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 LIBRARY 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 RIVERSIDE
 
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 It Never Can Happen Again
 
 BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 In One Volume, Croivn 8vo., price 6s. each 
 JOSEPH VANCE 
 
 Mr. Loris Melville, emineut crilic, and auti or of a 
 notable Life of Thackeray, writes as follows : " It is written 
 from the heart— in its way it is as sincere as Newman's 
 ' A.nologia.' Epic in its conception, magnificent in its pre- 
 seiitmerit— this autobiography of a great-heai ted man could 
 only be told as it is by another great-hearted man." 
 
 ALICE-FOR=SHORT 
 
 ••.\ story th:if grips. . . . Vou never lose interest in it. 
 ... It is a remarkable book. To hold us in a curious, 
 insidious waj', arrested and concerned— in a word, to play 
 wi;h us and to charm us— this is a triumph which Mr. 
 De Morgan's blended humour ard sentiment achieves," — 
 Daily Clvoniclc. 
 
 SOMEHOW GOOD 
 
 ■' Mr. De Morg.in is becoming a national institution. We 
 cannot do without him. He is an elderly, wise, humorous 
 obser\ er of life, with a ser.st of character and a fluent pen." 
 — Times. 
 
 LONDON : WILLIAM HEINKMANN, 
 21 Bedford Street, W.C.
 
 It Never 
 Can Happen Again 
 
 B 
 
 u 
 
 William^pe Morgan 
 
 Author of 
 Joseph Vance," " Alice-for-Short," "Somehow Good" 
 
 In Two Volumes 
 Vol. I 
 
 London 
 William Heinemann 
 
 1909
 
 Copyright, London, igog, by William Heincmann and 
 Washington, U.S.A., by Henry Holt & Company
 
 l^OT IN RESPECT OF ANYTHING ITS PAGES 
 CONTAIN, BUT SOLELY IN REMEMBRANCE 
 OF TWO LONG CONCURRENT LIVES AND AN 
 UNINTERRUPTED FRIENDSHIP, THIS BOOK 
 IS DEDICATED BY ITS AUTHOR TO THE 
 MEMORY OF 
 
 RALPH EARL OF LOVELACE
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Off LIZAEANN COUPLAND, HER FATHER AND HER FAMILY. OF HIS 
 
 rREVIOUS STORY, AND LIZARANN's BIETH .... 1 
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 OF jim's match-selling, and how he came to take to it. how 
 
 HE walked home WITH LIZ AR ANN 13 
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 OF ROYD HALL, AND ITS LITERARY GUEST WHO HAD AN IMPOSSIBLE 
 
 wife 28 
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 OP MISS AEKROYD AND HER AVIARY. HOW MR. CHALLIS WALKED 
 IN THE GARDEN WITH HER. OF ME. TEIPTOLEMUS WEAXALL. 
 AND OF HOW MR. CHALLIS WROTE TO HIS WIFE ... 43 
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 OF A RAINY DAY AT ROYD. HOW A MOTOR-CAR CAilE TO GRIEF. 
 HOW MISS AEKROYD 'S MOTHER WENT TO THANES CASTLE AND 
 SHE HERSELF DIDn'T 54 
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 OF THE GRAUBOSCHIAN PHILOSOPHY. HOW JUDITH ARKROYD 
 V.'ALKED WITH MR. CHALLIS TO THE RECTORY. HOW HE SAID 
 NOTHING ABOUT HIS WIFE BEING HIS DECEASED WIFE's SISTER. 
 HOW HE WAS OUT OF HIS ELEMENT AT THE RECTORY. SALADIN 
 AND HIS CAT. HIS HEDGEHOG 66 
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 OF OTHER GUESTS AND THEIR TALK. OF A SOFA-HAVEN AND HOW 
 MISS AEKROYD PERCEIVED THAT MR. CHALLIS COULD WRITE 
 A TRAGEDY. BEAUTY A MATTER OF OPINION ... 88 
 
 vii
 
 viii CONTENTS OP VOL. I 
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 PAOE 
 
 OF HOW NO ACCIDENT HAD REALLY HAPPENED TO THE MOTOR-CAR. 
 OF A COMBAT BETWEEN TWO SISTERS, CHIEFLY ABOUT THOSE 
 OF people's deceased WIVES. OF FLIRTATIONS WITH 
 MARRIED MEN. HOW CHALLIS WROTE A LONG AMITSING LETTER 
 TO MARIANNE 103 
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 HOW MARIANNE SHOWED THAT LETTER TO AN INTIMATE FRIEND, 
 MRS. ELDRIDGE. WHERE WAS THAT SOFA ? OF COUNTRY AND 
 TOWN HOUSES. JEALOUSY 117 
 
 CHAPTER X 
 CHALLis's adieti to miss arkroyd. a long ride home, and a 
 
 COLD WELCOME. BUT IT WAS JOLLY TO BE BACK, AT ANY 
 RATE. MISS ARKROYD 'S MESSAGE DELIVERED . . . 139 
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 VATTED RUM CORNER, AND CHESTNUTS. A YOUNG TURK. HOW 
 LIZARANN TOLD MOTHER GROVES OF THE FLYING DUTCHMAN. 
 OF AN AMBULANCE, AND WHAT WAS IN IT. HOW LIZARANN 
 WENT HOME WITHOUT DADDY 157 
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 HOW UNCLE BOB HAD THE HORRORS. HOW LIZARANN ATE COLD 
 CHESTNUTS IN BED. DELIRIUM TREMENS. HOW JIM COULD 
 SEE AT NIGHT, AND WAS UNDER THE BED. POLICE ! . .172 
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 HOW THE RECTOR OF ROYD TOOK A WRONG TURNING, AND PICKED 
 UP LIZARANN IN THE SNOW. MR. STEPTOE's KNIFE, AND HOW 
 LIZARANN MADE HIM LEAVE HOLD OF IT. HOW AUNT STINGY 
 WAS HANDY IN CASE OF ANYTHING, AND UNCLE BOB WENT TO 
 SLEEP ON A SECOND-HAND SOFA 189 
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 OF THE END OF THE BLIZZARD, AND OF SIMON MAGUS. HOW 
 MR. TAYLOR FOUND A DOCTOR. OF A CHASE THROUGH THE 
 SNOW, AND A CANAL LOCK. WHAT WAS FOUND IN IT. BUT 
 SIMON WAS INVISIBLE . . 203
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I ix 
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 now LIZARANN WAS TAKEN TO MISS FOSSETT'S, BUT HAD A STITCH 
 IN HER SIDE, AND WASN't TO GO TO DADDY TO-DAY. HOW 
 THE RECTOR WENT TO JIM IN THE HOSPITAL, AND JIM WAS 
 DISAPPOINTED ABOUT HIJM 
 
 PAGE 
 
 217 
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 IJREAKFAST IN GROSVENOR SQUARE. STRAINED RELATIONS OF 
 TWO SISTERS. A BATTLE INTERRUPTED. SAMARIA A GOOD- 
 NATURED PLACE. WHO WAS TO PAY ? 235 
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 LADY ARKROYD'S VISIT TO JIM. GOODY TALK. JIM AND HIS MAKER. 
 HOW MR. TAYLOR VISITED ANOTHER CASE. A DEATH-BED 
 CONFESSION 248 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THAT NASTY LITTLE STETHOSCOPE ! A RETROSPECT ABOUT THE 
 RECTOR AND MISS FOSSETT. A TRANSACTION IN KISSES. AUNT 
 STINOY'S WEEDS, AND WHAT A GOOD COOK SHE WAS 
 
 262 
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 HOW AUNT STINGY BECAME MARIANNE'S COOK. A MOST OFFENSIVE 
 BIBLE CLASS. MR. CHALLIS'S JUDITH. ESTRILD AND THE 
 OSTROGOTHS. THE ACROPOLIS CLUB 273 
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 .VRS. ELDRIDGE IN FULL BLOW. THE IMPROPER STUDY OF MAN- 
 KIND. NOTHING REALLY WRONG ! AN IDENTIFICATION 
 WITH A VENGEANCE. HOW CHALLIS CAME HOME LATE . 289 
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 HOW JIM RETURNED HOME, ALL BUT ONE LEG, AND LIZARANN 
 CALLED ON HIM. HAD THE DEVIL GOT UNCLE BOB ? HOW 
 BRIDGETTICKS HAD HEARD OF A SCHEME FOR LIZARANn'S 
 BENEFIT ..... ..... 307
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I 
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 1 AG 
 
 THE EXACT STORY OF CHALLIS's FIRST WIFE'S FIRST MARRIAGE. 
 HOW HE AND MARIANNE MISSED THEIR EXPLANATION. CHAR- 
 LOTTE THE DETECTIVE. CHALLIS'S SECOND COURTSHIP, IN A 
 NTTTSHELL 322 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 HOW CHALLIS CALLED ON MISS ARKROYD IN GROSVENOR SQUARE. 
 A SPRAINED ANKLE. ON THE EDGE OF A PRECIPICE. KING 
 SOLOMON AND HIS DJINN BOTTLE 331 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 HOW MARIANNE WENT TO TULSE HILL. OF BOB'S PHONOGRAPH, 
 AND HOW HE POSTED A LETTER TO JUDITH. OF MARIANNE'S 
 RETURN, AND MORE SUSUNDERSTANDING. BUT IT WOULD BE 
 ALL RIGHT IN THE MORNING 340 
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 OF AN UNCALLED FAMILY BOW, AND HOW BOB's BREAKFAST WAS 
 POSTPONED. OF A LETTER FROM JUDITH THAT MADE MATTERS 
 WORSE 367 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 AT KOYD AGAIN. THE BREAD OF IDLENESS. A GOOD PLAIN COOK. 
 A DIALOGUE BETWEEN A PRIEST AND A PROFANE AUTHOR. 
 THE RECTORY AND ITS GUEST, LIZARANN. HOW THE CARRIAGE 
 
 didn't STOP 377 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 HOW Judith's stage mania had cooled, trout bend, and a 
 
 TICKLISH INTERVIEW. HALF-A-AHLE OFF TEA. A DISCUSSION 
 
 ON RELIGIOUS EDUCATION 394
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 LiZARANN CouPLANn did not know what her father's em- 
 ployment was ; but she knew that, every morning, she saw 
 him to the corner of Bladen Street, put his left hand on 
 the palin's of number three, and left him to shift for him- 
 self. She was on honour not to watch him down Bladen 
 Street, and she had a keen sense of honour. She also knew 
 by experience that when her aunt, Mrs. Steptoe, said she 
 would learn her a lesson she wouldn't easy forget, Mrs. 
 Steptoe was not referring to teacher-book instruction like 
 at school. And this lesson, Lizarann understood, would be 
 imparted by her aunt with some blunt instrument, perhaps 
 a slipper, in case she failed to observe her promise. She 
 was not to go spyin' and starin' after Father no farther 
 than where it was wrote up " Old Vatted Rum, fivepence- 
 halfpenny " at the Green Man and Still. It was a compact, 
 and Lizarann observed it — always running away as fast 
 as possible to get out of reach of temptation as soon as 
 ever her father's fingers closed on the knob of a particular 
 low paling. It was a paling good to turn upside down 
 over, which affirmed the territorial rights of the Green Man 
 over a certain six-foot foreshore of pavement liable else 
 to be claimed by the Crown, or the Authority. 
 
 Lizarann's father, James Coupland, was stone-blind, and 
 the reason she was sent with him every morning was 
 because he had to cross Cazenove Street, and Dartley 
 Street, and Trott Street, before you come to pavement all 
 the way, and it wasn't safe. As soon as you got to the 
 Green Man, why, there you were ! Only like touchin' the 
 wall, and your stick on the right, and on you kep' direck. 
 But as to what Lizarann's father did, at some place on this 
 side of the next bad crossing, his six-year-old daughter 
 never could guess. All she knew was that she was useful, 
 and assisted towards some public object, not easily under- 
 
 VOL. I. 1
 
 2 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 stood by a little girl, when she piloted her father to and 
 from his starting-point of continuous pavement, as a ship 
 through shoals and cross-currents, to the mouth of a canal. 
 But the metaphor of Lizarann's flight when she left the 
 ship to its captain is not an easy one. If only metaphors 
 would not be so lob-sided ! 
 
 That her father was a supplicant for public charity was 
 a surmise that never crossed Lizarami's mind. An idea can 
 be got of how she thought of him by any young lady who 
 knows, for instance, that her father is in the Custom-House, 
 but who has never seen the Custom-House, and has no 
 idea what he does there ; or even by one who, having for 
 parent a sexton, and being kept in ignorance of his func- 
 tions, conceives of him as the Archbishop of Canterbury ; 
 or more easily — to take yet another parallel — by one 
 situated hke Lizarann's httle friend Bridgetticks, down a 
 turnin' out of Trott Street, whose grandfather was in an 
 almshouse ; but who was inflated past all bearing by his 
 livery or uniform when the old chap was out for his holiday, 
 and Bridget was allowed to walk with him all along Trott 
 Street and round the Park. There was no abidin' of her, 
 struttin' about ! 
 
 " My grandfather's richer than your father," said Bridget- 
 ticks, after one such occasion, " and he's got his heyesight, 
 too." 
 
 " Fathers are better than grandfathers," said Lizarann. 
 " Fathers goes down Bladen Street holdin' on to nufiin', 
 and ain't they rich, neither ? My father he fetches home 
 nine shilHngs in coarpers. Aunt Stingy, she let Uncle 
 Step toe get at it, and he laid some of it out in gin." The 
 name of this aunt, as Lizarann pronounced it, seemed to 
 ascribe a waspish character to its owner rather than a 
 parsimonious one. 
 
 " You lyin' little thing, how you ever can !" exclaimed 
 Bridgetticks. This was because the daring sum of nine 
 shillings took her aback. But on consideration another 
 line of tactics seemed more efiective. " Nine shillin's 
 ain't nothin'," she said. " My grandfather, he's got an 
 allowance regular, he has." 
 
 Lizarann paused before replying. She was confronted 
 with an unforeseen thing, foreign to human experience.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 3 
 
 What was an allowance ? On the whole, it would be better 
 to keep clear of it. She changed the venue of the discus- 
 sion. " He's dressed up, he is," she said. But she spoke 
 with diffidence, too, and her friend felt conciliated. 
 
 " Dressed up's a falsehood," she said, but -without 
 asperity. " If you'd 'a said cloze like the Lord Mayor's 
 Show, now ! But little infant-school pippings like you 
 don't know nothink." Lizarann felt put upon her mettle. 
 
 " My father," she said, "he's got a board with wrote 
 upon. Hangs it round his neck, he does. Like on Har- 
 thurses carts and the milk." 
 
 " You never see it on his neck, nor yet you can't read. 
 You can't read the words on Arthurses cart." But Lizarann 
 could read one — the middle one — and did it, a syllable at a 
 time : " Prov-i-ded." It was correct, and a triumph for 
 the decipherer. But she was doomed to humiliation. 
 Bridgetticks was a great reader, like Buckle, and could read 
 what was wrote on milk-carts all through. 
 
 " Any little biby could read tliat ! You can't read 
 ' fammy-lies,' nor yet ' dyly.' It's no use your tryin'." 
 But Lizarann felt unhappy, and yearned for Culture, and 
 tried very hard to read " families " and " daily " on each 
 side of " provided," while Bridgetticks gave attention to a 
 doll's camp on the doorstep. But " families " is very hard 
 to read — you know it is ! — and Lizarann quite forgot to 
 put back a beautiful piece of stick-liquorice in her mouth 
 during her efforts to master it. 
 
 Anybody would have thought, to look along Tallack 
 Street, where this colloquy took place, that the announce- 
 ment on Arthurses cart " Families provided daily " was 
 followed out literally by Arthurs, and that that Trust or 
 Syndicate was driving a brisk trade in the families it pro- 
 vided daily. To-day was a holiday at the Board school, 
 and the whole street teemed with prams. And in every 
 pram was one biby, or more, assimilating Arthurses milk. 
 But they themselves had not been provided by Arthurs ; 
 merely the milk. 
 
 The prams were nearly the only vehicles in Tallack Street, 
 which ran straight acrost from the railway-arch to the 'Igh 
 Road, parallel-like, as you might say, to Trott Street. 
 Even Arthurses cart wasn't a real cart, only drove by hand. 
 
 1—2
 
 4 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 A nearer approach to an ideal was the coal, which came 
 behind a horse, and sold itself for a shillin' a hundred, more 
 or less, accordin' as the season. The scales, they'd weigh 
 down to twenty-eight pound, if you didn't want to have 
 capital lying idle ; but then it was a sight easier to be 
 cheated at that, and you could always bring two coal- 
 scuttles, and if one of 'em ivas wore through, why, a stout 
 bit of brown paper, coverin' in the hole, and there you 
 were ! Because the dropping of fragments of coal on the 
 pavement was not only wasteful, but giv' them boys some- 
 thing to aim with. Ammunition was scarce, owing to the 
 way the road was kep' ; similar, them boys took every 
 opportunity. 
 
 There were two other vehicles that were knowTi to Tallack 
 Street. One came every day with a drum, and sold vege- 
 tables. The proprietor had made himself hoarse, many 
 years since, with shouting about the freshness of his stock 
 between the outbreaks on the drum, and, as life advanced 
 and his lung-po\\er declined, the drum-performances en- 
 croached on the oratory. This suited a large majority of 
 the inhabitants, conveying a sense of Life — was, in fact 
 thought almost equal to the Play — by those who had been 
 to it — and was so appreciated by Lizarann and Bridget- 
 ticks that they would petition to be allowed to stand 
 in contact with the drum to feel the noise inside of 'em 
 like. 
 
 The other vehicle was, however, the climax of the Joy of 
 Living in Tallack Street, only it demanded a 'apeny a time, 
 and you had to save up. But if you could afford it, it was 
 rapture. How describe it 1 Well, it was drawed by a 
 donkey, and Avent round and round and round. You your- 
 self, and your friends, sat on truncated chairs at the end of 
 radial spokes rotating horizontally on a hub, vrliich played 
 melancholy tunes, and you could tell what they were by 
 looking, because there was the ticket of it, every time a 
 new tune come. But the execution supplied no clue, or 
 very little, to its identity. 
 
 Tallack Street, as you will have inferred, was a cul-de- 
 sac, and therefore very popular as a playground with the 
 children of the neighbourhood. It ended in a dead wall, 
 formerly enclosing an extinct factory, which had survived
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 5 
 
 the coming of the railway, by which it had been acquired, 
 and for some reason sj^ared ; about which factory, or, 
 rather, its remains, an understanding had been current for 
 about a generation that it could be took on lease from the 
 Company, and adapted as workshops. The board was 
 almost illegible, except one word " inquire," of no value 
 apart from its sequel, which anyone who could read would 
 have told you at once was a name and address ; but as to 
 what name and what address, it would have taken a scollard 
 to tell that. 
 
 There came occasionally to Tallack Street a lady, who 
 appeared to Lizarann to make her way into her Aunt 
 Steptoe's home on insufficient pretexts. She certainly 
 was not the sort of lady to get her shoes mended by a 
 working cobbler in a suWrban slum, and Lizarann made 
 no pretence of understanding her. She saw very little of 
 any of her aunt's visitors, because she was always sent, or 
 bundled, out the moment they appeared, and only allowed 
 in the house again after their departure. 
 
 She was interested and pleased, therefore, when this 
 lady, who was dressed quite beautiful, developed as a 
 friend of Teacher, the familiar spirit of the Dale Road 
 Schools, where this little girl was learning to sew quite 
 beautiful. She was still more interested when she became 
 aware that the conversation between these two ladies 
 related to her own family. Teacher and the lady talked out 
 quite loud close to her— as if she didn't matter, bless you ! 
 
 " All the streets are not as bad as Tallack Street," said 
 the lady. " And all the houses in Tallack Street are not 
 so bad as that house at the end. People named Townroe, 
 I think — awful people !" 
 
 " Do you mean Steptoe ?" 
 
 " Oh yes— Steptoe. I've tried to talk to the woman, 
 and it's perfectly useless. You can't do anything when 
 the man's in the way. And as for him— well, you know 
 Adehne, when these people don't attend either church or 
 chapel, it's simply hopeless. There's nothing to begin upon." 
 
 " The man drinks. Of course !" 
 
 " Of course ! He seemed sober, though, the only time 
 I saw him, but very sulky. Oh dear ! — he was trying."
 
 6 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " What did he say ?" 
 
 " He wouldn't say anything — wouldn't answer ! And 
 he said to his wife : ' You say a something word ' — you 
 understand, Adeline ? — ' you say a something word, and 
 see if I don't smack your eye. You try it !' My daughter 
 talked for an hour, and then he said : ' If you think you'll 
 sedooce me into committing of myself, you'll find you're 
 mistook. So I should think better of it, if I was you. 
 Yours werry truly, Robert Steptoe.' Just as if he was 
 writing a letter." Both ladies laughed, and Lizarann 
 pricked her finger badly, and it redded all over the 'em- 
 stitch. But she couldn't understand the laugh. She was 
 not fond of her aunt's husband ; you can't love pock-marks 
 unless they have some counterpoise in beauty of dispo- 
 sition. But she had a certain spirit of partisanship about 
 her belongings, too ! 
 
 " I suppose the children go to some school — Board School 
 or something," said Teacher. 
 
 " They haven't children, thank Heaven ! these people," 
 said the outside lady. " But there's a little girl — some- 
 how — with a father. They said she came here — at least, 
 I suppose the ' school-house up the road ' meant here." 
 
 " Then she must be here now. What was her name ? 
 Did you make out ?" 
 
 " Eliza Ann something — Doubleday, I think, as near as 
 I can recollect. No, it wasn't Doubleday. What could it 
 have been ? . . ." And this lady tapped one hand with 
 the other, to keep on showing how hard she was thinking. 
 
 " Was it Eliza Ann Coupland ? Come here, Lizarann, 
 and tell the lady if it was you." 
 
 Lizarann approached by instalments, in awe. She had 
 received false impressions from the conversation — one tha'j 
 her uncle could write a letter, and this lady knew it. A 
 second that her aunt's children — if any — would have 
 been all over little sand-pits that would catch and hold the 
 grime awful, like their father, and that therefore we ought 
 to be thankful. A third that she was a " little girl some- 
 how," and she had never been told that she was one some- 
 how, only that she was a little girl. 
 
 " Are you the little girl ?" said the lady. 
 
 " I don't know, miss," said Lizarann. She thought the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 7 
 
 lady seemed impatient. And whom did she mean by 
 " they " when she said " Oh dear ! — how trying they are !" ? 
 
 " Ought I to tell her to say ' My lady,' or not ?" said 
 Teacher. 
 
 " Oh, bother !" said the lady. " What does your father 
 do, my dear ? You're a nice little thing, only your mouth's 
 too big." 
 
 Timid murmurs came from the catechumen. " What's 
 that you say ? Father goes out to work ? What does 
 father go out to work at ?" 
 
 " That's impossible !" said Teacher. " Her father's" 
 blind, and she leads him about." 
 
 " I hope you're not telling stories, child, like the rest, 
 because I Hke you all except your mouth. Come close 
 here, so that I can hear you, and tell me what your father 
 does. Only don't splutter or gabble !" 
 
 Whereupon Lizarann gave her version of her father's 
 professional employment. She knew she was to say, if 
 pressed on the point, that her father was " an asker," and 
 she said it, standing first on one leg and then on the other 
 uneasily. She had a mixture of misgiving and confidence 
 that the statement would be sufiicient ; just as you or I 
 might have felt in stating, for instance, that our father was 
 an apparitor, or a stevedore, or a turnover-at-press. But 
 she had absolutely no idea of the meaning of her phrases. 
 
 " What on earth does the child mean ? Say it again, 
 small person !" Thus the lady. 
 
 " A asker !" The child had the name perfectly clear, 
 and added " Yass !" — to drive it home — with eyes of assur- 
 ance standing wide open. Both ladies made her repeat 
 it, and asked her what she meant by it ; but she evidently 
 did not know. They pondered and speculated, till on 
 a sudden a light broke. "Is it possible she means a 
 beggar .?" said Miss Fossett. Then the two of them spoke 
 in an undertone, and Lizarann felt that her family affairs 
 were being discussed over her head, but by creatures too 
 great for her to take exception to, or even to interpret. 
 Presently the lady addressed her again : 
 
 " What does he ask for, httle stuffy ? Yes, you may 
 come as close as that. What does he ask for, child ?" 
 
 Thereat Lizarann, in support of her family credit, said :
 
 8 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " He took all of nine shillings in coarpers once on a time." 
 She couldn't compete with the lady in birth and position, 
 but she had a proper pride in her race, for all that. 
 
 The lady and Miss Fossett looked at one another, and 
 the latter said : "It's quite possible. They do sometimes." 
 And Lizarann felt flattered and that she had done her duty. 
 And that when she told her father, he would certainly give 
 her a peppermint- drop. She had a sense of an improved 
 position as she went back to her sewing. But the two 
 ladies went on talking about her under their breath, and 
 she fancied they were resuming some incidents of the 
 previous Saturday at Tallack Street. Teacher seemed to 
 have heard something of them, and she now connected 
 them with her pupil. As the lady ripened towards de- 
 parture she became more audible. 
 
 " It only shows the truth of what I'm always saying to 
 Sir Murgatroyd. How can you expect them to be any 
 better when they have such wretched homes ? Give them 
 air and light and sanitation and things, and then talk 
 goody to them if you like. . . . Oh dear ! — I must rush. 
 I've promised to go with Sibyl and those Inglis girls to 
 Hurlingham this afternoon." Then the lady had a re- 
 crudescence of her perception that Lizarann was funny, 
 for she turned round, going away, to say to Miss Fossett : 
 "Oh dear, how funny they are ! Fancy an Asker !" and, 
 as it were, fell a little into Miss Fossett' s bosom to find 
 sympathy, afterwards kissing her, and sajdng, " But how 
 good you are !" rather gushily, and making off. She did 
 say, however, to Lizarann : " Good-bye, little person ! 
 Consider I've kissed you. I would, only it's such a sticky 
 day." 
 
 Much of this conversation would have been quite unin- 
 telHgible to the child, even if she had heard the whole of it. 
 Her mind was not prepared to receive it, as, not having 
 had much time to reflect since her birth, she had not 
 noticed that her domestic life had anything exceptional 
 about it. Extension of her social circle had not, so far, 
 convinced her that there was anything unusual in their 
 rows and quarrels ; in fact, she was gently creeping on to a 
 belief that Steptoes — their inclusive name — was the rule, 
 and the balance of the Universe the exception. But her
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 9 
 
 unconsciousness of the actual was liable to inroads from 
 without, and that day at school roused the curiosity of an 
 inquiring mind. Lizarann asked herself for the first time 
 whether the conditions of her home-life were really normal, 
 and nothing better was to be looked forward to in the 
 future. No doubt Tallack Street would have sided with 
 the lady in the views she expressed of any one house in it, 
 though each house would have laid claim to an exceptional 
 character for itself. But in the case of Steptoe's its una- 
 nimity would have been impressive ; for Lizarann's Uncle 
 Steptoe he'd be in liquor as often as not, and frequently 
 aim a stool or suclilike at his wife's head — besides language 
 you could hear the length of the street. 
 
 It does not follow that he had no provocation. Mrs. 
 Steptoe was a fine study of the effect of exasperating cir- 
 cumstances on a somewhat uncertain temper, and Lizarann 
 conceived of the result as a typical aunt. She had married, 
 some twelve years since, from motives difficult of analysis, 
 a cobbler who drank, towards whom she had always pro- 
 fessed indifference. She seemed to have based a low opinion 
 of all mankind on an assumption that they were none on 
 'em much better than her husband, and most of 'em were 
 a tidy sight worse. If so, the tidiness of the sight might 
 have disappointed orderly, old-fashioned folk. Not that 
 Bob Steptoe was a bad sort when he was sober. Only that 
 was so seldom. 
 
 Now, on the Saturday evening in question, this uncle by 
 marriage of Lizarann, having previously taken too much 
 beer, took too much whisky, and became quarrelsome. " A 
 man ain't always answerable, look at it how you may !" 
 said Tallack Street. Let us hope Mr. Steptoe was not, as 
 on this occasion he loosened three of his wife's front teeth 
 and indented the bridge of her nose. His blind brother-in- 
 law, returning at this moment, personally conducted by his 
 small daughter, was unable to see, but guessed that Steptoe 
 was under restraint by neighbours, and from mixed sounds 
 of pain and rage and inarticulate spluttering that his wife 
 had been the victim of his violence. Poor Jim, mad with 
 anger, besought the restraining party only to let him get 
 hold of his brother-in-law, and he would give him what 
 would recall him to his memory on future occasions.
 
 10 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Feeling the desirableness of this, they complied ; and Mr. 
 Steptoe, when, after a painful experience of the superior 
 strength of Jim, he got his head out of Chancery, felt ill, 
 and was conducted to bed by his wife. Of whom Lizarami 
 afterwards reported that, when she heard Uncle Bob get 
 louder, Aunt Stingy, she said, " You do, and I'll call Jim 
 back again," and then Uncle Bob he shut up. 
 
 This little girl's father had been in the Merchant Service 
 and had lost his eyesight through an explosion of petroleum 
 in the harbour at Cape Town. Current belief held that it 
 was his own fault, saying that Jim Coupland hadn't any 
 call to drop a lighted match into a hole in an oil-cask that 
 was standing in the January sun ; still less was it necessary 
 that he should look after it tlirough the hole, and receive 
 the full blast of the inevitable explosion in his face. He 
 admitted these facts, but maintained that a hundred oil- 
 casks might have exploded in his face, and no harm done 
 if he had not, a few days before, seen the Flying Dutchman. 
 This belief could not be shaken by argument, not even by 
 the fact that the other men on his watch, all of whom had 
 seen the Phantom Ship, had retained their eyesight intact. 
 Didn't old Sam Nuttall — and nobody could pretend he 
 hadn't been forty years in the Navy — say the very first 
 thing of all, when he told him he'd seen the Dutchman : 
 "Look you here, my son," he said, "you've got to look 
 sharp and get yourself hanged or shot or drownded, if you 
 want to die with eyes in your head " ? And warn't he right ? 
 Anyhow, the coincidence of the accident a few days later 
 had created a firm faith in the mind of Jim Coupland, and 
 very few had the heart to try to shake it. 
 
 Whatever the cause, Jim Coupland came back eyeless 
 from that voyage, and found his 'svife lately delivered of a 
 female infant that did well, and became Lizarann. But 
 her mother did ill, presumably, and the doctor that attended 
 her did certainly, if the verdict of Tallack Street was war- 
 ranted. She had no call to die, said Tallack Street. 
 Perhaps its many matrons did not allow enough for the 
 hideous shock of poor eyeless Jim's reappearance. She did 
 die, and poor Jim, the happy bridegroom of a year ago, 
 was left a widower at eight-and-twenty, hopelessly blind, 
 with a baby he could never see.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 11 
 
 Oh the tragedies Life's records have to show, tliat 
 remain unpubHshed, and must do so ! — all but a chance 
 one or two, such as this one just out/lined. 
 
 Lizarann was named after the ship her father made his- 
 last voyage in, or almost after it. The ship was the Anne 
 Eliza, and the parson got the name wrong. Jim said it 
 wasn't any odds, that he could reckon ; and Mrs. Steptoe, 
 his sister, said, on the contrary, it ran easier, took that way. 
 So Lizarann she became, and Lizarann she remained. And 
 the tale how father lost his eyesight through seeing the 
 Flying Dutchman was the ever-present Romance of her 
 youth, and would constantly creep into her conversation, 
 even when the subject-matter thereof was already interest- 
 ing — as, for instance, when she was discussing v\'ith Bridget- 
 ticks an expected, or perhaps we should say proposed, 
 addition to the family of Lizarann's doll, which had been 
 fixed for the ensuing Sunday. There could be no doubt — 
 as there is usually in the case of human parents^about the 
 exact hour of arrival, as the Baby was ready dressed for 
 the event her intended mother was looking forward to, in 
 hypothetical retirement, on the house-doorstep. She and 
 her friend were comparing notes on previous events of a 
 like nature. 
 
 " Oh, you story !" said Lizarann, but not offensively — 
 it was only current chat. " My father says 1 understand. 
 He says I understand ship's victuals and port and star- 
 board." Grasp of these involved proficiency in other de- 
 partments of thought, so the implication seemed to run. 
 But Bridget wouldn't have it so. 
 
 " Ya'ar little silly !" she said, standing on the parapidge, 
 and hanging to the riling, so as to project backwards into 
 the little forecourt ; you couldn't, speakin' accurately, call 
 it a garden, but it had the feelin' about it, too. " Ya'ar 
 little silly Simplicity Sairah in a track ! Ship's victuals 
 ain't nothing to understand, nor yet port and starboard ! 
 Wait till you can understand fly-wheels and substrac- 
 tion engines ! They'll make you sit up and talk !" This 
 little girl's father was an engineer in charge of a steam- 
 roller. 
 
 Bridget would have said the exact reverse if the two 
 excursions into the relative fields of knowledge had been
 
 12 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 exchanged between them. Lizarann respected her friend 
 too much to conceive of her as a time-server, and her mind 
 cast about to fortify her position on other hnes. 
 
 " My father he says I can understand the Flying Dutch- 
 man, and he seen her. Yass ! Afore ever he lost his heye- 
 sight !" 
 
 " He's lyin', then. Dutchmen ain't women. I seen a 
 picter-Dutchman in trowsers." Lizarann cogitated gravely 
 on this before she answered. " A ship's a her," she then 
 said. " All ships is hers." She then added, but not as a 
 saddening fact, merely as a thing true and noticeable, " He 
 never seen me, father didn't."
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 Can anyone among us whose life is full of action, with 
 Hope in his heart and Achievement on his horizon ; whose 
 pillow whispers at night afterthoughts of a fruitful day, 
 and on the day that follows can, without affectation, re- 
 proach the head that lies too long on it with having lost 
 something precious that cannot be regained— can such a 
 one conceive the meaning of blind or crippled life, that 
 left Hope dead by the roadside long ago, and dares not 
 look ahead to see the barren land ; whose pillow speak& 
 no word about the past, but only welcome hints about 
 oblivion, and a question with the daylight — why rise ? 
 Why rise, indeed, and maybe miss a dream of a bygone 
 day ? Better lie still, and thank God for the dream- 
 world ! 
 
 " I wonder what that poor devil feels like," said one- 
 first-class traveller outside the railway-station to another, 
 who, like himself, gave the impression that he had plenty 
 of luggage somewhere else, which was being well looked 
 after by a servant whose Avages were too high. Both were 
 young men, well under twenty-five at a guess ; and though 
 one was fair and the other was dark, and they were not the- 
 same height, and their features were not alike, still, the pre- 
 dominant force of their class-identity was so strong that 
 individuality was lost in it, and most folk, seeing them 
 en passant would have spoken of them thenceforth as 
 " those two young swells," and dismissed them with an. 
 impression that either might be at any time substituted 
 for the other without any great violence to contemporary 
 history. They appeared to be sauntering to the train^ 
 and the poor devil was Jim Coupland, at his usual post by 
 the long blank wall he used to feel his way down^ after 
 leaving Lizarann at the corner she might not pass. The 
 wonderer had bought matches of Jim that he didn't want 
 
 13
 
 14 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN, 
 
 — for Jim was obliged to make a show of selling matches, 
 to be mthin the law — and had returned change for six- 
 pence, honourably ofiered by Jim. " I can't see you, 
 master," said the blind man, " and I never shall, not if 
 the sky falls, but I thank ye kindly. And I'll tell my little 
 lass on ye, home to-night." It was the only recompense 
 Jim had to offer, and he offered it. 
 
 " / should kill myself straight off," said the other 
 traveller. His speech was quite as consequent on his 
 friend's as most current speech is on its antecedent ; you 
 listen closely when you hear talk, and see if this is not the 
 case ! " Stop a bit ! Don't make me split this cigar. I 
 haven't got another, and nothing fit to smoke is procurable 
 in this neighbourhood . . . there ! — that's right, now. . . 
 The little chocket wouldn't snickle out. Let's see ! What 
 topic were we giving our powerful brains to ? Oh, ah ! — 
 the blind beggar. You recollect the fellah ?" 
 
 " Never saw him before, that I know of." 
 
 " Perhaps you haven't. I have. But you remember 
 the two little girls ?" 
 
 " \Vhich two ?" 
 
 " That morning we went to inquire about the railroad 
 arch. Of course, you remember." His friend assented. 
 " Well ! — that little girl is this chap's kid. She'll come in 
 the evening to take liim home. I've seen 'em about to- 
 gether, many a time." 
 
 " I remember tAvo little girls, where we went down that 
 street my mother and sister slum in. Tallack Street. 
 Which was the kid ? The bony one with the nostril ajar, 
 and the front teeth, that called you a cure 1" 
 
 " No — the little plummy modest one, with both eyes 
 stood open, and something to suck. Large dark eyes." 
 No really nice young man, such as we like, can ever men- 
 tion a girl's eyes, even a young child's, without a shade of 
 tenderness. 
 
 " What a sensitive youth you are, Scipio !" His friend 
 sees through him. " The other was a little Jezebel." 
 
 " Came out of Termagant's egg, I should say. Isn't 
 there a bird called a Termagant ? There ought to be." 
 
 " I quite agree, but I doubt it. Well — to return to the 
 point — you say you would kill yourself, straight off. How
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 15 
 
 do you know that ? You think you would now, but you 
 wouldn't when it came to the scratch. This man doesn't 
 want to kill himself." 
 
 " Because of the Httle girl. He'd kill himself fast enough 
 if he had nothing to live for." 
 
 " My dear Scipio, that is sheer petitio principii. A man's 
 having no msh at all to live takes his wish to die for granted. 
 Unless he has an unnatural taste for mere equilibrium for 
 its own sake. But the real point is that if you were this 
 chap, you would have exactly the same inducements to 
 live that he has — the little girl, for instance." 
 
 " Be calm, WilHam ! Allow me to point out that you 
 are begging the question yourself. The hypothetical form 
 — ' If you were this chap ' — if interpreted to imply an ex- 
 change of identity in all particulars, takes for granted that 
 what this chap does now I should do then. Clearly, I 
 shouldn't kill myself, or shouldn't have done so up to date, 
 as he hasn't. But the meaning of my remark is obvious 
 to any mind not warped and distorted by casuistry. I 
 refer more particularly to your own. Its meaning is that 
 if I had two scabs instead of eyes, and was reduced to 
 flattering the vanity of my fellow-countrymen in order to 
 stimulate their liberality, I should by preference select 
 Euthanasia." And he lighted his cigar, which had been 
 waiting. 
 
 " I wish that little girl was here now, to call you a 
 ' cure ' again, Scipio. She did you a lot of good." 
 
 Jim Coupland heard as far as "I should kill myself 
 straight off," which he certainly was not meant to do by 
 the speakers. But neither of them were on their guard 
 against the quickened hearing of the blind, and neither of 
 them heard that Jim answered, though each had an im- 
 pression the blind man was talking to himself. As for Jim, 
 his impression was that his words reached. But then he 
 had no means of knowing how far off the young men were, 
 and that, as against the shreAvdness of liis own hearing, 
 they were little better than deaf at that distance. What 
 he said was : 
 
 " I was minded to, young Master, at the first go off. But 
 the wish was on me strong for the voice of my wife, and the
 
 16 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 lips of her. And when I lost her — ye understand — it was 
 the cry of the baby new-bom that held me. I'd be shamed 
 to think upon it now, young Master. The day's bound to 
 go by, and I mean to bide it out." 
 
 " Who are you leeterin' to ? Polly — pretty Polly J" 
 Thus an unfeeling fiend of a boy, who hears poor Jim talking 
 to the empty air. But Jim, if he hears, does not heed him. 
 His mind is far away, thinking of the dreadful day of his 
 return to his wife and her week-old baby, and his coming 
 to know that his mishap, announced by letter the day 
 before, had been kept from her, and was still to tell. Of 
 the ill-judged attempt to keep it from her yet a while, and 
 let him be beside her in the half-dark. And the fatal 
 sudden light of a fire that blazed out, and her cry of terror : 
 " Oh, Jim, man, what have you done to your eyes ?" . . . 
 
 Then of yet one more forlorn hope — the ill-wrought, ill- 
 sustained pretext that this was but a passing cloud, a mere 
 drawback of the hour, a thing that time would remedy — 
 so ill-sustained that even in the few short days before her 
 death Jim's wife had come to know that his eyes, stone- 
 blind beyond a doubt, would never laugh into her face 
 again, would never rest with hers upon the little face she 
 longed to show him was so like his own. And then the end, 
 and a grave in the parish burial-ground he could not see. 
 
 Then of a dream of the Valley of the Shadow of Death, 
 and of a child's cry that reached him and called him back, 
 even as he longed of his own free choice and will to plunge 
 into its utter darkness. Then of a growth of ease — a sort 
 of working ease to get through life with — and a term of 
 reading, day by day, hour by hour, each tiniest change in 
 the inflection of the baby's cry, until one day Lizarann, to 
 whom it had occurred to glance round at the Universe she 
 had been pitchforked into, burst into a not very well 
 executed laugh at its expense, and made poor Jim for the 
 first time fully conscious that he had a daughter. 
 
 It would be hard to tell all the struggles he went through 
 before he could reconcile himself to a new position in life, 
 mendicancy under pretence of match-selling. He did it at 
 last, urged by grim necessity and Mrs. Steptoe. Perhaps we 
 should say stung by the latter rather than urged, for her 
 attitude was that, eyes or no eyes, if her brother wasn't
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 17 
 
 going to do a hand's turn for himself, he might pack up his 
 traps and go, brat and all ! Who was he, that he was to 
 eat his sister out of house and home ? And all because he 
 was too proud to beg, forsooth ! Wasn't he begging 
 already, and wasn't she alms-giving ? Yes ! — only it was 
 to be all underhanded ! Nothing fair or above-board ! 
 Why should he be ashamed to ask the public for what he 
 wasn't ashamed to take from two toiling relatives, the 
 weaker of whom had suffered so much already from the 
 disgusting drinking habits of the other ? Jim gave Avay, 
 and found excuses for his sister — he always did — in these 
 same disgusting habits. Perhaps he was right. Anyhow, 
 he gave way. And an old mate of his faked him up the 
 inscription afore- mentioned, and supplied the picture of 
 the Flying Dutchman from his narrative of the incident. 
 And well Jim remembered how the cord he hung it from 
 his neck by got frayed and broke, and brought back to his 
 mind another cord his hand once grasped, as he swayed 
 to and fro at the weather ear-ring of a topsail ; and his 
 wondering — would the frayed strands of the sheet hold 
 under the great strain of his back-draw, or snap and fall 
 with him into the black gulf that was hungering for him 
 below ? He could hear again the music of the gale that 
 sang in the shrouds, feel again the downward plunge of 
 the hull into the trough of the sea, and breathe again the 
 air that bore its flying foam. Then he thought to himself, 
 would not a plunge into that black gulf, then and there, 
 have been, after all, the best thing for him ? And answered 
 his own thought without noting a strangeness in its word- 
 ing : " What !— and never seen my little lass !" 
 
 But the happy fancy that Jim did not beg, but only 
 asked, took hold of the imagination. Of course he would 
 not beg — he would scorn to do so — he, the strong seaman, 
 who had lived a life of danger half of those whose footsteps 
 passed him daily would have flinched to think of ! Why 
 should he hesitate to ask of them what he would have given 
 so freely to any one of them himself — to any one of them 
 left in the dark ? So when Lizarann said to him one day, 
 apropos of the fact that people's fathers were their aunt's 
 brothers, " Bridgettickses brother's a 'Orsekeeper. Are 
 you a 'Orsekeeper 1" He replied that he wasn't, exactly. 
 
 VOL. I. 2
 
 18 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 But he was an Asker, to be sure ! And the child, catching 
 a sort of resemblance between the words, remembered it. 
 And, referring to her Aunt Steptoe, got it confirmed. It 
 served as a barrier for a time against an insight into the 
 facts. 
 
 When poor Jim's speech was so brave of how the day- 
 was bound to go by, and he would bide it out, was his whole 
 heart in his utterance ? Was there no reserve — no sup- 
 pressed execration of that mysterious unsolicited Cause 
 that had stinted him down to darkness after a short half- 
 time of light ? At that moment he was conscious of none — 
 a moment when he felt the world about him — heard the 
 voices of his fellow-men — felt on his face, without shrink- 
 ing, the full stress of the mid-day sun, whose rays he should 
 never see again. But how about the darkness of the night, 
 that he had learned to know only by the loneliness and the 
 silence ? In its solitude was it not now and again almost 
 his resolve to die, and not await another day ? Almost, 
 yes ! — but never quite. Always a decision to hear just 
 once again the voice of his little lass in the morning. If 
 it were only this once, and he should fail in strength to bear 
 that other day ; still, let it be, for now ! Just once again ! 
 
 But the longest nights led each to its dawn, and poor 
 Jim knew of each dawn by hearsay, and started off early, 
 on all days weather forbade not too grossly, hold of Lizar- 
 ann's 'and, and takin' good care not to crost only when 
 other parties done the same, actual-like, so you might 
 place reliance, and not get under the 'orses' 'oofs ; and 
 throughout each day that followed Jim treasured the 
 anticipation of its end, and looked forward to the coming 
 of his little lass to take him home. He would sit and think 
 of what her small hand would feel like in his when the 
 welcome hour should come for his departure ; and each 
 day, as that hour came, and he found his way back to 
 Vatted Rum Corner to wait for her, came also a short spell 
 of tense anxiety lest he should not hear her voice this 
 time. And then the relief, when he caught the signal he 
 had taught her, through the noise of the traffic and the 
 railway-whistles near at hand. 
 
 " Ye shouldn't sing out Poylot, little lass," said he, when 
 she turned up at the end of that day — the day of the two
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 19 
 
 young men and the sixpence. " Ye should say Pie-lott. 
 Else ye might be anyone else's little lass, not Father 
 Jim's." 
 
 " I ain't" said Lizarann resolutely. " I'm Father 
 Jim's. Pi-lot !" She threw her soul into a reproduc- 
 tion of her father's articulation. 
 
 " Nor yet j^ou've no need to lose your front teeth over 
 it. Easy does it in the end. Now again ! Pi-lot !" 
 Whereupon Lizarann repeated the word mth self-restraint, 
 and received approval. " Not for to tear up the paving- 
 stones, lassie," added her father, explanatorily. 
 
 " What was that young varmint a- saying ?" he asked, 
 as they started to return home. He was referring to words 
 overheard — winged words that had passed between his 
 daughter and a boy. It was the same boy that had called 
 him Pretty Poll, who had followed him to the street- 
 corner ; and had then gone on to greet Lizarann with the 
 report that her Daddy was waiting to give her " what-for," 
 for being late — which she wasn't. 
 
 Probably he was the worst boy in existence — at least. 
 Lizarann thought he was. She was too young to appre- 
 ciate his only virtue, a total absence of hypocrisy. 
 
 " Saying as it was your eyes as was out, and it didn't 
 hurt him.'" Jim seemed mightily amused. 
 
 " What did you say to him over that, little lass ?" 
 said he. 
 
 " Didnt say nuffint !" And, indeed, Lizarann had not 
 seen her way to quarrelling with two such obvious truths. 
 
 " What else was he a-saying 1 He said a bit more than 
 that. I could hear him giving it mouth." 
 
 " Sayin' he'd four nuts he hadn't ate, and me to guess 
 which 'and they was in beyont his back for a a'peny." 
 Lizarann then explained the proposed deal at some length. 
 
 " He's a nice young sportin' charackter ! Thimble- 
 rigging isn't in it. Why, lassie, if you had guessed right, 
 he'd just have swopped 'em across, and took your ha'penny. 
 He wants attendin' to with a rope's end, he does — wants 
 his trousers spilin'. His mother she sells the fried eels 
 and ,mnkles, next door against the little shop where I " 
 — Jim hesitated a minute — " where I get my shaving-soap." 
 For Jim remembered in time that his connection with this 
 
 2—2
 
 20 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 shop was not to come to his child's ears. His board was 
 to be kept in the background. 
 
 Lizarann wanted badly to frame a question about this 
 boy. Were all boys nefarious whose mothers sold fried 
 eels and winkles ? And if so, had this one acquired a low 
 moral tone by contact with fried fish, or had his parent's 
 humble walk in life resulted from his depravity ? Lizar- 
 ann gave up the idea of asking this question. It was too 
 complex. But she could get information about the barber's 
 shop. She approached the subject indirectly 
 
 " Bridgetticks she can read what's wrote up on shaving- 
 shops." 
 
 " What can she read on 'em, little lass ?" 
 
 " She can read Easy Shaving Twopence. And Hegg- 
 Shampoo Fourpence. And Fresh Water Every Customer. 
 Round in the winder in Cazenove Street." 
 
 " Brayvo, Bridgetticks ! But my little lass she's going 
 to read ever so well as Bridgetticks — ah ! and a fat lot 
 better. And larn manners belike, as well !" 
 
 " Bridgetticks said she'd larn Simpson's boy manners. 
 Down the yard where there's a dog killed his sister's cat." 
 Lizarann spoke evidently with some idea of joining the 
 class. But her father had other views. 
 
 " Bridgetticks indeed ! She couldn't teach manners to 
 a biled owl, to speak of. She better give her time to 
 studying of 'em herself. Whatever was the name she called 
 the gentleman, lass ? Tell us again." 
 
 " The long gentleman ?" 
 
 " Ah !" 
 
 " She didn't call him nuffint." 
 
 " Well, then — the short gentleman." 
 
 " A Cure." 
 
 " Well ! — that wasn't manners, lassie. She had ought to 
 have called him Sir — or his name, for that matter, if she'd 
 come by it. Couldn't she say his name with IVIister ? In 
 course she could, only she didn't know it." 
 
 Lizarann stopped, and stood nodding on the pavement. 
 " Bridgetticks, she knowed his name — the short one," she 
 said. " Because the tall gentleman, he called it him." Then 
 the two went on again, Jim having reclaimed the hand he 
 had let go for a moment to confirm a strange quick per-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 21 
 
 ception of the cliild's emphatic nods by touching her 
 head. 
 
 " What was the name of the short one the tall gentleman 
 called him by ?" he asked. This was not merely to make 
 conversation. Jim had fancied he caught a familiar sound 
 in the name one of his young swells of the morning had 
 applied to the other. He had not heard their reference 
 to Taliack Street. Had he done so, he would at once have 
 identified them as the subjects of a narrative of Lizarann's 
 some days since. She now olTered an imperfect version 
 of the name, and Jim at once caught the connection. He 
 had heard the name Scipio — used by the young man when 
 he gave him his sixpence for a box of Vesuvians. 
 
 " Sippy-oh — was that it ?" said he. " Well, that's a 
 queer start too. I've seen your two gentlemen, little lass, 
 only this morning. One of 'em, he planked down a tanner 
 for one box. Not Sippy-oh — t'other young master. What 
 were the two of 'em doing again do^vn in Taliack Street ?" 
 
 Lizarann braced herself for her narrative by drawing a 
 long breath and standing A\'ith her eyes very wide open, then 
 plunged in medias res with an oppressive sense of responsi- 
 bility for historical truth, but without punctuation. She 
 pooled all her stops, however, and by throwing in a handful 
 at long intervals gave her lungs an opportunity of ex- 
 panding. 
 
 " They was two gentleman in one hansom and I seen 'em 
 through the open winder and Aunt Stingy she sliet the 
 winder and Bridgetticks she come lookin' in at the winder 
 and Aunt Stingy she says I'll flat your nose for you she says 
 an impident little hussy and .she goes out for to catch hold 
 on her and Bridgetticks she sings out Old Mother Cobblers- 
 wax and hooks it off. ..." All the consolidated overdue 
 stops came in here. 
 
 Jim put in a word to steady the narrative, derived from 
 its earlier recital : " And then you got round behind your 
 aunt, and the gentlemen were talking to the cab-driver, 
 hey, lassie ?" 
 
 Lizarann nodded at her father exactly as if he could have 
 seen her. However, the way she said " yass " did all the 
 work of her nod, as well as its own, and she continued with 
 a new lease of breath : " The driver he says ' Don't see no
 
 22 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 spremises ' he says, and the gentlemen they says ' Don't 
 see no spremises ' they says, and then — ' Ho here's a little 
 girl ' they says all at wunst. ..." 
 
 " And that Avas my little lass, wam't it, lassie ? And she 
 showed 'em where the board was up. That was the way 
 of it, I lay. And Avhereabout was Bridgetticks the 
 whilst ?" Lizarann was becoming more reposeful in style, 
 and was working round to a proper distribution of stops. 
 
 " Bridgetticks," she replied, " was in behind the palin's 
 at 'Acker's, and was for biting Aunt Stingy if she laid 'ands. 
 And Jimmy 'Acker's granny she come out, and ' Leave the 
 child alone ' she says. But the two gentleman come down 
 out of the hansom scab and said there was no spremises, but 
 I was a nice little girl and should have a threp'ny bit. 
 Yass !" 
 
 " And then your aunt she looked round after you, I'll go 
 bail. Wasn't she in it, little lass ?" 
 
 " Then Aunt Stingy she giv' over, 'cos of Jimmy 'Acker's 
 granny, and come to see. And the tall gentleman, he 
 needn't trouble her, he says, and she kep' a little way off. 
 And I kep' the threp'ny bit in my mouf, I did." 
 
 " So she mightn't get it ?" Lizarann nodded. " And 
 where was Bridgetticks ?" 
 
 " Over acrost, feelin' up like, 'cos of Aunt Stingy." 
 
 An image passes through Jim's mind of a powerful rodent 
 working stealtliily round, clear of its enemy, to join the 
 colloquy, and perhaps secure another threepence. His 
 image of Bridgetticks is not a pleasing one. He doesn't 
 believe in her sex or her girlhood — classes her with the 
 fiendish boy at the fish-shop, and rather wishes he could 
 let her loose on him to run him down, as one slips a dog from 
 a leash. She would do it. 
 
 " And how came she to cut in ? It was my little lassie's 
 cake." 
 
 But Lizarann felt hurt on her friend's account. " She 
 giv' me two apples," she said, and left the point, as one sure 
 to be understood. Then she continued : " The gentlemen 
 wanted for to know our names, and Bridgetticks said not 
 if took down. So the gentleman put the pencil away and 
 she says Bridgetticks and I says Lizarann Toopland."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 23 
 
 " Right you were ! And then what did the gentleman 
 say ?" 
 
 " Not to shout both at once." 
 
 " Which did ye Hke best, Httle lass — which gentleman ?" 
 But the child is uncertain on this point. Being pressed, she 
 admits a tendresse for the one called Scipio ; but it appears 
 that Bridgetticks has condemned him on account of his 
 jaw, pointing to a certain sententiousness of style, which has 
 already been in evidence in this story Her discrimination 
 of him as a Cure, too, will show those who are familiar with 
 the use of this term that she placed a low value on his 
 reflections. 
 
 Her father, having certainly spoken with these two 
 gentlemen, felt some curiosity about what they could want 
 in Tallack Street. His having spoken with them himself 
 had, of course, given them an interest for him he had not 
 felt before. But inquiry of a child not seven years old has 
 to be conducted cautiously. If too hard pushed, she will 
 invent. " What did ye make out they came for, lassie ?" 
 he asked. 
 
 " Spremises," was the reply, given with confidence. 
 But this seemed ill-grounded when she added, " What does 
 spremises mean, daddy ?" 
 
 " Houses with bills in the winder, lass. Sure ! But 
 didn't they never say where they come from, nor what they 
 wanted ?" 
 
 " Bridgetticks she knew." 
 
 " Where did she say they came from ?" 
 
 " Smallporks Hospital." Jim wondered how on earth 
 Lizarann's friend had struck on this vein of invention, but 
 he only expressed the mildest doubt of its accuracy lest he 
 should upset his informant. As it was, he disturbed her 
 slightly. " She ain't tellin' no lies," she added. 
 
 " P'raps it warn't so bad as all that come to, lassie. 
 P' rap's it was only Guy's or 'Tholomoo's ?" But the little 
 person was not prepared to accept any composition that 
 threw doubt on Bridgetticks. She might have questioned 
 her statements personally, even to the extent of calling her 
 a story. But she felt bound to defend her, even against 
 her father. So she nailed her colours, so to speak, to the 
 Smallpox Hospital. That was to be the very hospital, and
 
 24 IT7NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 no other, that these two gentlemen were connected with. 
 She gave illustrations of untruthfulness, as shown by con- 
 temporaries. 
 
 " Jimmy 'Acker he's a liar. And Uncle Steptoe he's a 
 liar. Aunt Stingy says so. Bridgetticks she ain't. She 
 speaks the troof, she does. Yass ! She says so." Veiy 
 open eyes and a nod. 
 
 " In coorse she does, and in coorse she knows." Then 
 poor Jim wondered to himself what this young person was 
 like that his little lass had such faith in. He continued : 
 " What's she like to look at, by way of describing of her 
 now ?" 
 
 Lizarann had never described anybody, so far. That is 
 to say, not consciously. She might have done it without 
 knowing it was description. But she knew quite well what 
 her father meant, and braced herself up to authorship. 
 
 " She's very 'ard, all over," she said, as a first item. 
 " And she's awful strong. She is — yaas ! And she don't 
 stick out nowhere neither." A form the reverse of svelte 
 is impressed upon her hearer's inner vision. But she 
 repents of the last item, and adds, " Only her nose !" 
 
 " What's her colour of hair — black colour ? — yaller 
 colour ?" 
 
 " T'int no colour at all, daddy." 
 
 " Just plain hair-colour — is that it ?" 
 
 " Yass ! Pline hair-colour." 
 
 " What's her eyes f But this is too difficult. Lizarann 
 gives it up. To say plain eye-colour would be poor and 
 unoriginal. However, particulars could be given of Brid- 
 gettickses eyes, apart from questions of their colour. 
 
 " She can squint, she can. Yass — acrost !" 
 
 " She don't want to it — not she !" 
 
 " Don't she want to it, Daddy ?" A timid expression of 
 doubt this. " I said — I said — to Bridgetticks. ..." 
 
 " Hurry up, little lass ! What was it ye said ?" 
 
 " I said — to Bridgetticks — I said the boys said she 
 couldn't be off of it, they did. That's what the boys said." 
 
 " And she said they was liars, I'll go bail. Hay, little 
 lass 1" 
 
 "She said they was liars. Yass !" And then the diffi- 
 culties of negotiating the passage across Cazenove Street,
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 25 
 
 where they had by this time arrived, stopped the conver- 
 sation. 
 
 When the couple were safely landed on the opposite 
 pavement, talk went on again. Jim's image of Bridget- 
 ticks had not been improved by Lizarann's description. 
 And an incident of her narrative had caused him to picture 
 to himself a terrifying vision of her. 
 
 " She must have looked a queer un, lassie, flattening 
 her nose against the winder-pane." 
 
 " Aunt Stingy said she'd welt her down fine if she could 
 once catch holt." 
 
 " Your aunt don't seem to have thought her a beauty. 
 Not with her nose against the glass ! What did you think 
 yourself, lassie ?" 
 
 " I didn't seen her." Her head shook a long continuous 
 negative. 
 
 " How do ye make that out, lass ?" 
 
 " We ply at bein' oarposite sides of the winder-pine. 
 Her outside — me in !" 
 
 " Well, then — o' course you saw her, lassie. You've got 
 eyes in your head." 
 
 " I was a-flotting of my own nose against the glast, 
 inside, too clost to see. Right oarposite — yass !" And 
 then explained, at some expense of words, that this gyme, 
 or game, was played by two little girls, or little boys, or 
 a sample of each, jamming their noses one against the 
 other, as it v^ere, with the cold, unpleasant glass between. 
 The gratification of doing this, whatever it was, might be 
 enhanced and intensified by a similar treatment of their 
 tongue-tips. This last variation caused Lizarann to end 
 up with : " Outside tistes of rine. Inside tistes of cleanin' 
 windows." 
 
 " I don't see no kissin' to be got out of that," said Jim. 
 But the inventors of this game had evidently never antici- 
 pated its adoption by gro\vn-up persons, and did not 
 advise it. Their low natures could not enter into it. It 
 was, however, made clear why Bridgetticks was invisible 
 during an innings — if the term is permissible. 
 
 But oh, to think of it ! Poor Jim had never seen his 
 little lass, whose chatter had supplied him %\ith a vivid
 
 26 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 image — albeit, perhaps, a false one — of her friend of ten 
 years old. Her voice and touch were all he had to live 
 for ; but the only image of her he could get was from a 
 grudging admission of his sister's that she might grow to 
 be like her mother in time, but she would never have her 
 looks. These looks were only admitted by Mrs. Steptoe 
 for strategic purposes — videlicet, the cheapening of her 
 brother's one possession and emphasizing of his losses. 
 She may have had no defined intention of giving him pain, 
 but the attitude of thought implied formed part of a scheme 
 of Jeremiads her hfe was devoted to fostering and maturing. 
 The looks of Lizarann's mother were the only pivot on 
 which discussion of the child's own could turn naturally and 
 easily. The embittered and unsympathetic disposition of 
 her aunt made communication about them on other lines 
 difficult or impossible to poor Jim. 
 
 But he treasured in his heart the idea that one day he 
 would meet wdth some congenial soul whom he could take 
 into his confidence, and petition for a description of what 
 his little lass was really like. Unless, indeed, when she 
 grew older, she was able to tell him what her image in a 
 mirror resembled better than she had done when once or 
 tmce he had tried that way of eliciting information. For 
 on those occasions Lizarann had at first shown symptoms 
 of becoming what her aunt called a Httle giggling, affected 
 chit, and had only been able to report that she looked 
 " like Loyzarann in the glast," and then had grown un- 
 easy, betrayed a tendency towards panic, and hid her face 
 on her father when he became earnest, and begged her for 
 his sake to tell him what she really looked Hke. She 
 couldn't understand it at all, and may have had misgivings 
 that she was being entrapped into some sort of ritual of a 
 Masonic nature. So Jim had to wait for enlightenment 
 from herself, and looked forward to the day when she should 
 become more old and serious. Meanwhile what would he 
 not have given for one Httle ghmmer to help his imperfect 
 image of what his little lass was like, now — now that her 
 childhood was there ? 
 
 But the darkness was upon him for all time. And the 
 world that once was his to see had vanished — vanished 
 with the last image his eyes had known : the quay at Cape-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 27 
 
 town in the blazing sun, the Dutch-built houses on the hot 
 hill-side, and Table Mountain dark against the sky ; and 
 all the wide sea, a blaze of white beneath the blue, whose 
 strongest glare might never reach his cancelled sight again. 
 And there — so Jim believed, on the strength of a legend 
 his informant may have invented on the spot — when the 
 winds were at their worst round the Cape of Storms, might 
 still be seen the source of all his evil, the Phantom Ship 
 that had blasted his eyesight and made him what he had 
 become. So fixed was this article of Jim's faith that it 
 is no exaggeration to say that he drew comfort from the 
 unending doom of her shado\vy crew. Come what might to 
 him, he always had this consolation, that as long as the 
 sea should last, there was no hope of rest for the soul of 
 the Flying Dutchman. It was something, if it wasn't 
 much ; and he told and retold the tale to his little lass, who 
 was grieved on his behalf ; but had somewhere, in the un- 
 revengeful background of her mind, a chance thought of 
 pity now and again for the unhappy seaman who was the 
 cause of his misfortune.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 
 The lady who had shown an interest in Lizarann at the 
 Dale Road Schools was the wife of Sir Murgatroyd Arkroyd, 
 of Royd in Rankshire and Drum in Banffshire, and even 
 more places. The young man who had bought Jim's 
 matches and returned his change was their eldest son, 
 William Rufus Arkroyd. His friend, whom he called 
 Scipio, who was his college chum at Cambridge a year or 
 so since, and had remained his inseparable companion, 
 was on this particular day starting with him to pay an 
 autumn visit to his paternal mansion, Royd Hall, about 
 seven miles from Grime, Avhere the new Translucent Cast 
 Steel Foundries are. 
 
 The two 3^oung men got a carriage to themselves, and 
 played picquet all the way to Furnivals, the little station 
 where you get out for Royd and Thanes Castle, and the 
 omnibus meets you. Because you are the sort probably 
 that omnibuses meet. And it may be considered to have 
 met William Rufus and Scipio on this occasion, but only pla- 
 tonically ; for they rode to the house in a dogcart that 
 RAvaited them. However, the omnibus had the consolation 
 of being ridden in by Mr. Arkroyd's man Schott, who came 
 on in it with such luggage as would not go under a seat 
 amenable only to card-cases or the like. 
 
 The model groom, Bullett, who had driven the trap to the 
 station, had just time to establish himself on the back-seat, 
 when the model mare was off at a spin, and an agricultural 
 population, whose convictions and diet had changed very 
 little since the days of William the Norman, were abasing 
 themselves in a humiliating manner unworthy of the age 
 we live in — uncovering male heads and bobbing female 
 skirts — at the doors of cottages whose hygienic arrange- 
 ments were a disgrace to a Christian country and a reflec- 
 tion on civilisation. So said the Grime Sentinel, ia an 
 editorial ; and, as it spoke as though the editor had tried 
 
 28
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 29 
 
 all these arrangements and found them wanting, no doubt 
 it was right. 
 
 " Now, what have you and my affectionate brother been 
 talking about all the way here ?" Thus Judith, the sister 
 of tha one she is not addressing. 
 
 Scipio replies at leisure. He is evidently accustomed 
 to being patronised by this handsome and self-possessed 
 young lady, who is two years his senior, and speaks as to 
 a junior. But, though she patronises him, she waits until 
 he chooses to answer. 
 
 " Your affectionate brother and myself. Miss Arkroyd, 
 are so accustomed to each other's society, after a long 
 residence in college together, that it is only on rare and 
 special occasions that we exchange any remarks at all. We 
 agreed some time since that the edge of conversation — 
 that, I believe, was the expression — was taken off when 
 each of the parties to it is always definitely certain what 
 the other is going to say." 
 
 " Nonsense ! — ridiculous boy ! Do you expect me to 
 believe that you two rode all that way and never spoke ?" 
 
 Scipio reconsiders, and takes exception to his own 
 speech, with the air of a person drawing on a reserve of 
 veracity, a higher candour : " Perhaps I have overstated 
 the case. We played picquet all the way from Euston. 
 Picquet, as you are aware, involves an occasional inter- 
 change of monosyllables. . . ." 
 
 " I know. One for his heels and two for his nob. 
 Go on." 
 
 " Excuse me. Allow me to correct a misapprehension. 
 The expressions you have quoted belong to another game — 
 cribbage." 
 
 " Does it matter ? Do go on with what you were 
 saying . . . ' involves an occasional interchange of mono- 
 syllables ' . . ." The young lady is a Uttle impatient, and 
 taps. 
 
 " Which can scarcely be regarded as conversation." He 
 completes the sentence with deliberation. He seems to 
 take a pleasure in doing so, simply because of her im- 
 patience. " But with the exception of allusions to the 
 game, I can recall no remark or observation whatever, wise 
 or otherwise."
 
 30 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Whereupon the young lady, seeming to give him up as 
 hopeless, calls to her brother in an adjoining room : " Will !" 
 and he replies : " What ? Anything wanted ?" 
 
 " Yes ! — come and make Lord Felixthorpe reasonable." 
 From which it is clear that Scipio is a lord, or has a right 
 to be called one. He is somebody's son, supposably. 
 
 This conversation is taking place in the drawing-room 
 at Royd, where the two young men arrived just in time to 
 delay dinner half-an-hour, that they might have time to 
 dress. At Royd, undue hurry about anything was un- 
 known, and Mr. Schott had arranged young Mr. Arkroyd's 
 shirt-studs in his shirt, black silk stockings, coat, waistcoat, 
 and trousers in a most beautiful pattern on his bed, almost 
 before his apologies to his mother were over for giving the 
 wrong time of his train. He ought to have arrived an hour 
 sooner, and Bullett and the dogcart — or, rather, its mare — 
 had been kicking their heels all that time at Furnival 
 Station, enjoying the great luxury of enforced idleness, 
 with a grievance against its cause. However, it was all 
 right by now, and everyone who had not eaten too many 
 macaroons at tea had dined extremely well. 
 
 " Smoke a cigarette," said William Rufus to his sister, 
 as he settled down on the split fauteuil. " Never mind 
 Sibyl !" She disclaimed Sibyl's influence, and lighted the 
 cigarette he gave her at his o^-n. He continued : " / can't 
 make Scip reasonable. Nobody can." 
 
 " He says you and he never exchanged a word, and that 
 you played cribbage in the train all the way Avithout 
 speaking." 
 
 " It was picquet. I don't know cribbage." 
 
 " Oh dear ! — how trying you boys are ! As if that 
 mattered ! The point is, did you speak, or didn't 
 you V 
 
 Whereupon each of the young men looked at the other, 
 and said : " Did we speak, or didn't we ?" 
 
 " I can wait," said the young lady ; and waited with a 
 passiveness that had all the force of activity. 
 
 " I understand " — thus Scipio, more deliberately than 
 ever — " that technical remarks relating to the game are 
 excluded by hypothesis." 
 
 " Yes !" from the catechist.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 31 
 
 " Stop a bit, Scip. We did speak. We spoke about the 
 blind beggar." 
 
 " I knew you were talking nonsense. You talked all the 
 way. But who was the blind beggar ?" 
 
 " A friend of Scip's — at least, a father of one of his young 
 ladies." 
 
 Mss Arkroyd looked amused more than curious. " You 
 haven't told us of this one," said she. " Or have you V 
 
 " I have had nothing official to communicate, so far. 
 Possibly a mere passing tendresse. I have only knowTi the 
 young lady a very short time. I ^vill promise further 
 information as soon as there is anything to communicate." 
 
 Mss Arkroyd continued to look at the speaker as though 
 to find out his real meaning, half in doubt, half taking him 
 au serieux. But her brother struck in, sajdng : " Nothing 
 interesting, Judith. This one's too young, and might be 
 unsuitable from other points of view — eh, Scip ?" 
 
 " The family connection,'" Scipio answers reflectively, 
 " may have drawbacks. Nevertheless, I find, when I in- 
 dulge in the position, hypothetically, of a son-in-law, that 
 I do not shrink from the image of the relation I have created. 
 It has a sort of sense about it of the starboard watch, and 
 keeping a good look-out on foc'sles, and knowing how to 
 sphce cables. By-the-by, Will, this is an accomplishment 
 that might prove useful in my family — splicing cables, I 
 mean. I am certain that we can't, at present, any of us. 
 Even my half-brother, though his grandfather — on his 
 mother's side — is an Admiral, cannot splice a cable ..." 
 
 " Never mind the cables ! Go on about the blind 
 beggar." 
 
 Her brother, as one who knows his friend's disposition to 
 wander, supplies consecutive narrative : "The blind beggar's 
 that sailor at the railway. Most likely 3^ou've seen him. 
 . . . No ?" — replying to a disclaiming headshake. — " Well ! 
 — take him for granted. The child's his child." 
 
 " What child ?" 
 
 " You've seen her yourself, I think ; or the same thing — 
 the madre has. You remember ? — in that Tallack 
 Street place, on the Remunerative Artisans' Domicile 
 Company's estate. You told us of it yourself, you 
 know."
 
 32 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 ' cc 
 
 I know Tallack Street perfectly well. It's the place 
 where there was land for a factory that I thought would 
 do for the New Idea. Have you seen it 1" 
 
 " Why, of course ! Scip and I went over next day. 
 Well — it's that little girl." But Judith has slummed so 
 many little girls in Tallack Street, all ahke, that she can't 
 recall any special one. She remembers the front teeth 
 of one very plainly. Her brother also remembers Bridget- 
 ticks — not a young lady easily forgotten, clearly. But 
 he has forgotten her name. 
 
 " Yes, I know her. So does Scip. She called him a 
 Cure. But not that one — a younger child. I rather 
 think our mother knows something about her." He leans 
 his head mcII back towards his mother in the next room — 
 sees its ceiling, perhaps, as he blows his cigarette-smoke 
 straight upwards — and calls to her, " Madre !" The 
 Italian word may be some mere family habit, without 
 reason. A perceptive guest in the next room makes a 
 mental note of it as a useful point in his next novel. For 
 he is a literary celebrity. Lady Arkroyd answers : " Yes, 
 dear ; what ?" She looks quite round the high back of 
 the chair she sits in, and speaks fairly towards her son. 
 He continues to throw his voice back over his head to her : 
 
 " What was the name of the queer kid that said 
 her father was 'an Asker'? You told us about her, 
 you know. ... At the school place, down by Tallack 
 Street " 
 
 " I know. Her father's blind, and she leads him about. 
 Be quiet, and don't ask, and perhaps I shall remember the 
 name." Lady Arkroyd shuts her eyes over the job and 
 waits on Memory. It may take time. Her son decides 
 that he can listen just as well with his head down, and 
 becomes normal. Presently his mother reports : " I think 
 it was Steptoe — no ! — not Steptoe. Eliza Ann Copeland. 
 Adeline Fossett's schoolroom." If you look back to where 
 Lizarann made this lady's acquaintance, you will see that 
 there was underlying method in the seeming-disjointed 
 action of her memory. 
 
 Her son replies, " Yes — that child "; and adds, " All 
 right — that'll do," meaning that he has now got all the 
 information wanted for the moment. So the perceptive
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 33 
 
 guest infers, and listens with interest for the use he is 
 going to make of it. But he loses the thread of the con- 
 versation; for, just as he is going to speak, the sister says 
 to Scipio, "What did you say 'er' for ?" — meaning, why 
 did you begin and stop ? 
 
 " The expression," his lordship replies \Adth intense de- 
 liberation, " was an involuntary prefix to a statement I 
 was preparing to make concerning the patronymic of the 
 little girl who " He stops dead on the pronoun, with- 
 out finishing the sentence ; then continues : "I need go 
 no farther, especially as I foresee a fresh confirmation 
 forming on the lips of my dear friend William Rufus of 
 the view taken of my personal character by the other 
 little-girl-who. But perjiaps the name of the first little- 
 girl-who may be taken as decided on. In that case I need 
 not adduce my evidence." 
 
 " Do shut up, Scip," is the comment of William Rufus. 
 " The other little girl spoke the truth. You are a Cure — 
 not the least doubt of it." 
 
 " What is a Cure ?" says Judith. " I don't know. 
 But please don't shut up : never mind Will ! What was 
 it you were going to say ?" 
 
 " Merely this : — When your intractable brother and 
 myself visited Tallack Street, having previously interviewed 
 Mr. Illing worth, the courteous secretary of the Remunera- 
 tive . . ." 
 
 " Do get along, Scip !" from Mr. Arkroyd 
 
 " My dear Will, I assure you that your impatience only 
 defeats its own object. If you will balance the time gained 
 by skipping passages in my statement — which may in the 
 end prove essential to the context — against the time lost in 
 administering verbal stimulus to the speaker, you will find 
 — if I am not mistaken — that the latter exceeds the former." 
 
 " All right, old chap ! I give up. Go ahead !" 
 
 " I shall have to go and talk to the new visitors. You 
 had better get on." These speeches come simultaneously 
 from his two hearers ; the last sj^eaker with her fine eyes 
 fixed on a wrist-watch, little larger than the iris of either. 
 Scipio accelerates with docility. 
 
 " After getting the particulars of the land and buildings 
 from Illingworth, we drove round by Tallack Street to 
 
 VOL. I. 3
 
 34 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 look at the site. We always make a point of seeing every- 
 thing. Illingworth was not justified in saying that a small 
 shed on the land, in the last stages of disintegration, could 
 be utilised for a motor-garage . . . but never mind that ! 
 We are at present concerned with the name of the little- 
 girl-who. The plummy little dark-eyed one, Will — not 
 that shrill little fiend. Well ! — when we arrived at Tallack 
 Street, and could see nothing the least resembling a suit- 
 able site for a factory — or, indeed, anything else — your 
 accomplished brother. Miss Arkroyd, who cannot get in 
 or out of a hansom mthout breaking his knee-caps, urged 
 upon me the propriety of descending and inquiring at the 
 Robin Hood. The Robin Hood was congenial to me — the 
 sort of pub I always frequent when I have a choice. It 
 had a picture of Robin dressed like a member of what I 
 always suppose to be a benefit-club, which extends to me, 
 when I sit at windows, a long pole with a collection-box, 
 suggesting an inversion of the way we fed bears in our 
 youth. . . ." His hearers become restive. 
 
 " This is irrelevant," says the brother. And the sister 
 looked again at her wrist. 
 
 " I am aware of it. I will not detain Miss Arkroyd long 
 at the Robin Hood. I will merely note the fact that it 
 had a water-trough for horses, and a space in front — it is 
 in the main road, just as you reach Tallack Street — and 
 that it is a House of Call for Plasterers. I mention this 
 in case . . ." 
 
 " In case any of us should plaster unexpectedly ? Do 
 you feel that you wish to plaster, Will ?" 
 
 " I might. Sibyl probably will, sooner or later. Go on, 
 Scip. . . . Yes, we interrupted you — admitted ! . . . Now go 
 on." 
 
 " In the private bar of the Robin Hood — for it boasts a 
 public and private bar, though it stops short of making 
 parade of a saloon bar — I encountered a cobbler drinking 
 a tumblerful of spirits. He was becoming a cobblerful of 
 tumblerfuls. ..." 
 
 " I'm sure I know that man," Judith says, in brackets. 
 " It was the one that said he was ' mine very truly, Robert 
 Step toe.' Never mind ! — go on, ..." 
 
 " But he was not too drunk to tell me that if I kept my
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 35 
 
 eyes open I should see a blooming board at the end of the 
 street. There wasn't any too much reading on it now, the 
 boys having aimed at it successfully ever since he came to 
 Rose Cottage — 'ouse on the right — but he took it a board 
 was always a board, reading or no. I could see for my- 
 self, by looking. It warn't trespassers ; he knew that. . . . 
 Do not be impatient. I am coming to the gist of my com- 
 munication. . . . Shortly after leaving the bar of the Robin 
 Hood, I heard some boys singing a monotonous chant. A 
 name was frequently repeated in it ; it sounded like : 
 
 ' Lizarann Coupland's 
 Father begs for 'apeiice 
 Just round the corner 
 Down by the gasworks. . . .' 
 
 And so on over and over again. I inquired of one small 
 boy whose father it was that begged for halfpence, but he 
 turned the conversation, and suggested that I should give 
 him a farden kike. However, another one repeated the 
 name gratis ; and though he was too young to be quite 
 intelHgible, I was satisfied that the name was Eliza Ann 
 Copeland or Coupland." 
 
 " Why couldn't you tell us that straight off. Lord Felix- 
 thorpe V says Judith. To which the narrator replies with 
 a sweet smile, " My inherent prolixity, no doubt." She 
 says absently to the wrist-watch, " No doubt !" and then, 
 looking up at the speaker, illogically asks, " What was the 
 rest of the story ? Go on." 
 
 Her brother protests : " Come, Judith, be reasonable ! 
 You're just like the people that author-chap has been 
 telling us about downstairs . . . people who complain that 
 his books are too long, and then ask for more. He says 
 he's badgered for sequels, and untold gold wouldn't induce 
 him to bring an old character into a new book." 
 
 " He's perfectly right. Anyhow, I am sure he always 
 finishes a story when he begins it. I want the rest of 
 what happened. Only I want this one cut short — not too 
 prosy, please ! Did you give that little boy the farthing 
 cake ?" 
 
 " I gave him a halfpenny. He ignored my application 
 for change, and walked away hand-in-hand with his friend 
 towards a shop. I accompanied the cab on foot to the 
 
 3—2
 
 36 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 end of Tallack Street, where we found the blooming board, 
 and decided on its illegible character. But there was no 
 doubt the piece of land was the one Illingworth had 
 shown us on the map. The fictitious motor-garage was a 
 place that could only have been a source of danger to rash 
 intruders. We exclaimed together that there were no 
 premises, and the cabman endorsed our opinion. At this 
 juncture an exacerbated female rushed from a doorway to 
 intercept and chastise, if possible, a little girl about ten 
 years old, Avho had been peering at her through a \\dndow 
 on the ground-floor. This little girl slipped through an 
 impassable orifice and got away, shouting derision, but 
 pursued by the woman. . ." 
 
 " Who was more than half afraid of her." Thus Mr. 
 Arkroyd parenthetically. 
 
 " I agree with you. However, she left her door open, 
 and the little girl, whom I think we may consider to be 
 identified as Ehza Ann Coupland, came out timidly, and 
 sucked a corner of her neck-handkerchief in our immediate 
 neighbourhood. She seemed to regard the clash between 
 the other little girl and her mother as normal, and appeared 
 to court conversation with us. . , ." 
 
 " It's not her mother. It's her aunt. / know the 
 people." The nterruption is Judith's. " But go on." 
 
 " Her aunt. Our conversation with her was handi- 
 capped by her shyness ; also by her objection to removing 
 the handkerchief from her mouth. But she appeared to be 
 attracted to us by a kind of fascination, showing itself in 
 a fixed gaze in a direction contrary to the pull of the 
 handkerchief. Her aunt's injunction to her to put it out 
 of her mouth and answer the gentleman led the gentleman 
 to prevail on the aunt to withdraw. W^e then understood 
 her to refer us to a friend, Bridget Hicks, for local infor- 
 mation. . . ." 
 
 " Exactly. And Bridget Hicks called you a Cure." 
 
 " That is so. With what justice I am not in a position 
 to say, without a more exact acquaintance with the mean- 
 ing of the term. Bridget Hicks was the little girl who had 
 fled before the wrath of the aunt. She joined her friend 
 on witnessing the discomfiture of that lady by the tactics of 
 your accomplished brother, who, I think, impressed her as 
 Royalty."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 37 
 
 FT," Very well, then ! — it comes to this." It is Judith who 
 is reporting progress. " Tlie last time you spoke in the 
 train was about a blind beggar whose little girl walks him 
 about, and lives in that abominable slum papa has allowed 
 to be built on the Cazenove estate, where I sent you be- 
 cause there was a board with something about vacant 
 premises suitable for a factory on it. Why couldn't you 
 say so at once ?" 
 
 " May I be pardoned for suggesting," Scipio replies with 
 a reinforcement of his sententious manner, which had 
 lapsed slightly, " that, had I done so, a lengthy cross- 
 examination would have been necessary to put my hearers 
 in possession of details I have been able to supply." 
 
 His friend seems to think there is something in this. 
 " Just consider, Judith," he says. " If Scip had cut him- 
 self down, as you suggest, you would have known nothing 
 about Eliza Ann's neck-handkerchief. I consider that it 
 speaks volumes." 
 
 " Scip, as you call him, could have thrown it in." 
 
 And Miss Arkroyd, who is more tall, impressive, and 
 handsome than her mother, collects herself, which spreads 
 over a great deal of fauteuil, to join the party in the other 
 room. Her brother and his friend follow her. 
 
 The house-party in the room adjoining — that is, the large 
 drawing-room with the Tintoret ; perhaps you have been 
 at Royd, and know it ? — had been making a good deal of 
 noise, considering the connection. One mustn't laugh too 
 loud, if it's to be high-tension sweetness and light. This 
 thought passed through the mind of Mr. Alfred Challis, 
 better known to the world as " Titus Scroop," the great 
 Author, who ^^'as one of the party ; it was to him we re- 
 ferred as the perceptive guest. But he could not blame 
 himself for causing any of the too-loud laughs; because, 
 whenever he thought of a good thing, instead of speaking 
 it out as he used to do when he was an Accountant, he 
 kept it to himself and made a mental note of it for copy. 
 But when he was clear in his mind that a thing was not 
 good enough for copy, he revealed it ; and then the com- 
 pany; laughed gently and obligingly, because he was a great 
 Author. He felt sorry usually. 
 
 Mrs. Chalhs wasn't there. Mr. Challis used to visit at
 
 38 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 distinguished houses alone. But there was nothing against 
 her. Discussion of whether she couldn't be asked this 
 time always admitted that. But it invariably ended in a 
 decision that Mrs. Challis was an Impossible Person — 
 although Mrs. Candour had made every inquiry, and there 
 was nothing whatever against her. " Still," said Lady 
 Arkroyd to the Duchess of Rankshire, " even if there had 
 been ! . . ." And her Grace, predisposed to forgiveness 
 of antecedents by native good-nature and a flawless record, 
 saw regretfully that even then the lady would have been 
 welcome, if only she had been Possible. Not being so, and 
 being also, report said, huffy, she had never come to pass 
 in polite society. Her husband believed he believed she 
 was just as happy at home, because a working hypothesis 
 of life was de rigueur. She had certainly been almost rude 
 to Lady Arkroyd on the occasion of a conciliatory visit ; 
 misunderstanding may have helped, but one thing is 
 certain — she either was not asked to Royd this time or 
 refused the invitation. 
 
 As to other folks, there were several. Only it was not 
 easy to say which was which ; it often isn't when there are 
 several. They have to be left alone to assume identities, 
 and a certain percentage succeeds. The balance dies away. 
 And then one of them afterwards writes a daring story, or 
 ventilates a startling theory, or commits an interesting 
 murder. And there he was, all that time, at the Simpkins's 
 garden-party, and you never knew ! Were you also — you 
 yourself — a nonentity some of the others were thinking of 
 as a Person-at-a-Party, et prceterea nihil ? And is one of 
 them now thinking to ^mself — dear him ! — was that little, 
 snuflfy, unobtrusive chap really the author of this remark- 
 able work, which appeals to the better side of my nature, 
 and has scarcely a dull passage from beginning to end ? 
 Meaning, of course — you ! And just to think ! — he lost 
 his chance, and may never get another. How sorry you 
 feel for him ! 
 
 These reflections are really in the story, because they 
 were passing through the mind of Mr. Challis while a lady 
 who had been asked to sing Carpathian Ballads was making 
 up her mind which she would sing. In these philosophiz- 
 ings of his — especially the last one — may be detected the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 39 
 
 disagreeable sneering tone you never would have suspected 
 him of. You would have thought him an easy-going chap — 
 no more. It was there, though, and it affected his mind 
 more or less all through the Carpathian Ballads. Whenever 
 he was thrown on his own resources for a few minutes, the 
 disagreeable sneering tone was apt to be audible to himself 
 in his communings with his irmermost soul. On this 
 occasion, his innermost soul, being left alone with him for a 
 short time, took occasion to decide that his host was a 
 pompous old Ass. All these heavy landed proprietors 
 were pompous Asses, more or less. The Woman — thus it 
 referred to the lady of the house — was more interesting, of 
 course. Women were. But she was a worldling, and a 
 Phihstine at heart, for all this pretence of worshipping Art 
 and Letters and Song. As for the son, he gave himself 
 airs ; but it, the soul, wouldn't say anything against him, 
 because his cigars were undeniable. And the soul shared 
 its OAvner's — if, indeed, he could call his soul his own ! — 
 appreciation of good 'baccy. The young Lord, it decided, 
 was not a bad sample of his depraved class — would find his 
 level in Parliament, and be Under-Secretary of something, 
 sometime. But he would have to learn to shout louder 
 and speak faster. As for the two young women, the soul's 
 owner had really only just distinguished one from the other. 
 As for the music, the singer couldn't sing ballads, whatever 
 else she could sing. She was nothing much to look at ; but 
 the eldest daughter had a fine throat and shoulders. Only 
 nowadays you never could tell how much was real. As for 
 the others, he hadn't made them out yet. Lady Arkroyd 
 had been civil to him at dinner, certainly. But then she 
 had invited him. He had a vague sense that he was re- 
 garded as her property, and that the others all shirked 
 responsibility on his account, and that he was, in fact, to 
 them an outsider. Anyway, it was bad form of the son 
 and his friend, and the pair of shoulders, to go away and 
 talk in the back room, and take no notice of — well ! — of 
 himself, for instance. At which point his innermost soul 
 turned traitor — rounded on him, and accused him of allow- 
 ing his disagreeable sneering tone to get the better of 
 him — of giving way to ill-temper, in fact. 
 
 Perhaps these presents will be read by someone who has
 
 40 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 had a similar experience as a new-comer in a great house. 
 He or she may also have found out that there is honey as 
 well as wormwood, frankincense as well as assafoetida, to be 
 met with in such a position, even as did Mr. Alfred Challis, 
 the eminent novelist. 
 
 For, the Carpathian ballads coming to an end, that gentle- 
 man found himself suddenly being apprised, by the owner 
 of the shoulders, that she had been longing for a word — 
 with so eminent a writer — all the evening. And there was 
 a question she was dying to ask him. Only they would have 
 plenty of time to talk about that to-morrow. When was 
 his next book coming out ? . . . not till the spring ? ... oh 
 dear ! And what Avas the title ? . . . " Titus Scroop " always 
 had such interesting titles. . . . What ? Not decided on ? 
 The fine eyes that went with the shoulders seemed surprised 
 at this. " No doubt," said the Author, " the novel is as 
 anxious as anyone to know what its title is going to be." 
 This wasn't worth keeping for copy. The lady laughed the 
 laugh that concedes that a joke has been made or meant, 
 not the laugh of irresistible appreciation. What did that 
 matter ? Mr. Challis's ill-humour was being charmed 
 away. Probably some student of human nature has noticed 
 that it is not very material that the flattery of a good- 
 looking woman should be sincere, provided mankind gets 
 enough of it. Mr. Challis suspected that he was being 
 soothed, and " Titus Scroop " spoken of in inverted commas, 
 as compensation for having been left to choose between the 
 company of other males and no company at all. But still, 
 he was being soothed. No more words about it ! Mr. 
 Challis acquitted the shoulders, and even the mass of 
 rich black hair, of any assistance from Art; and when 
 the party broke up for the night, went to his couch 
 contented. 
 
 Having, as it were, obsessed this gentleman, in order to 
 get a clear view of this autumn's house-party at Roj^d, we 
 may as well make further use of him, and peep over his 
 shoulder as he writes his first letter to his impossible wife, 
 in the cretonne bedroom at the end of the passage where 
 the German Baroness soav the ghost — you know that story, 
 of course ? Oh dear, what a lot of candles one does light 
 to write letters by in other people's houses when one hasn't 
 got to pay for them ! _
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 41 
 
 This is what Mr. Challis is writing now : "... I hke the 
 talky chap better than the son and heir. He's a lord. They 
 neither of them take to me, because I'm not 'Varsity. I 
 came down in the train with them, only not the same 
 carriage. I rode third, of course ; there were no seconds." 
 The writer felt that it was very clever of the thirds to be 
 thirds at all when there were no seconds, but decided not to 
 write it — as too subtle for the intellect of his impossible 
 she — and wrote on : "I saw them playing cards in a 
 smoking-carriage, and recognised the son and heir by his 
 portrait. It isn't a bit like him. There's a fat pink 
 politician here, with little eyes, Avho talks thirty-two to the 
 dozen. His name is Ramsey Tomes. He pinned my host 
 as he was coming from the dinner-table, and detained laim 
 ever so long. We heard the rumble of his rounded periods 
 afar " — will she understand that ? thought the writer — 
 " long after everyone else had followed the womankind to 
 the drawing-room. However, they came up in time for the 
 music, and I heard Mr. Tomes assuring Sir Murgatroyd that 
 his respect for that Bart was so intense that he would re- 
 consider the whole of his political opinions forthwith, but 
 without the slightest expectation of changing one jot or one 
 tittle of them." Here the writer abstained, consideratively, 
 with his pen delaj^ed over the inkstand, from inditing that 
 he had never met \\ith a " tittle " out of the company of its 
 invariable jot. That would be too deep for this wife of his. 
 He brought the pen slowly into the arena again. " Sir 
 Murgatroyd repeated the same sentiment in several different 
 xvords. As for all the other people, I must tell about them 
 gradually, or leave them till I come home. The younger 
 daughter, Sibyl — that's how to spell her name — not Sybil, 
 remember — strikes me as a little waspish. Judith, the 
 other, is a tall, handsome woman, \\ ith a figure expensive 
 to dress, but a little prepofen'e." He let this word stand, 
 having written it, though he felt sure that the impossible 
 one's Italian would not cover it. He did not mind leaving 
 her to choose a meaning for it ; it franked him of any 
 responsibility. Then he thought he had written enough, 
 and ended up : " You need not be uneasj'^ about my neural- 
 gia. I feel better already, and shall have a hot bath first 
 thing in the morning. — Your loving mate, A. C." But he
 
 42 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 added an amends for an omission — " Kiss the kids from 
 me." 
 
 Then he betrayed further uneasiness of conscience by 
 sajnng to himself : "After all, she's much better at home 
 \^dth the babies. She would never get on among these 
 people." Whether it occurred to the good gentleman that 
 he had it in his power to alter the position of the pieces on 
 the board we do not know. If it did, the idea soon vanished 
 behind a speculation whether the next guest after him 
 would have a new acreage of clean sheet and pillow all to 
 himself ; and if not, what a lot of washing went for nothing ! 
 He almost wished he was a chimney-sweep, to make it 
 valid.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 It is bewildering to reflect on tlie number of avenues open 
 to Society by which to approach its own final perfection. 
 And disappointing, too, when a start has been made along 
 some promising one, to come so soon to a parting of the 
 ways, with never a sign-post — not so much as a stray un- 
 erucified Messiah for a guide — as the night falls over the 
 land. For even so, each last new Theory of Perfectibility, 
 each panacea for the endemics that afflict us, seems to 
 pass from the glory of its dawn to the chill hours of its 
 doubt ; and its Apostles fall away and change their minds, 
 and its subscribers discontinue their subscriptions, and it 
 becomes out of date. And those who have not lain Ioav, 
 like Br'er Fox, but have committed themselves past all 
 recall to its infallibility, are sorry because they cannot re- 
 mind us that they said so all along, only they were never 
 paid the slightest attention to. 
 
 It is possible that some such perceptions passed through 
 Mr. Challis's reflective mind in the course of next day at 
 Royd. He began to find out that he was in a sort of 
 hornet's nest of Reformers, every one of them anxious to 
 point out avenues of salvation for Society. For Sir 
 Murgatroyd, who was the soul of liberality towards every 
 doctrine, political, religious, or social, that he had no 
 prejudice against, liked nothing better than to crowd his 
 house full of reforming theorists. Was he not himself 
 one, and the author of a pamphlet called " The Higher 
 SociaUsm : An Essay towards a Better Understanding of 
 the Feudal System"? He therefore welcomed with 
 splendid hospitaHty every advocate of every doctrine that 
 was undoubtedly new, only two conditions being complied 
 with. One was that if it was a New Morality it should be 
 possible to enter into its details without shocking — sup- 
 pose we say — a hardened reader of Laurence Sterne ; and 
 
 43
 
 44 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 the other that it should not countenance, palUate, advo- 
 cate, encourage, support, or lend adhesion to his especial 
 hete noire, the Americanisation of our Institutions. On 
 this particular occasion a fine bag of neo-archs — how apolo- 
 gize for such a word ? — had been secured by him during 
 his summer holidaj^ ; and when Mr. Challis made his appear- 
 ance at the breakfast-table next morning, he was button- 
 holed away from its beautiful clean damask by a brace 
 of Thinkers, each anxious to communicate his Thoughts, 
 and, if possible, entangle the sympathies of a powerful 
 pen " Titus Scroop " was known to possess. 
 
 It is annoying to be interrupted when you are making 
 up your mind what you'll have ; and then you take poached 
 eggs when you want filleted plaice, or vice-versa. IVIr. 
 Challis showed intrepidity, saying to a disciple of the 
 learned German reformer Graubosch : "I make a point 
 of never listening to anything worth hearing at breakfast." 
 It was a clever repulse ; but committed him to capitula- 
 tion to Graubosch later. He succeeded, but with a like 
 reservation, in escaping from an advocate of a really for- 
 midable system of Assurance which would have wide- 
 spread effects on Society, by saying — as though the first 
 few words of its exponent had gone home to him — " You 
 and I must talk that out over a game of billiards." The 
 fact is this gentleman had not been sufficiently congratu- 
 lated aSout his last book, so far, by the ladies of the family ; 
 and he felt a strong bias towards being flattered by Miss 
 Arkroyd particularly, although in his letter to his Avife he 
 had spoken with coldness— ostentatious, and he knew it — 
 of this young ladj^'s fascinations. So he was already 
 scheming in his heart to get her in a corner by herself, 
 where she would be able to express her wonder at his 
 insight into things no one else — except she and he, pre- 
 sumabl}^ — knew anything about. He was perceptibly 
 conscious that the short interview betAveen himself and 
 this very good-looking young lady, the evening before, had 
 lacked reference to his insight, and that recognition in that 
 quarter m ould be pleasant. 
 
 It is a little difficult to saunter away from Thinkers who 
 are convinced that you will be interested in their Thoughts, 
 especially if you have given any of them the right to begin,
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 45 
 
 " Referring to what we were saying yesterday, etc." ; or, 
 " I have been thinking over that apparent contradic- 
 tion, etc." But it can be done, with tact. Mr. ChaUis 
 had not a perfectly clear record of avoidance of Philo- 
 sophy : his buttonholers of the morning could have pleaded 
 justifications. So he felt diplomatic as he got into another 
 coat because the sun was quite hot in the garden, and then 
 came down the other stairs, where he was sure to meet 
 nobody, and so through the kitchen-gardens to the Inigo 
 Jones orangery that was now an aviary. That was where 
 Miss Arkroyd had said she was going — not to him, but to 
 someone else in his hearing. So clearly so that it was 
 almost as good as if he hadn't heard, but had approached 
 her by accident, when he came upon her out of a side- 
 avenue of clipped hedges. By that time he was sauntering 
 quite naturally, wnth a cigar in his mouth, just begun. 
 This was as it should be. 
 
 " Have you seen my green parroquets ?" said the lady. 
 
 " I haven't noticed any. Are they loose in the garden ?" 
 As though they would have been ! But Mr. Challis wasn't 
 in earnest. 
 
 " Not that I know of ! Did you see any ?" She had 
 taken him quite seriously, and he had to explain. 
 
 " It was my ill-judged facetiousness " said he. "I 
 meant I had been nowhere except in the garden." 
 
 " Oh, I see ! You quite frightened me. They are such 
 nice little people. Come in and look at them." But Mr. 
 Challis felt that he would have to practise a certain dis- 
 cretion in his accustomed modes of speech, one of which 
 was a perverse gravity over an obvious aljsurdity. But 
 he had long given up expecting insight into this from 
 Marianne, the impossible Mdfe. Why should he, then, from 
 this young woman, to whom he and his ways were quite 
 a novelty ? Besides, we had to consider the individu- 
 alities of that strange creature, the human Toff. Mr. 
 Challis reflected that absurd tropes and inversions, without 
 a smile, are the breath of life to cab and bus men. Per- 
 haps William the Norman never put his royal tongue in 
 his cheek : it may have been contrary to the Feudal 
 System. 
 
 The little parroquets didn't wait for their proprietor and
 
 46 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 this new gentleman to come into their palace. The moment 
 they heard them they came with a wild rush into an out- 
 side cage. But, being out, they took no notice of their 
 disturbers — none whatever ! They conversed about them, 
 clewed side by side on a long perch, with a stunning and 
 unhesitating volubility that made the brain reel ; a shrill, 
 intolerable prestissimo of demisemiquavers on one note 
 that pierced the drum of the ear like a rain of small steel 
 shot. They had come to so exactly the same conclusion, 
 so it seemed, as they all repeated it at once, first to right, 
 then to left — had so precisely the same opinion about 
 their visitors, that it was hardly necessary to dwell upon 
 it so long, Mr. Challis thought. 
 
 " Are they sweet, or are they not ?" was what his com- 
 panion said. 
 
 Challis admitted the sweetness — or possible sweetness — 
 of their dispositions. But he took exception to their 
 voices. He would have preferred these to be more like 
 Cordelia's. The nice little people kept up such a fire of 
 comment, although ]\Iiss Arkroyd was now supplying them 
 with cherries, that Challis could hardly hear what she was 
 saying. But he gathered that it was eulogy of the way in 
 which he had referred to the voice of CordeUa and King 
 Lear's description of it, in one of his novels. Only it seemed 
 to him that she was putting the saddle on the wrong horse — 
 ascribing the passage to the wrong book, for she mentioned 
 the " Spendthrift's Legacy," the first work that intro- 
 duced him to liis public. As is frequently the case, this 
 book continued to be the one he was most connected wdth 
 by non-readers of his works, for all that many more recent 
 ones had had a much larger circulation. 
 
 " Are you sure it isn't in ' The Epidermis ' ?" he asked. 
 
 " What isn't ?" 
 
 " ' Gentle and low, an excellent thing in women ' — or 
 parrots — what you referred to just now. . . ." 
 
 " What's ' The Epidermis '? Who's it by ? I mean— 
 I've seen it. But I didn't know it was yours." Whereat 
 Mr. Challis felt crushed. Fancy anybody not knowing 
 whom ' The Epidermis ' was by ! If it had only been not 
 having read it yet, that could have been softened by con- 
 fession of intense yearning to do so, unfairly frustrated by
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 47 
 
 anaemic Circulating Libraries. But not to know whom it 
 was by ! 
 
 " Name of my last book. Fidgetts and Thrills. Six 
 Shillings net." Mr. Challis affected a light joking tone. 
 But he was mortified. However, Miss Arkroyd was under 
 obligation to invent something of a palliative nature, and 
 in the effort Cordelia's voice lapsed. 
 
 " Oh yes-s-s-s !" said she, dwelhng on the " s " to express 
 a mind momentarily bewildered, but awaiting a light that 
 was sure to come, if she made the hiss long enough, and 
 then cutting sharply in with an interruption to it. "I was 
 thinking of another book. Quite another !" And then 
 closed the subject for good, but as one that might have 
 been pursued had she been thinking of a book that was 
 rather another, but not quite. 
 
 You see, the fact was that this young woman had read 
 none of this author's works, though it seemed she yearned 
 to do so. She had had no time for reading, and the book 
 had always got sent back to Mudie's before she had read 
 it, and so on. Well ! — we can all sympathize, can't we ? 
 But, then, she shouldn't have pretended she had, because 
 that was fibs. At most she had read a quotation from one 
 of his stories — she couldn't say which — in a review. 
 
 Mr. Challis suspected all this, and was too much a man 
 of the world to commit the blunder of proving that a lady 
 had told fibs, however insignificant. He was rather glad 
 the little green birds kept in such good voice, for though 
 they usually dropped their cherries and wanted another, 
 they never dropped their subject. They helped the 
 position, and Challis felt he ought to help, too. His vanity 
 was a little wounded ; but, then, how jolly comfortable that 
 bed was, and what a lovely cold douche that was after a 
 real hot bath, and what a choice cigar this was, just re- 
 cently supplied by this lady's brother ! No ! — he Avould 
 be generous, and help. 
 
 " How charmingly your sister draws ! I was looking at 
 her landscapes last night." 
 
 " She's Prong's favourite XDupil." 
 
 " She's very clever ?" 
 
 " Oh yes ! — she can do anything she turns her hands to. 
 We differ on many points. But it's impossible to deny
 
 48 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 her cleverness. Poor Sibyl ! — I suppose she can't help 
 it." 
 
 " Can't help what 1" 
 
 " Well ! — rubbing me up the wrong way. But we all 
 do that." Challis began to feel that he was in the bosom 
 of the Family. He might ask Cjuestions freely, and did 
 so as soon as the quiet of a retired walk in the garden 
 allowed freedom of speech. The parroquets dropped the 
 subject abruptly as soon as they found themselves alone. 
 
 " What's the Great Idea ? I heard Lady Arkroyd 
 talking of it to Lord Felixthorpe. It was her idea, wasn't 
 it?" 
 
 " Do you mean Mamma's ?" Judith asked. Mr. Challis 
 had not, and hesitated a moment. Should he say, " Miss 
 Sibyl's ?" Surely no ! Sunday citizens would say that. 
 Very well, then! Should it be "Sibyl's" or "Your 
 sister's"? He almost wished the young females of this 
 landed family were ladyships : it comes so much handier 
 for outsiders. He risked the point, and said, " Sibyl's," 
 but softened the offence by adding, " Your sister's, I 
 mean." If the fine eyelids were offended, they con- 
 cealed it remarkably well. So much so that Mr. ChalUs 
 said to himself that no doubt the Normans Christian- 
 named more than the Saxons. Or, Avere those eyelids 
 lenient towards his personal self ? He was a married man, 
 certainly ; only, then ! — a married man may feel flattered, 
 look you ! But this is not our affair at present. How 
 about the Great Idea ? 
 
 " Sibyl's idea, of course." The speaker accepted the 
 Christian name ; she could have said " My sister's " stiffly. 
 " It's a perfectly mad one, A sort of new Factory, or 
 perhaps I ought to say Institution. Everything is to be 
 made there, only nobod}^ is to be allowed to work there who 
 is qualified to do anything else." 
 
 " Anything else than what ?" 
 
 "Why — don't you understand? Arts and crafts. 
 Enamels and lace and tapestry and hammered brass and 
 copper. Not manufactures — mediaeval things. ..." 
 
 " Oh, ah !— I know." 
 
 " All that sort of thing. Well ! — the Great Idea is to 
 take either some premises of the proper sort, or a piece of
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 49 
 
 land and build a Factory, with studios for herself _rand 
 Lady Betty Inglis ; she must be in it to make Sir Spender 
 Inglis, who's enormously rich, find half the capital. I've 
 done my best ... to prevent it. But it's no use my saying 
 anything. Will keeps her up to it." 
 
 " Your brother ?" 
 
 " Yes. You see, he's been looking into the question of 
 building, and is certain he could build at half the usual cost. 
 So he wants to try his hand on the Factory." 
 
 " Poor Sir Spender !" 
 
 " That's what I say. And poor Papa ! However, that's 
 not Will's only reason. He wants to build some workshops 
 for himself to carry out experiments in wireless high-tension 
 currents and aerostation. / don't understand these 
 things." 
 
 " Your brother seems a universal genius, too ?" 
 
 " Yes. But then, he took a very high degree at Cam- 
 bridge. He always has that excuse. Sibyl has no degree, 
 and ought to know better." 
 
 " What exactly is going to be done at the Factory ? And 
 are all the hands to be ladies ? Or how ?" 
 
 " Very much ' how V I should say. The idea is, to employ 
 no one who can do anything else anywhere else. People 
 with one hand or one eye. Colour-blind guards who can't 
 get places on railways. Deaf and dumb people that can 
 read the Scriptures aloud automatically and never be any 
 the wiser, don't you know V 
 
 " Was that what your brother was talking about to your 
 sister " — in this exact context " Sibyl " would hardly have 
 worked in — " last night ? About a blind chap he told her 
 of. She thought he might be taught to model." 
 
 " Did they talk about him ? I didn't hear them. A 
 blind beggar-man in a street where I slum — sells matches, 
 or pretends to. They won't get him to work for ten. 
 shillings a week." 
 
 " Why not ?" 
 
 " Because he's earning ten shillings a day, probably, and 
 putting by money. They do. Isn't that somebody calling 
 me 1 . . . Yes. . . . I'm coming." 
 
 And then the young lady, with a parting benediction to 
 her hearer for the amusing talk they had had, vanished in. 
 
 VOL. I. 4
 
 50 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 response to some summons which she had distinguished as 
 intended for herself. 
 
 He for his part thought it necessary to propose to himself, 
 and to carry unanimously, a vote of confidence in the great 
 advantage to the brain it was to get away from one's sur- 
 roundings now and again, and get a complete change. He 
 had the hypocrisy to add that the said surroundings stood 
 to derive benefit also, in ways not precisely specified. He 
 felt stimulated and braced, confirmed in the image he 
 treasured of his own identity. His interview mth Miss 
 Arkroyd had been like having the hair of his soul brushed 
 by machinery, and called for classification. It was necessary 
 to protest against a remark something somewhere had 
 made, that his own home need not suffer by contrast. He 
 indignantly repudiated the necessity for discussing the 
 matter, as he threw away a cigar he had taken some time 
 to smoke. 
 
 Still, he did not feel so sure on the point as not to be glad 
 to be finally pinioned by a gentleman with a theory, whom 
 he had provisionally escaped from at breakfast, an hour 
 before. This was Mr. Triptolemus Wraxall, the Apostle of 
 Universal Security, whose belief that policies and premiums 
 were remedies for all this world's evils had taken possession 
 of him while discharging the duties of visiting inspector to 
 a Fire Insurance Office. In the intervals of his inspections, 
 the object of which was to detect risks of fire in order that 
 no policies should be issued where any such risks existed, 
 he had evolved from his inner consciousness a number of 
 systems, all practicable in the highest degree — almost self- 
 acting, in fact. At least, they were none of them foolish, 
 like the Rejected Proposal Insurance (Matrimony), which 
 we believe fell through in consequence of the dishonest 
 connivance of the parties, renewed proposals being fre- 
 quently accepted within twenty-four hours of the paj^ment 
 of the sum assured. It was even reported that young ladies 
 had advanced the first year's premium in some cases, in 
 return for a commission of seventy-five per cent, at settle- 
 ment ; and that the Office was dissuaded wdth difficulty by 
 its solicitors from commencing proceedings for conspirac3^ 
 An absurd scheme ! 
 
 The scheme Mr. Wraxall was anxious to lay before Mr.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 51 
 
 Challis was at least (said its inventor) worthy of serious 
 consideration. It was a simple System of Assurance in 
 which unborn legitimate male children would, by payment 
 of a premium, secure to themselves the full advantages of 
 a University education. Of course, he did not rely on their 
 personal application — that was to be done on their behalf 
 by their proposed parents — but it was not only ladies and 
 gentlemen who had substantial guarantees for the appear- 
 ance of these undergraduates, but any lady and gentleman 
 whatever were to be at liberty to take out Policies of Assur- 
 ance, the premiums getting less and less in proportion as the 
 improbability of the couple ever having lawful issue became 
 greater and greater. The modest sum of fifty pounds was 
 to cover a claim for the possible son of an engaged couple 
 (as bashfully alluded to in marriage settlements) ; while a full 
 hundred was required for an infant of unknown sex awaiting 
 advertisement in the birth column of the Times. On the 
 other hand, where there was very little chance of the court- 
 ship having a successful issue (as in the case of extreme 
 youth of the parties) the premium went down contemptu- 
 ously to a sovereign. Children in arms betrothed by their 
 parents were to enjoy all the advantages of the institution 
 for two shillings and sixpence. But the lowest figure 
 on the list, nine decimal point ought-six pence, was the 
 sum for which any married gentleman could secure its 
 benefits for the not necessarily impossible son, born in lawful 
 wedlock of himself and any lady, also married elsewhere, 
 provided that the couple were of different nationalities and 
 each resident at home. It was thought necessary, said 
 Mr. Wraxall, to bar cases of murder by the policy-holder, of 
 whichever sex. 
 
 " I can't see the necessity " said Challis. " The 
 Office could not refuse to carry out the bargain because of 
 suspicion of murder ; and in case of conviction the chance 
 of a family goes down to almost nil, because of the hanging. 
 See ?" 
 
 " Quite so, as a rule. But cases might occur of conviction 
 and hanging deferred for months, even years. It might 
 even happen that an insured son had become a heneficlare 
 toVthe extent of a complete University education before 
 either of his parents was arrested for murder. Such an 
 
 4—2
 
 52 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 event would have to be provided against, or due allowance 
 made in fixing the amount of the premium. But without 
 going so far as that, we should meet with instances of 
 murderers under this arrangement getting married while 
 out on bail. A posthumous son could not be fairly branded 
 as illegitimate because his father was hanged and his mother 
 sentenced to penal servitude before his birth. Holy Matri- 
 mony is all that legitimacy demands." 
 
 " Couldn't you raise the premium, so as to cover all 
 possible cases ^ Distaste for murder, on its merits, would 
 tend to keep the number low. Make it eighteenpence." 
 
 " Pardon me, Mr. Challis, you do not understand Human 
 Nature. The passing from pence to shillings marks a 
 crucial point of its susceptibilities. For one man who will 
 go over a shilling to provide against a defined contingency 
 you will meet with a milHon who will invest pence on some 
 chance they almost deny the existence of, simply because, 
 if it did come to pass, the benefit would be so out of all pro- 
 portion to the sum risked to obtain it. If an investment 
 of one halfpenny could be shown to connect itself with a 
 possible gain of ten million pounds, the whole population 
 of the world would plunge to that extent. There can be 
 no reasonable doubt that, however improbable it may seem 
 to any married man that he should marry the widow of a 
 particular foreigner, quite unknown, still, the advantage of 
 having their son's education provided at a cost of nine point- 
 ought-six pence would be an irresistible argument in favour 
 of its outlay. Nothing short of mathematical certainty that 
 no such son was possible would . . ." 
 
 " I understand perfectly. That is my own view. I draw 
 the line at a shilling. To go beyond it opens up a world 
 
 of immoral extravagance " The speaker felt in danger 
 
 of yawning, and, to avoid it and break loose from his perse- 
 cutor, had to fall back on the time-honoured expedient 
 of inventing a neglected duty elsewhere. He drew his 
 watch suddenly from its pocket with the verve of an angler 
 landing a fish, and exclaimed with sudden deep convic- 
 tion : " I really must run !" 
 
 And Mr. Alfred Challis ran, and found that letters for 
 the Post had to be ready at eleven forty-five. He had come 
 away from home with the best intentions of writing a fine
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 53 
 
 every day to his \vife, and, indeed, had meant to write 
 long humorous letters with satirical descriptions of the 
 British Toff at Home, all the points of which would make 
 good copy after, as it was only Marianne. It wasn't like 
 repeating a published article. But this time it would have 
 to be a line, or at most a sheet of note-paper ; and it was, 
 accordingly. 
 
 When one has arrived at the time of hfe when one weighs 
 beforehand each sentence one writes, even to an intimate 
 friend — instead of dashing recklessly on, as in one's glorious 
 youth — how glad one sometimes is to be put under com- 
 pulsion about the contents of a letter ! Challis wouldn't 
 acknowledge his obligation to the coercion of the Postal 
 limit— not he ! But he felt it all the same. For he 
 couldn't have filled out his letter with Universal Security. 
 Marianne wouldn't have understood a word of it. It wasn't 
 her line. And as for his long talk mth Judith Arkroyd 
 . . . well, now ! — why on earth couldn't he just write that 
 he had had one, and that she had told him a lot about the 
 family, and he would write a long letter about it next time, 
 but really this was only a line to catch the Post. Why not, 
 indeed ? Yes, of course, that was the proper thing to 
 write. He wrote it, and denied the pause, to his own satis- 
 faction. But he was grateful to the Post for being so 
 coercive and superseding, and cancelling all considerations 
 of — of what ? He denied that there was anything to 
 cancel, and directed the letter.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 A LITTLE bit of duty done always seems at its best when it 
 has taken the form of a written letter. Because when the 
 time comes for posting, whatever the letter may contain — 
 whether it be a lame apology for breaking an engagement, 
 or a promise to send a cheque without fail next week — the 
 penny stamp and the direction are just the same as if^it 
 had been to reproach Angela for not appearing yesterday 
 at church-parade in Hyde Park, or had enclosed a final 
 discharge of your tailor's account. So Mr. Challis's 
 rather perfunctory line to catch the Post, boldly stamped 
 and directed, quite set his mind at ease about his home 
 obhgations as soon as ever it was licked and stuck to, past 
 recall. 
 
 In fact, so reheved was his conscience, after he had 
 handed this letter to Elphinstone the butler to see that it 
 went to the Post for him, that he felt quite at liberty to 
 enjoy some more soul-brush the next time the chance 
 came. All the more from a conviction of the importance 
 of its contents conveyed by the professional manner of 
 Mr. Elphinstone's reception of it — a manner that said, 
 " This really important letter .^hall go, whatever other 
 don't !" If his enjoyment of the soul-brush became too 
 oppressive to his conscience, he could square accounts by 
 an extra sheet or so of letter-paper. 
 
 Anyhow, he could now live for the present. He was 
 rather disgusted to find that, whatever he decided on to 
 enjoy next, it would have to be in the house, unless he was 
 prepared to get wet out of doors. For, taking a mean ad- 
 vantage of him while he was writing his short letter, it had 
 come on to rain. 
 
 In a country-house, when it comes on to rain after a fine 
 early morning, despair settles on the household, which 
 wanders about moaning, and looking for someone to come 
 
 54
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 55 
 
 and have a game at billiards ; or lamenting the cruel fate 
 which has beguiled it into putting its things on, and now 
 it supposes that it had better go and take them off again 
 and settle down to something, because it's going to pour ; 
 or asking what was the name of that capital game we 
 played every day at Fen Grange, for instance, when it 
 rained for three weeks on end, and nobody was the least 
 bored. It is in sad hours such as this that you seek for 
 a chess-opponent and find none, except a class of player 
 that knows the moves, whom you fly from candidly ; and 
 then, if fortunate, you may meet with one of another 
 class, who has forgotten the openings. Secure him, but 
 don't let him set you an interesting problem and run 
 away. 
 
 "I've never played, but I should like to learn. Only 
 I really don't know where the men are. Nobody plays 
 here, you see, and they get lost or hidden in cupboards." 
 Thus Judith in the second hour of a steady downpour to 
 Mr. Chalhs's inquiry, for he was always ready for a game 
 at chess, without being keen about it. 
 
 " You are not getting on with your book, anyhow !" 
 said he. " Can't I hunt about for the chessmen till I find 
 them ?" The book was one he had recommended at the 
 first coming of the rain, and it was when it was closed in 
 despair that Challis asked his question. 
 
 " I think we must ask Elphinstone. Would you ring ?" 
 Challis rang, and a sub. who appeared was instructed to 
 consult Mr. Elphinstone. Judith continued : "No ! — I 
 hate sinners who are touched by the Dies Irce in a cathedral 
 and repent, especially when they've got too old to do any 
 real mischief. I would sooner they went to the Devil 
 honestly " And so the chat ran on, Challis cordially con- 
 curring, and not hinting at any joy whatever over the sinner 
 that repenteth, until the young man Samuel came back 
 with chessmen. There was another set, of ivory, it appeared, 
 but Mr. Elphinstone had desired Samuel to say that a 
 prawn was defective, and one of the bishops was out of his 
 socket, and couldn't be got to screw in. Samuel had been 
 put to it to charge his memory with this obscure message ; 
 he was confident about the prawn, but had misgiving about 
 the bishop — feared it was disrespectful to the Church per-
 
 56 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 haps ; but went away relieved when nothing explosive 
 came of it. His situation was safe. 
 
 Many of us know that teaching chess is no sinecure. The 
 alumnus who refuses to accept the rules as they stand ; 
 who wants to know why the pawns may not move back- 
 wards ; why the pieces may not jump over, like in draughts ; 
 why the queen should have such absurd latitude ; who 
 thinks all the black pieces should remain on the black 
 squares, and per contra — how well we know him ! And the 
 difficulty a peculiar class of intellect has in mastering the 
 knight's move, condemning it on its merits, as too much 
 like squinting, or italics ! And another yet, which, on 
 being shown how to make a particular move, makes it, 
 and says contentiously : " Well ! — I don't see anj^thing so 
 very clever in that." 
 
 IMiss Arkroyd did not quite do any of these things, but 
 she was nearly as bad. She remembered the moves in the 
 abstract, but forgot which of the pieces made them ; and 
 this answered as well as forgetting the moves, for all pur- 
 poses of confusion. With so beautiful a hand it couldn't 
 matter how much she fingered the pieces. And Mr. Challis 
 seemed very contented. The instruction was a farce, but 
 it served its turn, and a sort of appearance of a game de- 
 veloped while the rain outside came steadily down, and 
 checkmated everyone in the house. Desultory chat, in 
 which the question, " Whose move is it ?" frequently 
 occurred, helped Challis to a further insight into family 
 conditions and local history. Eyi revanche the young lady 
 added to her impressions of Challis's own domestic circum- 
 stances and his literary career, and found that an image 
 was forming in her mind of Mrs. Challis. It wasn't a beau- 
 tiful image, but it was worthy. It was that of a good soul. 
 But not a good sort of body — nothing so bad as that ! 
 She felt glad, for Challis's sake. A good soul and the best 
 of wives ; that kind of thing ! You couldn't expect 
 education of very finished achievement in those sort of 
 people, in the class she came from. For Miss Arkroyd had 
 got somehow a perfectly clear impression of a class unde- 
 finable, but homogeneous and recognisable by symptoms. 
 A class that didn't dress for dinner, a class that liked 
 potatoes in their skins as a palliative to cold moist roast
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 57 
 
 mutton d' obhligo , and did not condemn, but merely looked 
 coldly on, at menu's, and finger-glasses. A class whose males 
 smoked pipes and whose females refused cigarettes ; which, 
 though its young learned French at school, condemned 
 France as the most salient foreign incident on an incorrigibly 
 foreign Continent, and a perfect moral plague-spot of un- 
 faithful wives and husbands. 
 
 But however good a soul this man's wife was, Judith 
 caught herself being sorry for him. Yesterday evening, 
 when she went good-naturedly to him, as to her mother's 
 latest discovery, just to say a few words and prevent his 
 getting left out in the cold, he had seemed to her only 
 moderately interesting, and far from handsome. Now she 
 began with a discriminating eye to see that, though he was 
 far from handsome, he was just as far from ugly. Still, she 
 perceived that it did credit to her discriminating eye to find 
 this out. She hadn't noticed it so much when he turned up 
 unexpectedly in the garden in the morning — unexpectedly, 
 because she was really unconscious of having said in his 
 hearing that she was going across the lawn to feed her birds. 
 But now, in a lucky half-light in the red drawing-room, 
 with his eyes dropped on the chess-board, his forehead and 
 eye-framing had a look about them that was certainly 
 interesting, if not a good substitute for beauty. Judith 
 would have preferred the beauty, certainly ; but she could 
 look contentedly at the good soul's property, and go on 
 wondering what she was like, while he considered knotty 
 points connected with the game. 
 
 " You've put your king in check, Miss Arkroyd. You 
 mustn't do that." He looked up suddenly and caught her 
 eyes. Her rapport ^vith the game saved him from his 
 vanity by good luck. " I see you thought you had caught 
 me," was his interpretation of her gaze. It was in token of 
 a supposed triumph, so he thought. Whatever it was, it 
 became disconcerted. 
 
 " Oh !— mustn't I do that ? I think it oughtn't to 
 count, when one does it oneself. Don't you ?" Challis 
 said to himself that this woman was rather a goose. Why 
 he felt a little disappointed at her being rather a goose he 
 could not have said off-hand. He apologized for the 
 stupidity of the laws of games generally ; said they were
 
 58 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 clearly wrong all round. But it would make such a 
 lot of fuss to alter them now that he doubted if it was 
 worth it. 
 
 " You're not in earnest, Mr. Chalhs ?" So the lady 
 spoke, and Challis said to himself that Marianne would 
 never have found that out. " Sharp, by comparison !" 
 was his comment to himself ; and then aloud : " But I 
 can't have you bored, Miss Arkroyd. You don't care 
 about this." To which Judith replied : " It's not exciting, 
 so far ;" and both laughed. The discovery that each had 
 been thinking the same thing was full of conductivities. 
 It improved their footing. 
 
 " It can't be, you know, when you come to think of it," 
 said he, pushing his chair expressively three inches back — 
 an expression of renunciation — with a slight boredom- 
 admitting stretch. " Chess requires apprenticeship before 
 it can be enjoyed, like smoking." 
 
 " I see. And this game has made me sick, like a boy's 
 first cigar. Why didn't you tell me 1" 
 
 " One must begin some time. . . . Well ! I don't 
 know either. Must one ? . . . " 
 
 " There was nothing else to do." 
 
 " We might have gone into the billiard-room and heard 
 politics. I heard them going on through the door a httle 
 while ago. Mr. . . . what's his name ? — the politician ..." 
 
 " Mr. Ramsey Tomes ?" 
 
 " Mr. Ramsey Tomes. I gathered that he was giving 
 details of his great scheme of Reciprocal Interdependent 
 Taxation of Imports — what he touched upon at dinner last 
 night " 
 
 " Don't let me disturb the chess !" says a passer through 
 the room. It is Lady Arkroyd with an armful of some iorm 
 of embroidery which no one is on any account to assist her 
 in carrying to the dra^^■ing-room beyond. But what she 
 means is, " Don't arrest my progress. Mind your own 
 business." Challis makes a convulsive suggestion of 
 willingness to assist the Universe, but doesn't mean any- 
 thing at all by it ; and her ladyship floats away, leaving 
 him normal. But his plunge, overdone from dramatic 
 motives, has knocked the board over. The Fates seem to 
 league together to throw cold water on this ill-starred
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 59 
 
 game. Judith conve^^s the fact by a shrug, but adds a 
 smile, that it may be understood there is no amertume in 
 the situation. Further, she says she can hear Tea. A sense 
 that Life's problem is solved for the moment mixes with a 
 consciousness of hairbrush-time come again, and Mr. Challis 
 disperses to reassemble presently and enjoy it. 
 
 How it is pouring, to be sure ! And how grateful one 
 feels to it — abstraction though it be — for doing it in earnest, 
 and making an end of all doubts whether we may not get 
 out for a turn later. Nobody is going to do that to-day. 
 
 Chalhs encounters young Lord Felixthorpe on the stairs, 
 coming from the bilhard-room. He is always amiable and 
 well-mannered, this young nobleman, and manages to make 
 everyone think he has their good oj^inion of him at heart. 
 But he often seems to be seeking their sympathy with his 
 derision of someone else. Or of himself, for that matter — 
 so Chalhs goes on thinking, for all tliis is what passes in his 
 mind ; the story does not vouch for its truth. During their 
 slow ascent of the great staircase together, he is more than 
 half-convinced that the young toff really cares about his 
 views on motoring. 
 
 *' I am quite aware," says his lordship, pausing at a corner, 
 as though one might go upstairs at any slowness, even Avith 
 the young man Samuel and a colleague agglomerating gilded 
 porcelain within hearing, as tea-factors. "I am quite 
 aware, my dear Mr. Challis, that the motor-car is at present 
 an object of execration to the public. But I sympathize so 
 keenly that I feel bound to spend as much time as possible 
 in the only place in which I am not tempted to forget 
 myself and use bad language against motorists. I refer to 
 the motor-car itself. Believe me that the only thing that 
 can reconcile a well-constituted mind to any practice essen- 
 tially damnable is the practice itself. I shall look forward 
 to your accompanying me in my Panhard, after a profusion 
 of curses perfectly reasonably directed against it — in which 
 you will have my sincerest sympathy." 
 
 " When do you expect the detestable contrivance — I 
 make no disguises, you see — to arrive I I shall be here for 
 a week, if my hosts continue to tolerate me." 
 
 " It ought to be here now. From the fact that it is not 
 here now, I am led to infer that something has happened.
 
 60 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 In this cautious expression you will kindly observe that it 
 includes the possibility that my chauffeur, Louis Rossier, 
 -has got drunk on the road, and has stopped the night at an 
 inn to become sober." 
 
 " Or he may have been poisoned by petroleum." 
 " Yes, or his head may have been cut off by a police- wire, 
 •stretched across the road in the dark. But in that case 
 I fancy we should have heard." 
 
 When Challis descended the stairs, he paused to look out 
 •at the great window with the quarried grisaille and armorial 
 bearings in each Hght, and saw through a quarry tempor- 
 arily repaired Avith common window-glass a clear view of 
 the approach to the house, dutifully draining off the deluge 
 that continued to fall steadily — steadily — on the gravel 
 road the great beech avenue took such care of, standing on 
 «ach side of it all the way to just this side of the Lodge. 
 How well he knew what that soaked gravel would have to 
 say to the pedestrian who ventured out — what it ivas saying 
 to that unhappy man in some sort of oilskin costume who 
 was coming slowly, jadedly along, above his undersquelch 
 and below an umbrella that can have done him very little 
 good. Mr. Challis saw at a glance that he was not indi- 
 genous to the soil ; a second glance determined that he was 
 a Frenchman ; a third that he was a chauffeur. Certainly 
 Louis Rossier — who else ? He smiled as a non-motorist 
 smiles when a motor comes to grief. When he reached the 
 dra^dng-room, Mr. Ramsay Tomes was already appljdng for 
 a second cup. That gentleman was thirsty, no doubt. He 
 had talked for two hours. Not that he meant to stop — far 
 from it ! 
 
 Challis had no one to talk to for the moment, so he hs- 
 tened to Mr. Tomes, who went on again as soon as he had 
 made sui'e there were two lumps. 
 
 " I start from an aspect of the question that must compel 
 the most incredulous to admit that at least the matrix is 
 ripe for solution." 
 
 As the orator paused a moment, everyone felt bound to 
 fructify a little, and said, " I see, you propose to . . ." or, 
 " I see your idea . . ." or merely got as far as, " I see 
 you ..." and remained stranded. All except the disciple
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 61 
 
 of Graubosch. who muttered knowingly, " The Branden- 
 bierenschreiligrath System. Graubosch's Appendix B. 
 deals with it." He and Mr. Wraxall exchanged astute nods ;; 
 the latter to oblige, because he really knew nothing about 
 it. But Mr. Tomes wasn't going to leave anything vague. 
 Not he ! — a man with a fixed glare, and loaded to the muzzle 
 with exhaustive elucidation ! 
 
 Challis did not wait for the next instalment. He cast, 
 about for an anchorage, and had not found a satisfactory 
 one when Lord Felixthorpe, who had not appeared at the 
 beginning of Tea, came into the room with something to 
 communicate written on his countenance, 
 
 " What's gone amiss, Scip ?" said his friend, William. 
 Rufus. 
 
 " That idiot Rossier . . ." 
 
 " I told you he was a fool. What's he done now ?" 
 
 " Left the machine in a ditch, and walked home through 
 the mud. . . . Oh no, he hasn't hurt himself. I wish he 
 had— in moderation." The public becomes interested, and 
 explanation spreads over the room. A lady's voice says,. 
 afar, that its owner supposes now we shall lose our excur- 
 sion, and that place will be gone, and it would have been 
 the very thing. Challis doesn't understand this, and asks. 
 Judith the meaning. He is in her neighbourhood somehow- 
 — seems to have sacrificed hearing more about the accident. 
 She supposes Sibyl meant the place for the Great Idea. 
 But they couldn't have gone to-morrow unless the weather 
 mended, anyhow. 
 
 People chatter so in a full room ; you soon lose threads . 
 of conversation. Challis knew little more about either the 
 accident or the Great Idea when he went away to dress for 
 dinner an hour later. He was only aware that Mr. Tomes, 
 was still at Avork on the Reciprocal Interdependent Taxa- 
 tion of Imports, and that Miss Arkroyd was going to play 
 Halma with him if he came up soon enough after dinner. 
 
 In his letter to Marianne, written after he went up to 
 his room rather early — people are very apt to think it's 
 getting on for bed-time after rain-beleaguered days in 
 country-houses — Mr. Challis merely mentioned two games 
 at Halma, and adduced the exciting character of that game.
 
 62 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 as a reason why very little was said. His letter implied 
 that he was being bored, which was untiiie. However, the 
 words " in the house all day " would do that without an 
 antidote. And we couldn't expect liim to mention the soul- 
 brush, especially as he disallowed its existence. He said a 
 good deal of what he did know of the motor-car mishap, 
 which was natural, for — so he said — he had inferred, from 
 the excitement on the subject, that this car, when it ap- 
 peared, would be the first ever seen by most of the inhabi- 
 tants of the district. 
 
 This machine was the latest extravagance of young Lord 
 Felixthorpe, who had spent a thousand pounds upon it ; 
 and its arrival from the agent at Grime, who was to welcome 
 it — or rather its components — to England, and to qualify 
 it for the enjoyment of its riders, and the execrations of its 
 victims, was looked forward to with feverish anxiety by 
 both. But he could not give such details as were supplied 
 next day, after a fuller sifting of Louis Rossi er's report, 
 which was not very intelligible at first. These had to wait 
 for a postscript, which told how the chauffeur, who did not 
 understand three words of English, had proved as sensitive 
 to misdirection as the compass is to the magnetic current. 
 He went the wrong way instinctively several times, and was 
 headed back, or finger-pointed back, just as often. In the 
 end he made an unfortunate choice between two roads, 
 although warned by along shouted instruction from a turnip- 
 field — which ignored his nationality robustly — that the 
 cross-over bridge, when he come to Sto'an's mill, nigh the 
 running wa'ater, wasn't to be troosted to carry lo'ads ; and 
 the shouter would be rather shoy of it, in yower place. But 
 you might take e'er a one of they two ways, at your liking. 
 Being none the wiser, Louis Rossier chose the more tempting 
 one; and when he came to the cross-over bridge, which 
 spanned a ditch, could not, of course, tell the meaning of the 
 Local Authority's posted caution to the effect that nothing 
 over two tons was to use it ; with the result that it gave 
 way in the middle. It was too small a bridge to let any 
 vehicle larger than a goat-chaise through, and almost too 
 small a ditch to accommodate ^one, but the motor was 
 trapped and detained in its sunk centre. 
 
 " You'll have to get to t' Hall on Sha'anks's mear, yoong
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 63 
 
 ma-an," said a native, who was not really taking pains to 
 hide his joy at the mishap. Louis got to the Hall, but didn't 
 know he had ridden Shanks's mare. 
 
 However, for a first accident wdth a new Panhard, it 
 wasn't so bad ! Only one tyre ruined ; its comrade was 
 mendable. In the end the gorgeous scarlet vehicle was got 
 to the house by horses, and was recovering its spirits and 
 snorting, with the new spare tyre on, by the time the 
 company at the Hall had eaten too much lunch, and were 
 arranging how they would spend their afternoon. Challis 
 had despatched his letter of the previous night, and was 
 enjoying himself. A gloriously fine day, following an iso- 
 lated local depression of the barometer, had removed the 
 local depressions the latter had occasioned to everyone else, 
 and Miss Arkroyd had ended a second interview over the 
 parroquets by promising to take liim to see the Roman and 
 British camps on the other side of the village. 
 
 The first really professional excursion of the new motor 
 was to be dedicated to the Great Idea. For the Great Idea, 
 however vaguely it was formulated, was clear about one 
 thing. Premises would be de rigueur. It was therefore 
 incumbent on its promoters to inspect premises, both in 
 town and country. At present the latter was the more 
 popular, because the weather was superb, and the notion 
 of incorporating with the Factory a Village Community, and 
 perhaps a Garden City, both in the evening with a flawless 
 Autumn sky, was too tempting to be neglected. So, this 
 afternoon, William Rufus and Sibyl and Lord Felixthorpe — ■ 
 in spite of an impression he gave that he was treating the 
 Great Idea with derision — were to run over to Whealhope 
 Paulswell, about thirty miles off, in the motor, to give that 
 treasure a baptismal run and inspect an extinct factory, 
 which had been empty a quarter of a century. They would 
 be back by dinner-time. 
 
 Sir Murgatroyd, of whom we have seen nothing, as he has 
 been continually talking about the ruin of English Trade 
 with Mr. Ramsay Tomes, was going to take that gentleman 
 to see some manure. People can look at some manure, and 
 talk about nefarious Germany, both at once. There is 
 reason to suppose that these two gentlemen talked of very
 
 64 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 little but the ruin of English Trade during the whole of this 
 visit to Royd. And wherever any member of the house- 
 hold was employed — we are recording the impressions of 
 Mr. Alfred Challis— he or she could always hear, in the 
 remote distance, what was only too clearly Mr. Tomes 
 taking this opportunity to state, once for all ; or Sir Murga- 
 troyd feeling bound, alike as a Statesman and an English- 
 man, to protest against. A steady, continuous rumble, on 
 these lines, accompanied the not particularly busy hum of 
 men, women, and chits, that made up the round of life at 
 Royd. The chits, by-the-by, of which there were two or 
 three, naturally involved a corresponding number of young 
 men, each to each ; or each in the pocket of each, as you 
 choose. None of them seemed the least ashamed of never 
 having a word to throw at anyone outside the pocket, 
 except its owner, and the rest of Europe seemed by common 
 consent to take no notice of them. And all the while each 
 one, and the contents of its pocket, was, like enough— so 
 thought Mr. Challis — the centre of an incubation of memo- 
 ries that were to last a lifetime. " As they bake, so they will 
 brew," philosophized Mr. Challis to himself, and clouded 
 over a little as he remembered that he, too, Avas in his 
 twenties once. Four of them played lawn- tennis that 
 afternoon, and the others got somehow lost sight of. No 
 matter ! 
 
 Lady Arkroyd had the carriage, and drove over to 
 Thanes Castle, to see the Duchess of Rankshire before the 
 Royalties came. But she wasn't at all sure she wouldn't 
 have done something else if she had known that Judith was 
 going to cry off at the last minute. She relied a good deal 
 on her eldest daughter as a factor in social intercourse. 
 But she didn't confess it. 
 
 " What on earth is the girl going to do with herself ? 
 How can you be so tiresome, Ju ? Now do just get ready 
 and come. There's no hurry. I can wait." 
 
 " Now, Madre dear, you really ought to know by this 
 time how bored I always am with the sort of people they 
 get at the Castle. And I've got letters to write. I must 
 answer Lady Kitty abovit the orchids." 
 
 " Nonsense, girl ! You can't be all the afternoon over 
 that:'
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 65 
 
 " I shall go out later. In an hour or so. I dare say I 
 shall take Mr. — what's his name ? — Harris — round the 
 village and show him the Roman Camp. He'll know 
 what castrametation means, and things . . ." 
 
 "Mr. 'Titus Scroop'? My dear! — he's as happy as 
 he can be talking to that idiot Brownrigg about Meta- 
 physics and nonsense. Do let him alone !" 
 
 " Well ! — I dare say I shall. Or otherwise, as may be. 
 But I won't come to Thanes. Love to the Duchess." 
 
 Judith was a stronger character than her mother, and 
 won. As the latter was driven off, she said to herself, for 
 no apparent reason, " Mr. Titus Scroop." 
 
 Lady Arkroyd was in the habit of asking every celebrity 
 she came across to her house, because she worshipped 
 genius. But she took the genius for granted if she saw 
 any author, artist, or musician's name often enough in 
 print. Was she sometimes rash ? Well — yes — some- 
 times ! Perhaps a doubt about " Titus Scroop's " genius 
 was the reason she said his name. But if so, why did it 
 lead to a resolve in her mind to ask Mrs. Candour — the 
 Mrs. Candour of the moment, v/hom she was sure to meet 
 at Thanes — more about Mrs. "Titus Scroop "? She kept 
 thinking of it, off and on, all the way to the park gates with 
 the dragon-sentinels on piers on each side presenting arms. 
 
 And all the while Challis was being bored by that idiot 
 Brownrigg, and wishing anyone would come and rescue 
 him. He resented the idea that he had any special rescuer 
 in view. But no one had said he had. However, Miss 
 Arkroyd had certainly spoken about a walk to the Roman 
 Camp ; so naturally he would cast her for the part, don't 
 3^ou see ? 
 
 VOL. I.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 The gentleman spoken of so disrespectfully by his hostess 
 was Mr. Adolphus Brownrigg, who was an enthusiastic 
 disciple of the great German philosopher Graubosch, whose 
 scheme embodied a complete Reorganization of Society on 
 an entirely new basis. But whereas all previous re- 
 organizers of Society had started on the fallacious and mis- 
 chievous line of breaking up existing institutions and re- 
 placing them by others of their own devising, this reformer 
 proposed to utilise them all as portions of his new System. 
 Thus the reigning Sovereign would fall easily into his place 
 of Chairman of a great Central Committee of Management, 
 retaining the Crown as a distinguishing badge of his office 
 the existing machinery of Parliamentary election would 
 answer equally well for the Members of the Central Com- 
 mittee ; the Bench would supply us with a most satisfactory 
 staff for what he termed Courts of Discriminative Decision, 
 and so on, and so on. Even the very Policemen's Uniforms 
 would be a ailable for the new staff of Order- Keepers and 
 Crime-Preventors that formed part of his System. Nay, 
 the Coinage itself would come in useful as Exchangeable 
 Tokens in Ms new Method of Sale and Purchase Accommo- 
 dation. 
 
 " What attitude does Professor Graubosch adopt to- 
 wards the Religions of the world ?" asked Challis, as he 
 and the advocate of this new Reform walked about the 
 garden, discussing it. 
 
 " Graubosch," replied the latter, " is, broadly speaking, 
 in favour of their complete abolition. Nor do I myself 
 think any continuation of them would be found necessary, 
 in view of his new System of Metaphysical Checks. No one 
 recognises more fully than Graubosch the necessity for 
 Moral Restraint derived from a Consciousness of the 
 Unseen, whether acting as a stimulus in connection with 
 
 66
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 67 
 
 an exalted and unselfish anxiety for personal rewards 
 throughout Eternity, or as a deterrent resulting from the 
 anticipation of unpleasantness hereafter, especially of con- 
 tinuous oxidation with evolution of caloric. But the new 
 System provides for both." 
 " As, for instance ? . . ." 
 
 " For instance, in respect of the Idea of a Deity. . . . 
 But perhaps, Mr. Challis, your own views on this subject 
 are . . . a . . . well defined ? I should be sorry to . . . 
 to . . ." 
 
 " To give offence ? Pray don't feel any scruples on my 
 account." 
 
 " Well, I will continue. In respect of this Idea of a 
 Deity, it is true that Graubosch abolishes God, as such. 
 But his System claims to provide a substitute ; and this 
 substitute is, to my tliinking, superior in many respects for 
 working purposes to the Idea it displaces. The first Meta- 
 physical Check he formulates is the Invariable Necessary 
 Antecedent. The acceptance of this as an inevitable con- 
 dition of thought is an essential of the System of Grau- 
 bosch." 
 
 " How does it act as a check ?" 
 
 " It is rather long to follow out ; but, put as briefly as I 
 can, it is somewhat thus : Graubosch admits the possi- 
 bility of an infinite number of successions of Antecedents, 
 as we have an infinite number of results or sequents. But 
 the effect on the Metaphysician of contemplating such a 
 condition of the Universe is fatal to reasoning, and may 
 easily produce suspension of the faculties. Philosophy 
 stipulates for a modus vivendi ; and as a working necessity 
 for argument, if for no other reason, Graubosch refers the 
 whole of the Universe to one Invariable Necessary Ante- 
 cedent ; which he accepts, for reasons which appear to me 
 satisfactory, as obviously superior to any one unit of its 
 results or sequences. We have no right, he says, to assume 
 that any result or consequence is not achievable by such an. 
 Antecedent." 
 
 " I concur, on the whole. Does Graubosch ascribe in- 
 telligence, in our sense of the word, to this Antecedent ?" 
 
 " Certainly not. Intelhgence is merely a sequence or 
 consequence of some minute fraction ... of ... of its power."' 
 
 5—2
 
 68 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " Why did you hesitate ?'" 
 
 " From afeeHng that Power itself may only be a finite 
 humanism, so to speak — an Entity on all fours with In- 
 telligence. But the Metaphysician has to leave himself a 
 few words, to speak with. Now the idea of greater and 
 less is axiomatic, and it is difficult to avoid the conclusion 
 that our Intelligence is a lesser thing than its working sub- 
 stitute in the Invariable and Necessary Antecedent." 
 
 " I quite understand. To create Intelligence, its Creator 
 when creating himself must go one better — break his own 
 anticipated record. What are Graubosch's views about 
 Good and Evil ? They both are factors in our existing 
 System, especially the latter." 
 
 " He ignores both, as antiquated and unnecessary. In 
 his System, the fruitless discussions about which is which — 
 where one ends and the other begins, and so on — disappear 
 entirely." 
 
 " That sounds good. Vice and Virtue could shake hands 
 over it — a Coalition Ministry, don't you know ?" 
 
 " Pardon me ! — the exact reverse. Party Government 
 would be intensified. But I ought to describe what Grau- 
 bosch terms the Plus and Minus of his System, in its Moral 
 or Ethical aspects. The first expression recognises in 
 what has been hitherto absurdly called ' Good ' merely 
 the Invariable and Necessary Antecedent leaking out, so 
 to speak, and becoming perceptible to our Senses. The 
 second, in v.4iat has been equally absurdly called ' Evil,' 
 its diminution or repression." 
 
 Challis ya\vned. He was getting bored. " Does not 
 that," he said, " assume the existence of some counter- 
 power, able to diminish and repress ?" 
 
 " Graubosch avoids doing so. And therein hes the 
 beauty of his System. His Minu^ is simply negation of 
 his Plu^. An exact parallel is suppHed by the phenomena 
 of light and darkness. To ascribe to darkness powers of 
 extinguishing light is scientifically absurd." 
 
 " I see." Challis spoke in a winding-up tone. His bore 
 perceived it, and dexterously pinioned him. 
 
 " Pardon me one moment more," he said. " We are 
 at a point where the beauty of the System becomes 
 most manifest. I refer to it elasticity — its power of
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 69 
 
 utilising, provisionally at any rate, existing Institutions 
 pending its maturer development. Graubosch does not 
 doubt the efficacy at some future date of the Metaphysical 
 Check on our propensities supplied by the Plus and Minus 
 of his System. But he proposes for the present — at least, 
 until believers in a Personal God from early youth have 
 had time to die out — to postpone the Plus which is to take 
 his place. Also — and this is important in connection with 
 the operation of Metaphysical Checks — he is favourable to 
 the retention of a Personal Devil until the Masses have 
 acquired an insight into Metaphysics. . . ." 
 
 " I must ask you to excuse me," said Mr. Challis. " I 
 have letters to write, and they say the Post goes at 
 twelve. ..." 
 
 " But I hope I have impressed you favourably. We 
 must bear in mind ..." 
 
 " Most favourably, my dear sir. And it seems to me 
 that if we only let things alone vigorously enough, we may 
 regard Professor Graubosch's great Reform as already in 
 operation. . . ." Mr. ChalHs paused on behalf of a new- 
 comer, to whom he resumed : " Not at all. Miss Arkroyd 
 . . . not the least ! I assure you Mr. Brownrigg and I have 
 talked the subject dry. . . . No ! — I really am speaking 
 the truth." This with absolute fervour. 
 
 " Because I do so hate interrupting." said Judith, who 
 had been waiting to speak. " And I saw you were so 
 interested. But I can say w^hat I have to say and go — and 
 then you can finish." Mr. Challis looked dejected, and 
 Judith continued : "I only wanted to say that I shall be 
 walking down to the village presently, and could show you 
 the Roman and British camps and the prehistoric mono- 
 lith." Mr. Challis looked elated. " Only presently, when 
 you have really had your talk out. I shall be on the ter- 
 race." Mr. Challis was just on the point of arresting Miss 
 Arkroyd's departure by another violent profession of in- 
 tense completion of the subject in hand, when prudence 
 murmured in his ear that his bore mustn't be allowed to 
 come too. Now a pretence that he was yearning for three 
 words more, and would then meet the lady on the terrace, 
 just served to place Mr. Brownrigg in the position of a 
 fixture. It localised him. Otherwise he might have
 
 70 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 moved with the train of events, unshaken off. Even as it 
 was, a veiy vigorous " I really mustn't keep Miss Arkroyd 
 waiting any longer " was wanted to effect the extraction — 
 for it was quite like tooth-drawing. But the force of 
 handling — as the art-critics phrase it — was so strong that 
 Mr. Brownrigg couldn't say, " Why shouldn't I come too. 
 I should like to know ?" He ivoidd have, nevertheless. 
 But he had to give the point up, and went to look for Mr. 
 Wraxall. 
 
 Judith was waiting on the terrace, looking handsome. 
 She was wrestling with an intractable glove-button, and 
 her hand that was operative was embarrassed by her sun- 
 shade having been taken into its confidence. Mr. Challis 
 could hold the sunshade, clearly. A very simple thing ! And 
 when the glove-button socketed into its metallic nidus, and 
 was satisfactory, how obvious for the young lady to take that 
 sunshade back again, with a profusion of thanks as for a 
 great service done ! But did the little incident leave the 
 two performers exactly where it found them ? Sometimes 
 things of this sort don't. Things of what sort, do you ask ? 
 Well ! — you see, we are watching Mr. Alfred Challis' s 
 mind, and can, for the present, only answer — the sort that 
 made that gentleman conscious that the twenties and he 
 had parted company many years ago. 
 
 Perhaps, however, it's only one of those nonsensical 
 ideas Sibyl gets (now, if you please, we are peering into the 
 lady's mind) when she tells her sister that flirtations with 
 married men are detestable. However, this time Sibyl 
 couldn't have a word to say — a literary man wth an 
 attenuated beard, and hair that seems to have thought of 
 curling once, and then thought better of it, and gone a 
 little grey hesitatingly ! And a weak mouth ! And a 
 lay-down collar ! And such clothes ! No ! — this time 
 Sibyl could find no excuse. If this man wasn't safe, you 
 might as well have no male friends or even acquaintances 
 at all, and live in a harem. 
 
 Besides, there was something very interesting about his 
 eyes and forehead, which were his good points. Oh yes ! — 
 his hands were not bad. They looked sensitive, and 
 showed the bones. Judith's mind made swift excursion
 
 IT ^EVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 71 
 
 down a side-alley. What was the impossible Mrs. Challis 
 like to live with, she wondered ? Did he adore her, or 
 how ? Perhaps she wasn't really a " good soul " at all, 
 but adorable— in reason. 
 
 " Thank you so much, Mr. Challis. I always get into 
 such a mess with buttons. I hope you are not afraid of 
 dogs, because Saladin must come with us. He never 
 gets any exercise unless I take him out." A huge Danish 
 boarhound, conscious that he was spoken of, looked up 
 and appeared to sanction the use of his name. He had 
 smelt Mr. Challis, and found some excuse for him, pre- 
 sumably, in some nicety of bouquet human nostrils know 
 not of. 
 
 " Saladin's welcome," said he. " But I'm like Br'er 
 Rabbit — a mighty puny man myself, and I may very easily 
 git trompled. . . ," For Saladin was appalling. 
 
 " What's that out of ?" 
 
 " Uncle Remus." 
 
 " I suppose I ought to read Uncle Remus ?" 
 
 " Yes ; but don't if you don't like." 
 
 " Not if I ought to ?" 
 
 " The ought is not a high moral ought. You ought to 
 read Uncle Remus if you want something amusing to read." 
 
 " I haven't much time for reading, and I want to read 
 ' The Epidermis.' Everyone tells me I shall enjoy it." 
 
 " Perhaps everyone knows. I don't feel so much confi- 
 dence myself. Read Uncle Remus first, anyhow. If 
 you do that, I'll ask you to accept a copy of 'tother one, 
 from the Author." 
 
 " I've just written off for a copy to the publisher." 
 
 " Oh ! — have you ? — I would tell him to transfer the 
 order to my account — only that takes all the edge off the 
 proceeding " 
 
 " When did Uncle Remus come out first ?" 
 
 " Oh — a long time ago ! It's odd to think how long. 
 I'm over forty. I was almost a boy." 
 
 " Perhaps that's why you liked it so much ? Fancy your 
 being fourteen years older than me !" 
 
 " Perhaps." The last half of Miss Arkroyd's remark had 
 to go without answer. It was too parenthetical to call for 
 one.
 
 72 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Experience teaches us that there is no meshwork of cir- 
 cumstance into which flatter conversation may weave itself 
 than the combination of a married man, a young woman, 
 and a walli out on a fine afternoon, of set purpose. At 
 least, that was the text of a literary reflection of Mr. 
 Chalhs at this juncture. He put it away in a mental store- 
 house for his next book. Its truth or falsehood is immaterial 
 at present. 
 
 Judith made no mental note of what her experience 
 taught ; but she knew she couldn't stand being bored, and 
 she felt it coming. She had made up her mind to have an 
 amusing walk -with this popular favourite. And Sibyl 
 might say what she liked, but she wouldn't be balked ! 
 
 A sense of intended impertinence may have heightened 
 her coxour slightly, as she stopped and turned the fine eyes 
 full on to her companion. He stopped, too, looking round. 
 
 " Mr. Challis, I want you to tell me something. . . . 
 No ! — don't promise till you know what it is. . . ." 
 
 " I am sure, Miss Arkroyd, you will ask me nothing I 
 should hesitate to tell you. ..." 
 
 Don't be too confident . . . it's very impertinent !" 
 
 All right — go on ! I'll forgive you." 
 
 Is ' Ziz ' in the ' Spendthrift's Legacy ' Mrs. ChalUs ?" 
 
 " My wife ? Marianne ?" Mr. ChalHs was conscious of 
 being reminded of his wife. A fine nuance of ashamedness 
 — it could hardly be called shame — affected his mind, 
 surely ? Else why note the perfectly obvious fact that 
 if he and Marianne were never to forget each other for a 
 single instant, life would be insupportable to both. Per- 
 haps he can hardly be said to have noted it, though ; 
 suppose we say that he declined to note it, consciously, 
 because of its absurd irrelevance. 
 
 " Yes ! — Marianne." Judith's eyes, with no concession 
 in them of any shade of impertinence in the use of Mrs. 
 Challis' s Christian name, waited for the answer, as she still 
 stood, not stirring. Was she saying to herself that this 
 was tit-for-tat ; a riposte for liis " Sibyl " of their talk in 
 the morning ? Saladin, not used to tliis sort of thing, 
 waited also, reproachfully. Challis, rather accepting 
 " Marianne " as a sanction of his " Sibyl," was again con- 
 scious that his soul was being brushed by machinery — not 
 
 (( 
 
 (C
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 73 
 
 an intrusive brush, though ; an easy one he could ignore. 
 His answer was not difficult. 
 
 " Not a particle of resemblance between them ! Ziz 
 was a " — he stopped himself just in time — " a . . . a . . . 
 almost a sort of professional beauty." The one word " pro- 
 fessional " made all the difference — saved the position. 
 
 Now, Judith had a habit of despising dangerous ground 
 in social intercourse ; it was part of what Mr. Challis had 
 called her prepotente disposition. She would always put 
 her horse at a quickset hedge if any image crossed her mind 
 of the finger of Discretion, the monitress ; especially if it 
 looked Hke Sibyl's. While Mr. Challis was breathing freely 
 about his dexterous escape, she made up her mind to know 
 all about this impossible person who wasn't a professional 
 beauty. As to how she should get at this knowledge, that 
 was another matter. All she could see her way to at the 
 moment was — not to be in a hurry and spoil her chances. 
 But she was very much mistaken if she couldn't do with 
 this man, whom she thought of as nerves and brains and 
 very Httle else, what she had done before now mth stronger 
 men than he — viz., twist him round her little finger. 
 
 " Ah !— I'm so glad," said she. And then, as though to 
 clothe her pause in walking with the semblance of a moment 
 of mental tension, she resumed movement forward. Saladin 
 emphasized her action by a single tremendous bark, and 
 did the same. A startled waterfowl decided that his posi- 
 tion was untenable, and condemned the neighbourhood, 
 going off in a bee-line -wdth a rush. Two horses out at grass 
 galloped round their field, and stood at gaze, with open 
 nostrils. Of which events Saladin, their source and origin, 
 took no notice, but moved on, smelling the planet gently 
 and thoughtfully. 
 
 " Why are you glad ?" asked ChalHs. " You didn't Uke 
 Ziz, I suppose ?" A note of pique in his voice. The young 
 lady's confidence about the finger-twisting grow. 
 
 " I admired her," she said with marked emphasis. " She 
 fascinated me down to the ground. But ... if you ask 
 me . . . you mustn't mind my saying, you know . . ." 
 
 " I can't tell you how I enjoy hearing what you really 
 think. No compliments, please !" 
 
 Well ... if I can express myself ! I should say your 
 
 ((
 
 74 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 heroine's was rather a . . . rather a . . . shrill personality. 
 I don't mean unlovable, exactly, but . . . well ! . . . I can't 
 think of any other way of putting it." 
 
 " She was meant to be excitable. Neurotic, as the slang 
 goes nowadays. Marianne is neither. I hope you liked 
 the reconciliation scene by the open grave, and the way 
 they appeal, as it were, to the coffin for forgiveness. Some 
 of the reviews thought it strained." 
 
 " Strained ! — oh no ! It seemed to me in some ways 
 one of the most touching things I ever read. And her ex- 
 planation to Septimus that she had divorced him on prin- 
 ciple in order that he should marry Julia, and both get a 
 chance of recovering their position in society. . . . But do 
 tell me — only it's hardly fair to ask — did you mean that 
 «Ae put the arsenic in Julia's coffee, or the negress ?" 
 
 " I leave that an open question for the reader to 
 speculate about. But you may rest assured of one thing. 
 Miss Arkroyd — the young person in my novel is about as 
 unlike my dear wife as she can be." He had determined to 
 pay some little tribute to his dear wife as soon as the chance 
 came, that she should lie less upon his conscience. Here 
 it was. " Marianne is the exact opposite — a pussycat 
 upon the hearthrug — a . . . kettle singing on the hob, you 
 might almost say. She's not exactly what's called a clever 
 woman, certainly. . . ." 
 
 " But she is none the worse for that ! How I do hate 
 clever women !" All the same, Judith thought to herself : 
 " Why couldn't he leave her in peace, on the hearthrug or 
 the hob ?" His last reservation had spoiled his little 
 tribute, and, indeed, he felt it himself. Bother ! 
 
 Setting it right would make it worse. In spite of a fer- 
 vent murmur from the young lady, that she felt she knew 
 exactly what Mrs. Challis was like, and that they would be 
 sure to understand each other, and what a pity it was Mrs. 
 Challis had not been able to come, he felt he would do best 
 to hrusquer the conversation. He couldn't well say 
 " Marianne isn't here because your mother never invited 
 her — only told her she might come." So, feeling that if he 
 could detach the conversation from Marianne personally 
 he did not very much care by what means the end was 
 effected, he made a fragmentary remark to the effect that
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 75 
 
 he had had an original in his mind for the neurotic heroine, 
 but quite a different person from his wife — utterly unlike 
 her. " Unlike in appearance — individuahty — everything ! 
 Is that the market-cross V No, it wasn't the market- 
 cross ; it was the pump. So Mr. Chalhs's conclusion did 
 very little towards its object. 
 
 Judith halted as before, after establishing the pump. 
 She knew she was going to be impertinent again ; and 
 drawled a word or two to that eifect, to get on a safe foot- 
 ing. " But do forgive me," she said, " if I ask who the 
 lady was. You needn't tell me, you know." And then, as 
 Challis wavered between disclosure and concealment, put 
 in a word to clinch matters : " Treat me as a friend. We 
 can always quarrel, you know !" The soul-brush seemed 
 to go a little quicker. 
 
 This author was a man who fancied he understood 
 womankind — and probably his was a fair average of know- 
 ledge in a department where so much ignorance exists. 
 But there was one sort of woman he could not understand — 
 the woman with a stronger nature than his own. He had 
 only mixed mth his equals, so far. He could be quite un- 
 aware that he was being influenced — could still persuade 
 himself, as a tribute to his manhood, that he was acting 
 from a politic motive. He could make an astute note that 
 his insight into humanity — " Human Nature . . . behoves 
 that I know it " — showed him that he could place confi- 
 dence in this lady. It had nothing to do mth her eyes or 
 her outline. It was his Insight. 
 
 " I don't mind telling you." A slight hitch before the 
 last word showed that the speaker had just avoided italics. 
 He paused a moment, to be quite sure he didn't mind, then 
 continued : " The original of ' Ziz ' was my first wife. So 
 far as there was an original. But exaggerated out of all — 
 out of all individuality." 
 
 " I never knew that you had been married before." The 
 wording of this— "never" during the last forty-eight 
 hours! — was ahead of their intimacy, but her hearer 
 accepted it. It chimed in with that luxury of the soul- 
 brush, always at work. He would not on any account have 
 had it exchanged for, " They did not tell me you had been 
 married twice.". Nevertheless, he was unaware that he
 
 76 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 was being influenced, and went on towards expansive con- 
 fidence, unsuspicious of himself. 
 
 " I married about fourteen years ago, and lost my wife 
 within a twelvemonth. My son is a big boy now, at Rugby ; 
 he was bom just before his mother died. He always thinks 
 and speaks of Marianne as his mother. She has always 
 been a mother to him, in fact. Her own children — we have 
 two little girls — do not realise his half-brothership. We 
 have never tried to make them do so." 
 
 " How right !" from Judith. Confidence was improving. 
 She was giving sanction to family arrangements. 
 
 " Yes, I think it has been best. Their difference of age 
 suggests notliing to them." 
 
 " I suppose they know ?" 
 
 " Yes — academically, one might say. But knowledge of 
 that is as nothing against the force of a child's acceptance 
 of its status quo. When I married Marianne, the boy — he's 
 Boij — was still too young to pay much attention to the fact 
 that she brought him away from his granny's to live at 
 my house. The only difference that impresses him between 
 himself and his sisters is that he can remember so much 
 more clearly than they do the house where my first ^\ife and 
 I used to live. It is the house described in " The Spend- 
 thrift's Legacy." I shall always beheve it was that title 
 that made it so fetching. You see, you can't guess whether 
 the Spendthrift inherited the legacy or bequeathed it. It 
 gets on your brain, and then you ask for it at Mudie's. . . ." 
 
 Judith interrupted. " Of course, the Spendthrift left the 
 Legacy. But why Avas he a Spendthrift, one wants to 
 know. . . . Yes, I see. It was a lucky title. But did you 
 always write ?" 
 
 " Not until the firm of accountants I was with wound 
 up the affairs of Eatwell and Lushington, the big publishers. 
 I was sent to check and overhaul the stock. An almost 
 unsold novel attracted my attention — an edition of two 
 thousand — fifteen hundred in sheets. Its issue had been 
 arrested by the discovery that the author — who had just 
 died of appendicitis, by-the-bye — had taken another man's 
 title." 
 
 " I suppose you can be prosecuted for taking another 
 man's title ?"
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 77 
 
 " H'm — no ! At least, there is no copyright in a title. 
 It wasn't that. It was for the book's own sake. Publishers 
 don't like other people's titles for their books. I was able 
 to offer a suggestion which made it possible to use the 
 sheets. The bound copies were made paper-pulp of again, 
 I believe." 
 
 " I can't see much encouragement to authorship in that, 
 Mr. Chains." 
 
 " None at all. But Mr. Saxby, who is virtually Eatwell 
 and Lushington — one's dead, and the other has become a 
 missionary in Morocco — saw reason to believe I should 
 succeed as a writer, owing to the new first chapter I wrote 
 for this book to accommodate the new title. He made me 
 write a novel for the firm, and I succeeded." 
 
 " But I don't understand. Wasn't the old title printed 
 anywhere on the old sheets 1" 
 
 " Printed everywhere ! The novel was called ' Amaris,' 
 and there were no headlines. The page-tops were just 
 Amaris, Amaris, Amaris all through." 
 
 " What is ' Amaris ' ? And how on earth did you 
 manage 1 . . ." 
 
 " Stop a bit, or I shall want Gargantua's mouth. 
 ' Amaris ' was a name the author concocted, like Mrs. 
 Kenwig's ' Morleena.' He wanted to be quite sure his 
 heroine's name had never been used for a novel before, so 
 that he could make it the title. But it had, with a Latin 
 subtitle, in which dulcibus and amaris were put in con- 
 trast " 
 
 " Never mind the Latin," said Judith. " What did it 
 mean ?" 
 
 " It amounted to the question, ' Is Life most full of 
 bitter things or sweet V and the title answered the question. 
 It might have been called ' Dulcibus ' for any light it threw 
 on the problem. But it wouldn't have sold. Nothing sells 
 without a snarl or a howl or a pig- sty in it." 
 
 " But I'm so curious to know how you got over the 
 difficulty." 
 
 " Simple enough ! We turned it into ' Tamarisk.' . . . 
 How ? Why, of course, by printing a ' T ' at the beginning 
 and a ' K ' at the end. It cost something to run the sheets 
 carefully thro igh again, but not so much as burning them."
 
 78 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " What was there about ' Tamarisk ' in the book ?" 
 
 " Not a word till I rewrote the first dozen pages. I had 
 to read that blessed book through till I nearly knew it by 
 heart, in order to work out the idea. But it seemed all right 
 when it was done. I was rather proud of it." 
 
 " I dare say it was tremendously clever. But how was 
 it done ? That's what I want to know." 
 
 " I made the name of the girl ' Tamarisk ' instead of 
 ' Amaris,' and then her baby brother can't pronounce it — 
 calls her Amaris; and the family catch the pronunciation, and 
 she adopts the name outright. It was difficult to do, be- 
 cause the conditions implied were those of the bosom of an 
 affectionate family, and the sequel might have clashed. . . ." 
 
 " Because . . . ?" 
 
 " Well, you see, the girl becomes a Vampire, and sucks the 
 little brother's blood. But I succeeded. In fact, I think the 
 very difficulties of the situation produced a certain pathos." 
 
 " I see," said Judith, with a gush of intense perception. 
 " I see that would be so. . . . Yes, that is the market-cross, 
 this time." 
 
 Is the gap above large enough to include an inspection of 
 a market-cross, a pump, a camp, and a village church ? 
 Perhaps, considering how little was left of the last — though, 
 of course, some of the walls had ancient invisible cores. 
 But hardly for tea at the Rectory, which had to be fresh- 
 made ; rather like the church, though in the case of the latter 
 a few of the old leaves were preserved from the first brew, 
 so to speak. Poor old leaves ! — jDoor conscious objects of 
 active conservation, each paroxysm of which left a little 
 less of the flavour of the 77ioye)i age behind it — a shadow 
 less of excuse for another subscription list on their behalf, or 
 another paper in the Journal of the local Society of Anti- 
 quaries. They were bein ;■ handed down to posterity with 
 such solicitude that whatever of bloom the axe and hammer 
 of Puritanism had left behind seemed hke to come off on the 
 gloves of Ecclesiastical Archaeology. 
 
 Is it necessary to say that the foregoing is only a peep 
 into the ill-regulated mind of Mr.Alfred Challis at about the 
 time that the fresh-made tea at the Rectory had begun to 
 reanimate it ? But, of course, Mr. Challis never said a
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 7^ 
 
 word to this effect to his host, and that reverend gentleman 
 naturally didn't want to talk about local matters. He 
 was sick of his interesting surroundings, and wanted to hear 
 about the new motor-car and wireless telegraphy and 
 aerostation and coloured photography, and all sorts of 
 things that were up-to-date three years ago, and for that 
 matter are still, to a certain extent. About which and 
 other things the literary gentleman was silent and absent- 
 minded, in spite of the tea. Had he been bound to account 
 to himself for this, he would have found it very difficult to 
 do so. Not being bound, he allowed his mind to recognise 
 the fact that he never did talk much to Parsons — you could 
 never be sure you wouldn't give offence ! — and to feel that, 
 reserve, short of incivility of course, was plausible at least. 
 
 For he was one of those unpractical persons who, never 
 having been thrashed into a Creed in childhood, and being 
 liberally ready to doubt any Creed of his own concoction, 
 associated Religions, broadly speaking, with the opening or 
 closing of shops on Sunday, the suppression of bands in the 
 parks, and the singing of the same tune over and over again 
 in unison at street- comers. When he came by chance on 
 the sound of a harmonium making an unintelligible droning, 
 he conceived of it as Christianity going on in a comer, 
 fraught with a quaint old-world feeling to the passer-by, 
 but scarcely to be encouraged by enlightenment. He had 
 cultivated Ritual so far as to be ready, on emergency, to 
 take off his hat and look intently into it, watching anxiously 
 the while for subsidence of religious symptoms without. 
 At old-fashioned houses, where Prayers might be expected 
 to occur at any moment, he used to become in a sense 
 demoralised, and felt lost when he found himself out of 
 reach of a chair or convenient prie-Dieu of some sort. His 
 only really heart-felt expression of gratitude to his o\ati or 
 anyone else's .Maker was the " Thank God that's over !'* 
 that he didn't say aloud at the end. Messiahs of all ranks, 
 from the highest to the lowest, he regarded as mere bonea 
 of contention along interminable sectaries, all ready to fang 
 each other, but kept in check by Scotland Yard. Qualified 
 practitioners of Religion, whether Priest or Presbyter, he 
 looked on as mere survivals of a past age perishing slowly 
 of Civilisation. He was not prepared to take the responsi-
 
 80 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 bility of hurrying their extinction, and, indeed, was ready 
 to make concession on minor points, complying in literature 
 with the public conviction that the pronoun standing for 
 the name of the Maker of the Stellar Universe, and possibly 
 others, really ought to be printed with a capital letter. We 
 are merely putting him on record — not hinting at any 
 opinion how far he was right or wrong. 
 
 Why do we call Mr. Alfred Challis unpractical ? it may be 
 asked. Simply because, while he avoided or ignored all 
 experts in Applied Religion, he himself was unprepared 
 with any substitute for it. And this was so even in the 
 case of his own children. He had, however, given carte 
 blanche, by implication of supineness, to the partner of his 
 joys, sorrows, and admixtures of the two. He knew per- 
 fectly well that if he could have cancelled the little restored 
 church at Royd, and the Parsonage and all its belongings, 
 and left Royd free from what he counted superstition, of a 
 sort, he would have held his hand — simply because he 
 could not for the life of him have suggested any alternative 
 that would not have worked round to the same thing in the 
 end. He was convinced at heart, even while he made 
 mental notes about Clerical Humbugs Avho pretended to 
 believe what they knew German criticism had exploded 
 long ago — for Mr. Challis had read whatever fostered his 
 predispositions, just like yourself and the present writer — 
 that if this athletic-looking, upright gentleman and his 
 serious sister — for it seemed he was a widower — were to be 
 suddenly removed from Royd, as well as any religious out- 
 scourings of a Dissenting nature hanging about — if all these 
 were cleared away and the village left in charge of the human 
 heart and intellect etid genus omne, the human stomach 
 et istud genus omne would get their way in double-quick 
 time, and a perfect Saturnalia would come about of Bacchus 
 and Priapus, of Cabiric deformities lurking round the comer 
 for a chance, and Beer. At any rate, he was enough con- 
 vinced of tliis to be rather grateful to the Clerical Humbugs 
 for pretending, pending enlightenment. He felt it was bene- 
 volent in him to be mean at the cost of his own conscience, 
 and to hold his tongue and leave them undenounced, in the 
 interest of Humanity. 
 
 This chronicle has no opinions — note that ! The fore-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 81 
 
 going is only a peep into the mind of a literary man who 
 was never at a University. Had he been at one, many 
 college-chums in Orders would have checked his con- 
 demnations. The man one has read with, swum with, 
 cricketed with — cannot be a Hypocrite. Absurd ! 
 
 Our snapshots of Mr. Alfred Challis's mind have taken 
 long to record, but they serve their turn in this place better, 
 perhaps, than the few trifling incidents of the visit at the 
 Rectory. Consider that the lady and gentleman are on 
 their way back to the Hall, in a golden sunset-light which 
 makes the former resplendent, and does no harm to the . 
 appearance of the latter. Judith weighs him more care- 
 fully than she has done yet, and the result may be more 
 favourable in such a glow. Quite passable ! — is her ver- 
 dict. And she knows how she looks, bless you, reasoning 
 by analogy ! For all her previous verdicts about her com- 
 panion's looks — so far as they were favourable — have run 
 on lines of intellectual rather than physical beauty. 
 
 The reason she looked at him carefully at that moment of 
 starting from the Parsonage may have been because of an 
 impression she had that he had cut a poor figure as against 
 that of the Parson. It had so chanced that Saladin, who 
 had behaved well in the house — accepting small sweet 
 biscuits with reserves as to first approval of them — had, on 
 coming away through the garden, just as they reached the 
 gate, become aware of cats, as an abstraction. Mr. 
 Challis's hold on his collar he hardly took any notice of ; 
 and it was fortunate that the Rev. Athelstan Taylor (that 
 was his name) got hold on the other side just in time to 
 prevent Saladin starting for a concrete cat over the flower- 
 beds. " You had, perhaps, best let me have both sides, 
 Mr. Challis," said he. Then had followed a magnificent 
 contest between the Rev. Athelstan and the boarhound. 
 If the former could have been unfrocked, it would have 
 been a Greek bas-relief. It ended in a draw, as the con- 
 crete cat vanished. " I couldn't have held you much 
 longer, old chap," said the Rector unassumingly to Saladin, 
 during apologies and explanations, dogwdse. These con- 
 tinued for some time after they had left the Rectory, and 
 Judith was really glad Saladin's chain was on, with no one 
 to help stronger than her Uterary friend, if a cat occurred. 
 
 VOL. I. 6
 
 82 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Rabbits had palled on Saladin, omng to their absurd and 
 unfair practice of running underground. 
 
 " He's a fine fellow, your Parson, Miss Arkroyd," said 
 Challis. He acknowledged it readily ; atliletics were not 
 his line. 
 
 " The Reverend Athelstan ? (Yes, my darling precious 
 pet, you did quite right, and it was an odious cat !) Oh 
 yes — he was a great atlilete in his old Oxford days ; was in 
 the 'Varsity eight. (Yes, dear love ! — you shall lick when 
 we get home. Now walk quiet, and let people talk.) 
 Yes — he's painfully strong." There was something in 
 this of implied justification for people who were not. 
 
 " I'm afraid I'm painfully weak — by comparison. My 
 sedentary emplo^^ments don't develop the muscles." But, 
 after all, reading prayers and singing of anthems does not, 
 either. This was in foro conscientice — not spoken aloud. 
 
 " Oh, everybody can't Sandow. / think that sort of 
 thing rather tiresome, carried too far. However, we are 
 very good friends, the Reverend and I. I like a man that 
 has the courage of his opinions. He's quite in a minority 
 here about the Woman question — or I suppose I should 
 say questions. But I meant the Franchise business par- 
 ticularly. He and the Bishop are at daggers drawn about 
 it. I haven't heard him say much about the other. I 
 fancy, though, he's at heart in favour of it — more than 
 myself, perhaps. I mean the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill." 
 
 " Are not you . . . ?" Mr. Challis had a hesitation on 
 him, not like his usual way of speech. That was an 
 amused way usually, a confident one almost always. This 
 was neither. 
 
 " I must confess . . ." said Judith hesitatingly — " I 
 must confess to having very little sympathy with men who 
 want to marry their deceased wives' sisters. It's a ques- 
 tion of taste, according to me — nothing to do with the high 
 moralities." The implied sneer against all moral law was 
 no discomfort to her hearer. On the contrary, spoken as 
 it was by a good-looking young lady in a sunset light, it 
 seemed to him alike picturesque and liberal. But he 
 changed the conversation suddenly, as though something 
 in it had disagreed with him. 
 
 " What a capital photographer the great Athelstan
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 83 
 
 seems to be !" He said it with a definite air of " Let us 
 talk of something else." She glanced round at him, de- 
 cided with some surprise that she had shocked him, but 
 answered without shomng it. She was quite a woman of 
 the world, was Judith. 
 
 " He's a sf)lendid photographer. You knoAv he took all 
 those photos for ' Ten Years of Slum Growth ' — my cousin's 
 book ?" Mr. Challis pretended he knew this book ; but 
 he didn't. " I made him come and photograph my own 
 special slum population in Tallack Street. But Lady 
 Elizabeth wouldn't have them in the book. She said 
 Tallack Street could hardly rank as a slum, in her sense of 
 the word." 
 
 " Was it too swell ?" 
 
 " She said so. Well ! — you shall see the photographs, 
 and judge for yourself." 
 
 But the conversation had fallen flat. A chill had come. 
 Even the discovery that the moon had risen when we were 
 not looking did nothing to remove it. We were not young 
 enough, probably, or not old enough, for lunar influences. 
 Indifference to Pha3be begins with maturity, and even out- 
 lasts it. So thought Mr. Challis, when rather mechanically 
 called on to admire the silver disc, shot with gold, just 
 getting clear of a purple gloom that was the hallowed 
 smoke of unholy Grime — hallowed by the sun's last word 
 to twilight, its heir-at-law and sole executor. For all that, 
 Mr. Challis made notes in this connection for literary pur- 
 poses, while Judith thought to herself that this would 
 never do. She must make an effort, or the skein she was 
 going to twist round her finger would float away and be lost. 
 
 " I know I shocked you just now," said she. 
 
 " Shocked me ? — when ?" 
 
 " Just before we got to the photography. . . ." 
 
 " I have quite forgotten. What were we saying ?" This 
 was not true ; he remembered perfectly. 
 
 " How kind of you to pretend to forget ! Forgive my 
 disbelieving you." 
 
 Challis was open t© a recrudescence of veracity. Perhaps 
 it was a fib this time — he made the admission. But as he 
 made it, he was again conscious of the soul -brush at work. 
 Had he perceived the skein-analogy, he might have recog- 
 
 6—2
 
 84 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 nised its first clip round the finger. " We were talking of 
 the Deceased Wife's Sister Bill, I think," said he. " But 
 why you think you shocked me I can't imagine." 
 
 " Never mind ! — if you don't recollect. But Sibyl would 
 have lectured me. She always says I ridicule Moral Law. 
 Perhaps I do, in a certain sense. But Sibyl is the soul of 
 propriety." 
 
 " I can't see where ridicule of Moral Law comes in, so 
 far. What you said was — well ! — amounted to a condem- 
 nation of the taste of men who wish to marry their wives' 
 sisters. Perhaps I misunderstood?" ChalUs's manner 
 had a flavour of personal interest ; the amused tone had 
 gone, and the last words ended on a pause for an answer, 
 with an intention in them of hearing it and going on. The 
 skein would run on easily from now, said the winder. But 
 not too quick at first. 
 
 "Oh no ! — quite right," she said. "I meant that. For 
 instance — I shouldn't mention this, only I see you guessed 
 it. You are so quick at guessing things. ..." 
 
 "I'm not. What do you suppose I have guessed?" 
 
 " Why — about the Reverend Athelstan, of course, and 
 Elizabeth Caldecott. . . ." 
 
 " EHzabeth who ?" 
 
 " Well — you saw her, just now !" 
 
 " I thought she was his sister ?" 
 
 " Oh no ! — sister-in-law." 
 
 " What were you saying about them — just now ? You 
 began ' For instance,' and pulled up. . . ." 
 
 " I was going to say theirs was a case in point. If Mr. 
 Taylor wanted to marry Miss Caldecott, I should consider 
 it simply a lapse from good taste on his part. I shouldn't 
 fret over the moralities. He and Bishop Barham would 
 have to fight that out between them. . . . Oh dear ! — 
 what has Saladin got ? I'm afraid it's a hedgehog. Do 
 you think you could keep hold of him, just for a few seconds, 
 while I throw it out of his reach ?" This was achieved 
 with difficulty ; all the greater from a misconception of the 
 position by Saladin, who thought it was all done for his 
 sake, as a relaxation. The hedgehog was throwoi over a 
 long high wall, and Saladin ran along it each way, leaping 
 up at intervals.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 85 
 
 " He gets so irritated with hedgehogs, and I don't won- 
 der, poor darhng ! I hope he hasn't strained your hand ?" 
 Mr. ChalHs couldn't say very much about that. Nothing 
 to speak of ! " Let's go on. He'll get tired of that, and 
 I don't hear the bull anywhere — it's all right. What was 
 I saying ?" It is perturbing to the non-bucolic mind to 
 hear a necessary and inevitable bull taken as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 " You were speaking of Mr. Tajdor and Miss Caldecott. 
 Is he supposed to want to marry her ?" 
 
 " I really couldn't say. Men are so odd. Of course, if 
 she were less angular ..." The young lady blew a whistle 
 for Saladin. The intentness with which both watched for 
 the dog to appear from the quarter he was last seen in 
 enabled him to play off a little joke at their expense. For 
 when Challis turned his head, after much Avatching and 
 whistling, there was that confounded beast, pretending all 
 the while to Avait, after a brief circuit of a mile or so out 
 of sight. He made a pretence of not being able to under- 
 stand motives, combined with great forbearance in not 
 asking for an explanation of them. 
 
 The skein- winding had been a little spoiled, but Judith 
 got it again in order before arriving at the Hall, and it 
 would wait for its opportunity. Her mere acceptance of 
 silence in the twilight of the great avenue, as though con- 
 versation-making was not called for under the circum- 
 stances, had its force. It might have been spoiled by a 
 quicker pace, to finish the walk up ; but, if anything, there 
 was a disposition to loiter, and to hate the idea of being 
 indoors on such a heavenly evening. 
 
 " Your wife's name was . . . ?" Surely the subject 
 franked a dropped voice, in harmony with the beauty of 
 the said evening — a touch of tenderness for its sake entirely. 
 None but a coarse nature would shout against the musical 
 hushing of the wind in the beeches. Let there be no false 
 note in the chord. 
 
 Challis accepted this tenderness as a tribute to the de- 
 parted. He answered, " Kate — Kate Verrall." He need 
 have said no more, but it filled out a sympathetic funereal 
 tone, in keeping Avith the hour, to add : " She died Avithin 
 two years of our first meeting."
 
 86 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Miss Arkroyd's regret at having raked up a painful 
 memory was so great that she all but laid her hand on her 
 companion's sleeve. " Oh no," she said, still more ten- 
 derly, " I did not mean that. I meant Marianne's maiden 
 name." It would have been artificial, and stodgy, too, 
 to call her " your present wife." Better the frankness of 
 a sympathetic nature, and Marianne. 
 
 " Craik," was the unqualified answer. Challis wished 
 that his first \\ife's mother, when she married again, had 
 chosen some one with a more rhythmic name, not to inter- 
 fere with the general feeling of the foreground and middle 
 distance. For, you see, she then provided this maiden 
 name for the second Mrs. Alfred Challis, whose mother she 
 was also. Mr. Challis had married his deceased wife's 
 half-sister, and would stand condemned — presumably, at 
 least, in the eyes of his companion — for bad taste cer- 
 tainly, possibly worse. He repeated the name, rather 
 crisply, in correction of Judith's first understanding of it 
 as " Blake," but never a word said he, there and then, 
 about Marianne's half-sistership with the original of 
 " Ziz." Was he bound to say anything ? 
 
 He departed to his room, to dress for dinner, with a dis- 
 jointed, incomplete feeling that he was rather glad that a 
 mere au revoir had involved no handshake. Could he have 
 trusted himself not to emphasize its pressure unduly ? 
 Faugh ! — M here was the sense of such an imbecile specula- 
 tion, or the need for it ? He was angry with himself for the 
 thought — angry at the way he had enjoyed his walk with 
 " that girl." He brushed her off his mind discourteously 
 as " that girl." Why, he had only knoA^Ti her a couple of 
 days ! He even found that an impulse of his wanted him 
 to say, " Damn all these people ! What are they to me, or 
 I to them, that they should come into my life, and make 
 hay of a working contentment I have never dreamed of 
 questioning ?" But he refused to say it, merely noting 
 what its syntax would have been if he had done so. En 
 revanche, he made up his mind to write a jolly long letter to 
 Marianne to-night. 
 
 The other party — though, indeed, it is hard to say to what 
 — retired to her room to dress, not very sorry to hear that 
 Sibyl was not home yet. She had quite made up her mind
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 87 
 
 that if her sister talked any nonsense about flirtations ^^•ith 
 married men, she would speak sharply to her — give her a 
 piece of her mind. But she hated rows. So if the motor- 
 car broke down — and it was pretty sure to^she shouldn't 
 be sorry. In a day or two she was going up to London, and 
 would go straight and call on Mrs. Challis, the Impossible 
 one, and that would put the friendship with her husband 
 on a footing;. She would wear that white chiffon and the 
 pearls again this evening, though ; she had looked so well 
 in them last night. 
 
 She herself was conscious of no inconsistency in the half- 
 formed thoughts that passed through her mind as she stood 
 before a mirror waiting for her maid to find the white chiffon 
 instead of the black satin ; which Sharratt, the said maid, 
 who had found no male in the company to allot to her 
 mistress, had placed in readiness on speculation. These 
 thoughts can be told, but Avith a liberal discount. She was 
 not the kind of woman — so they ran — that made mischief 
 in families. That was the fascinating, tender, serpentine, 
 insinuating kind — Becky Sharp, in fact. Intellectual 
 friendship was her roh — influence over men of genius and 
 that sort of thing. Was Challis, as a man of genius, worth 
 practising on 1 She thought he might be ; as a lay figure, 
 at any rate, if not for a specific purpose which crossed her 
 mind at the moment. But it was to be stirred aspirations, 
 roused sympathies. He was not the man to be worked on 
 by Vulgar Beauty. All the same, IVIiss Judith knew what 
 she was going to look hke in this mirror when fully draped, 
 when the majestic swoop of skirts should quench the 
 abruptness of the mere petticoat. Till that came, she could 
 fondle her fine arms and say to herself, "I'm not Becky 
 Sharp, certainly ! But to tliink of the mischief I could do 
 if I put my mind to it !" And then modesty prompted a 
 postscript, " Or any fairly good-looking woman, for that 
 matter." 
 
 This story has no insight into motives ; it only deals with 
 actions — at least when motives are hard to get at. It is 
 not its concern at present that Judith Arkroyd, splendid 
 in her beauty when she chooses to make the most of it, may 
 have much to learn about her own character — much that she 
 does not suspect herself of. If she does not, why should we ?
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 The party that assembled that evening to dinner at Royd 
 was smaller than usual, owing to the absence of the motorists, 
 who had not returned. Some of the chits, too — who were 
 never counted ; they were always " those girls " or " the 
 young people " — had vanished also, taking with them an 
 exactly equal number of male parallel cases ; for they were 
 flirting fair — there was to be no cheating ! Thus it came 
 about that the ladies' procession to the drawdng-room did 
 not make up to half-a-dozen, and the men they left behind 
 to smoke only just did so. But then, it was easier to talk, 
 because there was less noise. 
 
 Scarcely had the last inch of the last lady, regarded as a 
 total with all components included, disappeared through 
 the door, when Mr. Challis's two friends of the morning 
 made a simultaneous rush for a chair on either side of him. 
 He succumbed, having no alternative, but resolved to pay 
 absolutely no attention to anything they said. He would 
 throw his whole soul into the enjoyment of the cigar he 
 foresaw. There it was — in a box of ivory and tnadreperla 
 which Sibyl had somehow countenanced into existence, 
 without doing anything to it herself — being brought along 
 in a tray, abetted by cigarettes. But he would light it 
 when he had drunk his coffee, thank you ! The fact was, 
 Mr. Challis was acquiring presence of mind, and did not spoil 
 his opportunities now as he used to do formerly when the 
 world of toffs was new. 
 
 Mr. Bro^vnrigg the Grauboschite would not detain Mr. 
 Challis more than one moment from IVIr. Wraxall, the 
 Universal Insurer ; no more, in fact, than was necessary for 
 him to emphasize a consideration he had alluded to in the 
 morning. But he might take this opportunity of pointing 
 out one or two inevitable inferences from that consideration 
 which might not have occurred to his hearer. 
 
 88
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 89 
 
 He was better than his word, for he pointed out half-a- 
 dozen at least. He then went on to say that it was only 
 fair on his part to admit the plausibility of three or four 
 exceptions that he was well aware had been taken to those 
 inferences. But he was prepared to demonstrate the fallacy 
 of each of these on many different grounds, the least of 
 which would be fatal to the pretensions of his opponents' 
 arguments in more than one particular. 
 
 If he had stopped there, Mr. Triptolemus Wraxall would 
 have got in and scored ; and, indeed, double-wicket would 
 have been quite possible if Mr. Brownrigg would have 
 played according to rule. But he "wouldn't. Mr. 
 Wraxall struggled to get a hit and a run, but scarcely 
 succeeded. 
 
 As, with, the exception of Challis and one or two others 
 who listened and looked superior, everyone at the table 
 became a contributor of a vigorous analysis, an irrefutable 
 demonstration, an exhaustive enumeration, a thoughtful 
 review, an indignant protest, or a brief summaiy of essential 
 facts, or was laying stress upon an important point that 
 might easily be lost sight of, there was a great deal of noise. 
 Challis nearly succeeded, by a powerful effort, in abstracting 
 his mind from it and enjoying his cigar. He was able to 
 beUeve that he only resorted to a speculation as to what 
 was going on in the drawing-room as an assistance against 
 all this chatter. That speculation had certainly nothing to 
 do mth any particular young lady whatever. 
 
 But a drowsy semi-abstraction was only achievable when 
 the components of the Chaos were so numerous as to neutra- 
 lise each other, becoming a sustained inarticulate roar. The 
 moment a single speaker, or even two, became audible in 
 an oasis of silence, Challis's attention was caught by his 
 words, and divided fairly between them and what was left 
 of the reveries they intruded on. Such an oasis was reached 
 as far as Challis's immediate neighbours were concerned 
 about half-way through his cigar, just as regret began to 
 set in that he had smoked so mucli of it. 
 
 Now it happened that Mr. Ramsey Tomes, who was quite 
 unexhausted, though he had talked all day, and who was 
 seated on the other side of the table, had at that moment 
 just sketched the extinction of the British Empire in conse-
 
 90 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 quence of its ill-advised persistence in all the dementice of 
 all the States that Deus ever voluit perdere. He had used 
 up his Latin quotations, including the one we have taken 
 a liberty with, and had finished with a beautiful picture of 
 the New Zealander, our old friend, gazing across the site 
 of vanished London from Jack Straw's Castle, and murmur- 
 ing to himself, " Perierunt etiam ruinse." Happy in his 
 peroration, the orator sat sustaining a fat right foot on a 
 fat left knee with a fat left hand. His fat right thumb and 
 forefinger held a permanent glass of port ; they seemed to 
 be waiting for it to evaporate. His attitude was unfavour- 
 able to his figure, as it laid too much stress on a corporate 
 capacity which might have been described as pendant. 
 But the ensemble was majestic, as he fixed his small but 
 piercing eye on the cornice of the room opposite, grasping 
 the eyeglass that accompanied it with what almost seemed 
 a materialised allusion to his own powerful grasp of political 
 issues. So sitting, his appearance was that of a Mind, 
 giving attentive consideration to most things. 
 
 " The disciple of Socrates," said he, with a decision and 
 suddenness that compelled respectful attention, " turns 
 with satisfaction from the contemplation of a spectacle that 
 might well arrest the orgies of an Epicurus, or soften the 
 cynicism of a Diogenes, to the fields in which Speculation, 
 untrammelled by official responsibility, deposits — if I may 
 be permitted the simile — the eggs from which will emerge 
 (like Minerva from the brain of Jove) the fully-fledged 
 Pohtician of the future." 
 
 Here an expression of discontent from a young Lieutenant, 
 whose chit was in the drawing-room awaiting his release, 
 distracted Challis's attention for the moment. A word of 
 sympathy elicited from this youth that he had a private 
 grievance against Mr. Tomes. " You wouldn't like it any 
 more than I do, if he had trod on your pup. Poor little 
 beggar's only a month old !" He brooded over this injury 
 in silence, and the orator again became audible. He seemed 
 to have been digressing. 
 
 " I will pursue this aspect of the case no further, but will 
 return to the subject in hand. It is not, I hope, necessary 
 for me to say, at this table, that I am not one of that group 
 of indiscriminate Thinkers who are prepared to welcome the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 91 
 
 germination of the Political Idea in the crude brain of every 
 Sciohst. The outcome of such a surrounding is but too 
 apt to out-Herod Herod. The medio tutissimus ibis, the 
 procellas cautus horrescis that we may suppose to have 
 guided Caesar's wife, should also serve as a beacon to those 
 whose ambition it is to deserve the gratitude of posterity." 
 Challis was enjoying the cigar too much to ask — " Why 
 Caesar's wife ?" 
 
 Mr. Tomes's assumption of his right to the rostrum was 
 so forcible as scarcely to allow of usurpation while he was 
 visibly bolting an ad interim glass of port with a view to 
 going on again. Mr. Brownrigg chafed, and Mr. Wraxall 
 stood himself over in despair. The young Lieutenant mur- 
 mured a prayer to any Providence that would shape the 
 end of Mr. Tomes's speech, and help him on to it. There 
 seemed no hope. So he thought of the chit's teeth and chin 
 in self-defence. Mr. Tomes swallowed his glass of port with 
 a clear conscience about its non-evaporation— had he not 
 given it every opportunity ? — and resumed : 
 
 " I must not, however, allow myself to be led away. . . ." 
 But he had to pause a few seconds, to remember something 
 to have been led away by. Feeling uncertain, he repeated : 
 " I must not allow myself to be led away by a side-topic, 
 however fascinating. The maturity of Political Thought 
 claims our attention. Whether we contemplate the vast 
 areas of controversy laid bare to the scalpel of the Political 
 Analyst in connection with the aspirations of the Socialist 
 pure and simple, the Anarchist pure and simple, or the 
 Nihilist pure and simple, or differentiate by a closer scrutiny, 
 the theories of the Socialist-Anarchist, the Socialist- 
 Nihilist, or the Nihilist- Anarchist, we are driven irresistibly 
 to the same conclusion^that Omniscience is still in its 
 infancy. There is one element which all schemes for the 
 Readjustment of the Universe have in common — namely, 
 that each differs on some vital point from the whole of its 
 neighbours. Do not let us be discouraged by this. Let us 
 rather be content to infer from it the dangers that await 
 those who advocate rash departures from the existing order 
 of things, and to recognise, in the discrepancies attendant 
 on the consolidations of Political Opinion in the thousand 
 and one groups into which it crystallizes, the indisputable
 
 92 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 fact that the Index-finger of the PoHtical Horizon is the 
 maintenance of the status quo. I trust I make myself 
 clearly understood." 
 
 Mr. Tomes did not mean to stop for some time yet, but 
 breath was necessary to him, as to others, and he had got 
 blowTi over those groups that crystallized. He knew that 
 his last words would make all his hearers speak at once, and 
 they did. In the Chaos of their joint remark was concealed 
 a statement apiece that Mr. Tomes had most lucidly ex- 
 pounded the one great object of each one's several scheme, 
 and that the existing order of things would remain thereby 
 much more truly the sam«^— would have a much more 
 heart-felt identity than any mere banal and Philistine 
 letting-alone could confer upon it. The choral character 
 of the performance made the warning check of Mr. Tomes's 
 outspread hand plausible. 
 
 " Pardon me one moment," said he, with recovered 
 breath. " The point I wish to lay stress upon is this : 
 While the compass of the Political Mariner points incon- 
 testably to the dangers of quitting a safe anchorage, the 
 Voice of Enlightenment enjoins that all new schemes of 
 a subversive nature should be looked at on their merits, and 
 rejected on their merits. This is what I understand by an 
 Enlightened Conservatism. Rejection without examina- 
 tion is the programme of the Mere Bigot. I am sure Sir 
 Murgatroyd will appreciate my meaning." 
 
 Sir Murgatroyd, thus appealed to, seized his opportunity, 
 and dexterously annexed the rostrum. He contrived to 
 embark on a trip thr ugh the pamphlet he had written, 
 which claimed for W'l-ham the Conqueror the position of 
 the earliest pioneer of Socialism. 
 
 Just as he was within a measurable distance of his 
 demonstration that the Feudal System contained in itself 
 solutions of all difficulties such as the present age meets by 
 propounding a huge variety of remedies and calling them 
 all Socialism, noises of arrival interrupted him, and were 
 followed by an incursion of the motorists, very tired and 
 greedy, after a delay due to civilisation, which prescribes 
 soap and water before meals, and a curb on one's impatience 
 till the said meals can be laid on the table. The absence of 
 snorts without occasioned remark, and compelled a grudging
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 93 
 
 disclosure that the last time the motor broke do^vn nothing 
 could bring it to the scratch again ; and it had been left 
 behind ten miles off, the party having come home on a mean 
 hired vehicle. Their faith that this breakdown was ab- 
 normal and exceptional, and a typical example of the sort 
 of thing that never occurs again, was touching and beau- 
 tiful. 
 
 Mr. Triptolemus Wraxall was glad of the interruption. 
 He had not asserted himself, and felt that he was a mistake, 
 in that society. His forms of tliought were more studious 
 and reflective — sounder altogether ! One feels this when 
 one has not asserted oneself, and bounced. 
 
 Mr. Brownrigg was sorry. He had made up his mind to 
 point out something, but had not quite made up his mind 
 what it was to be ; merely that it would redound to the 
 credit of Graubosch. Why should not he point out, and 
 venture to call your attention to, like other people ? How- 
 ever, the others were the losers. 
 
 Mr. Challis and the young Lieutenant were both very 
 glad, but with a difference. The former thought fit, for 
 some reason, to represent to his conscience that his glad- 
 ness was due to a release from intolerable boredom, and 
 certainly had nothing to do with any young woman in the 
 drawing-room. The latter made no bones about it, but 
 simply ran, the moment the excuse came. Even so would 
 the little beggar Mr. Tomes trod on have gone for a saucer 
 of milk. 
 
 Challis passed the young soldier on the landing, he 
 having found his chit on the bottom stair of the next flight, 
 devoting herself to the little beggar, who had not been 
 welcomed in the drawing-room, owing to human prejudices. 
 The chit had been so bored in the absence of her counter- 
 chit, as the Lieutenant might be called, that she had found 
 it necessary to send for Cerberus. That was the little 
 beggar's baptismal name. Challis passed on into the 
 drawing-room, breathing a prayer that all would be well. 
 What his foreboding was we do not know. 
 
 He thought it necessary to deny his own accusation 
 against himself that he had been pleased at the Lieutenant 
 running on in front of him to join the ladies first, that he
 
 94 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 might thereby seem even-minded on the question of his 
 own anxiety to do so. He denied it, and to satisfy himself 
 of the strength of his position, walked in indifferently. He 
 emphasized his denial by spending no more than a remark 
 or two on Lady Arkroyd, who, he thought, showed a lack 
 of her usual cordiality, as though she had read a disparaging 
 review. He inquired a little whether she found the ride 
 to Thanes pleasant, and so on ; and then went at once to the 
 other end of her daughter's sofa — not a very long one. In- 
 deed, he could hardly do otherwise, as Judith certainly 
 transferred her fine eyes from him to its vacant corner- 
 cushion. He was a little nettled at finding he wanted an 
 excuse for his alacrity. 
 
 We have read in some novel that the reason women are 
 so fond of unprincipled men is that they know the latter 
 can and will enjoy their society thoroughly, and never vex 
 their souls with any questions as to what that society 
 may mean or lead to for either of them. They, the women, 
 will do the drawing the line, and that sort of thing. Why 
 be prigs ? Now Challis was scarcely a prig, and he was 
 certainly not an unprincipled man. If he had been the 
 one, he would have thought much more talk necessary with 
 the mother before monopolizing the daughter ; if the other, 
 his choice of a satisfaction would have been as candid as 
 his young soldier's had been — as the little beggar's always 
 was. Whether the authoress of this novel was talking 
 wisely or not, who shall say ? Broadly speaking, proHigates 
 are better company than prigs. Cceteris paribus, mind you ! 
 
 This is all by the way ; will very likely be deleted before 
 this present writing goes to press. Miss Arkroyd was cer- 
 tainly not under any necessity to speculate on the matter. 
 She knew perfectly well that IMr. Challis, married man or 
 no, was going to anchor at the far end of her sofa as soon 
 as he had got through that silly pretence of chatting with 
 her mother. And she had retired from a colloquy with 
 this same mother — whose influence was not strong over 
 her, and with whom something had disagreed, she thought 
 — with that end in view. Sibyl wasn't there, with her 
 nonsense, and she should do as she hked. Nay, more ! 
 — she would at once say something to show her indepen- 
 dence of Sibyl's nonsense.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 95 
 
 " We thought you were never coming up." She decided 
 to make it we, not /, on the wliole. Challis's vanity sus- 
 pected the substitution, recognising in it a maiden-of-the- 
 world's prudence, and applauded it. But a recollection 
 of what a letter he was going to write to Marianne prompted 
 a protest. He couldn't afford to enjoy his position too 
 much, without loss of self-respect. How important one's 
 self-respect is ! 
 
 " We were having some very interesting talk about 
 Politics. Your brother and sister and Lord Felixthorpe 
 came back and interrupted it." There was great detach- 
 ment in this, but it was overdone ; too much like " pointing 
 out " to a polypus that his tentacles were slipj^ing. 
 
 Ought her response, thought Judith, to show pique at 
 her quarry's independence — at his contentment to be away 
 from her society ? Much too soon ! — was her verdict, 
 passed, but not formulated. It would be just like a girl 
 in her first season. And she had not known this man 
 much above forty-eight hours. She was not going to be- 
 have like that child in the passage, whose pretty sing-song 
 voice chimed with her young soldier's outside when Challis 
 opened the door to come in just now. Judith felt certain 
 what she was saying was " I was so saw-ry for you having 
 to talk Pawlitics when you might have been up here A\ith 
 me and this dahling pup." Her imagination committed 
 itself to the words, musical drawl and all ; but negatived 
 this sort of thing in her own case. 
 
 " I should like to have been there to hear it," she said. 
 " What were they talking about ? The usual thing, I 
 suppose V 
 
 Challis felt she was an honourable polypus, in whose 
 tentacles he could trust himself. " I can't say," said he. 
 " I'm too recent to know what is or isn't usual. You'll 
 hear the supplement immediately. There they are, coming 
 upstairs !" 
 
 The lady remained silent, listening handsomely. The 
 thought in Challis's mind — to the effect that she was the 
 antipodes of Marianne, in looks — was so irrelevant and in- 
 appropriate that he gave it notice to quit, incontinently. 
 But he could not serve the notice without admitting pos- 
 session. He could, though, as a per contra, do a little
 
 96 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 mechanical forecasting of his letter to Marianne. Yes — his 
 course was clear ; he would tell his wiie how absurdly un- 
 like her in all respects this queenly young woman was ; 
 might even go the length of wondering how the partner 
 of her joys and sorrows would be able to live with so much 
 dignity always taking place in his neighbourhood. Would 
 that be like reminding Marianne of her homeliness, though ? 
 Oh no ! — he would take care of that. Still, if Marianne had 
 been just one shade less homely, it would have been easier. 
 Never mind ! 
 
 The voices on the stairs gathered audibility. Oh yes ! — 
 there was papa and the Feudal System. Judith could 
 hear that, plain enough. How sick she was of William 
 the Conqueror ! And Mr. Tomes, of course, just as usual ! 
 But we mustn't speak too loud, or Mrs. Tomes would hear. 
 What a fool that woman was ! But Mr. Challis didn't know 
 her. He must do so, in the interests of his next book. All 
 which, in a voice dropped to confidence-point, tended to 
 engage Mr. Challis's cogs — the simile is an engineering one — 
 in Miss Arkroyd's wheel. 
 
 What was that Mr. Tomes was saying ? Something or 
 other was to be relegated to the Limbo of departed some- 
 thing-elses. If only those j'^oung people wouldn't make 
 such a noise with the puppy, we should hear ! Why were 
 things always relegated to Limbos, and why was nothing 
 ever sent to Limbos except by relegation ? The question 
 was Challis's. But he was talking at random, for reasons. 
 So v.-as Judith, perhaps, when she said absently : " I have 
 noticed that, too." She Avas Hstening carefully to hear if 
 her sister and her co-motorists were following. " I suppose 
 they all came in famished," she added. 
 
 " Didn't you see them when they came in ?" 
 
 " I heard them." 
 
 " Didn't they sound famished ?" 
 
 " Not especially. I didn't pay much attention. As long 
 as no bones are broken. . . . They won't be coming up for 
 some time yet." There was in her voice a very clear im- 
 plication of relief. The inference was that we, in this sofa- 
 haven, should not be disturbed. Its correctness was soon 
 manifest. No two oratorically-disposed gentlemen, well 
 wound up, ever disturb a chat in a corner, further than
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 97 
 
 mere shouting goes. And Sir Murgatroyd and the sitting 
 member for Grime were wound up to a high pitch of agree- 
 ment about what constituted an Enhghtened Conservatism, 
 and each was anxious to supply the next hnk in the chain 
 of Syllogism, and get the credit of it. So they shouted 
 against each other all the way upstairs, and only lulled 
 very slightly when they reached the drawing-room. 
 
 Mr. Brownrigg and Mr. Wraxall, on the other hand, were 
 aux grands eprises on a vital question — never mind what ; 
 nobody knew or cared ! — which underlay the whole of their 
 argument. Mr. Wraxall had been unable to permit an 
 inference of Mr. Brownrigg's to pass unchallenged, and 
 Mr. Brownrigg had impugned the data on which Mr. 
 Wraxall's objections were founded. Mr. Wraxall had re- 
 plied that something or other had been clearly laid down 
 as a safe principle by Baker, and Mr. Brownrigg had pointed 
 out that the fallacy of Baker's assumptions had been ex- 
 haustively dealt with by Smith. Mr. Wraxall had counter- 
 pointed out that Smith's penetrating insight into everything 
 else had led him into error in this one particular ; and 
 had laid stress upon the fact that Hopkins, the weight of 
 whose opinion it was impossible to deny, had endorsed the 
 opinions of Baker. Mr. Brownrigg had then become 
 patronising, and went so far as to warn Mr. Wraxall not 
 to be led a^^ ay by the plausibility of Hopkins. Who then, 
 being a weak controversialist, had rashly appealed to INIi-. 
 Ramsey Tomes to countenance the authority of Hopkins 
 But that gentleman only gave a weighty shake to a judicial 
 head, claiming at once profound thought in the past, and 
 forecasting just censure to come. He feared that the 
 insidious ratiocinations of Hopkins were a rock we all split 
 upon in the forest of youth, and an ig7iis jatuus to mislead 
 the mariner in the ocean of dialectical difficulty that 
 chequered our steps in later life. 
 
 The controversy, of which the foregoing is a condensation, 
 had passed the quarrelsome point when the disputants 
 arrived in the drawing-room, shutting out the melodious 
 trill of the chit, the squeaks of the little beggar, and the 
 lieutenant's bass voice, saying, " He and the kitten were 
 having a high old time v.ith my boots early this morning." 
 The argument was in the mutual-amends stage, and Mr. 
 
 VOL. I. 7
 
 98 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Brownrigg was enlarging on the enthralling and irresistible 
 fascination of Hopkins's style, while Mr. Wraxall was 
 equally eloquent on the almost Nicholsonian vigour and 
 expansiveness of Smith's. They Avere then separated, and 
 presently the insurer was audible afar, enlarging to Lady 
 Arkroyd on a scheme for insuring against damage at the 
 Wash, in which she was much interested ; while the Graubo 
 schite was mentioning some further details of that great 
 man's system to Mrs. Ramsey Tomes. Who, however, 
 only said : " I think my husband would like to hear that," 
 or " Have you mentioned that to Mr. Tomes ?" but gave 
 no sign of receiving, or of ever having in her life received, 
 an idea on her own account. The Baronet and the M.P. 
 simply went on, like the water coming in when the ball- 
 cock has stuck, and nobody mil be at work till Monday. 
 
 But is this fair to the reader ? — to go on inflicting on 
 him irrelevant chatter merely to justify Judith's feeling 
 that in the security of that sofa-haven she could safely 
 carry on the skein-twisting a little prematurely — that is, 
 without waiting for a visiting acquaintance with the 
 probably plebeian wife, to put her friendship with the 
 husband on an ascertained footing. Now Judith was not 
 without a well-defined motive for the skein- twisting, as 
 was hinted at the end of our last chapter. We rather think 
 that if she had not been she would have suspected some- 
 thing abnormal in Challis's matrimonies from his manner 
 when he said " Craik." Women are as sharp as all that — 
 oh dear, yes ! 
 
 After a little discursive chat to make sure that no floating 
 interruption would desert the other group-units and bear 
 down on their haven, Judith was seized with a sudden 
 intense apprehension that Mr. Challis could write a tragedy. 
 She can have had very slight grounds for this conclusion ; 
 she had almost no knowledge of that author's work, as 
 we have seen. But she relied on his vanity to make him 
 take an easy-going view of any claims she had to pro- 
 nounce him Shakespeare. Pleasing verdicts soothe the 
 cavils of incredulous modesty, and suggest unsuspected 
 data in the bush. But he was bound to make some sort 
 of protest. It would never do to say he rather thought he 
 could.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 99 
 
 " What makes you think that ?" he said. 
 
 " I can't say. It has nothing to do with anything I 
 have read of yours. I think it is something in yourself 
 makes me think so." It was as well to head off any dis- 
 cussion of what she had read ; and an ounce of personality 
 is worth a ton of mere evasion. The fine eyes examined 
 Mr. Challis's intelligent brow carefully to see what it was 
 in himself that made their owner think so. His ov^na. 
 watched them as though expecting their conclusion would 
 be registered shortly. 
 
 " I have written a couple of comedies," said he, to help. 
 " But no tragedy, so far." And from thence a certain 
 reality crept into the conversation, which up to that mo- 
 ment had been rather words for words' sake, or, perhaps it 
 should be said, for their speaker's sake. For so much talk 
 that sets up to be interchange of ideas is uttered to con- 
 vince the speakers they are conversing, and to make them 
 plausible to themselves and each other. 
 
 " You have written for the stage, then. That is what I 
 meant. Have you had anything performed yet ? Forgive 
 my not knowing." 
 
 " There is nothing to know that you could have known. 
 One of the comedies, ' Aminta Torrington,' is to come out 
 after Christmas. The other, ' Widow's Island,' is on the 
 shelf. Nobody appreciates it." 
 
 " Do you see a great deal of theatrical people 1" Now, 
 Challis had wanted the eyes to be interested about his plays 
 — to abet the speaker in a curiosity she ought to have felt. 
 But no matter : that would wait. 
 
 " I see a great many. What makes you ask in such an 
 interested way ?" 
 
 " Because I want to know. I have a reason. I'll tell 
 you sometime." Whereat the mercury in the ther- 
 mometer of this lady and gentleman's intimacy went up 
 a degree distinctly. So much was implied in the word 
 " sometime." Not very easy to summarise, certainly — 
 but there, all the same ! It ratified anticipation of future 
 intercommunications, on the surface of it. Also, it hinted 
 at confidences to come. But let us be just to Judith here. 
 She never meant it as another wind of the skein. She 
 was honestly unconscious this time, thinking frankly of
 
 100 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 an interest of her own. She continued : " Tell me a 
 good deal about them. Why doesn't one know more of 
 them r' 
 
 " I didn't know one didn't. That's nonsense, or sounds 
 very hke it. But we know what we mean. I'll state it 
 clearly, to save trouble. The question is. Why do swell 
 young women that are presented at Court, and go to balls 
 in the season, and sit in carriages at Ascot, and see polo- 
 matches at Hurlingham, and get married at St. George's, 
 Hanover Square ... is that right so far ? . . ." 
 
 " That will do very well, at any rate." Judith said this 
 without a laugh, where there might have been one. " Go 
 on, Mr. Chalhs." 
 
 " Why does this sort of young woman not meet more 
 actresses and actors in the society she lives in ? Well, T 
 can tell you the answer — at least, I can tell you my opinion, 
 if you ask it." 
 
 " Yes, I do. What is it ?" 
 
 " They are always at the play, the actors and actresses, 
 either on the stage or in the boxes. Or the pit. Or the 
 gallery. I can't answer for the whole profession. But 
 that's my experience." 
 
 " I have always been told they were so disreputable. 
 Are they ?" 
 
 " My dear Miss Arkroyd, what a very old-fashioned 
 idea !" Challis laughed outright. " No ! — they are just 
 like everybody else as to manners and morals, and that sort 
 of thing. They are not monks and nuns, certainly. But 
 such a many folk are not that." 
 
 Judith looked at him doubtfully. Was not that rather 
 the way men sometimes talk, throwing dust in the eyes that 
 want to distinguish right from wrong ? Monks and nuns, 
 as we all know, are people that want to deprive you and 
 me of cakes and ale. But what is meant by cakes and 
 ale ? She would push a test question home. If Mr. 
 Chalhs had a grown-up daughter, she asked, would he let 
 her go on the stage, if she wished it very much, and had 
 a turn for it ? Of course he would, was his answer, with- 
 out hesitation. Why should he not ? This seemed to 
 decide Judith on an extension of confidence. 
 
 " I will tell you why I am asking. I know a girl . . .
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 101 
 
 well ! I should say womin . . . who wants to go on the 
 stage. But it seems impossible. What her capabilities 
 would be I cannot say. But it seems hard that she should 
 be unable to give them a trial." 
 
 " Why cannot she ?" 
 
 " Her family oppose it ; or rather, she knows they would 
 oppose it if the proposal took form. At present she only 
 knows that they treat the idea with derision — as something 
 hardly worth ridicule." 
 
 " But why ? — if she has it at heart." 
 
 " Respectabihty. Position. Balls in the season. Carriages 
 at Ascot. St. George's, Hanover Square. Family, in short !" 
 
 " Tell me more about this friend. Why does she sup- 
 pose she has qualifications ? She must have had some 
 experience to convince her 1" 
 
 Judith stopped to consider a few seconds. " Yes, I can 
 tell you that," she said. " She played in the ' Antigone ' 
 a couple of years ago. You know my brother and his 
 friends played it in London, and got the female parts 
 played by women. Of course, at Cambridge it was the 
 boys themselves." 
 
 " Did you think her performance good ?" 
 
 Judith sticks a Httle over her answer, but it comes. 
 " Not perfectly satisfactory — not to me, at least. But 
 everyone else spoke so well of it that I may have been 
 mistaken." 
 
 " Yet you would encourage her to make a very hazar- 
 dous experiment, and to incur the displeasure of her family, 
 on the strength of no more than what you now tell me. 
 Do allow me to say that your friend ought to have more 
 experience ..." 
 
 " She ought to keep out of the water till she can swim," 
 Judith struck in. "I know the sort of thing. What 
 people always say ! But can you wonder that she thinks 
 it hard that she isn't allowed to go in at the shallow end of 
 a swimming-bath ; and all because of the merest Mrs. 
 Grundy ?" 
 
 " Not quite the merest Mrs. Grundy. Moderately mere, 
 suppose we say ! The actress who fails is in a sorry 
 plight . . ." 
 
 " She wouldn't fail." Judith interrupted again, a httle
 
 102 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 impatiently. " At least — I mean — she wouldn't fail alto- 
 gether. But, of course, she would take her chance of 
 that. Why should she not try, if she chooses to run the 
 risk ?" 
 
 Challis was watching her image in a mirror as she said 
 this, and thought he saw a blush-rose tinge creeping over the 
 cheek. Surely she was taking this friend's case very much 
 to heart. An idea crossed liis mind, and he schemed a test 
 of its truth — a question he would ask. 
 
 " Is she beautiful ? That would help matters." 
 
 The eyes in the mirror turned, and Challis had to with- 
 draw his owna. suddenly. You Icnow how one feels caught, 
 when a reflection in a glass suddenly transfixes one ? It 
 is like conviction of treachery — quite unlike the direct 
 transaction analogous to it. But he need not have been 
 so conscious ; as he saw, when a furtive glance back showed 
 him that the reflection was not looking at him, but at IMiss 
 Arkroyd, at her comer of the sofa. 
 
 " Beauty is so much a matter of opinion," said she. " No 
 doubt she herself is convinced her allowance of it is enough 
 for working purposes." She stopped a moment, listening 
 to sounds ajjproaching — the motor-party audible on tiie 
 stairs. Then, as she began to get up from the sofa, she 
 said quickly, " If you think you can be of any use to her — 
 with introductions and so on — I will tell j^ou who she is. 
 Sometime ; not now. There they are !" The interview 
 was at an end, and Challis prepared to merge in a world he 
 was sure would be less interesting. However, he felt some 
 curiosity to hear the tale of the motor disaster.
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 
 The chit and her young officer felt unequal to remaining 
 outside, against the tidal wave of the returned motorists. 
 Occasional suspension is necessary to the greediest flirta- 
 tion, to give it a flavour of stolenness ; else it loses its char- 
 acter, and palls. This is our surmise as to why these young 
 people allowed themselves to be swept into the drawing- 
 room by the current. Cerberus seemed to have been 
 withdrawn. It is not necessary to the story to know 
 whether the little beggar had or had not disappointed his 
 backers. No questions were asked. 
 
 The way in which the motor-party ignored their acci- 
 dent was more like the concerted vigour of artillerymen in 
 charge of a gun than any mere philosophical submission to 
 the will of Fate. Practically the machine's twenty-horse- 
 power had brought them in triumph to the door exactly at 
 the time appointed. A trivial excursion into non-fulfilment 
 of its destiny was not the poor motor's fault, nor its in- 
 ventor's, nor its maker's, nor its chauffeur's. It was all 
 due to a little bit of original sin in the heart of a hexagon 
 nut, which, having heard that the only key that it could 
 be got at with was mislaid, immediately went slack. It 
 resisted the importunities of a screw-hammer, and de- 
 manded a box-key. Like some minute organism of 
 humanity — a spiteful medulla oblongata, say ! — endowed 
 with powers of striking work, it had paralysed the whole 
 structure. But, unlike the medulla oblongata, it could be set 
 right in five minutes as soon as we had a proper box-key. 
 Therefore it was as clear as noonday that the mishap, as 
 an incident in the History of Motoring, hadn't happened at 
 all. It was by-play — didn't count ! 
 
 The expedition had been a great success. Its object had 
 been attained : like that of the scout who locates the 
 enemy, but leaves his horse behind. When you have seen 
 
 103
 
 104 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 premises that are the very thing, what does it matter how 
 you get home ? For the purposes of the Great Idea, these 
 premises were the very thing. Three large waterwheels, 
 one overshot, ninety-four-horse-power in all, and the most 
 glorious oak- and beechwoods coming do\^Ti to the water- 
 side. And the most interesting fourteenth-century pound 
 William Rufus had ever seen. He and his friend Scipio 
 were fascinated with the place, and enthusiastic about the 
 Great Idea. But while apt to feel pique at any doubt 
 throA^Ti on the wisdom of the scheme, the latter was not 
 prepared to forego the luxury of making fun of it himself. 
 
 " No historical associations," said he, with perfect de- 
 liberation of manner, " could supply a more healthy stimulus 
 to the production of what I beHeve are called Art Objects. 
 The church, a most interesting example of several styles, 
 has been judiciously restored in one — I forget which — and 
 the castle, some portions of which are previous to something 
 veiy early — I forget what " 
 
 " Suppose you shut up, Scip," said his friend. " You're 
 never in earnest about anything. No — it really is the 
 most delightful place I've ever seen. You wouldn't look 
 so scornful if you could see it, Ju. And as for its 
 suitability, I don't see how there can be any question 
 about that." 
 
 His sister Sibyl's practical mind — her manner laid claim 
 to one — went straight on to details. " The only thing," 
 she said, " that I didn't see a place for was the ivory 
 carver's shop." 
 
 " Couldn't one of those places in the roof be converted ?" 
 her brother asked. 
 
 " Too hot in the summer," said Sibyl decisively. " I 
 can see the weaving-sheds, and the jewellery-shops, and 
 the bookbinder's department, and the printing-house, and 
 the woodblock-cutter's little shop round b}^ the stairs, and 
 the ceramic works — (only we really must be sure that 
 chimney-shaft will be any good) — and the bronze-casters, 
 and the printed fabrics, and the type-writing de luxe for 
 private circulation." She checked off each department on 
 her fingers, imagining clearly — so Mr. Challis, Avho was 
 Avatching her, thought — the place in which it was to be 
 located. Then she came to her exception — " But where
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 105 
 
 on earth those tiresome ivory carvers are to be put I can't 
 imagine !" 
 
 Her brother, with perfect gravity, accepted the difficulty 
 as one to be wrestled with. " I don't see why they need 
 be do\\Tistairs at all," said he. " Why not put them in — 
 well ! — if not in the roof, why not in that room beyond the 
 Art-needlework schools ?" 
 
 " We can't conveniently have boys and young men 
 passing and repassing." Sibyl was giving it serious 
 thought ; no doubt of that ! She added with conviction : 
 " We shall have to build in the end ; so we may as well look 
 the matter in the face." 
 
 " What do you want mth ivory-carvers ?" Thus 
 Judith, with a near approach to a yawn. It never came 
 off, owing to good breeding ; but Mr. Challis noted to Mm- 
 self that it would have been statuesque had it done so. 
 Marianne's yawn was not statuesque. He could recall 
 cases in point. . . . What had that to do with the matter, 
 by-the-bye ? Challis brushed it away by joining in a 
 murmur of half-protest against Judith's question. The 
 Avorld was hstening interested to the evolution of the Great 
 Idea. Politics had slacked down — to give it a turn. And 
 the world perceived, in a doubt thrown on the necessity for 
 ivory-carving, a dangerous phase of criticism that might 
 undermine the whole scheme. 
 
 Sib}^! said, with decisive resignation, " Oh dear ! — how 
 exactly like you that is, Ju !" And her brother, " That's 
 Judith all over." Then both asked a mixed question, 
 equivalent to — If not ivory-carvers, why not not anything ? 
 Why not no jewellery ? — no art needlework ? — no ham- 
 mered metal or wood-carving ? The world's murmur of 
 half-protest — so Challis thought — had really less to do with 
 the demerits of the cavil it condemned than with the 
 obviousness of the answer to it. A mob is apt to mistake 
 its self-gratulation at having perceived something for agree- 
 ment with the thing it has perceived. Folk sing below par 
 in unison, and no one cares much which way he votes in 
 a 'plebiscite. This is what Mr. Challis thought, not a 
 remark of the text. He resolved to put it in his next book. 
 
 " I am in a minority." Judith dropped her fine eyelids 
 with a hint in the action of formal surrender, as one strikes
 
 106 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 a banner. " Even Mr. Challis has deserted me !" Challis 
 said, "Not altogether. I'm a trimmer playing fast and 
 loose, A sort of plaid, like Sam Weller." But he had not 
 understood his monde. It was one that knew nothing about 
 Sam Weller. 
 
 The rest of the company — all but the chit and counter- 
 chit — showed a disposition to talk to each other of condi- 
 tions necessary to be observed in the sudden inauguration 
 of complex undertakings, these conditions touching points 
 familiar to the speaker, but not within the experience of 
 others. Each would call Mr. Arkroyd's attention to a 
 danger ahead, or an advantage to be attained by well- 
 advised foresight, as early as possible to-morrow, so that 
 Opportunity might be taken by the forelock. 
 
 Mr. Ramsey Tomes enjoined caution before all things. 
 He spoke as one having a monopoly of prudent instincts, to 
 the exclusion of a rash j^lanetful of fellow-creatures, or as 
 the voice of one crying " Beware !" in the wilderness of 
 pitfalls Don't-care neglected, with such fatal consequences. 
 He suggested, like the father of him who slew the Jabber- 
 wock, that he who only took sufficient heed was certain of 
 success— need not make any positive efforts — could go on 
 rather better without them. One would have thought he 
 meant — Mr. Challis did think^ — that any commentator so 
 cautious as never to open a volume was well half-way to a 
 triumph of exegesis, and that Columbus would have dis- 
 covered x4.meri(;a all the quicker if he had stopped at home. 
 The story, Mr. Tomes concluded, of the failure of the plethora 
 of lash enterprises that were our inheritance from an other- 
 wise glorious Past would fill a volume. Mr. Challis thought 
 to himself that this was unworthy of its author — rather an 
 anticlimax. But Mr. Tomes was sleepy. 
 
 In fact, it was getting late, and a sense of impending 
 adjournment was vitiating the discussion : a little pitted 
 speck in the garnered fruits of its intelligence was growing, 
 and a period of sleepy incapacity was in sight. Winding-up 
 remarks became frequent, such as " We shall have to think 
 all that over," or " We must settle this, that, and the other 
 first, before anything practical can be done," or "One 
 thing's certain, at any rate " — this last being the prelude 
 to several different conclusions. In the end the view that
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 107 
 
 we might sleep upon it was welcomed as an epigrammatic 
 truth, and acted on. The company broke up, finding their 
 bedroom-candles in the passage. 
 
 And as the chit and the counterchit tore themelves apart 
 till morning, the latter said to the former, " What was all 
 the fun ? Did you make out ?" To which the chit replied 
 simply, " I wawesn't listening," in a long sweet drawl. And 
 to that young officer's ears — will you believe it ? — these 
 words seemed the embodiment of divine wisdom, and ho 
 remained intoxicated ! 
 
 Miss Sibyl Arkroyd, although she had just professed her- 
 self utterly worn out with her hard afternoon's work, was 
 not too tired to say to her sister, over the lighting of a bed- 
 room candle in the passage, "Come into my room; I've 
 something to say to you." 
 
 Judith, majestically undisturbed at anything a younger 
 sister can possibly have to say, is in no hurry to comply 
 with this request or mandate. Rather, she is inclined to 
 make a parade of deliberation, exchanging understandings 
 with Mr. Challis over the heads of the group of males with 
 whom he is retiring to the smoking-room, to end the day 
 with a cigar. Secret reciprocities seem to have set in, 
 thinks Sibyl, pausing on the landing above, out of sight. 
 And these are too subtle for the vernacular guests, and 
 outclass the counterchits altogether. Though, as each of 
 these last is dwelling contentedly on liis recent chit, that 
 doesn't come into court. 
 
 But Sibyl is wary, and gets away in time to her room. She 
 just hears her sister's farewell speech to the author : " Do 
 consider your readers a little, Mr. Challis, and don't ruin 
 your brains with too many cigars," and his answer : " It all 
 depends on the quahty of the baccy ;" followed by a testi- 
 monial from William Rufus about the brand of the one 
 Challis has just chosen ; and then she ends a majestic ascent 
 of the broad stairwa3^ with the portraits of departed Ark- 
 royds looking down from its wainscoted walls, by disap- 
 pearing into her sister's room. 
 
 " What's the something, Sibyl ?" 
 
 " You'll be angry if I tell you." 
 
 " I may." Judith keeps her candle in her hand. Is it
 
 108 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 worth putting it down, if dissension in the wand is pointing 
 to a short interview ? " But how can I tell till I know ? 
 Why did you want me ?" 
 
 " Well — I'll tell you. But you mustn't fly into a rage. 
 That man Mr. Scoop — or Harris, or whatever his name is — 
 married his Deceased Wife's Sister !" 
 
 " Is that any concern of mine ?" 
 
 " You wouldn't speak in that way if it weren't." 
 
 " In what way ?" 
 
 " The way you spoke." What may seem inexplicable 
 here is due to the inability of mere 'words to do justice to 
 the intensity of Judith's unconcern. There was no need 
 for an indifference such as a humming-top asleep shows to 
 the history of its ovm time. 
 
 " I don't mind waiting till you are reasonable, Sib dear." 
 This little bit of Prussian tactics improved Judith's posi- 
 tion. She put her candlestick on a piece of real Chippen- 
 dale, to express anchorage, but remaired standing. She 
 had been looking very handsome in the white chiffon all 
 the evening, and thought so. Her subconscious judgment 
 confirmed this, as a mirror on a wardrobe-door swung her 
 reflection before her for a moment. Sibyl had opened it. 
 Judith looked at her wrist-Avatch as she stood, but meant, 
 subconsciously, to look up again when the countersmng 
 brought the image back. All which occurred, and then 
 Sibyl sat against the bed-end, having disposed of the ward- 
 robe, and said : 
 
 " You know you have been in j\Ir. Harris's company all 
 day, Judith. And I suppose it's going to be the usual 
 thing. But there's no sense in your calling me unreasonable 
 simply because I want you to know what the position is." 
 
 " What is the position ?" 
 
 " Just what I've told you. Mr. Harris . . . well — Challis 
 then ... is not really a married man. He married — at least, 
 made believe to marry — his Deceased Wife's Sister." 
 
 " Then, now you've told me what the position is, I know. 
 And I may go to bed." 
 
 " Don't be irritating, Judith." It is provoking, you 
 know, when your enemy makes a successful rally after a 
 seeming repulse. Judith's last tactical move was masterly. 
 Her success soothed her to moderation.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 109 
 
 " I don't want to be irritating, Sib. And I don't think 
 you have any right to talk of being irritating after what you 
 said just noAv. ' The usual thing !' What usual tiling V 
 
 " You know what I mean, and it doesn't matter." 
 
 " I don't think it matters the least. But what do 3'ou 
 know about Mr. Challis ? I mean, what do you know that 
 I don't ?" 
 
 " Only what I told you." 
 
 " But how do you know ? Really, Sibyl, I shall go if 
 there are to be any more mysteries." 
 
 " Well, don't be impatient, and I'll tell you." And 
 thereon Sibyl, seated on the end of the bed, gave the sub- 
 stance of a short chat wdtli her mother when she came in 
 from the excursion. That lady must have been mighty 
 interested, Judith thought, to talk about Mr. Challis's 
 affairs, which could not possibly concern any of them. She 
 said as much, resentfully, to her sister. 
 
 " Well," said Sibyl, " I only tel] you what she said to me. 
 She drove Mrs. Barham home from Thanes, and they talked 
 about it all the way. The Bishop had it on perfectly good 
 authority. I think it was the editor of some well-known 
 paper, who had heard it from a gentleman who had inter- 
 viewed Mr. Challis for him. You know how they do ?" 
 Oh yes ' — Judith knew. " Well, this gentleman had it from 
 Mr, Challis himself, who had begged him very earnestly to 
 say nothing about it. So, of course, nothing appeared in 
 the article." 
 
 " What a dehcate-minded editor !" 
 
 " I think it was very nice of him. Why not ? But you 
 always sneer, Ju. Anyhow, that's what the madre said to 
 me. And we agreed that the sooner you knew the 
 better " 
 
 " And why ?" 
 
 " Oh, Avell, because, of course. . . . However, we can't 
 discuss that now at this time of night. I only know what 
 Mrs. Barham said the Bishop said. ..." 
 
 " What did His Holiness say ?" 
 
 " Judith, if you sneer I won't talk to you. . . . Well, the 
 Bishop said that if he had his way, he would refuse Holy 
 Communion to all people's Deceased Wife's Sisters . . . there ! 
 — ^you Imow what I mean perfectly well, Judith."
 
 110 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Judith had started a protest, but gave up the point. 
 " I know what you mean. But why doesn't he ?" 
 
 " Mrs. Barham said he did not feel sure of the support 
 of Public Opinion. But for all that this gentleman was 
 living in Sin, technically if not actually, or actually as well 
 as technically, or . . . well ! — I forget which . . . with this 
 woman." Sibyl paused ; the pause was a tribute to the 
 force of the curl of her sister's lip. She ended : " Come, 
 Ju, you can't call her a lady, you know !" 
 
 " Did the Bishop say gentleman?" 
 
 " No. By-the-bye, I think the Bishop did say man. 
 But, of course, he would speak scripturally. Besides, 
 all gentlemen are men too, but all Avomen are not 
 ladies." 
 
 The curl died very slowly on Judith's lip, if at all. " Poor 
 Mr. Challis !" said she. " He doesn't know what he's 
 losing — at least, what he would lose if it wasn't for Bishop 
 Barham's respect for the World. Fancy having the Holy 
 Communion refused one — by Bishop Barham ! . . ." 
 
 " Judith ! If you're going to blaspheme ! . . ." 
 
 " I'm not, dear. I'm going to say good-night And 
 to-morrow I'll tell Mr. Challis of his parlous plight." 
 
 " Oh, Ju, you never wall !" 
 
 " Wait and see ! Good-night, dear." The " dear " was 
 rather perfunctory. And it was not to correct it to tender- 
 ness that Judith turned back in the doorway and reclosed 
 it from within. " I want to know what you meant by ' the 
 usual thing,' " she said, and waited. 
 
 " I thought you said you didn't think it mattered." 
 
 " I don't think it does. But I want to know what you 
 meant by it. just the same." 
 
 The return into the room to ask the question added to 
 its \^'eight somehow. Sibyl might have answered more 
 forcibly and less pertly had it been asked during conversa- 
 tion. " I should have thought, after the Honourable 
 Stephen, that that went A^dthout saying." 
 
 " ' After the Honourable Stephen ' ! . . . Sibyl !" There 
 is growing resentment in the handsome woman's voice of 
 protest, and a slight flinching in her sister's manner recog- 
 nises it. She speaks uncomfortably. 
 
 " Well, what would you have me say ? You know quite
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 111 
 
 well, Ju, that the madre thinks so too. What is the use of 
 pretending V 
 
 Judith's colour is heightened as she closes the door to 
 prevent some one hearing in the passage — her maid perhaps 
 or her sister's. " / see no use in pretending. Sib. If you 
 and mamma are going to say spiteful and mahcious things, 
 you had better speak them out. . . . Yes, it is spiteful and 
 malicious to try to make out that there Mas anything 
 between me and Stephen Lyell ; it is simply wicked to use 
 the word flirtation. . . . No — I know you have not actually 
 used it — but it's the same thing. It was that woman 
 entirely ! And you know it !" 
 
 " I should have felt as she did. Besides, Lady Di 
 Lyell's no fool. Look how you had him to yourself all day 
 long ... oh yes ! — I know what you are going to say. 
 Perhaps there wasn't. But some people can get on per- 
 fectly well without any love-making. I think that way's 
 the worst ; it's insidious and hypocritical. Yes, Judith ! — 
 if you are going to flirt ^vith a married man, I would sooner 
 you did it above-board." Notice Sibyl's elisions and how 
 easily understood they seemed to be. Sisters' intercourse 
 is based on concurrent consciousnesses of the actual ; 
 sometimes admitted, sometimes concealed. These two had 
 harboured theirs from the nursery, usually finding speech 
 for them. In the present case they had never spoken quite 
 openly, though each knew the other knew of her knowledge, 
 and pointed allusions to flirtations with married men had 
 been perfectly well understood. 
 
 Judith has been keeping back a great deal of anger — she 
 has self-control in plenty — to affect a certain patronage of 
 a younger sister ; albeit she has only a couple of years more 
 to her half of the fifty they share between them. " Sib 
 dear !" she says. " You are entirely absurd — quite 
 childish. If her jealous ladyship wasn't secure against 
 me and poor, good, honourable Stephen, where is married 
 bliss to find security ? Unless men and women are never 
 to be friends at all." 
 
 " Nobody objects to it that I know of. Only not one at 
 a time. You know the difference that makes as well as 
 I do — as well as everyone does." 
 
 Probably Judith did, and that was why she said nothing —
 
 112 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 or, at least, in what she did say made no reply to the last 
 assertion, but went back to the general question. She 
 put her hand on the door-handle to suggest peroration, 
 and spoke collectedly and coldly. 
 
 " You are quite wrong, Sibyl, when you use the word 
 ' flirtation ' about me and Stephen Lyell. Cordial ac- 
 quaintance is quite enough — even friendship is a little 
 overstrained. Not but that we are very good friends, and 
 should always keep so, only for that fool of a woman ! 
 But I shall always think somebody made mischief." She 
 turned the door-handle to indicate the penultimate char- 
 acter of what was coming, but did not open the door. 
 " And as for this Mr. Alfred Challis or ' Titus Scroop ' — 
 who is a person, by-the-bye, with whom any sort of flirta- 
 tion would be simply impossible — he's just a clever play- 
 writer, without the slightest pretence to be considered a 
 ... no ! — I wasn't going to say gentleman ; let me finish . . . 
 accustomed to the ways of Society." Sibyl didn't feel 
 convinced, but kept her counsel. " And I have my own 
 reasons for wishing to cultivate his acquaintance." 
 
 Now, surely, at this late hour of the night, and after so 
 active a day, and with these two young ladies' respective 
 maids wondering sotto voce on the landing outside what on 
 earth it's all about — surely that door-handle might have 
 turned in earnest ! But we all know the fire that seems 
 put out, with a spark still chuckling in its core at the nice 
 blaze it means to be one day. Perhaps if Sibyl had said, 
 " I ss — see " with less of suggestion that some human 
 frailty undefined had been sighted by her shrewdness, and 
 had commanded her sj^mpathy ; and perhaps (even more) 
 if she had abstained from saying to herself, " I thought it 
 was that," in a voice that was evidently intended to be 
 heard, yet to seem inaudible — perhaps the fire would not 
 have broken out again. As it was, the door-handle had 
 a relapse, and its manipulator said rather sharply : 
 " Thought it was what ?" 
 
 " The Stage," was the reply. " Oh yes, Ju ! — I know 
 all about it ; so you needn't look like a Tragedy Queen. 
 Pray disgrace your family ! Good-night, dear." 
 
 " Sibyl, you are a thoroughly selfish woman . . . did you 
 say why ? Why — because you are indulging all your own
 
 . IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 113 
 
 fancies — just flinging away hundreds on all sorts of useless 
 fads, and all the while opposing me in a reasonable wish — 
 for it is reasonable to wish to give it a trial — because of a 
 miserable, old-fashioned prejudice against a profession 
 which at least is as respectable as hammering little copper 
 pots and making Uttle bits of fsusy enamelled jewellery. 
 I can't tell you how sick I get of hearing of it all. . . ." 
 Anger at mere impertinence does not involve a flush, like 
 resentment against a charge of misdemeanour on a point of 
 delicacy. But one can go white with anger, and Judith's 
 change of colour may be due to it, as she says what she 
 evidently means to be her last word. Sibyl tries to deprive 
 it of a last word's advantage. 
 
 " If you are going to take that tone, Ju," she replies, " I 
 think we had better talk no more about it. And how little 
 copper pots can have anything fast or disreputable about 
 them I don't know. But pray disgrace your family, if 
 you can get anyone to help you — Mr. Scoop, or Challis, or 
 anyone." Then this young lady did not play fair, for 
 she said, or as good as said, that if her sister was as tired 
 and sleepy as she herself was, she wouldn't stand there 
 talking, but would go to bed. But even this was not so 
 bad as adding : " And what all this has to do with Mr. 
 Scooi)'s Deceased Wife's Sister I can't imagine !" The dry 
 tone in which Judith said, " Nor I, dear !" may have con- 
 veyed her views about her sister's powers of Logic, without 
 more enlargement — at least, she indulged in none, and 
 went away to her o"\vn bedroom, rather despising herself 
 for feeling exasperated, but knowing that she was so by the 
 satisfaction she got from an increased indifl^erence to what 
 her family thought about the theatrical profession. Her 
 stage-mania was getting the bit in its teeth. But she could 
 find it in her heart to laugh at Sibyl for trying to support 
 her o\^Ti fads on the moral repute of little copper pots. 
 Why, so far as that went, the little pots might be anchorites 
 in deserts for any power they had of blemishing it. 
 
 As for " Mr. Scroop's Deceased Wife's Sister," that, she 
 knew, was nonsense, because he had told her the name of 
 his first wife. Or, stop a minute ! — might she not have 
 been a half-sister ? Judith guessed shrewdly. But then 
 — it occurred to her presently — would that count ? She 
 
 VOL. I. 8
 
 114 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 thought of this after she was in bed, and was half inclined 
 to get up, and look up the point in her prayer-book. 
 
 The suspicion that had crossed Challis's mind in the 
 drawing-room was confirmed by the way his companion 
 had glanced at herself in the mirror, before answering his 
 question about the beauty of her friend the stage-aspirant, 
 more than by the wording of her answer. After all, the 
 fact that a good-looking woman had refused an unqualified 
 testimonial to the beauty of an alleged friend was very 
 negative evidence indeed that she was all the while speaking 
 of herself. But the glance at her reflection seemed natural 
 enough to him under the circumstances, though he was 
 ready to admit that, much as he had written about them, 
 he did not understand women. His conclusion from it was 
 supported by something not altogether natural in the tone 
 of the answer ; the substance of it might be no more than 
 provisional modesty, to cover future confession. Had she 
 answered that her friend had a Juno-like figure, a splendid 
 Greek brow and nose, rich coils of dark hair, a stately 
 column of a throat, and ample justification for evening 
 dress whenever warranted by authority — could she have 
 looked him in the face later and claimed the identity ? 
 Challis dwelt upon the inventory more than was needed, 
 and decided that the semi-evasion had been skilful, and 
 had shown that its author was superior to frivolous vanities. 
 There was glamour about this : men persist in ascribing high 
 qualities to beautiful women, and only concede them grudg- 
 ingly to dowdies as a set-off to their unhappy plainness. 
 
 Anyhow, even if he was mistaken, his mistake would give 
 him a sound ground for writing as much as he was inclined 
 to write about this young lady to Marianne; and he felt, 
 without exactly knowing why, inclined to write rather 
 liberally about her. Perhaps, if he had had a mind for 
 self-vivisection, he would have found that he shrank from 
 acknowledging the reason he had hitherto flinched from 
 writing about her to his mfe ; which was, briefly, that he 
 was just too far entiche to feel at ease in telling her how much 
 in love he had fallen with one of the daughters, and how 
 awfully jolly she was, and how awfully jealous she, Mari- 
 anne, would be if she was there to see. You know — male
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 115 
 
 reader over head and ears in wedlock — that that is what you 
 would have written, and despatched with an authenticating 
 photograph if one was attainable. And you would have 
 asked for the last photo of your correspondent in return — 
 the one with baby pulling her hair ; not that beastly one 
 yearning, Avith the lips slightly parted — to give as a swop 
 to your new love ; because six copies were to come from 
 Elliott and Fry's, and we could have as many more as we 
 wanted. But Mr. Alfred Challis was not so detached as 
 all this ; and, without absolutely suspecting it, he was not 
 sorry to be supplied with a well-defined locus scribendi, 
 where all analysis and justification would merge and be 
 forgotten. He felt, mth such a licence of free pen, much 
 more ready to go to work with his long letter to Marianne 
 about that long walk to the Rectory to-day. See what a 
 lot he could find to tell about that Parson who wanted (or 
 didn't) to marry his Deceased Wife's Sister ! Partly on 
 the question itself — one, of course, of the greatest interest 
 to both — and partly, if not more, because he had just 
 remembered that surely the name of the Parson who took 
 on the duties for Charlotte Eldridge's reverend cousin out 
 Clapham way was Athelstan Something ; and hadn't he, 
 the said cousin, been known to come away to this part of 
 the world to take his friend's duties in the country and get 
 change of air ? Of course ! And then, too, there was the 
 incident of the sofa in the evening. Yes ! — he would make 
 the peep into the mirror amusing. 
 
 They were new candles all through again this evening — 
 really ! . . . the extravagance in these great houses ! What 
 would Marianne say if she saw it ? But so much the better ! 
 Candles that have never been blo^^Ti out give a much better 
 light than restarted ones — who can say why ? Challis 
 settled dowTi soon to his long letter, and wrote well into the 
 night. The four candles he had enlisted had burned down 
 to mere housekeeper's perquisites^substitute-justifiers — 
 by the time he had signed himself Marianne's loving Tite ; 
 and after a good stretch in acknowledgment of an hour's 
 bent back, had lighted an isolated sample with an ex- 
 tinguisher-parasite, so as to blow all four out together, and 
 keep them neck and neck. 
 
 After he was in bed he said to himself that he must make 
 
 8—2
 
 116 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 sure that letter went by the first post, or it would only reach 
 Marianne such a short time before the writer. It was very 
 stupid of him, that it was, to have allowed so many days 
 to pass before writing a proper account of " these people " 
 to his wife. She had only had such very perfunctory letters 
 before. He classed it as a stupidity. However, it might 
 end by his overstajdng the week he was asked for by more 
 than an extra day already bespoken, and then this long 
 letter would seem in better keeping. That would make it 
 all right.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 Makianne Challis had never become quite reconciled to 
 her new life at the Hermitage at Wimbledon, obvious as 
 was the improvement on her old home in Great Coram 
 Street. What she would have liked would have been that 
 Titus — for she had adopted the Christian name of his nom 
 de plume, not without pride — should become a brilliant 
 and successful author, that a plentiful income should take 
 the place of the modest salary of a subordinate — important, 
 but still a subordinate — in a City accountant's ; but that, 
 nevertheless, their old life should go on as it had done since 
 their marriage nine years ago. 
 
 She made little concessions and reservations. They would 
 have had a bath put up in the little room next the nursery, 
 on the second floor, with a regular hot- water service from 
 the kitchen. The old kitchen-range might have been got 
 rid of at the same time, and a new one put in its place, with 
 a proper oven, and then it wouldn't have been one long 
 grumble-grumble-grumble from Elizabeth Barclay all day 
 long. They could have had the roof seen to, and the 
 window-frames seen to, and the drains seen to, and all the 
 substantial repairs attended to ; and they could have made 
 the landlord do it as soon as they were in a position to 
 threaten him with legal proceedings if he didn't. But 
 really, when you have no means but a limited salary, and 
 a boy's schooling to pay for ! — so Mrs. Challis had said to 
 Mrs. Eldridge, a friend in her confidence, and as she didn't 
 finish the sentence, we need not. And then the drawing- 
 room could have been made quite pretty, with the same 
 patterned paper, of course, and as near as we could get the 
 carpet. Only it was second-hand when poor Kate bought 
 it fourteen years ago, and the man from Shoolbred's said 
 the pattern was out of date. And as for the beds and the 
 blinds and curtains, it would have been just as easy to have 
 
 117
 
 118 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 them all new at Coram Street as at Wimbledon. And 
 really Titus could have done perfectly well with the top 
 back attic, out of the noise, to do his writing in. It could 
 have been made quite nice, and would have looked ever so 
 much bigger with book-cases round. 
 
 However, it couldn't be helped now Titus had con- 
 demned the top back attic, and made a fuss about the wajls 
 sloping in. Of course, she only meant bookcases on the 
 straight-up walls. But men were like that, and you might 
 talk to them till Doomsday. Mrs. Challis left something 
 defective here also, and we are again under no obligation 
 to complete the sentence for her. 
 
 Of course Titus had a much nicer room now — at least, a 
 much larger one. What he wanted such a big room for 
 Marianne couldn't imagine. Just look at the way he wrote 
 that first book, " The Spendthrift's Legacy." In pocket- 
 books and on omnibuses ! Just everywhere ! However, 
 it pleased him, and when he was pleased he was satisfied 
 As long as he didn't complain ! And yet once more Mrs. 
 Eldridge had to nod an implied easy interpretation with 
 closed lips. She — a A^ife herself — could understand. 
 
 Very likely the might-have-been, in Marianne Challis's 
 mind, of a glorified Great Coram Street, with the successful 
 author turning out immortal works in a glorified top back 
 attic, was only an allotropic form of a condenuiation of 
 things that had come to pass at the new home at Wimble- 
 don. Very likely, too, it was unconscious on her part. 
 She may never have noticed that the imaginarj^ new 
 chapters of the closed volume of the old home contained no 
 reference to the new friends her husband's great success had 
 brought about him, to the new Club he belonged to, and 
 met celebrities at, to the dinner invitations that frankly 
 left her out, and — almost more irritating — those that 
 followed a perfunctory card-shedding visit that shouted 
 aloud, " Because we can't ask liim and leave you out, good 
 author's wife !" The imaginary visitors her fancy saw in the 
 renovated might-have-been drawing-room were John and 
 Charlotte Eldridge, and the Smithsons and ^liss Macculloeh 
 — not grandma ; for Marianne's desire for her mother's 
 presence did not go to the length of cancelling her bron- 
 chitis in order to bring her out on imaginary Saturday
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 119 
 
 evenings. And those visionary social gatherings never held 
 a dream of young authoresses, with a strange power of 
 appealing to our hidden sympathies, and dresses that must 
 have cost God knows wlaat. But she never noticed the 
 omission. Nor that of the theatrical people, nor the press 
 people ; nor the swells — male and female — who came to 
 sit at the feet of Genius, and be civil to its wife, who, though 
 she may have been slow about some things, could see through 
 all tlmt, and really never went out, thank you ! 
 
 But a few days' change was just what her husband 
 wanted. That was what she had said to Lady Arkroyd of 
 Royd Hall, in Rankshire, a case in point, whom her husband 
 had met at Sir Spender's, as he called him, and had en- 
 couraged to call on Mrs. Challis at Wimbledon. Now, at 
 Great Coram Street, or the glorified fetch of it, no such 
 person appeared ; though, indeed, a few inexplicable fetches 
 were supplied by fancy of people who were in earnest when 
 they wanted her to come too. Neither Lady Arkroyd nor 
 Lady Betty Inglis, who accompanied her, had gone beyond 
 civility point — only men never saw anything, you knew 
 they didn't ! 
 
 Charlotte Eldridge (in this case) knew perfectly, dear ! — 
 and backed up Mariamie in refusing to go to Royd. Alfred 
 Challis said it was the merest temper ; but was he sorry she 
 didn't go ? — Marianne wondered. She rather preferred not 
 going, to say the truth, but she would have liked Titus to be 
 really sorry. And even though she had known just as well 
 that he was only pretending he wanted her to come too, she 
 would have liked him to pretend a little better. If he had 
 done this, she would really have enjoyed his absence a 
 great deal more, and it would have helped her to believe she 
 didn't enjoy it. She honestly v.anted to. 
 
 Because she was one of those housekeepers who reconcile 
 good housekeeping with what they call a little peace and 
 quiet. These ends are contributed to by the temporary 
 abeyance of the household. Scarcely by its permanent 
 absence — that would alter the character of the position 
 altogether. This position was that an unendurable stress 
 of responsibility was borne by the house's mistress in her 
 position, so to speak, of ship's master. The navigation 
 rested entirely on her shoulders, and the Captain meddled.
 
 120 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Captains seldom did anything else, and there was no peace 
 and quiet until they were at their office in the City, or 
 locked up in their cabin, as might be. In that cabin, as in 
 Challis's case, they pursued some private end which had no 
 relation to the stem realities of Life. It might chance, as 
 was admitted in theory, to have something to do with the 
 settlement of weekly accounts — a remote connection of a 
 vague ideal kind. But the keeping of the log, the regulation 
 of the chronometers, the comparison of charts — well, really, 
 it was impossible to attend to them for the fidget, till the 
 Captain was safely entombed in his cabin and out of the 
 way ! And Charlotte Eldridge knew all that as well as 
 Marianne did. She could understand, if anyone could. 
 As for schoolboys, everybody knew what a boy in a house 
 was ; hence, broadly speaking, the sooner he was back at 
 school the better. When home for the holidays, there was no 
 peace ; and it was just as well to look the fact in the face, 
 and not be deceived by any false prophets. 
 
 However, there was something to be said for the prophets 
 in that Jerusalem at Wimbledon when the nominal head 
 of the household was on a visit in the country, and that 
 dreadful boy was playing cricket and wouldn't be back tiU 
 late. This September afternoon there was a little peace and 
 quiet at last, and Charlotte Eldridge and Mrs. Challis could 
 chat — at least, till the husband of the former called in on 
 his way from the station to walk home with her across the 
 common. Let the record of their talk be taken anywhere, 
 at random. Take the images of them, also at random, 
 from any one of a thousand semi-detached villas in the 
 suburbs of London, and, if you choose ladies of thirty odd, 
 time centres of the EngUsh middle-class, you will have all 
 the description you will want for the present. f- ■ 
 
 " They're not girls. At least, / don't call them girls," 
 said Mrs. Challis, shutting the pot-lid on the tea. Then she 
 blew the spirit out, because it wasn't wanted any more. 
 
 " Twenty-six and twenty-four," said the other lady. 
 Not an opinion of her own, but a placarding of authorised 
 figures for consideration. They remained in view, neither 
 sanctioned nor censured. Marianne left the point. 
 
 " Why aren't they married, is what I look at." 
 
 " Looks, perhaps. Or short tempers. Either tells.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 121 
 
 Does Mr. Challis mention their figures ? Because figures go 
 a long way." Mrs. Eldridge seems to speak as an authority. 
 Mariarme nods agreement as a general rule. But presently 
 takes exception : 
 
 " There would be money," she says. " And that makes 
 a difference. Besides, his letter lays a good deal of stress 
 on one of their figures. I'm never surprised at figures when 
 it's those sort of persons, in girls. They have to." The 
 implication seemed to be that the she-toff, figureless, got 
 suppressed — cancelled somehow. 
 
 " He says looks too, doesn't he ?" 
 
 " One of them, certainly. But you can't tell, from men. 
 And it's one thing one time, another another." Here a 
 pause, following a question from Mrs. Eldridge, " Have you 
 stirred it ?" and an irrelevant answer, " I don't want it to 
 get too strong," from Mrs. ChalHs. Then tea. During 
 v/hich the subject is picked up and dropped at intervals, 
 an eye being kept on it throughout. It is like a mouse a cat 
 is warden of. 
 
 " I suppose the good-looking one is tlie one he sees most 
 of. They do." Mrs. Eldridge is enigmatical. 
 
 Her friend is almost equally so. "I suppose it's better 
 always to take no notice of it," she says. 
 
 " Always better." Decisively, as from an authority. 
 
 " The other one carves something, or does art needle- 
 work. When grandma Avas a girl they did painting on 
 velvet — poonah, it was called. Or took Hkenesses. But 
 then they wore ringlets." 
 
 " I know. And their waists were goodness knows where. 
 But they did ruins in water-colours." 
 
 " In sepia. Ma has some in a portfoHo. Ready for your 
 other cup ?" The answer is substantially in the affirmative. 
 
 " Don't put the sugar in this time. They're such big 
 lumps. . . . Thanks ! . . . Yes, that was before it was Art 
 Things, and Liberty's. They were just regarded as accom- 
 phshments where there were daughters. Then, if they be- 
 came old maids, they kept it up. Because they had such 
 famihes." This did not mean that the old maids of three 
 generations back created scandals, but that our grand- 
 mother's domestic cares stood in the way of their career as 
 poonah-painters and so forth.
 
 122 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Mrs. Challis cut the cake. Some always wait till this 
 stage of tea to do this. But there are many schools. Then 
 she said : " Titus says it's photography has put an end to 
 all that sort of thing. I shouldn't wonder." 
 
 " Nor I." But Mrs. Eldridge adds that she doesn't care 
 about Art Objects for their own sake, though they do for 
 presents. She then picks up the dropped mouse she has 
 had an eye on. " Which is the one that slums ?" she asks. 
 
 " Oh — both ! So does their lady- mother." There is a 
 trace of bitterness in this expression. " But only by the 
 way. I don't suppose they stick to anything." 
 
 " What does the good-looking one do ?" No immediate 
 answer comng, the speaker throws a light, " Perhaps she's 
 a vegetarian, or antivivisects ?" 
 
 " No, it's neither of those. But I've no business to tell. 
 Titus said not, in the postscript." 
 
 " He wouldn't mind me." 
 
 " I don't know, dear. Perhaps it was you he meant. 
 However, you must promise not to tell, if I get the letter." 
 
 " My dear ! — as if I should tell ! You know I never say a 
 word !" 
 
 Marianne felt she had done her duty by this letter as 
 she left the room to get it. For had she not honourably 
 resolved not to show it, and even gone the length of locking 
 it into a drawer to prove her resolution ? And didn't her 
 getting up from her tea show what an honourable intent 
 she had been acting under. Oh yes, she had done her duty. 
 Besides, what did it matter 1 
 
 " Here's his letter. I don't expect he'll be home till 
 Thursday. . . . No, I suppose I mustn't show you the 
 whole. I'll read the bits." 
 
 " You hachi't had your tea." Mrs. Eldridge felt quite 
 secure of the mouse, as she knew her husband wouldn't come 
 before 6.30, and the train was always behind. She felt 
 so secure that she interjected a remark on another subject — 
 dress. She saw Marianne had on her plaid, and admitted 
 her wisdom ; it had gone so much colder. How those stuffs 
 did last out ! It really looked as good as new. Then she 
 recommended those little oblong things with jam in the 
 middle, which she had tried and her hostess hadn't ; the 
 latter, though, had bought them at the new confectioner's.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 123 
 
 Marianne put the letter safe out of the way of spills and 
 slops, and finished her tea. During which the mouse may 
 be said to have remained on the floor, watched. Then she 
 picked up the letter, and after glancing through a page not 
 germane to the matter, identified that which was. " Here 
 it is," she said, and went on reading : — " ' You will be 
 amused at what I think I have found out about Judith, the 
 handsome eldest one I told you of. She is stage-struck — 
 wants to go on the boards ! She has not said it directly to 
 me, but I feel pretty certain that a " friend " she tells me 
 of, who has these aspirations, is no other than herself. 
 However, I may be mistaken. This is what I judge from : 
 We were sitting on a sofa ' . . ." The reader paused, looking 
 on into the text. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge struck in : " Where was the sofa ? Does he 
 say where the sofa was ?" 
 
 " My dear Charlotte !" Marianne expostulated, " can 
 
 it matter ? Besides, he says However, I'll go straight 
 
 on if you're going to fancy I'm leaving anything out." 
 And then continued, reading fair : "... ' on a sofa in the 
 drawing-room after dinner. When she had told me about this 
 friend, having asked me first if I loiew lots of actors and 
 actresses, I asked what sort of looking girl the friend was. 
 / saw her look in a glass on the wall before she answered. 
 And then she said something rather evasive about beauty 
 being a matter of opinion, and that there was probably 
 enough in this case for working purposes She had dis- 
 paraged her friend's performance, as it struck me, out of 
 all proportion to her apparent anxiety to advocate her 
 cause, and a sort of confidence that she would succeed. I 
 put this down to protest of personal modesty, as well as 
 the look in the glass.' " 
 
 Marianne paused, saying, " I see that," and Mrs. 
 Eldridge said also : " I see that." Whereupon the former 
 said, unreasonably : " What don't you see V and her friend 
 replied : "" Nothing. Go on." Wliich Marianne did, after 
 a very slight hesitation, as of doubt. 
 
 " ' I annex a plan of the position, showing the angle at 
 which the mirror was placed, the relative jDositions of 
 myself and the lady, and our respective images in the glass. 
 So I could see plainly by looking at her reflection that she
 
 124 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 took a good long look at herself before answering my 
 question.' " 
 
 " Is there another cup left, dear ?" said Mrs. Eldridge. 
 " Never mind if you haven't. . . ." 
 
 " It won't be good," said the tea-maker feelingly. But 
 the applicant said never mind, that would do ! She liked 
 it strong. But might she look at the plan ? She would 
 promise not to read. There was nothing there she needn't 
 read, said her friend. Nevertheless, she folded back the 
 script behind the rough bird's-eye view, -ndth dotted lines 
 of sight to show how things had worked. 
 
 " Well !" said Marianne, as she handed the cup of tea — 
 which didn't look bad. 
 
 " I don't believe the sofa was half as long as that." 
 
 " Charlotte — you're ridiculous !" 
 
 " Well, I doivt ! Now go on reading. ... ' She took 
 a good long look at herself. . . .' " Mrs. Eldridge considered 
 whether she should reveal the thought in her mind that 
 Mr. Challis must also have taken a good long look to know. 
 No ! — she would not ! Whatever she was, she was not a 
 mischief-maker ; and to prove this to her ovra satisfaction, 
 she not infrequently abstained from saying something 
 about a lady and gentleman. She often found an oppor- 
 tunity of doing this, as she never thought on any subject 
 not spiced Mith both. Satisfaction to conscience through 
 this abstention would be sure to result in free handling soon 
 after. Also, the abstention was easy to her this time, 
 because she believed — rightly or wrongly — that Marianne 
 knew she was making it. 
 
 Perhaps rightly, but no outward sign to that effect came. 
 Marianne glanced forward in the letter, and went on read- 
 ing : " ' This young woman, I fancy, is savagely jealous of 
 the younger sister posing as an active promoter of all sions 
 of upnesses-to-date. . . .' I ■^^^sh," said the reader paren- 
 thetically, " that Titus wouldn't use such unusual expres- 
 sions. I dare say they are very clever, but I don't 
 profess to understand . . . what ? . . . Oh, of course, I 
 see what he means, but it's a kind of thing I shall never 
 understand. . . . No. my dear Charlotte ! — it's no use 
 talking and trying to persuade me. ' Upnesses-to-date ' — 
 just fancy !" Now Titus had been in two minds whether
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 125 
 
 toalJow this phrase to remain, but had decided to do so, 
 as better on the whole than to provoke speculation over 
 an obliterated text. He might have speculated himself 
 over such an erasure. 
 
 " I don't think it impHes anything," said Mrs. Eldridge, 
 meaning, of course, anything about a lady and gentle- 
 man. " I fancy he is only referring to Art Movements 
 and Liberty silks and things. Go on." And Marianne 
 read : 
 
 " ' All sorts of upnesses-to-date, doing things her grand- 
 mothers would have thought infra dig. . . .' What does 
 that mean V 
 
 " Lord, Marianne ! — that doesn't mean anything. Do 
 go on. Only what they would be too swell to do ! That's 
 all." Marianne continued : 
 
 " ' Infra dig., while she herself is not allowed to try her 
 luck and face the music. She has the courage for it, 
 evidently. Old Norman blood ! By-the-bye, I've been 
 damning William the Conqueror up and down ever since I 
 came. For the old cock is besotted about him. Says he 
 was the first Socialist, and never talks of anything else !' 
 . . . It's not interesting this !" She stopped. 
 
 " No — that's not interesting. I want to hear more about 
 the girl's looks. Couldn't you find what he says about her 
 figure ? You said he laid stress on it." 
 
 " In his other letter. Tall and striking. Dignified kind 
 of girl." 
 
 " I should hardly call that lajang stress on her figure, a 
 such." Mrs. Challis reflects upon this rather paradoxical 
 view of her friend's. She is not as clear as she might be 
 often over her husband's elisions and hyperboles, and does 
 not feel sure she reported him rightly. " Perhaps," she 
 says, "I should not have said 'laid stress on.'" Her 
 friend says oh no ! — " laid stress on " was all right. But 
 there was some indeterminateness in what he was said to 
 have laid stress on. However, Mrs. Eldridge excuses 
 further elucidation. " Sure there's nothing more about 
 that girl ?" she asks. 
 
 " Yes, there's some more somewhere. Oh — here ! . . . 
 ' As to the lovely Judith, of course, she might prove a 
 duffer behind the footlights. But then, again, she mightn't.
 
 126 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 She's the very thing for Aminta Torrington in " Mistaken 
 Dehcacy." ' That's the name his new play's to be called. 
 I liked ' Atalanta in Paddington ' better myself." 
 
 " Not nearly such a good title. No ! If ' Mistaken 
 Delicacy ' hasn't been had a dozen times before, there 
 couldn't be a better title. Of course, he wants her to play 
 in it. What else is there ?" 
 
 " ' Very thing for Aminta Torrington. . . .' Oh yes ! — 
 it's here . . . ' and I shall try to get her to see Prester John 
 about it ' ... that's what they call Mr. — what's his 
 name ? — the manager at the Megatherium, don't you 
 know ? . . . ' about it, and see if we couldn't drill her up to 
 performance point. She couldn't be a total . . .' some- 
 thing crossed out. . . ." 
 
 " Let me look ... oh no — that's nothing ! Only 
 fiasco. It's the same as failure." Mrs. Eldridge retained 
 the letter and went on reading, unopposed. The erasure 
 had clearly been an almost insultingly merciful one, to 
 meet a defective knowledge half-way. She went on read- 
 ing, scrapwise, half inaudibly at times ; sometimes saying 
 "hm-hm-hm," to stand for omissions. . . . "'Couldn't be 
 a total failure, because it isn't every day . . . thing happens 
 . . . sort of Court-beauty . . . good family . . . make a set- 
 off against inexperience . . .' hm-hm ! . . . ' elocution very 
 good, as far as I can judge. . . .' I don't see any more about 
 her." Mrs. Eldridge read a good deal more of the letter 
 to make sure of the point, although Marianne reached out her 
 hand to take it back. The latter lady was looking rather 
 nettled. She knew that fiasco meant fizzle perfectly well, 
 and it was ridiculous of Titus to treat her like a school-girl. 
 
 Those who know the sort of person this young mater- 
 familias in a plaid dress was, must know also what she 
 meant by the phrase " a proper pride." It is easy for 
 superior persons — toffs of birth, toffs of Science, Letters, 
 Art — to decide that this phenomenon is a ridiculous 
 egotism in anything so middle, so Victorian, so redolent 
 of Leech or Cruikshank as Marianne Challis ; to pronounce 
 it an outcome of a simple incapacity to realise her oa\ti in- 
 significance. Gracious mercy ! — suppose we were all sud- 
 denly to " realise " our own insignificance ! . . . But really 
 the subject is not one that will bear thinking of. Dismiss
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 127 
 
 your insignificance with a caution ! And pray for a 
 cloudy sky, that the stars may not remind you of it. 
 
 When Charlotte Eldridge had read all down the next 
 page of the letter, she surrendered it to the hand that was 
 waiting for it. But, even then, not without a glance down 
 the following one as she let it go. Her friend apologized 
 for taking it away. 
 
 " I shouldn't mind your reading it all, dear," she said. 
 " But as I promised . . . ! " 
 
 " Quite right, dear !" And both these ladies felt they 
 had made a sacrifice to Duty. The letter wasn't to be 
 shown, and a great deal of it had not been shown. What 
 more could the most exacting ask ? How many ideals are 
 as nearly attained in this imperfect world ^ 
 
 " However, there's nothing in what you haven't seen 
 that could have interested you in the very least." Having 
 made out a good case for Conscience, why weaken it ? 
 But probably Mrs. Challis is unaware that she does so. 
 " No ! — there's not a word more about the girl." This is 
 in answer to a question that could hardly remain unan- 
 swered merely because nobody had asked it. The negative 
 chilled the conversation. Why was there not a word more 
 about the girl ? 
 
 A disturbance upstairs caused Mrs. Challis to get up and 
 leave the room. It was those children. Oh dear, what 
 little plagues they were ! Presently she came back, ex- 
 planatory. She believed it was really that odious girl 
 Martha's fault. She would have to get rid of her. But 
 Titus always sided with the girl, and that made it so diffi- 
 cult. . . . What was it this time ? . . . Oh, the child 
 wanted the iron. Martha was ironing, and of course 
 paying no attention, and Emmie had burnt herself. No — 
 not badly ; but a nasty bum ! Marianne's style does not 
 favour definition. 
 
 The two ladies sit on into the twilight — early, from a 
 south-east wind bringing the town-fog westward — and are 
 less talkative. The slow-combustion grate's first snail-like 
 manifestations this year — for the weather has been mild 
 till to-day — begin to glimmer in a half -dusk favourable to 
 their detection. The children will be doA\Ti directly to say 
 good-night. One can't talk till they are done with and
 
 128 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 out of the way. Presently they come, but are not allowed 
 to rush to the cake at once. They shall have some directly. 
 The casualty, Emmie, who yelled, exhibits an arm between 
 four and five years old with a scar on it. She consents to 
 goldbeater's skin on condition that she licks the place 
 herself. But what did that matter when there was cake ? 
 All children have but one relation to cake. They want it, 
 and v/hen that piece is done, they want another the same 
 size, or larger. These two were quite one with their kind 
 on this point, but they took the first piece behind a sofa 
 to devour it ; even as a Royal Bengal Tiger at the Zoo- 
 logical carries away a horror a vegetarian would die of 
 into his bedroom, lest you should get it and eat it first. But 
 they came out for more ; which the tiger never does, 
 because he knows it isn't any use, and prefers to pretend 
 he doesn't care to ask favours and be refused. 
 
 " I shall give them a couple of grains of Dover's powder 
 apiece," said their mother. " They've had nothing for a 
 month." This good lady held mth the practice of a dose 
 now and again, independent of symptoms. " If it were not 
 for me, they would be left altogether ^dthout medicine. 
 It's a thing their father always opposes me about." The 
 words " Dover's powder " were said a little too soon to be 
 unheard by the persons concerned, and the consequence was 
 that Emmie the younger one bit Martha, the nurse, going 
 upstairs. However, this incident, with the ructions that 
 arose from it, was closed in time ; and a little more peace 
 and quiet followed in its wake. 
 
 " I wonder at your husband and that Martha girl. Look 
 at her teeth !" 
 
 " My dear Charlotte, Titus quite likes Martha, compared 
 to Harmood, whose teeth are really good, considering that 
 she only takes sixteen pounds." Harmood was the house- 
 and- parlourmaid — a special antipathy of the great author's. 
 
 " Weil ! — I wonder at it, is all I can say. They go so 
 much by teeth. Besides, look at the way she hooks her dress. 
 The whole thing ! You may depend on it that Mr. Challis 
 is only doing it for a blind, because Harmood' s pretty. ..." 
 
 " Doing what for a bhnd ?" 
 
 " Oh, my dear child, what a silly you are ! You know 
 perfectly well what I mean. That sort of thing. He
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 129 
 
 wants you to think he hasn't any eyes, and makes beheve 
 to prefer the ugly one. Lots of husbands go on Uke that — 
 only simpletons never see anything." 
 
 " I can't see that it makes any difference to me, either way." 
 
 " Very well, dear ! Look at it your own way. Only 
 don't blame me and say I didn't tell you !" 
 
 Marianne failed, owing to lack of constructive power in 
 emergencies, in an attempt to devise something sharp to 
 say to her friend. However, as that lady closed \\dth a snap, 
 even as a moral physician who had written a prescription 
 and done her duty, there was time to consider an extempore 
 — an ex multo tempore, one might say. 
 
 " I wish you would say exactly what you mean, Char- 
 lotte." 
 
 " What about ? About the servants ?" 
 
 " No. About Titus." 
 
 " My dear Marianne, it isn't any use talking about it. 
 A woman in your position has to expect it. . . ." 
 
 " Yes ! But expect what ?" 
 
 " If you won't interrupt me, I'll tell you. Of course, 
 you know I know perfectly well your husband is to be 
 trusted, and all that sort of thing. He has too much 
 genuine regard for you. But I always have thought, and 
 always shall think, that men can't help themselves. . . ." 
 
 " What for ? I mean, why do you go on raking up ? 
 Can't you leave alone ?" 
 
 " That's just what I was going to say, dear ! Especially 
 in this case. Because there's really no need, if you come 
 to think of it. I'll tell you, dear, exactly what I should 
 recommend you to do — what / should do if I were in your 
 place. I should either say absolutely nothing, or if I said 
 anything at all, just make it chaff — talk about his new 
 flame — say you will evidently have to get somebody else, 
 don't you see ? As if it was entirely out of the question ! 
 Or perhaps that would be dangerous, and it wouldn't do to 
 have liim thinking you suspected him of fancying you 
 weren't in earnest. No ! — on the whole, I recommend 
 sajdng absolutely nothing" 
 
 Marianne's brain refuses to receive complications beyond 
 a certain point. She picks up the last intelligible phrase. 
 " As if what was entirely out of the question ?" 
 
 VOL. I. 9
 
 130 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 But Mrs. Eldridge is on her guard against making mis- 
 chief. " You mustn't run away Avith the idea that I said 
 there was anything," is the form her caution takes. And 
 then, in response to an angry flush on her friend's face, 
 " I'm sure there isn't the sKghtest reason for you to be 
 uneasy. I have far too much faith in your husband to 
 suppose such a thing possible for one moment. . . . No, 
 indeed, dear ! — even if she gets him to get her into this play 
 of his — and then, of course, they would go on seeing each 
 other— I shouldn't feel the smallest uneasiness. Because 
 look at her social position !" 
 
 " What has her social position got to do with it ?" 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge elevates her eyebrows, and perhaps her 
 shoulders, slightly, as though asking space what next ? 
 But she brings both doAvn to the level of her friend's know- 
 ledge of the world before answering : " I should have said 
 everything. A woman in her position doesn't commit her- 
 self in any way with a man in your husband's, however 
 distinguished he may be. Read any divorce-case of that 
 sort of people, and see if they don't have co-respondents of 
 condition. Of course, I'm not speaking of disgraceful cases, 
 where the woman isn't received after. But ordinary divorce- 
 cases in Fashionable Life." 
 
 " I can't see what you're talking about, Charlotte." 
 
 " Then I can't help it, dear. But I should have thought 
 it was pretty plain, for all that !" 
 
 Marianne laughs, a little uneasOy. " Do you mean to 
 say, Charlotte, that because Titus goes away for a week to 
 a country-house . . . ?" 
 
 " Go on, dear." But Marianne is not constitutionally 
 a sentence-finisher. She begins again : 
 
 " Why isn't Titus to speak to a lady without a preach 
 about it ?" 
 
 " My dear child, nobody's preaching. If you were to 
 listen to me, instead of becoming impatient ..." 
 
 " I'm not impatient ! But you know it's irritating, and 
 you can't deny it." 
 
 " Very well, dear, I won't then. But let me finish what 
 1 was saying. If you had listened to me, you Avould have 
 seen my meaning. I was all the time exonerating your 
 husband from the suspicion of even the slightest flirtation
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 131 
 
 with this showy girl. I was trying to make your mind easy 
 about them, and to say that even if they are rather thrown 
 together — as of course they must be, because one knows 
 what country-houses are ..." 
 
 " Now, Charlotte, that is nonsense ! Why are country- 
 houses any different from town-houses ? What stuff !" 
 Marianne sees a light on the horizon. She knows about 
 country-houses, because she was a girl in the countiy once. 
 But much of her friend's analj^ses and insights had been so 
 much unqualified Sordello to her, and had left her brain 
 spinning. She can and will hold fast that which is good, 
 and stick to the country-houses. And clearly, if she can 
 prove that countiy and to^\Ti-houses are on all fours for the 
 purposes of Charlotte's world — a world where a sort of 
 dowdy Eros dodders respectably about, all the Greek fire 
 knocked out of him — then a stopper \nl] be put on these 
 suggestions of infidelities. She does not see all the con- 
 necting-links, but would like to unhorse her opponent 
 somehow. 
 
 That lady is also ready to let the issue turn provisionally 
 on to^\Ti and country-house life. But this is for a reason 
 of her ou-n. She pursues the subject : " It's not stuff, dear. 
 There's all the difference in the ^^'orld. In country-houses 
 people split up into couples, and there's no check. 
 Chaperones on long walks, of course ! — ^only they can't go 
 so quick, and get left behind. In touTi, no such thing. 
 And there's really no such thing as staying with, in town, 
 either. Practically. Of course, now and again friends 
 from the country to stay a few days. But it isn't the same 
 thing, going to the Royal Academy and the New Gallery. 
 The Zoological Gardens is a good deal more like, only 
 scarcely anybody goes. Wasn't that John's knock ?" 
 
 It was, apparently, and was followed by John's pocket- 
 handkerchief — at least, that was how a very loud noise was 
 inexactly classified. Whatever its proper name was, it 
 caused its promoter's wife to fear his cold was worse. He 
 must have his feet in mustard and hot water. But his 
 attitude was, when he had replaced the contingent re- 
 mainder of the noise — a real pocket-handkerchief — in his 
 pocket, that his cold was nearly well, and no human power 
 should induce him to submit to treatment of any sort ; 
 
 9—2
 
 132 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 but mustard and hot water least of all. He would go and 
 have a Turkish Bath, and kill himself. Not that he antici- 
 pated a fatal result ; his wife forecast that for him. It 
 transpired shortly that he habitually set himself in opposi- 
 tion to all her wishes, and went his own way. But in so 
 doing he encountered frequent disasters, his rescues from 
 which were always achieved by her, single-handed, with 
 constant addition to a long score of debt, unpaid by him, 
 on account of which he never so much as said thank-you ! 
 \^r Mr. Eldridge was a person who defied description, in a 
 certain sense ; but only because description calls for 
 materials, and he supplied none, or nearly none. He 
 might have been the Average Man liimself, for any salient 
 point that he presented. An observant person, called on 
 to recollect what he was like, would probably have remem- 
 bered that he shaved, all but a little wliisker, and given up 
 the rest of him to oblivion. 
 
 His conversation, after the Turkish Bath had passed 
 away, was an inquiry if his wife was ready ; and, after he 
 had been told not to fuss, but to sit down and make himself 
 agreeable, a statement that it was a good deal colder than 
 yesterday. So it afforded a natural opportunity to his 
 good lady of giving him a chance to enrich it by comment 
 on the subject in hand at the time of his arrival. She did 
 not \nsh to drop it, having, in fact — as hinted above — a 
 purpose in dwelling on it. 
 
 " We're talking about country-houses," said she, 
 " What houses ?" said he ; and then, without waiting for 
 a,n answer : " Oh — country-houses ! Where ?" 
 
 " Don't pretend to be stupid, John. Nowhere, of 
 course ! No particular houses — country-houses in general. 
 And town-houses." 
 
 " Oh, I see ! What about 'em ? How's the children ?" 
 " Never mind them ! Listen to me." Marianne inter- 
 jected that perhaps they hadn't gone to bed, and she could 
 ring for Martha to see. But she didn't do it, and no one 
 urged it. So the children lapsed, and Mrs, Eldridge pro- 
 ceeded : " Pay attention to what I'm saying, John, and 
 put that glass down. You'll break it." He did as he was 
 bid. " We — are — talking — about — the differences between 
 country-houses and town-houses," To which Mr. Eldridge
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 133 
 
 replied, " Oh, ah ! — yes, to be sure ! Well ! — you'd have 
 to see 'em both," causing his wife to despair visibly of male 
 intelligence, with endurance, before starting afresh with an 
 appearance of willingness to make things easy for a slow 
 apprehension : " We \\'ere talking about the difference of 
 the way one lives, in town and in the countr}^. Nothing to 
 do -wdth premises." 
 
 She then went on to put a hypothetical case, to enable 
 her husband to grasp the full range of the recent conversa- 
 tion. Supposing that he had been a young man enamoured 
 of a damsel whose sentiments towards himself were a matter 
 of conjecture — suppose, in fact, he were " paying atten- 
 tion " ; that was how the lady put it — would he prefer to 
 press his suit in a to^vn-house or a country-house ? She 
 made the question a leading one by suggesting divine 
 solitudes congenial to the development of tender passions, 
 and a climate favourable to the inspection of sunsets and 
 moonrises. So tempting was the prospect to the mind of 
 her hearer that he made a grimace expressive of greedy 
 delight, and gave a low whistle. " 'Ooky !" said he, 
 dropping an aspirate humorously. " Country-houses — 
 rather !" 
 
 " Any man would say so at once, Marianne." Which 
 Mrs. Eldridge contrives to articulate in a Avay that implies, 
 Heaven knows hoAv, that their discussion has had applica- 
 tion to some particular case — no mere abstract review of 
 the subject. For the apprehension of her husband is 
 reached, with the effect that he says, -with an expression 
 of roused interest : " I say, Lotty, tell up. Who's the 
 party ? Who's at it now ?" But he does not press for 
 information, because his A\dfe checks him skilfully with, 
 " Hush, John ! — never mind now ! I'll tell you after." 
 His comment, " Some gal, I suppose," suggests some lucid 
 vision into life and character beyond its drain on the 
 resources of language. 
 
 Marianne Challis would have entered joyously enough 
 with her friend into the building up of a situation involving 
 only a neighbour's husband or wife, but she would fain 
 have put a brake on the car of Gossip in her own husband's 
 case. The worst of it was that every word she had said 
 so far, with that intention, had only brought about an
 
 134 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 increase of speed. And now she was conscious that if she 
 put in any protest of her faith in her hus'' and's stabihty, 
 matters would be made ten times worse. The horses 
 would get the bit in their teeth. At least, his name had not 
 been mentioned, nor the company he was in, before this 
 stuj)id John Eldridge. All this, or the protoplasm of it, 
 hung about her mind as she began saying, " If you 
 mean . . ." and stopped. But she had, even \\dth those 
 three words, put her head in the lion's mouth past recall. 
 Her friend interrupted her. 
 
 " I don't mean to say a single — word — more, dear, to 
 you or to anyone. So don't be uneasy. But you see what 
 John thinks." The speaker, as she rose to her feet mth 
 these words, as one gathering up for departure, showed as 
 a young woman in black, of a lissome, yet angular type ; 
 taller than her friend, and with more claim, from personal 
 experience of her o^\^a figure, to sit in judgment on other 
 women's. But her complexion is not as good as Mari- 
 anne's — a rather sallow one, not free from a sense of 
 freckles. However, that may only be the firelight. 
 
 John, merely conscious that something male and female 
 was under discussion, had put on what iie conceived to be 
 the proper look for the father of a family equal to all 
 moral emergencies. His face would have served just as 
 well for that of a person doing subtraction with a sense of 
 responsibility. This ambiguity of outward rendering of 
 the phases of his mind, of course, gave corresponding 
 latitude to his wife's interpretation of it. 
 
 Marianne had a growing misgiving that she was becom- 
 ing skilfull}'^ entangled in the meshwork of an undeserved 
 embarrassment, and floundered in desperation. " I don't 
 the least understand what you mean, Charlotte," she 
 said. " What does he think ? What about ;" On this 
 he asserted himself. 
 
 " No, I say, you know ! Don't bring me in — don't bring 
 me in ! / know nothing, you know — nothing at all, you 
 know ! Mum's the word, you know — always keep out of 
 this sort of thing !" He enforced his words by pursing 
 up his mouth and shaking his head continuously, in a kind 
 of paroxysm of caution. He also turned somewhat purple, 
 and his^eyes grew smaller. These combinations put the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 135 
 
 finishing-touch on the strengtli of his -wife's position. She 
 threw up a new and final entrenchment, and, as it were, 
 closed the subject officially. 
 
 " You do — quite — right, John," said she, " to keep out 
 of it. That's all you've got to do." She then assumed 
 quite suddenly a large-hearted tone of liberality. " And, 
 after all," she said, " what does it all come to ? Just 
 nothing whatever ! I'm sure, dear Marianne, you need 
 not allow yourself to feel the least uneasiness — not for a 
 moment ! With a husband like yours ! Only think ! 
 You'll see it will be all right, dear — just recollect what I 
 say ! Now we must go. I'll go and get my cloak — it's 
 upstairs. No ! — don't you come. . . ." But Marianne 
 goes, for all that. 
 
 Mr. Eldridge, left to himself, whistled a monotonous tune 
 over and over again, and flicked a glove that v/as on mth 
 another that was off. He threw his eyes opener by fits 
 and starts, as if he were trying on a new pair of lids. 
 Then he produced the vanished pocket-handkerchief, and 
 held it by two corners before him, spread out, as though 
 he admired the pattern. Then, as though he decided 
 suddenty that it was not Saint Veronica's, he availed 
 himself of it as a resource of civilisation, and returned it 
 resolutely to his pocket. We are not responsible for this 
 gentleman's actions, and can only record, without ex- 
 planation, that he then said quite distinctly, " Pum, pum, 
 pum !" and slapped his hands heavily together. He 
 added : " Time's gettin' on " — a remark equally true of 
 all periods. Then he listened to the voices of the two 
 ladies returning do\\Ti the stairs, 
 
 " Oh no ! — you needn't be the least afraid about John. 
 He's discretion itself in a thing of this sort. And you'll 
 see it will be just as I say. When your dear husband 
 comes back it will all be exactly the same, and . . ." Here 
 her voice dropped, and John listened hard, but missed a 
 great deal. ... "So now, dear, you mil promise to be 
 quite happy about it, and not let yourself fret. Won't 
 you ■?" 
 
 " But, Charlotte dear, it's all about Clothing. . . ." 
 
 " That's the right view to take, dear. That's just 
 exactly what it is — all about nothing ! Now let's try and
 
 136 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 be happy, and not think about it. John ! — where are 
 you ? Do come and let's be off ! I hope it isn't 
 raining." 
 
 " Pavement was dry enough when I came in," was 
 IVIr. Eldridge's testimony. To corroborate it he went out 
 in the front garden and gazed upwards, open-mouthed. 
 " Oh no — iVs not raining, fast enough," said he. Which 
 seemed to imply that perhaps something else was. 
 
 Marianne Avent back into her parlour and rang the bell 
 for Elizabeth Barclay to come and take away the tea- 
 things, because Harmood was out for her holiday. She 
 looked and felt flushed and irritated, but could not have 
 said whether it was A\ath Charlotte Eldridge, with herself, 
 or with this showy girl at Royd. With all her stupidity — 
 and she had plenty — she was not wanting in loyalty to 
 her husband ; although it may be a good deal of this 
 loyalty was only a form " proper pride " — that is to say, 
 amour propre — took. How one wonders that common- 
 place, uninteresting people should have any amour propre 
 — should love those insipid selves of theirs at all ! But 
 they have it — the dullest of them. 
 
 As she sat there in the growing dusk, watching the slow- 
 combustion stove economizing its coal, and making 
 attempts to consume its 0"«ti smoke, her soul was doing 
 battle on its oavti behalf against the insidious siren 
 Jealousy, who came and came and came again each time 
 she thrust her contemptuously away. Had she, perhaps, 
 despised her a Uttle too roundly when her first whispers 
 were audible ? Had she treated them too much as an 
 absurdity Vvhen her husband's first great success had been 
 followed by a sudden uplifting of him into a world she 
 resented — resented because the onty part she could play 
 in it had been a xevy minor one ? Had she taken it too 
 easily for granted that no harm would come if he went his 
 way and she hers — she, who didn't mean to be patro- 
 nised, whoever else did ! Might it not have been really 
 wiser to brace herself up to the bearing of one or two 
 slights and humiliations, to laugh them off and acknow- 
 ledge that a homely, uneducated woman of her sort must 
 needs fall contentedly into a back rank, rather than to
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 137 
 
 refuse indignantly to march with the army at all ? She 
 was not going to be tolerated, and made allowances for, 
 not she ! — that was her attitude. That Arkroyd woman 
 would have been just civil to her in time, no doubt ; but 
 how about all the affronts and indignities she would have 
 had to put up ^vith during apprenticeship ? No — it was 
 best as it Avas : Titus to go his way and she hers ! Be- 
 sides, her being constantly watching him would do no 
 good, if there were — that is to say, if there had been — any 
 truth in this nonsense of Charlotte's. But, really, it was 
 all so idiotic. As if she couldn't trust Titus for five 
 minutes away from her apron-strings ! Of course, Titus 
 was to be trusted ! . . . Was he ? 
 
 She got up and walked about the room in the flickering 
 firelight, conscious of her heart-beats, and half-inclined 
 to cry, if she could have chosen. But her eyes felt dry 
 over it, as a matter of fact. She caught herself begimiing 
 to feel angry with Titus, convicted herself of it, and repri- 
 manded the culprit severely. Idiot that she was, to be 
 affected by mere unfounded gabble ! For she was far 
 from believing, all the while, that Charlotte had any faith 
 in her own insinuations. She fully recognised that her 
 friend's pleasure in dwelling on the constructive relations 
 of Paul and Virginia, Paolo and Francesca, Adam and 
 Eve, for that matter — anywhom male and female, any- 
 where — was only human sympathy, leavened with hys- 
 teria. Had she not helped her, lubens et ex animo, when 
 the improper study of mankind seemed good to their 
 hours of leisure ? The studv, that is, of man and woman- 
 kind in braces, selected by the student ? But when the 
 model suggested for study was her oaati husband, in 
 leash with a strange young lady, whom she had not 
 seen, she felt the position of a philosophical analyst 
 uncongenial. 
 
 Why could she not be angry with Charlotte ? That 
 might have seemed the most natural safety-valve. Mari- 
 anne had never read " Othello " — or much to speak of 
 else — but she had seen it at the play. So she may easily 
 have recalled lago's cautions against the green-eyed 
 monster that doth make the meat it feeds on, and com- 
 pared it with the way her friend had somehow contrived
 
 138 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 to appear a warning voice, crying beware ! to a sus- 
 picious soul adrift in a wdldemess of its own unreason. 
 She was not so very unlike the Moor in her ready accept- 
 ance of the character her lago had claimed for herself. 
 Of course, Charlotte was a fool, and fanciful ; but, equally 
 of course, she was no mischief-maker. Why, see what 
 a perfect faith she had in Titus's integrity ! Marianne 
 was angry mth herself for allo^'^dng a doubt of it, without 
 having the shrewdness to see that she never would have 
 felt one if it had not been for Charlotte. In fact, left 
 to herself in the growing darkness, to brood over her own 
 scarcely fledged suspicion, she could not for the life of her 
 have said what on earth began it all. She forgot all 
 details of her conversation mth Charlotte, and only knew 
 that something in it had made her feel very uncomfort- 
 able. 
 
 Really, one is sometimes inclined to believe that imps of 
 darkness hang about, to run and help whenever they see 
 a little bit of mischief brewing.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 Marianne's loving Tite did not come back at the time he 
 had appointed — not by many days. He postponed doing 
 so in order to go back on the same day as Mr. Bro\\Tarigg, 
 whose society he had begun to find rather amusing. Their 
 departure together was again postponed in order that they 
 might travel up in company with WilHam Rufus and Lord 
 FeHxthorpe, with whom both had come to be on the best 
 of terms, after each had denounced either to the other, in 
 the strictest confidence, as purse-proud, rank-proud, 
 toffish, and standoffish. They had collated their respective 
 observations of the ingrained vices of Aristocracy, and 
 found that they agreed. But, then, after they had un- 
 packed their hearts \nth unprejudiced and candid criti- 
 cism, they had suddenly volte face'd, and discerned tliat 
 there was always a Something j^ou could not define about 
 people of this sort. They had both noticed this singular 
 fact, and each was supplied by it with an insight into the 
 unusual powers of penetration of the other. It Avas a 
 curious coincidence that both had acquired a consciousness 
 of this Something by comparing the courteous demeanour 
 and graceful hospitality of their host with what they found 
 it impossible to describe as anything but the Plebeian 
 Vulgarity of the sitting Conservative member for the 
 borough. Mr. Ramsay Tomes caught it hot. Then 
 look at the indescribable grace of Lady Arkroyd, and con- 
 trast it with the dowdy personnel and awkward manners 
 of the pofitical gentleman's wife. Why ! — there was a 
 woman, her ladyship to Avit, who could be as rude as she 
 pleased to anyone, and the indefinable Something came in 
 and carried it off ! 
 
 Was it the indefinable Something, or a very easily 
 definable Nothing-of-the-Sort, that brought about a still 
 further delay in Alfred Challis's return home ? Probably 
 
 139
 
 140 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 the latter, in the form of the gradual cordiality that comes 
 to folk living in the same house under auspicious circum- 
 stances, and goes on growdng till quarrelling time. It was 
 of less importance when once he had overstayed his 
 return-ticket ; and the final outcome of two or three post- 
 ponements, each to await a reinforcement to the home- 
 ward-bound Londoners, was that the bulk of the Royd 
 house-party caught the two o'clock train ten days behind 
 the date of Mr. Challis's promised return to his domestic 
 hearth, and arrived at Euston in a drizzling mist, Avhich 
 knew that summer had gone, and had the atmosphere all 
 to itself. 
 
 The porter that carried his portmanteau and his game — 
 a hare and partridges, with which was associated a promise 
 of pheasants next month — to a four-wheeler, might have 
 noticed that the literary-looking gentleman and the good- 
 looking young lady in blue said good-bye a great deal — in 
 fact, until a carriage called out to know whether the latter 
 was coming or not. But this porter's name was Onions, 
 and he had no soul, except one that was wrapped up in 
 remuneration. So he accepted fourpence and saw nothing. 
 
 But he might have. And also he might have heard the 
 following conversation between the good-looking — or best- 
 looking — young Isbdy and the gentleman, after the latter 
 had made sure that his selected four-wheeler was prepared 
 to go as far as Wimbledon. 
 
 " Now, Mr. Challis, I know you're not to be trusted to 
 give my message to your wife. ..." 
 
 " Yes, I am. She's to Avrite you a line to say when she'll 
 be at home." 
 
 " Stupid man ! Now you know quite well it was nothing 
 as bold as that. No, dear Mr. Challis, tell her I don't 
 want to make a formal ' call.' I want to know her — as 
 well as I know you. And I never shall unless we see each 
 other quietly, when there's no one else there. Oh dear ! — 
 if only people I want to laaow would give me a cup of tea 
 and say ' not at home ' to everyone else !" 
 
 " I should myself ! But I quite understand. I'll wrap 
 up the message to Marianne exactly to that effect. She 
 shall write and fix a day. And. I'm not to be there — 
 that's it, isn't it ?"
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 141 
 
 " That's it. Good man ! And you understand that 
 I'm entirely in earnest about Aminta Torrington — (all 
 rio-ht ! Nobody can hear. They're all in the carriage) — 
 and you're to speak to IVIr. Magnus at the Megatherium 
 about it." 
 
 " Oh yes ! I'm going to speak. Honour bright !" 
 
 " Very well then ! Now good-bye, ]\Ir. ChalHs." 
 
 " Good-bye. I have had a pleasant time." But Mr. 
 Onions heard none of this, as, while he was disposing of 
 the portmanteau, his attention was engaged by conversa- 
 tion with the cabman. 
 
 " Where's Wimbledon, Honey ?" the latter had said, as 
 he took the box from him. He seemed over-ripe, did this 
 cabman. He could not fall off the box, though, for he had 
 bound himself to it by tarpaulins of an inflexible nature. 
 " Honey " was not Irish : it was short for " Onions." 
 
 " What's the use of askin' me, when you know yourself ? 
 Mean to say you don't V 
 
 " I was born there, my son. I've lived there ever since. 
 Likewise, I'm going to hend my days there, exceptin' I 
 should 'appen to live for ever. I was just a-puttin' the 
 question to see if you knew." 
 
 " Couldn't say to harf an inch where it is. But it's a 
 place you get a pint at, every wdsit." 
 
 " Right you are, my son ! . . . All right, governor — just 
 off, as soon as these cloths are tucked in. You never men- 
 tioned any 'urry, or I'd have seen to it !" 
 
 And then Royd and its luxurious life have finally 
 vanished, and every day life has come back, as the cab 
 growls through its rather long ride. Challis was paying 
 the penalty of coming home by a different route, and now 
 almost wished he hadn't made up his mind to cab the 
 whole way. But you know what it is when you have a 
 large portmanteau that won't go on a hansom. 
 
 If it had not been for the hare and partridges, he could 
 have managed to consider the whole thing a dream. This 
 would have been an advantage ; for no one stickles at 
 finding waking life dull after a fascinating sleep-experi- 
 ence. Do not we all rather love to rub it into our waking 
 surroundings how sweet that place was in the dream, how 
 bright those skies and seas were, how lovable that — well,
 
 142 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 usually — person of the opposite sex was ? Are you, if 
 you are a lady, prepared to deny this last item ? Not 
 that this concerns the story, for there they were — the hare 
 and partridges. And the memories they brought back 
 clashed with the long perspectives of street-lamps in the 
 drizzle, and the reflections of them ; and the male um- 
 brellas and female umbrellas bobbing endlessly past below 
 them, or waiting for a bus that somebody may get out of. 
 Just there ; and the busses that stopped to shed their 
 passengers and fill up again with Heaven-favoured fresh 
 ones — while they, the umbrellas, waited — and made the 
 hearts of those no umbrella could keep dry sick ^\•ith Hope 
 deferred. This hare and partridges, fur-soft and feather- 
 soft, though cold to the touch, were full of suggestions of 
 the life that had been switched off finally just now at 
 Euston Station. But then, of course — Challis ought to 
 have recollected tliis, and he felt it — they were equally full 
 of suggestion of where they were going to be devoured. 
 Was he not going home to Marianne, and the children, 
 and his snug little writing- room looking out on the Common 
 across the garden, where he was on no account to be dis- 
 turbed ? The very word " home " had a magic in it, and 
 so forth : consult Literature, jMssim ! . . . 
 
 No, really, it was too absurd to allow his nasty cynical 
 tone to creep into his thoughts — here in Hyde Park ; for 
 that was the Marble Arch, and the cab was making a good 
 record — when in less than an hour he would be back 
 among his Lares and Penates. As he got nearer home 
 he found that the fire of pleasurable anticipation he had 
 lighted began to crackle and bum up of its own accord, 
 without further effort on his part. How he ^^ished he 
 could invent a Avord for that confounded hypothetical 
 ■s^dckedness — treachery or what not — that nervous imagi- 
 natives impute to themselves, knowing its unreality all 
 the wliile ! 
 
 He had never allowed himself to believe for one moment 
 that Royd owed any of its charm for him to anything but 
 . . . well ! — a sort of general summary of the charms of a 
 big wealthy country-house full of pleasant people vaih 
 balances at their Bankers'. So he expressly vetoed the 
 idea that in the dream he was now waking from, as he
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 143 
 
 neared The Hermitage and Marianne, there was any one 
 individual that played a predominant part. He vetoed it 
 in obedience to that groundless guilt of conscience he was 
 going to find a name for. But for that he would have let 
 it alone. 
 
 He would have to find that name, to brand the intoler- 
 able nuisance ; to denounce it by it, when it appeared. 
 Then he might look it in the face unflinchingly, when it 
 told him to snub his memory for remembering so vividly 
 the sunset-glow on his companion's face, that day they 
 Avalked back from the Rector}'. What a luxury it would 
 be to give this phenomenon its proper place ! As, for 
 instance, Mental Astigmatism — something of that sort ! 
 The more syllables the better ! Let him see ! — didn't 
 aischune in Greek mean disgrace, or guilt ? How would 
 pseudceschynomorphism serve the turn ? Long enough, 
 anj'how, to convince a Grand Jury. . . . 
 
 Well, it was this — no need to say the long name every 
 time ; at least, until the Jury should be empanelled ! — 
 that was galhng the kibe of his mind at every chance 
 thought of Judith iVrkroyd that came into it. Why, in 
 Heaven's name, should he not dwell with pleasure on her 
 eyes, which Avere public property ; on her lips, which he 
 did not propose to interfere with. ; on the touch of her hand 
 at parting, which, by-the-bye, had gone the round of the 
 male units as the party broke up ? He was not going to 
 appropriate a larger share than Felixthorpe, for instance, 
 whom he thought a very nice chap ; or Brownrigg, for that 
 matter ! Or . . . but no ! — one must draw a line some- 
 where. Let Mr. Ramsay Tomes keep his fat hand to him- 
 self ! At which point Pseudetcetera — (that would do for 
 the present) — said aloud : " Come, Alfred Challis, what 
 business have you with the word desecration in your mind 
 in connection mth this part of the business ?" He re- 
 buked the phenomenon, giving it its name in full. 
 
 He was no match for it, though ; and it ended by 
 scoring. " Should I be here at all," it said, " if Mari- 
 anne were ... 1" He brushed the question aside, but 
 his heart knew the end of it. Marianne wasn't. . . . 
 
 However, it Avas all Pseudetcetera, anyhow ! Judith 
 Arkroyd was cultivating him from a purely selfish motive —
 
 144 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 this rather bitterly ; and as for Marianne, was he not 
 really glad to be back again, and wouldn't it be a pleasure 
 to ... to present her with the hare and partridges, and 
 facilitate the housekeeping ? 
 
 As to Miss Arkroyd's proposal to call, he did not know 
 how it would be received. Perhaps he would have to tell 
 Marianne that she really must be a sensible woman, and 
 a Woman of the World. 
 
 Anyhow— and he drifted into a self-interested channel 
 with some sense of relief— it would never do to have what 
 might be a golden prospect for his play thwarted. He had 
 only imperfect means, so far, of guessing what Judith 
 would sound hke behind the footlights ; but as to what 
 she would look like, that was a thing there could be no 
 
 misgiving about Why ! — the horse was walking. 
 
 Actually, Putney Hill ! What a much better lot of four- 
 wheelers had come on the streets lately ! In a quarter of 
 an hour he would be at home ; and really very glad — honour 
 bright ! — to be back with Marianne. 
 
 When any lady or gentleman comes back from an ab- 
 sence, in a cab with luggage on it — however passionate 
 may have been her or his longing for a corresponding him 
 or her who may have been (or might have been) watch- 
 ing at the door for its arrival, or however much the two 
 of them may feel disposed to 
 
 " Stand tranced in long embraces 
 Mixt with kisses sweeter, sweeter 
 Tiian anything on earth " — 
 
 they usually find, in practice, that it is necessary to stand 
 matters over, because of the cab. This does not, of course, 
 apply to where a man-servant is kept, who can pay fares 
 dogmatically, and conduct himself like the Pope in Council. 
 But where the yearnings of both parties have to be 
 suppressed all through a discussion of the fare and a re- 
 pulse of the unemployed, whose services have been antici- 
 pated by your own mercenaries . . . well ! — do what you 
 will in the way of cordiality afterwards, it is chilling, and 
 jou can't deny it. We know we are putting this in a very 
 homely way, but this is a very homely subject.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 145 
 
 If that over-ripe cabman had sho\vn a different spirit, 
 and accepted the shilHng or so too much that ChalUs 
 offered him, and gone his way in silence, Avho knows what 
 course events would have taken in the Challis house- 
 hold ? But he not only said, " My fare's nine shillings !" 
 but came down from his box as one comes down from a 
 box when one's mind is thoroughly made up, and one 
 ain't going to stand any more of one's ex-fare's trifling. 
 He also unbuttoned a series of coats, and produced from 
 his inner core a pocket-book, supposed to contain docu- 
 mentary evidence of some sort. It was eight mile o' 
 ground, and three on 'em outside the radius. Challis 
 was irritated at the low valuation put on his understanding 
 by this cabman, and disputed a point he would have given 
 way on had an appeal been made to the goodness of his 
 heart to shut his eyes to obvious truth in the interest of 
 extortion. He was also obsessed by a woe-begone creature 
 who had run all the way from Putney Bridge to assist 
 with the one portmanteau, but had been headed off by 
 Martha and EUzabeth Barclay. Who, thus intercepted, 
 had substituted a moral claim on account of the distance 
 no one had asked him to cover for a legal claim for carry- 
 ing a portmanteau into a house, and making the latter 
 smell of his wardrobe till properly aired and the mats 
 shook next day. The consequence of which was that, 
 when the cabman had reconstituted himself on his box, 
 under protest, and departed, Challis, eager to make up 
 for the postponement of his greeting by a good husbandly 
 accolade, found himself met by, "As soon as you've done 
 Mith the man !" and, turning, perceived an injured being 
 touching a soaked cap, and awaiting recognition or exe- 
 cration in a spirit of meekness, but quite determined not 
 to go away without a settlement. 
 
 " Run all the way from Putney, have you 1 What the 
 devil did you do it for ? Nobody asked you." Here a 
 gratuity, of coppers. 
 
 " Won't you make it up a shillin'. Captain ? It is 'ard, 
 when a man's been out all day looking for a chance, and 
 walked all over Battersea and Chelsea and round Brixton — 
 ask anybody if I ain't ! — and nobody to 'elp me to a job 
 or say the word for me. . . . Thank ye kindly. Captain !" — ■ 
 
 VOL. I. 10
 
 146 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 here more coppers ; this mode of address proving irre- 
 sistible — "onty if it was made up to a shillin' I could get 
 my tools out of pawn, being a carpenter by trade. . . ." 
 
 Challis pushed the door to in the man's face with some- 
 thing like an oath. Then at last he got a moment's leisure 
 for his overdue kiss, which he paid liberally, as he said : 
 " Well, it is jolly to be back, at any rate ! How are the 
 kids ?" For, whatever the malady he had made the awk- 
 ward name for had been, he wasn't going to show any con- 
 sciousness of it. 
 
 " The children you mean ? There's nothing the matter 
 with them that I know of. Now make haste ; because it's 
 a small leg. If I'd thought you were going to be so late it 
 could have been rumpsteak." 
 
 Challis looked at his watch. " H'm !" said he. Which 
 meant that seven-forty was not so enormously late, and 
 really more elastic arrangements might have been con- 
 trived. " I shouldn't have time for a warm bath, 
 should I ?" 
 
 " I must tell Elizabeth Barclay, then. I dare say she 
 can keep the meat back. Only say !" 
 
 " Oh, it don't matter, if there's any difficulty. . . ." 
 
 " My dear ! — why should there be any difficulty ! 
 You've only got to say. . . . Well ! — am I to tell Elizabeth 
 Barclay, or am I not 1" 
 
 ChalHs decided, and said. That is, he did not formulate 
 special instructions, his words being merely, " Half-past, 
 then. I'll be sure not to be later," and went straight away 
 to get a bath. It is the greatest of luxuries, as we all 
 know, after a journey, and Challis had made up his mind 
 to have one the moment he detected a flavour of roasting, 
 because that implied plenty of hot water in the bath-room. 
 
 Those who measure events only by the bounce they 
 manifest — by their rapidity, or unexpectedness, or by the 
 clamour that accompanies them — will wonder why any 
 narrator of a story should think such flat incident worth 
 recording. But observe ! — it was the very flatness of this 
 conversation that gave it its importance, coming as it did 
 on the top of the exhilaration of Mr. ChalHs's visit, and 
 his parting with that large and lively company of friends 
 less than two hours ago. It has its place — this flatness has
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 147 
 
 — in the lives of these two folk we write of, and really 
 accelerates the story, although it is certainly slow in 
 itself. 
 
 How very much Challis would have preferred it if his 
 wife had said, " I won't kiss you if you swear," and had then 
 done it quandni'me ! His mind — a fictionmonger's — re- 
 constructed his reception with things more palatable for 
 Marianne to say, this one among them. Another thing he 
 would have liked, quite inexplicably, was, " Well ! — how's- 
 the fascinating Judith ?" Possibly this was because he 
 would have welcomed help from without to convince him 
 he was indifferent about the young woman. The answer 
 he imagined for himself, which would have been pleasant 
 for him to give, was, " She's coming to see you next week, 
 Polly Anne. So get your best bib and tucker ready !" 
 But there had been none of tliis, nor the laughter — purely 
 imaginary — that he garnished it -with. Only the flatness, 
 as recorded. 
 
 " Perhaps it was all that confounded cabman," said Challis 
 to himself and a bath-towel like a toga, after a very respect- 
 able warm bath— not equal to that at Royd, though — and 
 a cold douche. He had to hurry up to keep his word at 
 half-past eight. But he kept it. 
 
 " Well !" said he, as he joined his mfe in the drawing- 
 room, where she was awaiting the announcement of dinner, 
 Challis conceived. 
 
 " Well what ?" She touched the nearest bell-handle. 
 " They'll know it's for dinner," she said, and the remark 
 seemed relative. " Why well ?" 
 
 " Well everything ! Tell me all about the kids, about 
 who's called, about where you've been, about everything. 
 Come, Polly Anne, I think you might unbutton a little and 
 be jolly when a chap's been away three weeks. How are 
 John and Charlotte Eldridge ?" . 
 
 " Yes ! — I think you might have asked about them. 
 Jolm has been at death's door. There's dinner I . . ," 
 Challis made a sympathetic noise about Mr. Eldridge, but 
 postponed inquiry. Nothing made it easy until he found 
 himself a lonely soup-consumer ; because, you see, Marianne 
 wasn't hungry. 
 
 " What has it been ?" Too concise, perhaps. But 
 
 10—2
 
 148 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 really death's door, with John on the step, had been the 
 last thing mentioned. 
 
 " What has what been ?" 
 
 " What you told me. What's been the matter with John?" 
 
 " Peritonitis. But he's going on well now. Dr. Kitt 
 says he'll have to live very carefully for some time. ... I 
 know what j^ou mean, but it's very unfeeling to laugh. 
 Besides, I don't believe he eats more than other people." 
 Challis felt indefensible. Just fancy ! — there he was, eating 
 gravy soup all by himself ! 
 
 " I wasn't laughing, old girl," said he. " Poor Jack 
 Eldridge ! Peritonitis is no joke. I'll go round to-morrow." 
 
 " It won't be any use. He won't be able to see you. 
 Yes — you can take the soup, Harmood. Mr. Challis isn't 
 going to have any more. ..." 
 
 A mere rough samj^le of the conversation. It was not 
 unlike others of the same sort on like occasions. But was 
 Challis wrong in imagining that, this time, it was a little 
 accentuated ? Was it only his imagination, gathering sug- 
 gestions from, the atmosphere that his home had been that of 
 self-denying endurance during his absence, and that his 
 o^vn selfish indulgences elsewhere were being actively for- 
 given for his sake ? What had he done to deserve forgive- 
 ness ? 'J If he had lal0^v•n that he was incurring it, v/ould he 
 have committed the offence at all ? 
 
 Also he did feel that Marianne hadn't played fair. What 
 could have been more genial than her send-off, three weeks 
 ago ? — more apparently genuine than her refusal to accom- 
 pany her husband to Royd on the ground of a real dislike 
 for Society ? To be sure, a throb of conscience reminded 
 him of a certain breath of relief — almost — that he drew at 
 the decisiveness of this refusal. Had Marianne been sharp 
 enough to see it ? His instinct told him that a woman 
 might have a sharp department in her mind on points of 
 this sort, and yet make a poor show in logic and mental 
 philosoi:>hy. 
 
 The sense that he was a naughty boy that had been 
 eating three-cornered jam-tarts, and giving no one else 
 any, hung about him, and made him unlike himseli. If 
 only that abominable cabman had not spoiled the part he 
 had sketched out for himself on his first arrival, one of
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 149 
 
 exaggerated self-denunciation for his beastly selfishness, 
 and tragi- comical commiseration for Marianne as Penelope 
 or Andromeda ! It would then have come so much easier 
 to deliver that message from Judith Arkroyd. And now ! 
 Just look at now / Now, when he actually found himself 
 fallen so low as to half-ask if he might smoke in the drawing- 
 room ! Not quite, of course ; that would have been too 
 absurd ! But he said something or other, or Marianne 
 would not have replied as she did. 
 
 "As if I ever minded ! How can you be so ridicu- 
 lous !" This was good and lubricative. But she spoilt it 
 by adding that there was the little ash-pan. Nevertheless, 
 by the time the incense from her husband's cigar, and an 
 atmosphere of consolatory coffee, were bringing back the 
 flavour of a thousand and one post-prandial hours of peace 
 in days gone by, the malignant influence of that cabman 
 began to lose its force, and there was concession in the 
 way she added : " I suppose you weren't allowed to smoke 
 in the drawing-room at Boyd's — Royd's — whatever it was ?" 
 
 " Royd. Cigarettes — yes ! Hardly cigars. At least, 
 nobody did it. The young women smoked cigarettes." 
 
 " Those sort of people do it now. At least, Charlotte 
 Eldridge says so. / don't know." 
 
 " Wish you'd smoke, Polly Anne ! Have a cigarette 
 now." 
 
 " Oh no ! — I've tried often enough to know I don't like 
 it. You must go away to some of your Grosvenor Squares 
 if you're not happy smoking by yourself." 
 
 Things were pleasanter. Why couldn't Challis let it 
 alone, instead of at once discerning an opportunity of 
 delivering Judith's message ? To say, as he did, " No — 
 I've had enough of the Grosvenor Squares for some time 
 to come," wasn't unblemished truth, but it was an excusable 
 stepping-stone under the circumstances, with poor dear 
 slow Polly Anne waiting for consolation. The mistake was 
 in what followed. Our own belief is he would have done 
 much better to make a forget of that message until his life 
 was running again in a married channel. He began badly 
 for one thing. You should never say " By-the-bye 1" in 
 order to introduce the thing uppermost in your mind. . 
 
 " By-the-bye, Polly Anne, it won't do to forget that the
 
 150 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 young female Grosvenor Square wants to call on you." 
 To this Marianne made no answer, and her husband had 
 to add : " Miss Arkroyd— Judith !" 
 
 It became difficult not to answer. Marianne fidgeted. 
 " I suppose she'll have to come," she said. 
 
 " Well ! — I suppose so." There was a shade of asperity 
 in this. But what followed softened it. " You know, ' 
 really, Polly Anne darling, you'll have to put up with the 
 fascinating Judith a little, for the sake of the play. Be- 
 sides, she sent you such a very nice message." 
 
 " Very kind of her !" However, Mrs. Challis has quite 
 her share of human inquisitiveness, and if she wants to 
 hear the message after her sardonic speech, she must make 
 concession. " What was the very nice message ?" she asks 
 grudgingly. 
 
 Perhaps Challis's powers of fiction made him able to 
 imagine exactly how he would have behaved if Judith 
 Arkroyd had been merely a showj^ smart-set sort of a girl 
 — or merely an intelligent young woman, without a figure 
 to speak of — or, still more merely, one of those excruciating 
 well-informed persons of importance phrenologically, but 
 with no figure at all. On this occasion he felt he knew 
 exactly what his conduct would have been had he under- 
 taken an embassage from the merest of these three — the 
 last. And he modelled his conduct accordingly. 
 
 " Don't be mifly ^^ith the poor woman, Polly Anne," 
 said he. He had thought of " poor girl," but decided on 
 something bonier, with hair brushed on to the shape of 
 the head, and a black dress. This refers, of course, to the 
 provisional lay-figure he elected to give his message from. 
 
 " The poor woman !" Marianne repeated, looking rather 
 suspicious over it. But the image of the lay-figure in his 
 mind, telepathically communicated, produced a certain 
 softening, so he thought. He moved from the bent wood 
 rocking-chair he was smoking in to the sofa beside his 
 wife. 
 
 " I'll tell you exactly her message word for word," he | 
 
 said. He did so, as from the lay-figure. And, indeed, he 
 almost wished that fiction had been a reality, as far as this 
 message went. He could have sketched out the proposed 
 visit so much more easily, in his inmost mind : which was.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 151 
 
 to say truth, incredulous about its turning out satisfactory 
 to either lady, their respective personalities being as 
 supplied. 
 
 " I suppose she'll have to come," said Marianne drearily. 
 " Why can't she come when other people are here ?" 
 
 " Because she wants to see you, my dear. She doesn't 
 want to see the other people." 
 
 " Why need I be in it at all ? Can't you introduce her 
 to Mr. Magnus, and let them settle it between them ?" 
 For in his last letter Challis had enlarged on the Aminta 
 Torrington scheme, and his wife was quite au fait of the 
 position so far. 
 
 He hummed and hawed, and flushed slightly. The 
 removal of a column of ash from his cigar seemed to absorb 
 him for a moment. " I don't think you quite see all the 
 ins and outs of the situation, Polly Anne. Don't you 
 understand ? . . ." 
 
 " Understand what ?" 
 
 " Well — I'm sure Miss Arkroyd really wishes to know 
 you. You see, I've talked so much about you." This was 
 not really a true truth, for conversation about Marianne 
 had always been at Judith's instigation. " But there are 
 other considerations, apart from that. ..." 
 
 " What considerations ?" 
 
 " Well, you know, we do live in a world ! Don't we now, 
 Polly Anne ?" 
 
 " I thought it was something of that sort. Charlotte 
 Eldridge said it would be." 
 
 " What did Charlotte Eldridge say ? I wish she'd keep 
 her tongue to herself. ..." 
 
 " But you're getting angry before you know what she 
 did say." 
 
 " No, I'm not ! I mean I'm not getting angry at all. 
 Why should I get angry ? Come, old girl, be reasonable ! 
 What did Charlotte Eldridge say ?" Nevertheless, it is 
 clear that Mr. Challis is keeping his temper — keeping it 
 admirably, perhaps, but still, keeping it ! His wife's answer 
 shows painfully how well she is keeping hers. 
 
 " Charlotte Eldridge said I should be wanted the moment 
 I told her about Aminta Torrington. ... No ! — it's no use 
 pretending, Tite ! . . . Besides, I'm not hurt. Why should
 
 152 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 I be ? Only I don't see why there need be a make-believe 
 friendship between me and this young lady — and me to 
 have to put on my black silk, and a new Madeira cake — 
 and to give Harmood directions to say not at home ! 
 Charlotte Eldridge and I have talked it all over. . , ." 
 
 " Oh ! — you've talked it all over ?" Challis either is, or 
 pretends to be, inclined to laugh. 
 
 " Yes, we have. And you know how sensible Charlotte 
 is about things of this sort. . . . No, Titus, you can try- 
 to make what I say ridiculous, and I dare say you'll succeed, 
 but you know what a good friend Charlotte has been to 
 me from the beginning. ..." Marianne pulls up short 
 suddenly in the middle of her speech, with a suggestion in 
 it of a tear corked in at its source. She gets the cork well in, 
 and ends with : " I won't say any more about it. You shall 
 arrange it just as you like your oa^ti way " — but this with 
 the amenability of a traction-engine making concession to 
 its handle. 
 
 Challis, who had felt it rather hard that a tearfulness 
 derived from tender memories of Mrs. Eldridge's loyalty 
 in past years should slop over into his department, became 
 awake to the fact that brisk strategy would be needed to 
 prevent that cork coming out. " Come, I say now, Polly 
 Anne !" said he with jovial remonstrance. " Fancy you 
 and me falling out about a Grosvenor Square young lady !" 
 He burst out laughing, roundly. " We have shot up in the 
 world. My word !" He got his arm round an unrespon- 
 sive invertebrate waist, in spite of a collision with a hook, 
 which rather took the edge off his caress. Why cannot 
 ladies have some sort of little smooth tie, just at that point, 
 in case ? It was a very slight blot on the scutcheon, 
 however, and, indeed, would have counted for nothing 
 with Challis had not Marianne offered him her mole to kiss 
 instead of her lips. For she had a mole — a small one, 
 certainly — just on the cheek-bone. Now a liberal, un- 
 reserved warmth in this act of the drama would have been 
 invaluable. It would have helped Challis to snap his 
 fingers at whatever it was that was taunting him with 
 having effected for politic purposes a half-derision of Judith 
 as a Grosvenor Squarian — and that, too, after the cordial 
 message to his wife !
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 153 
 
 However, it was quite impossible to pretend — it would not 
 be fair to say admit — that they were quarrelling, after 
 that. In fact, it was so established an assumption that 
 their old confidence was again on its old footing, that 
 Challis felt it would be ungenerous to Marianne to change 
 the subject for safety's sake. Besides, he wanted an answer 
 to a question. 
 
 " You didn't tell me what it was Charlotte did say, Polly 
 Anne. ... I dare say she was all right, you Icnow." The 
 use of her Christian name alone was a concession — showed 
 good-will. Speech is full of such niceties. 
 
 Marianne got up and broke a coal on the fire. She 
 couldn't think of two things at once, naturally. This made 
 a pause before answering, and a pretence of having omitted 
 an answer because of the slightness of its subject was 
 plausible. 
 
 ' ' Oh — Charlotte ? It really was the merest talk by the way. 
 She only said it ^vould keep people from talking nonsense." 
 " What would ?" 
 
 " If the Grosvenor Square young lady and I were bosom 
 friends. She was joking, you know." 
 
 " I see what she meant," said Challis ; and seemed to, 
 reflectively. But really he was crossing Mrs. Eldridge out 
 of one or two passages in his good books where her name 
 still occurred. Confound her ! Couldn't she leave it to 
 him to instruct Marianne — who was much too slow to find 
 out anything for herself — on this point ? However, it was 
 best to confirm her, on the whole. He continued : "Of 
 course, if it were thought that you and she were at daggers 
 drawn, spiteful people would say things. They always do 
 if they get a chance. But what I look at is that she is 
 Aminta Torrington. It's quite miraculous. You never 
 saw anything so happy." He quite forgot that lay-figure. 
 Marianne waived discussion of the dramatic aspect of the 
 question. She knew nothing about these things — was an 
 outsider. But she seemed to register concession on the 
 main point. She supposed the young woman must come, 
 and she could tell Charlotte and Maria Macculloch and 
 Louis Smithson to be sure not to call that day, and then 
 Harmood could say " not at home." Better make it Thurs- 
 day, and get it over.
 
 154 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " Didn't Charlotte say anything else ?" This was chiefly 
 conciliation on Challis's part. He did not wish to seem in 
 a hurry to get away from Mrs. Eldridge, or to resent her dis- 
 cussion of his affairs. 
 
 " Oh — she trdiced, of course ! You mean when I saw her 
 yesterday ? Only she was still so anxious about John." 
 
 " He'll be all right, won't he ? Did you say peritonitis ? 
 Are you sure ? Because peritonitis is the dooce's own 
 delight." 
 
 " The doctor says there is no occasion for the slightest 
 uneasiness." Whereupon Challis settled in his own mind 
 that John Eldridge would be spared to his wife and rela- 
 tives, for the present at any rate. Peritonitis inside a 
 week, and no need for uneasiness at the end of it ! He 
 allowed the medical report to lapse, and referred again to 
 what Charlotte had said. It certainly seemed, to judge 
 by Marianne's reply, " I thought she was quite mistaken, 
 you know," that Charlotte had " talked, of course," al- 
 though she was so uneasy about John. 
 
 " What about ?" But he didn't want to seem to cate- 
 chize, so he discovered that his cigar — which he was quite 
 half through — didn't draw well, and lit another. Then he 
 was able to say, " Let's see ! — what were we talking about ? 
 What Charlotte said." He resumed his place beside his 
 wife, too manifestly to receive the answer for her to with- 
 hold it. 
 
 " It was only general conversation, about what Miss 
 Arkroyd's family — with all their ideas — would think of her 
 going on the stage." 
 
 " My dear ! I must say I do wish you hadn't mentioned 
 Miss Arkroyd to her at all. I hope you made her under- 
 stand she must be quiet about it ^" 
 
 " Oh, she won't mention it — except perhaps to John." 
 Challis looked alarmed. However, John couldn't talk 
 much at present, even if peritonitis only meant obstruction. 
 " Besides, I didn't really tell her anything. It was an 
 accident. I showed her something else in your letter a week 
 ago, and by the merest chance she read it by mistake. It 
 wasn't her fault." 
 
 " Nor yours. I see ! But what did she read ?" 
 
 " Only where you said you would have to talk to the old
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 155 
 
 boy about his daughter's stage-mania . . . nothing that 
 could possibly do any harm." 
 
 Now, Challis's conscience had been uneasy about the 
 part he was going to play in helping Judith towards a 
 secret arrangement Avhich was sure to outrage the feelings 
 of her family. So, when he said " Oh !" to this, he had to 
 jump abruptly on to make it seem a casual, ordinary " Oh !" 
 He succeeded pretty well. " What was Charlotte's idea ?" 
 said he. 
 
 " The same idea, of course. As long as Sir Thingummy 
 knew all about it, no one could possibly blame yow." 
 
 " I don't know that it's really my concern. I don't 
 know that it's any of our ..." A pause here is due to his 
 duty to sjmtax. ..." I mean to say — that it is the business 
 of any one of us. Miss Arkroyd is no chicken. In fact, I'm 
 not sure that her age won't stand in her way — for training, 
 I mean. However, of course I shall take care that her 
 family knows all about it." Challis's voice sounded well 
 in his own ears, and he was convinced that no fault could be 
 found with his behaviour so far. As to anyone saying he 
 should not have made the promise about Mr. Magnus of 
 the Megatherium while he was a trusted guest at Royd, 
 that was sheer nonsense. He felt quite nettled with 
 Marianne for saying, " Oh, haven't you done it 1" But 
 he wasn't going to prolong discussion about it. 
 
 He felt nettled, too, with himself for feeling, when 
 Marianne left him to read, before going to bed, the letters 
 that had come for him — with a charge to him not to make 
 a noise when he came up — nettled for feeling that he had 
 got through the evening well, which was absurd ; and that 
 to do so he had assumed a certain rouglmess in reference to 
 Judith, to accentuate his equable indifference to her per- 
 sonally, which was absurder. What was it all about ? — was 
 the question he asked himself. And then another that arose 
 from it naturally. What was what all about ? The dis- 
 traction afforded by a handful of miscellaneous correspond- 
 ence gave him an excuse for ignoring the latter question, 
 which, indeed, seemed to him the more unanswerable of 
 the two. 
 
 One thing, however, he was glad of having achieved. 
 Marianne would write that letter, he felt sure. Only he
 
 156 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 would just keep his eye on her to see that she did it. He 
 would not have to write to Judith, " Please don't come and 
 see my ^^dfe !" in any form, transparent or otherwise. 
 
 For anything the story shows at this point, Alfred Challis 
 and Marianne might have tided over any little difficulties 
 arising out of the visit to Royd, if they had only been 
 judiciously let alone. It was those blessed Peacemakers !
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 LiZARANN CouPLAND uscd to wonder how ever Daddy 
 could go out in the cold and stop all day. It was noble of 
 him to do so in the public service — that was how Lizarann 
 thought of it. For she believed the insinuations embodied 
 in song by " the boys " in Tallack Street to be malicious 
 falsehoods, and as for " the boy " whose aunt sold fried eels 
 and Avinkles next door to the shop where her father pur- 
 chased his shaving-soap, she only hoped that a good 
 basting her o^vn aunt wished to give to the whole clan- 
 jamfray of 'em — meaning boys generally — might be con- 
 centrated on the unsheltered person of this particular boy. 
 She had improved her acquaintance with him, and had 
 come to the conclusion that for presumption and self- 
 conceit, for ill manners and very doubtful good feeling, that 
 boy was without a parallel. 
 
 During the whole of this acquaintance it had never 
 occurred to Lizarann to ask this boy's name. And but 
 yesterday she had committed the tactical error of sur- 
 rendering her own christened name in exchange for pepper- 
 mint drops. The moment of the present writing is a deadly 
 afternoon in January, gettin' on for four, but that dark 
 you'll have to light the gas in the end, and may just as well 
 do it at once. The place is the one spoken of in an earlier 
 chapter as Vatted Rum Corner, and that boy is a settin' 
 on the rilin' eatin' of four 'ot chestnuts off of ^Irs. Groves's 
 bikin' trye, for a 'ape'ny, and to be allowed to warm your 
 fingers at the grite. He had had to make room for other 
 customers. 
 
 Lizarann came up cold, and envied the feast. The boy 
 was a self-indulgent boy, or seemed so. For he only said, 
 " These four's for me, bought and paid for, square. You 
 git some for yourself, orf of Mother Groves. Two for a 
 farden's your figfrer, Aloyzer." And then he sketched a 
 
 157
 
 158 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 clog-dance on the hard-trodden snow of the pavement, 
 with a mouth quite full of chestnuts. 
 
 Lizarann felt the heartlessness of his attitude. Yester- 
 day he had cajoled her into an admission that her name 
 was Lizarann by offering peppermint drops. Now he had 
 nothing to gain by an offer of chestnuts, and kept them all 
 himself ! She happened to be in funds, and could have 
 purchased four for a 'ape'ny, and in that case would as like 
 as not have given that boy one, as an exemplar towards 
 generosity. But at the moment a higher interest claimed 
 her attention. He knew her name, and she didn't know 
 his. An iniquity, clearly ! How could she remedy it ? 
 
 Now Lizarann had contrived, childwise, a curious idea 
 about her name. It may have originated in a chant she 
 herseli had joined in frequently, merely for the sake of the 
 music : 
 
 " Oh fie — fie for shame ! 
 Everybody knows your name." 
 
 But it certainly had acquired its full force from an ex- 
 pression made use of by her Aunt Stingy, who had spoken 
 of a young person as having " lost her good name." What 
 the young person was called by her friends, afterwards, 
 was a problem Lizarann had given a good deal of thought 
 to. And she was now unable to dissociate the young 
 person's position altogether from her own. If her name 
 had not been lost as a necessary implement of social inter- 
 course with the world at large, it at least had been surren- 
 dered with no per contra, in the case of an immoral and 
 worthless member of it. But she felt that, could she become 
 possessed of Ids name, as a set-off, the balance of righteous- 
 ness would be adjusted. And she was much more anxious 
 about this than about the chestnuts. 
 
 " What's your nime ?" said she, after self-commune 
 which suggested no less trenchant way of approaching the 
 subject. 
 
 The boy paused in the clog-dance. " Moses," said he. 
 And then went on as before. 
 
 " Nuffint elst no more than Moses 1" 
 
 " That's tellin's." The boy said tliis absently, and did 
 some more steps. Then he simulated a grace'"ul subsidence 
 of the dance, ending in an attitude that seemed to acknow-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 159 
 
 ledge the applause of a delighted throng. But a commer- 
 cial possibility had presented itself. " What' 11 you stand," 
 said he, " for to be told my name, and no lies ?" This 
 seemed mercenary ; but then, had not Lizarann herself sur- 
 rendered hers for a deal ? Why condemn him ? 
 
 No ! — ^Lizarann lived in a glass house, and wouldn't 
 throw stones. But she would make conditions. " Real 
 nime all froo," she said. " Moses is lyin' stories !" For, 
 you see, this was a crafty boy, and might consider the con- 
 cession of a true surname alone would discharge his obliga- 
 tions under the contract. 
 
 " Then on'y Moses," said he ; and began an encore — 
 presumably, as it was the same dance. But he was not too 
 preoccupied by it to take off the shell of his fourth chestnut, 
 and when he had done so he smelt it, with disappointment. 
 For it was mouldy. An idea struck him, and he acted on it. 
 
 " Marcy me, no !" said Mother Groves of the chestnuts 
 when requested by him to 'and over a good un, fair and 
 no cheating. " The riskis lies with the buyers. Where 
 'ud I be, in half the time, at that rate ?" 
 
 " Then I'll 'ave the law of yer. Just see if I don't." 
 He danced again, and this time his dance seemed to express 
 confidence in his solicitor. But presently he stopped, and 
 offered a composition : " You lookee here, Missis Groves," 
 he said. " I'll 'and you back the mouldy one, onbit-into 
 and closin' over the busted shell, acrost a clean new un, 
 and I'll take another highp'orth off you, and pay square. 
 If that ain't fair, nothin' ain't ! But you got to look sharp, 
 or the chance '11 be gone." 
 
 Mother Groves rejected the chance. " It ain't con- 
 sideration enough to go again' the rules on, and me to take 
 my 'ands out in the perishing cold. Make it a penn'orth and 
 pick yourseir, all exceptin' the three top." 
 
 " Hin't got no penny ! Feel in my porket and see. 
 It's open- to yer to feel. There hin't no horbstickle. 
 Here's a highp'ny and the bloomin' nut, shell and all. 
 Mike your mind up !" 
 
 But Mrs. Groves' s mind was made up, apparently. The 
 boy then suggested that his motives had been the pros- 
 perity of trade, throughout ; he was, in fact, or said he 
 was, full up til? dinner-time. He dined late, evidently.
 
 160 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 At this point Lizarann made a proposal. She, too, had 
 a halfpenny, and was ready to pool this halfpenny with the 
 boy's, and give him sole enjoyment of the extra chestnut, 
 but only on one condition. He must tell his name, and no 
 lies. Thus approached, he said, " Git done talking then. 
 Let's see 'em told out." 
 
 Mrs. Groves brought her hands out in the perishing cold 
 — pathetic old hands, a young girl's once — and made two 
 even groups of four nuts each. Theu. leave being giv', the 
 boy chose the compensation nut ; only he took his time 
 like a young 'Eathen as he was Then Mrs. Groves., as 
 assessor and umpire, required his name as a preliminary to 
 final liquidation. 
 
 " 'Orkins. Frederick. Frederick 'Orkins. Could have 
 told yer it wasn't Moses any day of the week ! 'And 
 over !" And thereon he and Lizarann each had four 
 bloomin' nuts, so 'ot you couldn't 'ardly 'andle 'em. 
 
 " I shall keep mine for my daddy, and keep 'em 'ot too," 
 said Lizarann. She placed them nearest her heart, and felt 
 that it was good to do so. They was a' most too 'ot, in the 
 manner of sj)eaking ; but then a small undergarment pro- 
 tected her, when discreetly scroozled up fluffy. 
 
 " You best 'ide 'em well up," said Frederick Hawkins. 
 " Here's a coarper comin' along ! Don't you let 'em make 
 no show, or he'll get his 'and on 'em." 
 
 But he only said this to perplex and annoy, and create 
 unnecessary panic ; and Lizarann knew that, every bit as 
 M^ell as we do. So she merely said : " Jimmy 'Acker can 
 foight you" and enjoyed the warmth fearlessly. Her 
 daddy's stick was not audible yet, coming along by the 
 wall. He was late to-day. Lizarann's orders were to wait 
 at the comer till she heard it, and then call " Pilot," that 
 he might know she was waiting for him, and be happy. 
 For he always had pangs of doubt that he might not meet 
 her this time. Think of that little thing — for he knew how 
 small she was still, by the feel, though there was no one 
 to tell him Avhat she was like to look at — think of her coming 
 along that crowded street alone, to meet her daddy ! She 
 for her part had no misgivings about his coming. " Never 
 you'fear for me, lassie," he had said. And he knew, Law 
 bless you !
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN IGl 
 
 " I'll Jimmy 'Acker Hm /" said Frederick Hawkins 
 boastfully. " I could 'tend on two like 'im at wunst. 
 How old do you make him ?" Which showed the vain- 
 gloriousness of his character, for clearly he knew nothing 
 about Jimmy Hacker. 
 
 Lizarann couldn't commit herself to the age of the latter. 
 But she could to his bulk and prowess. " He's thicker 
 than you," she said, and added, mth recollection of a com- 
 batant defeated by Jimmy Hacker : " He can foight a boy 
 twelve next birthday." 
 
 " Then he ain't any so much to count on. I don't go 
 by ages. Weights is what I go by. Any number o' stun 
 I can foight, up to eight stun seven. You tell 'im to keep 
 indoors, or I'll fetch him somethin' for to rek'lect me by. 
 You see !" 
 
 But Mother Groves interposed to rebuke and check this 
 inflated and defiant spirit. " Don't you pay no attention 
 to that boy, my dear," said she to Lizarann. " He's that 
 full of lip there's no placin' no reliance on a word he says. 
 If I was his mother I should know just where he wanted a 
 good canin'. Ah ! — and he'd get it too, night or mornin'. 
 A young cocksparrer / call him, and if he don't come by a 
 bad end it'll be a moral. Ah ! — wait till I find out where 
 your mother lives, and see." Mrs. Groves worked rising 
 indignation into her speech, after the manner of her class- 
 Even so the Choctaw or Cherokee stimulates himself to 
 battle-point. But Frederick Hawkins remained unmoved. 
 He knew the old woman couldn't ketch holt upon him. 
 He became most offensive, assuming a nasal drone Avith an 
 approach to a chant. 
 
 " I got a widdered mother. She keeps a fish-shop. And 
 I ain't a-goin', neither, for to tell you where." He threw a 
 reminiscence of his previous dance into this. 
 
 Now Lizarann knew perfectly well that the fish- shop was 
 next door to where her daddy bought his shaving-soap. 
 But she wasn't going to tell. No nice little boy or girl ever 
 tells. The particulars kept back on principle may relate 
 to young cock-sparrows on whom no reliance can be placed, 
 or to mere heathens — as in the present instance — but as 
 for acquaintin' their parents, guardians, or other responsible 
 grown-up persons, what they done, or anything likely to 
 
 VOL. I. 11
 
 162 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 lead to conviction — Avho ever heard of such a thing ? 
 Even the London servant class retains this one trace of 
 an honourable usage. It won't tell. 
 
 Mother Groves merely referred to the ease of discovering 
 fish-shops ; especially when localised, as this one practically 
 was, by the constant presence round her comer of a heathen 
 residing there. She then gave all her attention to the 
 conservation of vital heat ; and it was needed, for her poor 
 old clothes were thin on her poor old body. It wasn't 
 'ardly a reg'lar bad day, not to call it so, but it was a frost 
 that was going to give a lift to the plumbin' trade, and do 
 a rare lot of good that way. For the only good that can 
 come now to this world is evidently through the destruction 
 of something it has worked at the making of in years past, 
 in order that people who have little may have to pay 
 people who have less to do a bit of repairs to it, so that it 
 won't want no lookin' to again, not yet awhile. 
 
 Can we wonder ? — we who have read, for instance, of 
 the revived prosperity of ship-building, shown by the 
 putting doT^Ti on the stocks of several new . . . destroyers ? 
 But never mind this ! — pardon it and get back to the story 
 and the degrees of frost at Vatted Rum Comer. 
 
 It wasn't so bad then, not when once you was out in 
 it ; it had been a tidy sight worse two days ago, afore it 
 froze so hard underfoot ; why — the busses couldn't keep 
 goin', and a 'orse fell down so soon as ever you got him on 
 his feet ! And as for cabs, they wouldn't set foot outside 
 of the yard, because where was the use ? You couldn't 
 stiddy yourself on your feet, not unless there was cenders 
 on the track, or tliored with boiling water. 
 
 Lizarann bore it bravely, in spite of chilblains and a 
 blue complexion. Frederick Hawkins was blue ; but either 
 liis heathenism or some other attribute enabled him to bear 
 the cold defiantly. " It ain't freezin' here," said he, deny- 
 ing the obvious. " Hicey cold it was Bart'sey Park 
 Sunday. The hice makes it cold 'acos of the skatin'." And 
 Lizarann accepted this view of cause and effect. She might 
 have disputed it had she not been beginning to feel uneasy 
 about her daddy. 
 
 " Why, child, don't ye go along to'ards meetin' him ? 
 He'll be comin', I lay." Thus Mother Groves. And the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 163 
 
 boy added : " Why don't yer 'ook it along down to the 
 Rilewye, to see for yourself ? You 'ook it ! 'Ook it orf ! 
 I'm tellin' of yer." But Lizarann only stood on her two 
 feet alternately, and hugged the dying heat of the chestnuts. 
 They wouldn't be no good for daddy. Alas ! 
 
 " I was tolded not to it," said she. " Yass !" 
 
 Mrs. Groves approved. " Quite right, my dear, not to 
 disobey your parents. But your daddy he'll come, you'll 
 see." 
 
 But Frederick Hawkins had another code of morals. 
 " I'd disobey my parents if I had any to speak on. If I'd 
 a dozen on 'em, I'd disobey the bilin'." Mrs. Groves pointed 
 out that by doing this Frederick would be brought into 
 collision with, his Creator, and dwelt on the impolicy of 
 such an action. But he continued obdurate. 
 
 " I'd disobey the kit on 'em. You'd see, if you kep' 
 your eye open." Then, addressing Lizarann, he added : 
 " You give me a chestnut, and Fll disobey your parents for 
 yer. You jist try ! See if I don't !" Then, when Lizarann 
 timidly produced the chestnut, in great doubt of whether 
 her action was justifiable, he added : " See if I ain't back 
 again afore yer know where y' are," and, after a slight pre- 
 liminary quick-step or double-shuffle, fled away into the 
 growing dusk. 
 
 " You keep your sperrits up, child," said Mother Groves. 
 And, as is usual when one hears that one's spirits want 
 keeping up, Lizarann's went down. But she felt the old 
 lady's goodwill, and went and stood close up to her, taking 
 care to choose the side away from the roasting-box, lest 
 she should seem simply seeking warmth. However, she 
 was soon invited round to the other side. The warmth 
 made her communicative. 
 
 " My daddy he's been to sea," she said. " Only in real 
 ships, and come home again. The Flying Dutchman she 
 never come home." This did not explain itself to Mrs. 
 Groves. She drew a false inference. 
 
 " She went to the bottom, I lay. And all aboard of her 
 belike. Lord be good to us !" 
 
 Lizarann shook her head. " Not the Dutchman. She's 
 afloat, every spar on her," — she religiously gave Jim's 
 exact words, with a sense of saying a lesson — " and to 
 
 11—2
 
 164 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 stop afloat till the Lord comes to judge sinners from re- 
 pentance." She got a little confused here, but it sounded 
 good, and her hearer was impressed. 
 
 " Now only 'ark at that !" said she. " I'd 'a said you 
 was a God-fearin' child. And you may never need doubt 
 but it's all true, my dear !" Mrs. Groves, perhaps, was 
 prepared to ascribe truth to any narrative that had a 
 religious phrase or two in it ; still, she was probably im- 
 pressed mth the little person's manner, for she referred 
 to Frederick Hawkins, in contrast. "Now, that young 
 Turk, he's no respect, and won't come to no good end, I 
 lay." 
 
 But Lizarann didn't want the conversation coaxed away 
 from the Flying Dutchman. " Daddy seen her, himself*" 
 she said fervently ; and then, resuming the lesson- manner : 
 " Every stitch o' sail on her set in a three-quarter gale 
 freshenin' from the south. And the look-out forward, he 
 seen her too. And Job Colhns, he seen her. And Marma- 
 duke Flyn, he seen her. And Peter Cortright, he seen her." 
 All these were essential items of the often-told tale. 
 
 Mother Groves's hearing was none of the best ; so when 
 she condemned the time-honoured legend as outlandish and 
 French, it may be she had really supposed that some of 
 the expressions were in a foreign tongue, any variety of 
 which she would naturally consider French, failing instruc- 
 tion to the contrary. But Lizarann's reference to the Lord, 
 to sinners, and to repentance, was strong enough in itself 
 to keep suspicions of Voltaire and Tom Paine in abeyance. 
 Mrs. Groves therefore allowed the story to continue, and 
 felt fortified against the heresies abounding on the Con- 
 tinent by the approved religious bias of the narrator. 
 
 " Peter Cortright and Marmaduke Fljm they was both 
 on the mainyard reefin', alongside o' my daddy, and Job 
 Collins he was aft by the binnacle. Then Peter Cortright 
 he sings out to my daddy to look ; and my daddy he looked 
 and seen her, carryin' all sail afore the ^vmd. And then, 
 no more time than what you says budget in, she was agone 
 away, out o' sight." A pause came here, for dramatic 
 impressiveness. Then followed, for reinforcement of testi- 
 mony : " But Job Collins, he seen her, too, plain !" 
 
 Mrs. Groves only said, " My sakes, now ! — to think of
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 165 
 
 that." But rather as a courtesy to the narrator. She 
 would no doubt have followed her meaning better if thawed 
 indoors before a nice warm fire. She certainly could not, 
 or did not, admit to her mind a comparison that surely 
 hung on the outskirts of the tale — a parallel between that 
 moment on the great sea, and now ! To think of it all ! 
 Of the three reefers out on the yard, struggling with the 
 mighty Avind ; of the rising seas whose crested foam it 
 blew to spray ; of its voice as it whistled through the 
 drenched cordage, and made a whisper of the sailor's shout 
 to his mate, that spoke of the ship he saw out yonder — 
 the ship that, whatever she really was, was to become the 
 Flying Dutchman in the memories of all the three ! And 
 then to think of what that child — that almost baby girl — 
 told about her as she nestled, welcome enough, to the side 
 of the old soul that had spent her last decade selling, in the 
 London Streets, the chestnuts that had ripened in the 
 southern sun, above the slopes the vines grew on. To 
 think of the sordid and darkened lives, closed round in the 
 intolerable hive of their own contriving, so stunted and sub- 
 orned to a spurious contentment as never to long for an 
 escape ; so strange to the meaning of the word " rejoicing " as 
 to find a version of it in the filth-house at the comer ; whose 
 swing-door, to say the truth, the little maid looks rather 
 enviously at as it opens and closes, letting out the vapid 
 bawlings from the human fools within into the silence of 
 the streets, and suggesting jolly bad ale and new to the 
 cold and empty passer-by ! To think of the millions near 
 at hand, all sunless beneath the great black pall that has 
 for weeks past shrouded their visible world, but has left 
 them unchoked as yet and confident, and even a little 
 boastful — Heaven knows why ! — of some strange indefinite 
 advantages carbon and sulphur confer on those who can 
 breathe them and live. 
 
 No two items of the parallels could be more vmlike, surely, 
 than the reefers out on the yard in the great sea wind, and 
 such chance waj^farers as are to be seen now — few enough, 
 for all who can keep indoors prefer to do so — making the 
 best of their slippery way home, let us hope, to the native 
 joint and vegetables and rice-pudding. Certainly — so one 
 would have said — none more unlike than those of this
 
 166 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 approaching crowd, close on the heels of three policemen 
 in charge of a wheeled ambulance, hand-driven, working 
 slowly along the least slippery part of the road. And most 
 unlike of all, surely, the human burden, sot or reprobate 
 perhaps, that the closed curtain of the ambulance hides 
 from us. But he would have been wrong who said so. 
 For it was Jim himself that was inside that ambulance, 
 and he ought by rights to have come along that road on 
 his feet. 
 
 " You lie still, my good feller. The doctor he'll see to 
 you." The policeman who says this to the interior of the 
 ambulance says it as one to whom any form of poll-parrot- 
 ting — that is to say, human speech — is distasteful. He 
 slaps his gloves for warmth, as he walks beside the ambu- 
 lance. He is a reserve man, who has come out in charge 
 of it. But a moment after he listens again ; there may be 
 exceptions, after all, to a rule of universal glum silence ! 
 What is this ambulance case saying ? 
 
 " It ain't for myself, master. It's for my little lass. She 
 comes for to fetch me home to the Green Man . . . house at 
 the comer . . . very nigh to us now, as I take it. . . ." Jim's 
 voice is bad, and he is speaking against pain, gallantly. 
 A subordinate constable says, " That's so, too !" and this 
 confirmation reinforces Jim, Avho goes on, recognising the 
 voice : " Your mate, he knows her. You'll tell her, master. 
 I'll trust ye for a good man . . . there's only a little bit of 
 harm done . . . say I've had worse happen many a time 
 afore. . . ." But Jim is at the end of his tether. His 
 voice goes faint. His instruction was clear, though. 
 
 " See for the child, Clancy," says the first officer. " And 
 tell 'em at the bar to send out a small brandy." Clancy 
 goes on ahead. He is a person incapable of feeling surprise, 
 so when he meets a potboy approaching with a glass of 
 brandj^ he makes no useless inquiries, but merely points 
 backwards over his shoulder towards the approaching 
 ambulance. 
 
 The potboy carries the brandy on, and the officer gets it 
 down Jim's throat somehow. " Very smart of you, 
 Thomas," says he, inventing a name for the potboy, a 
 complete stranger to him. " Nothin' like being beforehand !" 
 
 But Thomas disclaims any credit for himself. His action
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 167 
 
 was, he affirms, due to instructions transmitted to him by 
 a young customer. His report is : " He cuts in and he 
 says, says he, ])'leece accident, he says. Pickford's waggon 
 gone over a bloke, he says. You cut along out with a nip 
 o' brandy for a stimilant, he says. That's what the 
 orficer says, he says. And off he goes !" As the brandy 
 is consumed, it clearly will be a good contribution to taci- 
 turnity to say nothing about it. Moreover, the potboy, 
 miscalled Thomas, conveys that his governor, at the Man, 
 is not a blooming screw ; and that the brandy ain't worth 
 going to law about. The officer suggests, however, that a 
 second nip would not be unwelcome to himself, and would 
 bring the total up to the point of being chargeable to the 
 Force. 
 
 There is time for all this, as a case of this sort must be 
 carried gently, apart from the fact that the slippery road 
 makes caution necessary. And by the time the ambu- 
 lance reaches the comer Lizarann is sticking to loyally, 
 mindful to the last of her promise never to go beyond 
 where it was wrote up "Old Vatted Rum," her first tendency 
 to break into panic-stricken sobs, on hearing that her daddy 
 has had an accident, is already well under control ; the 
 policeman Clancy, whom she knows by sight, and has even 
 spoken with, and who therefore is trustworthy, having 
 told her that her daddy will soon come round, and never 
 be a penny the worse. 
 
 " Now you^re going to be a good little girl, ain't you, and 
 not make a shine V Thus the policeman, on vernacular 
 lines, supposed to be soothing to the excitable. And 
 Mother Groves, partly in deference to a uniform, adds : 
 " You do like the gentleman tells you, my dear, and go 
 along where he saj^s !" This suggests to Clancy, who had 
 at first intended to limit himself to negative injunctions, 
 to say : " Yes, you run along home, little miss, and tell 'em 
 your daddy's being took proper care of." 
 
 But the terrified scrap, blue with the cold, half-choked 
 with the hysterical gasps she is fighting against so bravely, 
 as bidden, sees a deadlier possibility still before her in her 
 arrival at home without her daddy. It was the dread of 
 having to tell, more than the fear of being accounted the 
 responsible culprit, thatjkept her glued to the spot. She
 
 168 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 was docility itself towards constituted authorities of all 
 sorts, but now her feet simply would not move. Oh, what 
 a huge relief it was when the other policeman, him along 
 of the hospital- barrer, said : " Ketch that kid, some of you, 
 and bring her along this way ! Can't wait here all 
 day !" He slammed his hands one across the other very 
 hard, not only to procure circulation, but to express 
 promptitude. 
 
 The kid didn't want any bringing. She was across the 
 road and beside the ambulance before the instruction to 
 catch her could be obeyed. " You'll do your daddy more 
 harm than good, that way !" said the hand-slapper, stopping 
 short. Lizarann's first instinct, to scramble up the 
 hospital-barrer — to get at her daddy on any terms — had 
 to be combated on his behalf. " Peck the child up, and 
 'old her acrost the edge," suggests the potboy from " The 
 Man." The constable remarks, " Some o' the public '11 
 be feeling dry by now, and nobody to serve 'em ! You best 
 carry that emptj- glass back, Thomas." But he accepts 
 Thomas's suggestion, and Lizarann is grateful to the strong 
 hands that pick her up to kiss her daddy's face. Was it 
 really his ? — she thinks to herself, as they put her down 
 again out of her father's sight, below the couch-rim of the 
 ambulance. She can't speak ; he can. 
 
 " Ye never cried ' Pi-/of,' little lass." How hard he tried 
 to make his voice cheerful, and how well he succeeded, too ! — 
 mere mass of breathless pain that he was. The least word 
 a man can speak over whom a waggon has passed, crushing 
 both legs, will show the constitution of a giant behind it, 
 even if it is followed perforce by a groan ; and Jim sup- 
 pressed even that. Were not those his little lass's lips 
 that had just touched his cheek ? She, poor child, could 
 only say " Daddy !" or mix it with a sob. Which of the 
 two Jim heard, who can say ? But just at that moment the 
 nip of brandy began to tell, and Jim was able to make a 
 great effort. " Never you fret, little lass," he said. " The 
 ship's doctor, he'll make a square job of my leg. You run 
 away home and say I'm took proper care of." WTiat 
 Lizarann's daddy said was to be done ^\ as the thing to do, 
 past doubt, and nothing else could be right. Lizarann 
 started straight for home.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 169 
 
 Poor Jim ! — he knew what he was and where he v.as 
 well enough. But he couldn't find his words right. So 
 he talked of the ship's doctor, knowing all the while that 
 the surgeon of the Z division was going to attend to his 
 leg. As to the extent of his hurt and how it came about, 
 he knew almost as little as the story does, so far. All he 
 was sure of was that he lost his bearings after leaving his 
 precious board at the barber's shop, was shouted at to 
 stand clear, didn't stand clear, and v.as overwhelmed by 
 what he should have stood clear of, and knocked silly. 
 Beyond that, the little that had reached him, since he 
 recovered consciousness, related so much to the prophetic 
 certainty of its speakers that what had happened had been 
 sure to happen, and they could have foreseen it an}' day, 
 that it made him little the wiser. And what the crash had 
 left of his faculties was too actively employed about his 
 child to feel curious about the details of the accident. 
 
 Lizarann's first information about it, as she completed 
 the legend of the Flying Dutchman to Mother Groves, was 
 from the boy Hawkins, who came running to report the dis- 
 aster, just as she was standing cross-examination on her 
 first deposition. Instead of coming straight, he just in at 
 one door of the ale 'us, and out at the other, like you might 
 have said, only half a minute between ! He then come 
 crassin' over — this was Mrs. Groves's experience — and queer 
 he looked, causing Lizarann to ask, " Ain't my daddy 
 there ?" in alarm. To which his reply was alarming and 
 ambiguous : " Oh ah ! — he's there all right enough — wot 
 there is of him." He did not improve this by beginning, 
 in a throat-clearing, gasping way, like a boy whose speech 
 has lost its orientation, " I say, Missis . . ." Whereat 
 Lizarann, in growing terror, broke into hysterical sobs, and 
 would have started in her despair along the forbidden way, 
 if the sad procession with the ambulance had not appeared, 
 and chilled her to the marrow. She could hear the boy, 
 greatly relieved by the appearance of direct evidence of 
 what had happened, saying that there was nothing to make 
 a hollerin' about ; it was only a haccident, and wot could 
 you expect, a day like this ? His anxiety to minimise the 
 evil did credit to a human heart that seemed, in spite
 
 170 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 of appearances to the contrary, to underlie his Asiatic 
 nature. He was even attempting further exhortation 
 towards fortitude when the policeman came up, and he 
 vanished. 
 
 In a very few minutes all were gone but Mother Groves 
 and the chestnut stove, in the yellow gloom of the growing 
 fog, waiting for the grandson of the former to come and 
 see to the gettin' of 'em both home. As the old Avoman 
 looked back on the event, it presented itself to her as an 
 accident, and the accident had been took to the Hospital. 
 That was all. On'y, that poor httle thing ! But Mrs. 
 Groves soon forgot her, and was back on a great problem 
 of her life — would the stove last out her time, with a bit 
 of patching now and again ? It had been that patched 
 already, and was near falling to pieces. And when her grand- 
 son come, late, she'd a' most forgotten the accident. There 
 now, she declared if she hadn't ! 
 
 Lizarann pattered on as hard as she could go, so many 
 steps to a sob, until] she got to Dartley Street, and then 
 she heard, behind her, the boy Frederick Hawkins, 
 out of breath. " You ain't any call for to watercart, 
 young un," said he. His maimer was superior and 
 offensive, but Lizarann felt that benevolent intention 
 combined in it with masculine dignity. Still, protest was 
 called for. 
 
 " I hin't a-cryin !" she said. " On'y my d-daddy — he's 
 t-took to the Hospital !" It was too dreadful, put into 
 words, and Lizarann broke doA\T3 over it. 
 
 " Who do yer call the worse by that ? He ain't, not he !" 
 This boy means \\&\\. His better nature is roused, but he 
 has no mode of speech that is not truculent or threatening. 
 He softens a little, though, as he becomes communicative : 
 " Whj^, I had two uncles and a aunt, flat they was, under a 
 street-roller ! And they just off with 'em to the Horspital, 
 and, my eyes and Avitals ! — you should a' seen 'em no better 
 than a fortnit after ! Singin' t\\Qy wos !" 
 
 Lizarann disbelieved tliis story, but not because of the 
 main incident. It was the singing that stuck in the gizzard 
 of her credulity. Uncles and aunts never sang. They 
 might be raised from the dead ; may not Lazarus have had
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 171 
 
 a niece ? But singing ! — no ! She merely summarised 
 her views, not arguing the point : " They never sang 
 nuffint." 
 
 A proud spirit brooks no contradiction. " Ain't I tellin' 
 of yer V said the Turk indignantly. He adduced corro- 
 borative evidence. " Why ! — warn't a boy-makes-his- 
 livin'-by-daily-joumals-I-knows's father's corpse h'isted 
 up out of a shore and took to the Horspital stone-dead 
 with the un'olesome atmosphere and fetched to ? And 
 dined off of nourishin' food the same evening, and rezoomed 
 work on the Monday ?" Meeting no expression of doubt 
 of this case, he adduced another, more calmly. " Likewise 
 Tom Scott, as 'arf killed Parker for five pound aside, he 
 picked up six of his teeth he'd knocked out, he did ; and 
 he run after him to the Horspital, he did ; and they stuck 
 'em in again for Mr. Parker, they did, as good as new. They 
 can do most anythin' .'''' So it appeared. And the cases 
 gained greatly in credibility by the Turk's obviously true 
 recitation of maturer ideas than his own in the language of 
 seniors. It was like Lizarann's own tale of the Flying 
 Dutchman ; and she felt it so, and found solace accordingly. 
 She hoped the Turk would go all the way with her, to give 
 moral support, and repeat his experience. You see, this 
 Turk was, to her vision, big, authoritative, and mature. 
 He did not present himself to her as an impident young 
 sprat, in want of local smacking. Which no doubt would 
 have been Mrs. Steptoe's view of him had he come all the 
 way. But he forsook Lizarann at the top of Tallack Street, 
 leaving her grateful to him, all the more for his narration 
 of how he heard the blooming copper say a nip o' brandy 
 wouldn't be amiss as a stimilant, and he told 'em at the 
 Green Man. He added that he expected to be proarsecuted 
 for telling of 'em — recalling a little the saying of the third 
 Napoleon, that the Human Race always crucifies its Messiahs. 
 
 So there stands Lizarann trembling on the doorstep, after 
 jumping up to the knocker to strike it back and leave it to 
 execute a single knock by itself, and v»atching the great 
 white flakes of snow that are beginning to fall at their 
 leisure — no hurry — plenty of time yet for three inches deep 
 of them and their mates before the milk comes in the 
 morning !
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 LiZARANN could not shut her eyes to the difference between 
 Aunt Stingy, as she anticipated her on the doorstep, and 
 the PoHce Force, according to her last impression of it. 
 Her aunt's was not a bosom she could fly to for solace in 
 her trouble — well ! no more was that of the Force, if you 
 insist on literalness up to the hilt ; but metaphorically she 
 would far sooner have had recourse to the latter than the 
 former. She did not, however, expect penalties this time if 
 she could get in her explanation ; but she had doubts 
 whether the shortness of her aunt's temper would allow of 
 its development at sufficient length to be understood. 
 
 She tried to think of some quick thing to say that would 
 at once reveal her daddy's mishap and the cause of her 
 return A\dthout him. But she should have done it before 
 that sepulchral single knock had shown the executive 
 power of the knocker, and brought out by contrast the foot- 
 less, hoofless, wheelless silence of Tallack Street. Now 
 that its summons to open had been delivered, the poor 
 little shivering author of it could think of nothing at all. 
 She might have done so, though, as far as time went, for 
 she had to repeat her knock after a pause her terror made 
 to seem short ; while to her eagerness for any human voice — 
 even Uncle Bob's — it seemed awfully long. But, as it 
 turned out, the best she could have thought of would have 
 been of little use. 
 
 The second knock brought about a shuffling in the house 
 that fluctuated a moment, threatened to subside as it had 
 begun, then seemed to decide on action, and approached the 
 door — but heavily, being palpably Uncle Bob, whose mission 
 seemed to be considered complete by the household when he 
 had stood the doer on the jar, and left it, without waiting 
 to see who had knocked. Of course, it could only have been 
 Jim and the child. So it looked as if Mr, Steptoe had 
 
 172
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 173 
 
 decided that his duty was discharged by removing obstacles 
 to their entry, and leaving them to close the door their own 
 way. He'd stood the candle down and Just left it to gutter 
 in the passage, when Lizarann got inside of the house. 
 There was something gone wrong there, too, evidently. 
 
 As her uncle was in the habit of using the adjectives 
 popular in his class rather freely, Lizarann was not sur- 
 prised when. Supposing himself to be addressing her father, 
 and asking him to " shet to that door and keep the cold out 
 of the house," he prefixed one open to many objections to 
 each of his three substantives. But she was surprised at 
 the tone of his voice, which chattered in gusts, as though 
 control over it went and came, and at the way he was 
 crouching over the fire. He had spoken to her father as 
 Jim, and evidently was taking him for granted — had 
 grasped no facts. 
 
 " Please, where' s Aunt Stingy ?" The child could think 
 of no better tiling to say. Something was altogether too 
 wrong with her uncle. She could see he was shaking. All 
 things were all wrong clearl}-, and the world a nightmare ! 
 
 " In her bed, mayhap ! — shamming ill, I take it." Then 
 he raised his voice, but never looked round : " Jim ! — why 
 can't you shut up that da-da-damned d-d-door and come 
 inside ?" He had a fair convulsion over those words, more 
 like the chattering fit that sometimes comes before a bad 
 attack of sea-sickness than the effects of ordinary cold. 
 Many may not know this sort. 
 
 " Father ain't here," was all Lizarann could say. 
 
 " Then shet to the damned door till he comes." He could 
 say this and never look round, or notice the sob-broken 
 voice, all a-strain with its terrors, of the little speaker. If 
 he had only cursed her for crying, it would have sounded 
 sane by comparison. Lizarann wished herself back in 
 the street, with the Turk. And how happy those few 
 minutes seemed now, when she did not know about daddy, 
 and was telling Mother Groves about the Flying Dutch- 
 man ! 
 
 She could only stand speechless and utterly terrified at 
 the oddity of her uncle's manner — she well knew his 
 ordinary one, of being in the liquor he was never out of — 
 and was just on the point of mere mad screaming or starting
 
 174 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 to run God knows where, when the voice of Aunt Stingy 
 came from her bedroom above, also with alarm in it. 
 " Jim, can't you hear, you fool ? Leave him to himself, 
 I tell you. He's had the horrors." Aunt Stingy seemed 
 to imply that the horrors, whatever they were, would sub- 
 side of themselves. 
 
 Ill has a fixed point in the minds of young cliildren — a 
 simple maximum it reaches and never goes beyond. Lucky 
 for them that it is so ! For a step further would kill. 
 Lizarann's mind could be dragged no farther along the road 
 of terrors that leads maturer lives to self -slaughter or the 
 madhouse. Or it may be some pitying angel wrapped her 
 small soul in a merciful stupefaction, that it might live. For 
 when her aunt's voice came again, peevish and impatient, 
 but without sense of any very abnormal conditions, she was 
 able to answer, " Yass, Aunt Stingy," but not very audibly. 
 
 " Why can't you answer when I speak ? I tell you, let 
 him bide. He's best to himself, and he's had all what liquor 
 there was. . . . Can't you answer ? . . . Fetchin' me 
 down ! . . ." 
 
 The child understood- her aunt's context, for all its eli- 
 sions. To propitiate, she ran upstairs. A descent in wrath, 
 portended by an exaggerated foot-tramp, was averted 
 by her words : " D-daddy ain't come b-back — he ain't !" 
 
 " Why couldn't you speak ? — little hussy ! YouWe a 
 child to have in a house. When's he coming ?" 
 
 " He airCt coming ! Yass — he ain't ! He's took to the 
 doctor on a barrer. Yass — he is /" And Lizarann, whose 
 small hands, cold and blue, are all tremor and visible unrest 
 from panic, would like to run, but dares not. She has 
 worded her awful message, though. That is something, 
 however much Aunt Stingy may doubt its truth. 
 
 " Who's to know you ain't lying ? Who's to know he 
 ain't in at the Robin Hood ? Now, if you're story- 
 tellin' . . . !" A bony warning finger should have been 
 enough without any further details of the penalties of 
 falsehood. A reference to a flagellum that had once been 
 inherent in a discarded pair of the speaker's stays — an 
 incredible wooden lathe — ought to have been quite super- 
 fluous. But Mrs. Steptoe had had great trials, to excuse 
 her short temper.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 175 
 
 However, nothing can alter the facts ; and Lizarann can 
 only repeat her statement. Daddy had been took away 
 on the p'leece barrer, wth curtings ; and his leg v/as hurt. 
 But the doctor was at the Horspital. This was felt, and 
 offered, as a palliative. Surely it deserved better recog- 
 nition than, " And Avhy couldn't the child tell mc all this 
 before ? Keeping me standin' here !" very wrathfully fired 
 off at poor Lizarann. She had told it, and at the earliest 
 possible moment. What could she do more ? 
 
 Aunt Stingy's reception of the story, which was less 
 emotionne than Lizarann had expected, had its good side. 
 Perhaps the presumptuous boy's description of the pov.ers 
 of Hospitals was not all fanciful, and her aunt's wider 
 experience knew that in a short time daddy would be back 
 home again ; not only well and sound, but even better and 
 sounder. Lizarann extracted consolation from her aunt's 
 half callous hearing of her news, without closely analysing 
 it. Probably Mrs. Steptoe would have been more sympa- 
 thetic if her o^v^a cup of bitterness, like her small niece's, had 
 not been full to the brim already. But sympathy would 
 have intensified Lizarann's solicitude about her father ; the 
 fact that the news could be apathetically received by any- 
 one, even Aunt Stingy, fortified her. It may even be 
 that she was braced by her ovm keen feeling of the injustice 
 her aunt did her in apparently ascribing her father's 
 disaster to her, when really she was only the innocent and 
 most unwilling bearer of the news of it. That, however, 
 was Mrs. Steptoe's attitude. " There's a many'd 'a said you 
 didn't deserve no supper," said she, and claimed a weak 
 good-nature as a quality of her own. She hustled Lizar- 
 ann into her father's bedroom, with needless collateral 
 pushes in wrong directions, and the admonition, " Don't 
 let me catch you in the parlour, or you'll know of it. Starin' 
 round !" Her truculence, no doubt, had something of a 
 safety-valve character, and she may have thought that the 
 youth of its object would remain ignorant of its full stress, 
 while she herself had the whole advantage of the relief it 
 gave. But really the child understood more thanjshe 
 ascribed to her, and felt its injustice, tempered by the broad 
 consideration that it was only Aunt Stingy. 
 
 Mere ferocity towards children is bad enough, but|it is
 
 176 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 hardest to bear when it is illogicah Aunt Stingy was in- 
 consecutive in her grounds of indictment against Lizarann, 
 and this added to the sting of her injustice. No child 
 would have been readier than she to see to her own supper, 
 and hot up half a bloater on the bit of fire that had looked 
 so cheerful in the front room — though she couldn't above 
 half see it for Uncle Bob gettin' in the way — or to stoast 
 a slice of bread afore the bars ^Wth a fair allowance of butter 
 on ; or to do what she dared not ask her aunt to do, and lie 
 the four chestnuts, which she still treasured mechanically 
 inside her frock, on the top bar where it was flat, to get 
 the heat back in 'em a bit, before cracking off the shell. 
 So it was inconsistent and absurd in her aunt, after telling 
 her to keep where she was or she would let her know, to 
 return presently \\dth all the supper she would get to-night, 
 comin' in so late, and to add : " / wasn't waited on when I 
 was a little girl. Standin' round, expectin' your elders to 
 fetch and carry !" quite ignoring the fact that she herself 
 had paralysed her niece's activit}^ bj'^ instinictions not to 
 go outside of that room until she was told to it. And 
 equally so when, wdthout any evidence that the child was 
 going to say a word, she added : " Now, don't you answer 
 me, for that I csmnot abide ; but just you eat your supper 
 and go to bed, or we shall have you ill next." Of course, it 
 was only when Jim was out of the way that Mrs. Steptoe 
 allowed the shortness of her temper to get the better of her 
 so completely, and on this occasion everything was against 
 elasticity. 
 
 Things were all so nightmare-like that nothing could well 
 make them worse, or Lizarann might have been addition- 
 ally terrified and oppressed when her aunt, before consigning 
 her supper finally to her for consumption, looked it all over 
 closely and said, more to herself than the public : " I don't 
 see any things a-crawling." As it was, in the Valley of 
 Shadows Life was passing through to-night, Lizarann 
 merely said : " There ain't nufiint on the stoast," and began 
 her supper off it sadly. Her daddy's great effort to speak 
 against his pain, and his reassuring words about the doctor, 
 had made that cheerless evening meal a possibility to his 
 little lass. Full knowledge, and a year or so more of life, 
 would have meant inability to eat. But Lizarann was
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 177 
 
 very young, and, moreover, could not credit a possibility of 
 mistake to her daddy. Had he not spoken confidently of 
 the " ship's doctor " making a square job of his leg ? She 
 had certainly a slight misgiving that this pointed to his 
 leg assuming a different shape after the operation. All 
 sorts of contingencies hung about Hospitals. You never 
 could tell what grown people wouldn't be at next. But 
 whatever the outcome was, daddy would be there. And 
 this black cloud would roll awa3^ 
 
 Aunt Stingy retired, and left Lizarann to herself and her 
 supper with a final imputation of rebelliousness and dis- 
 obedience that was quite groundless — so its object thought. 
 " You do like I tell you, and go straight to bed when you've 
 e't your supper. Bumin' the candle-ends for nothing !" 
 She then did violence to the understanding, by adding : 
 " The fight won't last you out, except you look sharp ; 
 and then you'll be in the dark." If a rigid economy was 
 compulsory, how could extravagance be possible ? But 
 menace without method was Aunt Stingy's attitude to- 
 night. 
 
 Lizarann, left alone, looked all round the tray and under 
 the milk- jug, but could see notliing crawling. She was 
 not so much concerned with the avoiding such things as 
 articles of diet as a County Family would have been, or 
 even the Upper Middle Class ; her object was to throw 
 light on her aunt's soliloquy, which she had not ventured 
 to ask the meaning of. Getting no light, she ate the scrop 
 o' bloater, and the stoast and butter, and drank the milk, 
 and did very well, for her aunt was not christened Stingy 
 from any tendency to cut down rations unduly. Only she 
 would have done better still, had she been able to sob less, 
 and if the resovirces of a pocket-handkerchief ten inches 
 square had not required supplementing by sleeves, which 
 can only be crudely engineered against tear-drops, or their 
 reincarnations. But she got through her supper before 
 ever the candle set alight to the paper, and flared. Then 
 she got to bed before the flare became convulsive ; not to 
 be left in the dark with — who knows ? — a nightgowned 
 sleeve inside out and no finding where. Because we all 
 feel that spectres are not to be trusted, unless you have 
 something on. Indeed, timid persons are not happy till 
 
 VOL. I. . 1^
 
 178 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 the v/hole thickness of the bedclothes is between them and 
 possibly convincing phenomena. 
 
 The candle died hard. But Lizarann knew that the 
 longer it took, the less it Avould taint the atmosphere after 
 its last convulsion, and left it to smoke ia peace. So she 
 watched it from her bed that stood in what was little more 
 than a cupboard off the room her father slept in, and cried 
 to think that his was empty. She watched, and wondered 
 which would come first, the last flicker, or her last mouthful 
 of chestnut. For she ate those chestnuts cold, and shoved 
 the shells well under the bolster so Aunt Stingy shouldn't 
 see. She was a very human little girl, was Lizarann, for all 
 she was so devoted to her daddy. 
 
 The candle outlived the last chestnut. Then considera- 
 tion had to be given to the problem how to get to sleep 
 afore the nasty smell come along the ceiling and down. 
 Once asleep, you can ignore smells, even when sut. Sut 
 is the worst, but candlegutter has a nasty flaviour with it. 
 So Lizarann did wisely to go to sleep vigorously. 
 
 She was succeeding, and beginning to dream a nice 
 dream, though she wasn't getting warm yet, when her aunt 
 made a tempersome re-entry on the scene. Lizarann woke 
 with a start, and, remembering all the dreadful reality, 
 broke out crying — she couldn't help it ! Shaken by one 
 arm, and told to wake up and have done with that petering 
 noise, she recovered self-possession, except for a lagging 
 sob at intervals, and sat up. Directed, inconsecutively, 
 to lie down and go to sleep again, and no more nonsense, 
 she was preparing to comply when her aunt gave a first 
 beginning of a screech and stopped it short. 
 
 " Whatever is it ? . . . O Lard ! . . ." 
 
 " It's a ch-chestnut sell. I eated it." Confession 
 proved good policy in this case, averting inquiry which 
 would have revealed the hidden store under the bolster. 
 
 " Lard, what a turn it gave me ! . . . he's made me as 
 bad as himself. ..." The woman had a frantic look 
 about her ; her husband's horrors evidently had a sort of 
 infection for her ; though of course the child had little 
 insight into this. " You bad child, you ! You little good- 
 for-nothing slut, lyin' in bed eating chestnuts, and your 
 father in the Hospital !"
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 179 
 
 This wounded Lizarann to the quick, and righteous in- 
 dignation overcame both grief and fear. " I airi't,'" she 
 shouted, and for the moment quite forgot that she was, or 
 at least had been, the moment before. 
 
 " Don't you tell me that, you ontruthful child, and your 
 leavings staring you in the face ! Now just you tell no 
 more stories, but say where they've took your father, and 
 what he's done to himself." 
 
 This retrospective use of a conviction for untruth — and 
 a morally unjust one — to suggest a course of antecedent 
 misrepresentation on her part, seemed to Lizarann quite 
 the worst piece of mendacity within her experience. But 
 it got the conversation still further away from that nutshell 
 deposit ; and that was good, so far. " Father said he'd be 
 took proper care on, and I w-wasn't to c-cry, and 1 
 shan't !" 
 
 " Cari't you tell me where they've took your father to, 
 instead of vexin' me ? Is he gone to the Station, or the 
 Hospital ?" 
 
 " The Spoleece, they carried him off to the Sospital. 
 Yass !" Then, sitting up in bed, a small monument of woe, 
 for the moment tearless, Lizarann considered whether she 
 had grounds for deciding which Hospital. She knew of 
 three, the Smallporks, Guys's, and Bartholomew's, but she 
 was very uncertain about the two last. She decided on 
 denying the Smallporks, if asked. However, her aunt 
 accepted the Hospital as sufficient. Let it go at that ! 
 
 " What did your daddy say he'd done to his leg ? Now, 
 no makin' up ! Sa}^ the truth, like he told you." This 
 would have been a signal to many children to strain hard 
 to invent the truth out of their own heads. Goaded by 
 stupid, unsympathetic people, they do this in self-defence. 
 But Lizarann was honourable and clear-headed. 
 
 " He only saided his leg — didn't say nuffint about it. 
 Only the sip's doctor would make a square job of it. Yass !" 
 
 " And what good's your schoolin' done you ? Couldn't 
 you have the sense to ask and find ? What ever do you 
 suppose God gave you your tongue for ? — to set with your 
 mouth wide open ? Little plagues can talk fast enough 
 when they ain't wanted to it !" She then suggested, 
 most unfairly, that Lizarann was detaining her by holding 
 
 12—2
 
 180 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 out false hopes of information. " / should like to know 
 how long you expect me to stand here askin' questions. This 
 time o' night ! And me wanted to look after your uncle ! 
 Get down into your bed and ha' done with it ! / can't waste 
 my time talkin' to you." After which she departed and 
 locked the door ; Lizarann could not imagine why. But 
 there was something vevy queer with Uncle Bob, who had 
 been audible all the time in fitful outbreaks, conveying a 
 sense of his adjective applied as a stigma to many things, 
 and as a refreshing emphasis to parts of speech. 
 
 Lizarann's last impression — a hazy one, before deep 
 sleep came, and total oblivion — was that her aunt went 
 out from the house, leaving the street door on the jar, and 
 that then she heard the voice of their neighbour Mrs. 
 Hacker, saying, " He'll be all right by morning." 
 
 Now this little maiden attached only two ideas to this 
 husband of her aunt : one, that he was a painful con- 
 comitant of all their lives, who had to be put up with, and 
 w^here w^as the use of complainin' ? — the other that he was 
 the victim of a liver-disorder knowii as " the boil." His 
 absorption of gin was part of himself ; a practice as much 
 identified with him as any inherent quahty or fixed condi- 
 tion ; perhaps the celibacy of a priesthood presents a sort 
 of parallel case. So all new and strange developments in 
 Uncle Bob were credited to this disorder, and when Mrs. 
 Hacker from over the way said the patient would bo all 
 right by morning, the only suggestion to Lizarann's drowsy 
 mind was that there was a bottle of doctor's stuff never 
 been took, and that it had just come, in handy. For — but 
 perhaps you know tliis ? — the masses, 'par excellence, 
 account all drugs good for all diseases, if took reg'lar. The 
 classes, prone to affectation, get prescriptions made up 
 each time. 
 
 So the child was soon sound asleep and happy. 
 
 But the cobbler's disorder was the first beginning of the 
 end of a long devotion to gin, and, to speak scientifically — 
 always do so when you can ! — he was in a very advanced 
 condition of Alcoholism. But he was very unhke the 
 priest, who, in the most advanced conditions of celibacy, 
 passes his life — poor fellow ! — in secret longing for the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 181 
 
 remedy. For Mr. Steptoe hugged his Alcoholism, caressed 
 it, and fed it constantly with new supplies of raw gin. 
 His affection for the cause of his disease was self-supporting, 
 and he longed for small goes of it as keenly as the priest 
 longs for the proper antidotes of his — for Home and Love. 
 
 Wlien Aunt Stingy took such pains to lock her niece into 
 the bedroom she might just as well have locked her husband 
 into the front parlour. But she was deceived by appear- 
 ances. For it was just — only just — untrue that he had had 
 all the liquor there was. There was a short half-glass in 
 the bottom of an unnoticed bottle, put by to be took back, 
 and a penny on it. On this Steptoe greedily pounced, 
 during his wife's first interview with the child in the next 
 room. It produced that momentary flash that is so mis- 
 leading in these cases, when actual improvement seems to 
 follow a new stimulus. Often the trembling hand and 
 idiot brain resume skill and coherency, for the moment, 
 only to fall still lower at the next reaction. The woman 
 felt secure in her husband's assurance that he was a bloom- 
 ing sight better, and that he couldn't tell what the described 
 Hell had been the described matter Avith him. He pro- 
 mised to come to bed as soon as the fire giv' out ; and she 
 left him, free from the horrors for the time being, standing 
 with his back agin' the mantelshelf, collecting the last heat 
 with a view to sitting on it— the heat, not the mantelshelf 
 —while he finished through his pipe. 
 
 She ought not to have done it. Or she ought to have 
 took the key out of the outside of the bedroom door, or hid 
 it anywheres handy — where he would never have looked 
 for it. Law bless you ! Instead, she went to bed herself, 
 and probably fell asleep as soon as a sense of her husband 
 moving, downstairs, seemed to warrant a belief that he 
 was going to keep his word. She slept sound, and it may 
 have been two hours past midnight when she was waked by 
 a movement below, and found that her husband had never 
 come to bed ; was still smoking, probably. But this was 
 not her first thought as, having lighted her candle, she sat 
 up in bed, noting the sounds that followed. Her spoken 
 reflection was : " If that's Lizarann prancing about, I'll 
 let her know to-morrow," Then she remembered the key, 
 and couldn't understand the position. And then took
 
 182 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 advantage of a silence to decide that it wasn't anything. 
 When an " anything " may involve our having to get out 
 of bed in the cold, we are apt to decide on its non-existence. 
 She blew out the candle and lay down again. 
 
 This is not a medical work, and it is no part of its busi- 
 ness to locate exactly the case of Roberf Steptoe in medical 
 records. The discrimination of the symptoms of delirium 
 tremens proper, and their points of difference from those 
 of ordinary delirium — nervous or feverish — are matters 
 of great interest, especially in their relation to treatment, 
 but thej^ belong elsewhere. Our function is limited to 
 recording the symptoms of the case as they have been 
 brought to our knowledge ; and we must hope that our 
 medical readers Avill allow a certain latitude to the descrip- 
 tion of the only instance of the malady that has come 
 within its writer's experience. Some of it is necessarily 
 conjectural, but nothing would be gained by a laborious 
 effort to separate these portions from the certainties. For 
 instance, the patient's hours in the room alone, after his 
 wife left him, must be matter of surmise. But surmise to 
 the following effect appears well groimded. 
 
 So long as the effect continued of the small dose of 
 stimulant he had discovered, he remained sane and free 
 from immediate delusion, and had no other intentions than 
 to smoke through his pipe and follow his wife to bed, as 
 promised. But after he had finished it, and knocked the 
 ashes out — they were found on the hob, and the pipe 
 stuck in the looking-glass frame, when the ground \\a,B 
 gone over afterwards — his attention was arrested by some- 
 thing crawling over the table. He had seen one before 
 (as appears by our narrative), in fact, he had seen several, 
 causing a sympathetic horror in Aunt Stingy. He tried 
 to destroy this one, but nothing came of the attempt. 
 Putting a volume on it and crushing it down only caused it 
 to come through the book and crawl over it. He tried this 
 frequently, wondering at the result, but not specially 
 alarmed — more amused perhaps in a kind of vacuous way 
 — until he saw another, and then another. The place was 
 all over them, and he called them names— some very in- 
 appropriate — and qualified them all with his favourite 
 
 {
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 183 
 
 adjective. In themselves they really did not matter. But 
 most unfortunately the fact that they were all going in 
 the same direction showed him that they were emanations 
 from a man of the name of Preedy, a leather-seller, of whom 
 he used to purchase ready-closed uppers and cuttings. 
 It was shrewd of him, he thought, to identify Preedy as 
 their original source by the steady way in which they all 
 kept going in one direction. And still shrewder to infer 
 that it was all part of a scheme to oust him from the sort 
 of little kennel or box in which he carried on his trade in 
 a street half a mile off. It was left locked at night ; but, 
 seen by the light of these vermin, and a buzzing noise that 
 accompanied them, what was to prevent Preedy getting 
 possession of it and bribing the police on duty to support 
 him in his usurpation ? He sat down for a minute or two 
 longer to think this out. The room was always well lighted, 
 because the street gas-lamp, just outside, always showed 
 through the clear space above the shutter. 
 
 Reflection did not even suggest that it might be a mis- 
 take about Mr. Preedy. If it had, his condition would not 
 have been delirious. On the contrary, it all became clearer 
 to him than ever. If it were not true, how came he to 
 have read half-an-hour since full particulars of it under the 
 heading " Late' Entries " in the sporting journal that was 
 still lying on the table ( He could find it again in a minute, 
 only it was so dark. He had a match and lit it, to read 
 by ; but his hand shook so — always along of that (described) 
 Preedy — that he couldn't master the (described) small type. 
 And his wife had got the candle away. Just like her ! — she 
 done' it a-purpose. But he knew there was a candle in 
 Jim's bedroom, next door. 
 
 The noise he made fumbling at the door, Avhich was of 
 course locked, waked Lizarann, who, having fallen asleep 
 on the fact that her aunt had locked her in, knew that 
 fact and no other as her senses returned. She called 
 drowsily, " You locked the key that side," conceiving the 
 disturber to be her aunt. Contrary to what might have 
 been expected, her uncle understood clearly, and opened 
 the door. But the reason he felt no surprise at the key 
 having been turned outside was one of the indescribables 
 of delirium. It was, somehow, because Lizarann answered
 
 184 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 instead of Jim. Of course — so it seemed to him — if Jim 
 had answered, it would have been inside. You tliink that 
 too strange ? Try dehrium, and see ! 
 
 His wife had haxi nothing to gain by telHng him of Jim's 
 accident, and his faculties had not been at ohservation- 
 point. Or, perhaps, he might be said to have forgotten 
 that he had never known that Jim didn't come in to 
 supper. Anyway, he accepted Jim as having gone to bed, 
 and made a sort of apology for disturbing him. 
 
 " Ashkpardon mashcandlestick," said he, in two husky 
 words, consisting of matter thrown loosely together, and 
 added, as a single thought that might help, " Looshfer- 
 mash." He had no idea about time — thought his wife had 
 left him a few minutes since. 
 
 Lizarann was not frightened. She did not understand 
 that Uncle Bob imagined her daddy was in his bed as 
 usual ; and there was nothing unusual in his coming to 
 look for a lucifer-match. She called out to him without 
 moving : " On the mankle-shelf. Uncle Bob." But she 
 was only half awake. She dimly heard him feeling about 
 the room for the candlestick, and muttering to himself. 
 Sporadic examples of his favourite adjective made outcrops 
 in his monologue, becoming more and more frequent as he 
 failed to discover the object of his search. Still, Lizarann 
 thought herself at liberty to remain half-asleep, if she 
 chose. 
 
 Not being sure how far she had done so — she might, 
 indeed, have been wholly asleep without knomng it — she 
 could not have said how long this continued. She was 
 roused in the end by the delirious man suddenly exclaiming, 
 in a voice of terror that filled her, too, Avith terror : " My 
 Goard, then, he has only one !" He then broke out in 
 incoherent fear : " You keep him off of me, master — you 
 keep him off. Or I tell yer, I'll blind him— I mil /" At 
 which Lizarann's heart stopped. Not from anything in 
 the words, which were of the sort that she would have told 
 Bridgetticks were " only Uncle Bob." Uncle Bob occurred 
 too frequently in daily life for her to fret much about^his 
 language. The cold shiver had run down her back, this 
 time, because she knew there was no one in the room with 
 him. But, may she not have known falsely V Surely
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 185 
 
 there was someone else there, that he was speaking to. 
 Listen ! 
 
 " Good job you come in, master ! You're a good chap, 
 you are. You're Bonyparty, I take it, in the picter-book. 
 You lam him to keep his distance, and I'm your friend. 
 Won't you take nothing ? Just a drain ? . . ." He wan- 
 dered on, ^\^th a thickness of speech that, if spelt ever so 
 successfully, would only encumber the text. 
 
 Uncle Bob had gone mad, clearly, and would get himself 
 took to the Asylum, where Bridgetticks's Aunt Tabither 
 was. Bridget was very proud of this aunt. And though 
 there might, as in her case, be advantages in the end, the 
 present had to be faced. And poor Lizarann was the only 
 soul that knew anything about it, and was stiff -wdth terror 
 in bed, in the dark, with a speechless tongue, but a calm 
 interior spot somewhere, that was wondering when she 
 would begin to crj?^ out in her agony of fear, yet knew that 
 daddy wasn't there to cry to. 
 
 In a few moments she was aware that the breath of the 
 delirious man was catching again, as in terror, and his 
 voice followed: "He ain't gone — he ain't gone ! Don't 
 you pay no attention to 'em, master ! I can see his eye 
 under the bed, spinning round like a wheel. If there'd a 
 been two of 'em novv. ..." Then in a sudden extremity 
 of terror his voice was worse than if it had been a scream ; 
 he forced it from his lungs in a strained whisper. " My 
 Goard ! — he's a-coming. He's a-coming on. He'll get me 
 afore he's done, he will. . . . Leave hold of me ! Leave 
 hold, you ..." We have to stop short. 
 
 Lizarann's impression was that he then struck out to 
 protect himself against his imaginary aggressor. He cer- 
 tainly fell, and was stunned. The child grasped tliis, and 
 the fact that he was now harmless for the moment. But 
 she was so dumbstricken that it was perhaps the whole of 
 three or four minutes before she could find her voice, and 
 then only for inarticulate hysterical screams. 
 
 The fall of Steptoe on the floor was the sound that waked 
 his wife in the room above. The silence that followed was 
 almost long enough to convince her of the safety of going 
 to sleep again. But Lizararm's cries of heartfelt terror and 
 entire panic came to stop that. The woman jumped up
 
 186 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 and lit her candle, whose Avick had smouldered to the grease 
 the last time it was bIo\ATi out ; it had to be coaxed, and a 
 libation of melted paraffin had to be poured off it before 
 it would flare up steady-like, so you could cany it and not 
 spill. It taxed Mrs. Steptoe's nerves to negotiate all this, 
 with that tryin' child making that noise doAvnstairs. But 
 it was either that or go do\M3 in the dark. We borrow her 
 own phraseology. Besides, Lizarann had had nightmare 
 and woke cverj'^body, that time Jim gave Bob such a 
 remindin', three months ago. So her aunt made her light 
 secure before going below. 
 
 Her expectation was to find her husband in a stupid 
 drunken sleep in the front parlour and the door of the back 
 room closed as she had left it. She saw the open door and 
 quickened her pace. 
 
 " What's that child been after outside of the room ? 
 ril soon know about that. . . ." She soon knew all that 
 could be kno\vn at the moment — that her husband, whom 
 she nearly tumbled over, was insensible on the ground — or 
 half-insensible, muttering — and that Lizarann was voci- 
 ferous with terror in bed, and quite incapable, so far, of 
 telling anything. Her first instinct Mas fault-finding, as 
 against the child for screaming. " Stop your noise or I'll 
 make you . . . Lizarann ! ... do you hear ? . . . Will you 
 stop ?" And then in a voice of vengeful resolution : " Fll 
 be in after you directly." Whereujjon Lizarann choked 
 her screams back and waited. 
 
 Her aunt was examining Uncle Bob for bruises, so she 
 thought ; and he appeared to be resenting the inquiry. 
 Suddenly he recovered his articulation in a wonderful way, 
 and became quite unreasonably angry. 
 
 " You'll keep your hands off me, or I'll smack your chops 
 for you." He gathered himself up and got on his legs, but 
 swayed a little as he stood. " What's that you're a- 
 sayin' ? Why the (described) Hell can't you speak up ? 
 Your tongue's fast enough when nobody's asked you for 
 it. Look you here, Prj^-scilla Coupland, I ain't going to 
 be minced about no more, for nobody." Lizarann knew 
 from his calling his wife by her maiden name that her 
 uncle's state was a dangerous one. He did it Avhenever 
 he became savage with drink. What followed wits no
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 187 
 
 improvement. " Ah ! — you may go and tell Jim if you 
 like. He's in it, like the rest of 'em. I know all about 
 their planning and scheming. I'll make my affidavit 
 afore a lawyer. First thing to-morrow morning, and make 
 an end of it all. I will /" His maimer had such serious 
 conviction in it that the child thought him sane for a 
 moment. It was something grown-up that she didn't 
 know about. Her aunt's reply, with an uneasy half-laugh 
 in it, was an attempt to soothe and conciliate. " Whatever 
 are you fancyin', Robert ?" she said nervously. " Who's 
 planning or scheming ? Just you come up to bed, and be 
 done with your talk-talk-talk. Affidavits and lawyers ! 
 Where shall we be next ?" 
 
 " Don't you think to take me in !" His reply was in 
 manner perfectly sane and coherent — that of a shrewd 
 man of business, who sees through a clever imposture, 
 being himself cleverer still. " Don't you think to take 
 me in ! I M^asn't bom last Sunday momin'. Now look 'ee 
 here, Pry-scilla Coupland ! Shall I tell yer something I 
 know ? Shall I tell yer a little thing I know ? A little — 
 little thing ?" This was said as a question of superhuman 
 slyness, as he pointed an intuitive finger to emphasize it 
 and waited. Then, quite suddenly, he became ferocious. 
 " What the Hell, do you think I don't know ? Do you 
 think I don't know that it's yov. that's in behind it all ? 
 Ah ! — you and Jim. One as like as t'other. It's a bloody 
 conspiracy, I tell yer. And I'll make yer pay for it, I'll 
 make yer pa^'." Still, Lizarann was impressed that he 
 was speaking of something I'eal, as there is nothing per se 
 insane in an idea of a conspiracy, however groundless. 
 
 But when he next spoke, she saw that he was really 
 mad. For her aunt, perceiving that her attempt at a 
 soothing tone had only made matters worse, tried a little 
 intimidation. " You wouldn't kerry on like that, Robert, 
 exceptin' you knew Jim wasn't here. But he's a-coming, 
 and I tell it you, for you to know. So just you bear it in 
 mind — there !" 
 
 " Jim's over there. I seen him." He pointed to the bed. 
 
 " Talking silly, you are ! His bed's empty, anyhow ! 
 But he's a-coming — that I tell you, plain. Now you come 
 along upstairs."
 
 188 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " Aha ! — right you are, Mrs. Hess." This was the initial 
 of Steptoe. He went on with a sly triumphant wrinkhng 
 of his face, that mixed oddly with the tremor of eye and 
 lip that is part of this disease. " No, he ain't in that bed. 
 But I can tell yer where he is — he's under it ! That's where 
 Jim is. I seen his eye, plain to see ! . . ." 
 
 " Jim's eye, ye silly ! Come to bed, and sleep your drink 
 off. Ye bom fool ! Jim's eye !" 
 
 " Ah ! — Jim's eye. The one he opens at night. He's 
 under' anded and sly — sees a rare lot more than he'll put 
 a name to ! Why, I seen it, God damn you !" — with a 
 sudden revival of ferocity — " I seen it, I tell you, there under 
 that there bed." 
 
 Then Lizarann knew that he was mad. Of course, she 
 knew nothing of delirium tremens, but she knew quite 
 well the state often described as " mad drunk," and 
 that her uncle when so affected always became violent ; 
 although since that occurrence three months since, fear 
 of Jim had been a wholesome check. Oh, if Daddy were 
 only here ! — so thought Lizarann, as she stood in the 
 doorway with her teeth chattering, and literally sick 
 with terror. 
 
 " I tell you I seen it, and I'll tell you some more. Only 
 just you stand still. I'm a going for to cut it out, by 
 Goard ! Only you wait till I get my * * * knife. . . . It's 
 round the * * * comer against the window. ..." These 
 were the last articulate words Lizarann heard, as her aunt 
 followed their speaker into the front room. Then the 
 voices of both in confusion — his raving, hers concealing 
 apprehension badly under an attempt at command. This 
 for a while ; then a rapid crescendo of terror ending in a 
 shriek, and an appeal to Heaven-knows-who to get the 
 Police. And Lizarann — not seven yet ! — had to make up 
 her mind what to do.
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 When the Rev. Augustus Fossett, the brother of Lizarann's 
 schoolmistress, and incumbent of St. Vulgate's Church, 
 Clapham Rise, got haemoptysis, his friends tried to persuade 
 him to throw up his appointment and go away to Australia 
 or South Africa. His brother Jack wanted him to chuck 
 the Church, and take to some healthy employment — the 
 young man's expressions, not ours — ^and took the oppor- 
 tunity to generalise overmuch, on the subject of the causes 
 of death among the Clergy. He said that something he 
 referred to merely as " it " was " all very fine, but two- 
 thirds of them died of consumption." He was devoted to 
 his brother, and wanted badly to get Gus clear of that 
 filthy slum, with its horrible rows of little houses that had 
 two or three families in them 1 efore the mortar was dry. 
 But Gus refused to comply with his family's wishes. " I 
 know Jack thinks," said he, " that if he could only get me 
 into a lawyer's wig, or a sailor's trousers, I shouldn't have 
 an apex to my right lung, practically. And moist sibilant 
 rales would be things unheard of." He added that he 
 wasn't married, and never meant to be ; that the neigh- 
 bourhood was healthy, if it was a little damp ; and that all 
 he wanted was change of air now and again. Taylor 
 would come and take his duties for a week or so, and he 
 would go to Royd, and Bessie Caldecott would nurse him 
 up, at the Rectory. 
 
 For the Rector of Royd, whose acquaintance the story- 
 has already made, was, in his relation to the Rev. Gus, the 
 other half of one of those friendships that, according to 
 Tennyson, have mastered time. So every now and again, 
 as occasion arose, the Rev. Athelstan's broad chest and 
 shoulders loomed large in the pulpit of St. Vulgate's, and 
 his voice sounded altogether too big for the architectural 
 treatment of the east window. 
 
 189
 
 190 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 About six weeks before the story-time of last chapter, 
 the reverend gentleman had said to his sister-in-law : 
 " Bess, I can't have Gus kill himself this winter. He'll 
 do it in the end, but let's keep him here as long as we can. 
 I'll go and see to his parishioners in January, and he must 
 come here. You mustn't let him work hard, and give him 
 no end of cream and new-laid new-laid eggs. I can get 
 Tom Cowper to do his work in February, and then I'll 
 come back and take him for walks. Ah dear !" The 
 Rector's anxiety about his friend got to the surface, through 
 his tone of serene confidence, which was factitious. 
 
 " What are we to do about Ph^rbe and Joan ?" said Miss 
 Caldecott. 
 
 " Isn't it very likely all nonsense about infection ?" 
 
 " I don't know." Then both looked perplexed ; and 
 that, as we all know, doesn't do any good. 
 
 " There's plenty of places for them to go to . . ." said the 
 Rector ; but didn't say where. 
 
 " But they'll be so heart-broken," said Miss Caldecott, 
 " if they are away when their uncle's here." For Mr. Fossett 
 had always held rank as a " putative " uncle to Phoebe and 
 Joan, with natural confusion in their minds as a result. 
 
 " We must think it out somehow," said the Rector. 
 " Their potatoe uncle ! Ah dear !" 
 
 It must have been thought out somehow, without danger 
 of infection to Phoebe and Joan ; for January saw Augustus 
 shepherding the flock of Athelstan, and Athelstan heavily 
 afflicted with the population of a suburban slum. " At 
 least," said he to himself, in the small hours of the morning, 
 as he plodded back to his temporary residence from a death- 
 bed side, through a thick snowstorm — " at least in the 
 country we are still Shakespearian. These Londoners get 
 more unintelligible every year." For a youth whom he 
 had heard communing with another had first said, " I'll 
 have your hat, Maria," which seemed to have no meaning ; 
 and then when the other said, " What price 'Igh 'Olborn, 
 Joe ?" had merely replied, " So long," and trotted away 
 whistling. 
 
 They were the last defilers of the English language, 
 though, that he heard speech of for the best part of a two- 
 mile walk. For all that had a bed to go to had done so
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 191 
 
 an hour or more since, and left the white world to the 
 snowflakes and the police-force — the latter sadly out- 
 numbered by the former, and fairly driven to whatever 
 shelters official obligation allowed. For the flakes, which 
 at midnight had been large and rather benevolent than 
 otherwise, with a disposition to lie down quietly and not 
 fuss, had become small and vicious and revengeful, and 
 were* rushing point-blank along the streets seeking for the 
 eyes of passers-by and finding none. The gas-lamps, 
 which had at first enjoyed melting them as they came down, 
 were giving up the attempt in despair, and had each its 
 incubus of thickening snow to darken it. The Rev. 
 Athelstan found it pleasant and stimulating — it reminded 
 him of the Alps, years ago — and he had only met three 
 vehicles, all told, in the whole of his walk, so far. One 
 was a belated coster's cart, drift-blocked ; whose donkey, 
 its owner, and a policeman were trying to help it out of its 
 difficulties. He lent a hand, and the rest of his physical 
 resources, most effectually, and earned benedictions and a 
 certificate that he was the right sort. Both the policeman 
 and the costermonger spoke as though several sorts had 
 been tried, and been found wanting. The former, as he 
 wished him good-night, remarked that it was a blizzard 
 this time, and no mistake, as though serious mistakes had 
 been made in the classification of previous examples sub- 
 mitted. A sense of pass-exams, hung in the air. The Rev. 
 Athelstan said good-night, and tramped or waded off 
 through the snow, acknowledging to himself that he didn't 
 know why a blizzard was a blizzard. Now his impression 
 had been that this one was a bad snowstorm. However, a 
 policeman would know, of course. 
 
 " American, I suppose," said he to himself, " and well 
 up to date ! Now I wonder ..." He stopped opposite 
 a wayside inn standing back from the road ; a record of 
 the days of an old suburban highway, with a drinking- 
 trough for horses and a troughlet for dogs, and a smnging 
 sign, half obscured by snowblotch that might fall off, or 
 not. But it would in a minute, if waited for, for its framing 
 creaked in the wind. " I wonder where I am ?" he con- 
 tinued. " I've seen this pothouse before. I've photo- 
 graphed it, if it's the same. It was the Robin Hood." A
 
 192 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 snow-slip occurred at this moment, and left the outlaw's 
 face and a portion of the merry greenwood visible. Oh 
 dear yes ! — the Robin Hood. No mistake about that, 
 anyhow ! The pause ended in complete enlightenment. 
 " Then I know where I am. There's the new Cazenove 
 slum on the left. Now I've got to take care not to go 
 down the wrong turning. One's a cul-de-sac ; ends in a 
 fence. But I fancy mine's the next — yes ! — mine's the 
 next. Addy Fossett's school's just a bit farther on. Lady 
 Arkroyd said it wasn't a slum ! A slum made up of wliited 
 sepulchres — well ! suppose we say machine-pointed brick 
 sepulchres, and let 'em go at that." The difficulty of walk- 
 ing through the snow, and the silence, both seemed to 
 favour soliloquy. He plodded on, driving aside the dry 
 white snowdrift with his feet, and cogitating. 
 
 How deadly dark and silent it is down this side-street ! 
 Only one gas-lamp alight that one can see, some way on. 
 And the silence ! One might be murdered here so quietly, 
 ■with so little inconvenience to one's murderer. And the 
 cold ! " Thank God it is me and not Gus," says the man 
 in the snow through whose mind these thoughts pass. 
 " He wouldn't be kept at home, even by a blizzard. Really 
 — if I hadn't a good pair of eyes . . . Hullo ! what's that ?" 
 He quickens his pace towards something he has seen or 
 heard. 
 
 An instant after, and the silence has vanished. Piercing 
 shrieks are on the night — a child's shrieks — shrieks of 
 frenzied and intolerable panic, there, where nothing can be 
 distinguished yet. . . . Yes ! — there — -coming this way 
 through the snow — this side of the dim lamp-gleam the 
 snowdrift all but hides . . . but oh, so small ! How can a 
 thing so small give such a cry ? 
 
 How can it struggle so, either, as it is caught and picked 
 up by a pair of strong arms, and wrapped in the bosom of 
 a big overcoat '\ " Anything " — said the Rev. Athelstan, 
 when he told the tale after — " anything to get the poor 
 little barefooted, nightgowned scrap up off the snow and 
 out of the cold ! The pluck of the midget ! I never saw 
 such a baby. Not seven yet — just think of it !" For he 
 often told of this adventure of his afterwards. But let us 
 tell it now.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 193 
 
 " Oh, pleathe — pleathe — let me down !" It is such a 
 heart-harrowing cry for liberty that its hearer almost 
 believes himself cruel to shut his ears to it. But — the cold ! 
 " Oh, pleathe let me go to c-call for the Spoleece to c-come 
 to Uncle Bob " 
 
 " Pm the Police, dear child, this time. You show me 
 where Uncle Bob is, won't you ? Hush-sh ! . . . there, dear, 
 now ! . . . that way, is he ? That's a good brave little 
 girl. ... In at this door, is it ? That's right ! Now I'll 
 put you down." And then Uncle Bob's niece is on the 
 ground, pulling with all her small force at the skirt of the 
 big coat that has sheltered her. She doesn't believe the 
 gentleman's statement that he is the Police ; or only with 
 some important reservations. But he is on the side of the 
 right, she is sure, and is vast and powerful. It is no use 
 her pulling, if he does not mean to come after all. But all 
 is well, for he has only paused to get off the big coat the 
 snow falls in lumps from as he leaves it behind him on the 
 floor, and is pulled along the dark narrow passage towards 
 some mysterious male voice out of all keeping with its sur- 
 roundings — a voice with something of a Hyde Park orator's 
 rant in it — pulled by the little nightgowned morsel that 
 seems, now that the end is gained, and help has come, to be 
 quite dumb with terror. 
 
 Along the narrow passage and through the door on the 
 left. The room is lighted by a candle at its last gasp on a 
 side-table, and the gleam through the window, above the 
 closed shutters, of the street-lamp outside. There is light 
 enough to see all that is going on in that room, and it is a 
 sight to give pause to the readiest help, and unnerve the 
 most willing hand. For any succour, in the very bringing 
 of it, may in this case undo itself. 
 
 Against the wall, in the corner next the window, is the 
 ashy face of a terror-stricken woman, kneeling with hands 
 outstretched to avert violence threatened by a man who 
 is waving some weapon before her eyes, while he talks 
 incoherently. It is his voice that sounded like a popular 
 orator's, making telling points. What seemed a meaning 
 when the words were unheard vanishes as they become 
 audible. 
 
 " You keep still afore I pin you to the wall. You * * * 
 
 VOL. I. 13
 
 194 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 well know that what I swear to by Goard's the * * * truth. 
 Climb up and see — all I say is, climb up and see ! The 
 
 * * * noospaper's on my side, and d'you think they don't 
 
 * * * know. . . . Ah ! — would you ? — steady — steady ! I'll 
 put a strap on either side of you to keep you steady. You 
 and Jim thought you were going to have it your own bloom- 
 ing way. And where d'you think he's gone. . , . He — he 
 — he !" He laughed a sniggering laugh. " Jim, he's gone 
 along the railings. Now, don't you go sayin' I haven't told 
 you, or I'll just rip you up afore the clock strikes. I can 
 have your liver out just as soon as not. I can give a 
 reference, by Goard ! Just you ask my wife — she can get 
 a * * '^ reference." And then the Rev. Mr. Taylor saw that 
 what he held in his hand was a pointed cobbler's knife, a 
 deadly instrument. 
 
 The little girl, clinging to him in convulsive terror, made 
 sufficiently prompt action almost impossible. He felt that 
 if he could have caught the man's eye, he might have been 
 able to control him. But as it was, any movement on his 
 part might have meant a stab in the woman's heart. He 
 could see she had on only a thin sort of flannel wTapper 
 over a night-dress, and he understood that the man, in his 
 delirium, conceived her to be some enemy, not his wife 
 certainly. What she was of course he did not know. The 
 lips of his mind formed the simple word " drink " — the evil 
 principle whose name accounts for half the ills flesh would 
 have been so glad never to come to the enjoyment of, but 
 must perforce inherit. 
 
 He dared not spring upon the man to pinion him, \^dth 
 that hideous Icnife so near the woman's life-blood. But a 
 change was to come — one caused by the woman herself. 
 She could barely gasp, so paralysed was articulate speech ; 
 but the few words she said, " Catch hold upon him behind, 
 master !" were heard and understood by the man, who 
 instantly swung round to be ready for some unknown 
 opponent. The Rev. Athelstan felt greatly relieved. The 
 position was simplified : he was now face to face with a 
 delirious maniac with a knife — a knife that seemed made for 
 murder — that was all ! 
 
 " Thank God it isn't Gus, but me !" said a passing thought 
 as he caught the madman's eye, just too late to unsettle,
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 195 
 
 as he might have done — so he fancied — the delivery of a 
 thrust backed b}' the whole strength of the arm that sent 
 it. It was well for him^so straight did the blow come — 
 that the clerical hat he pulled off to stop it had a wide hard 
 brim and a round hard crown, good for a point to slip on. 
 The boss of a Japanese targe could not have balked it 
 more cleverly. Had it struck the centre straight, it would 
 have pierced through to the hand that held it. As it was, 
 it went aslant, striking tAvice on the shining silk nap, but 
 quite harmlessly. 
 
 " Give me the knife, my man. I can show you how to 
 use it better than that." His voice could not have been 
 more collected if he had been reading the Commination 
 Service, Avithout meaning it, in the httle old peaceful church 
 at Royd. The delirious man, whose conception of his own 
 position was probabl}^ that of a victim somehow at bay, 
 surrounded by conspirators, was for a moment convinced 
 that he would better it by compliance, and was indeed 
 actually surrendering the knife, when the woman's hysterical 
 voice broke in, and undid everything. 
 
 '■ Yes — you give the gentleman up the knife, Robert ! 
 You give it him to keep for you now you ain't j^ourself, for 
 to take good care of and giv' back. He'll do the best by 
 you ! You may trust the gentleman . . . etc., etc." The 
 Rev. Athelstan's mind said : " Deuce take the woman ! — 
 can't she hold her tongue ?" but of course he said nothing 
 so secular aloud. 
 
 The lunatic — for he was little else— had all but given up 
 the knife, but of course now changed his mind. " You're 
 answerin' for him, I see !" he exclaimed, \^ith so sane a 
 voice it was hard to think him delirious. " I can see round 
 some of yer better than you think. Yes — Muster Preedy t 
 Ah ! . . . would you . . . would you ? . . ." This with an 
 expression of intense cunning, with the knife held behind 
 him ; and a dangerous tendency to edge back towards the 
 woman, all the while watching the Rev. Athelstan with a 
 sly, ugly half -grin. 
 
 As he got nearer to the woman, she became unable to 
 control herself — little wondbr, perhaps ! — and broke out 
 hysterically : " Oh, God ha' mercy ! — stop liim ! stop him ! — 
 Oh, Lard ! — oh, Christ ! . . ." and so on. It was time to act^ 
 
 13—2
 
 196 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 and Athelstan Taylor knew it. Delay might be fatal. 
 Guided by some instinct he could not explain, he shouted 
 with sudden decision : " They're here, you fool ! Can't 
 you hear them ?" and then, seizing on the pause in which 
 the maniac's attention — caught also for the moment, 
 perhaps, by railway sounds Avithout — wandered to this 
 mysterious " they," sprang upon him, and by great good 
 luck pinioned his knife-hand as both rolled together on 
 the carpetless floor. " Thank heaven it's me, not Gus !" 
 thought he again, as he and his antagonist pitched heavily 
 on the ground. He could feel the great strength there was 
 still in the miserable victim of the fiend Alcohol. Often 
 patients with this disorder will need three or four men to 
 hold them — indeed, sometimes develop abnormal muscular 
 strength, even while its tremors are running riot through 
 their whole system. 
 
 But Mr. Steptoe's strength would have been abnormally 
 developed indeed to enable him to contend against the 
 successful competitor in a hundred athletic contests in the 
 old 'Varsity days. A few sharp struggles, and he lay 
 powerless, his adversary kneeling over him, grasping his 
 two wrists, while he cursed and muttered below, before the 
 railway sounds, connected apparently ^\'ith the stopping of 
 an almost endless luggage- train, had subsided into mere 
 clinks that seemed to soothe it to stillness. But the knife 
 was still in his right hand. 
 
 " Now where's that little maid ?" Our little Lizarann 
 had never run away, as some children might have done, but 
 had held on bravely through the whole of the terrifying 
 scene, full of admiration for this new Policeman — she almost 
 thought he was really one ; and when she heard him ask 
 for her, she found voice to reply, not very articulately. 
 She was there, please ! — blue with the cold and her teeth 
 chattering. Aunt Stingy was g-goed away. So much the 
 better, the new Policeman seemed to think. He con- 
 tinued : " Very well, my child ! — now you can be useful. . . . 
 No, don't call your aunty. We'll do %\4thout her ; she's 
 no use. You do just as I tell you — just exactly !" Lizarann 
 nodded^her alacrity to obey orders. " Me ? — yass !" is her 
 brief undertaking. 
 
 The gentleman looked round at her, still grasping the 
 
 I
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 197 
 
 ^vrists of his captive, who muttered on wildly, lost in a 
 forest of execrations without meaning. He seemed satisfied 
 that the child could be trusted, and determined at any rate 
 to try a desperate' expedient to get that horrible knife out 
 of the maniac's clutch. The only other course would be to 
 call or send for help. Send whom ? This baby out in the 
 snow again ? Heaven forbid ! As for the woman, she 
 was no use. He could hear her hysterics somewhere 
 outside. No ! — if the child only dared do exactly as he 
 told her, he would soon have that knife safe out of 
 the v/ay. 
 
 " Look here, my dear, where's the box of matches — the 
 lucifer matches ? Now don't you be frightened, but do as 
 I tell you. You light a match !" Lizarann obeyed duti- 
 fully, though her hand shook. " Now, you know, if you 
 blow that match out, there'll be a red spark, won't 
 there ? . . . Very well then, or yass, if you prefer it. Now 
 I want you just to touch your father's hand with it . . . oh, 
 he's your uncle, is he ? . . . well ! — now you'll have to light 
 another. . . . Now you touch his hand with it — don't you 
 be frightened." 
 
 Lizarann followed her instructions without question. 
 Whatever the gentleman said was right. Her duty was 
 obedience. But she broke out in spasmodic terror at the 
 result of what she had supposed to be some curious ex- 
 periment ; not to be understood by her, but certainly 
 beneficial. 
 
 And Athelstan Taylor needed all his strength to retain 
 the hand that was scorched, as his prisoner — or rather 
 patient — gave a great plunge and a yell, as the fire touched 
 him. But he kept his grip, though it was his left hand 
 against the delirious man's right ; and the knife, relinquished 
 in the uncontrollable start, was left lying on the floor as he 
 dragged him across the room away from it. He could 
 breathe freer now that the knife was out of the way. 
 
 He inferred afterwards that the whole thing had hap- 
 pened very quickly ; for the railway-occurrence without 
 seemed to explain itself as a convoy of empty trucks 
 shunting on a siding to allow an express to shriek past — 
 an express that cared nothing for blizzards, and came with 
 a vengeance, just as he gave his last instructions to
 
 198 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Lizarann, waiting a moment for that little person's terror 
 to subside. 
 
 " That's a good little girl. Now pick up that knife and 
 take it away. And then . . . well ! — and then . . . shut the 
 door after you and go to bed, for God's sake, and get 
 warm . . . What ? ... no ! — never mind Aunt What's- 
 her-name 1 . . . don't say anj'thing to her — only go to bed 
 too. What did you say her name was ? Aunt Stingy ?" 
 It didn't seem probable, but the little maiden evidently 
 felt surprised at its being thought the reverse. She con- 
 firmed it with gravity, and was departing, small and 
 bitterly cold, but intensely responsible, when the new 
 Policeman called her back. 
 
 " Look here, poppet !— you stand the street-door M'ide 
 open, and then you go to be?d. Now shut the door." 
 
 Lizarann obeyed religiously, and crept away silently to 
 bed. Only, as she passed through her daddy's room with 
 its empty pillow, life became too hard for her to bear. 
 But tears came to help, big ones in plenty ; and Lizaraim's 
 bed was kind. It absorbed, received, engulfed, all but can- 
 celled the small mass of affliction that cowered into it and 
 stopped its ears and did its best to cease. In two minutes 
 after leaving the New Policeman, Lizarann was little more 
 than a stifled sob, at intervals, in the dark ; in five, at most, 
 had cried herself to sleep. 
 
 Mrs. Steptoe, after giving way — quite excusably, to our 
 thinking — ^upstairs for ten minutes or so, began to be 
 aware that her self-control was returning. But being 
 hysterical as well as human, she utilised it to go on moaning 
 and gasping intentionally, some time after she had ceased 
 to be able to do it involuntarily. Curiosity about mIio 
 had given such a sudden and effectual succour then began 
 to get the better of mere terror, and she perceived she ought 
 to make an effort. So she went cautiously downstairs and 
 listened, outside the door, to the voices in the front room ; 
 her husband's, now seeming less definitely insane, more 
 weak and drivelling ; and that of the stranger, whom she 
 found it easiest to take for granted, although unexplained. 
 Very severe shock makes the mind travel on the line of 
 least resistance. No ! — she Avouldu't knock at the door
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 199 
 
 just yet to ask if her services were wanted. That would 
 do presently, especially as she expected stupor would soon 
 follow her husband's outbreak, and if she showed herself 
 now he might have a return. So after listening a few 
 moments, sufficiently to satisfy herself that the stranger's 
 voice showed a complete mastery of the position. Aunt 
 Stingy retired into the bedroom adjoining, to be handy in 
 case of anything— so she described her action afterwards — 
 and then, having made sure that her niece was in bed in 
 the little room and sound asleep, lay down on Jim's vacant 
 bed for just a half-minute and closed her eyes. And would 
 you have believed it ? — or rather, it should be said, would 
 Mrs. Hacker, to whom she told it, have believed it ? — she 
 was that dead wore out that only listening for two minutes 
 to the voices going on steady, as you might say, set her 
 off half unconscious-like, and in an unguarded moment 
 sleep took her by surprise. Just the letting of her eyes close 
 to had made all the difference ! Kep' open, no such a 
 thing ! In tiiis case they were not kept open, and there 
 was such a thing. It took the form of profound sleep. 
 
 But before leaving the passage — -the one known by the 
 rather grandiose name of The Hall — Aunt Stingy first 
 removed her rescuer's overcoat, that still lay on the ground, 
 and hung it on a neighbouring hook. A more intelligent 
 person would have seen that its owner might want it, for 
 warmth, in a fireless room. She must needs then decide 
 that the street-door had no business to be on the jar, and 
 it was just that child's carelessness leaving it open ; and 
 closed it, noiselessly. This was fatal to a calculation of 
 Athelstan Taylor's ; for he had told Lizarann to leave 
 the door open in the full confidence that the policeman on 
 the beat would notice it ; and that he would by this means 
 be brought into communication with the outer world, 
 without having to leave his dangerous charge alone in the 
 house with that plucky baby and that weak woman ! 
 
 No doubt a policeman did come down the cul de sac 
 street, but even a policeman's step is inaudible on three 
 inches of very dry snow. It is otherwise when the snow 
 is partly thawed, especially if a second frost comes. Mr. 
 Taylor concluded, believing that the street-door was " on 
 the jar," that the policeman's bull's-eye would at once
 
 200 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 detect it, and that his guard was sure to be reUeved ; but 
 the hours went by and nothing came. It is more likely, 
 though, that the policeman passed at a moment of noise 
 from the railway, for goods trains occurred at intervals 
 through the night. 
 
 More than once he was all but resolved to leave the 
 man's side and summon the woman, or go himself for 
 medical help, whatever the risk might be. But he did not 
 know what other knives might be within reach, and he 
 was one of those people who always decide on the righter 
 of two courses, however little may be the difference between 
 them. Not the smallest risk should be run through fault 
 of his of harm to come to that plucky infant — well ! — or to 
 the woman, for that matter. But he was obliged to admit 
 that he felt less keen on that point. 
 
 So, though he relaxed his hold on the man as his 
 paroxysms of violence died down — for they were intermittent 
 — he never allowed him to go quite free, and scarcely took 
 his eyes from him to inventory the' scanty contents of the 
 ill-furnished room he sat in. For he contrived to shift the 
 position in a moment of the patient's quiescence, some 
 half an hour after he found himself alone with him ; half- 
 dragging, half-lifting him on to an untempting and ujirestful 
 sofa, whose innate horse-hair was courting investigation 
 through slits and holes that had evaded the watchfulness of 
 ineffectual buttons, guardians of its reticence in days gone 
 by. One of those articles of furniture of which we know 
 at once that the understraps have given, and will have to 
 be seen to some day. An analogous chair was within 
 refach ; and the New Policeman, not in love with his job, but 
 strong in his determination to see it out, made up his mind 
 to pass the rest of the night on it, if necessary, watching the 
 fluctuations of his patient's delirium. Oh, how thankful 
 he felt that all this had befallen him, not Gus ! What a 
 pleasure to think of his consumptive friend in the best 
 room at the Rectory ; sound asleep, said Hope, uncontra- 
 dicted. 
 
 An hour or more passed. The violence of the patient had 
 become more and more fitful, and seemed at length to be 
 giving place to mere stupor. A little longer, and he would 
 sleep. But suppose his heart failed and he died in his sleep.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 201 
 
 Mr. Taylor had had an uncle who drank, and who died of 
 collapse aftei' just such an attack of delirium tremens. Yes 
 — but how long after ? Then, on the other hand, there was 
 no evidence to show how long this man's attack had been 
 going on. Nor was the Rev. Athelstan quite clear that the 
 case was uncomplicated ; the brain might be unsound at 
 the best of times. He tried to remember all he had seen 
 or heard of the disorder. His impression certainly had been 
 that insomnia was a characteristic symptom, and invariable. 
 Now this man seemed to be sinking into a state of coma. 
 He would keep watch over him, at least until he seemed 
 quite unconscious, and then he would try to get help from 
 without. He might be able to rouse a neighbour, and so 
 communicate with the police and send for medical assist- 
 ance. What he was most anxious to do was to get the 
 man safe out of the way, at the workhouse-infirmary or 
 the police-station, and to feel sure that he could leave the 
 house safely Avith that child in it. He would come back 
 next day as soon as he was at liberty, to find out more 
 ' about her. It was fortunate that to-day was Tuesday, not 
 Saturday — or rather he should have said, Wednesday, not 
 Sunday. But one always thinks, when one has been up all 
 night, that it is still yesterday ! 
 
 Yes ! — the breath of the man was coming more regularly, 
 and his pulse felt slower and steadier. In a moment it 
 would be safe to leave him and look for help. He withdrew 
 his hand from the A\Tist it held and touched the slee] er's 
 forehead. It was scarcely so hot as he had expected it 
 to be. But it seemed insensitive to his touch, as there was 
 no perceptible shrinking from it. The patient could be 
 safely left for a moment. 
 
 He rose to liis feet and stretched himself, glad of the 
 respite. In the account of the affair that he wrote later 
 to his substitute at Royd, he lays claim to having had no 
 feeling at this moment but a wish for clean warm water to 
 wash the touch of the drunkard's wrists oil. He watched 
 the motionless figure on the couch for a few moments, and 
 the breathing satisfied him. He could be spared ; for as 
 short a time as need be, though. 
 
 He opened the door quietly and went out. But he re- 
 turned to lock it ; removing the key from within, but leaving
 
 202 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 it in the lock. Then he opened the street-door and looked 
 out. The little one had evidently misunderstood his in- 
 struction to leave it open — well ! she really was almost a 
 baby. However, that was enough to account for the non- 
 appearance of any policeman. No police-officer ever 
 leaves a " stood open " door uninvestigated in the small 
 hours of the morning.
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Hovv sweet and white and silent was the huge shroud of 
 snow that lay so carefully on road and roof alike ; unbroken, 
 in this untrodden stillness, by so much as the memory of 
 a rut inherited from yesterday's traffic ; unmelted, even on 
 the chimney-stacks by the expiring efforts of yesterday's 
 fires ! How satisfied the stars that began to twinkle 
 through the clearing veil of the snowdrift dying down, 
 that the work of hiding London from them had been done 
 thoroughly and well, and that they might shine on some- 
 thing clean at last ! For the blizzard had gone to an 
 appointment elsewhere, and the few flakes of belated snow 
 that were afloat had given up all thought of blinding human 
 eyes, and only seemed to pause in their selection of a resting- 
 place. Thc}^ had an embarras de choix. ^ 
 
 As the sole spectator of the stillness stood looking out 
 into the night, and thinking Wordsworth to himself, he saw 
 the fixed red eye of a Cyclops railway-signal through the 
 clear air ; snow-scoured, and innocent, so far, of smoke. 
 All that mighty heart was lying still — yes ! But that 
 engine, idling on the line and wide awake, felt free to wander 
 to and fro, with clanks, and finally to execute an arpejgio 
 of truncated snorts downwards, and give a sudden yell, and 
 depart behind a steam-blast from beneath its apron. Then 
 Mr. Taylor saw distinctly, at the end of his wrong turning, 
 the fence that stultified it as a thoroughfare. 
 
 A wall of snow was against the lower half of the door, 
 and the whole row of houses it made one of was nearly 
 masked by the drift-pile heaped against it ; and the snow 
 that had caught and held against every roughness on the 
 upright wall lay thick on every ledge and slope, and filled 
 in every cavity. A sense of compromise was abroad in the 
 air — an anticipated suggestion of a thaw ; not yet, you 
 know, but in time ' Athelstan Taylor, as a neighbour's 
 
 203
 
 204 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 clock struck five in a hurry, knew so well what the shovels 
 meant to sound like in the morning while all was still diy ; 
 and what the falls of snow would be Hke from uncleared 
 roofs later on, when much would be slush. 
 
 There was not a soul in sight in the cul-de-sac street, 
 which had so obviously been the wrong turning. There 
 was consolation in that, though, for the Rev. Athelstan, for 
 if it had been Gus and not he, Gus would have known his 
 ground better, and passed on. But then ! — what might 
 not have happened to that poor little kid, asleep in there ? 
 However, it was necessary now to think what was to be 
 done. Not a soul in sight, and hardly a sound to be heard ; 
 the very murmur of the city's traffic, that never quite 
 dies, barely audible ! Every house more than ever like 
 its neighbour, in its cloak of snow. Which door should 
 he choose, to knock at ? One opposite looked the most 
 promising, he thought. But he would put on his great- 
 coat before crossing through the cold night air. Where was 
 that coat, by the way ? So — back into the house to get it ! 
 
 He struck a wax vesta to make the dark passage visible, 
 and soon saw where the Avoman had hung it on a peg near 
 the stairway. Should he, after all, go upstairs and rouse 
 her ? — Well, no, on the whole ! Because he thought the 
 woman bad for the patient, and better out of the way on 
 that account. It did not occur to him that she was in the 
 adjacent room, and the exploration above contributed as 
 an obstacle to his decision. He felt readier for a colloquy 
 with a roused next-door neighbour than for shaking a 
 stupefied sleeper to wakefulness — one, too, whom he had 
 very poor reliance on. Besides, his own clearest scheme 
 was to get some safe person to take charge of the patient, 
 while he himself went for a doctor. If he did this, the 
 doctor v/ould come. If he sent, perhaps no ! How could 
 he tell ? 
 
 But after this slight delay, just as well to look in at the 
 sleeper once more before leaving him ! The Rev. Athelstan, 
 feeling very much like the Ncm^ Policeman, opened the door 
 cautiously. Just as well, for his charge was no longer where 
 he had left him. He could see him in the half-light, blun- 
 dering against the window-shutter, apparently without 
 purpose, and talking to himself.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 205 
 
 " Everything's took away, by Goard ! Now if I could 
 just lay 'ands on that there * * * knife, I could slit 'em all 
 up. All the biling ; and that 'd make me even with 'em ! 
 Who's makin' any offer to stop me ?" He muttered on, 
 and there seemed no object in interrupting him. Very 
 likely he would lie down and doze off again. A few minutes 
 patience, anyhow ! 
 
 Suddenly he stopped and turned. And then perceiving 
 Athelstan Taylor as he stood by the half-open door watching 
 him intently, he addressed him exactly as though he were 
 one of a succession of applicants or customers, whom he 
 had satisfied so far. 
 
 " Now who might you be, master ? 'And over your 
 job ! I'll be answerable to see to it by to-morrow fore- 
 noon." He seemed for the moment quite composed and 
 businesslike, then suddenly changed to shrewd suspicion. 
 " Unless you're — unless you're — unless you're . . . No ! — 
 would you ? That's not playing fair, by Goard ! Come 
 — you're a gentleman ! — give a beggar his fair chance. ..." 
 For a sort of wily approach, as though to somehow circum- 
 vent an object of suspicion, had been promptly intercepted, 
 and he found himself firmly held as before. Then an in- 
 tolerable horror seemed to seize on him quite suddenly. 
 " God's mercy — keep him off — keep him off ! I'll never 
 let on about him to no one. I promise. Only give me a 
 blooming Testament. I'll swear !" He asked several times 
 for a Testament, variously described, rather to the amuse- 
 ment than otherwise of his hearer, whose sense of language 
 discriminated between words with meanings and expletives 
 without. The drunkard's manner seemed to him to throw 
 doubt on the validity of any affidavit made on an unstained 
 volume. 
 
 But there was no amusement — nothing but a shudder — 
 to be ^ot out of the intense conviction of his delirium that 
 there was some horror — some spectre or nightmare, God 
 knows what ! — in ambush behind the man who held him. 
 Those who have nursed any ordinary fever-patient through 
 the hours of low vitality in the night, know how hard it is 
 to struggle against a sort of belief in the reality of his 
 delusions — against the sympathetic dread, at least, that 
 all but does duty for a real belief. In deliriura tremens this
 
 206 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 conviction is overwhelming, and the Rev. Athelstan almost 
 felt it would be an easement, just once, to glance round 
 behind him, and make sure there was no one else in the 
 room. And this, although the drunkard's description 
 seemed to apply to a conjurer (with the usual drawback) 
 who had escaped from his coffin, but might be got back if 
 we was sharp. His conviction of the reality of this person 
 was too fervid to be ridiculous, or anything but unearthly ; 
 even when he added, as confirmatory, that he! was a Hebrew 
 conjurer, as well as a sanguinary one. Simon Magus, 
 perhaps ? — thought the Rev. Athelstan. And when he 
 told his friend Gus Fossett of this after, he pretended it had 
 made him laugh. 
 
 The sound of a child crying, surely ? Yes — the voice 
 of the little girl, in an agony of grief or fear, in the next 
 room ! He flung the madman from him, and passed out 
 of the room, locking him in. " I heard him." said he, 
 afterwards, " begging me to keep Simon Magus off, but I 
 couldn't stop to see to it." He went into the back room, 
 Avhere Lizarann, roused by memory of her miseries from 
 the lighter sleep of morning, was shedding bitter tears 
 because Daddy was not there, but in the Hospital. Who 
 does not know how the consciousness of affliction awaiting 
 us will drag us awake, however much we may strive to 
 remain in dreamland ? Lizarann was glad of the gentle- 
 man, though, whatever he was. And it was all the easier 
 for her to give a short abstract of her tragedy of the! night 
 before, that her aunt had gone upstairs to dress, as a pre- 
 liminary to action in connection with the front parlour, 
 whatever it was that was going on there. For whether 
 anyone was there with her husband — the gentleman of the 
 night before, or a policeman, or doctor perhaps — she had 
 yet to learn. And she was horribly cold. A favourable 
 disposition towards lighting a bit of fire in the kitchen was 
 all the more marked on this account. 
 
 The very small person sobbing in a very dirty nightgown 
 in the middle of the back room could not — so Athelstan 
 Taylor decided — go on indefinitely unwarmed on such a 
 morning as this. He rejoiced to feel that there was still 
 plenty of vital heat in her rudiment of a carcass, as he 
 wrapped it in the first thing that came to hand, a stray relic
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 207 
 
 of a blanket of days gone by. He picked the little bundle, 
 so compacted, up on his knee, and helped the subsidence of 
 its sobs with a word or two of consolation. While doing 
 so, he could hear what difficulties his case next door was 
 getting into with Simon Magus. 
 
 " Berbecause derdaddy's in the Sussospital and hurted 
 his leg," said Lizarannn, as far as our spelling will carry us, 
 in reply to inquiry. 
 
 " That's a good little woman ! Now she'll tell me all 
 about it. How did Daddy hurt his leg ?" 
 
 Lizarann settled down to her narrative. Here was human 
 sympathy, at last, for her real trouble. For all the dreadful 
 scene of last night was only Uncle Bob ; and of course that 
 sort of thing was always happening, more or less, with 
 uncles. Not daddies, look you ! — that was quite another 
 pair of shoes. 
 
 " There was free spoleecemen," said she, beginning like a 
 true artist with the strong, conspicuous points of her 
 narrative, " took Daddy along like carrying a Guy, only the 
 spoleeceman he pictited me up and held me inside of the 
 skirting for Daddy tor to kiss me. And Daddy, he says 
 why didn't I call out like he told me ' Pi-lot !' so he could 
 hear ? . . ." 
 
 " But was Daddy being carried on a chair ?" The 
 reference to a Guy has complicated matters. 
 
 " Not a chair to set upon. A hospital- barrer. With 
 skirtings. Yass ! But I hadn't called out Pi-lot, so 
 Daddy could hear. , . ." Lizarann's conscience torments 
 her on this point, which is one her hearer cares very little 
 about. He wants to find out what hurt Daddy's leg, and 
 the extent of the damage. He waits a moment to listen ; 
 thinks he hears a silence in the next room, as though Simon 
 Magus had vanished and left his victim in peace. Some- 
 thing like knocking about of furniture follows. But the 
 drunkard is safe locked in. He can do no great harm for a 
 few minutes anyhow. 
 
 " Was it an accident, or did he tumble down of himself ?" 
 he asks. He knows the child will understand. A mere fall 
 on a slippery pavement would hardly rank as an accident 
 with her. An accident, unclassified otherwise, almost 
 implies a vehicle, among this class of Londoners.
 
 208 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " Yass ! — an accident. The boy said so." A self- 
 explanatory boy, the speaker seems to think. The hearer 
 accepts him as explained. But what was the accident, and 
 how much was Daddy hurt 1 Didn't the boy tell ? 
 Gradually all that Lizarann has to communicate is elicited, 
 and Mr. Taylor takes a cheerful view of the outlook. 
 
 " Then Daddy's gone to the Hospital ? They'll set Daddy 
 on his legs again. What does Daddy do for his living ?" 
 
 " He's a Asker. Askin', he does. Yass !" Lizarann's 
 large dark eyes, and her gravity, added force to this. 
 
 Every dye, by the Rile wye Stytion, where I goes to fotch 
 
 'im." 
 
 Athelstan Taylor gave a low whistle. " Oho ! — thaVs 
 where we are, is it ?" He at once recognised the little girl 
 whose fame had reached him from the great house at Royd, 
 with which he was of course in frequent communication. 
 " You're Lizarann Coupland, then ; Lady Arkroyd's 
 friend ?" 
 
 " Yass !" said Lizarann, nodding. Not that she was 
 sure of it. But she knew there was a Lidy, come to see 
 Teacher at School, she did ; and she couldn't have been 
 certain, off-hand, that this wasn't the Lidy's nime, in the 
 face of the gentleman's statement. So she assented. She 
 felt rather proud. Her daddy was well spoken of among 
 the (lite evidentl3^ She continued : " And the boy said, 
 he did, they could mike Daddy's leg well any day of the 
 week at the Sospital, because they done his Aunt and 
 Uncle. And a gentleman was a corpse they done, out of a 
 shore. And Mr. Parker's teef they done, as good as new ! 
 So they was all singiri' ! Yass — they was /" This came 
 in instalments ; our report is shortened, for convenience. 
 
 Athestan Taylor said afterwards to his friend : "I was 
 getting so sleepy by that time, that I didn't above half enjoy 
 the little maid's hopeful chatter about her Daddy, which of 
 course I confirmed. I had to commit it to memory to laugh 
 at it afterwards." Indeed, his great strength and en- 
 durance had been sorely taxed by the trying nature of his 
 long vigil ; mere sitting up all night he would have made 
 light of. 
 
 When Aunt Stingy appeared a few minutes after, having
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 209 
 
 been employed in lighting the kitchen fire as projected, she 
 found Lizarann still on Mr. Taylor's knee, kept warm in 
 the extemporised wrap, and filling in the blanks in her 
 narrative, in reply to his cross-questionings. With a 
 curious lack of tact and insight, Mrs. Steptoe immediately 
 denounced her niece's presumption, suggesting that the 
 child had taken the gentleman by storm, as it were ; and 
 alleging that little g'yells ought to know better how to 
 behave than that. The gentleman cut this ill-judged 
 attempt to creep up his sleeve very short indefed. 
 
 " Now listen to mel, if you please, Mrs. . . . what's your 
 name ? . . . oh — Steptoe. Mrs. Steptoe. I am going at 
 once to get the nearest doctor to see your husband. And I 
 think the best thing you can do will be to leave him quiet 
 in the front room till I come back. He won't take any 
 harm. And I hope when I come back I shall find the 
 little girl dressed, with a nice warm fire to warm herself 
 at, I suppose you can't get any breakfast for her yet 
 awhile ? . . . Well ! — do what you can in that direction. 
 Yesterday's milk is better than no milk." And with a very 
 decisive refusal to take a cup of tea at any future time, on 
 any terms, he buttoned his coat tight round him, and left 
 the room. Lizarann heard the street-door open and close, 
 and then she was left friendless and alone Avith a formidable 
 aunt. That good woman stepped out after the street-door 
 closed, and listened a moment at that of the front room, 
 but finding all silent did not open it. She saw it had been 
 locked, as the key had been inside overnight. Evidently 
 her visitor had locked it. 
 
 She returned and afflicted Lizarann by a destructive 
 co-operation in the :ettin' of her frock on, a form of help 
 that twitched its victim to and fro under the pretext of pro- 
 moting her stability ; that resented her offered assistance 
 and denounced it as henderin' ; that left her penalised by 
 a sense of wrong hooks in wrong eyes, buttons adrift from 
 their holes, and holes aghast at the intrusion of strange 
 buttons. But Lizarann was used to this, and discerned in 
 it the shortness of her aunt's temper. Her Dadd}^ he'd 
 always said poor Aunty she couldn't help her nater, and 
 we must bottle up according. Lizarann beheld her aunt 
 through a halo of Jim's patience and forgiveness. 
 
 VOL. I. 14
 
 210 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Athelstan Taylor soon found the doctor in Cazenove 
 Street, who came readily in answer to his summons. It 
 wouldn't do to lose sight of the case, he said. The man, 
 who was quite well known to him as a typical case of 
 Alcoholism, to the police as an habitual drunkard, and to 
 the neighbourhood as always the worse for liquor, might 
 very easily die of collapse if he wasn't carefully nourished 
 when the reaction came. He would be much safer in a 
 Hospital. Often in cases of this sort, life or death would 
 turn on an injection of morphine on the spot. Heart- 
 failure might be very rapid. He spokef as though Mr. 
 Steptoe's decease would be a real calamity. Mr. Taylor, 
 tramping beside him through thd snow, tried to shape 
 a thought that hung in his mind. How if he him- 
 self, who preached a Resurrection or Hereafter that as 
 like as not this scientific gentleman did not believe in — 
 how if he was less keen to preserve this depraved hfe, as a 
 chance to clean it up a bit for a wholesomer departure later 
 on, than the doctor in his professional enthusiasm, his 
 sportsmanlike eagerness to win in a game of Therapeutics 
 against Death ? He felt a little ashamed of having thought 
 more than once that the miserable victim of vice would be 
 " best out of the way." Out of the way ! . . . where ? 
 And then, how did he know that this consensus of all 
 mortals to try and save even the most worthless hves may 
 not be an unconscious tribute to the underlying sense of 
 immortality throughout mankind ? Would an honest 
 belief in extinction fight to preserve a life that is a pain 
 to itself and a curse to its neighbours ? So thinking, he 
 turned with his companion into Tallack Street. " Last 
 house on the right, isn't it ?" said the doctor. 
 
 What was that policeman doing in front of the last house 
 on the right ? Looking about on the snow as though in 
 search for something, and then stooping forward over 
 the low railing to examine the window-fastenings. It was 
 all secure there when Athelstan Taylor came away. He 
 quickened his pace, and the doctor did so too. 
 
 " Anything wrong, ofiicer ?" Both ask the question at 
 once. 
 
 " Couldn't say. Sir. Be so good as not to tread on these 
 footmarks. I want 'em kept till my relief comes. He'll
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 211 
 
 be here in a few minutes. . . . No — the window's not been 
 tampered with, so far as I see. That's where it's so queer." 
 
 All three stand silent a moment. Then both gentlemen 
 exclaim at once that they see. The queerness is clear 
 enough to both. The footsteps on the snow all point away 
 from the udndow, and a glance shows that there is no corre- 
 sponding track of an approach to it. 
 
 None of the three seem to think the mystery soluble, for 
 the moment, and mere speculation is useless. The police- 
 man supplies an additional fact, but does not claim im- 
 l^ortance for it. The hasp of the window is visibly unclosed 
 through the glass. But — so the officer testifies — they don't 
 shut 'em to, as often as not. 
 
 " You can open it from outside," says the parson-gentle- 
 man to the policeman. " All right ! I was coming to the 
 house. I know the people." 
 
 " All right, officer !" says the doctor-gentleman. " You 
 know me. Dr. Ferris, Cazenove Street." And thus en- 
 couraged the constable easily throws up the window from 
 without. A touch on the shutters, and they open inwards. 
 They reveal an empty room, and the track of the footsteps 
 away from the window is at once explained — fully to 
 the two who knew that a delirious man was the only tenant 
 of the room, and clearly enough for purpose of action to 
 the third, who only sees that some j)erson, to whom the 
 exclamation of both at once, " He has escaped !" applies, 
 has been able to close the window behind him to disguise 
 his flight, and may by now be far away at the end of a 
 long trail they all start to follow, running through the snow 
 as best they may. It is dirficult to run, as the drifted snow 
 is nearly knee-deep sometimes. But here and there the 
 wind has kept the ground clear, blowing it like dry dust. 
 
 The track goes straight to the closing fence at the street 
 end, at a point the youthful marauders of Tallack Street 
 have chosen for inroads into the railway territory beyond. 
 It is passable, for those who can climb a little, and whose 
 clothes do not mind nail-rip or paint-stain. As the three 
 follow one another over this obstacle, Athelstan Taylor 
 and the doctor send back a shouted \\ord or two of re- 
 assurance to whoever it is that has opened the house-door 
 and come out with a cry of alarm — woman or child or both. 
 
 14—2
 
 212 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 They do not stop to see which, but get on as fast as possible. 
 The track ends for a few yards where the railway arch has 
 made a gap in the snow, but it is soon found on the other 
 side, and then is easy to follow over a desolation of land 
 ripe for building — ripe for the creation of ground-rents — 
 ripe with the deadly ripeness we all know so well, of the 
 land that the hay will never smell sweet upon again, the 
 land that even now awaits interminable streets of dwellings 
 no man or woman of the days to come shall ever think of 
 as a home in childhood. Easy to follow as it lies clear in 
 the thick snow it has had all to itself, and will have till 
 the road is reached that leads to the Refuse Destroyer, with 
 its two hundred feet of chimney-shaft, from which a black 
 cloud is pouring — presumably of refuse that has refused 
 to be destroyed ; or has reappeared after destruction in an 
 astral body, or suppose we say disastral — and the canal, 
 and the Breweries, and the Chemical Bottled Stout Works, 
 and the Artificial Food Works the Sewage Appropriation 
 Company, Limited, are building down Snape's Lane this 
 side of the canal-basin. 
 
 The track goes straight to the road, but on reaching it 
 swerves aside, baffled by a hedge, or the memorj'^ of what 
 was once a hedge, whose function has been reinforced by 
 barbed wire ; probably the last expiring effort of a pastoral 
 age to induce sheep to remain on the land and be tempted 
 by the dirty grass. The swerved footsteps follow on to 
 an opening two sad stumps face one another in, and think, 
 perhaps, at times of the days when they were a stile, and 
 real villagers stepped over them, and distant London was 
 unknown. Then the track is lost for a space in a maze of 
 other tracks of men on their Avay to brew, to bottle stout 
 chemically, to appropriate sewage, that artificial food may 
 be stocked, in tins, for a race with powers of digestion 
 up to date. Then is found again, and followed on to a 
 canal-bank with Platonic locks that sleep sometimes from 
 day's end to day's end, bargeless, and dream of a past when 
 railways were unknown, and they were full of purpose, and 
 the ^\'orld was young. And then is lost again, at a bridge. 
 
 Stragglers are gathering round, anxious to satisfy 
 curiosity about the nature of the search ; also anxious to 
 impart information about its object, whether possessed of
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 213 
 
 any or not. Willingness to further the public interest, 
 without any qualifications or data to go upon, is often a 
 serious hindrance to the end in view. In this case several 
 casuals, who have rwt seen a man in his shirt-sleeves, A\ithout 
 ne'er a hat on, go by, are so anxious to mould the particu- 
 lars of something else they have seen into a plausible 
 substitute for information about the said man, that the 
 necessity for hearing enough of their evidence to reject it 
 becomes an obstacle trying to the patience of the searchers. 
 It seems injudicious to snub a volunteer informant who 
 see a party go along the road in the opposite direction 
 rather better than an hour ago, with a sack over his head 
 and shoulders, who " might have been a dorg-fancier, to 
 look at, in the manner of describing him," and to tell him 
 to shut up if he can't go any nearer than that ; not only 
 because this drastic treatment may discourage other infor- 
 mants who have really something to tell, but because, being 
 put on his mettle, he proceeds to adjust his evidence to 
 the facts, so far as he can ascertain them. He removes the 
 sack from the head of his recollection, makes it walk the 
 other way at any acceptable time ; won't undertake, now 
 you ask so partic'lar, that it hadn't shirt-sleeves, and sur- 
 renders the dog-fancier in favour of any vocation you are 
 inclined to put a leading question about. In like manner, 
 a party sim'lar to you describe come straight — according 
 to other proffered testimony — acrost yarnder open ground 
 to this very self-same spot, and so forrard over the bridge 
 to'ards the Princess Charlotte down the lane, and went in 
 at the bar. But the photographic likeness of this person 
 to any description you choose to give of the man sought for 
 fails to establish the identity of the two, as he was seen 
 on the previous day, maybe about dinner-time. Com- 
 promise is impossible ; the informant stands committed 
 to yesterday, past recall. 
 
 But the track on the snow is lost — that is the one fact 
 clear. Give it up and go back ? — is that the only course 
 open to us ? Not when the chase ends so close to a canal- 
 lock. True, the footsteps do not go to the edge, but only 
 because a wind-swept skirting of brick pavement is clear 
 of snow. The last one is none so far off the stone curb, 
 above the water. Look down into the emptj^ lock, and think !
 
 214 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 The parson and the doctor represent intelHgent specula- 
 tion ; the policeman, official reserve ready to Hsten to 
 information and compare it with his pre-omniscience : the 
 gathering crowd of earl}'^ workmen, the uselessness of de- 
 fective reasoning powers brought to bear on insoluble 
 problems. 
 
 After a moment the parson speaks to the doctor : " The 
 ice is broken over there — just where the water is running in." 
 
 " Are you sure ?" asks the doctor. " Isn't it only the 
 wash of the water melting it off ? But your eyesight is 
 better than mine, I expect." 
 
 " No, there's a broken edge. The water-wash would 
 scoop and leave a curve." 
 
 " What do you think ?" the doctor asks the policeman, 
 who replies briefly : " Gentleman's right, perhaps. Worth 
 trying, anyhow ! . . . Now then, some of you, idling round, 
 I want that bit of ice broke up — against the lower gate. 
 Look alive now ! . . . Yes ! — a couple of planks and a short 
 ladder and a yard or so of scaffold-cord. Get 'em anywhere 
 round ! I'm answerable. Never vou mind what anvone 
 saj^s — just you take 'em !" And the leading casuals, 
 probably labourers on the building job down the lane, are 
 off at a trot to requisition planks and cords. Bur, not 
 without establishing a slight collateral grievance, in the 
 manner of their kind : " You've only got to name what you 
 want, and we'll get it fast enough. Who's to know what 
 you're askin' for, exceptin' you speak ?" 
 
 Athelstan Taylor's surmise of course was that Uncle Bob 
 had ended his run by falling into the lock at the upper end, 
 where the ice was thin ; and, breaking through it, had 
 passed below the thicker ice, where he remained — probably 
 jammed against the lower gate, which was closed. He 
 noticed that this conjecture was at once accepted, but that 
 no living soul of all those present referred to it in words. 
 Silence is kept about it, but for a word between himself and 
 the doctor, even till after the planks and cords and ladder 
 have come, and the planks are laid athwart the sounder 
 ice at the lower gate. One man can stand on them safely 
 without fear of its giving — perhaps two. But one can break 
 the ice with a pick fast enough, as soon as he can get at it. 
 Hand him down a shovel to clear the snow a bit !
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 215 
 
 The parson is feeling sick at heart mth his long night's 
 vigil, and as though he could hardly face the dreadful end. 
 He shrinks back, not to see more than he need. Then 
 from the depths of the lock comes the crackling sound of 
 the ice that breaks beneath the pick. Then the tension 
 of the gromng excitement as those on the brink watch for 
 a result they feel confident of. 
 
 " Nothing there ?" . . . " Nothing that side." . . . 
 " Now you keep steady across with your peck — ^right you 
 are ! — across the middle . . . don't go to sleep ! . . . yes, nov,- 
 right up in the comer. . . . Something there ?" . . . " Ah ! 
 — easy a minute till I catch holt . . . have that cord 
 ready. . . . Got him ? " 
 
 ^2j «j^ ^1* 9^ t^ 
 
 " You are quite certain nothing can be done ?" 
 
 " Absolutely certain. He was ready for heart-failure, 
 without being an hour under the ice." 
 
 " Will you tell the poor woman, from me, that I had no 
 choice but to go ? And that poor baby. . . ." 
 
 " Is there a baby ?" 
 
 " Well— little girl of six then ! Say I'll come at three 
 to take her to see her father at the Hospital. You're sure 
 it's the same case ?" 
 
 " Not the least doubt. A blind sailor beggar — there 
 couldn't be two. You know the wards at St. Brides. . . . 
 Never mind — you'll find out. . . . What is it, my good 
 woman ?" 
 
 It is a woman with a tale to tell. Briefly, that she 
 looked out of her bedroom window about an hour and a half 
 since, and saw what must have been the unhappy inebriate 
 running across the field, looking back, time and again, as 
 if he see some party follering of him. Then he come to the 
 lock, and stood close over the edge — back to, as you might 
 Bay. So standing, he went wild, on the sudden, and threw 
 up his arms, and there ! — he was over in the lock, afore 
 you could reckin him up like — clear over ! Both her 
 hearers are indignant, or perhaps incredulous about the 
 truth of the story. For if she really saw this, why in 
 Heaven's name did she give no alarm ? — the man's life 
 might have been saved ! She expresses contrition as for
 
 216 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 an error of judgment, but no great remorse. She told her 
 master — meaning her husband — who said it was a queer 
 start. But it was that early ! The exact bearing of this 
 fact on the matter was far from clear. 
 
 " She'll have to tell her tale before the coroner, anyhow," 
 said the doctor, as he showed his companion a short-cut 
 into his road home. " Well ! — now keep straight on — 
 you'll be in the main road in five minutes. I hope you'll 
 get a good breakfast and a good sleep before you marry 
 those two sinners. Good-bye ! Remember, straight on !" 
 
 For the Rev. Athelstan had told this gentleman of a 
 binding engagement that he had to keep that morning as 
 locum tenens at St. Vulgate's. He had with difficulty per- 
 suaded a navvy to remedy an omission in his duties towards 
 the mother of his family, whom he had never led to the 
 Altar of Hymen ; and the said navvy had consented to do 
 so this morning, and was rather entering into the fun of the 
 thing. But if the parson were to fail in his appointment, 
 was it certain that the delinquent would be brought to the 
 scratch a second time ? 
 
 However, he had still time for breakfast and rest before 
 this appointment was due. So he walked briskly on 
 through the thick snow, sad at heart, but wonderfully little 
 the worse physically for his terrible experience. And as 
 he walked he shuddered as he thought of the unhappy case 
 of Alcoholism, flying over the spotless virgin snow from 
 God knows what, to liis death. " I suppose Simon Magus 
 had got out, after all, and was sharp on his heels," said the 
 Rev. Athelstan, and then added : " At any rate, I'm glad 
 it was me, not Gus !"
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 If the doctor-gentleman had not brought back assurance 
 of the reappearance of the New PoHceman who had rescued 
 Lizarann, the child might have been more on the alert about 
 the events of the previous night that concerned Uncle Bob. 
 But she had no doubt her rescuer would come back. And 
 this anticipation, as well as the hopeful tone in which he 
 had spoken of Daddy's prospects at the Hospital, set her 
 mind at ease on that score ; the whole occurrence, delirium 
 tremens included, presenting itself to her merely as exag- 
 gerated domesticity. It was Uncle Bob, only rather more so. 
 Seen from her point of view, the events that had preceded 
 Uncle Bob were that Daddy had been in collision with a 
 Pickford's Van, and had suffered, but not murderously, 
 from the accident ; that he had not been able to walk, 
 because of his leg ; and that he had been carried away by 
 well-disposed officials to an institution that promoted 
 soundness of wind and limb, and had even been kno^vn 
 to make its h'w'rficiaires musical. A child's mind knows 
 no proportion ; and the last item, which was really a gratui- 
 tous invention of the boy whose name was not Moses, 
 gained credence with Lizarann slowly, and ended by throw- 
 ing every other particular into the shade. Further, she 
 knew that Uncle Bob, considered as an infliction, had been 
 worse — for he was to her merely an endemic disease that 
 increased or diminished, like gout — and that he had run 
 out in the snow. Nothing abnormal in that ; besides, the 
 police, new and old, had run after him, to say nothing of 
 the doctor-gentleman from the house with " Surgery " 
 wrote up big, where you could get a supply of medicine if 
 you said where you come from, and took back an exhausted 
 bottle with a surprisingly high number on it, considering 
 its pretensions. And these events having passed muster 
 as normal, what followed was only natural. 
 
 217
 
 218 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Her aunt had slio-mi at first dispositions to join the chase, 
 but had desisted in consequence of remonstrance from 
 neighbours, who had begun to be aware that history had 
 been in the making during the night at Steptoe's ; he, 
 though chronic the previous evening, having become acute 
 in the small hours of the morning. INIrs. Hicks and Mrs. 
 Hacker, and others, having troope'd round the vortex of 
 excitement, had counselled Aunt Stingy to remain where 
 she would be of some use, and not go canterin' over the 
 buildin' land ^\ith no object, in the manner of speaking. 
 Wasn't three plenty ? 
 
 Jimmy 'Acker, told off to follow the trail in the snow and 
 bring back word if he see 'em coming, had come back 
 uneasy and evasive, had told contradictory stories about 
 what he see, and had confirmed the public belief in the 
 untrustworthiness of boys. Questioned, during ostracism, 
 by his sister and Lizarann, his replies had been mysterious, 
 and his refusal to make them less so unintelligible. The 
 expression, " Just you wait and see if what I told you ain't 
 k'rect," laid claim to having said something, sometime ; 
 and no effort of his hearers' memory confirmed his having 
 done so. Other emissaries departed to get information, 
 and did not come back. 
 
 This state of uncertainty had been ended by the reap- 
 pearance of the policeman and the doctor, who climbed 
 back over the fence followed by straggling units from among 
 those who had ^\^tnessed the scene at the lock. Everyone 
 can read something written about Death on the faces of 
 those who have just seen him. 
 
 " Now which of you women was this man's wife ?" That 
 was what Lizarann had heard the policeman — the old sort ; 
 she looked in vain for her glorious friend — say to wifehood 
 within hearing. Whereupon Aunt Stingy became on a 
 sudden hysterical, and was helped, gasping and crying, into 
 the house. Lizarann wanted to go too, moved by pity 
 for she knew not what — for something folk were speaking 
 under their breath about to one another, not to her ; nodding 
 about, pointing about, to something past or present, 
 beyond the railwaj^-arch ; draA^dng morals about and re- 
 ferring to their own foresight about. Then she had heard 
 the voice of the doctor-gentleman :
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 219 
 
 " Which of you youngsters is his Httle girl ? . . . Hadn't 
 got a httle girl, hadn't he ? . . . Oh ah ! — of course he 
 hadn't. ... I should say — which is the little girl whose 
 dad's hurt his leg and gone to the Hospital ? . . . Ah, to 
 be sure ! — Lizarann. Now, Lizarann, suppose you get 
 your bonnet and wTop yourself up as warm as you can and 
 come along o' me to Teacher at the School, just till Mr. 
 Taylor comes to go to see Daddy with you. The big 
 gentleman 1 . . . just him, and nobody else. Come along !" 
 Which Lizarann did, ^\^th alacrity. Daddy was in view 
 
 again. 
 
 Then had come a very pleasant phase of what had really 
 seemed more a dream than a reality, all along, to Lizarann. 
 She had found herself being fed and washed and dressed 
 and generally succoured by Miss Fossett, otherwise Teacher, 
 at her private residence next door to the School, after the 
 departure of the doctor-gentleman who left her there. She 
 couldn't for the life of her make out whether it was good 
 news or bad news he had been telling Teacher under his 
 breath. All she knew was that she was somehow 
 appointed to go to Daddy in the Hospital, and that nothing 
 else mattered. Even had she known the tragedy of the 
 morning, it would only have been the fact of Death that 
 would have appalled her — not the loss of the man who died. 
 Practically, the grave was already closing over the remains 
 of Uncle Bob, or the chief part of them. Decision on that 
 point scarcely rests wth ignorance though ; who shall say 
 that even Alcoholism can efface a soul ? Nips won't, 
 however frequently took; a germ always remains. At 
 least, that is our experience, or an inference from it. 
 
 It is always pleasant to feel at liberty to over-indulge a 
 child, and Miss Fossett, a good-natured woman that might 
 have married — that describes her — interpreted something 
 the doctor had told her about Daddy as a licence to do so 
 in this case. So Lizarann enjoyed herself thoroughly — 
 may almost be said to have been pampered — in the interval 
 between the doctor's departure and the arrival of the Rev. 
 Athelstan. When the latter came, as promised. Miss 
 Fossett had said something to him with concern, under 
 her breath, and he had replied in a strain as of reassurance, 
 to judge from his tone : " Nev^er you mind the doctor,
 
 220 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Addie. Like enough he was mistaken. Besides, he said 
 he thought they might save it." Which, half- heard by 
 Lizarann, only left an impression on her mind of the hospital 
 staff on its knees hunting in the gutter for poor Jim's 
 takings in coppers, spilt from his pocket last night when he 
 met with this accident. Also at the moment Lizarann 
 was doing some arithmetic by herself, hors de concours, 
 and honestly believed she was conferring a real kindness 
 on Teacher by adding up rows of figures for her. She would 
 have done them quicker, only she had to stop to lick and 
 rub out each carried cipher after writing in the next one. 
 Also, when she got the values wrong in an eight, which is 
 difficult, she had to rub it out and do it all over again. 
 
 " Lizarann says two and two make four, but fifteen and 
 twelve don't make twenty-seven." Lizarann thought 
 Teacher said tliis rather maliciously. But she was prompt 
 in self-justification. 
 
 " Not of theirselves. Not till you do them in a sum. 
 Like this. ..." And she did it. 
 
 " Quite right, Lizarann ! Of course they don't. But 
 two and two mil make four if you leave 'em alone ever so. 
 Isn't that it ?" Thus the gentleman — a sympathetic soul ! 
 
 " Yass !" And the little woman felt that justice had 
 been done. But she didn't know why maturity should 
 laugh, as it did. 
 
 " They may save it, of course," Miss Fossett continued. 
 " I don't see what's to be gained by taking the child to the 
 Hospital, myself. Only make her miserable ! It won't be 
 half as bad if it's a wooden leg and he's up and well, as seeing 
 him in a hospital ward. Besides, Dr. Ferris said he couldn't 
 be certain they'd let you see him." 
 
 " I fancy they would. I know a man there who would 
 manage it, regular hours or no !" 
 
 " I don't mean that. I mean it might not be safe for 
 the man himself. Just think I — suppose they have had to 
 amputate both." Of course Lizarann heard none of this. 
 They were in the next room, having left her engaged in 
 arithmetic. 
 
 " Yes — he may be betwixt hfe and death. After all, 
 we know nothing. When did Dr. Ferris say he would be 
 at the Hospital ? Is that the child coughing ?"
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 221 
 
 " Is that you coughing, Lizarann ?" Teacher raised her 
 voice to ask, and Lizarann repHed that she had " a stiss " 
 in her side whenever she Hcked the sHte. She hcked it to 
 try, and the experiment was crowned with success. She 
 then tried to readjust something out of gear inside her by 
 short coughs and wriggles. This did not seem so successful. 
 Teacher lowered her voice again : " Mucous membrane," 
 said she, " or muscular." 
 
 " Very likely. She's had a deal of exposure though, 
 snow and all. Let's keep our eyes on her." But Lizarann 
 didn't cough again, that time. 
 
 Nevertheless Miss Fossett seemed not quite easy in her 
 mind about that cough, and when Mr. Taylor remarked 
 that we ought to be thinking about starting, if we were to 
 get to the Hospital by four o'clock, she said — only she 
 pretended it was quite a sudden idea of hers — that if she 
 spoke the truth she would really be much happier to have 
 the child not go out of doors in all this terrible cold and 
 slush. For it was a thaw, and an enthusiastic one ; and, 
 you see. Miss Fossett had come by her knowledge of mucous 
 membranes and so forth in a sad curriculum of two courses ; 
 one of nursing a sister through phthisis to death ; and the 
 other, which was incomplete, of doing the like at intervals 
 for a brother, with only a poor hope that it would end 
 otherwise. So she knew all about it. 
 
 " I really should feel easier, Yorick," she repeated. And 
 Lizarann looked up from the slate to see who else was in 
 the room, that Teacher could be speaking to. But seeing 
 no one, and being a sharp little girl, she perceived that it 
 was her friend the gentleman that was addressed. Only, 
 of course, she couldn't guess that it was a sort of nickname, 
 given, years ago, to her brother's schoolfellow by her friend 
 the lady. 
 
 " / should, a good deal. It's not the right sort of day 
 at all for little girls with coughs. How shall we console her ?" 
 
 " You must." 
 
 " I suppose I shall have to, Addie. I always have to do 
 all the dirty work." This metaphor distracted Lizarann's 
 attention from two uneven numbers, one of which had to 
 be took off the other and wouldn't come out right. Did 
 the New Police scrub underneath the beds, clear the flues
 
 222 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 of sut, scour out the sink, and so on ? Impossible ! H® 
 went on : " Look here. Lizarann ! You're a good Httle girlj 
 aren't you ?" 
 
 " Yass !" 
 
 " And you're not going to cry — that's about it, isn't it ?" 
 
 " Ye-e-e* — yass !" She is not quite so confident about 
 this, but will conciHate pubhc opinion to the best of her 
 abihtJ^ 
 
 " Well, Lizarann, the doctor says we mustn't see Daddy 
 till — till a day or two." The small face clouds over piti- 
 fully. The disappointment is bitter. But Lizarann won't 
 cry — well ! — not yet, anyhow. Yorick continues : " I shall 
 go to the Sospital to hear about Daddy, and come back and 
 tell. But you mustn't go yet, because it would hurt 
 Daddy." He conceals his consciousness of the background 
 of tears to the child's Spartan resolution. 
 
 "You'll see it will come though," says Miss Fossett, saying 
 good-bye at the street-door. " She'll have a good cry 
 about it when you're gone. . . . But oh dear ! — what a lot 
 of stories you have told that child, Yorick." 
 
 " Of course I did. You put it on me, Addie, and then 
 you sneak out ! / call it mean. But oh dear ! — what a lot 
 of stories one does have to tell children !" 
 
 " You never tell them stories about anything you think 
 serious. I know you don't." 
 
 " Yes, I do. I tell them as matter of knowledge what I 
 know to be only matter of belief. They wouldn't believe 
 it if I didn't say I knew it." 
 
 " But you believe it ?" 
 
 " I do. But I don't know it. Good-bye, Addie ! I 
 shall keep my promise about the Hospital, though, and 
 bring the news back. Cosset over the little woman and 
 console her." Which Teacher really did to the best of her 
 ability, but the fact is that though Lizarann was brave, she 
 was inconsolable. And — what was bitterest of all — she 
 felt that faith had been broken ^\^th her ; which, coming 
 home too late to Miss Fossett, made her think that it might 
 have been better to tell a child of Lizarami's character the 
 real reason why she wasn't to go to Daddy. It was a 
 doubtful point, though. Besides, it was far from certain, 
 after all, that she could have seen Daddy if she had been
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 223 
 
 taken to the Hospital. It would have been the worst 
 result of all to fail in that, and have all the exposure for 
 nothing. 
 
 So the Rev. Athelstan— or Yorick — certainly thought, as 
 he started to walk to St. Brides, meaning to avail himself 
 of a townward-bound hansom if one should overtake him 
 before he got to the tram. Omnibuses were all full, 
 apparently, inside and out ; and the opportunity of enjoying 
 a rapid thaw was open to those who had for three Aveeks 
 been praying for one. Streets overwhelmed with insuffer- 
 able slush, and what was beautiful clean snow only a few 
 hours since turned to torrents of an inkiness defying ex- 
 planation. Roads that made even the sufferer by the 
 slides we so enjoyed the making of in the early morning 
 wish that he, too, was on our side, and could benefit by 
 them, and knock double-knocks on them and never tumble. 
 And see them now, turned to mere ill-mixed morass — floating 
 pea- soup ankle-deep ! Scavengers' carts that seemed to 
 spill more than they removed, and persons of low ideals 
 of energy losing sight of the objects for whose attainment 
 they had been entrusted with brooms and rakes, and con- 
 tented to do nothing particular with them, in rows. Malig- 
 nant persons on roof-tops discharging wicked accumulations 
 on unsuspecting heads, and shouting out " Be-low !" at 
 the moment of impact. Butcher's carts coming as close to 
 you as possible, to splash mud in your mouth and inside 
 your collar, and reaching the horizon long before you 
 become articulate to curse them. And then that saddest 
 of all depressing sights, the skater who has been warned off 
 the ice that won't be dangerous for another hour at least, 
 and is going home swinging his skates and doubting the 
 benevolence of his Maker. 
 
 So onward, through abating suburb and increasing toA\Ti, 
 to the zone of the Effectual. Of impatient carts that won't 
 wait for the snow to thaw, but snap it up and carry it away 
 without offering to account for thefir conduct ; of mowing- 
 machines fitted with Brobdingnag revolving hair-brushes 
 that mil have to be washed now to be put to their proper 
 use again, after sweeping up all that equivocal mess parallel 
 with the kerbstone ; of turncocks looking happy from human 
 apj)reciation in great force, and alone able to cope with
 
 224 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 obstructions or relaxations in the bowels of the earth whose 
 nature we outsiders can only dimly guess at. So travelling 
 onward; on foot and by tram, the Rev. Athelstan arrived 
 at his destination, and slipping the fare he had provided 
 for the cab he had discarded into the contribution-box at 
 the gate, entered St. Brides Hospital. 
 
 "I didn't know you were in these parts, Taylor," said 
 his friend, the House Surgeon. " Haven't seen you for a 
 century. . . . Yes ! — ^I know I am right. It's two years 
 next Lady Day. How's the family 1 How's Miss Caldecott 1 
 ... all right, are they ? That's well. Now let's have a look 
 at you. Turn round to the light. . . ." 
 
 "I'm all right." 
 
 " Didn't say you weren't. Let's have a look ! Turn well 
 round and show yourself . . . h'm !" 
 
 " Well !— w^hat's the matter ?" 
 
 •' I thought as much ! You've been dissipating, my 
 man. Your sort of dissipation ! What was it this time ? 
 You've been up all night, my good sir ! It's no use your 
 trying to deceive me." 
 
 " ' I will not deceive you, my sweet !' " Mr. Taylor 
 quoted Mrs. Gamp, and was understood. " I chanced upon 
 a bad case of delirium tremens threatening its lawful wife 
 with a knife, and I staj'ed to see it out. Poor fellow !" 
 
 "H'm !— why poor fellow ?" 
 
 " Because I locked him up and went for the doctor round 
 the corner. He said he kncAv you. Man of the name of 
 Ferris. Good sort of little chap. ..." 
 
 " I know him. Saw him yesterday — came to see a 
 patient here. Well ! — what did he say to your man ?" 
 
 " He never saw him alive. While I was away the poor 
 fellow escaped out of the room, ran a mile and a half through 
 the snow, and pitched himself into a canal-lock. . . . Oh 
 yes ! — he was fished out dead from under the ice. . . ." 
 
 " Rather a good job, I should think. . . . However, 
 perhaps I oughtn't to say that. . . ." 
 
 " Glad to hear you say so, Crumpton ! It sounds 
 hopeful." 
 
 " I didn't mean that way. I meant he might have been 
 an interesting case. Anyhow, there's an end of him /" 
 
 I wish I could think that. But suppose I tell you what 
 
 a
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 225 
 
 brings me here now : we can quarrel about the human soul 
 after. I want to hear about a man that was brought in 
 yesterday night, a blind sailor-beggar that was run over. 
 Have you seen him ?" 
 
 " Rather ! I helped to get his leg off, just above the 
 knee. A very good case — a very good case !" 
 
 " What does that mean ? — a very good case ?" 
 
 " Means that if the limb hadn't been taken off on the 
 nail, septic poisoning might have set in — ^yes ! — already ! 
 By the merest chance Brantock was here when he was 
 brought in — ^he's our visiting surgeon, you know — and he 
 operated immediately. . . . Save it ? Not a chance — 
 arteries all torn— circulation stopped — nothing for it but 
 the knife ! The other leg we may save. He has a splendid 
 constitution. Couldn't have kept him so long under chloro- 
 form else." 
 
 " The other leg ?" 
 
 " Compound comminuted fracture of tibia and fibula, 
 with extensive laceration of soft parts. Much extravasa- 
 tion. But vitality retained. Oh yes ! — we may save that 
 one. It's in plaster of Paris. He was removed into the 
 surgical ward an hour ago. Do you want to see him ? — 
 he can't talk, I fancy, and he'd better not try. He's had a 
 good deal of opium to allay pain, you see." 
 
 " May I see him ? I should like to say I have, to his 
 little girl. Poor child ! The delirium tremens case was her 
 uncle, and she has no mother. She's the poor chap's only 
 child." 
 
 The House Surgeon put a book he had been looking into 
 as he talked, inside a desk and locked it ; wrote with extreme 
 rapidity on half a sheet of note-paper as people write on the 
 stage ; handed it to a chubby nurse who seemed to have 
 been indulging optimism while waiting for it ; remarked 
 to her, " That's three hundred and forty-nine. I'll see 
 about the other presently ;" and said to the Rev. Athelstan, 
 briefly, " Come along !" 
 
 Poor Jim was worse now, as far as his own feelings went, 
 than when he spoke to Lizarann off of the hospital- barrer. 
 Tliero he was, in his own eyes, a chap that had been knocked 
 over and come by some damage to his legs, which a week in 
 
 VOL, I. 15
 
 226 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 hospital would set right. Pain enough ! — ah, to be sure ! — ■ 
 and what might you expect ? Not for to lie up in cotton- 
 wool all the days of your life. As a Spartan, and as against 
 pain, with the normal courage of his healthy hours upon 
 him, Jim was matchless. Add to that, that when he said 
 those few words to his little lass, all the pain was as nothing 
 in itself, measured against the need that she should not 
 know it. 
 
 It was that nasty suffocating stuff that knocked all the 
 heart out of a man, getting at his innards and stopping his 
 clock. For when the time came to shift Jim from the couch 
 he was first laid on to the operating-table, and to place him 
 under chloroform as a preliminary, he was conscious enough 
 of much that was going on — had dra^vn his own inferences 
 from the rapid undertone of consultation ending in a raised 
 voice : " Perfectly useless to try for the left. May save the 
 right !" In that instant he gave no thought to his own 
 share in the matter ; all he could think of was the coming 
 of the knowledge to his child that her Daddy was legless as 
 well as eyeless. Three things made up his universe — his 
 little lass, a crushed and spoiled thing on a couch, and that 
 mysterious thing, Jim's Self, independent of both, but mad 
 with anxiety for the former — until the chloroform came 
 and made all three things Nothing. 
 
 However, Jim never knew he was Nothing, because he 
 had no sooner swallowed the nasty stuff into his lungs than 
 he was feeling very bad, and sick-like, on a bed he had never 
 been moved to at all, to his very certain knowledge. And 
 he was able to guess, although he could not move his limbs 
 to test it, that he was in the form in which he was to 
 fossilise. Then, as the slow rally of a splendid constitution 
 against the shock began, there grew with it an intense 
 longing to knoAv what manner of figure he was going to cut 
 when reinstated. Would it be one Avooden leg or two 
 M-ooden legs 1 Would he be able to walk at all ? Would 
 he, in short, be in trim to persuade his little lass that he 
 was on the whole rather better off than before his accident ? 
 He really thought of nothing else when awake. But he 
 chiefly slept, rousing himself for dexterous doses of nourish- 
 ment at short intervals. And when he slept, he dreamed, 
 as folk dream whose pain opium has half quenched.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 227 
 
 He would have done very well in his dreams if he could 
 only have had them to himself, and been free from an awful 
 something that ran through them all. Whereof the only 
 certainty was that it was always the same, and a curse. 
 Preferably, as to form, it was cubic and immovable, but of 
 hideous weight. But then, it was by no means certain that 
 it was not a continuous sound, a sustained hoot of appalling 
 power and persistency that struck terror to the heart, and 
 jarred the brain. Or was it a wild beast, that kept the 
 ship's crew from going ashore 1 Or an evil fire Jim was 
 hard at work to crawl away from, but could not, seeing 
 that it could follow him on wheels ? Or, hardest to describe 
 of all — when he woke from liis dream to recognise a fact 
 he had recognised fifty times uselessly, that it was merely 
 his pain and nothing else — was it a strange concerted action 
 of malignant battalions, always coming nearer, never in 
 sight ? It made him sick to know that it was each and all 
 of the others, just the same. Now if he could only have 
 enjoyed his dreams — ^for, look you, he could see m his 
 dreams, plain— he wouldn't have mmded the pain, if he 
 could only have kept it square and intelligible. It was just 
 the confusion that made him so hot and dry, so unable to get 
 properly range. 
 
 For instance, there was a dream of eight years back -with 
 Dolly in it. Dolly was Lizarann's mother, and the reason 
 Lizarann was not called Dolly was that Aunt Stingy had 
 always thought it such a selly name, and it had appeared 
 to Jim that it couldn't much matter what anything so 
 small was called. Its size was all he knew of it, and a 
 milky flavour, and some squeaks. And Jim was in the 
 dark, and Dolly in her grave, and nothing mattered. 
 
 Jim was in the dark now, with a vengeance ; but he could 
 dream Dolly out of her grave, and did it, in this dream. 
 It was a dream of the day he met her, when he came off his 
 first voyage, a mere boy, and a perfect stranger to her. 
 There was the bar he and his mates off the Fera had trooped 
 into for refreshment, just paid off and feehng good, with 
 money in their pockets. There were the square bottles 
 with names on the glass, and the round ones all over labels, 
 and the pump-handles in a row that Dolly's red-faced 
 cousin Jane, the barmaid, was in the confidence of, but 
 
 15—2
 
 228 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 which everyone else would have pulled wrong. There, too, 
 was the girl that came in behind the bar and berthed up 
 alongside the red-faced cousin, just as Murtagh O'Rourke 
 called back to him through the swing-door, " We're lavin' 
 ye behind, James, me boy," and vanished. And the girl 
 was Dolly — Dolly herself. Jim didn't know in his dream 
 that he had married Dolly since, and that she was dead — 
 not he ! It was all new and young again, and in a moment 
 he would hear Dolly say what she did then, when after 
 some chat — during which the eyes of each saw the other 
 solely, Dolly's flinchingly, Jim's greedily — ^the red face was 
 called away and left them. Yes ! — he knew what she 
 would say, " You never daren't come across to me," and 
 that he in defiance of all Law and Order would be over that 
 bar like a shot, and then would be driven forth by the 
 righteous rage of the returning barmaid, ^^ith the remains 
 of a kiss on his lips, the spoil of war in this audacious enter- 
 prise. And all the sequel of the story — how Dolly ran after 
 him to say he might come back, under reserves ; and the 
 lightning speed of their unsophisticated courtship, under 
 none — all this he knew in the dream beforehand, but did 
 not wonder why he knew it — took it as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 It never came off, though, for the dream never got as far 
 as the kiss, to Jim's bitter disappointment. Jane, the 
 cousin, instead of clearing out and leaving the introduction 
 to nature, swelled and became redder still, and very hot, 
 and ended inexplicably by becoming the pain that had 
 passed through so many vicissitudes. Whereupon Jim 
 was awake in the dark, somewhere. And a man's voice, 
 one good to hear, was saying : " I'll sit down by him and 
 wait till he wakes, nurse. I promised little Lizarann I 
 would see him." 
 
 " That's my little lass !" said Jim faintly. And the 
 nurse said, " I thought I heard him speak." Then Jim 
 felt that a big man came and sat beside him, who asked him 
 what he had said. So he repeated, " The name of my little 
 lass at home, master," and then had said all he could, and 
 went off again in a drowze, and was far away in a new 
 dream in two seconds. In perhaps five he woke again 
 with a start, and said : " Have ye been here long, master ?"
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 229 
 
 But his mind must have travelled quick from the dream 
 he was in, and his place in it. For he had to come back to 
 bed No. 146 at St. Brides Hospital from Singapore — from 
 the hold of a ship a Malay sailor had hidden himself in, 
 after running amuck through the decks, wounding right 
 and left. And Jim and Ananias Driscoll, the second mate, 
 were the only men who would dare to ferret him out in the 
 dark, mth a horn lantern and loaded revolvers, to use in 
 earnest if need was. And, mind you ! — the fugitive might 
 have put fire to the ship, as lief as not, except they caught 
 liim. Now the bilge in this ship, or something broke out of 
 a cask in the hold, had a powerful bad smell with it, that 
 had a mortal strange effect on your legs. And when Jim 
 said so to Driscoll, a voice came that was not Driscoll's, 
 and Jim became aware that he was somehow in a trap, and 
 woke just in time to escape it. But the smell of that bilge 
 was the pain of Jim's foot ; for the foot was there still, for 
 all it had been cut off and carried away in a pail. And the 
 voice that had seemed Driscoll's, which was quite an un- 
 natural one for a sailor with earrings, and a crucifix tattooed 
 on his chest, was identified halfway by Jim's waking sense, 
 and Singapore had melted. *■ 
 
 " Scarcely a minute," said the man who sat beside him, 
 completing Driscoll's speech. Which seemed incredible to 
 Jim, after that affair at Singapore. But he let it pass, the 
 more so that at that moment the nurse brought him some- 
 thing in a cup, which made him feel better. 
 
 " You was so good as to mention, master . . ." 
 
 " Your little girl ? Yes — I saw her, an hour since. . . . 
 Look ! — I'll put my ear down, close. Needn't try to raise 
 your voice !" For Jim had something he wanted to say 
 badly. 
 
 " You'll not be mentioning any matters to my Httle lass, 
 sir," said he slowly. And then, as though he felt his 
 words were a little obscure : " You might chance to be 
 sailing something regarding of the matter of my fut. Ye 
 see, master, a young child don't take these-like things as 
 easy as we do, and my little lass's heart wall be just abroke 
 about her Daddy's fut. I'd take it very kind of ye if ye'd 
 make any sart of a bit of contrivance like, only for a short 
 spell o' deception, just till I get the heart in me to make
 
 230 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 a game of it all. It's the chloroform done it. A fair 
 easuality don't knock all the heart out of a man. . . ." 
 
 " Your little girl will have to know about it in the end." 
 
 " Ah ! — ^in the end — ^\^es ! But then ... a wooden leg ! 
 See the difference ! Why, I can most hear the lass laughing 
 at it." Jim paused a few seconds to enjoy Lizarann's 
 imagined hilarity, then added : " Ye'll keep it snug about 
 my fut, master ? A stump's a stump, ye know." 
 
 " She shan't be told any particulars yet, Coupland. 
 Don't try yourself talking too much." For Jim's long 
 speech has made his breath come short, and his last words 
 are almost inaudible. He submits to listening. " The 
 doctor has told me all about the accident. You'll have to 
 have a wooden leg. Let me tell you about Lizarann." 
 The way the speaker, whoever he is, accents the child's 
 name, makes a family friend of him at once. Jim, -with a 
 vague picture in his mind of a sort of guardsman with quiet 
 manners, moves his o^\ii big right hand, hot and weak 
 now, as it lies on the coverlid. It is taken by another as 
 big, and the image of the guardsman is confirmed. Its 
 voice suits the hand, and continues : " We thought it best 
 "for her not to come — Miss Fossett and I did. You know 
 Miss Fossett, at the National School." 
 
 " Sure !" Jim's intonation acknowledges Miss Fossett, 
 with approval in it. Athelstan Taylor had made up his 
 mind how much it would be safe to tell of last night's work, 
 so he continued : 
 
 " Your little maid and I made friends early this morning. 
 I was passing by your house, and she came running out. 
 Her uncle had been drinking, and his behaviour had fright- 
 ened her. . . . What's that ?" He stoops down again to 
 hear, and Jim tries for clearer speech : 
 
 " The Devil he'll take Bob Steptoe one of these odd- 
 come-shortlies, or I'm a liar. Only I \\dsh he'd . . ." 
 
 " Wish he'd what ?" 
 
 " Be alive about it — look a bit smarter ! What was his 
 game this time, master ?" 
 
 " He was drunk and violent, and I had to control him. 
 He's quiet now. I'll tell you more, Coupland, when you are 
 stronger." 
 
 " Very right, sir !"
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 231 
 
 " I'll tell you now about Lizarann. I carried her oS 
 to Miss Fossett's — -odth her aunt's consent, of course. The 
 poor little woman had had a bad time, you see. She 
 wanted consolation badly after your accident, and not 
 being able to come to you. And her aunt's a good woman, 
 but . . ." 
 
 " She ain't that sort of good woman . . . t'other sort !" 
 
 " Well, perhaps ! Anyhow, I made her wrap Lizarann 
 up, and trotted her off to the School. Miss Fossett's got 
 her there now, and she's in good hands. . . ." 
 
 " You mustn't spin it out too long, Taylor." Thus the 
 Doctor's voice, as his footsteps stop by the bed-end. He 
 comes to the other side of the bed, and lays his finger on 
 the near pulse. " Magnificent constitution ! Everything 
 in his favour ! Splendid case — pity to spoil it ! Give you 
 seven minutes more by the clock. Look in to say good-bye 
 as you go." He is gone, and Jim is conscious of the slight 
 rustle of a nurse, on the watch to pounce, hard by. 
 
 " I must tell you what I came for, Coupland. Of course 
 I wanted to find how you were, and take back word to 
 Lizarann." Mr. Taylor has to speak quickly. " But I 
 wanted to ask something of you." 
 
 " Give it a name, master !" 
 
 " I wanted to ask your consent to our keeping her — I 
 should say to Miss Fossett keeping her — at the School till 
 you are about again. She shall be well cared for. I know I 
 am asking you to tnist ..." He stopped ; Jim's lips were 
 moving. 
 
 " You're the School-lady's brother, belike ?" 
 
 " Not quite, but that sort of thing ! Her brother and I 
 were at College together. He is doing my work in the 
 country, and I am doing his at St. Vulgate's at Clapham." 
 
 " That parson gentleman — he'd be her brother. Him I 
 heard cough ?" For the brother and sister, interested in 
 Lizarann, had visited Tallack Street, and interviewed Jim. 
 
 " Him you heard cough. That's it !" 
 
 " But he can't do no work, poor chap ! — ^not work in the 
 country." 
 
 " My work in the country is the same as his in London. 
 Only not so hard. And the country air does his cough good." 
 
 " Oh, master ! — ^ye never mean to say you're a parson !"
 
 232 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Jim's voice rises with the poignancy of his disappointment. 
 To him, every cleric is the Rev. Wilkinson Wilkins, the 
 spiritual adviser of Aunt Stingy. 
 
 " I'm not a very bad one, Coupland. At least, I hope 
 not." There is humility in the speaker's tone, and recogni- 
 tion of the aggressive and objectionable character of Cures 
 of Souls, but a germ of a good-humoured laugh buried in it. 
 The seven minutes are near their end, and the nurse, 
 considered as a rustle, is increasing. She means action in 
 a moment. 
 
 " I'll be your bail for that, master." But Jim cannot 
 quite conceal his disappointment. He had formed such a 
 high ideal of his visitor. Still, he can and does show liis 
 faith in him by spending the rest of his available speech- 
 strength on a few words of gratitude to Lizarann's protec- 
 tors, and assenting Avithout conditions to the proposed 
 arrangement. But when will he be " about again " ? The 
 nurse throws eight weeks, somehow, into her expression, 
 without speech, and the forgiven parson interprets for the 
 blind man's hearing. 
 
 " Quite a month, Coupland. But I will bring your little 
 girl to see you the moment the doctors will allow me. 
 Now, good-bye !" 
 
 Alas, poor Yorick i He had been so enjoying his com- 
 pany — company that had neither respect for his cloth, nor 
 contempt for his cloth, nor indifference to his cloth ; that, 
 in fact, knew nothing about his cloth — and rejoicing in 
 Jim's free speech, that would have been cramped here and 
 crimped there had the speaker known he was addressing 
 a parson-gentleman. It was like stepping back into the old 
 days before he took clerk's orders ; days when he was still 
 uninsulated, still one with his kind. And yet there was 
 never a man with a more earnest belief in his inherited 
 mission to fight the Devil in any of the half-score of Churches 
 that look askant at one another, and waste good powder 
 and shot over the creeds their congregations shout in unison, 
 knowing all the while that one or more of the chorus may 
 be — must be — uttering a lie. Athelstan Taylor had donned 
 the cloth he wore simply because it was the uniform of 
 his territorial regiment in the army that, as he conceived, 
 was being for ever enrolled in the service of Ormuzd against
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 233 
 
 Ahrimanes, In his enthusiasm to fight beneath the banner 
 of his division of the army, the Cross, he had ridden rough- 
 shod over a hundred scruples on petty details ; and the 
 consequence was that his most earnest admirers were often 
 fain to shake their heads over his lawless expressions of 
 opinion on sacred subjects, and to lament that Taylor, 
 with so many fine points in his character, should be on vital 
 points of Doctrine so painfully unsound. It was an open 
 secret on the part of both Augustus Fossett and his sister 
 that they prayed for Athelstan ; the former Avith a belief 
 as real as he was capable of that the wanderer would be 
 guided ; the latter with a practical misgiving that a very 
 large number of thoughtful persons had not been guided, 
 or so many samples would not be to be found outside the 
 Communions of the Enghsh — and Roman — Churches. For 
 too many of her brother's idols had " gone over " for it to 
 be possible to pool the latter in the sum total of orthodox, 
 heterodox, and cacodox dissidents. Of which last, in con- 
 nection with this brother's and sister's petitions to the 
 Almighty to guide Athelstan into their way of thinking, 
 the one they preferred to call Socinianism was the most 
 poisonous and insidious. A creed baited with mere veraci- 
 ties, to get a bite from the unwary ! 
 
 As for Athelstan, every time he came to take his friend's 
 burden off his shoulders in London he felt more clearly 
 than before how apt he was to lose sight of even Ormuzd 
 and Ahriman in a blind struggle against the brutalism and 
 debauchery, and filth and disease, of a London outskirt 
 well up to its date. Encouraged at first by the tidiness of 
 the last-built bee-lines of bricks and mortar, he had half 
 hoped a compromise was being found between purchasing 
 a sense of Christianity for the rich at the cost of indefinite 
 multiplication of the poor, and passing sentence of death 
 on those unable either to enjoy living on nothing, or to 
 give anything in exchange for something. But as soon as 
 he began to get behind the scenes his poorer parishioners 
 were enacting, he saw and heard every day things that had 
 dashed this hope ; and by the time of the story had quite 
 come to the conclusion that the small population whose 
 souls he was supposed to be looking after were as vicious 
 as the Court of Charles the Second, and so idle as to affirm
 
 234 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 the right of male mankind to sixteen hours out of twenty- 
 four to eat, drink, sleep, and do nothing in — slight excep- 
 tions to the last, to nobody's credit, being allowed for. Of 
 course it was an exaggerated feeling on Athelstan's part ; 
 one thing was that he could not reconcile himself to the 
 ubiquitous ft-tor of the beer in which, speaking broadly, 
 his flock — ^who didn't acknowledge him as their shepherd 
 at all — lived and moved and had their being. Under 
 exasperation, he thought of them in that way . . . and 
 forgave them ! 
 
 Miss Fossett interrupted a reverie to this effect, by 
 saying to him, as he arrived, after striding five miles in an 
 hour through the slush and drizzle : " I've had to put that 
 child to bed." 
 
 " Hullo ! — nothing bad, I hope ?" What a damper ! 
 And he had looked forward so to the small anxious face, and 
 the consolation he was going to give it. All his clients were 
 not so nice as Lizarann. 
 
 " Dr. Ferris said he wasn't sure if it was pleurisy. It 
 might be pneumonia." 
 
 Doctor's been, then ?" 
 
 Oh yes ! — -I sent for him. She's been poulticed ever 
 
 
 smce." 
 
 " Hope it's all a fuss about nothing." 
 " I hope so. Here's a visitor, Lizarann. Now don't you 
 jump up !"
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 In a town-house of the Arkroyd order, a certain dramatic 
 interest attaches to the morning meal that is not shared 
 by any later one. Nobody knows who A^dll come doMTi to 
 breakfast, except perhaps some confidential lady's-maid ; 
 and she won't tell, as often as not. So that the knights- 
 harbingers of fresh toast and tea and coffee can always 
 enjoy a little sport in the way of wagers as to who will take 
 which, and which of the young ladies will be up — or do^vn, 
 which is the same thing — before ten. The pleasurable 
 excitement which those who play cards feel, before they 
 pick their packs up and know the worst, is akin to theirs, 
 only less. Because the cards may be snapped up the 
 moment it isn't a misdeal ; while the tension is prolonged 
 for the watcher who speculates beside a well-laid table as 
 to whether the methylated will last out under the urn till 
 one of the ladies appears to make tea, or will sputter and 
 fizz and have to be taken out and refilled, and very likely 
 the wick too short all the time ! 
 
 Lunch is different. People make a point of lunch, or 
 else declare off, and don't come home at all. Those who 
 do not comply with this rule are Foolish Virgins — and 
 serve them right ! Our own experience, an extended one, 
 points to the impossibility of being too late for breakfast. 
 There may be a case — ^but ! . . . 
 
 Anyhow, the same human interest does not attach to the 
 question of who is, or isn't, coming to lunch. And as for 
 tea, nobody cares a brass farthing ; because you can get 
 tea somewhere else. On the other hand, dinner is a serious 
 matter, and you must make your mind up ; and either come, 
 or not. 
 
 This tedious excursion into the ethics of Breakfast is all 
 owing to everybody commg down so late at 101, Grosvenor 
 Square, on the morning after the last chapter. The story
 
 236 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 is, as it were, kept waiting, and may as well indulge in a 
 few reflections. Samuel, the young man who brought the 
 chessboard at Royd, had to wait, and seemed able to do so 
 without change of countenance. He very likely reflected, 
 for all that. 
 
 It may have struck Samuel, when Miss Arkroyd made 
 her appearance first of those expected by him, that when 
 this young lady said, " Oh, nobody !" on entering, she did 
 not seem sorry, and picked up her share of the morning's 
 post from her plate to read nearer the fire quite resignedly. 
 It was getting colder again, and folk were i^ledging them- 
 selves not to wonder if the wind were to go round to the 
 north. 
 
 Judith looked at the outside of her mother's and sister's 
 letters. Sibyl's interested her most ; and she looked them 
 all through carefully, numerous though they were. Why 
 does one look at the directions on other people's letters ? 
 So Judith thought to herself, as she got disgusted -ndth the 
 monotony of the text on Sibyl's, and her inability to suggest 
 any emendations. She was very honourable, for she read 
 nothing but a signature or two on the numerous postcards. 
 She was, in fact, only acting under the impulse which 
 prompts the least inquisitive of us all, when we have under- 
 taken to post a letter for a friend, to read the address upon 
 it carefully before we insert it into the inexorable box, and 
 feel inside to see that it hasn't stuck. Judith did not 
 answer the question she asked herself ; yet her reading^ of 
 the same address again and again called more for explana- 
 tion than that of the letter-poster ; for the latter may be 
 put on his oath in the end, if a letter fails to reach. 
 
 There were so many to " Miss Sybil Arkroyd " that she 
 had become confused over the spelling of the name by the 
 time its owner's footstep was heard on the stairs. However, 
 she wasn't going to pretend she hadn't been reading them. 
 " There's one for you from Betty Inglis," she said inciden- 
 tally ; and picking up her own letters from the table, took 
 them with her to read bj' the fire. It was a morning to 
 make the hardiest give in to the temptation of a hundred- 
 weight of best Wallsend, blazing. Judith enjoyed it ; so 
 much so that a sense of a russet Liberty serge, baking, crept 
 into the atmosphere as she sought in vain for an inlet into
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 237 
 
 an envelope cruelly gummed to its uttermost corner. When 
 will envelope-makers have compassion for their customers' 
 correspondents ? 
 
 " You're scorcliing, Ju. Or you will be directly," So 
 spoke Sibyl, reading a letter attentively, and speaking 
 through her absorption as to a world without. " Who was 
 that ? . . . No — don't make the tea yet, Elphinstone. 
 Coffee for me. You're coffee, I suppose, Ju ? . . ." 
 
 " Yes, coffee. Who was what ?" 
 
 " Wlio was that in your cab last night ? . . , Well, you 
 made noise enough ! Of course I could hear ! I'm not 
 deaf." The letter is read by now, being short, and Sibyl 
 has come out into the world to hear the answer to her 
 question. 
 
 But Judith is deep in half-a-quire of illegibility, after 
 an episode of a fork-point, and some impatience. " It's 
 an old dress," she says, and then ignores Sibyl altogether 
 for a term, in favour of the letter. Her eyebrows had 
 moved in connection with the cab-inquiry, up to the point 
 of detection by a sharp younger sister. " I had no cab, 
 dear," she says at last. " I came in Mr. Challis's cab." 
 This is quite a long time after. 
 
 " Has Mr. Challis a cab ?" 
 
 " You know perfectly well what I mean, Sib." 
 
 Sibyl knows, but has become absorbed in a second letter. 
 So she leaves her tongue, as her representa.tive, to say 
 fragmentarily, " Hansom cab off the rank," and then retires 
 altogether into the letter for a moment. However, she 
 comes out presently to say, " The question is, was it Mr. 
 Challis ? I suppose it was, though, or it couldn't have 
 been Mr. Challis's cab ... oh no ! — I'm not finding fault. 
 It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned." 
 
 The respectable domestics have been in momentary 
 abeyance, and the conversation has been more suggestive 
 than it would have been in their presence. The reappear- 
 ance of Mr. Elphinstone, with the gist of two breakfasts, 
 causes an automatic adjournment of the subject. The day's 
 appointments make up the talk, during his presence. 
 
 But so late was the quorum of the total breakfast — 'in 
 fact, it was doubtful whether two of the constituent 
 cujusses would appear at all — that Sibyl got ample oppor-
 
 238 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 tunity for resuming the conversation exactly where it left 
 off, at least a quarter-of-an-hour having elapsed. 
 
 " It's all perfectly right as far as I'm concerned," she 
 repeated. " As long as Marianne doesn't mind !" The 
 Christian name may have been an intentional imperti- 
 nence. 
 
 " There is nothing for Marianne to mind, Sibyl." 
 
 Sibyl changes her ground unscrupulously. " It doesn't 
 matter to me as long as Pm not his wife. But a hansom- 
 cab is a hansom-cab, and you know it as well as I do." 
 
 " I do know it, dear." Judith speaks serenely. The 
 attack is too puerile to call for resentment. " They try 
 one's nerves and destroy one's skirts, getting in and out." 
 
 Sibyl's style has not been worthy of her Square, or Mr. 
 Elphinstone. There was too much of the lowlier air of 
 Seven Dials in the suggestion that a hansom-cab would 
 promote an irregular flirtation to do more than provoke a 
 smile. Charlotte Eldridge, even, would have condemned it 
 as the bald scoff of inexperience. 
 
 But there was more maturity and force in Sibyl's next 
 speech. " I want to know, are you going to tell the madre 
 about it or not ?" Judith flushed angrily as she answered 
 her wdth : " I have told you, Sibyl, that as soon as there 
 is something to tell, I will tell it at once to anyone it con- 
 cerns. Mamma certainly !" 
 
 " How far has it gone ? — that's what I want to find out." 
 
 " How far has what gone ?" 
 
 " You needn't look so furious, Ju. Do let's talk quietly. 
 You know perfectly well what I mean. This talk about 
 a trial-performance." The imputation that Judith looked 
 furious Avas a sporting venture. No doubt she felt furious, 
 thought Sibyl ; and how was she to know she didn't 
 show it ? 
 
 " I told you days ago there was no talk of a trial-per- 
 formance." 
 
 Sibyl restrained herself visibly — too visibly for the 
 prospects of peace. After some thirty seconds of self- 
 command, she reworded her question mechanically. " The 
 talk about something that was not to be a trial-perform- 
 ance." The forms of the court were complied with, without 
 admission of previous lack of clearness. This was shown
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 239 
 
 in a 'parti pris of facial immobility. A licked lip, a scratched 
 nose, an eye- blink, would have marred its dramatic force. 
 
 " You needn't look so stony over it, Sib. There's no 
 mystery of any sort, and I can tell you about it in three 
 words. Alfred Challis is anxious . . . what ?" 
 
 " Nothing— go on !" 
 
 " Mr. Challis is anxious that I should get up enough of 
 Aminta Torrington's part to give Mr. Magnus an idea . . . 
 No ! — Sibyl. Mr. Magnus is not vulgar, and / think him 
 picturesque. He smokes too many very large cigars 
 perhaps, and thej^ don't improve his complexion. But 
 what objection there can possibly be to diamond shirt- 
 studs . . ." 
 
 Sibyl interrupted. " You may just as well tell it all out, 
 Ju. What do you mean by ' enough ' ?" 
 
 " What do I mean by enough ? Do be intelligible, 
 Dandelion dear !" Judith is patronising. 
 
 " I wish you wouldn't call me by that hatefully foolish 
 name. Yes — what do you mean by ' enough ' ? Does it 
 mean that what Mr. Magnus has heard of Vvhat j^ou can do 
 isn't enough ? That doesn't mean that he's heard nothing. 
 And you know he hasn't." 
 
 Sibyl is really no match for her sister in the long run, and 
 perhaps this is a sample of it — of a run long enough for her 
 to get ruffled in. Judith's forbearance becomes exemplary. 
 " Listen while tell I you," she says, imputing impatience, 
 " what Mr. Magnus has heard ; and then you can talk 
 about it." 
 
 " Very well, go on !" snappishly. 
 
 " The suggestion came from Mr. Magnus. Alfred 
 Challis . . . certainly ! — it's his name. Don't be absurd. . . . 
 Alfred Challis may have talked to him — ^no doubt has — of 
 my fitness for the part. And yesterday between the acts 
 he asked us into his room, and made us read one of the 
 scenes. Of course I was Aminta, and Alfred Challis was 
 Moorsom. It was where they meet for the first time at 
 the oculist's at Vienna, in the waiting-room. ..." 
 
 " Is that the kissing scene ?" 
 
 " The kissing scene ! Sibyl ! — I'm sorry you read that 
 manuscript. . . ." 
 
 " You shouldn't have left it lying about."
 
 240 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " It was in my bedroom, child. . . . Well ! — it certainly 
 wasn't what you choose to call the kissing scene . . . but 
 it doesn't matter. I don't believe I should ever be able 
 to make you understand how purely professional it all Avas. 
 Mx. Magnus sat on the arm of a chair smoking, mth his 
 thumbs in his waistcoat, and said that sort of thing wouldn't 
 go down ^\\t\\ the public." Judith omitted Mr. Magnus's 
 reason, which was that it wasn't half " schick " enough, 
 or thick enough ; for it wasn't clear which he said, as his 
 tongue interfered with his articulation. 
 
 Sibyl listened, chafing. When no more seemed to be 
 coming, she elected to treat the communication as a con- 
 fession forced from reluctant lips. " You see I was right, 
 after all," she said. " And it was Mr. Chalhs in the cab." 
 The discontinuity of semi-accusation was bemldering, and 
 refutation hung fire for a moment. She ran on, giving her 
 sister no chance. " I really must say, Judith, that I do 
 not understand you at all. But you must go your ovai 
 way. Do you suppose — can you suppose — that any 
 member of your family would approve of what is going on, if 
 they knew it ?" 
 
 At this point the fact that Judith is really much the 
 cooler of the two tells. " I don't know whom you mean, 
 Sib," she says temj^erately, " by they. No member of my 
 family is plural, that I know of . . . well ! — it isn't grammar, 
 according to me. However, if you mean the madre, we shall 
 very soon see ; that is, if the thing doesn't turn out a flash 
 in the pan. I shall tell her all about it at the proper 
 time " 
 
 " Meanwhile, hold my tongue, you mean ? I'm not at 
 all sure, Judith, that any other sister in my place wouldn't 
 at once tell her mother all she knew about such goings 
 on " 
 
 " What are the goings on ? I know of no goings on." 
 
 " I do. This visit to the back slums of a theatre, alone ; 
 I mean unaccompanied by any other lady. The impro- 
 priety — ^yes ! impropriety — of the whole thing. . . ." 
 
 " Please don't make a scene, Avith Elphinstone every 
 half-minute, and Mamma just coming do^vn. I never said 
 we were alone. If you had asked me, I should have told 
 you that ]\Irs. Eldridge was with, us."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 241 
 
 " Who's Mrs. Eldridge ?" 
 
 " A verj^ nice person, a friend of Marianne Challis. Her 
 husband's in the Post Office. Madame Louise could dress 
 herji^to look almost pretty, if her complexion were better. 
 And 'propriety — oh dear ! — the very pink ! She rather 
 bored me, in fact, because she wouldn't let it alone." 
 
 " And was this Mrs Ostrich — or whatever her name is — 
 satisfied ?" 
 
 " Perfectly. She has known Alfred Challis since before 
 his first wife died, and has the most absolute confidence in 
 him." 
 
 " I don't fancy your Mrs. Ostrich. Where was Mr. 
 Challis's wife all this time ? . . . well ! — his deceased wife's 
 sister, anyhow." 
 
 " Sibyl ! I won't talk to you. Marianne Challis was 
 where we left her, in the stage-box. I don't suppose she 
 left it, but I didn't ask her." 
 
 " And then did she and Mrs. Ostrich go home separ- 
 ately ?" 
 
 " Eldridge. Marianne Challis and she went away to- 
 gether. They were not going home ; Wimbledon's too far, 
 where they are. I really don't know where they are staying." 
 
 " I'm not curious. But you and Mr. Challis drove home 
 lovingly in a hansom, after acting lovers in a play. There ! 
 — ^you needn't fly out. . . ." 
 
 Was it any wonder that Judith then lost her temper ? 
 For she had not flown out. The insinuation that she 
 would do so was based on Sibyl's knowledge that she would 
 have been perfectly justified in doing so. But now, she did 
 lose her temper, subject to that disguise of self-command 
 which tells for more than any outburst. 
 
 " You are taking too much on yourself, Sibyl. Mamma 
 knows. At least, she knows Alfred Challis and his wife. 
 They have dined here, and we agreed — mamma and I — to 
 know nothing about the deceased wife's sister business. 
 It may even be false from beginning to end. . . . Ask her, 
 did you say ? I should never dream of doing so. . . . And 
 as for your other disgraceful — yes ! disgraceful — speech just 
 now . . . 
 
 " Well — ^it's true ! You had been, and you know you 
 had." 
 
 VOL. I. 16
 
 242 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " Had been what ?" 
 
 " Acting Moorhouse and Aminta Dorrington." 
 
 " That's not the way you put it. But I don't care about 
 that. It's only your silHness and inexperience makes you 
 say these things. . . ." 
 
 " What is it you do care about, then ?" 
 
 " I won't submit to be catechized, Sibyl. But I'll tell 
 you. I do care about what the madre thinks — and papa. 
 And I shall tell her. ... I wonder who that can be ?" 
 
 The " that " in question was a knock at the front door, 
 one that expressed confidence that it was at the right house, 
 and even that it would find some one at home — well- 
 founded confidence in both cases. For the Miss Arkroyds, 
 listening for the identity of the abnormal visitor — at ten 
 o'clock in the morning ! — only wait for a barely perceptible 
 instalment of voice and footstep to exclaim jointly : " The 
 Rector . . . just fancy — what can he want ? . . . In here, 
 Elphinstone !" And it may be neither is sorry for the 
 interruption. How very frequently a visitor is the resolu- 
 tion of a family discord ! Judith, pale with suppressed 
 anger, recovers her colour. Sibyl's flush of excitement dies. 
 
 It is the Rector of Royd, no doubt of that ! And some- 
 thing equivalent to a breeze of fresh air, or the tide in an 
 estuary, or the new crackle of a clean pine-wood fire — but 
 not exactly any one of the three— comes into the room with 
 him and his laugh. He has an effect that is usual with 
 him. The under-housemaid, who has passed him on to 
 Mr. Elphinstone, hopes she won't have done dusting when 
 he comes out. Mr. Elphinstone is seriously hurt at his 
 having breakfasted three hours ago and now refusing food, 
 which would have promoted their intercourse ; and the 
 young ladies are not sorry, on inquiry, to hear that her 
 ladyship is not coming down, but will have her breakfast 
 upstairs, because thereby they will have the Rev. 
 Athelstan all to themselves longer. 
 
 However, they chorus sorrow which they don't feel 
 about their mother ; and affect an equally hypocritical 
 satisfaction at a probable appearance of their father, which 
 they don't believe in. 
 
 " You'll see papa will come in presently and say he never 
 heard the bell." Thus Judith, who shows her pack by
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 243 
 
 adding : " Now do let's talk and be comfortable till he 
 comes." All right — nem. con. ! 
 
 " I think you the most profligate and dissipated family 
 in London and Westminster. . . . Come nearer the fire ? 
 Not if I know it ! Both you girls are scorching. . . . Well 
 now ! What was it last night ?" 
 
 " They went to ' Ibsen.' " Judith summarises, abruptly. 
 Sibyl says : " And you went to the Megatherium," rather 
 as a counter-accusation than a contrihution of fact. The 
 visitor looks quickly from the one to the other. Whatever 
 he notes, he passes it by. 
 
 "I've been to ' Ibsen,' " he says, " and know all about it. 
 The people commit suicide. What was the other play ?" 
 
 " A stupid thing. I really hardly made out what it was 
 about. But the author's a friend of the people I went 
 with. You remember Mr. Challis, Mr. Taylor ? I brought 
 him to tea at the Rectory." 
 
 " Of course. I thought him such a shy customer. But 
 I met him after that. We had quite a chat." 
 
 " Oh yes — I remember he talked about it to me. I'm 
 afraid you found him a great heathen." 
 
 " Absolutely." Mr. Taylor laughs cheerfully over 
 Alfred ChalUs's heathenism. " But a very good Christian 
 for all that. I shouldn't say so to the Bishop, though. 
 He never came to church, and I wasn't sorry. . . ." 
 
 " Do take care, Mr. Taylor. We shall tell the Bishop." 
 
 "... Not on his account, you know — on my own. He 
 would have convicted me of plagiarism. I took all his ideas 
 for my sermon." 
 
 This was incidental chat, leading to nothing. Then 
 followed inquiry, overdue, about the Rector's estabUsh- 
 ment, especially his locum tenens at Royd, the reporting of 
 whom brought disquiet to his face. His hearers knew he 
 was making the best of it ; he was not a good actor. This 
 led naturally to conversation about his own temporary 
 locus tenendus in his friend's behalf, and so to the miserable 
 tragedy of the drunkard's death in the canal-lock. Now 
 it was well over four months since either young lady had 
 done any slumming in the Tallack Street quarter : indeed, 
 their visits there soon lost the charm of novelty, so 
 neither recollected its inhabitants off-hand. The descrip- 
 
 16—2
 
 244 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 tion failed to identify, until Mr. Taylor mentioned the un- 
 happy Uncle Bob by name, first heard by him at the 
 inquest. Then a recollection struck Judith. 
 
 " That must have been the man that said he was ' mine 
 truly, Robert Steptoe/ " said she. "How very shocking !" 
 The horror of the story of course increased tenfold the 
 moment a nexus was established. Reminiscence, at work 
 in Sibyl's mind, caused her to strike in upon Mr. Taylor's 
 continuation of his narrative ; on which he arrested it to 
 hear what she was going to say. She said : " Never mind, 
 go on !" till pressed to take her turn first ; then said : 
 " Wasn't that the blind beggar and the little girl — the same 
 family, I mean ?" 
 
 " Exactly. I was just coming to them." And then the 
 Rev. Athelstan proceeded with a full account of poor Jim's 
 sad plight in the Hospital, and of how the little girl had been 
 a great source of anxiety to Addie Fossett. He contrived 
 to assign the whole of the activities on Lizarann's behalf to 
 that lady ; having, indeed, a most happy impersonal faculty 
 of narration, which detailed the facts without his own 
 connection with them. 
 
 " They are really the reason of my coming here this 
 morning," said he in conclusion. " I dare say you have 
 both been wondering what it was all about. However, it's 
 that. Tliis poor fellow, Jim Coupland, oughtn't to be 
 allowed to sell matches in the streets. And although he 
 makes a good deal by what is really begging in disguise . . ." 
 
 " He makes three times what he would at any trade." 
 Sibyl speaks positively ; she always knows things. 
 
 " But he's putting it all by for the child." The clergy- 
 man justifies Jim, promptly. 
 
 " Please go on with what you were saying, Mr. Taylor !" 
 Judith speaks. " ' Although he makes a good deal by what 
 is really begging in disguise ' . . ." 
 
 " He might be dissuaded from it even if the loss of his 
 foot — poor fellow ! — should make it more lucrative." 
 
 " I don't see how." This is Sibyl, naturally. The Rector 
 makes a mental note that she is always in opposition. Her 
 sister says nothing, and he resumes : 
 
 " You remember the story of the asker F" Sibyl re- 
 members it with a snap, and " Of course ! — ^go on !"
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 245 
 
 Judith, more slowly, thinks she remembers, and then — oh 
 yes ! — she remembers now. The speaker continues : " You 
 know the child isn't seven, and doesn't the least realise 
 about her father. She has been indoctrinated from baby- 
 hood with a false idea of some employment he has ; he's 
 as professional to her as the turncock or lamplighter. But 
 he — poor chap ! — is most anxious she should never know 
 the truth. Yesterday he consented to not seeing the child 
 for another six weeks — although he's longing for her, day 
 and night — because he wants to spare her the knowledge 
 of his stump. He's convinced that a wooden leg will be a 
 great joke between them, and is devising shifts by which 
 it may be concealed from his " little lass," as he calls her, 
 that it is ever taken off. And yesterday, after swearing 
 me, as it were, into the conspiracy for the child's deception, 
 he ended up with an earnest request that I would never 
 ' let on ' about his being a ' cadging varmint.' I pointed 
 out to him the utter uselessness of the attempt, and that 
 it must fail in the end, and that the longer the knowledge 
 is put off, the more painful it will be when it comes. I 
 suspect he would give it up, to spare her. But he would 
 have to be provided for, somehow." 
 
 " Have to be !" Sibyl's tone suggests impatient protest 
 against Jim's case being made a claim on Society. The 
 whole duty of a Christian includes a liberal amount of. 
 slumming ; but it must be distinctly understood to be 
 Christianity, not bald equity. Athelstan Taylor didn't feel 
 analytical on the subject. He knew he would have " had 
 to " cross the road between Jerusalem and Jericho if he had 
 happened to come up before the Samaritan, or else that he 
 would have been miserable all night about the man that 
 had fallen among thieves and come to grief. He was like 
 that at school, you see. Such an awfully good-natured 
 chap ! Probably Samaria was an awfully good-natured 
 place. Anyhow, he didn't see his way to discussing the 
 point this morning. He made a concession : 
 
 " Well — suppose we say it would be a pleasure to do it ! 
 You would feel it so if you knew the child. Ueally that 
 infant's pluck when that poor madman was flourishing that 
 horrible knife about ..." 
 
 " But you didn't tell us about that." Both ladies speak.
 
 ^46 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Indeed, Mr. Taylor has slurred over a great deal of his 
 adventure, merely saying he was passing the house and had 
 given what assistance he could, with very little detail till 
 he got to Uncle Bob's escape. 
 
 " I never saw such a courageous child in my life. Addie 
 Fossett's got her at the Schoolhouse now. She got a bad 
 chill that night, and we've been very uneasy about her. 
 Perhaps we are both of us given to fidgetting about coughs 
 and temperatures and things. However !" This isolated 
 word expresses, as briefly as possible, dismissal of the 
 subject as material for depression, ^nth retention of it as 
 stimulus to action. 
 
 Judith is only languidly interested. " What do you 
 think of doing, Mr. Taylor ?" she says absently. Her mind 
 is on the playhouse, yesterday. 
 
 " I'm not very clear about details, but if Jim will be 
 tractable, and do as he's told, there ought to be some 
 arrangement possible. He admits that he has some money 
 in the savings-bank, and the Carriers' Co. that ran over 
 him . . . yes ! — I've seen the manager . . . are inclined to be 
 liberal in the matter of compensation ; and then there's . . ." 
 Here a hesitation comes in. 
 
 " There's papa, of course." Both ladies agree about 
 their parent, as a sort of jons et origo nummorum. Mr. 
 Taylor had better talk to him about it. Mr. Elphinstone, 
 after thirty-five years in the family, has no scruple about 
 showing that he overhears conversation, and subinforms 
 Miss Arkroyd that Sir Murgatroj^d is imminent. Pending 
 the baronet, the conversation is general, then drifts to- 
 wards the Great Idea. Sibj^l becomes gracious — points 
 A\dth pride to a mountain of letters on the subject that 
 she will have to answer before she goes out. Mr Elphin- 
 stone has restricted them to a clear spot on the breakfast- 
 table, ^\^thout presuming to fold or envelope. Miss Arkroyd 
 detracts from their glory. Most of them are from artists 
 who want to make designs for the cripples to execute, or 
 from cripples who can do nothing at present, but would 
 take three-and-sixpence a week during apprenticeship. 
 Sibyl is indignant. The letters are the exact contrary of 
 what Judith alleges. It is easy to sneer, but read vihat 
 JVIr. Brewdover says. There's his letter ! But Judith says
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 247 
 
 she isn't prepared to take up her parable on the subject — 
 doesn't know enough about the matter. No doubt it's all 
 right ! She withdraws an incipient yawn, and Sibyl says 
 something sotto voce, possibly that Judith might just as well 
 have held her tongue. 
 
 Athelstan Taylor, writing of this interview to his friend 
 Gus later, said : " I was glad at this point that the Bart, 
 came in, apologetic — as I didn't fancy having to make 
 peace between those two girls. Why need well-brought-up 
 young women to be so quarrelsome — without the excuse of 
 Alcoholism ? They are rather a disappointment — those 
 two — they used to be so nice as kids. I must say the old 
 boy is my favourite of the family still — he was quite 
 examplary about this poor sailor chap — said, if / was con- 
 vinced, that was enough for him, and I had only to say 
 how much would be wanted. Her ladyship was very good 
 too — do her justice ! — promised to come and see poor Jim 
 at the Hospital ; and I think will keep her promise." He 
 added a postscript next day : " Lady Arkroyd's visit came 
 off this morning, and passed off without ructions. I was 
 rather nervous, because her ladyship thinks it her duty to 
 get up a sort of theologico-ethico-moral-goody steam 
 because Fm there — and poor Jim is such a terrible and 
 appalling example of theoretical irreligion that I was on 
 tenterhooks."
 
 CHAPTER XVII 
 
 The reference to Jim's irreligious attitude, in the Rector's 
 letter, makes it almost incumbent on the story to give some 
 particulars of Lady Arkroyd's visit to the Hospital. 
 
 Athelstan Taylor, of course, came to his appointment to 
 the minute. He always preferred to do the waiting himself 
 if he could spare the time, and he usually found something 
 to avert tedium. On this occasion, seeing no sign, when 
 he arrived at St. Brides, of the Arkroyd pair of bays, or 
 the dark chestnuts with starred foreheads — both well 
 known to him — he made short excursions into the neigh- 
 bourhood, hoping each time to just catch Lady Arkroyd 
 on her arrival when he returned. 
 
 He made three such excursions, amounting in all to half 
 an hour. The first and longest was made so by his lighting 
 on a fight between two small boys, which he felt bound to 
 interrupt. But not at the very earliest ; it was such a good 
 fight, and the two pugilists and their friends were enjoying 
 it so. So he spun out his approach as much as possible, 
 and then pounced with, " Why aren't you two at school, 
 hey ?" They looked at each other, and at him, as their 
 friends did also, but could not agree on a reason. Then 
 they said, " Let's go down the lyne," and fled, carrjdng 
 jackets, to begin again as soon as possible. Pursuit down 
 the lane did not seem to come into practical politics. 
 
 The second excursion was shorter, and he was sorry he 
 could not spare time for more conversation with a purveyor 
 of tortoises, who was offering them to the public from a 
 truck. Why should the trade in tortoises flourish in 
 South London ? Why tortoises at all ? He could not 
 stop to learn ; and when he found that her ladyship was 
 still in arrear, he started back to find the tortoise- monger, 
 but failed to do so. On his return this time, he thought it 
 best to step into the Hospital and get a few words with his 
 
 248
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 24^ 
 
 friend the House Surgeon, to whom he had sent a card 
 overnight. It was all right, said that gentleman, about the 
 dressers. They had nearly done by now, and Jim's case 
 had been made a point of — was quite ready for visitors ; 
 nothing doing now till the visiting surgeon came — in an 
 hour and a half about. Mr. Taylor, reassured, went out 
 again to meet her ladyship, and presently saw the carriage 
 coming down the street. In a very short time he was 
 telling Jim he had brought a lady to see him. 
 
 " It's mighty kind of you, master. And it's mighty kind 
 o' the lady. I'm not so fit to see company as I might be." 
 He did not mean he could not see ; for he always forgot 
 his blindness. He referred entirely to his uncourtly 
 entourage. 
 
 " We mustn't trouble about that," said her ladyship, and 
 really didn't mean to be condescending. " I shall sit here, 
 Mr. Taylor. Where \v\\] you come ?" Here being the 
 chair beside the bed. Mr. Taylor wouldn't sit down ; 
 indeed, it was easier to stand, as long as Jim kept his hand, 
 which he did not seem inclined to let go. 
 
 " Tell this lady about your accident, Jim." 
 
 " Oh, do, please ! I should so like to hear." This was 
 true, and opened up an avenue of respite to a feeling of 
 her ladyship's that she ought to say something good, if it 
 was only about how we should bow to the will of an All-wise 
 Providence. She had got that ready in the carriage coming 
 through Old Bond Street, and had felt quite sure she should 
 think of something better presently, and hadn't succeeded. 
 So she was glad of a pause, to think in. Besides, it was 
 interesting. 
 
 " There's none so much to tell about it, lady ; you might 
 put it all inside of a minute, in the manner o' speaking. 
 Ye see, I never see this van coming along — never took note, 
 I should say ! — more by token I M'^as listening like to hear 
 the voice of my little lass call ' Pilot ' — a kind of divarsion 
 we make out between us, me and the lassie . . . you'll 
 understand ? . . ." 
 
 " I quite understand. Your little lass is the child I have 
 seen at Miss Fossett's Schoolroom. Little EHza Ann." 
 
 " Belike you have, lady. She's Lizarann, sure ! Well, 
 this here van come along in the dark, and there was I mazed
 
 250 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 like, by reason of not finding the granite curb. It come 
 with a nasty rush, and I had no way on me to steer clear, 
 set apart the want of sea-room. But I'm a bit uncertain 
 bow it come about, there's the truth of it !" Jim paused, 
 ^nd felt for an expression, probably one akin to loss of pres- 
 ence of mind ; then ended wath, " In a quick turn about o' 
 things, you don't easy come by the time to get your con- 
 siderin' cap on. But it was no fault of any man, as I 
 see it." 
 
 Lady Arkroyd saw an opportunity. " It was the will of 
 Providence," she said. There could be no harm in that, 
 although her clerical friend had cautioned her that Jim's 
 mind was not an easy one to deal ^^^th on religious lines. 
 But Jews, Turks, Heretics, and Infidels innumerable could 
 have subscribed to this, surely. Jim only said, with the 
 most perfect simplicity : " I wouldn't \vish to fix the blame, 
 with any confidence. It was just a chance, as I see it." 
 Her ladyship did not catch the exact tenour of the remark, 
 and did not see the amused, benevolent smile on the face of 
 the big man who still stood looking down on Jim, holding 
 his hand as he would have held a child's. 
 
 The fact was that, on one of the two or three occasions 
 when the Rev. Athelstan had referred — but quite collo- 
 quially, and mthout any idea of taking a mean advantage 
 of Jim's helplessness — to the Almighty as the responsible 
 agent in the matter, Jim had taken up the theological 
 position that if God hadn't " cut in," he — Jim — might have 
 been still the strong seaman on the great free sea, might 
 have actually seen his little lass ! Dolly must have died, 
 of course — " my wife, seven year agone, master," said Jim. 
 " Because a many on us may die, any time " — but that 
 was another matter. At least, why need both his eyes 
 go ? " Ah, master !" said he, when it was settled that if 
 God had done one job, he'd done the other, " why couldn't 
 lie leave me just no more than a quarter- allowance of one 
 of them — just for to see my wife and the little lass together, 
 what time there was for it ?" Perhaps it was part of the 
 Rector of Royd's unsoundness that he almost lost sight of 
 Jim's anthropomorphism — the naivete of his presentment 
 of his Maker as a meddlesome old plague — in the heart- 
 broken voice that could still speak about the eyes that
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 251 
 
 could no longer see, about the child his touch and hearing 
 alone could tell him of. Part of that unsoundness, too, 
 maybe, that he resolved thenceforward to make no at- 
 tempt to change Jim's views, except by hypnotic sugges- 
 tions, or their equivalent ! No crop could grow^ on land 
 80 foully manured ! Better to leave it to the wild-flowers 
 for a season. 
 
 He certainly thought he saw an improvement of Jim's 
 feelings towards this strange deity of his conception, in 
 this readiness to exonerate him, or it, and to lay the blame 
 on the metaphysico-religious scapegoat. Chance. It was 
 manifested in the tone of his voice, one of willingness to 
 spare even an author of mischief — maybe a well-intentioned 
 blunderer — and to find an insensitive back to flagellate in 
 his place. 
 
 " The merest chance, I am sure !" Lady Arkroyd wel- 
 comed the scapegoat, and the Rev. Athelstan looked more 
 amused than ever, under the skin. The lady never sus- 
 pected herself of any absurdity. " But Sir Murgatroyd 
 says the matter ought to be gone into, and proper inquiries 
 made." The Baronet had done so, certainly ; but may be 
 said to have been left speaking, like M.P.'s when a reporter 
 packs off an instalment of shorthand in mediis rebus. " Of 
 course, if there was any doubt about the driver of the van 
 being sober at the time . . ." 
 
 Jim showed anxiety on the carman's behalf. " He 
 mightn't be any the worse driver for that. Lady," he said. 
 " It was the sart o' night a pint or so don't go far on, to 
 keep the life in a man." 
 
 " Jim won't grudge him that much, on such a night, 
 Lady Arkroyd. But Sir Murgatroyd's quite right, of 
 course ! However, as a matter of fact, the whole thing has 
 been thoroughly sifted, and it seems certain drink had no- 
 thing to do with it, this time." 
 
 " Not likely, master ! Didn't the pore feller make a 
 shift to get over here a'ter work hours — took a night-turn 
 all the way from Camden Road goods station — so they told 
 me — just for to hear the end of the story ? And the 
 foilerin' night 1 So they said, and I'm tellin' ye all I know. 
 In coorse, I never seen him, myself !" 
 
 " No — of course you could not." Lady Arkroyd's pity
 
 252 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 for Jim's blindness, which his speech ignored, is mistaken 
 by him for regret at the stringency of visiting regulations. 
 The feeling of compassion in her voice seems to him only 
 man's natural resentment against rules, interpreted by 
 womanly sensibihty. 
 
 " I'll see him one o' these days. Lady," Jim says con- 
 solatorily. Of course, he means in the days of the wooden 
 leg to come, it not sooner. Her ladyship, still conscious 
 of the desirability of a religious atmosphere, has some vague 
 impression that Mr. Taylor has been guaranteeing Jim 
 eyesight on a cloud, through the whole of an exasperating 
 Sunday lasting for ever ; and she makes up her mind Jim 
 could be read to out of the Bible with advantage, and of 
 course there were any number of people ready to do this 
 sort of thing. She will inquire about that. But Jim had 
 really wanted to change the conversation to a subject 
 nearer his heart 
 
 " My little lass, Lady !" he said. " You seen the lass 
 once, round to the Schoolhouse. Happen you might see 
 her again 1" 
 
 " If I see Miss Fossett, Coupland, I shall certainly ask her 
 to point out your little girl. She may not be there, you know." 
 
 " That's so, lady. But supposin' ! Any guess thing you 
 might speak about, ye know. So I was just thinkin', if you 
 was to be so very kind as to bear in mind . . ." 
 
 " Yes, Indeed I will, Coupland. Is there something you 
 wish I should say ?" 
 
 " Well, lady, yes ! And be very thankful to ye ! Would 
 ye be so very kind as just say to her . . . from her Daddy, ye 
 know . . . nothing at all about any sort of an ill-convenience 
 come of this here accident. Just make it easy, like . . . for 
 she's but young, ye'll understand. . . ." 
 
 " Jim means ... I know, Jim " — for Jim seemed about 
 to interrupt the Rev. Athelstan — " he means he wants 
 Lizarann to think the accident a slight one." 
 
 " Right you are, master !" Jim is much relieved, and 
 his interpreter continues : "So he wants her to know as 
 little as possible till he can walk about and make the least 
 of it." I ^ ' 
 
 ■J 
 
 " Oh yes ! I quite understand that. I'll be very careful 
 and discreet."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 253 
 
 " Not for to let on, anyways, about her Daddy being a 
 fut the less !" Jim's relief is enormous at the completeness 
 of the understanding. 
 
 The conversation ran on, on such general lines as the 
 diet of hospital life — highly approved of — the sanguineness 
 ofjthe head-surgeon that Jim would make a record in 
 recovery, and the peculiarly small amount of inconvenience 
 endured (if the truth were known) by the wearers of wooden 
 legs. Jim was very cheerful about this. " Bob Steptoe, 
 he'll lose a good half o' my custom," said he, immensely 
 amused. 
 
 At this moment an interruption occurred. A nurse who 
 had passed through the room a few minutes before rather 
 hurriedly was returning, with a slightly perplexed manner 
 on her, as of one who had not found a thing sought for. 
 At the same moment another, who seemed a superior func- 
 tionary, came in from the opposite door, and they met and 
 spoke together in an undertone. Both looked round 
 towards Jim's bed. 
 
 " I can ask him, anyhow !" said the senior nurse, and 
 approached Athelstan Taylor. She spoke to him rapidly 
 under her breath, but of what she said neither Jim nor the 
 lady heard anything. When she had finished, he said, 
 " Of course, certainly !" and then, turning to Lady Ark- 
 royd, explained that a man who was dying in another part 
 of the Hospital had asked to see a clergyman, and that an 
 unusual conjunction of circumstances had made it difficult 
 to comply with his request, which was urgent. He might 
 die any moment, the nurse had said, and Mr. * * * was ill — 
 he being, presumably, the usual resource in such cases. 
 Mr. Taylor was sure Lady Arkroyd would excuse him. But 
 it would be better for him to say good-bye provisionally, as 
 no one could tell how long he might be detained. Her 
 ladyship would no doubt stay and talk with Jim a little 
 longer. 
 
 Lady Arkroyd was not sorry to do so. She had not quite 
 come up to her own standard of self-justification ; having, 
 indeed, a well-marked conviction of her capability of doing 
 anything she turned her hands to, and certainly not least 
 of affording consolation and help to the distressed. With- 
 out cataloguing the instances, she had an inner conviction
 
 254 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 of the existence of a class of persons who were sick, and she 
 visited them. She was a good-natured woman enough, and 
 really took sufficient pleasure in doing good on purpose, to 
 make playing at Providence a luxury, or at least to prevent 
 its ever becoming a bore. No wonder that on this occasion 
 she felt a Httle damped, with nothing further to her score 
 so far than an undertaking on her part to hold her tongue 
 and be discreet, under specified circumstances. 
 
 " The master's coming back — the gentleman ?" says Jim, 
 as the door closes on Mr. Taylor and the nurse. 
 
 " Oh yes ! — he'll come back to see you before he goes." 
 Jim has to be satisfied with this. " You must try to keep 
 quiet and be patient, Coupland, and then the healing will 
 go on quicker. . . ." 
 
 " It ain't hardly impatience. Lady." Jim pauses to 
 think what it is. " Not so much as the want of a good 
 stretch. I'd be all right if they'd take this here })laister 
 off o' my right leg. It's a mighty thick plaister, anyhow. 
 Jim's slight movement is terribly expressive of the irksome- 
 ness of his lot. The nurse in charge notes the fact, and 
 contrives such alleviation as may be — an alteration in the 
 angle of the couch, an adjustment of a pillow, a dose of 
 some refreshing stimulant that seems not unwelcome. 
 " He's not the trouble many are," says she. Jim seems a 
 favourite. 
 
 Lady Arkroyd, left to herself, casts about for something 
 to say which shall neither be aggressively religious nor too 
 cowardly a concession to Jim's heathenism, of which Mr. 
 Taylor has spoken freely to her. After a few more words 
 about collateral matter, especially about the Hospital's veto 
 on smoking — a bitter privation — she thinks she sees her 
 way. 
 
 " It is very hard, Coupland, and one can't help saying so. 
 Only, of course, it doesn't do to call the Wisdom of Provi- 
 dence in question. ..." 
 
 " What might that be, missis — lady, I should say T' 
 Now the fact is, Jim was not inquiring about the Wisdom 
 of Providence — of which he had heard before from Mr. 
 Wilkins — but about the meaning of " calling in question." 
 The lady thought othermse, mistakenly. 
 
 " I only meant," she said, feeling very unsafe, " that we
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 255 
 
 know — at least, we believe — that events are Divinely- 
 ordered for the best." 
 
 " Ye know better than I do about that, lady," said Jim. 
 And then Lady Arkroyd thought he was an Agnostic. He 
 had really only paid tribute to her superior education. But 
 it seemed to set him a-thinking, too ! For he added, after 
 a pause : " If they'd a' been ordered for the worst, maybe 
 I might have had my barker-pipe." The word " Divinely " 
 had not carried his mind outside the Hospital regulations. 
 Poor Jim had not the remotest conception that he had 
 shocked his lady visitor. 
 
 Nevertheless, she was shocked, and felt the case called 
 for an effort. But her own religious convictions — only she 
 had been quite properly educated, mind you ! — were few 
 and vapid. Her proprietorship of a Prayer-Book, with a 
 mark in the right place, nearly covered the whole ground. 
 However, there was always the Rev. Athelstan ; she could 
 make him responsible, by indirect engineering, for any 
 amount of belief, whatever her own unprofessional laxity 
 might be. So she assumed a definitely religious air, and 
 ignored Jim's unfortunate remark about the pipe. 
 
 " I feel so sure, Coupland, that Mr. Taylor has told you, 
 and will tell you more, about Where to look, in tribulation, 
 for . . ." 
 
 " Sakes alive. Lady ! Me look ! . . ." Jim, who had 
 interrupted, stopped suddenly, confused and perturbed at 
 something. Her ladyship, interpreting this as some protest 
 of Agnosticism, now felt her insufiiciency to deal with the 
 case, and only wished to transfer the conversation else- 
 where. She felt she had done her duty, in what she would 
 not have hesitated to mention in Society as " goody talk," 
 when she executed that superb entrechat, so to speak, of the 
 big initial W of " Where." She had done her duty, and had 
 not succeeded. She would be quite justified now in relax- 
 ing from the exalted serenity, tempered with due humility, 
 of a spiritual instructress, and referring to the minor con- 
 solations of this earth. She ignored Jim's exclamation, and 
 continued speaking as though her last sentence had been 
 completed. 
 
 " Besides, in a very little while you will be able to have 
 EHza Ann back again, and really you'll be able to move- 
 about quite easily."
 
 256 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Jim laughed out — a big hearty laugh of contempt for any 
 mere personal mishap of his own. " I'll have the less 
 weight to carry, sure !" he said. And then her ladyship 
 looked at her watch, and asked the nurse whether that 
 clock was right ; who promptly replied that that clock was, 
 if anything, slow. Seeing the good effect of which, she 
 went on to say that it was slower still. However, this was 
 not needed, for the visitor was only feeling about for 
 departure, which, in view of the possible indefinite post- 
 ponement of Mr. Taylor's return, was given up with insin- 
 cere professions of regret on the part of both, and Lady 
 Arkroyd took her leave, consolable, but with a noble sense 
 of duty done. 
 
 " The master be coming back, though, missis . . . ?" Jim 
 asks anxiously of the nurse. 
 
 " Oh yes, he's bound to come back, and you may make 
 your mind easy." 
 
 When Athelstan Taylor and the nurse left the ward, 
 they passed through the avenue of beds in the adjoining 
 ward without speaking, and into a lobby beyond. Then 
 the nurse stopped and spoke. " This is a bad ward that 
 we are going to. Perhaps I ought to have told you ?" 
 
 " You are going there yourself ?" 
 
 " It is my duty to go." 
 
 " And mine." They said no more, but no more was 
 necessary. It was a little way further that they had to go, 
 through wards and passages ; but the circumstances did 
 not seem to favour chat. Arriving at the door of the 
 ward, Mr. Taylor turned and said : " This is a man, is it 
 not — this patient — I think you said 1" 
 
 " A man. The case developed in the hospital. He was 
 brought in as sudden paralysis. He has been here a month 
 or more." 
 
 " Do they keep cases of this sort so long ?" 
 
 " Not always. They kept this one. He had an epileptic 
 
 seizure wiiich was followed by torpor. Dr. thinks 
 
 now that the disease has affected the valves of the heart. 
 He might die suddenly, at any moment. When I told him 
 
 so to-day, he asked to see the Chaplain, Mr. . He and 
 
 all his family have mumps."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 257 
 
 A young doctor was in the ward, who said, " Is this the 
 gentleman ?" and after " Yes " from the nurse, continued : 
 " You mustn't be alarmed at our precautions. We only 
 take them in order to be on the safe side." The precautions 
 which, it seemed, St. Bride insisted on for all who should 
 enter a contagion-ward were a close overall of some germ- 
 proof canvas or linen, and thin, invulnerable rubber gloves. 
 Mr. Taylor, as he drew them on, shuddered to think how 
 many a time, conceivably, they might have been some 
 wearer's only safeguard against a blasted life, and the in- 
 heritance of a dire poison by generations yet unborn. 
 
 When he was safely attired in them, the young surgeon, 
 as he conducted him through the ward, said in reply to a 
 question : " Oh no ! — not the slightest danger from the 
 breath. You may be quite happy about that. Let Sister 
 Martha put a little eau-de-Cologne on your handkerchief. 
 This is your man." 
 
 This ! This semi-mummy that is little else than band- 
 ages ! This tiling, at least, only manifested to us, other- 
 wise, as an exposed mouth ; or what was a mouth and is 
 an orifice, to be identified by two carious, projecting teeth ; 
 or as the nailless fingers of an enclosed hand, escaping from 
 its wraps. This, it seems, is the Rev. Athelstan Taylor's 
 man, by whom he takes a chair the nurse brings him, as he 
 thinks to himself : " My man, thank God, not Gus's !" 
 For his invalid friend might easily have been here in his 
 place, and could he — poor delicate fellow ! — have borne the 
 awful flavour of this place, breaking through all antiseptic 
 spray and palliation of ozone, and making him, himself, 
 as physically sick as he is sick at heart 1 " Not Gus's 
 man, thank God ! At least, a great overgrown giant like 
 myself !" So he thought as he tried to catch the words of 
 the wretched remnant on the bed beside him. They were 
 audible only by him, as he stooped resolutely, brusliing all 
 caution aside, and placed his ear close to the dreadful 
 mouth. It needed an effort, even with Sister Martha's 
 benediction on his handkerchief. 
 
 " What is my name, and who am I ?" He repeats the 
 whispered words as he hears them. " I am Athelstan 
 Taylor, a priest in holy orders. . . . Yes — a clergyman of 
 the Church of England . . . yes ! — I understand what you 
 
 VOL. I. 17
 
 258 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 say. You have something on your conscience which you 
 wish to tell. Try and tell me." 
 
 The nurse evidently tliinks the man is dying, and may 
 die without receiving the Sacrament, which she has sup- 
 posed his principal object. She makes a suggestion to that 
 effect. But Mr. Taylor thinks otherwise. " Presently !" 
 he says. " Let him tell his story first." The nurse retires, 
 and the tale goes on. 
 
 It was a hard tale to catch the threads of. But its hearer 
 was able to master the main points. The narrator had 
 married, sixteen years before, a very young and inexperi- 
 enced girl, unknown to her parents, who seemed to have re- 
 mained in ignorance throughout. Even when he deserted 
 her, a very short time after marriage, she kept her secret 
 from everyone but a young clerk, a friend of his own, with 
 whom, as a natural consequence, the poor girl, apparently 
 afraid to divulge the facts to her family, became very IKe. 
 His story was obscure at this point, the only clear thing being 
 that, in order to shake her off and remain free to contract 
 another marriage, he had written a mock confession to this 
 young man ; alleging, on grounds which the djdng man's 
 condition prevented his explaining in full, that the wedding 
 had been really a fraud, and his statement that it was so 
 seemed to have been held sufficient by the girl. The friend, 
 either convinced of its truth or in love with the girl himself, 
 had accepted it, or seemed to accept it, as indisputable. 
 Was it to be wondered at that, when she returned to her 
 home after an absence of some months, with nothing to 
 show that this concealed marriage had taken place, she had 
 accepted this young man as her lover, and married him 
 with the full consent of her parents ? The narrator had 
 clearly foreseen this, and looked to it as a practical release 
 from an encumbrance. His OAvn subsequent career had 
 been one of profligacy and crime, some of his sins being, to 
 all appearance, far worse than this one, as such things are 
 estimated ; one achievement having, in fact, procured him 
 a long term of penal servitude. How strange it seemed 
 that now, with the hand of Death upon him, he should feel 
 the lighter offence an exceptional weight upon his con- 
 science ! Yet so it was ! And his hearer thought he 
 could detect the relief the confession had given him in
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 259 
 
 the changed whisper that followed the completion of 
 his story. Mr. Taylor was glad that the atrocity that 
 sent him to Portland Island was not specially referred 
 to in the culprit's final inr^uiry — could he hope for 
 forgiveness ? 
 
 " I told the unhappy creature," wrote Athelstan to Gus, 
 in the letter he wrote that evening, " that his chances of 
 forgiveness must depend on the truth or falsehood of his 
 own contrition, and I am afraid I had the cruelty to say it 
 with some severity. You know my severe manner. But, 
 then, it was true. I'm afraid, Gus dear, that I have 
 hardly your faith in the efficacy of my holy office, taken by 
 itself. But these things are awful to face. I had hardly 
 time to fulfil my function as a priest when the poor wretch 
 breathed his last." 
 
 It was at that last moment that the need of the rubber 
 gloves became manifest. Just at the end, the dreadful nail- 
 less hand, moving painfully about, and fraught with some 
 sudden strength, had caught the healthy one that lay near 
 it on the coverlid, and drew it up to touch it with the 
 things that had once been lips. The young doctor seemed 
 relieved when he had himself seen the priest in holy orders 
 well drenched in water with strange suspicions of sanitation 
 in it, after a heart-felt lather of carbolic soap. 
 
 When the Rev. Athelstan came back to Jim's bedside, 
 his face no longer wore its cheerful aspect of an hour ago. 
 In that short time his sad experience — surely something 
 more than a mere death-bed, such as his daily routine of 
 life brought him to the sight of so often ! — had changed it, 
 and made him almost like another man. 
 
 " I'm martal glad ye've come, master," said Jim. And, 
 at the sound of a voice with a memory in it of the chant 
 the windlass echoes when the anchor leaves its bed in the 
 sand, and the last shore-boat waves God-speed to the 
 ship set free, his hearer seemed to shake off some of 
 the gloom that oppressed him. " I'm martal glad to see 
 ye back," he repeats, " by token of the good lady." 
 
 Athelstan takes the hand that seeks his. " Why the 
 good lady, Jim ?" he says. 
 
 " Why, master, the good lady she says to me, she says, 
 
 17—2
 
 260 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 did I know where to look for soomat or other ? Lard knows 
 what ! And I says to her, ' Me look !' I says, because I 
 was thinking belike this drawback on my eyesight might 
 have slipped out of memory. ..." 
 
 " Not very likely, Jim ! But if it did, Lady Arkroyd's 
 recollected it by now." 
 
 " Ye think so, master ? But put it she hasn't ! I'd be 
 sorry she should come to the knowledge late in the day. 
 These here ladies, master, they ain't a rough sart, like we " 
 — this did not mean his hearer, only himself and his con- 
 geners — " and she might easy get tender-hearted what 
 with thinkin' over. And Fd never be the worse, bless 
 you !" 
 
 ^x^:" / see what you mean, Jim." The light dawns ; the 
 speaker had been till then in the dark. He has a laugh 
 ready for it, as he adds : " You thought the lady would be 
 unhappy when she found she'd been talking to a blind 
 man about his eyesight ? Wasn't that it ?" That was it, 
 clearly. But Jim discerns a justification for his idea, when 
 he learns that his blindness had been fully talked over. 
 
 " There's just what I said, in that, ye see !" says he. 
 " The lady wouldn't be talking, not to hurt my feelings ! 
 Jim Coupland's feelings now ! . . . where are we at that ?" 
 They seem to be a rare good joke to Jim. But there is 
 material for regret in the background. " 'Tain't a matter 
 to cry one's eyes out over," says he, " but a bit of a pity, 
 too ! . . ." 
 R^" What is, Jim ?" 
 
 " If I'd kept a lookout ahead, I could have steered the 
 good lady clear of any fret about me and my eyesight. 
 And if v/e'd only 'a known, I might 'a told her the starry o' 
 the Flying Dutchman — just for entertainment like ! A 
 yarn's a yarn, master !" 
 
 Athelstau Taylor was puzzled on his way home by the 
 ourious selection of a restless conscience as aUment for dis- 
 quiet. But tliinking back on his own past, he found that 
 his disquiets had not been about his mistakes that had 
 most harmed others. Could he not remember his own 
 prolonged remorse, at five years old, when an overt\^ist 
 brought off the wooden leg of a minute doll, and he had
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 261 
 
 the meanness to put the limb in place, and leave it, sound 
 to all seeming, for its owner to discover its calamity ? And 
 how he never told ! Even now, he wished he had confessed. 
 It was no use now ! The sister that doll had belonged to 
 had been dead thirty years, and this tale he had just heard 
 was, so he gathered, well within the last twenty. 
 
 He was wondering that evening, after writing to Gus, 
 whether his friend, whose place he was so glad to occupy, 
 would not have raised some technical difficulty about 
 the Administration of the Sacrament in rubber gloves, 
 when a note came from his friend the House Surgeon. 
 Had the man he had talked witli given his name 1 It 
 appeared that the name entered in the list of patients 
 was an alias. Probably he had several aliases. But he 
 had a right to be buried and registered under his last one. 
 A line by retvim would do. The letter made very light of 
 the matter — said the deceased couldn't liave had any 
 property ! 
 
 Athelstan Taylor's reply was that the name given, as far 
 as he could hear it, was Edward Kay Thome. He walked 
 out and posted it himself, as the servants had gone to bed. 
 He posted at the same time his letter to his friend Gus, to 
 y/hich he had added a long postscript about the events of 
 the day. " You need not think," it ended, " that I have 
 broken the ' seal of the confessional ' in telling tliis man's 
 story. He said I was at liberty to do as I liked." He felt 
 rather glad to have a sharer in such a confidence. Then 
 he went back to his comfortable library, put coals onCthe 
 fire, and sat up till one in the morning reading.
 
 CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 The dead drunkard's funeral expenses had been made con- 
 ditional on liis widow postponing her \dsit to the Hospital. 
 No doubt the stress laid by Miss Fossett and her brother's 
 friend on Jim's unfitness to receive visitors, was owing 
 to their desire to justify this. It is fair to say that the 
 woman spent the money honourably on its assigned object. 
 She belonged to a class that expresses its emotions in the 
 presence of Death by the celebration of obsequies, just as 
 much as Kings and Princes — perhaps even more, considering 
 its limitations. The classes that keep funeral ecstasies 
 in check are to be found half-way on the human ladder, 
 somewhere. 
 
 The object of using the power thus gained was not so 
 much to conceal the story of the drunkard's death — for it 
 was soon clear that Jim Avould not be injuriously affected 
 by hearing of that — as to keep from him that Lizarann was 
 the worse for her exposure in the snow on that terrible 
 night. It appeared to Miss Fossett and the Rev. Athelstan 
 — or Yorick, as she always called him and thought of him — 
 that a certain amount of playing double was justified by 
 the circumstances. It might have been a very serious 
 throwback to Jim to know that his little lass was being 
 kept away from him by anytliing but his oavti wish to be 
 " on his pins again " next time he saw her ; and he held on 
 so stoically to his resolution not to see her till then that it 
 seemed a very diluted mendaciousness to say no more of 
 Lizarann's health than that she had caught a slight cold, 
 and would be much better cared for at the school-house 
 than at her aunt's — unless, indeed, Jim especially v.ished 
 Mrs. Steptoe to have her back. Jim didn't. 
 
 " She's such a nice httle girl in herself, Yorick." said Miss 
 Fossett a fortnight after Lady Arkroyd's visit to the 
 HosiJital, " that one wishes it could be managed." She 
 was referring to a suggestion her ladyship had made. 
 
 262
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 263 
 
 " Does one, altogether ?" was Yorick's reply. " What 
 was it she said ? — ' Get her away from her terrible sur- 
 roundings, and give her a chance of doing well.' Our 
 Baronetess is a good-hearted woman in reality — with a 
 little flummery — only she's apt to be taken in by sounding 
 phrases. This one would either mean taking the little 
 person away from her Daddy, or else getting him away 
 from his terrible surroundings. "Wlio's to do it, Addie ? 
 You would shirk the task just as much as I, if j^ou knew 
 Jim." 
 
 " But couldn't he be got away, too ?" 
 
 " Well ! — of course, I was thinking of that as impractic- 
 able at the moment." 
 
 " But is it ?" 
 
 " Why — no ! It's only a question of money. Jim would 
 be ductile enough, I see that. I suppose I should be right 
 in getting Sir Murgatroyd's money used that way ?" 
 
 " Certainly. He has twenty thousand a year. What 
 does it matter ? One-pound-five a week is fifty-two pounds 
 for the pound, and thirteen pounds for the five shillings— 
 one-fourth part. Sixty-five pounds ! Oh, Yorick, what 
 can it matter ?" 
 
 " I don't know," says Yorick. He is one of those rare 
 people who don't think misappropriation of funds grows 
 less and less immoral in the inverse ratio of the one borne 
 to them by the source of their supply. 
 
 " Well !— I do,'' says Miss Fossett. " Sir Murgatroyd 
 can perfectly well afford it." 
 
 There was time to discuss the matter, and Yorick and 
 Miss Fossett did so at intervals during the Aveeks that 
 followed. Discussion of any project favours its materialisa- 
 tion, which often comes about more because it is kept alive 
 than in consequence of any agreement on details among its 
 promoters. The idea that " something would have to be 
 done " about Lizarann and her Daddy took root both in 
 Grosvenor Square and the neighbourhood of Tallack Street, 
 and only waited for Jim's wooden leg, to become a reality. 
 It was taken for granted that Lizarann's cough, which was 
 really hardly anything now, would be quite gone by then, 
 and that her pulse would be normal. Six whole weeks ! 
 
 Meanwhile Lizarann herself was not prepared to admit
 
 264 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 there was anything the matter mth her. She secretly 
 regarded the whole thing as a conspiracy to keep her away 
 from her Daddy — a conspiracy somehow fostered and en- 
 couraged by Dr. Ferris's stethoscope ; but not one to be 
 denounced and rebelled against, because of the obviously 
 good intentions of Teacher, the gentleman, and the doctor- 
 gentleman. It wasn't their fault ! They were misled by 
 that audacious little lying pipe, which was no use either to 
 play upon or look through, and yet had the effrontery to 
 pretend you could listen with it. Absurd ! 
 
 Other forms of medical investigation she regarded as 
 games, and resolved that when she and her Daddy were 
 back at Aunt Stingy' s, she was going to ply them gymes 
 with Bridgetticks. She would listen to Bridgetticks's chest 
 with a hoopstick many a day when the spring came, and 
 weather permitted doorsteps. And vice versa ; fair play, 
 of course ! And she would get her do'WTi flat, and put one 
 hand on lots of different places on her chest, and thud it 
 unfairly hard with the other, and say, " Does that hurt 
 you ?" and make her draw long breaths. She accepted 
 diagnosis as human and lovable in benefactors, but still a 
 weakness, and a sure road to misapprehension in chest cases. 
 
 It if had not been for cod-liver oil, and restraints, and 
 mustard poultices that printed her small chest red, she 
 would have regarded the whole thing as a lark, especially 
 in view of the banquets that accompanied it. And was she 
 not assured that Daddy was having the same, only heaps 
 more ? The oil was the worst trial. It pretended to be 
 tasteless certainly, but that was mere pharmaceutical 
 hypocrisy ; the bottles knew better, whatever the labels 
 might say. Her first hearing of the name of this nasty 
 elixir vitce produced a curious confusion in her mind, the 
 revelation of Avhich shocked IVIiss Eossett, taxed Yorick's 
 command of his countenance, and made the doctor chuckle 
 at intervals all the way home. For she recalled an occa- 
 sion on which the Rev. Wilkinson Wilkins had denounced 
 " ungodly livers." Herein lay great possibilities of mis- 
 apprehension, and Lizarann was not sIoav to infer that cod- 
 liver oil was divine, as opposed to some still worse abomina- 
 tion on draught in the opposite camp — de^nl-liver oil, 
 perhaps !
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 265 
 
 The foregoing shows to what an extent Teacher had 
 turned her residence next door to the School into a hospital 
 for the accommodation of this case. The good-natured lady 
 was always liable to get involved in the fortunes of any of 
 her young students, and though the present one had no 
 claim on her that a hundred others might not have had, she 
 was no doubt a lovable child, and her courage under trial 
 had fairly engaged the affections of the Rev. Athelstan. 
 Now Yorick had always been an idol of Adeline Fossett's 
 from the day when he was first introduced to her, a girl his 
 junior in years, but older than he for all that, as an 
 Eton friend to whom her favourite brother probably 
 owed his life. She had been much in his confidence in the 
 years that followed ; had been his great friend and adviser 
 all through his Oxford days ; had sympathized with him in 
 all his youthful love-affairs. Why it was invariably taken 
 for granted that he and she were always to beat up different 
 covers for a lifelong mate it would have been difficult to 
 say. But so it was, and so it continued, quite to the seem- 
 ing satisfaction of both. She remained his confidante 
 during all the hesitations and perplexities of his courtship 
 of Sophia Caldecott, while only giving a qualified approval 
 to his choice ; and when he departed, beaming, with that 
 young lady on a wedding-tour, she honestly believed that 
 her own burst of tears as soon as she found herself, after 
 the day's excitement, alone with her sense that the world 
 had got empty and chill, was due to the fact that Yorick 
 had married, as she viewed the matter, the wrong sister — 
 Sophia instead of Elizabeth, her great friend. Sophia was 
 the pretty one, of course ! But men were blind ! 
 
 Adeline's life was so interwoven Avith that of a brother 
 who, she believed, would certainly never marry that she 
 looked on herself as not entered for the race of life at all. 
 The idea held her with such force that she could build castles 
 in the air tor a bosom friend without a suspicion of a wish 
 for self-election to their suzerainship. Sophia — once four- 
 teen, and nothing — changed into a woman and captured 
 the best castle for herself. Is it certain that Ehzabeth's 
 entry into that castle would have left Adeline's world so 
 much less empty and chill ? Who can say ? All there is 
 room to tell here is that Sophia's death came in a few years ;
 
 266 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 and that Adeline's contemplation of Elizabeth's instalment 
 as Queen Regent, without rights of coronation, was pro- 
 ductive of involutions of thought and feeling that would 
 have baffled Robert BrowTiing. She was glad to believe 
 she believed her secret grief that Yorick and Elizabeth 
 could never be man and wife genuine. Perhaps it was. 
 
 Very likely the readiness of Miss Fossctt to harbour and 
 cherish Lizarann does not want such an elaborate explana- 
 tion. Lizarann, as the story has shown, was far from being 
 an unattractive scrap in herself, although the mouth was 
 too large for beauty — no doubt of it ! She was especially 
 so in these well-washed days when Miss Fossett went after 
 her own very early breakfast to Avake her in the morning ; 
 or, if awake, to prevent her trying to get up before Dr. Ferris 
 came. 
 
 " Maten't I go to see Daddy to-day, Teacher ?" she said — 
 always the first question — one such morning about a month 
 after her appropriation by Miss Fossett. 
 
 " Maten't you — funny child ! Mayn't you's what you 
 mean. No, dear, you mayn't — not yet ! Not till Dr. Ferris 
 says yes. You must be a good little girl and have patience." 
 For Miss Fossett knew children too well to weep with them 
 invariably in their troubles. Here was one that would bear 
 a bracing treatment. Its effect this time was that a sob 
 never came to maturity — w-as resolutely swallowed — and 
 that the career of a couple of tears was nipped in the bud 
 bj^ a nightgowTi-sleeve. A snifif made a protest in their 
 favour, but cut a poor figure. Courage had the best of it. 
 
 " Mustn't I only send a kiss to Daddy, Teacher ?" 
 Lizarann says this very ruefully. 
 
 " Teacer !" Miss Fossett mimics her pronunciation. " Of 
 course you may, dear, as many as you like ! You give them 
 to me, and Pll see that Daddy gets them." This is very rash, 
 as Lizarann springs like a tiger, and discharges a volley 
 that would have kept a game of kiss-in-the-ring going for a 
 fortnight. An evil, you will say, easily endurable by a 
 childless w'oman, with perhaps a hungrj^ heart ! Agreed. 
 But embarrassing complications followed. As soon as 
 Lizarann, who was evidently going to be much better 
 to-daji-, had disposed of a very respectable breakfast for 
 an invalid, and w^as brought into good form to receive the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 267 
 
 doctor — she was very nice when she smelt of soap, was 
 Lizarann — her mind harked back on the kissing transac- 
 tion. 
 
 " Who shall you give the skisses to, to tike to Daddy ?" 
 
 " Never you mind ! Daddy shall get them, and that's 
 enough for any little girl at this time in the morning. Now 
 lie still and be good. There's Dr. Ferris's knock." 
 
 Lizarann complied. But curiosity rankled. Would 
 Miss Fossett entrust those kisses to Dr. Ferris to give to 
 Daddy ? That was the substance of the question that came 
 in perfect good faith from the pillow Lizarann was lying 
 still and being good on. And this with Dr. Ferris audible 
 below ! 
 
 " Most certainly not ! I don't know him well enough." 
 This was very decisive ; and Lizarann's impersonal mind 
 discerned in it a mistrust of the goods reaching their 
 destination. Dr. Ferris might give them to some one else. 
 Another carrier must be found. 
 
 " But you do the gentleman ?" 
 
 " Yes, of course ! I could give them to the gentleman. 
 But we'll do better than that, Lizarann. I'll give them 
 back to you, and you'll give them to the gentleman." An 
 arrangement that pleases Lizarann, whose allegation that 
 there was siskteen, makes the refund a long job. It lasts 
 till the doctor knocks at the room door. 
 
 " Who were you talking to. Doctor V Lizarann's tickle 
 is still on the speaker's face, as she smooths matters — liair 
 and such-hke. 
 
 " It's the aunt. Widow Steptoe. . . ." 
 
 " Do take care. Doctor !" 
 
 " Oh — I forgot ! It's all right, I think, though . . . she 
 wants a testimonial, to say she can cook. She can't, of 
 course ! How's the patient ?" 
 
 " Look and see ! I suppose I must see Mrs. Steptoe. 
 She M'ants to talk, you know. I could just as easily write 
 to this Mrs. What's-her-name ... oh yes ! I know -who it's 
 for ... as have a long talkee-talkee. If she keeps me, come 
 in as you go, to tell me." 
 
 There is a twofold advantage in the loss of a husband 
 who is a curse to your existence — who is bone of your bone
 
 268 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 and flesh of your flesh, mth all the disadvantages of a 
 community of goods, such as was endured by Zohak the 
 tyrant, who shared his "with two serpents that had grown 
 out of him, and partook of him at intervals. One gain is, 
 that your husband is nov/ no more — as the vernacular puts 
 it when not claiming various forms of hereafters for the 
 departed ; the other, that we may now mourn his loss and 
 ascribe beauties of character to him mtliout fear of his 
 coming to life to give them practical disclaimers. We can 
 do it with crape, and if we can't afford a pair of black kids, 
 Lisle thread lastis a long time, if wore careful ; indeed, 
 Mrs. Hacker, whose testimony we are quoting, was able 
 to dwell on the cheapness of job-lots in the article of 
 mourning, and the advantages we enjoy from sales — ad- 
 vantages unlcno-wTi to Zohak in his day ; only perhaps his 
 snakes outlived him. If they did, there can have been no 
 false note in the pathos with which they spoke of him as 
 " now no more." 
 
 Mrs. Steptoe, having been so liberally assisted towards 
 funeral expenses, had been able to enjoy herself thoroughly 
 over the millinery department. Even Bridgetticks had 
 been impressed by the respectability of her appearance. 
 Tallack Street felt it, and joined in tributes to the moral 
 qualities of Mr. Steptoe. It did not shut its eyes to his 
 failing, but rather utilised it to the advantage of his 
 memory, sketching an exalted character that he would 
 certainly have possessed if it had not been undermined by 
 his unfortunate propensity. Each male inhabitant of 
 Tallack Street could conscientiously call upon all his neigh- 
 bours to bear ^vitness to the many times he had dwelt on 
 what a good, honest, generous, trustworthy nature underlay 
 this unfortunate proclivity to drinking spirits continually, 
 during waking hours, whenever he had a thrap'ny bit left, 
 or could get credit, or stood treat to. All agreed to regard 
 it as a sort of involuntary habit, like blinking ; or at worst 
 a flaw in culture — like eating peas, or the butter, with the 
 blade of your knife. " The man he was, be'ind it all !" — 
 that was what Tallack Street looked at. The Philosopher 
 might, if Time permitted, have exclaimed : " i)e non 
 apparentibus et non existentihus eadem est ratio !" Tallack 
 Street would have replied, forcibly as we think, that it
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 269 
 
 wam't mossin' about with any blooming reasonings — only 
 turning of it over like. 
 
 But we doubt if Tallack Street Avould have recognised 
 Uncle Bob's virtues so readily if his widow's grief had been 
 less effectively shown. 
 
 Her mourning gownd was that respectable to look at 
 you couldn't 'ardly tell her for Mrs. Steptoo, goin' along the 
 street, or in at the butcher's. Whereat Tallack Street 
 shook its heads, and accepted the past as a lesson for the 
 future, its older ones saying to its younger ones : " Pore 
 Bob ! What did I tell you, N. or M., concernin' of small 
 goes of gin took at all hours and no sort o' system ?" The 
 tone of melancholy forgiving retrospect being entirely a 
 reaction produced by the correct attire of the widow. 
 
 The same influence made Miss Fossett believe, for the 
 moment, that Mrs. Steptoe could cook, for all Dr. Ferris 
 said. She wrote a testimonial for her which suggested 
 that behmd the good plain-cooking accomplishment, as 
 scheduled, were unexplored possibilities this candidate for 
 a place would not lay claim to, from modesty. But for the 
 applicant's decent gown and gloves and nev/ umbrella, she 
 would have thought nothing of her account of her cooking 
 powers, as shown many years since in the early days of her 
 marriage, in certain apartments at Ramsgate, where her 
 husband then worked, before they came to London. She 
 had then cooked a dinner for ten persons, with entrees and 
 sweets. Miss Fossett hesitated, metaphorically, to swallou" 
 this dinner— tried to persuade Mrs. Steptoe to reduce it 
 to eight. That good woman, however, on taxing her 
 memory, rather showed a disposition to increase it to 
 twelve. On which Miss Fossett surrendered at dis- 
 cretion. 
 
 " Of course you'll soon get your hand back again, Mrs. 
 Steptoe ; and I hope you'll get this place." At this point 
 the character was written, with a full certificate of the 
 circumstances. It seemed worded to convey that a female 
 cordon hleit, who had been seeing better days, had been 
 forced by ill-hap to resume her old role of life. Completing 
 it, Miss Fossett again spoke : " Where did you say you were 
 in service, Mrs. Steptoe ? Ramsgate ?" 
 
 "' Not exactly in service, miss."
 
 270 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " What, then ?" 
 
 "In apartments to let." Mrs. Steptoe seemed a little 
 uncertain ; like a respectable person telling fibs, and in a 
 difficulty. Then she saw her way, and went on, relieved. 
 " I was requested to it, as a faviour. Owing to landlady 
 indisposed — having kno\\Ti her from early childhood." 
 She was proud of this expression evidently. " By the name 
 of Cantrip. I was left in charge, and give every satisfaction. 
 Thirty-two, Sea View Terrace, on the clift." 
 
 " And the lodgers had ten people at dinner !" Miss 
 Fossett was surprised, and showed it. The image her 
 mind formed of thirty-two, Sea View Terrace, did not jump 
 with a dinner of ten persons, with entrees and sweets. But 
 was it reasonable in not doing so ? Mrs. Steptoe must have 
 appreciated the difficulty, for she threw in, " Did you 
 know the house, miss ?" and the question was skilful. 
 Miss Fossett admitted that she did not. " But I certainly 
 thought it seemed a large party for a lodging-house," said 
 she, feeling apologetic. She did not wish to be unjust, even 
 to a lodging-house. 
 
 Mrs. Steptoe was all amazement that the extensive 
 accommodation of Sea View Terrace should be unknown 
 any^A■here in Europe. Her desire to express it seemed to 
 expand beyond dictionaries. Her sakes — why, a many 
 more could have sat down ! She then went on to sub- 
 stantiate her statement, giving the names of the guests : 
 " There was Mr. and Mrs. Hallock and family was five, 
 staying in the apartments. And Mrs. Bridgman and her 
 daughter was seven. And Mr. and Mrs. Thome, and Mr. 
 Hollings — no ! — Harris, a young gentleman from to"\vn. 
 Countin' up to ten !" Mrs. Steptoe was triumphant. Such 
 detail would verify anything. 
 
 " Well ! — anyhow, there's the letter, Mrs. Steptoe, and 
 I hope you'll get the place and do well." Miss Fossett was 
 convinced the good woman had been lying, more or less ; 
 and so she had, but the only portion of her statement that 
 affects this story was true enough. She had relieved her 
 conscience about the fib that she had cooked this dinner 
 by giving the actual names of those who had eaten it as 
 nearly as she remembered them. Can we not sympathize 
 with her ? Are we not human ?
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 271 
 
 She took the letter A\ath abasement and deep gratitude, 
 neither altogetlior unconnected with a religious fog, un- 
 explained, hanging about the memory of her lamented 
 husband. She inquired after her brother — was looking 
 forward to seeing him on Friday, the next visiting-day at 
 the Hospital — understood he had asked for her to come, 
 with a distinct implication that his nature was a neglectful 
 one, and that she was neglected. 
 
 " He has asked for you several times," said Miss Fossett. 
 " But Mr. Taylor thought — so did I — that it Avould be best 
 for him to know nothing of your husband's death till he 
 was stronger. He puts it down to the Hospital regulations 
 — thinks you have not been admitted. Mr. Taylor will tell 
 him all about it before you see him." 
 
 " As you and the gentleman think best, miss ! And the 
 little girl, you was a-sayin', is better ?" 
 
 " The little girl is a great deal better. Wait a minute, 
 and I'll ask Dr. Ferris if he thinks you could see her." 
 
 Airs. Steptoe, who was quite able to keep her anxiety to 
 see her niece in due subordination, dwelt upon her un- 
 willingness to encroach on Miss Fossett's time. Who, 
 accounting these professions honest — which they weren't — 
 went away and met the doctor coming down. He had been 
 a long time over his patient, she remarked. " This patient,'^ 
 said he, " is good company. Glad to say she's going on 
 capitally. Temperature all but normal." 
 
 " That aunt-woman's here still." Miss Fossett drops her 
 voice to say this. " Could I take her up to see her safely, 
 do you think ?" 
 
 " Can you be sure she won't talk about her conf . . . about 
 her husband, I mean 1" 
 
 " Ye-es ! I think so, if she promises. I don't know.'^ 
 
 " It can't do any great harm, in any case. The child is 
 thinking of nothing but Daddy. Five past nine — oh dear ! 
 I'm off ... oh yes ! — you may try it." And off goes the 
 doctor. 
 
 As to Lizarann's interview with her aunt that folloA^ed,. 
 a few words will be enough. For no story can record everj'-- 
 thing everywhere closely ; it must take and reject. It was, 
 on the part of Aunt Stingy, an unpresumptuous interv ew, 
 fraught with meek reminders to little girls of what was due
 
 272 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 on their part towards their benefactors ; as also with 
 suggestions of the depravities inherent in all their species. 
 An interview mysteriously saturated with a sense of 
 religious precepts refrained from, but conferring a sense or 
 moral superiority in one who could, had she chosen, have 
 become a well-spring and fountain-head of little-girl-crushing 
 platitudes. On Lizarann's part, an interview with a back- 
 ground of indictments against herself undisclosed ; con- 
 nected, no doubt, somehow Avith her demeanour on the 
 terrible occasion when she saw her aunt and uncle last. 
 She dared not ask what she had done, preferring to refer her 
 blood-guiltiness — of which, as a general rule, she entertained 
 no doubt — in this case to the lucifer-match negotiation 
 which had induced Uncle Bob to leave hold. That seemed 
 more likely than that she had left the street-door stood 
 on the jar. Of course, she might have been convicted of 
 concealed chestnuts ; or even, by some necromancy. Aunt 
 Stingy might have divined how near she had felt to 
 passing the forbidden Vatted Rum Comer limit. But the 
 lucifer-match theory seemed the most probable — not to be 
 broached, however, without the gentleman himself there 
 to protect her. Teacher was good — angelic, indeed — but 
 she was uninformed. And who could say that the evil 
 plausibilities of a subtle human aunt might not persuade 
 her to turn against her 'prot'gee, and rend her ? However, 
 the question was not raised, and Lizarann felt grateful 
 when the said aunt departed, after a horny farewell 
 peck. 
 
 But as soon as she had departed, Lizarann became 
 suddenly talkative. " Is Aunt Stingy's new go^vnd pide 
 for ?" said she. 
 
 " Inquisitive little monkey !" said Teacher. " Perhaps 
 it is ; perhaps it isn't." 
 
 " What did it costited ?" asked Lizarann. But she was 
 really uninterested about the purchase. She v/as keeping 
 the question before the House in the hope that the debate 
 would throw a light on a collateral point. " Mrs. Hacker's 
 married daughter Sarah was a mdow," said she, to give the 
 conversation a hft. " She wore her cloze out, she did." 
 
 But why had widowhood come suddenly on the tapis ? 
 Evidently sharp ears had heard the doctor's indiscreet
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 273 
 
 speech. Miss Fossett grasped the position. Lizarann 
 would have to know some time. Why not now ? 
 
 " Poor Aunt Stingy !" She spoke with her eye on 
 Lizarann, on the watch for a guess on the child's part that 
 would assist disclosure. She saw in the large puzzled orbs 
 that met hers, and the small hands pulling nervously at the 
 sheet, that the idea she wanted was either dawning or 
 fructifying. She continued : " Aunt Stingy will have to be 
 a widow now, Lizarann." 
 
 The idea had taken hold, and another young mind that up 
 to that moment had looked on Death as a visitor to other 
 families, not hers, had got to face the black terror — just 
 as terrible a mystery, just as cold a cloud, when that which 
 dies is what none would wish should live, as when all worth 
 living for seems lost with it. Even the opportune removal 
 of an Uncle Bob turns the whole world into an antechamber 
 of the great Unknown, and veils the sun in heaven. No- 
 body had died, in Lizarann's immediate circle, so far, and 
 as for outsiders, that was their look out ! Uncle Bob 
 wasn't wanted certainly, rather the reverse ; but none the 
 less the two large eyes that were fixed on Miss Fossett's 
 informing face filled slowly with tears, and their small 
 owner's hands came out towards her, feeling for something 
 to cry on. Yes !— Uncle Bob was dead, and would never 
 mend any more boots ; thus, substantially, the testimony of 
 Teacher, confirming and amplifying the deluge that fol- 
 lowed. It was some time before mere awe of Death allowed 
 Lizarann to refer to the fact that Daddy would never enjoy 
 Uncle Bob's society again ; there may have been ambiguity 
 here — was it all unmixed disadvantage ? — and still longer, 
 quite late in the day, in fact, before her reflections reminded 
 her that Sirs. Hacker's married daughter Sarah, having 
 wore her cloze out, took up with Mr. Broph}^, her present 
 husband. A reminiscence evidently recording the exact 
 language of older persons than herself. 
 
 " What did you say was the name of that gentleman you 
 met at Royd, Yorick ? — the amusing one ? . . ." 
 " Brownrigg ?" 
 " No— the other." 
 " Chalhs." 
 
 VOL. I. 18
 
 274 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " The same name as the author ?" 
 
 " He is the author. Titus Scroop is his Twrn-de- plume. 
 Why do you ask ?" 
 
 " Because it must be his AAife I wrote Mrs. Steptoe's 
 character for last week. Mrs. Alfred Challis, The Hermi- 
 tage, Wimbledon." 
 
 " Oh yes — that would be. How did you know of her ?" 
 
 " That IVIrs. Eldridge — she's a sort of cousin, you know — 
 wrote to see if I knew of a cook." 
 
 " But you knew nothing about Mrs. Steptoe's cooking." 
 
 " No ! — but she can try." 
 
 " I don't call that conscientious." 
 
 " Oh, my dear Yorick ! Isn't that just like you now ? 
 If everyone was such a dragon, no one would ever do a 
 good-natured action." 
 
 " Was it good-natured— to JMrs. Chalhs ?" 
 
 " It may turn out so. Mrs. Steptoe may be a real 
 treasure." 
 
 The above is short and explains itself. The time of it 
 may have been three days after the previous story time.
 
 CHAPTER XIX 
 
 It was certainly our friend Marianne at the Hermitage, 
 Wimbledon, to whom Mrs. Steptoe, now a free-lance, was 
 going to apply for a cook's place. It was rather an auda- 
 cious piece of effrontery ; so also are two-thirds of the 
 applications the Registry sends you on, and charges you 
 five shillings for. Mrs Steptoe was a very poor cook 
 indeed ; but, then, it was so long since she done any cooking 
 reg'lar that it was easy for her to forget how poor it had 
 been. 
 
 The coincidence was not a miraculous one, and it will 
 not appear so if you Avill image to yourself INIrs. Charlotte 
 Eldridge coming down very late one morning and opening 
 letters. Further, imagine that the contents of one takes 
 her aback, binds her attention, and excites a sort of torpid 
 curiosity in Mr. John Eldridge, who is Just off to catch his 
 train ; but the nine thirty-eight will do if he misses it. Then 
 that the lady throws the letter down, and says : " Well, I 
 declare ! Elizabeth Barclay, of all people in the world !" 
 
 Don't try to imagine Mr. Eldridge, nor his hat, nor its 
 band, nor the woollen comforter he buttons his coat over. 
 It isn't worth the effort. But take the story's word for it 
 that he said " Elizabeth Barclay ?" six times, and ended 
 with " What's she been had np for ?" 
 
 " John, you're a fool ! She's Marianne's cook, and she 
 wants me to find her another. Of course !" 
 
 " But what's her game ? What's Marianne's cook's 
 little game ? What's she been a-takin' shares in ? Where's 
 she been selling her dripping to 1 Tell away, Lotty ! — 
 spit it out !" But he does not forward matters, for he 
 again says " Elizabeth Barclay " several times, and finishes 
 up with " Well !" 
 
 " When you've done." A pause. " She's going to 
 marry a corn-factor." 
 
 275 18—2
 
 276 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Mr. Eldridge closes one eye. " Females do," he says ; 
 and then adds, quite inexplicably : " I shouldn't wonder if 
 he was in the Brixton Road." 
 
 " It doesn't matter whether he is or isn't. The question 
 is, where am I to go to find a really good plain cook for 
 Marianne ?" 
 
 " Ah ! — that's the question." 
 
 "Well, but you might help, instead of looking like a 
 gaby." 
 
 " Why not ask that party ?" 
 
 " What party ?" 
 
 " Over Clapham way. Some connection. Where you 
 got Ellen Sayce." Mrs. Eldridge looks her despair, for was 
 not Ellen Sayce a girl who wept on the stairs instead of 
 doing them down, and had to return to her parents ? 
 Nevertheless the attempt was worth a postcard, which was 
 written as Mr. Eldridge — M^hose peritonitis had gone — 
 trotted away down a snow-swept footway slapping his 
 gloves, and saying " Elizabeth Barclay " at intervals. 
 But she omitted the date, as she decided not to post it then 
 and there, but to exhaust her other resources first. Ellen 
 Sayce was a poor result. 
 
 The consequence of this was that for a month or there- 
 abouts Mr. Eldridge was never without a topic of conversa- 
 tion, frequently calling attention to the unborn postcard 
 in a recess on his \Adfe's escritoire. " I say, Lotty, when's 
 Miss Fossi jaw's letter a-going ?" being his form of query, 
 connecting the matter in hand with phosphorus-poisoning, 
 humorously but not intelligently. 
 
 However, when Mrs. Eldridge's other presentments ran 
 dry, the postcard was despatched, and reached Adeline 
 Fossett just the moment after Mrs. Steptoe had been sub- 
 mitting her cookworthiness, and lodging her claims for 
 favourable consideration. Whereupon Miss Fossett 
 despatched a summons to her to come next day for a written 
 character (which would do m this case), and the events we 
 know of followed. There was nothing remarkable in the 
 coincidence whatever. 
 
 But there was something very remarkable — so Mrs. 
 Challis had thought — about Elizabeth Barclay's unac- 
 countable desire to marry a corn-factor, after being in the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 277 
 
 family fourteen years ! For the Challis family had mono- 
 polized Mrs. Barclay during the whole of that time, and it 
 was natural it should be indignant at her desertion. In 
 fact, Marianne had hardly been able to believe her ears 
 when one day the good Avoman, who had been very distraite 
 over the ordering of dinner, took advantage of its conclu- 
 sion to say, through huskiness and hesitation, that she had 
 been thinking it well over, and had decided on it, in spite of 
 her attachment to the family and heartfelt desire to cause 
 it no inconvenience. Being pressed to say what she had 
 decided on — which she had not so far mentioned — she had 
 turned the colour of a tomato, and with a determined rush 
 had said : " I have decided, ma'am, to change my condi- 
 tion," and had then revealed the corn-factor with such a 
 tremendous accent on his first syllable that an impression 
 followed it in the mind of Bob Challis, the boy, home for 
 the holidays, that factors of many other goods had been 
 under consideration, and that Mr. Soul had been the fortu- 
 nate candidate. For his name was actually Seth Soul. 
 
 This, of course, was at the Christmas following Challis 
 pcre's visit to Royd. But Mrs. Barclay had kept her con- 
 dition unchanged for the time being, to oblige Miss Mari- 
 anne, which was how she as often as not spoke of Mrs. 
 Challis. That lady had really exerted herself to find a 
 substitute, any plausible application having been referred 
 for settlement to the corn-factor's fiancee. That very 
 honest woman had denounced and rejected every candi- 
 date for the place so far. She applied the same formula 
 to all : " It don't speak much for her " — that there was 
 such a flaw in her register, or such a defect in her demeanour. 
 It didn't speak much for one that she had just taken a 
 twelvemonth's leisure at a relative's ; or for another that 
 she smelt of spirits at that time in the morning ; or for 
 another that she nearly came tumblin' down the kitchen 
 flight, and couldn't walk straight. It certainly didn't. 
 But it spoke volumes for Mrs. Barclay's integrity that she 
 rejected them all, when, by accepting one, she might have 
 flown straight to the corn-factor and nested under his 
 wing, the minute her things were got. 
 
 The acceptance of our friend Aunt Stingy was the result 
 of desperation, as we have hinted, on Mrs, Challis's part.
 
 278 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 However, to do her justice, she tried to shift the responsi- 
 bihty off her o^\^l shoulders. 
 
 " I should not have dared to send her packing after 
 Avhat you said this morning, Titus," said she ; scarcely, 
 perhaps, quite fairly. But Titus replied good-humouredly 
 — tor think how well that chapter had started ! — " Never 
 mind, Polly Anne ! I'll be responsible. She'll turn out all 
 light enough, I dare say." 
 
 And thus it had come about that Mrs. Steptoe found her- 
 self, within six weeks of her husband's death, in a situa- 
 tion where, although its standard of cooking was no better 
 than that of most English houses of the same type, she was 
 hard put to it to keep up the pretence of any knowledge at 
 all. A very slight early experience had to go a long way, 
 and detection and conviction would have ensued if Mari- 
 anne ChaJlis had profited by her dozen of years of house- 
 keeping. But Elizabeth Barclay had been a treasure ; and 
 treasures — that is to say, persons who don't drink, can 
 roast and boil, and know three sorts of soup — make it 
 quite unnecessary for any English mistress to give any 
 thought to the subject. The new cook, too, was entrenched 
 in a strong position. Who shall say that any chance per- 
 son Avho does not know how to pull and grill now was in- 
 competent to pull and grill ten or fifteen years ago ? Or 
 that it is impossible that she passed a culinary youth in 
 contact with mayonnaise sauce, truffles, or Gorgonzola 
 cheese, and yet should in that period have forgotten the 
 very names of them ? The problem Aunt Stingy had to 
 solve was how to acquire knowledge without admitting 
 ignorance. And the attitude she took up in the pursuit 
 of this object was that of a higher cult graciously stooping 
 to accommodate itself to insular prejudice or mere bucolic 
 barbarism. She elicited a great deal of information by 
 dwelling on skilful achievements hard to believe in, but 
 practised for all that in the Augustan age of her experi- 
 ence, for the tables of an almost Parisian circle of connois- 
 seurs. There was danger in the method, but her intrepidity 
 was more than Murat-like. As, for instance, when, 
 apropos of omelettes, she said that " we " — that is, the 
 cooks attached to that circle — always made them without 
 eggs. On learning that omelettes contained nothing but
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 279 
 
 eggs, she exclaimed with the greatest presence of mind, 
 " Oh yes !— what Ave used to call egg-pancakes." 
 
 " I'm afraid you'll have to give this woman the sack, 
 Polly Anne. She can't cook worth a cent," Thus IVIr. 
 Challis, sampling something one day at lunch, perhaps an 
 omelette without eggs. 
 
 " Oh, do have a little patience, Titus !" 
 
 " Well — of course we must give her a fair trial. I didn't 
 mean immediately." 
 
 " Anyone would have thought you did. And it only 
 upsets me, and does no good at all. Do leave it alone till 
 Elizabeth Barclay has shown her one or two of her receipts. 
 She's very willing to learn, and goes to Chapel." For 
 Marianne was disposed to be lazy about this as about other 
 things, and was inclined to temporise. If Mrs. Steptoe 
 could be educated, why not retain Mrs. Steptoe ? " Even 
 if you dined out every night for a time — you know you can ; 
 look at all those invitations ! — it would be better than 
 having to go through it all again. Oh dear !" 
 
 But Challis was not anxious either to dine out every night, 
 or to quarrel over the dinners at home. He was really 
 well pleased with himself and his surroundings, when he 
 could feel that he had passed a comfortable domestic 
 evening free from self-questionings and collisions with — 
 well ! — that disorder he made the awkward compound word 
 for. But he never got ofif without scars. When he thought 
 he had succeeded, after a very well-executed quiet evening 
 with his Avife, in saying to himself : 
 
 " Jam me juvaverit 
 Viros reliuquere 
 Doctaeque conjugis 
 Sinu quiescere," 
 
 really almost with earnestness ! — all the \Aind was taken 
 out of his sails by a perfectly uncalled-for reflection on 
 Marianne's education. He was angry after with himself 
 for making it. Besides, no one in his senses could ascribe 
 any abnormal culture to . . . Never you mind ! — what on 
 earth had she to do with it ? 
 
 The fact is that, at this date of the story, some two or 
 three weeks after we last heard his voice in that cab that 
 drew up in Grosvenor Square, Challis was keeping watch
 
 280 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 and ward over his love of his own home and the mother 
 of his two children. His other world — especially the 
 brilliant and fascinating one that centred in the Mega- 
 therium Theatre and the preparation of his new play — was 
 both courted and kept at bay by him. He could make no 
 strong stand against its temptations ; but he could resent 
 them, and did so. And whenever his conscience — however 
 he nicknamed it — had been especially intrusive, he could 
 always rebuke it by a little more home life than usual, by 
 a more patient toleration of some home discomfort. He 
 did not see that the very fact of his doing penance, as it 
 were, for his enjoyment of that outer world of enchantment, 
 was really opening a postern-gate to admit the enemy his 
 culverins were pounding from the battlements. When 
 he paid himself out for that delightful supper with the 
 Megatheriums in the small hours of the morning by showing 
 forbearance over Mrs. Steptoe's fatuous attempts at cookery, 
 he was no more conscious that he was really pleading guilty 
 on the main issue than was Judith Arkroyd, when she de- 
 clined an invitation to join it, conscious that she was only 
 hedging against her dallyings with perfect truth and honour 
 towards her family in keeping back the lengths she had 
 gone in rehearsals of the part of Aminta Torrington. Mrs. 
 Steptoe's greasy cookery and a dull pompous dinner at 
 the Duke's each did duty as a salve to conscience without 
 the unAvilling sharers in either detecting their o^n self- 
 deception. But it was good for Mr. Ramsay Tomes, who 
 took Miss Arkroyd in to the banquet and bored her by his 
 appreciation more than by his talk ; which Judith mimicked 
 extremely well, to Mr Challis's great delight, when she met 
 him next day at the theatre. And it was good for Mrs. 
 Steptoe, who between Challis's penances and Marianne's 
 indisposition for another excursion into disengaged-cook 
 land, seemed likely to attain the low standard of excellence 
 we have mentioned as satisfactory to the British house- 
 keeper. 
 
 Marianne gave her husband no help. Of course, she 
 was not bound to. We know ! No woman is under any 
 legal obligation to assist her husband against himself, if his 
 affections — promised at the altar, don't you see ? — be- 
 come weak-kneed and uncertam. He may have to love 
 
 ■^
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 281 
 
 uphill, but he must take his chance of that. Still, she need 
 not skid his wheels or put stones in his path. But did 
 Marianne do so ? 
 
 In our opinion she did. Mere words, told in a story, go 
 for little ; a shade of accent makes them much or nothing. 
 How, we ask you, did Bob Challis, Rugby-sharpened, 
 know that his mater, whenever she made an allusion to 
 churches or chapels, was having a fling at his Governor ? 
 How did Bob know that his l.-overnor was making no 
 answer in italics, as one might say, when he turned to him 
 and said : " Got your new skates, human schoolboy 1 Let's 
 have a look ! Now, why is it no new strap ever has a hole 
 in the right place ?" And made conversation, trans- 
 parently. Bob did know, somehow ; and had he been pre- 
 sent to hear his mother say that Mrs. Steptoe went to 
 Chapel, he would have quite understood her inflection of 
 voice to convey an addendum, " which you don't ; or, at 
 least. Church, and you wouldn't say the responses if you 
 did." 
 
 If Mrs. Challis Avould only have left that point alone, it 
 would have made a world of difference in her relation with 
 her husband. Why would she not ? He had left her free 
 to secure salvation, not only to her own children, but to 
 her nephew or stepson, whichever you like to call Bob. 
 And he had made no conditions except that he himself 
 should be allowed the luxury of perdition on his own 
 terms. " You let me go to the Devil my own way, Polly 
 Anne," he had said, " and you shall have poor Kate's boy, 
 and tell him any gammon you like." Perhaps the reason 
 why he said— just now in the story — " Doda conjiix, 
 indeed !" may have been some memory of how, when 
 Bob blacked another boy's eye for calling the Founder of 
 Christianity a Jew, Marianne had defended his action, and 
 condemned the other boy for impiety and heathenism. 
 " And you know I'm right, Titus," said the lady tri- 
 umphantly. 
 
 Of course, it is impossible to say that a really honest 
 fulfilment of the religious bargain would have diverted 
 the current of events into another channel. All the story 
 points to is that if Challis could have reposed on the bosom 
 of his " docta conjux " with less fear of its bristhng sud-
 
 282 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 denly — like the image of the Virgin with which the Inqui- 
 sition convinced the most sceptical — with suggestions of 
 precept or reproof, even as the blessed image shot out 
 spikes, then there would have been one needless apple of 
 discord the less. And if Marianne had carried out her 
 half of the compact, Titus would certainly have been 
 more scrupulous in saying, before the boy, things of a racy 
 nature on subjects of reverence in the eyes of all Chris- 
 tendom and many thoughtful persons outside it. It wasn't 
 fair to Marianne, who had no sense of humour at all, to 
 develope an old line of critical analysis of the Scriptures 
 for the benefit of Bob ; to consider that young man, in 
 fact, as a Bible Class, anxious to discover and record the 
 first mentions of all the trades, all the professions, all the 
 popular complaints delicacy allows to be canvassed in 
 public, all the sports and all the winners, in a volume his 
 mother regarded as sacred. What did it matter how in- 
 distinct an idea she had of what she meant by the word 
 sacred, or anything else ? She might at least have been 
 spared one especial atrocity — the first mention of pugilism. 
 To do liim justice, however, Challis was not himself guilty 
 of this triumph of successful research, wliich we need not 
 record here. It came home from school with Bob next 
 Easter holidays, and Bob teemed and t^vinkled with it 
 until at last he got the chance of dehvering it into his 
 father's ear as he sat astride of his knee, with all the license 
 of a boy just released from the classics. 
 
 " You young scaramouch ! Where do you expect to 
 go to 1 Don't you go and tell your mother that !" For 
 Challis, in the presence of this youth, kept up a certain 
 parade of potential reverence, available in extreme cases. 
 He could countenance the first mention of CannibaHsm 
 — " The woman tempted me, and I did eat." But this one 
 ran near the confines of the unpermissible — overpast 
 them. 
 
 " Shuttle worth and Graves Minor's going to tell their 
 sisters. Because they'll be in such an awful rage !" 
 
 " A veiy low motive. Perhaps you'll be good enough 
 to regulate your conduct on better models than Shuttle- 
 worth and Graves Minor." 
 
 " Their father's a Bishop. A.t least. Graves Minor's is.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 283 
 
 He only allows him a shilling a month pocket-money. 
 He's gone to his aunts Jane and Mary's for the holidays 
 because they're infectious. . . ." 
 
 " Which — the holidays or the aunts ? Pay attention 
 to your antecedents, young man !" 
 
 " Neither. They're infectious at home ; they've got 
 scarlet fever. He's awfully glad, because his Aunt Jane 
 lives in a haunted house, and he can get out on the leads. 
 I say, pater !" 
 
 " What, offspring ?" 
 
 " When's that lady coming that gave me my skates at 
 Christmas, and the ' Lives of the Buccaneers ' ?" 
 
 " I don't know. I can't say. Some day." Challis has 
 become reserved suddenly. " Give me the little Japanese 
 ash-pan, and find yourself a chair. A strong one, I should 
 recommend." For Bob is at that pleasant growing age 
 that has relapses into babyhood, if not checked by a hint 
 now and then. He accepts the hint this time, but declines 
 the chair, preferring to lean over the back of his father's, 
 and pull his hair. 
 
 " The mater hates her. I don't." Now, if this had been 
 said immediately, it would have seemed much slighter con- 
 versation, easy to pass by. Coming after a good pause of 
 hair-pulling, it implied a confidence in the speaker's mind 
 that liis hearer's had been dwelling, during that pause, on 
 the person he didn't hate and his mother did. 
 
 " It's no concern of any young monkey's who his mother 
 hates or doesn't hate." 
 
 " Well ! — it's true. And I say it's a beastly shame. 
 After all, it wasn't her fault that it thawed." 
 
 " You unblusliing young egotist ! Is the whole world 
 to be nothing but skates — skates — skates ? Whose fault 
 wasn't it ? Your mother's ?" 
 
 " No fear ! The mater wanted me to chuck it up, and 
 not skate at all. Rather !" Tliis youth's language de- 
 pends for expression on a tone of overstrained contempt 
 for experience outside his own. But the desert of his 
 egotism has oases. He reaches one now, and says in quite 
 a natural voice : " I say, pap !" 
 
 " Go on, human creature !" 
 Shall I tell you what me and Cat . . ." 
 
 C(
 
 284 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " What who V This is accompanied by a pantomimic 
 threat of extermination. 
 
 " Well ! Cat and I, then. , . . what we call her, when 
 we're alone ?" 
 
 " By all means. Only look alive ! Because your 
 father's cigar is waning, and copy is behindhand. Go it !" 
 
 " We call her Judy. Cat and I do. Short for Judith." 
 
 " You'll make your little sister as bad as yourself, and 
 she's too sharp by half already. How do you know her 
 name's Judith ? It might be Sarah — or Euterpe." 
 
 " But it ain't. It's Judith." 
 
 " Ah ! — but how do you know ? That's the point." 
 
 " Because we listened. And Ave knew the mater meant 
 hzrr 
 
 Perhaps if Master Bob had seen his father's face, it 
 would have checked his outflow of virgin candour. But 
 he was behind him, and saw nothing. Challis was balanc- 
 ing a nice question in his mind. Ought he not to check 
 this revelation ? Was it not hke eavesdropping to listen 
 to it ? He decided that he might, as Marianne would 
 surely never say before the children anything she would 
 not wish him to hear. But he wanted to know, too. Still, 
 he was conscious enough of his wish to know, to find it 
 necessary to impute his reluctance to be influenced by it 
 to that mental vice he had invented a name for. 
 
 " How did you know your mother meant her ? How 
 did you know she didn't mean the new cook ?" 
 
 "No fear! Eer name's Priscilla. Besides, the mater 
 calls her Steptoe. Besides, Aunt Lotty did it, too." 
 
 " Did what ? What did Aunt Lotty do V 
 
 " Called her Judith. Cat heard her, same as me." 
 
 " Probably you ought to say ' same as I,' young man. 
 But it may be an open question." Challis paused, half- 
 minded to request his promising son and heir to keep his 
 confidences in reserve. But the evil genius of himself or 
 Marianne stepped in, and caused Catharine, the little girl, 
 who was still under seven, to sing with her mouth shut as 
 she hung over the bannisters in the passage outside. 
 Master Bob immediately left off pulling his father's hair 
 and rushed to the door, shouting loud enough for the 
 Universe to hear, " Didn't she. Cat ?" and ended a per-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 285 
 
 fectly orthodox interview for the collection of evidence by 
 lugging the \ntness in, nearly upside down, to testify. 
 
 " Put your sister down, you young ruffian — do you 
 hear ?" And Challis adds under his breath : " Much good 
 your school's doing you !" But the young persons explain 
 simultaneously, " That's how we do," not without pride in 
 an ancient usage. 
 
 Now, this little provincialism, or scrap of folklore, had 
 its share in moulding events. For consider ! — if a Sabine 
 woman, after Rubens, had been put down right-end-up, 
 anxious to make a statement, who could have refused to 
 listen to her ? Challis, who would not have objected to 
 hearing no more of what Aunt Lotty said, felt bound to 
 take tlie readjusted maiden on his knee— she wasn't 
 Sabine, and he could — and get at the upshot of her dis- 
 jointed testimony. Master Bob, follo\ving ascertained 
 usage, dictated or suggested her evidence ; and nipped 
 anticipated statement in the bud, at his convenience. 
 Between the two of them, however, it was clear enough 
 what sort of talk had gone on between their mother and 
 Aunt Lotty. 
 
 " After all," said the vexed man to himself, after pack- 
 ing off his young informants to presumable mischief else- 
 where — " after all, what can it matter if Marianne did say 
 in a moment of irritation that I might go away to ..." he 
 paused on the next two words, and finished without them 
 abruptly "... altogether if I liked C Then he tor- 
 mented himself a little about his own shrinking from 
 uttering the words " my Judith," and ended by saying 
 them in a cowardly way, under his breath, to show his 
 independence. 
 
 He was sitting in his library at the time, opposite to a 
 half-written sheet of foolscap. It was copy, Avaiting for 
 more copy, which came not. Challis denied his self-accusa- 
 tion that this was owing to the way that fool of a woman's 
 words had upset him — meaning Charlotte Eldridge ; he 
 absolved his wife. Had he not often to wait for an idea, 
 to get a start with 'i Let him see, where was he ? Oh 
 yes ! — where Estrild tears off her jewels and flings them 
 at the Ostrogoths. Judith Arkroyd would be simply 
 magnificent there ! For this was the great tragedy ho
 
 286 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 had promised Judith he would try his hand on expressly 
 for her. How that incomparable arm and hand would 
 tell, with Estrild's blood visible on it, torn by the bracelet 
 her vehemence had plucked off ! . . . 
 
 Very likely it was all a blunder of the kid's, and Char- 
 lotte Eldridge had never said any such thing. Was it 
 likely she would say, " Of course, Titus calls her Judith, 
 when they're alone "? Still, the deposition did sound like 
 that, and that was a damnable mischief-making woman, 
 mind you ! Challis was conscious, as he said this to him- 
 self, of an image of Charlotte Eldridge, rather a graceful 
 one, turning an impish glance over her shoulder to see the 
 effect of some apple of discord, just thrown. There was a 
 skittishness about this image, a skirt-sweep, that was true 
 to life. So was the becoming hat the odious woman always 
 wore indoors whenever she could, with that meaning 
 feather in it. How Challis hated her as he thought to 
 himself that they all meant, somehow, her studentship 
 in the Universit}^ in which that dowdy Eros, whom we 
 mentioned before, was Dean of the Faculty of Discord- 
 breeding between a lady and gentleman, about a gentle- 
 man or lady. But they were the constituents of a Stylish 
 Female, according to John Eldridge, her husband, the 
 victim of peritonitis. 
 
 " Come in .'" No wonder Mr. Challis said it a little im- 
 patiently, when a knock came at his study-door, because he 
 had just got his idea, and was at last effectively at work 
 again upon the Ostrogoths. The impatience caused Mari- 
 anne, who had knocked, to say that another time would do 
 as well. But to her husband's sensitive hearing the tone, 
 distant and severe, in which she said it spoke volumes. 
 And the Tables of Contents of those volumes related to 
 gulfs placed between married couples resident in Wimble- 
 don by fashionable beauties with a turn for the stage. It 
 was a large order for a mere tone of voice, but it was quite 
 filled out, as the commercial phrase is. Challis could not 
 possibly allow Mariarme to depart, closing the door with ag- 
 gressive gentleness. It would have been checking the items 
 of the large order. " Come back !" he shouted. " What 
 is it ? How can you be absurd, Polly Anne ? Come in !" 
 
 Polly Anne came in, but every step of her entry was
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 287 
 
 fraught with instant withdrawal. " I won't keep you a 
 minute, because of Steptoe and the dinner," she said, jum- 
 bling her context horribly. " Only I must know if you're 
 going out or not." 
 
 Challis really tried to be jolly and good-natured over it. 
 " Oh no ! it's all right," said he. " I'm at home to-night." 
 
 " You had better make sure." She spoke rather like 
 an iceberg — a forbearing one, but still an iceberg. " Look 
 at your cards on the chimney-piece." 
 
 Now, the fact was that the lady knew the position, 
 having gone over the ground the evening before in her 
 husband's absence. " The pink card !" said she. And 
 thus guided, Challis found himself brought to book — 
 convicted of inconsiderate forgetfulness alike of his friend 
 and his household. " I wish you would be more careful," 
 said the iceberg. 
 
 " But I really did think the Acropolis was to-morrow, 
 the twenty- third." 
 
 " To-day is the twenty- third." One more degree of 
 frost on the iceberg. 
 
 " I thought to-day was Wednesday." A feeble effort 
 to extenuate. 
 
 " To-day is Thursday. You see on the card. It doesn't 
 matter. I can easily arrange with Steptoe. . . . Oh no ! — 
 you can't throw them over at the last moment. Quite 
 absurd !" 
 
 " Well !— I'm awfully sorry " 
 
 " It makes no difference at all. Now, I won't disturb 
 you any more." And the iceberg retired. 
 
 But if Challis had given way to his first impulse, had 
 run after his wife, kissed her, said good-humouredly, 
 " Don't be miffy, Polly Anne ! — I shall be at home to- 
 morrow. And you know the Acropolites did ask you too " 
 — had he done this, all might have gone better. But his 
 impulse was weakened by the thought — or the know- 
 ledge — that his wife knew perfectly well when she entered 
 the room that he had this engagement, and must already 
 have made all her household arrangements with reference 
 to it. He resented her insincerity, and though he rose from 
 his chair and went towards the door, his resentment had 
 the best of it half-way, and he bit his lip and returned,
 
 288 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 looking vexed. Now, why couldn't she have said honestly 
 to him at breakfast, " Recollect, to-night's the Acropolis 
 dinner"? He was in such a state of sensitive irritation 
 that, just as he was getting into stroke again, he had a 
 new upset — caught a crab, as it were — because Estrild 
 reminded him of Eldridge, and brought the whole vexa- 
 tion back in full force !
 
 CHAPTER XX 
 
 Be good enough, to note that none of the characters in this 
 story are picturesque or heroic — only chance samples of 
 folk such as you may see pass your Avindow now, this 
 moment, if you will only lay your book down and look out. 
 They are passing — passing all day long — each with a storj\ 
 And some little thing you see, a meeting, a parting, a 
 quickened step, a hesitation and return, may make the 
 next hour the turning-point of an existence. For it is 
 of such little tilings the great ones are made ; and this is 
 a tale made up of trifles — trifles touching human souls 
 that, for aught we know to the contrary, may last for ever. 
 
 It is the share Marianne had in a thousand little things 
 like the triviality with which our last chapter ended that 
 makes us say that she gave her husband no help against 
 himself. Many a time a word of concession from her, in 
 answer to any of his unspoken appeals for help — for the 
 plain truth is, he made many such appeals — might have 
 led to a rushed embrace of reconciliation, and a flood of 
 not altogether uncontrite tears from her, and even some 
 from him ; for though one may pity him, he cannot be held 
 absolutely blameless. The fact is, Alfred Challis had loved 
 this Marianne even better than ever he did her sister, 
 Bob's mother — loved her, that is, as men love what is called 
 beaute de diable, and a kind of rough, good-natured manner. 
 Besides, see how good she was with the boy ! 
 
 If there had been no core of jealous reserve born of 
 overstrained self-respect inside this rosy-seeming apple — 
 if the girl would have obligingly matured without change 
 — she would always have remained Polly Anne, as of old. 
 But the core was there, and there Challis was to find it. 
 after a pleasant year or so of experience of the outside of 
 the fruit — the best part. Hence she came to be Marianne 
 
 VOL. I. 289 19
 
 290 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 rather than Polly Amie to him, oftener and oftener ; Mrs. 
 Challis rather than Marianne to friends ; and " your 
 mother " rather than " mamma " to the children. 
 
 She was not the woman for the position in which she 
 found herself. There was really only one chance of steady 
 sailing for the domestic ship, and that was that she should 
 go everywhere with her husband, brave the snubs of the 
 scornful toff, laugh at her own inferiorities, and, above all, 
 rejoice publicly at every new success of her husband. 
 Inwardly she may have done the last ; all the other con- 
 ditions she failed in. The one chance was not caught at, 
 and this man found himself alternately in the brilliant 
 world of Imperial London, made much of, looked up to 
 as an authority and quoted, refusing from sheer plenitude 
 welcomes to one rich house after another — all these on the 
 one hand, and on the other — suppose we put it briefly — 
 — Mrs. Steptoe. • 
 
 If Marianne had only had a friend who would have 
 pointed out the exaggerated nature of her impressions 
 about the motley crew we owe so much to Sir Bernard 
 Burke for telling the likes of us about ! A friend, even, 
 who would have said to her, " Don't give way to jealous 
 pride, stupid ; but go and observe the ways of the human 
 toff, and come home and tell me, ici has. I'll do your 
 hair for you." But there was none such ! — only Charlotte 
 Eldridge ! 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge certainly got some satisfaction out of the 
 concern ; it would have been a sad pity if no one had got 
 any. It was all in the way of her own speciality, the proper 
 — or improper — study of her kind. It may as well be ad- 
 mitted that the conversation the cliildren overheard part 
 of had run thus : 
 
 " I don't think, dear, that my feeling uneasy whenever 
 John is out of my sight ought to count. John is a fool. 
 Besides, girls that apply for situations are very mixed, 
 whether telegraph or sorters. The most dangerous class 
 of girl may apply. The safeguard in his case is that there 
 is so little reserve in his nature. When his admiration is 
 excited he always makes grimaces about them, and then 
 I know who, at once. If taxed with them he always 
 whistles popular airs and shuts one eye. ' Pop goes the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 291 
 
 Weasel ' or ' Tarara-boomdeay.' But I try to believe he 
 knows where to draw the line. This case is different." . 
 
 " I don't see the difference." I 
 
 " The girls are different. This Miss Sibyl What's- her- 
 name . . ." 
 
 " The one Titus admires so much is Judith. Sibyl's the 
 Art Coiffeur one, that wanted to do my hair like a picture 
 of Titian's " 
 
 " Titian's mistress, I suppose They did, then. Well ! — 
 I meant Judith. Don't you see how entirely different the 
 cases are ? Judith's position ! — the publicity, dear 1 — the 
 whole thing ! . . ." 
 
 " No ! — I see no difference." 
 
 " My dear ! — what nonsense ! Do you mean to say . . . 
 why, only look how he ' Miss Arkroyds ' and ' Miss Sibyls ' 
 them ! One judges from little things." 
 
 " When we're here, Titus does. But when they're 
 alone ... t" 
 
 " Well, of course ! When they're alone, Mr. Challis may 
 call her Judith. I don't say he does, but suppose he does, 
 what does it all amount to ? . . . Now don't be unreason- 
 able, Marianne dear !" 
 
 " I am not unreasonable, Charlotte. . . . Nonsense ! 
 I'm not crying about it. I wouldn't be such a fool. But 
 all I can say is, if Titus wants to go away to his Judith, let 
 him go ! / don't want to keep him, against his will. . . . 
 What are those children at, in there 1" At which point the 
 conversation may stop. 
 
 Incidentally, it helps us to see that Sibyl had lent herself 
 to an effort, which seemed to her — as to us — a politic one, 
 to induce Mrs. Alfred Challis to be a little more coming and 
 tractable. She quite appreciated that friendship between 
 her sister and Challis, if Marianne was included in it, would 
 be a very different thing from the same thing, conditioned 
 otherwise. And when she called at the Hermitage ^^dth her 
 sister, she was strongly impressed that scandal, if any arose, 
 would be the more dangerous unless Marianne could be 
 induced to change her attitude, which suggested that of a 
 civil tigress, with a grievance against the jungle. 
 
 " You needn't make a fuss about me," said Mrs. Challis 
 
 19—2
 
 292 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 to her husband, just departing for the Acropolis Club. He 
 always went through an apologetic phase, partly real, every 
 time he deserted the domestic hearth. This time his 
 remorse was superficial ; for surely Marianne might just as 
 well have accompanied him to this entertainment. You 
 know the Acropolis Club, no doubt 1 — a cock-and-hen club 
 of the purest water, with about the proportion of hens one 
 sees in farmyards. He would have preferred her coming. 
 However, he wasn't to make a fuss about her ; that was 
 settled. It was fine, she said ; and Charlotte had said she 
 would come in if it was fine. Challis became aware that 
 Charlotte must have said she would come in, sometime 
 before he himself had been reminded of his engagement 
 to go out. His remorse vanished all the quicker, and 
 he was beginning to enjoy his clean shirt-front — a phrase 
 his mind put by for Ms next story on any light social 
 subject — before his hansom landed him at Wimbledon 
 Station. The Acropolis, you remember, is barely ten 
 minutes cab from Waterloo, so tliis way did perfectly. 
 
 " Jolm finds it do better," said Mrs. Eldridge, arriving 
 in due course. "Only when he wants a walk he goes by 
 East Putney, because the District saves him at the other 
 end. Eight o'clock dinner, I suppose. Besides, they 
 won't be punctual. They never are, nowadays." This 
 was said to show how thorouglily au lait the speaker was 
 of the ways of fashionable life. It was mere talk by the 
 way, unspiced by direct reference to any Eros, respectable 
 or otherwise. 
 
 " I know nothing about them," said Marianne damn- 
 ingly — that is, so far as a suggestion that she was none the 
 worse thereby could condemn. Another, that it was best 
 to know little of the class referred to, was latent. It 
 rankled though, all the more that Mrs. Eldridge's expres- 
 sive silence recognised its existence better than words. A 
 garrulous person's silence may have all the force of a pause 
 in a symphony. When the baton of Mrs. Eldridge's con- 
 ductor. Mischief, allowed the music to steal gently in again, 
 it came on tiptoe, with subtle finished skill ; a pianissimo 
 flute-phrase in the stillness, harbinger perhaps of a volume 
 of sound.
 
 C( 
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 293 
 
 Couldn't you — Marianne dear — couldn't you . . .' ?" 
 Couldn't I what ?" It may be unfair to use the 
 adjective grumpy to describe tliis question. When a lady 
 beds her chin in both hands, Mdth her elbows on her 
 knees, and gazes at a slow-combustion stove doing its best, 
 while she speaks, her words may have an altogether false 
 effect. 
 
 " Ah — well ! Perhaps I oughtn't to say. . . . Never 
 mind, dear ! Let's talk of something else. How's Mrs. 
 Steptoe getting on mth her soups 1" A brisk rally of the 
 orchestra — a rousing thrill on the drum. But too arti- 
 ficial ! 
 
 " Elizabeth Barclay's been here to-day, to show her about 
 blotting-paper. Greasy, and then Titus grumbles. But 
 what did you mean to say ?" 
 
 The conductor hushes the orchestra — gives gentle per- 
 mission again to the flute. " No, dear, I oughtn't to say. 
 Because I know how you feel about it, exactly. But what 
 I thought of sajang was ..." 
 
 " Yes. Do go on, Charlotte !" i 
 
 " Couldn't 3^ou have made up your mind to go — just this' 
 once ? Because you were asked, this time." 
 
 " I shouldn't have enjoyed myself." 
 
 " Of course not, dear ! Neither should I. But you know 
 what I think. It all turns on a question of prudence. 
 Anything is better than an esclandre.'''' The other instru- 
 ments come in again, and the conductor is warming to his 
 work. 
 
 " I don't see why we want anji^hing French in it. There's 
 nothing of that sort, so far as I know." 
 
 " Of course not, with the people !" Given, that is, this 
 character cast, Parisian laxities have no chance. But dis- 
 tinctions must be made. " Nobody's the least likely to 
 do, but people Avill say, exactly the same as if they did do." 
 Better expressed by Hamlet, in the plague he offered poor 
 Ophelia as a dowry ! Who shall escape calumny ? 
 
 Marianne mutters something her friend takes to be, " I 
 don't care what people say." The orchestra — pursuing our 
 strained musical metaphor — sees a crescendo phrase ahead, 
 and the conductor interprets it as accelerando. 
 
 " That's where you're so wrong, dear — do forgive me for
 
 294 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 saying it ! But you are wrong. Pure and honest natures 
 like yours always make that mistake. Of course you know, 
 and I know — we all know — that to speak of anything really 
 wrong in the same breath with your husband would be 
 absurd, and even this fashionable girl for that matter. 
 T mean, you know, really wrong." A nod-supported 
 whisper — the music goes to 'pianissimo quite suddenly ; 
 consider the sharp ears of Mrs. Steptoe, and Harmood, in 
 the kitchen ! But enough of that. Our text calls for no 
 secrecies ; brush them aside, and resume without pedals, 
 but con espressione. " But everyone is not like you, dear ! 
 So many people take pleasure in putting — well ! the most 
 horrid constructions on the most innocent. . . . What ?" 
 For Mrs. Charlotte had stopped to gloat so long over the 
 first syllable of innx)cent — she did not enjoy the " horrid 
 constructions " half so much — that she had heard what 
 Marianne said. Who, on request, repeated it : 
 
 " I didn't say I didn't care what people said . . . oh 
 well ! — I've forgotten what I did say now, and it doesn't 
 matter. Anyhow, I consider I've done my duty, and now 
 I simply won't go to any of their dinners, come what may. 
 Acropolis Club or no ! So there !" This is a stronger 
 ground than a plea of simple non-enjoyment as a cause of 
 abstention, and Charlotte makes no protest. Her mind, 
 too, is attracted by another point. She speaks dreamily 
 to express that it is feeling its way, as through a mist, to 
 illumination. 
 
 " What was it . . . oh, don't you know ? Lewis Smith- 
 son heard it . . . oh dear ! — what was the name of the club 
 now ? One of these mixed clubs ... oh no ! — of course, 
 I know what the story itself was — you needn't tell me 
 that ! . . . I mean what was the name of the club 1" But 
 Marianne cannot help, and conversation can't stop for it. 
 At any rate, it wasn't the AcropoHs. Which Mrs. Eldridge 
 repeats more than once confirmatorily, to make the 
 Acropolis safe before resuming the general question. She 
 dismisses the legend itself — what it was does not matter 
 here — as quite unworthy of credence. " I believe Lewis 
 Smithson made it himself," she says. " Anyhow, it's 
 nonsense. For my part, I should say they were much more 
 likely to be stiff and straight up, for fear of its getting
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 295 
 
 about. Besides, who was it you said was coming to this 
 party ? Lord and Lady Who ?" 
 
 " Some name like Albatross." 
 
 " Ross Tarbet. Why, my dear, they're the pink ! 
 Corstrechan Castle in Banffshire. Oh no ! — it's all right 
 enough as far as that goes. But still I do think, if you ask 
 me, it would have been just as well if you hadn't refused." 
 
 " Why ? I do wish you would speak plainly, Charlotte, 
 and not go round and round." 
 
 Mrs. Eldridgc won't commit herself to a statement with- 
 out passing through a period of reflection. It is con- 
 sistent ^Wth the contemplation of the shadow of her free 
 hand, held beyond it, on the screen she is interposing be- 
 tween her face and the fire. Its silhouette of outspread 
 fingers seems to satisfy her, and not to interfere A\dth the 
 thoughts that her drooj)ed eyelids and fixed look are grave 
 about. After quite enough cogitation, she says abruptly : 
 " I wasn't thinking of at the dinner. Nor the rest of the 
 evening. But seeing home comes in. However, if you 
 think of it, she would be with the Ross Tarbets, and they 
 would drive her home. Let's see ! The club's in Jermyn 
 Street. Her family are in Grosvenor Square. I fancy 
 the Ross Tarbets are in Park Lane. It's all in the 
 way." 
 
 Such talk ought to have had a soothing, reassuring in- 
 fluence. Miss Arkroyd under the vAng of a live Countess, 
 safe of an escort to the paternal mansion, what more could 
 be asked ? Nevertheless, there is an hysterical sound — 
 to Mrs. Eldridge's experienced ear — in the laugh MJth 
 which Marianne says : " What silly nonsense ! As if it 
 made any difference to me if Titus saw the girl home in 
 twenty cabs !" 
 
 " Because you have such confidence in Titus, my dear. 
 And that is right ! I wouldn't trust John myself. But 
 he's different." 
 
 If Marianne had been in the least a humorist, the image 
 of Mr. Eldridge, in danger from an aristocratic enchantress, 
 seeking to unsettle his devotion to the stylish female he 
 could now call his own, would have drawn from her a more 
 genuine laugh than her last. But she was in no moodf or 
 laughing, and the greatest booby in Christendom might
 
 296 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 have passed muster with her as a parallel to her husband. 
 We are not prepared to say he had not done so in the 
 present case. 
 
 Marianne got up uneasily from the low chair she sat on 
 before the fire ; took another, but did not keep it long ; 
 rose again, and walked restlessly about the room. Un- 
 like her ! — so thought her companion, glancing up at her 
 keenly, but furtively. Mrs. Eldridge had no definite plan 
 of mischief ; she only wanted the luxury of caressing her 
 favourite subject. She felt a little alarmed, and rather 
 washed the disquieted one would sit down again. But 
 Marianne showed no tendency to do so On the contrary, 
 she said suddenly : " I forgot to tell Martha those under- 
 things must not go to the wash. That woman always 
 shrinks them," and left the room. Mrs. Eldridge heard her 
 bedroom door close above, but no sound of colloquy with 
 Martha. Then her attention was taken off by a tap at the 
 door, whose executant she gave leave to come in. 
 
 It was Mrs. Steptoe, meek and creditable as an evening- 
 cook ; to wit, one that has done her washing-up. A sense 
 of chapel hangs upon her, and the cough she gives as 
 preface to speech seems conscious of its indebtedness to 
 a pause in some sort of devotional service undefined. Her 
 widowhood and the distinction of her sudden loss have 
 given Aunt Stingy a chastened identit3^ But though in 
 the ascendant, she will not obtrude herself. Mrs. Challis 
 — servants seem lately to have left off saying missis and 
 master — not being to the fore, she will retire and remain in 
 abeyance, exceptin' rang for. It was only to remind 
 about ordering Huntley and Palmer, Mr. Challis being 
 that particular. But Mrs. Challis would be back directly ; 
 so said Mrs. Eldridge. Aunt Stingy, nothing loth, would 
 remain to chat. 
 
 Interrogated, Lizarann's aunt is finding the place com- 
 fortable. The ketching chemley draAvs a little imperfect, 
 certainly ; but the boiler full up, if hot over-night, lastis on 
 the next day, and any quantity. A great convenience ! 
 It is noticeable about Mrs. Steptoe's speech that it does not 
 improve when she tries to talk up to her company. When 
 she spoke to her equals in Tallack Street, Avithout desire 
 to impress, she was provincial and unpolished, but seldom
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 297 
 
 Cockne3\ Now, her attempts to be classical and win re- 
 spect from Mrs. Eldridge are failures. 
 
 " What sort of a place was Mrs. Fossett's ?" 
 
 " Miss ! — excusin' my makin' bold to correct. But 
 not in a place there. Only as a reference." "'^ 
 
 " Where was your last place, then ?" But Mrs. Steptoe 
 explained, with many reserves and sidelights, that she had 
 never been truly in service ; having led, broadly speaking, 
 a regal life, until she married beneath her, but, rieverthe- 
 less, into a respectable trade connection. The suggestion 
 that her husband's brain had been affected rounded off a 
 tale that hinted at ancestry and a pursuing evil destiny — 
 the race of Laius ! " But you used to cook, wherever you 
 were, once," said Mrs. Eldridge, wedded to practical 
 issues. 
 
 " Oh, there, now ! — cook, indeed ! Why, I was sayin', 
 only to-day, to Miss Harmood, ' If you could have seen the 
 table they kep' at Sea View, soups and jellies, and made-up 
 dishes, and the whole attention left to me, in the manner 
 of speakin'.' Owing, ma'am, you see, to uncertain health, 
 my aunt's sister — in charge of the establishment — suffering 
 with a complication, and terminated fatally eleven years 
 this Easter Day. Coming back to me, naturally, with the 
 season." A retrospective sigh, over life's changes, came 
 well in here. 
 
 " Was it a sort of private hotel, or boarding-house ?" 
 Mrs. Eldridge thought she saw light. 
 
 Mrs. Steptoe conveyed general assent, mthout close 
 definition. " But very select !" she added. And Mrs. 
 Eldridge said, " Of course," entirely without reason. 
 
 Aunt Stingy felt encouraged, and made up her mind to 
 resume in full all particulars of the banquet we have heard 
 about. After all, she is not the only person that ever 
 dwelt overmuch on scanty incidents of slight importance 
 in themselves ; but oases, for all that, in the arid stretches 
 of an eventless life. Besides — as her tale showed after 
 Mrs. Eldridge had heard all about the splendid cooking 
 accommodation of this estabhsbment at Ramsgate, and 
 full particulars almost of every dish on the table — there 
 was revealed a curious sequel to this seaside dissipation, 
 which no doubt would have been communicated to Mrs.
 
 298 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Challis, if that lady had been as inquisitive as her friend. 
 For Mrs. Charlotte hearing of an occasion — fifteen years 
 ago ! — when six or eight persons of either sex had dined 
 together, forthwith smelt rats, and made for their places 
 of concealment with the alacrity of a Dandie Dinmont. 
 
 " You seem to remember them all very well, Mrs. 
 Steptoe." 
 
 " Along of what followed, no doubt, ma'am." The 
 speaker appeared to become suddenly reserved, but 
 awaiting catechism for all that. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge's shrewd intelligence reached the issue 
 promptly. " Perhaps you promised not to tell it. Don't 
 tell me !" This would have disappointed Aunt Stingy, if 
 she had believed it genuine. But she didn't, and confir- 
 mation of her disbelief came. " Only really, it's so long 
 ago ! It's almost ridiculous." The catechumen still 
 awaited pressure. " But do just as you feel, Mrs. Steptoe. 
 Of course, it's no affair of mine." 
 
 Aunt Stingy laughed slightingly, to remove the matter 
 from among grave responsibilities. " Ho, as for that," 
 she said, " I was never under any promise— only Mr. and 
 Mrs. Hallock wished no reference made. Only, as you was 
 sayin', such a many years after ... Is that Mrs. Challis 
 coming ?" But it wasn't. 
 
 " She's speaking to Martha upstairs. She won't come 
 yet." Mrs. Eldridge betrays her curiosity — is very trans- 
 parent. So urged, Aunt Stingy gives, not at all obscurely, 
 a narrative some ten minutes long, which, for all purposes 
 of this story, may be condensed as follows : — 
 
 The Mr, and Mrs. Hallock who figure in it had, for some 
 not very evident reasons, felt justified in abetting the 
 marriage of their nursery-governess with a man sup- 
 posed to be of good means and antecedents, with the full 
 knowledge that this marriage was concealed from her 
 family, and was to remain so for a term. The dinner that 
 was Aunt Stingy's culinary triumph was a festivity to 
 welcome this happy couple on their return from a short 
 honeymoon. The young gentleman named as Harris 
 among the guests was a friend of the bridegroom. So far, 
 nothing very criminal. But there was a sequel. The 
 Hallocks, returning next season to the same apartments,
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 299 
 
 where it seemed they spent every summer, frequently re- 
 ferred to the affair, but always with surprise that no news 
 had reached them of the wedded couple, and this in spite 
 of inquiries by letter. " Ungrateful girl !" was their ver- 
 dict. One morning towards the end of their stay they 
 were dumbfounded by an advertisement of a wedding, 
 in the Telegraph. The bride actually bore the name of 
 their ex-governess — her maiden name, that is — while the 
 bridegroom's was, to their nearest recollection, that of 
 the friend who had been introduced to them as Mr. Harris 
 the year before. That was the substance of Mrs. Steptoe's 
 story. 
 
 " They were that surprised," she said, " you might have 
 loiocked either of 'em down with an electric shock. ' My 
 word,' says Mr. Hallock, ' to think of that !' he says. 
 ' Then Home must be dead, and that girl married to his 
 friend already ! And not so much as a letter !' . . . Oh 
 yes ! Mr. Hallock, he was resentful like, but Mrs. Hallock, 
 she leans across to him, and she says : ' My dear, it's a 
 coincidence ! Kate never would — never ! I knew the 
 girl,' she says. So she talked him down, and they put it 
 at a coincidence, and let it go." 
 
 " But did you hear no more ?" 
 
 " 'They heard — not me ! Or only remarks fell by chance. 
 There come a letter next day, and they was a-talking and 
 she a-crying over it. Little scraps they let drop, loud 
 enough to reach. ' Ho, the miscreant !' and ' The licensual 
 scoundrel !' And then Mrs. Hallock she says : ' Whatever 
 could possess us, Edwin, not to make more certain about 
 the ceremony ?' Then they see me, and dropped to a 
 whisper. Only saying to me after, not to repeat anj^- 
 thing I'd heard, which I made the promise, as requested." 
 
 " There's Mrs. Challis coming. I wish you could have 
 been more sure of the names, because it's interesting. 
 Couldn't you think them up a little ?" 
 
 Mrs. Steptoe cogitated. Hallock, of course, she said. 
 Because she knew them a long time. But the other names 
 hardly, to be any surer. Except it was the young lady's 
 single name. Because that she see in the newspaper, when 
 she come to look at the advertisement. Then she must 
 have seen the bridegroom's name, said her interrogator.
 
 300 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 It seemed not ; the glance was a hurried one. But she was 
 sure about the girl's. It was Catherine Verrall. 
 
 This storj'- has only had occasion once to refer to the 
 name of Challis's first ^vife, Marianne's half-sister. And 
 though Mrs. Eldridge had often talked with her friend 
 about this half-sister, dead five or six years before the 
 families became acquainted, it was always about " Kate " — 
 no other name — or " my sister " when Marianne was the 
 speaker. It is quite an open question whether she would 
 at once have felt the name familiar, if it had not been for 
 Bob's full name. Her knowledge that it was Robert 
 Verrall Challis was perhaps what made her say, " What ? 
 — what's that ? — did you say Verrall?" with stimulated 
 interest. Mrs. Steptoe repeated " Catherine Verrall " 
 quite distinctly, just as her mistress, returning, opened the 
 door. Mrs. Eldridge hoped, A^thout having had time to 
 make up her mind why, that Marianne had not heard the 
 name. For a few moments she thought she had not. The 
 whole thing happened very rapidly. 
 
 Mrs. Steptoe delivered her reminder about Huntley and 
 Palmer's Oatmeal Biscuits, to be ordered with the stores. 
 Mrs. Challis had not forgotten them. One or two other 
 small matters were referred to, and then Mrs. Steptoe said 
 good-night with due humility, and departed. She was in- 
 structed not to sit up for Master Bob, who had gone to a 
 neighbour's to assist in acting charades. Marianne would 
 let him in. She did not resume her seat by the fire, but 
 lay doAATi on the sofa, away from it. She had a flushed, 
 turbulent look, and a smell of eau-de-Cologne, backed by 
 ruffled hair over the forehead, conveyed the idea that she 
 had been putting it on her face, to cool it. Mrs. Eldridge 
 felt uneasy. Had she gone too far ? 
 
 " Was it all right about the flannels ?" she asked. 
 
 " I think so. I don't know. I didn't see Martha. I 
 felt sick, and lay down. . . . Oh j-es ! — I'm all right now." 
 
 " No, you're not, dear ! You look very flushed. Shan't 
 I get something ? A little brandy-and-Avater 1" 
 
 " Oh heavens, no ! — make me sick ! Like on the 
 steamer — the very idea makes me ill ! There's nothing 
 the matter." 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge wasn't convinced. Should she open the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 301 
 
 window to let a little air in ? She was one of those 
 plaguing people that will remedy, whether you hke it or 
 no. Mrs. Challis repulsed her open-window movement 
 with some asperity ; reduced her to fiddling with her 
 screen with a fixed gaze of solicitude, fraught with ulti- 
 matums about medical advice, failing prompt improve- 
 ment in the patient. 
 
 Marianne remained still on the sofa, with her eyes closed 
 for a few minutes. Then she said suddenly, rather as one 
 who turns to an offered relief : " What were you and 
 Steptoe sajdng about my sister when I came in ?" 
 
 Her hearer started ; grasped the coincidence of name 
 fully for the first time probably. " Your sister, Mari- 
 anne. . . . Why, how ?" And then, with a complete 
 perplexity : " How could that be ?" 
 
 " My sister was Catherine Verrall — my sister Kate, that 
 died. Why were you talking about her ?" 
 
 " It must have been another Catherine Verrall — must 
 have been." 
 
 " Who must have been ?" 
 
 " This girl. Stop, and I'll tell you ! . . . But, really, 
 the coincidence !" And, indeed, Mrs. Charlotte seems 
 almost knocked silly by it, as the pugilists say. Marianne 
 is roused and interested at her perplexity — sits up on the 
 sofa fanning herself with her pocket-handkerchief — seems 
 half inclined to laugh. 
 
 " What's it all about, Charlotte ?" she says, and then 
 adds — a little passing tribute to the memory abruptly 
 revived — " Poor Kate !" 
 
 " Oh, my dear, of course it's nothing to do ^\ith poor 
 Kate. Just an odd coincidence of a girl Mrs. Steptoe knew 
 at Ramsgate, I think — years ago !" 
 
 " Kate was at Ramsgate, though, when I was a child. 
 She taught music to some people's children. What was 
 their name now ?" But the name would not come back, 
 on any terms. Marianne gave it up. Her friend felt 
 actually glad, for the puzzle was too incisive to be 
 pleasant. 
 
 " Very likely she was at Ramsgate. Why not ? But 
 she hadn't been twice a widow when she married your Titus, 
 at any rate. Come, Marianne !"
 
 302 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " Certainly not ! She wasn't nineteen, for one thing. 
 Was this coincidence-lady a ^Wdow ?" 
 
 " Perhaps I had better tell you the story ?" 
 
 " Much better, I should say." On which Mrs. Eldridge 
 repeats Mrs. Steptoe's tale, neither confounding the persons 
 nor dividing the substance, but Avith a tendency — very 
 common in narratives we pass on to others, but ourselves 
 have no part in — to substitute descriptions or epithets for 
 names. Thus the Mr. and Mrs. Hallock of the original 
 narrative appeared as " this lady and gentleman " until 
 Mrs. Challis, whose puzzled look was on the increase, asked 
 a question about them : 
 
 " What were they — this lady and gentleman ? What 
 was their name ?" 
 
 " I fancy he was a coal-merchant or dealer in something. 
 Mrs. Steptoe didn't say. The name was Hallock." IVIrs. 
 Challis sprang up from the sofa, excitedly. 
 
 " Charlotte \—ivhat did you say ? Hallock .?" 
 
 " Yes— Hallock. Why not ?" 
 
 Marianne's breath is quite taken away. " But that is 
 the name I had forgotten — Hallock," she says, as soon as 
 she can speak. " They're in one of those photographs in 
 the old book — the one I brought from mother's." Her 
 speech is rapid and frightened. The strangeness of the 
 story is getting its mastery ; and she feels, %\ithout imaging 
 them, the ambushes in wait for her. " Oh dear !" she gasps, 
 sinking back again on the sofa, " all this — it's so odd ! 
 Charlotte, I'm afraid to look at the photograph." 
 
 Charlotte's nerves are stronger, and she has recovered 
 from the momentary alarm her friend had given her ; is 
 ready, one might say, to be in mischief again. " Don't be 
 a goose, Marianne," she says. " You're frightened of 
 everj'thing. Do let's get the thing explained, dear, 
 instead of going dotty over it. Which photograph book 
 is it ? . . . left-hand chiffonier ? ... no ? — right-hand . . . 
 top shelf ? . . . No ! — I Avon't make a mess. ... I expect 
 it's this." 
 
 It was, and it exactly confirmed IVIrs. Eldridge's anticipa- 
 tion of a coal-merchant and his wife, two young daughters, 
 and a governess a few years older than themselves. A 
 stupid seaside photographer's group, but with well-marked
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 303 
 
 face-features. The artist's address in a little oval under- 
 neath, conspicuously Ramsgate. 
 
 " Of course it's all some confusion of Mrs. Steptoe's," 
 says Mrs. Eldridge. She knows she is talking nonsense, 
 but she wants to calm all troubled waters while she gets her 
 curiosity satisfied. " You'll see she won't recognise any 
 of these — unless you give her hints, Marianne." 
 
 This is unprovoked, and Marianne resents it. " Show 
 them to her when I'm not there if you like. Show her now 
 and I'll go. Only I'm afraid they're gone to bed." If they 
 have, no harm in ringing the bell ! It is rung, and evolves 
 Harmood, apologetic for not having gone up yet. And then 
 Mrs. Steptoe, even more so. 
 
 Marianne does not go, but then that was mere talk. 
 Mrs. Eldridge wants Steptoe — so she tells her — to see if 
 she recognises a photograph. Aunt Stingy is not dis- 
 satisfied to be consulted about anything. Mrs. Eldridge 
 shows diplomacy, astutely getting her to identify Mrs. 
 Challis at different ages. Having put the witness on a 
 false scent, she shows the group, and asks : " Now which of 
 those is Mrs. Challis ?" 
 
 The witness tried to find an excuse for identification, but 
 failed. But having admitted failure, why hold so tightly 
 to the photo-album ? 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Steptoe ?" Mrs. Eldridge speaks. 
 
 " Nothing, ma'am. Oh no ! — only what unaccountably 
 caught my eye. Nothing to detain. What would be 
 termed an impression." She relinquished the album slowly 
 mth a vaguely constructed " Excusin' the liberty I took, 
 I'm sure !" 
 
 " You noticed something, Mrs. Steptoe ?" 
 
 " In the manner of speaking, yes ! But not to detain. 
 It just cut across me hke . . . yes, ma'am, thank you, just 
 a minute !" For Mrs Eldridge had said, " Look at it again," 
 and handed the open book back. 
 
 Aunt Stingy looked and looked, in more and more visible 
 bewilderment. Pressed to explain it, she at last said : " I 
 can't make no less of it, put it how you may. That's Mr- 
 and Mrs. Hallock I was telling of, just now half-an-hour 
 gone. And that is the young lady." 
 
 Iterations, stimulated by an increduhty Mrs. Eldridge
 
 304 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 affects in ordor to procure them, are interrupted by a knock 
 at the front door. Mrs. Steptoe departs to open it. It is 
 Mr. Eldridge, to accompany his wdfe home. He is not, she 
 says, to hurry and fuss, but to sit doAvn and wait, and not 
 knock things over. He makes the remark, " Somethin' 
 up ! Easy does it !" implying, perhaps, readiness to 
 wait for enlightenment, and becomes seated, but knocks 
 nothing over. His wife throws him a gleam, to live on. 
 " We are discussing the identity of a photograph," she 
 says. 
 
 An occurrence interposes. Master Bob's arrival ; the 
 toleration for a few brief moments of exultation over the 
 evening's successes, and his dismissal to bed, rather dis- 
 gusted at Europe's want of appreciation. Then Mrs 
 Steptoe, who had retired to admit him, re-enters and 
 resumes. 
 
 " Those are the parties I told you, ma'am," says she, in 
 an undertone of confidence brought forward from the pre- 
 vious conversation, rather definitely exclusive of the new- 
 comer, who had overlapped it. But he has his ideas, and as 
 soon as he has thoroughly polished with his wrist the bridge 
 of a nose he has just blown, he offers counsel : 
 
 " No name on 'em ? Look on the back. Look on the 
 edges where they tuck in. Nothin' like lookin' !" His 
 wife accepts the suggestion without tribute to his sagacity ; 
 and when the photo is slipped from the passepartout, there 
 on the back is plainly written : " jVIr. and Mrs. Hallock, 
 Nelly, Totty, and self. June, 1888." 
 
 " She'll be all right," said Mrs. Eldridge, returning to 
 her husband in the drawdng-room a quarter of an hour later. 
 For Mrs. Challis, already upset by her previous interview 
 with her friend, had been in no condition to have it burst 
 upon her suddenly that important events — which she could 
 not the least understand, so far — relating to her sister's 
 life, and perhaps to his own, had been concealed from her 
 by this husband whom she was now called upon to have so 
 much faith in. She had completely broken down ; had left 
 the room white as ashes, having been previously flushed 
 and feverish ; and had nearly fainted away on the stairs. 
 She had been got safely to bed, and had so far recovered
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 305 
 
 as to be able to say that she should go to sleep soon. Per- 
 haps her chief wish was to be let alone. She wanted to 
 think to the bottom of this photograph story. What was 
 it all about ? 
 
 But Mr. Eldridge perceived that this sort of weather was 
 trying to some constitutions, and suggested drastic treat- 
 ment. His wife said, " Be quiet while I write this," and 
 ignored his suggestions. She wrote a brief note to Mr. 
 Challis, and left it in his bedroom candlestick on the hall- 
 table outside. He was sure to see it. She then asked 
 her husband whether he was coming, or was going to go on 
 mooning there indefinitely. He chose the former course 
 without insisting on closer definition of the latter. 
 
 A couple of hours later Alfred Challis paid a cabman a 
 sliilling too much, to avoid discussion, through his con- 
 fessional guichet overhead, and escaped from a guillotine — 
 thanks to its momentary forbearance — in a steady shower 
 of rain that had heard that the wind had fallen, and caught 
 at the opportunity to come down. It was lucky he had a 
 waterproof on, though he had only to negotiate the garden's 
 length to reach shelter and discover liis latchkey. 
 
 He was not in the best of humours ; all the more so that 
 Miss Arkroyd, who was to have accompanied the Ross 
 Tarbets, had been unable to do so on account of a sprained 
 ankle — a trifle in itself, but warranted to become serious 
 if walked on. 
 
 Seeing the envelope after lighting his candle, he opened 
 it and read the note. His comments, in their order, were 
 a " Hm — hm !" of concern and apprehension, another with 
 some impatience in it, a grunt with nothing else, and a 
 suppressed " Damn the woman !" He read it twice, and 
 again, and went upstairs noiselessly. 
 
 Marianne was not asleep. She was wide awake, and 
 wholesomely disposed to trust her husband, and tell the 
 events of the evening at whatever risk. It would have to 
 come out some time. Besides, the relief of knowing, either 
 way ! However, to tell him as natural sequence to an 
 enquiry how things had gone vvdth her was one tiling ; to 
 rush the position another. She could not bring herself to 
 call out to him — so little concerned about her as to make 
 no such enquiry, and still scintillating, as it were, with 
 
 VOL. I. 20
 
 306 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 sparks from the brilliancies of his evening's entertainment 
 — to come into her room and hear the story. No, let him 
 go — him and his Grosvenor Squares and Countesses ! 
 
 Meanwhile he, however little weight he attached to any- 
 thing Charlotte Eldridge said, conceived that he was on 
 the safe side in paying attention to what she enjoined about 
 a patient whom she had seen, and he had not. She might 
 have been more definite about the nature of the attack. 
 It was just like her to make a mystery of it. But it was 
 evidently better to take her hint not to disturb his wife — 
 now at near one in the morning ! Challis made as little 
 noise as possible, and got to bed in his own room, next to 
 hers, without opening the door between lest he should 
 wake her. 
 
 This was the text of Mrs. Charlotte's letter : 
 
 " She is much better, and will sleep. John and I both 
 think you need not be the least alarmed. She has been 
 too much excited lately, but will be all right now. Be 
 very careful not to disturb her when you go up. I will try 
 to come round in the morning. C. E."
 
 CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Lizarann's deferred hopes of being allowed to rejoin her 
 Daddy made her heart sick, but they never ceased to be 
 hopes. No undercurrent of despair made itself felt. If 
 Teacher's reassuring tones had not been sufficient, were 
 there not the gentleman's, known to Lizarann's direct 
 simplicity as Mr. Yorick — a designation remaining uncon- 
 tradicted in his laughing acceptance of it. But he was 
 going back to his own Rectory, in order that Gus should 
 be once more in harness at St. Vulgate's — his own proper 
 field of labour — during the approaching Holy Week. The 
 invalid was enormously better ; so he himself said. 
 
 However, Mr. Yorick was destined before his departure 
 to put the crowning comer-stone on the fabric of Lizarann's 
 affection for himself. 
 
 " Now, Miss Coupland," said he, " you sit still ! And 
 don't kick ! And then tell me where you suppose you are 
 going to be taken to-day." 
 
 Lizarann was cautious — wouldn't commit herself. 
 " Who's a-going to tight me ?" she asked, to get a clue. 
 
 " Me," said Mr. Yorick, falhng to the grammatical level 
 of his company. " I'm going to take you, as soon as 
 ever you've guessed where. But only one guess, mind !" 
 
 Lizarann thought this shabby. But then, after alL 
 when there is only one guess worth making, you may just 
 as well use it up and have done with it. She looked from 
 one of the faces that was watching to the other, and back ; 
 then risked her guess. " To Daddy in the Sospital !" she 
 fairly shouted. But, alas ! — disappointment was in store 
 for her. 
 
 "No ! Not Daddy in the Sospital. Guess again." 
 
 " Oh, Yorick, how can you ? Playing with the child ! 
 I/shouldn't have thought you could be so wicked. No, 
 Lizararm dear, don't you beHeve him ! Daddy's out of 
 
 SOI 20—2
 
 308 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 the Hospital, and you're to go and see him. There ! . . . 
 I'm telhng the truth, child !" Eor Lizarann, bewildered, 
 still glances from one to the other, 
 
 " That's it, Lizarann. Not Daddy in the Sospital, but 
 Baddy out of the Sospital. Now wrap up warm, and 
 we'll go at once." A wild shriek of delight, an " undue 
 subordination " of limbs, as in pictures of a debased 
 period, and a rush for wraps, is followed, we are sorry to 
 say, by some coughing. There is no such thing as flawless 
 event any^^here. 
 
 " Oh no ! — it won't do her any harm to go out," says 
 Teacher. " Dr. Ferris said it might do her good if it got 
 mild. Now, Lizarann ! — Mr. Yorick's ready." For this 
 Monday, kno-wm to the Rev. Gus as " Annunciation," and 
 to most of his flock as Lady Day — a dreadful day when 
 your rent isn't rea^dy — had come as a herald of early 
 spring, and a behef in violets was in the air. 
 
 " How far mustn't we go to the Sospital ?" Lizarann 
 speaks obscurely, but the meaning is clear to her con- 
 ductor. How long is the road we are not going to the 
 Hospital on ? — surely that's clear. 
 
 " How far is it to Daddy ? Daddy's at home." And, 
 surely enough, when Mr. Yorick comes to Tallack Street 
 he turns the corner. This bewilders Lizarann. 
 
 " But Aunt Stingy, she's took a place," she says. She 
 is not certain of the exact sense of her words. The place 
 might be Badajoz ; or a Chancellorship of something, with 
 a portfoho. But it doesn't matter ! In either case. Aunt 
 Stingy has left her home desolate — cookless ! Again 
 Lizarann is sympathetically understood. 
 
 " Your Daddy's being seen to, IMiss Coupland. So he 
 won't starve. Here we are !" And it is actually true ! 
 Lizarann is back in the home she has been eight weeks away 
 from. For although of late the cliild had been allowed out, 
 cautiously, no expedition had covered the half-mile be- 
 tween the school and Tallack Street. It is actually true 
 that she is back there now, and wild with dehght on the 
 knee her Daddy still has left for her — in a rapture of tears 
 and laughter that can just allow — but only just — the 
 moderation of deportment called for when knees but lately 
 
 '
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 309 
 
 the subjects of comminuted fractures are sat upon, even 
 by very light weights. 
 
 Jim was garrulous about the Hospital, and the kindness 
 and attention he had received there. " Yes, master, I 
 was main sorrj'' to come away, one side o' lookin' at it. 
 I'll carry the doctor gentleman and Nurse Lucy in my 
 mind a long day on. Many's the time I said to myself 
 what I'd be tellin' of 'em to the little lass, home again. 
 There was a bit o' sameness, as might be, when you think 
 of it, and I got fixed uneasy-like about the lass. But, 
 dear Lard bless you ! — there was a many there worse off 
 than me. Why, there was that pore chap you see, next 
 bed off on the right ! How might you suppose he come 
 there 1" 
 
 " Don't know, Jim ; give it up ! How was it ?" Mr. 
 Yorick does all the conversation. Lizarann will find her 
 tongue presently, when she and Daddy are alone. At 
 present she merely nestles to him, speechless, but bHssful. 
 Jim pursues his topic : 
 
 " As I made it out, master, it was this sort o' way : It 
 was a kind o' small-arms factory, and there was two young 
 wenches in the finishin' shop o' one mind about him. So 
 it came to making ch'ice, for him. And one o' them, by 
 name Clara, she warns him if she catches him sweet- 
 hearting with her shopmate, she'd just mark him. Both 
 decent girls, ye see ! And she was all as good as her word, 
 with a little pot of vitrol, right in his eyes ! And he run, 
 roaring mad with pain, and was caught in the machinery, 
 and made a spoiled man of, as I reckon, all liis days. 
 Name of Linklater." 
 
 " What a terrible bu.siness ! And it may have been he 
 wasn't to blame, either." 
 
 " No — pore chap ! He'd just no consolation, as you 
 might say. I count myself a well-off man, set against 
 him. Just wait a bit, master, and see me when I'm clear 
 of them crutches. Once I get to use my stick again, 
 anybody'll say, to see me : ' Why, there's a man ain't got 
 anything the matter with him !' Nor yet I shan't have, 
 to speak of !" 
 
 Athelstan Taylor could not help comparing Jim's reso- 
 lute optimism — poor crushed wreck that he was ! — with
 
 310 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 his sister's aggressive meekness and its pious claim to 
 resignation or uncomplaining acquiescence in what was 
 really a most happy release, though paraded as a cruel 
 blow of Fate. But he could not stay to chat. He had to 
 get back to St. Vulgate's ; have a talk about the local 
 flock, chiefly goats, with his friend, who had come home 
 the evening before ; pack liis trunk, and get to Euston by 
 one- thirty, with or without lunch. So he had only a few 
 more hurried words with Jim. 
 
 " You'll think of what I was saying to you, Jim ?" 
 
 " Sure, master !" 
 
 " And the lassie wiU just trot back to Miss Fosse tt, 
 before it's dark. She'd better ; the house might be cold 
 here. Won't you, Lizarann ?" Lizarann \vill, honour 
 bright ! " And how about those kisses I'm to take to my 
 own little girls 1" Payable on demand, three crossed to 
 the account of Phoebe, three to Joan ; both names being 
 now familiar to di-awer. They are very loud — those kisses ! 
 Mr. Yorick says farewell and goes. Lizarann and her 
 Daddy are again alone together. Eight whole weeks ! 
 
 Oh, the hours that had seemed weeks, and the days that 
 had seemed years, of waiting — waiting for this moment. 
 And here it was ! Daddy himself — come back out of that 
 mysterious Hospital, where Lizarann had never been to see 
 him ! No wonder Lizararm did not know where to begin ! 
 
 " Well, then, little lass ! They haven't cut the little 
 lass's tongue out amongst 'em ?" A vehement head- 
 shake of denial precedes the first of the many things 
 Lizarann can select, at random, from the multitude she 
 has been resolving to tell Daddy all through this dreary 
 period of privation. 
 
 " Teacher's new cat's black all over, only wliite on the 
 stomach. Yass ! And four of the kittens was drownded." 
 Jim's sympathies are all ready for Teacher's cat's kittens. 
 But he is not further called on to show them, for the child 
 deserts the kittens almost instantly with "Oh, Daddy ! — 
 they took you to the Sospital." 
 
 " Coorse they did ! How many policeman was there, 
 lassy ?" 
 
 " There was free I see first. And one he turned back 
 down the road. Only there was men, as well as policemen."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 311 
 
 " Chaps ?" 
 
 " Yass ! And there was the boys. And there was a 
 woman. And there was another woman. Only not 
 sober." So she didn't count, that one ; was civilly dis- 
 qualified, as it were. But was the sober one making her- 
 self of use ? — Jim enquires. "She wasn't finding any 
 fault," is all the testimony Lizarann can give. It seems to 
 imply that the drunken one was indicting the executive. 
 Lizarann finishes up her report : " Then there was Mother 
 Groves, and the 'ot-chestnut stall at the corner, and the 
 Young Varmint." For this is the name — no less — by 
 which Frederick Hawkins is known to Lizarann and her 
 Dadd3^ 
 
 " So there they all was, the bihng of 'em," said Jim. 
 " And there was Daddy, he'd got himself under a cart, and 
 was a bit the worse by it. And Ms little lass, she come 
 and kissed him, for to cheer him up — hay, lassy ? Nor 
 never cried, nor made no noise, like he told her not to." 
 
 Lizarann felt proud and happy. But she could not endure 
 a position with the slightest false pretence in it. "I did 
 cried, too," she said, " when I got so far as Dartley Street. 
 And the boy, he says not to water-cart." 
 
 " The Young Varmint ?" 
 
 " Yass ! He toldited me his nime, he did. Hawkins — 
 Frederick — Hawkins." Lizarann gives the exact words the 
 boy had said. " And he says not to water-cart because of 
 his aunt and uncle. Took to the Sospital quite flat they 
 was, and begun singing a fortnight after !" Jim made 
 concession to the Young Varmint — went so far as to say that 
 he would not warm his hide for him this time, pr'aps ! 
 But he spoke without confidence of the hke abstention being 
 justified in the future. 
 
 " And then the lassie come home," said he. " And who 
 come to the door V 
 
 " Only me, Daddy !" 
 
 " Ah ! — but t'other side — who come ?" 
 
 " Uncle Bob didn't come to the door, only he set it just 
 on the jar for me to push." Clearly " coming to a 
 door " involves opening it wide for friends, or conferring 
 with strangers to learn their reason for knocking or ringing. 
 He who takes letters from a letter-box does not go to the
 
 312 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 door, even if he rushes downstairs like a madman when the 
 postman's knock comes. 
 
 You may be sure that Lizarann's narrative that followed 
 was full of little niceties of language, as spoken in Tallack 
 Street. But you have had all the substance, and it need 
 not be repeated in a new form. 
 
 Jim interspersed the story of the suppression of his 
 delirious brother-in-law with exclamations of applause. 
 Lizarann deserved what the players call " a hand " now 
 and again for the vivacity of her descriptive report of the 
 knife scene, with its dramatic ending of the application of 
 the spent lucifer-match to Uncle Bob's hand. " He just 
 give one scroatch, and there he was !" The introduction 
 of a new self-explanatory word into the language alone 
 deserved recognition. But Jim was not concerned with 
 this. The conduct of Athelstan Taylor in a difficult posi- 
 tion took his attention off minor points. 
 
 " I could have named the sart of man he was," said he, 
 speaking half to himself, " from the feel of his hand, and 
 maybe no more than just a ' Good-marning, mate !' by the 
 way. And — but to think of it ! — him a parson .'" Jim 
 couldn't get over this at all. He dwelt on the unfitness of 
 the arrangement : " Now, if they'd 'a made pore Bob a 
 parson, it might 'a broke him of his habit, and we'd not 
 have had a bad miss of him on our side." He seemed to go 
 on thinking of the subject in all its aspects — possibly of the 
 utilisation of ecclesiastical preferments as an antidote to 
 drunkenness. But his fingers kept wandering about his 
 little girl's face and head, as if to detect the change eight 
 weeks had made in it. 
 
 " Uncle Bob's dead," said she, getting closer to say it, 
 in a dropped, awe- struck voice. 
 
 " Ah — he's dead ! He might have turned over a better 
 day's work, mayhap ! But Lard ! — if you come to that, 
 what a many of us mightn't ! Poor Bob !" 
 
 " Does it hurt, Daddy ?" 
 
 " Does what hurt, lassie ?" 
 
 " Being dead." 
 
 " I reckoned you might mean my old leg. . . . No — it 
 don't hurt, bless you ! — not good little lassies, like mine. 
 Other folks' I couldn't say about. They do say the Devil
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 313 
 
 gets some on 'em, now and again. But he ain't a sartainty, 
 himself. Though in coorse he manages all he can see his 
 way to." That is to say that, unless handicapped by 
 absolute non-existence, Satan might be trusted to do his 
 best to get all bad little lassies. 
 
 Lizarann knew her catechism, and all that was necessary 
 for her salvation, as school-knowledge. But she could not 
 help being curious about these things as actual facts — 
 knowledge-knowledge, one might say. Daddy could be 
 relied on. Why not go straight to the point ? So atter 
 some mere conversation-making about whether Mr. Winkle- 
 son had ever actually seen the Devil, Lizarann did so. 
 " Has he got Uncle Bob ?" she asked. 
 
 Her father's answer was not consistent with his previous 
 expressions of opinion. " Never you fear for him, lass ! 
 The Devil don't take a poor chap for making mistakes with 
 his grog. And as for his handling that knife a bit too free, 
 I doubt the liquor had just got the mastery of him. And 
 then, you knov/, lass, a man ain't himself when that 
 happens. Ye may make your mind easy about Bob." 
 
 So Lizarann felt no further disquiet. Perhaps she was 
 unconsciously soothed by observing the differences of 
 opinion among her seniors — Mr. Winkleson, Teacher, and 
 Daddy. The last was most hkely to know, and gave the 
 pleasantest answer to the problem. 
 
 " And there was my little lass out in the snow in her 
 night-shimmee. To think of that ! And her Daddy all 
 the while no more use than a turned turtle !" This had to 
 be explained ; and the continuity of the conversation was 
 risked, ov.ang to Lizarann's womanly pity for turtles on 
 their backs and helpless. However, this very pity caused 
 reaction towards the previous questions, as Jim's situation 
 had been no better than that of the turtles. Lizarann had 
 to cry a little over this, and then renewed her petition — 
 previous applications having been met by evasion or post- 
 ponement — to actually see the wooden substitute for a 
 limb that, in spite of its boasted efficacy, compelled her 
 Daddy to sit on a chair with more or less disguise of coat or 
 blanket over it, both limbs being preferably kept horizontal 
 for the present. But she might look at it, sure, might 
 Lizarann ; and, indeed, anyone would have thought, to
 
 314 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 see Jim exhibiting the business-end of a very new wooden 
 leg, that some great improvement on a previous unsatis- 
 factory condition had been attained. The httle woman 
 was incredulous about this ; and, suspecting guile, put her 
 Daddy through a severe cross-examination. 
 
 " 'Sposin' you was obliged to it, Daddy ; 'sposin' you had 
 to walk all the way up Tallack Street, and all the way acrost 
 Cazenove Street, and all the way acrost Trott Street to 
 Blading Street where the cart Avas . . . ?" 
 
 " Lard, lassie ! — I could do it on my head, as the saying 
 is, any minute o' the week !" But Jim demurs to an 
 actual performance — says the doctor don't allow any tricks 
 to be played. Lizarann gives the point up ; but, oh dear ! — 
 how dreadfully afraid she feels that she is being prac- 
 tised on, and that in reality this shiny, well-turned, clean- 
 leather-strapped contraption is, after all, no better — even 
 perhaps worse — than an ordinary human foot. She will — 
 she must ! — elicit the truth somehow. 
 
 " Daddy !" 
 
 " Lassie !" 
 
 " When you was out on the yard-arm, and the wind was 
 a-freshenin' up from the south . . ." 
 
 "To be sure, lass ! Freshening to a three-quarter gale, 
 and none too little canvas on her. . . . Easy ahead, lassie !" 
 Jim is only helping the memory of the well-worn story, and 
 the child accepts the prompting. 
 
 "... None too little canvas on her. And Peter Cort- 
 right and Marmaduke Flyn, they was both on the mainyard 
 reefin' alongside. And Peter Cortright he sings out to 
 look . . ." 
 
 " Ah ! — and your Daddy, he looked, and there he see 
 her, the Dutchman, carrying all sail afore the wind. . . . 
 Well, little lass, and what o' that 1" 
 
 " When you was then, 'sposin' you'd only had a wooden 
 leg !" 
 
 Jim's big laugh comes ; and so lost is he in his little lass, 
 so free from all thought of his own great privation, even in 
 the face of the bygone time, that he can make it a heart- 
 whole laugh and never fhnch. 
 
 " 'Sposin' I'd only had a wooden leg ? Well — as I 
 reckon it — I shouldn't have taken much notice. Not for
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 315 
 
 one such ! If you'd 'a named two wooden legs now, lassie ! 
 That might have constitooted a poor kind of holt on a 
 slippery yard. But I might have made a shift to do, even 
 at that." 
 
 Lizarann was silenced, but not convinced. She resolved 
 to thresh the subject out with Bridgetticks, whom she had 
 secretly resolved to call upon on her way home. Bridget 
 might know nothing about wooden legs, but she could 
 cite a parallel experience, having herself walked on her 
 brother's stelts, what he made out of two broomsticks 
 and the foot' old nyled on, and mide syfe with a scrop of 
 narrer iron hooping. She would refer it to Bridgetticks 
 whether her brother — or a Circus, for that matter — could 
 walk upon a bare yard, of which her own image was akin 
 to a yard-measure, with a pair of stelts. If she, Bridget, 
 felt confident of her brother's powers, no doubt Jim's 
 assurance of his own might have been well grounded. 
 
 " Doesn't Aunt Stingy come for to see to you, Daddy ?" 
 she asked anxiously. For she couldn't see no sign neither 
 of breakfast, nor yet of dinner, nor yet of supper. 
 
 " No — lassie ! Your aunt, she's got to 'tend on some- 
 body else, away off to Wimbledon Common ; and these 
 here Simses — or Groombridges ; I didn't catch the name 
 right — she's got a short let to, are mostly away on a job. 
 So she's packed together her bit of furniture, like you see 
 it, and Mrs. Hacker, she's so obliging as to give me her 
 time and attention ; 'cos the master, ye see, he put the 
 matter in trim for me. One don't look for hospital fare 
 all the days of one's life." 
 
 Lizarann had heard where her aunt's " place " was, but 
 her experience of places was of such as could be got to by 
 half-past seven in the morning and come back to sleep at 
 home. She thought now that she saw her way to enlighten- 
 ment. 
 
 " Is where Aunt Stingy' s gone where Mr. Winkleson 
 lives ?" 
 
 " Never a bit of it, lassy ! He's by name Wilkins — 
 Wilkinson Wilkins. This here's Wimbledon, a place with 
 a Common to it. I went there once, for to see a review. 
 I wouldn't mind going to see one again, and take the little 
 lass." Perhaps he meant that liis child's sight would
 
 316 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 serve for both ; but more probably it was an instance of 
 the strange way blind folk forget their own blindness. 
 " Your aunty, she's come over once or twice, to pack up 
 her traps and make straight, but I've got to put my depen- 
 dence on Mrs. Hacker, so far as I can't shift for myself." i 
 
 Lizarann derived from this and what followed one broad 
 impression that the history of No. 27, Tallack Street, had 
 reached the end of a chapter — the one that contained her 
 own biography to date. Another, that Aunt Stingy would 
 be much less in e\adence for the future. Another, that a 
 new force had come into her life and Daddy's — a welcome 
 one, connected with Miss Fossett and Mr. Yorick. She 
 had a happy guardian-angel sensation about this, and 
 took it to her bosom with only one slight misgiving — that 
 they were too easily duped by that ridiculous little pipe of 
 Dr. Ferris's, that would hold up like a candlestick certainly, 
 and you could blow through if he let you, but that ^ was 
 impotent for every other purpose. 
 
 If this story could ask its reader a question at this point, 
 it would be : " Have you not noticed that Lizarann has 
 scarcely coughed, all through this long interview with her 
 Daddy ?" It was the case, anyhow, and rather points 
 to the truth of what a physician once said to ourself, the 
 writer : " If in the early stages of lung-disease doses of 
 unalloyed joy, of perfect happiness, could be administered 
 three times a day to the patient, the later stages would be 
 much rarer than they are at present." Certainly Lizarann's 
 happiness had almost touched rapture, doubts about the 
 wooden leg being the only alloy in the pure gold. And she 
 certainly had coughed mighty little. Perhaps Dr. Ferris 
 would have known what claim Lizarann had to be con- 
 sidered a case of the kind referred to. 
 
 The delightful time had to come to an end, and Lizarann 
 found herself compelled to say good-bye. Daddy would 
 have it so, although darkness was a long way off yet awhile. 
 So she departed, bidden first to go to Mrs. Hacker's, and 
 say to that good lady, that she was on no account to be in 
 any tirrit to come away from her own supper to attend to 
 Jim's, for that he had got his pipe, Lizarann having helped 
 him to light it, — a thing to rejoice at, after that one 
 defective usage of an Institution otherwise perfect — and
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 317 
 
 wasn't in any driving hurry. This message Lizarann gave 
 fairly honestly, in an interview with Mrs. Hacker, which — 
 being repeated to Jim — may be held responsible for some 
 borrowed phrases used lately to describe impressions on 
 her mind of his surroundings. But she was not uneasy 
 about him ; her faith in ]\Ir. Yorick was too great for that. 
 
 Having given her message, it did not strike her as a 
 serious transgression to pay a visit to Bridgetticks. The 
 injunction to go straight home covered the line of road — 
 did not deal with continuity of movement. That seemed to 
 her a just interpretation of it. But of course not stopping 
 only five minutes ! 
 
 So she went next to the door of Bridgetticks, and shouted 
 through its keyhole, in preference to knocking or ringing. 
 But Bridget was assisting her mother at the washtub, and 
 up to her elbers in suds ; so she sent an emissary to the door 
 instead of going herself. He was very young, and was 
 eating an apple ; he was, in fact, too young and crude to 
 be trusted to do like he was told ; and he put a false con- 
 struction on his mission, endeavouring to spit some of his 
 apple through the keyhole, with a mistaken hospitality. 
 His name was, as pronounced, Halexandericks. His bursts 
 of laughter at each new failure of his attempts on the key- 
 hole obscured the voice that was calling through it. He 
 had a vacuous though not unpleasant laugh. 
 
 " I'll let you know directly, if you don't open that door," 
 shouted his sister. She gave close particulars of the means 
 she would resort to, but without effect. So she onsoapied 
 the suds off of her arms, which she then placed akimbo, 
 and went herself ; not \vithout a certain dancing effect, in 
 consonance with a rhythmic utterance difficult to class as 
 either song or recitation. Its words were certainly, " Waxy 
 diddle-iddle-iddle, high-gee-wo !" ending in a pounce on 
 Alexander, who spat his last piece of apple in his captor's 
 face with a fiendish crow of delight. She wiped it off on 
 his costume without comment. 
 
 " I seen my Daddy," said Lizarann, beaming, when the 
 door was opened. 
 
 " I seen him afore ever you did," said Bsidget, not to be 
 outdone. " I seen him fetched along in a cab, last night 
 just on seven-thirty. I seen him holped into the houre."
 
 318 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " You story !" said Lizarann, hurt. " He can help him- 
 self, he can. He don't call for no help. Who was helping 
 of him ?" 
 
 " Clapham Church Parsing — same as see your uncle Mr. 
 Steptoe drownded — and rilewye-stytion cabman with 
 rihngs for trunks atop. Three thousand six hundred and 
 thirty- two. Got him indoors they did." 
 
 Lizarann felt inclined to cry ; this was a throw-back ! 
 But she wasn't one to give in easily. " My Daddy says 
 he could swarm up the rigging as soon as not," said she. 
 " Only the doctor he says for to keep quiet a bit, owing to 
 prudence." When Lizarann repeated phrases lately heard, 
 you would have thought, to listen to her, she was quite a 
 big girl. 
 
 Now, it must not be supposed that Lizaraim and Bridget- 
 ticks had not met during the past eight weeks. On the 
 contrary, visits had been arranged, by request, even before 
 Lizarann had been thought plenty well enough for school, 
 only not to fret herself. These were the terms in which 
 Miss Fossett's Anne confirmed that lady's opinion, and 
 sanctioned a continued study of arithmetic and caligraphy. 
 But intercourse during school-hours is fettered by formula ; 
 and when there's carpets and the bed made and all, you 
 have to set quiet, and it's not the same thing. So when 
 these two found themselves once more in their old haunt, 
 it was as though a ceremonial padlock had been removed 
 from their tongues. Lizarann's improved exterior — for 
 Teacher and Anne had reconstructed it — clashed a little 
 with Bridgettickses ; but the principle held good. Here, on 
 Mr. 'Icks's doorstep, when an imputation of falsehood 
 as an exordium to any reply seemed natural and genial, 
 neither speaker felt bound to check her inspirations. 
 Lizarann and Bridgetticks were themselves again. 
 
 They sat on the doorstep, cloze or no ! — this referred 
 to Lizarann's frock — and Bridget retained her younger 
 brother, perhaps for shght rehearsals of the vengeance she 
 had in store for him ; he was that troublesome ! Bridget 
 smelt of soap and warm steam. 
 
 " You wented on stelts, and wooden legs is better than 
 stelts !" Lizarann's uneasiness rankles, and she longs for 
 public acknowledgment of her Daddy's prospects of re- 
 habilitation.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 319 
 
 " I shouldn't 'a said so," Bridget answered. " Stelts 
 you catches hold atop. Wooden legs is balancin'. Stelts 
 is your hands as well as your legs. Wooden legs you're 
 stood-on-end and pitches yourself over, just as like as not. 
 Not onlest you have crutches. Your Daddy he 's crutches, 
 he has. I see 'em myself !" Lizarann could say nothing 
 about Job's comforters, if only because, on the one occa- 
 sion when she had heard them mentioned — by Mr. Winkle- 
 son — she had supposed them to be woollen ones. Besides, 
 she was interested on another point. 
 
 " My Daddy hasn't no scrutches," said she. She had 
 caught their name, without understanding it, when her 
 father used it ; and now decided on denying them pro- 
 visionally, pending inquiry into their nature. " What's 
 a scrutch ?" 
 
 " Oh, you little ignorance !" said Bridget. " Never to 
 know what a crutch is, at your age !" She appealed to her 
 infant brother to say, directly minute, what a crutch was, 
 or she would take advantage of his unprotected youth to 
 smack him. His reply, needing interpretation, was that 
 it was a penny-farden. Halexandericks had evidently a 
 turn for negotiation. His sister cast him off, telhng him 
 to go and ply by himself on the pivement, and then re- 
 sumed : " If you'd 'a knowed 'em when you seed 'em, you 
 might have kep' your eye open, and took note." 
 
 Lizarann, skipping the unnecessary, immediately re- 
 plied : " Daddy said they was second-hand, and to go back 
 when done with." 
 
 Bridget skipped some more. " Very well, then ! — you 
 see them cross-pieces for the 'ands ? . . . Very well, then ! 
 — there's a lather pad for under the shoulder-j'int, and 
 they're n'isy going down the street. Now don't you go 
 to say I never told you." There was nothing really unkind 
 or overbearing in Bridget's peculiar manner ; it was only 
 the strong working of a leading mind. She was, in fact, 
 a very clever child, being less than two years her friend's 
 senior. 
 
 She saw that Lizararm was downcast by hearing of the 
 crutches, never having rightly appreciated the position, 
 and set herself good-naturedly to consolation. " It's 
 always tender where your leg's took off," said she, " and
 
 320 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 you want something to ketch the weight, walking." She 
 spoke as if she had often had legs off. " But my father, 
 he says it's nothing to get the hump about, with a little 
 aecommodatin'. And I seen a man with one leg and one 
 crutch took two coppers to tike iiim to the stytion." 
 Lizarann brightened visibly. "' You see what your Daddy 
 he'll look like when he's been a month in the country !" 
 
 Obviously this was repetition of sometliing said by an 
 older mouth. " Who toldited anj^thing about the coun- 
 try ?" said Lizarann. 
 
 " Clapham Church Parsing. Him as see Mr. Steptoe 
 drownded. I heard him telhng. ' You see,' — he says to 
 your Daddy — ' you see what you'll feel Hke when you've 
 been a month in the country,' he says. ' You do just as 
 I tell you,' he says, ' and I'll make it aU square for you,' 
 he says. And then he says you to go too." 
 
 " Me !" Lizarann exclaimed, open-mouthed with amaze- 
 ment. And then Bridgetticks gave more particulars of 
 what really was a bout of careful eavesdropping on her 
 part, she having succeeded in overhearing a good deal of 
 conversation between Jim and the Rector of Royd, who 
 had accompanied him from the Hospital the night before. 
 It pointed to a scheme by wliich Lizarann was to be taken 
 in at the Rectory, and carefully nurtured — treated, in fact, 
 for a disease which had existence only on the authority 
 of that IjHing Httle stethoscope of Dr. Ferris' s ! However, 
 as long as no project involved a new separation from Daddy, 
 what did Lizarann care ? 
 
 Besides, look at the new exjaerience of a world she had 
 been so httle in — it was glorious to think of ! She was 
 not so much dazzled as she might have been had every 
 minute of her life been passed— for instance — in Drury 
 Lane. She and Bridget had both benefited by school- 
 treats. " I've been in the country," she said. " It's at 
 Dorking." 
 
 But Bridget had a larger horizon. " There's more sorts 
 than that," said she, " without taking count of foring parts. 
 Like you'll find when you done some more geograph3^" 
 Lizarann felt awestruck. 
 
 But it was getting along towards six, and she knew she 
 ought to be re^jorting herself to Teacher. Perhaps she
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 321 
 
 would have delayed still later, if she had not become 
 anxious to ask that lady point-blank about this fascinating 
 bucolic scheme. As it was, she was received with some 
 displeasure — on her own behalf entirely — and decided to 
 postpone investigations. We, for our part, have never 
 believed that that extra half- hour of exposure to the even- 
 ing air made in the long run the slightest difference. 
 
 VOL. I. 21
 
 CHAPTER XXII 
 
 If there had been no cause of irritation between Alfred 
 Challis and his wife about his relations with Grosvenor 
 Square, it would have mattered much less what he kept 
 back from her of his previous history. And if he had taken 
 her fully into his confidence about the story of his early 
 marriage with her sister, his relations with Grosvenor 
 Square would have been much less capable of embitterment 
 and misinterpretation. But his palpable concealment of 
 Heaven-knew-what from one who conceived she had of all 
 others the fullest right to know it, played the part, in this 
 domestic misunderstanding, of poor Desdemona's bad faith 
 towards her father. " She has deceived her father, and may 
 thee," said Brabantio. 
 
 Could Marianne have knowTi what Heaven knew, she 
 would probably have held her husband blameless, if ill- 
 judging ; though she might have felt very httle leniency 
 towards her sister for contracting a marriage unknowTi to 
 her family. But the ground was not in order for the 
 so^^ing of a crop of explanation, to be reaped as a harvest 
 of reconciliation. It was cumbered with the clover her 
 husband was supposed to be enjoying at the Acropolis Club 
 and elsewhere, and choked with a creeping weed of Jealousy 
 unacknowledged. And as the trivial things of life are 
 always the ones that play the biggest parts, so that un- 
 fortunate resolution not to disturb his wife, when Alfred 
 Challis came home from the Club dinner, had to answer 
 for quite ten times its fair share of the events that followed. 
 No doubt her silence was a little vindictive — it would have 
 been so easy to give a hint that she was awake — but the 
 truth is it had very little to do with the matter. What 
 had a great deal to do with it was the fact that Mr. Challis 
 had not been enjoying himself. Had it been otherwise, he 
 would have felt apologetic ; the monitor he would not admit 
 
 322
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 323 
 
 was his conscience would have prescribed amends to 
 Marianne for contriving to be so jolly without her. But 
 she had no guess that her Grosvenor Square enemy was 
 laid up with a sprained ankle, any more than he had that 
 the new cook had been the means of bringing to light a 
 great deal — the worst half in disjointed fragments — of 
 a story his good if mistaken intentions had concealed. 
 For, needless to say, the actual story was still very 
 obscure to her ; and Mrs. Eldridge, though clever enough, 
 was a biassed assistant in its elucidation. 
 
 Lest it should still be equally obscure to the reader, let 
 him note its broad facts as follows : Edward Keith Home 
 married, or went through a marriage ceremony, with Kate 
 Verrall, a governess at the house of a coal-merchant named 
 Hallock. Six weeks later he went away to New York, 
 promising an early return ; there was some pretence of 
 winding up a relative's affairs. He repudiated his wife 
 shortly after ; as she became convinced, and as Challis, 
 his friend, also believed, on legally good grounds. As 
 we have already said, Challis may have met conviction 
 half-way, being in love with the girl himself. Of course, it 
 was he whose name Mrs. Steptoe had remembered wrongly 
 as Harris. And, equally of course, the miserable reprobate 
 of Athelstan Taylor's painful experience at St. Brides was 
 Home, who succeeded with what was left of his mouth in 
 nearly articulating his true name rightly. " Kay Thorne " 
 was close to the truth, considering the circumstances. 
 This story is fortunate in having very little to do with this 
 man ; as his young wife, or victim, may also have been in 
 having for her only adviser a youth with a strong interest 
 in urging her passive acceptance of her position. If only 
 half the betrayed girls in the world could have such an 
 adviser ready to hand ! Alas ! — how seldom is one found 
 with the courage to say, " Think yourself at least in luck, 
 silly girl, that you are not fettered for life to this lout or 
 devil ! Hug to your heart tliis one consolation, that though 
 you have bought your experience of him, and what he calls 
 love, dear, you have escaped scot-free of the blessed sacra- 
 ment of marriage !" Too often the poor thing finds herself 
 alone in the desert — the desert where correct expressions 
 grow — sin, and shame, and penitence, and so on — and where 
 
 21—2
 
 324 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 marriage-lines and marriage-settlements make oases, from 
 which she is excluded, for the Grundy family to breed in. 
 
 Perhaps Challis had a concealed motive for his decision 
 when, at the time he married Kate's sister, he made up his 
 mind to treat the whole story as a sealed book. But, even 
 with none, was he wrong, knowing that his wife elect was 
 quite convinced that no belonging of hers had ever set foot 
 outside her particular Grundy oasis ? Remember, too, 
 that he was only pursuing the course he would have held 
 it a point of honour to pursue if he had never married 
 Marianne at all. Why should his marriage with her make 
 it incumbent on him to dig up a story that his Avife had 
 already passed years in ignorance of, without any living 
 creature being perceptibly the worse ? No doubt Mrs. 
 Eldridge would have said, with a portentous gush of deep 
 conviction, " She ought to have been told." But why ? 
 
 At least, the story shows that Challis himself had nothing 
 disgraceful to conceal, and that all his actions were dictated 
 by consideration for others. It is more than likely that 
 an explanation, had the position favoured it, would have 
 ended — if not by placing him in the position of a hero — at 
 least by a discharge Mith a first-class certificate from the 
 high court of Morality. But the atmosphere teemed with 
 suggestions of malpractice undefined, and the master-hand of 
 Mrs. Eldridge made the most of them. 
 
 No explanation took place between Challis and Marianne 
 at the only time when it was easily possible — on the morning 
 after we saw them last. Explanations are like straw- 
 berries — bottled up, they spoil. Now, whatever chancfe 
 there would have been of Challis hearing of the photograph 
 mystery and Mrs. Steptoe's memories was cancelled by the 
 malign arrival on the scene of Mrs. Eldridge and her John, 
 bound for his daily toil at St. Martin's-le-Grand. So, you 
 see, it Avas early in the morning. 
 
 Charlotte had been so uneasy about dear Marianne that 
 she felt she must come over to find out. It was so entirely 
 unexpected. She had been laughing and joking the minute 
 before. So Charlotte thought fit to say, and Challis, to 
 whom it was said privately, detected a flavour of an un- 
 asked-for assurance that Marianne was cheerful in his 
 absence. " It " had come quite suddenly, when Marianne
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 325 
 
 went away to speak to Martha. Challis had no means of 
 guessing what " it " had been, except Mrs. Eldridge's note, 
 and a certain demeanour of his wife's, which no doubt had 
 to answer for an expression of Master Bob's, in secret con- 
 clave with his sister Cat. According to him, his mater 
 was savage, if you Hked, this morning. Chalhs had gone 
 to his wife's room to ask about " it " as soon as he heard 
 that the servant had abated ; and had been told, coldly, 
 that nothing had been the matter that Marianne knew of. 
 His production of Mrs. Eldridge's note was met by, " That's 
 just like Charlotte !" He waited a few moments for 
 counter-inquiry about himself, rather anxious to tell what 
 a failure the Acropolis had turned out ; but no curiosity 
 was sliOMTi, and he went back to his own room to dress, 
 saying nothing further. Had he been Avise, he would have 
 sat on the bed in his pyjamas, and said he meant to stop 
 there until the mystery was accounted for. 
 
 Matters got definitely worse when Mrs. Eldridge, whose 
 invasion occurred just at the end of breakfast, took ad- 
 vantage of a chance exit of Marianne's, in connection with 
 housekeeping matters, to follow her and contrive a sympa- 
 thetic interview within hearing of the two gentlemen. Not 
 that a word was audible, but anyone with the slightest 
 knowledge of human nature would have discerned that one 
 of the speakers, the tone of whose voice was mellow with 
 the opposite sexes of the persons she was spealdng of, was 
 recognising the patience and forbearance of the other 
 under trials, and exhorting her to renewed efforts in the 
 same direction. 
 
 " What do you suppose was the matter V Challis was 
 filling his pipe, as he asked this question of Mr. Eldridge. 
 " Mean to say you don't know ?" 
 " I certainly don't. Nobody has told me." 
 " I ain't any help. Don't ask me — that's all ! Don't 
 put it on me to say !" Mr. Eldridge, however, im- 
 plies that his attitude is one of Discretion, not Ignorance. 
 For he closes one eye, an action that can bear no other 
 interpretation. He also shakes his head continuously and 
 gently, as one who would convey to an interviewer the 
 hopelessness of cross-examination. 
 
 " I suppose it was nothing but an upset. The weather's
 
 326 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 tiying." It had really been unusually normal. But i\Ir. 
 Challis was talking as gentlemen do when they are lighting 
 a pipe, and thinking more about whether that's enough 
 than about the topic in hand. 
 
 " Stomach !" said Mr. Eldridge, as nearly in a mono- 
 syllable as spelling permits. He repeated the word just 
 half-a-dozen times in a run ; then added this rider : " Say 
 nervous system, when a lady. Puts it better." 
 
 " Something of that sort !" The pipe draws, and the 
 smoker ought to look happy. He doesn't. But, then, the 
 sympathetic murmur, with its unguessed import, of Mrs. 
 Eldridge afar, is reaching his ears. Sudden appreciative 
 gushes, and the firm tone of sound advice, are very un- 
 settling when inarticulate. Cannot that fool John be 
 made to throw a hght on the mystery ? Try again ! 
 " Charlotte told you all about it, John ; you know she 
 did !" The Christian names give cordiality. But John 
 is not to be cajoled. 
 
 " Telhn's is tellin's," says he ; and goes so far as to place 
 a finger against one side of his nose, in token of perspicuity. 
 " Put it at stomach ! . . . Got the right time V 
 
 " That clock's right." 
 
 " Then Greenwich is fast. Must see about gettin' off ! 
 Gettin' off— gettin' oft— gettin' off !" Mr. Eldridge's repe- 
 titions no doubt have some bearing on his relations with 
 his fellow-man, but it is not easy to say what. They seem 
 to sanction concurrent event ; that is the most one can 
 say. He continued his last repetition even after he had 
 taken his leave, saying he wouldn't wait for Lotty, because 
 she was going the other way, and seeming quite content 
 with his speech-work. 
 
 Hence, when Lotty reappeared hurriedly, and was sur- 
 prised at his departure, having something she must say to 
 him before he went, Chalhs got very little speech of the 
 lady. All her limited time allowed her to say was that she 
 had had a long talk with dear Marianne, and she was quite 
 sure " it " would be all right now. Only she was con- 
 vinced it would be so much better to say nothing to her — 
 just to take no notice of " it " and let " it " drop. How- 
 ever, rush she must, or she Mould never catch John ! And 
 rush she did. And ChalHs grunted, but retired to his own 
 room, and was soon absorbed in the Ostrogoths.;^-:;
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 327 
 
 A stand-up fight between Titus and his wife at this 
 period might have saved the situation. It would not 
 have mattered one straw whether it had turned on Gros- 
 venor Square or on the unsolved mystery of the photo- 
 graph. Anything that led to fiery outspeech would have 
 been a precursor of reconciliation. 
 
 It is difficult to tell anything with certainty about any 
 love-affairs. Nobody ever knows anything at all about 
 them ; even the two constituents, if called on to explain 
 and analyse themselves, make but a poor show. We know 
 pretty well what the Poet is good for at a pinch. And as 
 for the Man of the World and the Man in the Street — well ! 
 — all we can say is, give us the Woman of the World or the 
 Woman in the Street ; preferably the latter. But the duty 
 of the story, in reference to the psychology of Challis's 
 two marriages, is to tell what has come to light, or seems 
 most probable — what it thinks or believes, not knows, 
 about the depths of an unfathomable ocean. 
 
 Challis, then, being a young man irreligiously brought 
 up — that is to say, made to understand that he was re- 
 sponsible for his behaviour, and that no attempt to shift 
 his sins off on other shoulders would be held fair play — 
 found himself at five- and- twenty in a position that would 
 have been a sore trial to the strongest fortitude. He 
 was, if not actually left in charge of a friend's recently 
 married wife, at any rate in her close confidence ; and, after 
 her return to a home and friends from whom her marriage 
 was a secret, the sole depository of that secret. He might 
 never have fallen in love with Kate had they met on fair 
 ground. But a youth unfamiliar with girl-kind that is not of 
 his own belongings — sisters, to wit, and cousins earmarked as 
 sisters — is always in danger if even a moderately pretty or 
 attractive outsider takes liim into her confidence. Challis's 
 danger was all the greater owing to his terror of being 
 treacherous to liis friend. Perhaps, if the avowal of his 
 passion had been legitimately possible, he might never 
 have suspected himself of any passion to avow. But when 
 you believe your conscience wiU brand you as a traitor to 
 all eternity if you pursue a particular course, you naturally 
 want to pursue it.
 
 ■328 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 So it was a great relief to him when a letter, shown to 
 him alone by the terrified girl, disclosed the atrocious de- 
 ception that had been practised on her, and the miserable 
 position in which she was placed. No wonder the avowal 
 came. Our own behef is that it would have come, exactly 
 the same, to a girl of almost any personality. Nothing 
 could have averted it, short of a hare-lip, an isolated pro- 
 jecting tusk, or — suppose we say — onions. And tliis girl 
 had pretty lips, and the interview occurred after tea. 
 
 Information is scant}' about what followed. But no 
 serious inquiry can have been made into the truth of Mr. 
 Home's accusation against himself. The exact nature of 
 it — the particular illegality he appealed to in support of 
 his case — does not come to light. There really was no one 
 to inquire, except Challis, unless the whole story had come 
 out. It did not. A twelvemonth later Kate exchanged 
 the name of Verrall — whether rightly or wrongly borne — 
 for that of Challis, and two years later ]\Iaster Bob was 
 born, and his poor little mother had died of him. He 
 showed no compunction, but kicked and made a horrible 
 noise. 
 
 His father was only reasonably overwhelmed by his 
 loss. It may be that, like many another inexperienced 
 youth, he had not reckoned with the difficulties this world's 
 Bobs and their like are apt to inflict on their family before 
 they are formally enrolled in it, especially when the 
 mothers they select have nervous temperaments. Challis 
 felt, when he was left alone with the baby, that he had had 
 a fierce tussle with Fate, and had come out of it severely 
 punished. Probably, if his wife had survived, and Bob 
 had lived to be a j-ear old, without alarms about another 
 brother or sister, his father would have been much less 
 easily reconciled to his widowhood. He would then have 
 had a short draught of the nectar of life at its best ; that 
 is, if — as we suppose — a tempestuous excitability, which 
 appeared two or three months after marriage, was entirely 
 due to Master Bob. Mental unsoundness seems to have 
 ^een denied ; but, then, surely some one must have 
 affirmed it ? 
 
 As it was, Bob did a good deal — the best he could — to 
 make up for the mischief he had done. He was a satis-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 329 
 
 faction to his father ; and, being taken in hand by his Aunt 
 Marianne, then a girl of eighteen, and in a sense adopted 
 by her, became a strong connecting hnk betAveen the two, 
 and was really the agency that brought about Challis's 
 second marriage four or five years later. It would have 
 happened sooner, no doubt, but for the anomalous and 
 grotesque condition of English Law, which, till a year or 
 so since, made certain marriages diversely legal in different 
 portions of the British Empire. The Angels might weep, 
 but if they cried their eyes out it would still remain impos- 
 sible for a man to wed with his deceased wife's sister 
 on certain square yards of it. He had to be domiciled in 
 a special portion of the Empire on which the sun never sets 
 to do that, and yet live ungrundied. Marianne was slow- 
 to give in on the point. She had, in common with many of 
 her countrywomen, a religious conviction — a belief in the 
 plenary inspiration of any book in a religious binding — you 
 know the sort. She may have had others, but the qualifica- 
 tions of her intelligence were not such as to enable by- 
 standers to discover their exact nature. Alfred Challis 
 certainly never did so. And this religious conviction did 
 not give way until her brother-in-law deliberately wrote 
 formal proposals to a ]\Iiss Bax, with elbows, whom she 
 hated ; to a fascinating young Jewish widow, Avho had 
 lawlessly said she would just as soon marry a Gentile 
 as a Jew ; and to the daughter of a Unitarian minister. 
 He took the three letters to her, and said : " Now, Polly 
 Anne, which is it to be ? You may burn two of these ; 
 the other one I post." Polly Anne promptly destroyed the 
 two last ; her brother-in-law was blasphemous and impious 
 enough already without that, she said. But Emma Bax ! 
 — no, when she came to think of it, it was impossible ! 
 However, Challis directed the letter and, as it were, in- 
 vested a postage-stamp in intimidation ; so there was 
 nothing for it but to throw her arms round his neck and 
 surrender at discretion. Anything rather than Emma 
 Bax ! He kissed her tears away, and said : " You know, 
 Polly Anne, after all, you're only poor Kate's half-sister, 
 when all's said and done !" This she found very consolatory. 
 It was a pity, at this juncture, that the girl's mother 
 was a fool. Had she been a reasonably good guardian for
 
 330 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 her daughter, she would at least have insisted on the 
 nuptials being celebrated in a land where the marriage 
 would have been held lawful. But she contented herself with 
 condemning the union in the abstract, and flinging Holy 
 Writ — also in the abstract — at its perpetrators. The 
 Bench of Bishops would have done the same, no doubt ; 
 but that Bench would have forbidden the banns, to a 
 certainty. As she remained silent, and no outsider could 
 be expected to screw himself up to prohibition-point in 
 the case of a half-sister, the pair were wedded by a priest 
 who knew nothing of them beyond their bare names, and 
 never really became man and wile, as they would^have 
 done if they had been married sixty-odd years before ; 
 unless, indeed, some busybody had obtained a decree 
 annulling the marriage — as the Law, \nth a keen sense of 
 fun, directed in the days of our great-grandfathers. 
 
 The notable point in the psychology of these two 
 marriages surely is that in neither case was the bride the 
 free selection of the bridegroom, except in the sense that 
 he was absolutely free to take or leave either. He never, 
 strictly speaking, fell in love at all. He found himself in 
 a well, and love trickled in. But even in this metaphor 
 he never was over head and ears. He never washed to be a 
 glove on any hand, to press any cheek. To call him 
 passionately in love with either of the two sisters would 
 have been just as absurd as to say that Romeo " got very 
 fond " of Rosaline and Juhet. Exchange the phrases, and 
 each fits its place. Challis got very fond of both his wives, 
 being an affectionate sort of chap. But he remained a 
 stranger to the divine intoxication which is known in its 
 fulness only to Romeo and his like, and which some men 
 never know at all. 
 
 Short of this last sort may often be found men who 
 have escaped Romeo's experience early in life, yet whom 
 some cunning context of circumstance may just upset, 
 and convert for the moment into idiots as infatuated as 
 the young Montague and Capulet we have cried over so 
 many a time. For our own part, we count none quite safe 
 from what is really an ennobUng phase of sheer madness ; 
 except it be for instance, a Charles the Second, a Rochester, 
 a Tiberius, or a Joe Smith. Id genus omne is safe enough.
 
 CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Mr. Elphinstone, responsible for No. 101, Grosvenor 
 Square, and the morals and dignity of the family that dwelt 
 in it, was not without uneasiness about the literary and 
 artistic circles that his two young ladies had elected to 
 move in. This description is superficial ; it judges from 
 externals. Say that Mr. Elphinstone's appearance con- 
 veyed that he, like Atlas, had the whole house on his 
 shoulders — was practically answerable for the honourable 
 repute of all his subordinates, and morally for that of his 
 superiors. That was the construction Alfred Challis felt 
 obliged to put on such flawless shaving ; such a weighty 
 deference to the slightest personalities — his own, for 
 instance — on production of adequate credentials ; such a 
 hypnotic suggestion of having foregone an episcopate else- 
 where to take service with a beloved family whose interests 
 he had at heart. It was a construction not free from the 
 derision Mr. Challis was in the habit of meting out to 
 dignitaries of all sorts. In this case he may not have 
 been free from personal feeling ; for he must have been 
 aware that Elphinstone regarded him as an interloper — 
 one who outraged the sacred traditions of the household, 
 calling at unearthly hours in a soft felt hat, and smoking 
 on the doorstep until compelled to throw away too much 
 cigar by hearing that the family was at home. 
 
 This is substantially what was happening about two 
 hours after Mr. Eldridge had declined to shed any light on 
 anything at all, and his wife had departed enjoining silence 
 about Heaven-knows- what. Challis, disoeuvre by the mys- 
 tification, had found himself unable to invent any single 
 thing a Scythian mercenary would have been likely to say 
 in English blank verse, and an approach towards Marianne 
 of a conciliatory sort was met by, " I must see Steptoe 
 now about the: dinner." Unfortunately, this speech^was 
 
 331
 
 332 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 absolutely passionless ; if it had only been tempersome, 
 there might have been a row. And a row — as the Press de- 
 lights to phrase it — might have spelt salvation. But Challis 
 could see in it nothing that justified more than a languid 
 " All right !" on his part. And he had departed to the banks 
 of the Danube again, with no better success than before. 
 
 Presently liis wife knocked at his door in an excluded, 
 ostracised sort of way, and he got up to open it. She was 
 dressed for going out. " I won't disturb you," she said. 
 " Don't come out. I only wanted to say that if the man 
 comes about the gas you had better see him, because he 
 won't believe Step toe, and the meter is certainly out of 
 order. That's all." 
 
 It was one of those queer little turning-points of existence. 
 Challis was not ready with any reply that would have caused 
 a moment's delay and saved the situation. Before he 
 could manage more than general assent, Marianne was 
 gone, too far for any tiling short of demonstrative recall. 
 He did not see his way to this, and the chance was lost. 
 
 He was unable to work, and wanted to go out. But he 
 had been, as it were, put in bond on account of the gas-man, 
 who wouldn't believe. He failed to console himself b}^ an 
 accusation of Sadduceeism against that functionary, and 
 repeated Blake — 
 
 " The bat that flits at close of eve 
 Comes fi-om the brain that won't believe " 
 
 — without benefit to his ill- temper. Then he impatiently 
 wrote a note about the meter to leave with Steptoe, to 
 whom he said with immovable gravity : " Is it a Sapphic 
 or an Alcaic meter, do you know ?" Aunt Stingy's repty, 
 without a shadow of suspicion in her voice, " I could not 
 say, myself, sir, but The Man would be sure to know," put 
 loim in a much better humour. He actually chuckled as 
 soon as he was sure the good woman was out of hearing. 
 
 He wanted a book from the London Library, and could 
 get it easily and come back to lunch. He really did not 
 admit to himself, when he left home, that he had any good 
 grounds for suspecting that he meant to call in Grosvenor 
 Square to inquire about that sprained ankle. He took 
 pains to disbelieve in any such intention till he had got
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 333 
 
 the volume he was in want of from the Library, and then 
 it occurred to him that it would be unfeeling not to inquire 
 after the victim of an accident which might prove serious, 
 after all. His image of the injury done became very bad 
 as he told his cabman to drive to 101, Grosvenor Square. 
 Was he aware that he welcomed this solicitude about the 
 sprained ankle because it disguised, for the comfort of his 
 conscience, his disposition to call upon its owner 1 
 
 The only palliative to the disgust of that doorstep in 
 Grosvenor Square — ^to which it is time to return — -was that 
 this time Mr. Challis was not actually smoking on its brink ; 
 as, when his cab pulled up, he was descried, before he had 
 time to descend, by Mr. Elphinstone liimself, who had come 
 out tentatively into the Universe to look round at it, with 
 a sense upon liim of possible sudden retractation through the 
 open door, like a hermit-crab. A Piccadilly hansom, equal 
 to bespoke for Royalty, had in this case levelled its occupant 
 up. Even so a growler of the deepest dye, lurching, 
 springless, effluvial, knacker- destined as to its horse, drags 
 down the noblest blood that dares to ride in it — yes ! even 
 a Duke's ; but who can cite a case in point ? Only, when 
 Mr. Elphinstone crossed the pavement, he did it to confer 
 with the contents of the cab, as such ; not with Mr. Alfred 
 Challis, thank you ! 
 
 He was reassuring about the ankle ; a slight strain that 
 with care — his own and Sir Rhyscombe Edison's — would 
 disappear in a day or two. Oh no ! — in answer to inquiry — 
 Miss Arkroyd had not been compelled to keep her bed ; a 
 phrase that entered a respectful protest against " stop in 
 bed," the coarse, familiar expression Mr. Challis had made 
 use of. But he was, after all, a married man with a family, 
 so it might be overlooked, this once. He went on to say 
 that Miss Arkroyd, he believed, was up, though nursing 
 the injured hmb on a sofa. He arrived, after responsible 
 doubts, at the conclusion that he might send Mr. Challis's 
 card up, in case of any message. Delicacy dictating a 
 female emissary, Samuel was despatched with it to Miss 
 Arkroyd's maid ; who presently, being an unpolished 
 sample from the dairy at Royd, came dow n and said briefly 
 that Mr. Challis was to come up. Mr. Elphinstone's ex- 
 pression was well- restrained protest.
 
 334 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 But it may not have been so much the little dairy- 
 maiden's bluntness that provoked it, as an indescribably 
 small shade of demeanour of INIr. Challis's. As the girl 
 came along the passage, and before she spoke, Chalhs threw 
 his cigar away, or the two-thirds that was left of it. Such 
 a little matter ! But unless he had known what she was 
 going to say, he surely would have kept it till he did, to 
 finish at leisure. How came he to be so positive ? 
 
 Anyhow, there it was ! — the cigar — not half smoked, on 
 the pavement when the house door closed. And the cab- 
 man's eye rested on it. And he spoke thus to a butcher's 
 boy, who appeared from an area : " Wipe your fingers on 
 your apron, young dripping, and just hand me up that 
 cigar, and I'll see if I'll smoke it. I ain't proud. Only don't 
 you discharge off any of your natural grease upon it !" 
 
 To be addressed, even in disparaging terms, by such a 
 hansom, was flattering to tliis butcher-boy's vanity, and 
 he did not resent it. " Licked, but not busted, that I can 
 see !" was his comment as he handed the cigar up to the 
 cabman, who went on wuth it, contentedly. 
 
 It is two months of the story since it saw, or rather 
 heard of, Miss Arkroyd and Mr. ChalUs driving up to this 
 door after midnight in another hansom. All that it said, 
 or implied, at that time amounted to little more than that 
 a not very strait-laced lady and gentleman had been rather 
 free and easy over some theatrical schemes interesting to 
 both, and that the lady's sister, being less free or less easy, 
 had intimated that the conduct of the two might be laced 
 a little more straitly, with advantage. It is over six months 
 of the story since they discussed " The Spendthrift's 
 Legacy " and " Ziz " in the garden at Royd. If Charlotte 
 Eldridge, as an authority, had been asked, " On which of 
 these two occasions, madam, should you suppose the 
 chances were best of this gentleman and lady supplying 
 you with a story made to your hand, akin to the one Robert 
 Browning never went on \vith ?" what would her answer 
 have been ? 
 
 Our own impression is that at this present date of writing, 
 when Challis, smelhng rather strongly of tobacco, is follow- 
 ing the little ex- dairymaid up the second fhght of stairs to 
 what is known as the young ladies' sitting-room — at tliis
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 335 
 
 very moment, with the cabman making the most of his 
 inherited Havana, and Judith forming to receive visitors, 
 the position would have been much less likely to supply 
 copy for Mrs. Eldridge than the previous one, but for one 
 thing. Challis's relations with Marianne were, at the 
 moment — say — of the parroquets, intact. What were they 
 now ? . . . 
 
 They were something, or Challis's last unspoken speech 
 to himself on the stairs would not have been, " At any rate, 
 it isn't my fault !" It needed the atmosphere of Judith — 
 amused, if irritated, at her absurdity in getting a sprained 
 ankle — to enable him to shake free — though always under 
 protest — of the Hermitage. 
 
 " Wasn't it ridiculous of me ! . . . No ! — don't sit there ; 
 I can't see you. . . . Wasn't it ridiculous of me to do this — 
 just now of all times in the year V 
 
 " I thought you were a passive agent. I mean I didn't 
 know that you did do anything." 
 
 " No more I did ! No more than one does. You know 
 what I mean ?" 
 
 " Couldn't be better expressed ! Like when one chokes 
 and thinks one could have helped it, and what a fool one 
 is ! But how did it happen ?" 
 
 " Perfectly simple ! I was getting down out of the 
 carriage, and forgot to think about my feet. Fenton Ark- 
 royd was passing, and if he's not taken notice of he's 
 sensitive, because he married a laundress, or something. 
 So I forgot to think about my feet. It might have been 
 so easily avoided — with a little common-sense." 
 
 " So might so many things." Challis isn't the least 
 clear how the common-sense would act in the cases he is 
 talking at — the plagues that beset his own path. But what 
 a capital thing to say ! — on general grounds, of course, with 
 a little esoteric meaning all to oneself. 
 
 Judith, perhaps, thinks it too early in the morning for 
 ethics, as she changes the conversation. " How did you 
 like my little maid ?" she says, keeping her eyes closed ; 
 which seems absurd after stipulating for visibility on 
 Challis's part. But it all belongs to a certain imperious 
 humour in the grain of her character. And rights of 
 translation are reserved. She can open them if she pleases.
 
 336 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " She's new, isn't she ? Jolly little party !" Thus 
 Chalhs. 
 
 " You're not warm enough ! Didn't you want to kiss 
 her ?" 
 
 " Yes, badly — when she gave your message — half- 
 way up. . . ." 
 
 Judith opened her eyes. You can't laugh with your 
 eyes shut ; you snigger. " She really gave it ? Do tell 
 me exactly ! What did she say ?" she asks dehghtedly, 
 keeping her eyes open to hear the answer. 
 
 " She turned round on the landing, and became for the 
 moment a mere mass of blooming conscience. ..." 
 
 " Is that — excuse me ! — to be taken as language, or 
 how ?" 
 
 " No, no ! — literally . . . Blown flowers of intense truth- 
 fulness, and buds on the burst. . . . Well ! — she said, as 
 near as I remember : ' ]\Iiss Arkroyd said if Mr. Challis 
 didn't smell too strong of smoke, only Mr. Elphinstone 
 wasn't to hear.' And then she got away up the second 
 flight with some alacrity. I thought she was afraid I 
 might propose investigation, and Elphinstone was still 
 in the neighbourhood." 
 
 Judith is intensely amused. " I shall have to give that 
 child one of Sibyl's bead necklaces. Turquoise. It goes 
 with her eyes exactly — they have just the violet tinge." 
 She closed her own again on the slight subject, but it has 
 suggested a weightier one. " Couldn't you give Estrild a 
 little Visigoth inginue — I mean Ostrogoth — to wait upon 
 her ?" 
 
 " What ! — and train the Httle Rankshire beauty to the 
 part ? Think of her parents — the stage ! — merciful 
 Heaven ! . . ." But Challis stops suddenly, discomposed 
 by a discomposure in his hearer. [^ 
 
 " Never mind," says she, shaking it off. " You didn't 
 mean it. You're forgiven ! Go on." 
 
 " I naturally didn't think of it from that point of view. 
 The cases are so entirely different." 
 
 " Never mind !" Judith repeats her words with more 
 emjDhasis. " You are forgiven. Now go on about the 
 Ostrogoths." 
 
 " I could put the Uttle beauty in ; she would be very
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 337 
 
 useful as a set-off to Estrild. Besides, I want to get rid of 
 Isames the Cappadocian, and she would work in . . ." 
 
 Judith interrupts him, calUng to the little attendant, 
 who comes in answer from somewhere within hearing. 
 " Child !" she says — " bring me that hand-mirror off my 
 dressing-table," and when it comes, continues, interrupting 
 a recommencement of the Cappadocian, " That's right ! — 
 give it me. Now put your face over my shoulder and look in." 
 
 The order is compHed with, but an inexplicable apology 
 follows : " Please, miss, I know. Because I looked. And 
 I've tried monkey-soap, and it won't wash out." The 
 seriousness of the young voice is heart-rending. Judith 
 bursts out laughing, but consoles : " It wasn't that, child ! 
 But I like you to be a funny little goose, so don't stop ! 
 Now take away the glass, and let the monkey-soap alone, 
 for Heaven's sake ! . . . You got a good view, Mr. Dra- 
 matist ? . . . Well ! — ^you saw what I mean. Now, tell 
 me what you were saying about the Cappadocian." 
 
 " Why, you see, he ought to make a showy end, after 
 dyeing his hands in the blood of so many inoffensive per- 
 sona, and killing a Sarmatian bison with a single blow in 
 the arena. He might be just giving a hideous laugh of 
 triumph, and his innocent victim might be struggling vainly 
 in the grasp of a giant — it would be Jack Potter ; you know 
 what a biceps he lias — and a sudden arrow would be shot 
 from across the Danube and pierce his brain through the 
 eye. . . ." 
 
 " Of course — shot by What's-his-name ? — the man that 
 wouldn't embrace Christianity, but does heroic deeds. 
 You know, ChalHs, you'll have to make him embrace 
 Christianity. What is the use of being unpopular ?" 
 
 " Of course he embraces Christianity in the end. The 
 high-priest or bishop elevates a crucifix. I've been trying 
 to think of a good name for liim. Ingomar or Anthrax. . . ." 
 
 " That won't do. It's what the sheep die of. How 
 would Zero do ?" 
 
 " Something between Zeno and Nero. Very good name, 
 onl}' the thermometer's been beforehand with us. . . ." 
 And so the conversation ran on for a little, throwing an 
 interesting light on the human drama in its connection mth 
 Gibbon. But it was a conversation that murmured con- 
 
 VOL. I. 22
 
 338 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 tinually : " You know you did not allow me to go my own 
 way because you thought I was going to be disagreeable. 
 Finish me piecemeal as I arise, or take the consequence — 
 misgiving on either part about what the other did or didn't 
 think." Judith, who, after all, was the one responsible 
 for the discontinuity, gave in to these murmurs first, and 
 harked back. 
 
 " I know you think, Challis, that I am keeping the madre 
 and papa in the dark about what I mean to do. But I'm 
 not, because Sibyl knows, and they can know perfectly 
 well if they like ; it's only that they don't choose to know. 
 Besides, what on earth is the use of making scenes, when 
 I've made up my mind ? I'll confess when the time comes." 
 
 The levity or laxity of Challis's voice is gone from it in 
 his reply, scarcely a sequel to the words just spoken : 
 " When I said that about your little maid, I had no thought 
 that it could possibly apply in your case. The child, re- 
 member, is under the legal control of her parents. How 
 old is she ? — sixteen ? . . ." 
 
 " Yes, perhaps — not more, certainly. You mean that 
 I'm . . ." 
 
 " Over twenty-one. I don't say you would assert a 
 legal independence against the wishes of your family. 
 But it separates the two cases. I wouldn't have any hand 
 in getting a very young girl on the stage in any case. And 
 I think I should avail myself of the existing legal . . . well ! 
 — call it pretext, if you will ... to excuse myself from doing 
 
 so." 
 
 " That's just like you, Challis ! You really are a disciple 
 of Mr. Brownrigg's Groschenbauer— what's his name ? 
 You deride every existing usage, merely because it exists, 
 and then you make use of it for your own purposes ! 
 You're Just the same about the parsons, and all re- 
 ligion ! You tolerate it, or pose as tolerating it, because 
 you dislike wickedness on the whole, and can't see your 
 way to a substitute — not even to a Metaphysical Check." 
 
 Challis's laugh left his face twinkling Avith paradoxical 
 intention. " I believe I am the only known example," 
 said he deliberately, " of a person apparently of sound 
 mind who has never once succeeded in justifjdng a single 
 position he has taken up. ..."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 339 
 
 " Don't talk like Felixthorpe ! At any rate, you can 
 justify the position you have taken up that I'm more than 
 twenty- one." 
 
 " Because you told me !" 
 
 " Yes — the day after my birthday. I was twenty-six 
 the day you came to Royd. I remember telling you the 
 day we went to the Rectory. Six months ago ! Oh dear ! 
 — how the time does run away !" 
 
 In obedience to a mysterious law, which dictates that no 
 speech of any good-looking woman to any passable man 
 shall mean to him nothing beyond its obvious meaning, 
 this little reminiscence of Judith assumed an identity. 
 It reminded Challis of the existence of that soul-brush, 
 which had become — it is useless to deny it — so much a part 
 of his relation with Judith that he had ceased to hear the 
 macliinery. He denied it, mind you ! — denied it systemati- 
 cally. Yet he was indignant with anything that reminded 
 him that it was time to deny it. Plague take this necessity 
 for walking guardedly ! How acceptable it would have 
 been to be able to say, " How we enjoyed that walk back 
 through the sunset !" Another type of man — the type 
 that says, " Let Charlotte Eldridge do her worst, and be 
 blowed !" — would have had no scruj)les on the subject. 
 But Challis was a nervous person, and liis Self was per- 
 plexing him — very especially now, with poor, dear, stupid 
 Polly Anne maldng life a weariness, with her tempers and 
 her fancies. 
 
 Was Judith Arkroyd aware, all the time, that tliis man's 
 bark was in troubled waters, while she was floating in a 
 secure haven — secure, at least, for now ? Did she ask 
 herself any questions ? 
 
 Or was Challis just a shade priggish to show a stony front 
 to such a very meek little reminiscence ? His actual 
 reply was : " I thought it Aras a good deal more, since my 
 visit to Royd, I mean." 
 
 " I hope you'll pay us another visit." Judith thought 
 to herself that two could play that game. And Challis 
 immediately felt chilly, illogically ; rather as though the 
 soul-brush had slacked off. He would have to say some- 
 thing serious now, to merge this little fault in the stratifica- 
 tion of their conversation. 
 
 22—2
 
 340 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " I hope to, certainly. Well ! — what were we say- 
 ing ? . . . Oh yes ! — you told me your age, you know. But 
 even then I had misgivings about Aminta Torrington. 
 I can't say I wasn't glad when old Magnus put his foot 
 down. It's an odious part, and it wouldn't have suited 
 you. Thyrza Shreckenbaum won't look so well on the 
 stage, but it's more her part than yours." 
 
 " I should have thought Estrild was wicked enough for 
 anything." 
 
 " So she is. But it's mediaeval — good, honest, outrageous 
 atrocity. It's almost Scriptural. Suppose, now, you had 
 to apologize to the papa of your Uttle tire- maiden for 
 putting her on the stage, think how much easier it would 
 be if she was only to play Messalina or Lucrezia Borgia 
 than if it was Frou-frou, for instance !" 
 
 " That httle sugar-plum — just fancy ! No, I shouldn't 
 like her to play Frou-frou at all. The atmosphere is purer 
 in the other cases. How ridiculous one is ! But point 
 your moral, Mr. Dramatist." 
 
 " Let me see ! — what are we talking about ?" For 
 Chalhs had forgotten. " I beUeve I'm on a line of self- 
 justification. Didn't I tell you I never succeeded ? I 
 believe I'm creeping round to a sneaking apology for having 
 offered you Aminta Torrington at all. I wouldn't have 
 written the part for you — even then. But there it was, 
 and you asked for the chance, and it was the only thing I 
 had to offer." 
 
 Judith's laugh rang out. She had a capital stage laugh, 
 musical but penetrating. " Nobody's finding fault with 
 you, stupid man ! But why ' even then ' ? It's not four 
 months since. Where is the difference ? She had opened 
 her eyes full on liim to laugh at him, and now closed them 
 again to wait for an answer. Had Challis been at his best, 
 observing nature with a view to copy, he would have 
 noticed that last time she laughed — about the sugar-plum's 
 message — she had left her eyes open, full flash on him. 
 
 But he was too busy with a difficulty to do his dutj' by 
 human nature, that it behoved him to know, hke Peter 
 Ronsard. That unfortunate " even then " that he had 
 blundered out had brought him face to face with a fact 
 that — so it struck liim now — he had never felt properly
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 34 1 
 
 ashamed of. How came it that, up to this moment, he 
 had scarcely seen in it a matter to be ashamed of at all ; 
 and now, almost involuntarily, he had drawn a distinction 
 between noiu and then that seemed to place Judith Arkroyd 
 then on a lower level ? It was actually true that three 
 months ago he was tr3ang for all he was worth to negotiate 
 this girl into the good graces of his stage Jupiter ; to get her 
 on the boards to represent a woman whose wickedness 
 he had specially invented, thereby to fall into the fashion 
 of a time that he himself accounted an age of stark fools. 
 For he had never come across an Aminta Torrington ; 
 but he conceived, for all that, when he put her on the 
 stage, and set Mr. Guppy and Dick Swiveller off being up- 
 to-date about her, that he was performing his part in the 
 dance — the dance of fools ! He felt he was in difficulties, 
 and even for a moment contemplated an appeal to the 
 Artist's Love for his Work, as an excuse for his own attempt 
 to get the help of Judith's beauty for his corps dramatique. 
 He hesitated, negatived it, and said to himself uncandidly 
 that — thank God ! — he had not fallen as low as that. 
 But he never suspected, as this story has begun to do, 
 that his sense of shame was due to the fact that this lady 
 had become less cheap to him in these three months — 
 dangerously less. 
 
 But he could not leave that " Why even then .?" un- 
 answered, with his questioner waiting there behind her 
 closed eyelids for whatever excuse he might see his way to. 
 Why even then ? He felt he was flushing a little, and hoped 
 she would not open her eyes. But his speech hung fire too 
 long ; and when they turned on him suddenly to see what 
 it was going to be, he was caught, and could only see his 
 way out through franl^ness. " I know," he said — " I 
 know. Of course, I was wrong to suggest it. Still, it 
 was the only thing that came to hand. It was either that 
 or nothing. And you wished it . . . and besides . . ." 
 
 " I am not blaming you. Go on ... ' and besides ' . . ." 
 The beautiful eyes that were to make so much mischief on 
 the Danube were almost cruel in the way they waited for 
 what Challis felt he had better not have begun to say. 
 
 But there was no help for it now. He had to continue, 
 and did so : " . . . And besides, I did not know you so well
 
 342 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 as I do now ... I mean, I saw the thing differently. ..." 
 He was getting deeper and deeper in the mire, and the 
 eyes showed no signs of letting him off. " No ; it's no use,' ' 
 he said abruptly. " I did wrong. But then, can you 
 understand me ? — how could I know it was you .?" Then 
 he made a weak attempt to dispersonalise his words. " No 
 one of us remains the same." And then, feeling he wasn't 
 shining, settled to hold his tongue. But he did not look 
 Judith in the face over it. 
 
 She, for her part, being perfectly collected and thoroughly 
 mistress of herself, only saw in his confusion a clear token 
 that she was also mistress of the situation. She had done 
 this sort of thing before — love of power being always her 
 chief incentive — and had come out scathless. If a doubt 
 now crossed her mind that she might be playing with 
 edged tools, it was not strong enough to stop her. 
 
 "How true that is! Do j^ou know, Challis" — please 
 note this habit of address ; it has somehow become natural 
 to Judith — " I was thinking only just now, before you came 
 in, how completely you have changed your identity since 
 those days. Do you remember when we played chess ? . . . 
 Well, I'm almost ashamed to tell you how I thought of you 
 then " 
 
 " You owe it me. See how I've been at the confessional 
 myself !" Challis submits to the soul-brush without 
 protest. It is no use. Why resist ? 
 
 " You were merely an author whose works I hadn't read 
 — yes ! — that's true ; authors never have any idea what 
 a lot of people haven't read their books. I thought you 
 would just come and go, like the rest of them. But I 
 fancied you seemed at a loose end, and I would take pity 
 on you. I never thought . . ." 
 
 " Never thought what ?" 
 
 " Don't look so em'presse over it, Challis !" Really, this 
 woman's faculty for going close to precipices, foot-sure, is 
 something perfectly marvellous. Tenderness outright 
 seemed the only natural sequel just now. But she ^dll get 
 back to safety, after gazing coolly over the edge. Trust 
 her ! "I couldn't say it all in one Mord, you see . . . Never 
 thought that in six months you would be writing a tragedy 
 for me to play in. That's all that it comes to. At any
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 343 
 
 rate, you seemed quite a different person then." Had she 
 recoiled too abruptly from the precipice ? Is there slight 
 concession, just to accommodate a working equilibrium, 
 in her last words ? Her own working equilibrium, mind 
 you ! — in which to dangle her victim over that precipice 
 at leisure, and yet to keep able to deny its proximity 
 undisturbed, or pooh-pooh it altogether, at choice. For a 
 thorough-paced female flirt enjoys driving her quarry mad 
 best, when she knows she has plausible innocent uncon- 
 sciousness enough left in the cellar to quench any fever of 
 self- accusation of her own. " Who ever said a word, or 
 thought a thought, about love-making ? . . ." Don't we 
 know the sort of thing ? 
 
 Challis's own frame of mind — for the story must needs 
 try to define it, however difficult it is to deal with — was 
 one of a sort of thanldulness that he had perturbation of 
 feeling all to himself. Therein lay his safety ; he could 
 keep it secret. He could and would pay for it by addi- 
 tional tenderness to poor dear Polly Anne — who was Polly 
 Anne, after all, mind you ! — when this last stupid bit of 
 purposeless quarrelsomeness should have cleared away. 
 But he wanted security that the conflagration whose 
 smouldering he could not disguise from himself would be 
 local. He had just, only just, stamped out a spark that 
 might have become a flame at that precipice-edge, now a 
 moment since. He was willing to go great lengths in per- 
 suading himself that there were no fires smouldering else- 
 where ; for to what end, in Heaven's name, should he 
 recognise them ? 
 
 But suppose he should be forced to ! Suppose he should 
 find one day that he could no longer parade before his 
 mind this creed that was his security — this impossibility 
 that he was ever present in his absence to this woman ; 
 as he had to confess perforce, struggle as he might against 
 growing conviction, she was so often — nearly always — 
 present to him. He built this faith upon a rock of friend- 
 ship, genial and firm, but always cold, that an exaggerated 
 respect for her character — which really did him honour — 
 chose to assign as the onl}'- leasehold her heart could 
 accommodate him with. Perhaps unfounded hallucina- 
 tions about the beauty of Judith's character were the most
 
 344 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 dangerous features of the disease Alfred Challis was 
 sickening for, if it had not developed already. 
 
 All this may seem too many words about a simple thing. 
 Perhaps Sibyl's way of disposing of the subject, was more 
 intelligible — saved trouble, certainly. " That man ad- 
 mires you too much, Judith, for it to be safe to play tricks 
 with him. You'll do this sort of thing once too often. 
 And then you'll be sorry." However, it was clear that there 
 could be no real danger as long as the lady remained de- 
 tached, and very little as long as the gentleman was con- 
 vinced that she was so. 
 
 And he may have been so convinced — one would have 
 said — when he found him-self able to answer Judith with a 
 philosophical, " Have you ever known a new acquaintance 
 not to change completely in the first six months ?" And 
 she may have thought he was running too much to ab- 
 stractions when she said, " I did not say you had changed 
 completely "; as though she would not have him suppose 
 her too unconcerned. He was not to slip from the web she 
 was weaving round him by a device of gossipy discussion. 
 Her remark just met the case ; and the soul-brush, which 
 had got a little out of gear, got to work again. 
 
 They went back to the tragedy, and talked of it so long 
 that at length it came to measuring the minutes by his 
 watch. Then Judith said to him, as though she had 
 but just recollected it : " You found my letter, I suppose ?" 
 No, he had not — had she written ? Oh yes ! — it was 
 posted last thing last night. There was nothing in it, or 
 she would have spoken about it. The fact that she had 
 written lubricated that soul-brush. But he must go, or 
 he would be late. A few more words, mostly about 
 how last night's entertainment had missed her presence, 
 and the lady the Ross Tarbets had brought in her stead 
 had proved a failure, and then Challis was standing beside 
 her to say adieu — her hand in his. Really inevitable, if 
 you think of it, on the supposition that the forms of civili- 
 sation are to continue to hold good. 
 
 It was a perversity of Fate that chose this very moment 
 for the only other frequenter of that room to open the door 
 unheard. Judith could not see her sister through Challis 
 as he stood there. He turned to go.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 345 
 
 " Oh, Mr. Challis. I did not see it was you. Perhaps 
 you are talking business. Don't let me disturb you." 
 
 " Not at all. I am just going." 
 
 " Stop one minute, Mr. Challis." Thus Judith. " Never 
 mind Sibyl ! You must try to persuade Mrs. Challis to 
 come and see us. Now promise you will !" She had not 
 referred to Marianne before, by the way. 
 
 " I'll try what I can do. But my ^vife goes her own 
 way. Good-bye ! Good-bye, Miss Sibyl !" 
 
 " How long had he been here ?" 
 
 " Over an hour. I can't say exactly. You must ask 
 Elphinstone when he came, if you want to know." 
 
 " It doesn't matter to me when he came." 
 
 " You asked." Sibyl made no reply. A lunch-gong 
 sounded below, and she vanished, but presently returned. 
 
 " You are not coming down to lunch ?" she said. " At 
 least, are you ? Or not ?" 
 
 " Of course not ! How could I, without fljang in Sir 
 Rhyscombe's face ?" 
 
 But Sibyl's question had been mere conversation- 
 making, or skirmish-seeking. She said what she meant 
 directly after. " I suppose it's perfectly useless my saying 
 anything. But you know what I think." 
 
 " I know what you think, dear ! Go to lunch." 
 
 " Very well, Judith !" And Sibyl departed for lunch 
 as Judith sounded her bell for her little handmaid, the 
 reputed sugar-plum. 
 
 " How long will it take you to get to Wimbledon ?" 
 Challis asked the driver of the waiting cab. 
 
 " A tidy long time, the rate I'm going now !" was the 
 reply. " Jump in !" Challis, feeling he was in the hands 
 of a master-mind, obeyed without question, and the cab 
 was off, at speed. Presently the master-mind said briefly, 
 through his orifice above — as King Solomon may have 
 spoken to the evil djinn he bottled — " Within the hour," 
 and closed it on his fare for that period. The djinn was in 
 for a lifer, and was immortal ; so thought Challis to him- 
 self. That was too long, but short of that, something over 
 an hour would not be unwelcome — ^just to think things 
 over a little !
 
 CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 If King Solomon's captive had gone on scheming con- 
 ciliatory attitudes through all eternity, he would probably 
 have failed to hit upon the right one at the end of it, from 
 mere want of presence of mind. Even the short " Within 
 the hour " of Challis's cabman was a little too long for his 
 fare to think things over in safety, without a risk of the 
 things tripping one another up. He conceived a very good 
 deportment to suit his return, based on sorrow for being 
 so late, and then began to complicate it with considerations 
 whether he should at once enquire more particulars about 
 Marianne's alleged — and denied — indisposition of last night, 
 or let it alone. Also, should he confess up at once where 
 he had spent most of the morning, or let that alone ! 
 Perhaps that letter of Judith's that he would find on 
 arriving would help matters. Yes, it Avould ! He pic- 
 tured himself to himself — as an actor in the concurrent 
 drama of Life that he always made notes of by the way — 
 saying, " Oh yes ! That's nothing ! — only about the 
 play. I saw Miss Arkroyd for a few minutes this morning. 
 You know, she was kept away last night by a sprained 
 ankle, so I went to enquire. Hm-hm-hm !" He went the 
 length of supplying the sound of reading a letter to himself, 
 and threw its imaginary pieces, when he had torn it up, to 
 show how unimportant it was, into an image of a waste- 
 paper basket. Then he turned round, that actor, and 
 kissed his wife, who had recovered her temper. And then 
 all went well in that play, and that actor told himself not 
 to be a damned idiot about a fashionable beauty, who knew 
 he was a married man with a family, and hadn't the 
 slightest idea that — well ? — that anything ! 
 
 That was the play. The reality did not work out so 
 comfortably. Challis was in time for lunch, as the cabman 
 was as good as his word. " Fifty-six and a half," said he, 
 
 346
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 347 
 
 looking at his watch ; and added, in a comfortable sort of 
 way, " Make it up eight shillings," as one who felt he 
 really deserved the extra half-crown or so. He had a 
 pleasant, engaging manner with the opposite sex, this 
 cabman, saying to Harmood, when she brought him his 
 money out : " Don't you get married wthout letting me 
 know, my dear ! My old woman, she might get sick of me 
 any minute !" But Miss Harmood was accustomed to 
 admiration. 
 
 Mrs. Challis had left word not to wait lunch, said the 
 young lady, returning undisturbed. Also, there was a 
 note to say, with the letters — that is, to wit, with the postal 
 accumulations. Challis, opening it, found a bald and 
 severe statement that the writer was going to Tulse Hill, 
 and might be late. Marianne's mother's domicile was 
 always spoken of as Tulse Hill. Challis knew that this 
 mother and daughter were seldom on cordial terms except 
 when he was in disgrace with both, and it did not tend 
 to allay the feeling of irritated mystification that came 
 back now to Challis, with quickened memory of the events 
 of the morning, that his wdfe should have pitched on this 
 particular moment for a visit to Tulse Hill. She really 
 seldom went to see her mother, for she Avas very lazy. 
 But — and this was a big but — she always went to see her 
 when there had been dissensions. So much so that when 
 at any time Challis found that she had gone to Tulse Hill, 
 his tendency was to look back through the last twentj^- 
 four hours to discover what skirmish was responsible for 
 the visit. 
 
 This time he was completely baffled. His wife knew 
 perfectly well that she had been invited — cordially in- 
 vited — to this last night's entertainment. Did all this 
 mean that in the end he would have to give up associating 
 M'ith the outer world, and restrict himself to John Eldridge 
 and Lewis Smithson ? That seemed the only programme 
 compatible with the enjoyment of a comfortable home. 
 Only for God's sake let it be formulated ! Let him know 
 what he had to expect, and Challis would put his sign- 
 manual to any reasonable treaty. . . . He stopped suddenly, 
 yet asked himself — why stop ( Then, knowing well that he 
 dared not answer his own question, flinched ofi the subject.
 
 348 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 This phase of reflection did not come immediately on 
 opening Marianne's note. He had passed through a brief 
 epoch of kmch for himself and dinner for Bob and Cat and 
 Emmie since then. It had been a riotous but not un- 
 pleasant experience, and Challis was grateful for it. Bob's 
 greeting to him had been, exactly transcribed : " Mater's 
 gone to Tulse Hill. I say ! — if you were to give me five 
 shillings, I could buy a phonograph, because I've saved up 
 fifteen. Tommy Eldridge has got one that does a mena- 
 gerie, and you can hear a man having his head bit oflf." 
 This felt jolly and cheerful, especially as the two little 
 girls jumped with eagerness to hear the subsidy voted. 
 Imitations of insubordinate wild beasts, and the sounds 
 incidental to detaching a Bengal tiger from his prey with 
 red-hot irons, made lunch pass pleasantly, and Challis 
 felt much happier. He granted the five shillings on con- 
 dition that no operatic records should be purchased. He 
 had heard " Voi chesapete " through a gramophone once, 
 and he knew ! 
 
 He was in his study, and Bob had probably nearly arrived 
 at the phonograph local plague-centre in Putney, when ho 
 got to speculation, acknowledged as such, about a modus 
 Vivendi for himself and the mother of those two little 
 wenches. He denied Judith any place in the problem, 
 preferring to recognise, as the sole difficulty he had to fight 
 asainst, the attitude of Marianne towards what he summed 
 up as " Grosvenor Square " compendiously. He refused 
 to admit that the class of feelings he entertained towards 
 that lady — or might have entertained ; he wouldn't quite 
 admit them — could possibly come under discussion so long 
 as he kept them to himself. Why, if every trifling vibration 
 of personal feeling, every grain of salt on the dish of a man's 
 friendship for a woman, was to be made the foundation of 
 an indictment of faithlessness to his wife, where would 
 matrimony be ? But he nearly lost the thread of his 
 reflections in the obligation to define what the feehngs 
 were that he was refusing to admit. 
 
 He would not allow for a moment that these feehngs could 
 possibly interfere with his aft'ection for his wife. In fact, 
 he actually shouted " Nonsense !" aloud in answer to some 
 accusation to that effect for which he was not responsible.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 349 
 
 So loud, in fact, that Harmood came, and said, " Did you 
 call, sir," and disbelieved the " No, / didn't !" th?vt she was 
 met with. He would not have felt foolish on hearina; his 
 own voice getting out of bounds, but he did when it came 
 home to him that Harmood must have heard him two 
 rooms off at least. This would never do. He would get 
 back to the Ostrogoths. How about Estrild's little 
 hand-maiden ? — a good name for her ? — something ending 
 in ilia ? Favilla 1 — Scintilla ? — Yes, that would do, with- 
 out the 8 ; otherwise, like LaAv Courts and tittles of evi- 
 dence ! Yes — certainl}' Cintilla ! But he got no further. 
 
 Because the little sugarplum brought back his interview 
 of the morning. There was Judith again — he had nearly 
 given up thinking of her as Miss Arkroyd — holding the 
 mirror at arm's-length to make it include both faces 
 easily, watching the ensemble \\dth a slightly Ostrogothic 
 effect, sympathetically resumed from some passage in 
 the play she had half read, and knew the purport of ; eye- 
 lids thrown up as per instructions of stage- trainer, to secure 
 the glare which seems to have come so freely on the faces 
 of all our forbears whom the Stage has thought worthy 
 of portrayal ; just a hint of what upper lip and nostrils 
 could do, if they tried, in the way of callousness towards 
 tortured prisoners. For Judith had been tliinking over 
 the part. And how grand her eyes were, too ! — sometliing 
 of the dark colour of sapphires by artificial light. And the 
 little chick's face had come so well ! That episode of the 
 monkey-soap had produced a nuance of terror-stroke ; 
 exactly how Cintilla would have looked over a Christian 
 martyrdom ; a penalty deserved by a Dissenter, but 
 alarming, for all that. He would tell Judith next time 
 he wrote. . . . Well ! — he would write, of course. But 
 it was all in the way of business. What of that ? . . . He 
 would tell her he had christened the child Cintilla. She 
 would call her Cintilla now ; he was sure of it. . . . Now 
 he must get to \^ ork ! This would never do. 
 
 He actually did get to work this time. He wrote blank 
 verse, or prose abstract to turn into blank verse, or other 
 blank verse that was better than the first blank verse ; or, 
 if worse, could be rejected when found wanting. But the 
 worst was when alternatives turned out equal — impossible
 
 350 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 to make choice of. After a while he found] himself with 
 two such samples to choose between. Which speech of 
 the two would come best from the lips of Estrild 1 He 
 had to acknowledge that he was puzzled. 
 
 And yet a good deal might depend on it. He was 
 wavering between two courses in the plot of the play. Each 
 of these speeches seemed to point to one. Suppose he 
 chose the one that, afterwards, Judith liked least, and 
 followed on the line of plot that suited it ! He would not 
 feel happy over it, that way. Obviously, Judith was the 
 proper person to decide. Master Bob might just as well 
 carry the speeches to a handy typewriter at Putney, wait 
 for them to be executed, and bring them back. Or stop ! 
 Challis knew he could rely on the accuracy of this typist, 
 at a pinch. Why not write to Judith, leaving the envelope 
 open, and let Master Bob put the typed copy in and post 
 it ? It would save a deal of time. Then he would be 
 able to get on with the plaj^ first thing in the morning if 
 an answer came by the early post, as it might. He could 
 mention Cintilla, too. 
 
 So said, so done ! Master Bob was off like a shot, 
 though reluctant to leave his phono, whose hideous din 
 had been audible from afar since its arrival an hour ago. 
 No sooner was he past recall than Challis remembered that 
 if he had decided the question himself, it never would have 
 been necessary to show the rejected version to Judith at 
 all ! But the fact is he had got rather into the way of 
 consulting her. Anyhow, it couldn't matter much, either 
 way. He went back to his writing, and found something 
 else to go on with. He went on with it peacefully until a 
 cab arrived, and he looked out, expecting that it was 
 Marianne. It was not, and he had an odd sensation of 
 being glad he was sorry it was not. He saw who the 
 visitor was, and retired. 
 
 Confound that woman ! Why on earth need Charlotte 
 Eldridge come bothering in when Marianne was away ? 
 A confirmatory announcement is followed by, " Oh, Mrs. 
 Eldridge ! — Did you tell her your mistress wasn't here ?" 
 Thus Challis to Harmood, who checks the incorrectness 
 of his speech. " I said Mrs. Challis was not at home, sir. 
 Mrs. Eldridge said she would come in and wait." On which
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 351 
 
 Challis's comment— too much to himself to rank as an 
 answer — is, " She'll have to wait." 
 
 " Am I to tell her so, sir ?" Harmood, docile and well- 
 bred, awaits instructions. 
 
 " No / — don't tell her anything. Perhaps your mistress 
 wall be in soon." 
 
 Challis made a show, for his own satisfaction, of going 
 on with his work — but not for very long. As tea-time 
 drew near, he looked at his watch, and decided not to have 
 tea in the drawing-room with his visitor, but to go out. 
 So, when he looked in on Charlotte for a moment, he was 
 in walking trim, and merely shook hands hurriedly, and 
 said : " Marianne must be in soon. She'll never staj' to 
 dine at Tulse Hill. / have to go. Ring the bell for tea, 
 and make Harmood attend to you proj)erly. Ta-ta !" 
 and departed, affecting haste. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge was not quite ready for tea, and also hoped 
 Mrs. Challis would reappear shortly. So she postponed 
 summoning the handmaiden, and took Challis's old novel, 
 " The Spendthrift's Legacy," from the bookshelves, wish- 
 ing to compare the portrait of his first wife, which she 
 knew it contained, with current events. As she sj^eculated 
 over this and that, an unmistakable boy's head — that first 
 wife's boy's — came in at the door, and said " Hullo !" in 
 a very uncompromising way. It was merely greeting — no 
 more ! 
 
 " Well, Master Bob, where have you been ? Come in 
 and talk, and shut the door." 
 
 " Haven't got much time for talk. I say ! I wonder 
 if you can hear up here. We've got such a ripping phono- 
 graph." 
 
 " I can hear beautifully." Indeed, a woe-begone and 
 God-forgotten croak has been audible for some minutes, 
 rendering patter-songs. Bob warms to his subject : 
 " Isn't it awfully jolly ? You're really sure you can hear, 
 though ? I say, though, isn't it a pity ? I got ' Move- 
 ment in A flat,' and I might have had ' The White-Eyed 
 Musical Kaffir,' and it's such rot. Harmood says she's 
 sure it's only music — like pianos." 
 
 " Why don't you open it and see ?" 
 
 " Because then they won't change it. I might have
 
 352 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 changed it when I was out, if I'd known. But I thought 
 it was a row in a house, and furniture getting broke, don't 
 you know ?" He gives further particulars of liis misappre- 
 hension, but it will be as clear as it needs to be without them. 
 
 " Where did you go when you were out ?" Mrs. 
 Eldridge seems strangely unconcerned about the phono- 
 graph. But Bob is too high in the seventh heaven about 
 it to conceive it possible that such indifference should exist. 
 He takes his hearer's sympathy for granted, and as for 
 suspecting any non- phonographic motives in his questioner 
 — impossible ! 
 
 " Putney. I could have gone to the shop twice over in 
 the time I was waiting." 
 
 " What were you waiting for ?" 
 
 " Typewriter. For the governor. Oh — quite half-an- 
 hour !" 
 
 " What a shame ! And you wasted all that time wait- 
 ing. But you got what you went for ? I mean your 
 father got his typewriting ?" 
 
 " No fear !" This with scorn. Then, to keep the 
 heaven of veracity spotless : " He didn't get it, you know. 
 I shoved it in her envelope, and shoved it in tHe pillar-box 
 in High Street. Not the one near the tobacconist's." 
 
 " Whose envelope ?" 
 
 " It was all right. There wasn't any other. Judith's. 
 I say — are you quite sure you can hear up here ? Hadn't 
 I better bring it up, while you have tea ?" For tea is 
 coming of its own accord, audibly, outside the door. 
 
 " No — after tea. I shall listen better. Whose letter 
 did you say j^ou put in ? Judith's ? — who's Judith ?" 
 
 " Oh — you know ! Me and Cat always call her Judith. 
 Miss ^rA;royd." There is a trace of contempt, quite un- 
 explained, in the accent on the first syllable. But Bob will 
 be lenient, adding, " But she gave me my skates." Then, 
 for he cannot honestly conceal a defect, " She's duchessy, 
 for all that. A hundred- and-one, Grosvenor Square, W." 
 And leaves her, classified. 
 
 Should Harmood make the tea ? Not on Mrs. Eldridge's 
 account, certainly ! Mrs. Challis was sure to be back. Too 
 probably, in practice, for either speaker to sa}*" " D.V." 
 about it. But no atheism was meant — far from it ! Har-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 353 
 
 mood attended to the fire ; enough just to keep it m, al- 
 though if it went on like this we should soon be able to do 
 without. And the water couldn't go off the boil as long as 
 there was ever so little methylated. Mrs. Eldridge was 
 beginning to fear that there was ever so little, and that the 
 boil's hour was come ; and was questioning whether it 
 would not be better on the whole to make tea in order that 
 its getting cold should favour IMarianne's return, when a 
 cab-sound recommended itself to her notice for some un- 
 explained reason, and she began making the tea. She 
 really wished to see Mrs. Challis, having a card in her hand 
 she wanted to play. One fights against a misdeal when one 
 has seen the ace of trumps in one's hand. But let us be 
 just to Mrs. Charlotte. Of course, it was well understood, 
 between her and her conscience, that her motive was to 
 make sure that no mischief came of that letter to Miss 
 Arkroyd. Suppose that young monkey were to say he 
 posted the letter, and say nothing about the palliative type- 
 writing ! And then suppose Alfred never thought it worth 
 mentioning that he had written at all. Quite a case for 
 a judicious friend, etc., etc. Oh, these meddlers ! 
 
 The cab was Mrs. Challis — not literally ; only household 
 patois — and Mrs. Challis was sorry she was so late, Char- 
 lotte. Why had that lady not had tea ? Marianne's 
 manner was dry and hard. No — she was not the least 
 tired, she said. She would go up and take her things off 
 and come down immediately. She threw out a skirmisher 
 to stop that horrible noise on her way up ; and when she 
 returned, if peace did not exactly reign where Bob was, 
 somewhere below, at any rate the sounds that continued 
 were human, not diabolical. ^ ^ 
 
 " Well r' Mrs. Eldridge spoke first. ! J 
 
 " W^ait till I've had some tea, and I'll tell you." A cup 
 apiece elapsed, and then Marianne said briefly : " Says it's 
 a parcel of lies. If poor Kate had been married, she must 
 have known." 
 
 Charlotte considered. The detective character asserted 
 itself. " How does she account for Mrs. Step toe knowing 
 the name of these Hallock people ?" 
 
 " She doesn't account for it." 
 
 " What does she suppose her motive to be ?'* 
 
 VOL. I. 23
 
 354 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " She doesn't suppose." 
 
 " Even if she knew the name, it's impossible to believe 
 she would trump up such a story ! With nothing to gain 
 by it, Marianne dear, with nothing to gain by it !" 
 
 " I didn't say I did believe it. I only told you what 
 mamma said." 
 
 j ,A conversation that flags from lack of any visible step 
 forward welcomes another cup of tea, to pause on. After a 
 measure of silence, so filled out, consciousness of the impasse 
 brought in a new element, as stimulus. 
 
 " I talked to John about it." 
 
 " Why must you talk to John ?" 
 
 " My dear Marianne ! Well ! — John's a fool, I know, but 
 I have a great respect for his judgment, sometimes. I 
 shouldn't have begun about it myself. But he was there 
 when Mrs. Steptoe was looking at the photographs, and he 
 spoke of it to me. . . . What did he speak of ? Oh — the 
 whole thing !" 
 
 " What did he say ?" 
 
 " It wasn't so much what he said. You know his way. 
 He only said that a party he knew in the City knew a man 
 in a Private Inquiry Office, and that sort of thing always 
 ran into money. So his idea was — you know how funnily 
 he phrases things ? — his idea was that ' keep it snug ' 
 was the word. In fact, he repeated it several times. 
 John's habit of repetition gets rather irritating, now and 
 then." 
 
 r " Did he say nothing else ?" 
 
 p~ " I don't think he did ... oh yes ! — he exonerated your 
 husband. At least, he said that that sort of trap wasn't 
 the sort of trap anyone would suspect Titus of being up to. 
 It was a little obscure, but John is obscure." 
 
 Marianne showed no disposition to take an interest in 
 John's opinions, even assuming them to be capable of 
 recasting in an intelligible form. She sat holding her 
 teacup, as one anxious not to break with a pleasant memory. 
 But her face was not pleasant for all that. It might be 
 unfair to say it had a set jaw and a scowl, because that 
 suggests a prizefighter without a prize. But accept as 
 much of the description as leaves an image of a comely 
 woman with dark hair — plenty of it — in a plait, and rather
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 355 
 
 embonpoint for thirty. Put in the mole we have spoken of, 
 just on the cheekbone ; but don't run away with the idea 
 that there must be a stye in the eye on the other side, that 
 you are not looking at. Let Marianne have all that is left 
 of a bonny robust girlhood that was in its day rather more 
 acceptable — consciously so — to her brother-in-law than the 
 more delicate approach to beauty of his deceased wife. 
 But Marianne had gone off, too ; there was no doubt of it. 
 Nevertheless — and in spite of occasional acerbity and fre- 
 quent sullenness — her husband loyally cherished the idea 
 that she was good with a deep-buried goodness, a quality 
 that might be relied on when the hour of trial came, a rock- 
 bed of sound-heartedness, to build on even when appear- 
 ances suggested earthquake. 
 
 Some such appearance may have made Mrs. Eldridge 
 cautious about pursuing the thread of John's judgments, as 
 she joined in her friend's silence beyond her usual habit — 
 a loquacious one. Presently she said, to relieve the 
 monotony, " Shall I put your cup down ?" and took it with 
 a well-formed hand she was vain of — indeed, it ran close 
 to beauty — from one that was rather a defect in its owner ; 
 too chubby, too accented at the rings, to be redeemed 
 by a mere addendum of filbert-nailed fingers. 
 
 Marianne then said, as she surrendered the cup : " You 
 saw him before he went out ?" She spoke as though she 
 took her companion's knowledge of the contents of her own 
 silence for granted. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge seemed to acquiesce. " He looked in for a 
 moment," she said. 
 
 " I suppose he got his letter." This was mainly thinking 
 aloud, for how could Charlotte know anything about his 
 letter ? She could guess, though, and was not slow over it. 
 
 " I suppose so, because he answered it." Then she may 
 have felt that her knowing so much without data might seem 
 unwarranted ; for she added : " At least, if it was a letter 
 from her," and then explanatorily, in response to an 
 inquiring look, " Yes !— Judith Arkroyd, of course." She 
 probably had no definitely mischievous motive in the 
 phrasing of this. The assumption that any " her " must be 
 Miss Arkroyd only showed what she herself had been 
 thinking of. But it teemed with suggestion of continuous 
 
 23—2
 
 356 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 correspondence between the lady and gentleman in hand. 
 Marianne flushed angrily, far more moved by the way in 
 which she heard of it than by the mere letter itself. It was 
 only one of many letters, after all ! 
 
 " How do you know ? How can you tell ? * 
 
 " Marianne dear — really !" 
 
 " Really what ? No, Charlotte, you're nonsensical. Of 
 course it was her ! Why do you take a pleasure in mysti- 
 fying me ? Can't you tell me what you mean ? How do 
 you know he answered it ?" 
 
 " Dear, if you'll be patient, I'll tell you. But, really, 
 you do make so much out of nothing . . . it's all about 
 nothing.''^ And, indeed, Mrs. Eldridge looked frightened, as 
 a mischief-maker may whose hobby has got the bit in its 
 teeth. 
 
 " If it's notliing, at least you can tell me what it is." 
 And Marianne, who a moment since was red, now goes 
 w^hite, with hands just restless and a foot that taps uneasily. 
 There had been nothing in antecedent circumstance to 
 warrant so much excitement. So thinks Mrs. Charlotte, 
 and would like to hark back, and make her mischief 
 gradually, on congenial safe lines. A row would be pre- 
 mature, to her thinking. 
 
 " What wliat is, Marianne dear ?" she says. But then 
 makes concession : " Only, of course, dear, I know what 
 you mean. How did / come to know about the letter he 
 sent her ? It's quite simple. . . ." 
 
 " Well— go on !" 
 
 "... It was Bob. He was in here just now, and told 
 me his father had sent him to post a letter to Judith — that's 
 what the young monkey calls her — and then you asked if he 
 had got his letter. Of course, I thought it must be from her." 
 
 " Why ?" 
 
 " Oh, nonsense why, Marianne dear ! How could it be 
 anyone else ?" And Mrs. Challis cannot answer this, 
 naturally, as she knows quite well it was Judith's hand- 
 writing alone that attracted her attention to the letter, 
 and that there were at least a dozen other items by the 
 same post. Charlotte continued : "I can see nothing to 
 make such a fuss about. With this play-acting going on, 
 a letter might be anything."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 357 
 
 " How do you know I thought it wasn't anything ?" 
 
 " I dare say you didn't, dear. Of course, one takes 
 for granted that one's husband . . . well ! — even if it was 
 John, it would never occur to me. And look at the differ- 
 ence between my John and your Titus !" 
 
 As it is impossible to fathom Mrs. Eldridge's motive for 
 ascribing the character of Lovelace to the chosen of her 
 affections, the attempt shall not be made. Some things 
 begin, exist, and cease, and none knows why. But one 
 may conjecture. Was it that Charlotte wanted a certifi- 
 cate to her understanding — from experience — of Man the 
 Baboon that she sometimes sketched St. Martin's-le- 
 Grand and the Royal Exchange as a sort of ilex groves 
 furnished with Maenads and Bassarids, all for the delecta- 
 tion of respectable Satyrs with stove-pipe hats or billy- 
 cocks, each in his degree ? Like Nicholas Poussin, you 
 know ! Yes — that was it ! John's character had to be 
 sacrificed, to show through what slant or squint in a side- 
 aisle his wife had got a glance at the mystic altar of the 
 Bona Dea. 
 
 But Marianne was not prepared to accept the view 
 suggested. " One man's the same as another," said she. 
 Then, with an access of feeling that she was being en- 
 tangled in sometliing, she knew not what, that she was not 
 clever enough to escape from, " I Avish you wouldn't talk 
 like this, Charlotte. I hate it !" 
 
 " Talk like what, dear ?" says Charlotte, but adds illog- 
 ically, " It wasn't me began talking like this. It was you 
 said, how did I know he answered it ? I could only tell you." 
 
 " I don't care what who said, or anyone. It's nothing 
 to do with it. You know what you're trying to make out, 
 so where is the use of pretending ?" Mrs. Eldridge inter- 
 jects, " What am I trying to make out ?" But this is 
 ignored, and Marianne continues, " And you know you're 
 wrong and the thing's ridiculous." Through all this nins 
 a tacit acceptance of the existence of " the thing." But it 
 remains undefined, by mutual consent. 
 
 At this point Mrs. Eldridge began to suspect that Mari- 
 aime was showing more tension of feeling than the case, 
 as known to her, seemed to call for. She must find out, in 
 the interests of the drama she wanted to enjoy — for, of
 
 358 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 course, true miscliief-maker that she was, she never ad- 
 mitted that mischief was her motive — what had passed at 
 Tulse Hill to account for her friend's acces of asperity. 
 Because of course it was that ! It was that horrid old woman. 
 
 " I suppose you talked it all over with your dear mother, 
 Marianne ?" 
 
 " There wasn't anything to talk over with my dear mother 
 that I know of. Yes, I did — I talked over what you mean." 
 
 " And she agreed with me, I'm sure ?" 
 
 " I don't know whether she did or didn't, and I don't 
 know what " agree " means. But I do know that I won't 
 talk to Mamma again, neither about this or anything else 
 unless ..." 
 
 " Unless what ?" 
 
 " If she talks as she does. She knows, because I told her." 
 
 " Don't tell me about it, dear, if you don't like." With 
 which licence to silence IMrs. Eldridge settles down to the 
 hearing of a good long tale, which she knows will have to 
 be elicited by jerks, as Marianne is profoundly Anglo- 
 Saxon — not a drop of Celtic blood in her veins. It comes, 
 and, summed up, amounts to this : 
 
 IMarianne had carefully avoided saying a single word at 
 Tulse Hill about " it " — in fact, had wanted to keep Gros- 
 venor Square out of the conversation altogether. She 
 had really only spoken about Mrs. Steptoe's story and the 
 photographs, and how " it " came in Heaven only knew. 
 But there " it " was, and mamma had been very dis- 
 agreeable about it, and said things. What things ? Oh, 
 of course the sort of things she always said . . . well ! — 
 about her own marriage with Titus, and the Deceased 
 Wife's Sister business. Just as if she, Marianne to mt, 
 wasn't only poor Kate's half-sister — and it just made all 
 the difference ! But what did she say ? Well, it seemed 
 that she had up and denounced, in the most positive way, 
 about how she had always said, and always should say, 
 that the Blessing of God could never rest on an Unscrip- 
 tural Union. And then, being pressed to develope this 
 thesis, had fallen back feebly on the position that " we 
 were told " it was Sinful, and that Marianne knew where 
 just as well as she did ; which was indeed true in a sense, 
 for neither of them knew anything of theology, or divinity,
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 359 
 
 or exegesis, except that the Bible was the Word of God, 
 and contained everything necessary to Salvation, as well 
 as to the fostering of all our little particular prejudices. 
 In fact, it would have been difficult to light upon any two 
 completer agnostics, etymologically, than this mother and 
 daughter. So, though the former was happily unconscious 
 of the whereabouts of any texts bearing on the question, 
 she was convinced of their existence ; only maldng this 
 much concession to her daughter's position — that the 
 marriage of a man ^\dth a half-sister-in-law was only half 
 as bad as with the complete article. It was a Venial Sin, 
 and a commodious one thus far, that it still permitted 
 intercourse under protest between a daughter who had 
 committed it and a mother who went to church. 
 
 On this occasion, when the admixture of foreign matter 
 into the discussion had raised the question of possible 
 nuptial infidelities, the old lady had embittered her criticism 
 of her daughter's position by pointing out that Titus 
 might do whatever he liked, and she would never be able 
 to get a divorce, like a legally married woman. The knot 
 that had never been tied could never be untied, clearly ; 
 and one of the great advantages of conformity to established 
 usage was hopelessly lost. This view had fairly enraged 
 Marianne, who had-fought for her right to a divorce as the 
 tigress fights for her young. Not to be a \\dfe at all accord- 
 ing to the law of the land was bad enough, but if you had 
 to forego your birthright to be a legal divorcee or divorceusey 
 whatever were we coming to ? 
 
 " I must ask Jolm how that is," said John's wife, really 
 to make talk, for she was at the moment weighing the 
 question whether this item in Marianne's recent colHsion 
 with her dear mother was enough to account for her ill- 
 temper. " You would never suppose John knew anything 
 at all, by his manner ; but it's wonderful what he does 
 know. There he is !" There he was, and there also was 
 Mr. Challis, who had met him on his Avay from the station, 
 and told him he believed Charlotte was at the Hermitage, 
 and he had better come in. And there also was a Mrs. 
 Parminter, or Westrop — Marianne wasn't sure which — 
 who had really wanted to leave a card and cease, only 
 Titus had gone and asked her in, and now Marianne sup- 
 posed we should have to be civil.
 
 360 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Do not suppose this Mrs. Parminter or Westrop has 
 nothing to do with the story. She will go out of it, 
 certainly, very soon ; because she has promised to be at 
 the Spurrells' at six, and it takes a full quarter of an hour. 
 But she has an influence on it, by the spell of her presence 
 acting on the social rapports of the household. Briefly, 
 we all know it's quite diflterent when there are people ; 
 and this Mrs. Parminter or Westrop was quite as much 
 people, ad hoc, as if she had been the Spurrells. 
 
 When there are people, you assume a genial smile, and 
 affect a crisp alacrity of interest you do not feel in their 
 loves or their sheep, or even their digestions. You shout ; 
 so do they. Then some one else shouts louder, and you 
 try to finish what you were shouting. But you don't 
 succeed, and perhaps you give in ; and then your famOy — 
 lady- wife, mother, sister, what not ! — says afterwards, 
 need you have been so glum, and couldn't you have exerted 
 yourself to make things go a little ? And you're sorry, 
 because it's too late now, and the Mrs. Parminter or 
 Westrop of your case, or your particular Spurrells, have 
 trooped away with parting benedictions, and left the hush 
 of daily life behind. And then your family lady looks at 
 the cards the Mrs. Parminter or Westrop has deposited, 
 and sees which of the two she is, and says she thought so. 
 
 All this happened in the present case, the Mrs. Par- 
 minter or Westrop having swept Mr. and Mrs. Eldridge 
 away in her vortex, because they were going in the same 
 direction ; and having said to them what a delightful call 
 she had had, and what delightful people the Challises were ! 
 To which Mr. Eldridge had appended a note to the effect 
 that he had known Challis quite a long time, now you 
 came to think of it. And the equivocal lady had said dear 
 her ! — how very interesting ! 
 
 The genial wooden smile, as of the visited, on the faces 
 of Marianne and her husband died abruptly as its cause 
 became a distant shout. It gave place to a mere puzzled 
 look on his, provoked, no doubt, by the expression of cold 
 fatigue on hers and her silence. So far as he could recollect 
 there was nothing to account for this — at least, at the date 
 of their last parting. The interview about the gas-man 
 was unleavened with tenderness, certainly, but then it
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 361 
 
 was the merest household colloquy. But, to be sure, there 
 had been Tulse Hill since then ! That was it ! — it was that 
 horrid old woman ! So it was just as well to say nothing. 
 Challis said it, and went to get ready for dinner. 
 
 " Getting ready " amounted to little more than washing 
 his face and hands. It could not interfere with mental 
 schemes for approaching and conciliating his wife. He 
 really wanted to do so, for he knew in his inmost heart 
 that he had more than once this day turned angrily against 
 suppositions that ivould present themselves — hypothetical 
 readjustments of his life, always with Judith Arkroyd 
 sooner or later working into them through a mist of the 
 honour in which he held Marianne. Suppose — oh, suppose ! 
 — all his life had been different ! Suppose he had known 
 her in her girlhood, this Judith ! He had let the image 
 he had formed of the self he would have been, had all 
 been otherwise — just for one moment he had let it hunger 
 for the hand, the lips, the eyes of this hypothetical girl- 
 hood. It seemed so slight a wrong to grant himself that 
 luxury, when by hypothesis he was then never to have 
 seen or spoken to either of his wives of the time to come. 
 But the moment he had recognised the nature of this 
 supposition he had flung it from him, as he had others of 
 a like sort. Just so the watcher, sworn not to sleep, 
 believes himself awake even as the spell seizes him ; then 
 strikes hard to slay the coming dream, and is awake again. 
 Alfred Challis had been secretly guilty of this particular 
 dream, was angry with himself for it, and was scheming 
 now to lay some stress on his affection for his living wife. 
 He knew enough from long experience of Tulse Hill to 
 ascribe to it powers of producing an even greater severity 
 of deportment than Marianne's at this moment. 
 
 He judged it best " not to be too previous," and went 
 from his own dressing-room straight to the drawing-room. 
 That would make the best job. He felt obliged to John 
 Eldridge for this expression of his. 
 
 Marianne followed in due course, and appeared in con- 
 flict ^vith a preoccupying wrist-button. His proposed 
 arrangement was to say, " Well, Polly Anne, now let's 
 hear all about it !" And she spoiled it with, " Stop one 
 moment. I must get Harmood to do this for me."
 
 362 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 A new departure became necessary. But it would not 
 be half so digage. A certain amount of spontaneity would 
 have to be surrendered. Try again ! 
 
 " Got it right now ?" Yes — that was best ! — not to go 
 outside current event. 
 
 " What — the button ? Oh yes, it's right enough ! At 
 least, it'll do." And then dinner, according to Harmood, 
 was on the table, and the button lapsed. 
 
 " Did you find your mother Avell ?" This followed on 
 the heels of soup, concluded. By this time Challis had 
 given up all his little conciliations, and was drifting, a 
 mere log on the current of matrimony. Oh yes ! — Mari- 
 anne had found Mamma well — that is, just as usual. She 
 wasn't going to help, evidently. However, he would try 
 yet again, but presently. Presently did not come, appa- 
 rently, till cigar-time. Then he made a more vigorous 
 attempt. " Well, Polly Anne, I think you might ask 
 me where Fve been." 
 
 " Where have you been ?" The amount of concession 
 there was in this was just sufficient to make it impossible 
 to indict the conversation as unendurable, and demand 
 improvement or silence ; but not enough to pave the way 
 to cordiality. 
 
 Challis would probably not have ventured on his last 
 attempt if he had had nothing to report but his visit to 
 Grosvenor Square. But his afternoon excursion, later, 
 Iliad given him confidence. He was able to answer that he 
 had looked in to tea at the Ponsonby-Smiths', or whatever 
 the name was ; and what did Polly Anne think ? — CeHa 
 Ponsonby-Smith had got t^vins. 
 
 " Celia Robinson, I suppose you mean," said Marianne 
 coldly. " I saw it in the Telegraph. Did you go nowhere 
 else ?" 
 
 " In the morning — yes ! I went for a book to the 
 London Library, and made a call. NoAvhere else this 
 afternoon." 
 
 " I meant in the morning. Don't spill your coffee. The 
 cup's too full." 
 
 " No— it's all right. There !" Challis reduced his 
 coiTee to safety-point, and was not ungrateful for the 
 slight break in the conversation. He was able to affect
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 363 
 
 a balked readiness to speak, as one whose swallowed 
 coflPee has left him free to say the words it interrupted. 
 
 " I called in at Grosvenor Square." 
 
 " I see." This is a simple speech enough, but if the 
 / lasts a long time and the S even longer, it expresses 
 diabolical insight. Yet one can say nothing. Challis 
 could only ignore it, and continue : 
 
 " I told you Judith Arkroyd had had an accident. Or 
 didn't I ?" But he knew quite well ; and Marianne knew 
 he knew, and merely shook her head. He went on : 
 " Well — she has. And she wasn't able to come to the 
 Acropolis last night." 
 
 " A bad accident ?" Marianne seems determined to 
 keep her words at the fewest. 
 
 " Nothing very serious ! A sprained ankle. She'll 
 have to lie up for it. Not a hanging matter !" 
 
 " Of course you didn't see her ?" 
 
 " I did. There is nothing to prevent her receiving 
 visitors." 
 
 " Was she up ?" 
 
 " My dear Marianne ! Of course she was up. What do 
 you suppose 1" 
 
 " I don't know. I don't pretend to understand these 
 sort of people. I suppose it's all right, either way." And 
 this lady then withdrew from the conversation, leaving 
 her husband half-nettled and half-apologetic, but quite un- 
 able to lay hold of any excuse for expressing either irrita- 
 tion or apology. Especially the latter, because why 
 should he think confessions or apologies necessary ? 
 
 Perhaps nothing could throw more light on the way the 
 heads of this household quarrelled — for domestic bliss has 
 many forms — than the internal comment made by its eldest 
 son when he returned by contract at half-past ten from 
 supping with his friend Tommy Eldridge. What Master 
 Bob said to himself, after a short wait for sounds of human 
 voices, was : " Bow on, I expect. Pater and mater not 
 talking !" He put his head in at the drawing-room door 
 and made a statement. " I say. I'm not late." His 
 father, who understood Master Bob down to the ground, 
 attached the right meaning to " What are you ?" which 
 followed. He looked at his watch. " Ten- thirty- three,"
 
 364 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 said he. " Three minutes late ! Now go to bed, and 
 leave the phonograph alone till to-morrow." 
 
 " What ! — not only just one, in the breakfast-room, with 
 the door shut ?" But even so conditioned, it is too late 
 for phonographs, and Bob goes to his couch a sadder boy, 
 but as great a goose as ever. Before doing so, he has 
 to give securities that he will not pound about over- 
 head and wake his sisters ; and to note that his pater is 
 reading and sorting letters, and his mater has settled down 
 to a book. 
 
 You know what that means, especially when the book is 
 bicolumnar, microtypical, and there's such a lot to read 
 before it gets to where everyone says it's so improper. 
 You read the first brisk spirt, till you get to the point at 
 wliich the author's inventive power has flagged, and then 
 you become strangely content to repose underneath that 
 work, with your eyes closed and your hands peacefully 
 folded over your foreground. But Bob was wrong. His 
 mater had not settled down to her book in the true sense 
 of the words, and Challis knew it by the speed at which the 
 leaves turned. Marianne couldn't read at that rate, even 
 without stopping to think of the meaning. And you must, 
 sometimes. 
 
 Besides, ChalHs had glanced at that book himself, and 
 knew his wife would never understand local Americanisms 
 and Indian dialects in Kamschatka. It was an interesting 
 book, though, and ChalUs remembered how the first chap- 
 ter began : " Midnight in Nootka Sound, and the blood 
 still dripped monotonously from the shelf above, etc." 
 He was just thinking could he safely venture on asking the 
 reader why this first chapter was called " Hello !" when 
 she put the book aside, and said briefly : " I'm going to bed." 
 She had not spoken a word since Bob's incursion. 
 
 Special efi'ort is needed to keep in mind how Uttle Mari- 
 anne's husband knew of the causes of her perturbation. 
 So far as he could see, the whole ground was covered by 
 illogical resentment against a group of his friends, whose 
 advances to herself — as it seemed to him — she had in- 
 excusably rejected. Still, he could frame excuses for 
 her ; it was not for her as it was for him : he had the key 
 of the position. It was a case for compromise, and Mari-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 365 
 
 anne was uncompromising. That was all ! As for any 
 conception that a new light thrown on his past had pre- 
 sented him to her as distrustful and secretive — certainly 
 keeping back something she must have a right to know ; 
 possibly, though she hesitated over this, something dis- 
 graceful to himself — no such idea crossed his mind for a 
 moment. 
 
 It would be all right in the morning ! He had said that 
 many a time overnight, in tiff-times, and peace had fol- 
 lowed as predicted. Tulse Hill, considered as an incident, 
 was too recent for any sort of conciliatory effort to be worth 
 making — to-night, at any rate. Let it alone, and have a 
 finishing smoke ! Go back to the Ostrogoths ! 
 
 Then, as he wondered whether, for all its slow combus- 
 tion, the grate would not consume its coal before he got 
 through his cigar, there came back to him an image of 
 Judith Arkroyd in a dangerous form — an image in which 
 physical beauty was subordinate to a subtle relationship 
 of soul, which he had imperceptibly slipped into ascribing 
 to liis own and hers. A dangerous form, because Love 
 played a new part in it for this man. His first wife had 
 probably been — put it plainly — a mistake ; his second . . . 
 well ! — he was very fond of Mariarme — very — and they had 
 had many happy times together. But it wasn't quite the 
 same thing as — oh, dear ! — well, it couldn't be, you know ! 
 One can't have everything. 
 
 Much more dangerous, that sort of thing, to our think- 
 ing, than the primitive fascinations of Aphrodite herself ! 
 Indeed, we have sometimes thought that lady didn't go 
 the right way to work in that affair with Adonis. She 
 should have sympathized with him. All the same, mind 
 you ! — so Cynicism murmurs at our elbow — man has an 
 extraordinary faculty for detecting companion-souls to his 
 own, pulses preordained to beat in unison with his, in bodies 
 of extraordinary beauty, of indisputable grace. He may 
 squint, and his eyesight be defective, but his predestined 
 She, the mate of his soul, will gaze on him through lustrous 
 orbs of tender radiance. Her voice will reach him through 
 the rosiest of lips, the pearliest of teeth, without so much as 
 one gold stopping ; and all the while there will he be, without 
 a sound tooth in his head to boast of, unless he has the
 
 366 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 effrontery to make a parade of his crown-and-bridge treat- 
 ment. He may even wear a wig, and brazen it out, in 
 the same breath with a protest against a single false 
 tress on the head of his other dearer life-in-life — this comes 
 out of Poetry, somewhere — while as for a Venus Calva 
 . . . simply out of the question, thank you ! 
 
 Anyhow, the predestined mate of the soul was a much 
 more kittle head of cattle to shoe behind when chosen for 
 her beauty from among the daughters of an aristocracy 
 not celebrated for ugliness, and manipulated by photo- 
 graphers into bestowing their eyes upon the readers of the 
 shiniest print that ever lay on the table of an hotel reading- 
 room.
 
 CHAPTER XXV 
 
 The Mistake's son was the unfortunate means of causing the 
 next day to begin badly. For he rose early, and hastened 
 to the plague-centre at Putney whence Records flowed, 
 to acquire in exchange for the condemned piece of mere 
 music either "The White- Eyed Musical Kaffir" or some- 
 thing equally Juicy. Naturally, he found the shop not 
 open, at an hour when sparse milk and eggs were the only 
 things procurable. " Won't open till ten," was the current 
 opinion. Bob, disgusted, called on his friend Tommy 
 Eldridge, and found sympathy and consolation. Tommy 
 had had the "Musical Kaffir" for two days past, and the 
 Kaffir had palled. He would swop him for the " mere 
 music " record and twopence. Bob closed with the offer, 
 but the bargain had taken time ; and, as a consequence, 
 he burst in upon breakfast at half-past eight o'clock, and 
 announced his acquisition with an evident conviction that 
 his hearers had been awaiting his return with suspended 
 breaths. His step-mother — or aunt ; either will do — con- 
 fiscated this treasure promptly, and denounced Science 
 within the home-circle. Lectures, she said truly, were 
 one thing ; houses another. Bob cited the indulgences 
 shown to other fellows by their parents in respect of phono- 
 graphs, and Cat said that Tommy Eldridge always had his 
 till tea-time. Her mother told her not to speak with her 
 mouth full, and met Master Bob's half-inaudible " I shall ask 
 the Governor, anyhow!" with so harsh an enquiry, " What's 
 that you're sajdng, sir ? Don't mumble to yourself !" that 
 Bob evacuated his position, and awaited reinforcements. 
 
 Marianne was making the common mistake of easing ill- 
 temper by attacking objects blameless of provoking it — 
 blowing off steam through wrong channels. At another 
 time she would have been too lazy to open a campaign 
 against a phonograph. Now she found it a relief to pitch 
 
 367
 
 368 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 in — Bob's phrase — and enlarged her scheme of opera- 
 tions. " If it wasn't for your father," she said, " you 
 would all be breakfasting upstairs." Bob, who was afraid 
 of her because she had boxed his ears for him before now 
 — and not so very long ago — only muttered a sotto-voce 
 " I'm a Rugby boy now, and that would be grandmother," 
 expressing in his simple, limited way his sense of acquired 
 status, and the folly of ignoring it. Marianne, who was 
 not really the least angry with Bob, and certainly didn't 
 care twopence about the "Musical Kaffir," saw in this sup- 
 pressed defiance an outlet for her own high-pressure atmo- 
 sphere, and jumped at its inaudibility as though it were 
 the head and front of its offending. What was it he was 
 mumbling ? — she said again, with growing anger. He 
 wouldn't mumble if his father was here. Bob denied this 
 audibly, probably meaning that he had said nothing he 
 would have scrupled to say to his father. He felt indig- 
 nant and injured ; having, indeed, meant no wrong, tliough 
 his preoccupation about the glorious phonograph had no 
 doubt made his speech appear careless. 
 
 As ill-luck would have it, Challis, coming down at this 
 moment to breakfast, and not in a beaming good-humour 
 himself, heard his wife's indictment, and quickened his 
 descent of the stairs. He resolved at once on his usual 
 policy whenever Marianne came to open warfare with any 
 of the family — namely, to take her part at the moment, 
 for discipline's sake, even supposing he had to make amends 
 for it after by concessions. 
 
 " What is the matter ?" said he magisterially, in the 
 pause of silence his entry created. It was more impres- 
 sive than any amount of excitement, and the younger 
 little girl, Emmie, began to cry in a terrified way. Nothing 
 creates the formidable like fear, even when it is only a small 
 child's. The tension became full-blown, having — please 
 observe ! — all grown out of nothing. 
 
 " You must ask your boy what he means, Alfred, and 
 find for yourself. All I can say is, that if I am to be spoken 
 to so before the servants, I cannot go on." 
 
 " How dare you speak to your mother so — eh ? What 
 do you mean by it ?" Challis' s assumption of uncon- 
 trollable anger is affectation, merely from motives of
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 369 
 
 policy. He knows he can make it up with Bob, any 
 time. 
 
 " / didiiH." Bob no more knows what he is denying 
 than his father knows what he has accused him of. Never 
 mind ■ FamiUes don't quarrel by the book. Bob is scarlet, 
 for all that, and warms to his subject. " She took my 
 Record, and it cost a shilling, and twopence over. She 
 wanted to prevent me ..." But it remains untold, what- 
 ever it was, for Marianne interrupts : 
 
 " You can hear for yourself how he calls me she. But do 
 as you like, Alfred !" — use of this name means a state of 
 siege, observe ! — " He is your boy. After which she repeats, 
 " She, indeed .'" to rub it in. 
 
 Challis at once perceived that he must either sacrifice 
 poor Bob on the altar of Peace, or be entangled in a hopeless 
 discussion of rights and wrongs with Marianne ; how hope- 
 less, only experience such as his could know ! Action was 
 necessary, and he pounced on Bob, seizing him by the collar 
 of his coat. " How dare you speak so to your mother ? 
 How dare you ..." But stop ! He could never ask him 
 how he dared say she to his mother ! Even Marianne would 
 suspect him of making game of her. So he had to pretend 
 that his indignation had overwhelmed liim. " Don't 
 answer me, sir," he shouted, shaking the culprit with a 
 severity probably more apparent than real. "Be off to 
 your room directly, and stop there !" And the child that 
 was crying broke into a roar, to do honour to the way the 
 scene had climaxed. Bob vanished. 
 
 The roaring slowed down, and was gradually merged in 
 bread-and-marmalade. An intermediate period of sobs 
 and bites, overlapping, was filled out with public discom- 
 fort — an embarrassed silence in which Challis's visible 
 vexation was unfairly taken advantage of by Marianne, to 
 say, " You can't wonder at the child, when you're so vio- 
 lent." Challis closed his lips lest he should speak ; but it 
 came home to him, in some mysterious way, that he was 
 in the wrong. Men are ; or if they are not, it comes to the 
 same thing. For a firm conviction in the mind of a woman 
 with a strong will and a proper spirit has all the force of 
 fact. But Challis's acquiescence in his guilt was accom- 
 panied by a growing resolution to take Bob to the play,. 
 
 VOL. I. 24
 
 370 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 cohte que coute, before he went back to school on Monday. 
 He had no misgivings about the boy's breakfast. He knew 
 Harmood might be rehed on, as Bob was a favourite in that 
 quarter. Probably a compensation- breakfast was in store 
 for Bob, later. 
 
 It was a bad moment for dealing with a female corre- 
 spondent who is " always sincerely yours." Had Challis 
 been confident that an unopened letter on the table was 
 from one who was only " his faithfully " — though, indeed, 
 Rebekah could not have been much more to Isaac — or even 
 " his truly," he might have opened it confidently and made 
 some excuse to throw it carelessly along the table to his 
 wife while he went on to his last consignment of press- 
 clippings. Or he might have done so equally, however 
 " sincerely his " Judith Arkroyd's signature said she was, 
 if only this stupid needless row had not been bred by Mrs. 
 Challis's Short Temper out of Bob's Phonograph. But 
 then, in addition to the sincerity with which Judith sur- 
 rendered herself for ever, ChalHs knew the letter would 
 contain a repeat of her invitation of the day before to his 
 wife — probably to accompany him to Royd at Whitsun- 
 tide. So he postponed opening all his letters, and made 
 the fatal mistake of hustling them together as though he 
 valued them all alike. Marianne knew better. Had she 
 not seen him pause half a second over that characteristic, 
 unmistakable hand — a strong bold upright script that 
 seemed to speak its contempt in every line for the scratchy 
 ItaUcisms of its writer's ancestors ? How was she to 
 interpret its being packed away out of her sight in this 
 way ? However, she wished the jury in the court of her 
 inner conscience to understand distinctly that she did not 
 care one straw what her husband did or did not do m 
 respect of Grosvenor Square — but within well-defined lines. 
 For, apart from the degree to which she rehed on the safe- 
 guards of that Square's aristocratic pride, she had about 
 her husband the feeUng many students of nature ascribe 
 to married folk who are not ripening for divorce — the feeling 
 Geraint had about Enid, according to Tennyson. Marianne, 
 for all her tempersomeness and jealousy, loved and re- 
 verenced Challis too much to dream he could be guilty of 
 anything that would supply copy for a modem novel.
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 371 
 
 A more frank nature than Marianne's would have said to 
 him when he pocketed his unopened letters, " What ! — not 
 read her letter 1 Well ! — / wouldn't write again, if I were 
 she !" or some such pleasantry. Her obdurate silence pro- 
 voked him to say what might else have stopped on his 
 tongue's tip. It came just after the children had vanished 
 to the nursery. " I think, Marianne, considering that the 
 boy is going back to school on Monday, you might have . . . 
 Well ! — you might have been a little easier with him." 
 
 "I'm sorry he is going back to school ; that is where he 
 learns it all. But I expected to be found fault with." 
 
 " Learns all what ? What does he learn ?" But the 
 lady simply bristles with silence in reply to this question, 
 so intensely does it call for no answer. Titus continues, 
 letting it lapse : " I don't tliink you remember that it was I 
 that gave him the phonograph ; at least, I gave him leave 
 to buy it." 
 
 " I don't remember anything about it, and I'm not going 
 to try to. Of course you gave it him, to encourage him 
 against me. Very well, Alfred, you take his part ! Oh, / 
 know ! — oh yes, I'm not his mother. But I know what 
 poor Kate would have said, if she had been here now." 
 This was rather a favourite position of Marianne's ; only 
 she never by any chance filled out her claim to knowledge 
 of what would have happened under perfectly inconceivable 
 circumstances. She kept details secret. 
 
 He thought of replying : " Poor Kate wouldn't be a fool, 
 anyhow !" For he was vexed about Bob. But he was 
 ashamed to find how Time had changed the face of things, 
 that he should actually take exception to his own state- 
 ment on its merits ! Wouldn't she ? He wasn't at all 
 sure. He gave it up, and merely said : " We won't talk 
 any more about it now. Where's Bob's Record ?" 
 
 This was unfortunate. He had better have swept his 
 letters into his pocket, with the hand that was waiting to 
 do it, and carried them off to his study. Instead, he 
 waited for the confiscated Musical Kaffir. 
 
 " No — Alfred — it's no use ! I won't give it you if Bob's 
 to have it. Horrible noise! Besides, look at the way 
 he's been behaving !" 
 
 Challis gets visibly angry, or angrier. " You had much 
 
 24—2
 
 372 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 better give it me, Marianne," he says, reaching out his 
 hand for it. But he just misses it, and it goes into Mari- 
 anne's pocket ; past recovery, without concession on her 
 part or physical force on lais. All might have been well 
 if the dispute had not got to this point. 
 
 Things being thus, nothing remains for the story but to 
 tell what actually took place. The lady persisted. No, 
 she w^ould not give it up ! Nothing would induce her. 
 Appeals on moderate lines, to come, to be reasonable, and 
 so on, only made matters worse — tending, in fact, towards 
 admission of Aveakness on Challis's part. He became 
 more irritated, and in his annoyance at having to give up 
 the point, made an unfortunate speech. " Well — keep it, 
 then, if you're so obstinate. I won't try to take it from 
 you. But I tell you this, Marianne : there are many 
 husbands that would." His only meaning was to lay a 
 little stress on his own forbearance. He w^ould not even 
 try. But his speech sounded like an assertion of male 
 power against female weakness, as well as of legal right. 
 
 The last was what stung Marianne. Her recent en- 
 counter with her mother had thrown doubts on her right 
 to a divorce. How^ could they be reconciled with a hus- 
 band's legal right to confiscate a White-Eyed Musical 
 Kaffir, or any record, for that matter ? Her eyes flashed, 
 and she bit her lip as she turned to leave the room. A 
 laugh that was no laugh came of it, but scarcely speech, to 
 speak of. All she said was, " Because they could " — not 
 very intelligibly. And then the nurse, Martha, with some 
 appeal through the just opened door, cut off the interview, 
 and imposed an every-day demeanour on both. 
 
 Challis went to his room to cool down. To him his 
 wife's last words were inexplicable, unless they meant that 
 his physique was not his strong point, and that he might 
 not have recaptured the Musical Kaffir so very easily. 
 But that did not seem to ring quite true, neither. Never 
 mind ! — he had to look at his letters. After all, it was not 
 the first time Marianne had been unintelligible. 
 
 But her exclamation had no relation whatever to what 
 Bob chose to call " vim." It was part of the new phase 
 of thought connecting her mother's views about the legiti- 
 macy of her own marriage-knot with Challis's suggestion
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 373 
 
 of a male domination that others — not he — might have 
 legitimately claimed. If she was not to be Titus's lawful 
 wife — if she was to be swindled by a trick of jurisdiction — 
 at least let her have the advantages of her freedom. Let 
 there be no rubbish about a man's right to rule, about a 
 wife's duty to obey. Keep that sort of thing for authen- 
 ticated marriage-lines, if hers were to be flawed. 
 
 It was the vaguest hint of an idea — no more ! A gleam 
 not worth a thought, except for what it grew to. 
 
 A human creature with an unopened letter in its hand 
 is raw material for an Essay on the Past, Present, and 
 Future. Rather dangerous things for a thoughtful scrib- 
 bler to touch on rashly ! Better say as little about them 
 as possible. 
 
 That, or something like it, was Challis's thought as he 
 stood in his writing sanctum, reasonlessly hanging fire 
 over the opening of Judith Arkroyd's letter. Or was it 
 that he wanted time to settle down after the recent emeute ? 
 Some nervous characters — like his — shrink from a clash 
 of conditions, a discordance of consecutive surroundings, 
 and are prone to let each association die down before 
 another takes its place. Challis wanted to shake clear of 
 his domesticities, maybe, before transferring his thoughts 
 to Judith and the invitation to Royd that he knew her 
 letter would repeat. 
 
 For whatever reason, he hung fire. And when in the 
 end he opened the letter, he did it slowly. He took a 
 broad view of it ; then placed it on the table while he 
 lighted a pipe, with a misgiving that there was a flaw in 
 it that would prevent his showing it to Marianne. When 
 he picked it up for deliberate revision, smoke-encircled, 
 he found it read thus : 
 
 " Dear Mr. Challis, 
 
 " Speech A. will suit me best — but never mmd that 
 if you feel like deciding on the other. Both enclosed 
 back. 
 
 " Remember about Whitsuntide. Only please do succeed 
 in persuading Mrs. Challis to come this time. Shall I 
 come and go down on my knees to her ? ]t does seem such
 
 374 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 a shame that she should keep so much in the background. 
 Tell her she must come. I leave it to you — but do try ! 
 
 " Sincerely yours, 
 
 "J. A. 
 
 55 
 
 What the dickens possessed Judith — not Miss Arkroyd, 
 please ! — to use that unfortunate expression, " keep so 
 much in the background " 1 Of course, Grosvenor Square 
 is the foreground of the Universe — a httle of Challis's style 
 as an author outcropped here — but why not take it for 
 granted ? Why, in a communication that was to be 
 shown to a fretful porcupine, need Grosvenor Square let 
 the cat of its deep-rooted faith in its position out of the bag 
 of its good-breeding ? That was Challis's metaphorical 
 standpoint. But really Judith very seldom sinned in this 
 way ; scarcely ever, so Challis persuaded himself, tres- 
 passed on Mr. Elphinstone's department. 
 
 Now, why need Mrs. ChalHs choose this exact moment 
 to remind her husband that his Fire Insurance expired on 
 the twenty-fifth, within fifteen days of which, et cetera ? 
 Why had he left his door on the jar, so that she should look 
 in, unannounced, just as he was deciding that it would 
 never do to show her this letter from Judith 1 He had no 
 time to reflect — barely enough to replace it in its envelope. 
 And that, after all, was the worst thing he could do. For 
 Marianne knew the envelope by heart already. The only 
 way of accounting for things of this sort is by imputing to 
 Ebhs a conscientious attention to detail. He reaps his 
 reward, as we know, the smallest interventions often 
 yielding a profit. This remark is suggested by Chalhs's 
 decision, after liis wife had left the room, that the Devil 
 was in it. 
 
 Has all this incident of Bob's phonograph been worth 
 recording ? Certainly it has. Because, coming as it did 
 on the top of Mrs. Steptoe's reminiscence, and Mrs. Challis's 
 visit to Tulse Hill, it blocked explanations by supplying 
 reasons for the attitude of that hill — reasons valid enough 
 undoubtedly in the eyes of Mrs. Challis. The phonograph 
 ruction was an effect, not a cause of ill-temper, and poor 
 Bob was really a victim, not a prime mover in it. It did
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 375 
 
 not matter much to him, for his release was not long delayed, 
 and ■ reinstatement and compensation followed somehoAv. 
 Besides, his father took him to hear the Barhiere di Siviglia 
 before he went back to school. But he refused to admit 
 that Melba w^as any better than her record Avould be, if 
 he might only buy it for three bob. 
 
 By itself the Steptoe incident might have been explained. 
 So might Challis's correspondence Avith Judith, or might 
 never have attracted attention. It was the correlation 
 of each to each, and the visit to Tulse Hill, with the subtle 
 touch of Charlotte Eldridge at critical points, that provoked 
 the dissension over the boy's harmless instrument of torture, 
 and gave the Devil his opportunity. 
 
 Mrs. Steptoe had never recognised the young man 
 whom she remembered as Harris, who, of course, was 
 Challis himself. But the identification was in the air — 
 bound to be made sooner or later. Although Mrs. Challis 
 kept silence towards her husband, she lost no time in re- 
 curring to the subject with Mrs. Steptoe. Her own pene- 
 tration had gone very little way, but Mrs. Eldridge had not 
 been behindhand in finding out that either Kate Verrall 
 had been thrice married, or that the second husband of the 
 Brighton story was Challis himself. Charlotte would not 
 have made a bad female detective. " Don't be a goose !" 
 said she to her bewildered friend. " Don't give the woman 
 any hints. Show her an old photograph of your husband, 
 and see if she doesn't recognise it." Marianne did so, and 
 it was straightway identified as that young Mr. Harris. 
 " But," said she, " that is Mr. Challis, before we were 
 married." Aunt Stingy, completely taken aback for a 
 moment, recovered herself wdth great presence of mind, 
 and laid claim to having said many things she never had 
 said the first minute she set eyes on Mr. Challis. In a 
 very little while she persuaded herself she had known him 
 at once. But she could not be induced to admit that she 
 had got the name wrong ; and as it was quite unimportant 
 that she should do so, both ladies agreed to leave her un- 
 convinced. 
 
 Mrs. Eldridge's suggestion was made at her own semi- 
 detached residence, a quarter of an hour's walk from the 
 Hermitage, where she and Marianne were reviewing the
 
 376 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 position some days after " it " occurred. The latter had 
 been dwehing on a suggestion of her mother's, a very 
 stupid old woman, that her husband had been, and still 
 was, ignorant of poor Kate's first marriage. 
 
 " ^46solutely impossible, dear !" said the authority. 
 " Thing couldn't be ! Besides, she would have had to 
 be twice a ^vddow, in such a very short time, if this young 
 man Harris wasn't your husband. He must have been." 
 And then she added her detective suggestion, as recorded, 
 and the result removed all chance of acquittal on this 
 score.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 That Whitsuntide the may-trees were thick with bloom 
 at Royd when Mariarme ChalHs once for all flatly decided 
 not to accompany her husband there. As for liim, he 
 couldn't possibly refuse to go merely because she wouldn't. 
 And when you particularly want to do anything, intrinsic 
 impossibility to refuse to do it is always welcome. So on 
 an early day in June Challis found himself again on the 
 lawn at Royd ; not exactly breathing freely because Mari- 
 anne had refused to join the party, but distinctly glad that 
 he was not called on to speculate as to what she would have 
 said or done in this contingency or that, or which of the 
 guests she would have fallen out with, or the extent to 
 which he would have been bound to try to lubricate the 
 situation, or the exact nature of the mess he would have 
 made of it. Marianne had decided the matter, in spite of 
 bo7ia fide efforts on his part to reverse her decision. He had 
 made them bona fide, in the interest of his conscience 
 later on. 
 
 Anyhow, that was all settled, and he could inhale the 
 aroma of the may-trees and the lilacs, and identify the 
 note of the wood-pigeon — he was just bucolic enough for 
 that — and pretend he meant blackbird when he said 
 nightingale, and, in short, betray his Cockney origin 
 ad libitum, while basldng on the lawn in the first enjoyment 
 of his escape from the hoots and shrieks and petroleum- 
 stench of town. For even Wimbledon Common is not 
 exempt. And nowhere can the music and the silence — 
 strange compound ! — of the world of growing trees go home 
 more strongly to the jaded sense of a mere town- rat than 
 in the charmed circle of a park-girt home, with centuries 
 of repose behind and possible decades of conservation 
 ahead. Not too many, because that would savour of 
 sentimentalism ; and it is always our duty to be prosaic 
 
 &77
 
 378 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 in the interests of an advancing Civilisation. Not too 
 many, in this case of Royd, because that would imply too 
 great a delay in the development of the wealth of coal 
 that is known to exist below the beech and cedar of the 
 three-mile drive, and the woods of ash and oak the deer 
 and the keepers have pretty nearly kept to themselves 
 since the days of William the Socialist. And when the 
 coal comes, what that means in the end is — heaps more 
 people ! Never mind what sort ! Don't bother ! 
 
 Don't bother ! That was Alfred Challis's view of the 
 Universe in two words as he settled down to the enjoy- 
 ment of faultless afternoon tea, which would be a little 
 stronger presently for those who waited ; of the society of 
 his hostess, the Rector, and two of the previous chits ; 
 of whom one, the young soldier's idol of last September, 
 was drawling with sweetness, but without interest, to 
 oblige. She was looking frequently towards the house. 
 Challis said to himself that she need not be uneasy, be- 
 cause he would come, all right enough, in due time. He 
 knew this, because they had ridden from Euston together, 
 and talked about tobacco the whole way, that being their 
 only topic in common. When the young man appeared, 
 with the visible benediction on his head of two ivory- 
 backed hair- brushes with no handles — which ChalHs had 
 seen when a dressing-case was opened in the train for a 
 moment — the young lady received him ceremoniously, 
 almost distantly. Never mind ! — thought the author to 
 himself — they'll be romping like school-children the 
 minute we oldsters are turned off. 
 
 There was no one else yet, of all a large house-party ; 
 nearly the same as in September, said Lady Arkroyd. 
 She apologized for this to Mr. Challis, who replied that he, 
 too, was nearly the same as in September, if not quite, 
 and that it was a coincidence. He hoped his identity 
 would be as welcome to the house-party as its would be 
 to him. Lady Arkroyd smiled acquiescence without 
 analysis. She remained gracefully on the surface of things, 
 confident that all would go well below it in the hands, for 
 instance, of an eminent, if sometimes puzzling novelist. 
 Lady Arkroyd had not the insight of Judith, Challis per- 
 ceived. He indulged a disposition to detect insight in
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 379 
 
 Judith. Geisl in that quarter made their relation — not 
 that they liad any, mind you ! — plausible and warrantable. 
 
 There may have been concession to some such relativity 
 in her ladyship's remark that Judith would not be back 
 till dinner. Challis fell flat over it, not knowing whether 
 he ought to say, " Cheer up ! — I can wait," or shed tears. 
 Athelstan Taylor relieved the position by saying that he 
 hoped Miss Arkroyd had stopped on her way at the Rec- 
 tory, as he wanted her to see the little girl. Then her 
 ladyship bestowed on Challis, for a snack, as it were, the 
 odd chit, who was at a loose end ; devised her to him by 
 name, and went back to a talk on local games at Provi- 
 dence with the Rector. The chit's name, however im- 
 probable it may seem, was Lady Henrietta Mounttulli- 
 bardine, and she did not look as if she could live up to it. 
 She coloured at intervals, and seemed hushed. ChalHs 
 distinctly saw her want to say something several times, 
 and give it up. He encouraged her tenderly, and in time 
 she confessed that she rea,lly wanted to know whether it 
 was Pepperstraw, in Challis's last novel, that hit upon the 
 idea of using digitalis, or Bessie. He told her, and she 
 retired on her information, in awe at having spoken to a 
 live author. Challis could listen undisturbed to the con- 
 versation of the Parson and their hostess. 
 
 " There is something very engaging about the child," 
 said the latter. " Of course, she has that defect. The 
 mouth is too large for beauty. But she cossets up to you 
 nicely, and opens her eyes wide. The eyes are fine in them- 
 selves, and remind me of ... oh dear !— what was that 
 girl's name, now, in Somersetshire ? I can't recollect the 
 least." Athelstan Taylor felt helpless, and was wonder- 
 ing if it would be legitimate to say never mind, when her 
 ladyship decided that it didn't matter, and continued : 
 " Sir Murgatroyd is quite of our opinion, that it would never 
 do to let the child lapse." 
 
 " Never do at all !" said the Rector. " Indeed, even 
 if the child were not there, I should be very reluctant to 
 lose sight of the father. I suspect, too, that the people at 
 the cottage — where I put him to stay, you know — wouldn't 
 thank me for taking him away. It's very curious to me 
 how a man with such qualifications for being an encum-
 
 380 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 brance can manage to make himself welcome at all. But 
 he's become very popular there, especially with old Margy. 
 She says it's like a clock to hear him tell. I think she 
 means that he goes on chatting in a pleasant, easy kind 
 of way. Sea stories, you know — that sort of thing !" 
 
 " Didn't you say he was inclined to give trouble ? — they 
 are troublesome sometimes." She referred, no doubt, to 
 the intransigeant pauper population, and their natural 
 love of independence combined with outdoor relief. 
 
 " I didn't mean exactly troublesome in that sense. 
 Troublesomely averse to giving trouble, perhaps I should 
 have said. He never said anything to me, but old Margy 
 is in his confidence. It seems that that sister of his — 
 the Steptoe woman, you know ? ... oh yes ! — you know — 
 the woman whose husband was drowned in the lock — the 
 delirium tremens man ..." 
 
 " Delirium tremens man ?" said her ladyship dimly. 
 And then suddenly, " Oh yes, I Imow, of course," almost 
 in one word. Challis listened with stimulated attention, 
 and Mr. Taylor continued : 
 
 " Well ! — she's Jim Coupland's sister, you see — and it 
 seems that she used to twit him ^vith eating the bread of 
 idleness before he took to the retail match-trade. He con- 
 siders that he is eating the bread of idleness now. Perhaps 
 he is. But he is submitting, until he is strong on his legs 
 again — that's his expression. Besides, we have made a 
 composition, and half his keep is to be deducted from his 
 savings. By-the-bye ..." The Rector paused, with re- 
 collection on his face. 
 
 Lady Arkroyd's speech is apt to have a superseding 
 character — to pass by lesser folks' unimportant remarks. 
 " I liked the father at the Hospital," she says indifferently. 
 " I hope the child isn't going to be delicate " Mr. Taylor 
 was arrested long enough to say, oh dear no ! — oh no, it 
 was or would be all right as far as that went — and then 
 left it, whatever it was, to finish his own beginning. 
 
 " I was just going to say what an odd chance it was 
 that Mr. Challis's housekeeping should have absorbed 
 Mrs. Steptoe. How does the woman answer, Challis ?" 
 For, as we have heard, these two gentlemen had become 
 fairly well acquainted last September, in spite of the cloth
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 381 
 
 of the one and the predispositions of the other — a better 
 word for the case than " antipathies," which had almost 
 crept into the text. One or two country- walk chats had 
 ended in Challis giving the Rev. Athelstan practical abso- 
 lution for his black stock and silk waistcoat, and the latter 
 reflecting much on the figments of mediaeval creed and 
 formulary that make a gulf between so many intellects 
 with concord at the root, and play into the hands of their 
 common enemy, the Devil. Why was he glad that hi& 
 > friend Gus was safe in London dabbling in incense, coquet- 
 ting with Holy Water, preaching Immaculate Conceptions, 
 and not letting his left hand know that his right hand had 
 renounced the Bishop of Rome — when a visitor like Challis 
 might accrue at any moment at Royd Rectoiy, as per 
 promise given eight months ago ? Why ? — simply be- 
 cause he felt that the bridge of his own liberality, however 
 long the span of it, was not enough to cover the great gulf ! 
 And there was Ahriman, chuclding all the while ! 
 
 " I am given to understand that Mrs. Steptoe is a good 
 plain cook," was Challis's answer to the Rector's question. 
 Something in the manner of it seemed to throw doubt 
 on his good faith. Otherwdse, why seek confirmatory 
 evidence, as his hearers seemed to do ? 
 
 " I suppose you dine at home ?" said the Rector, going 
 to the point. 
 
 " I don't judge so much by that. It wouldn't be fair 
 to do so, because I gather that in our house the flues don't 
 act, and the best kitchen-coal at twenty shillings has no 
 bum in it, and goes to cender in no time. Also we have 
 no saucepans the right size. Also our greengrocer supplies 
 us with potatoes which on peeling turn out irregular poly- 
 hedrons. So it doesn't do to be biassed by what we get to 
 eat. But I am convinced she is a good plain cook." 
 
 Lady Arkroyd was accepting all Challis said in the spirit 
 of Bradshaw. A territorial lady knows nothing of the 
 small domesticities of any middle class. The Rector, 
 perceiving a danger ahead — a new-born interest in the 
 peculiar potatoes obtaining in suburban villas — headed 
 Lady Arkroyd off just as she had begun, " What very 
 curious pota . . . !" without a smile. k ^ k 
 
 " Challis isn't in earnest," said he. " It's only his chaff."
 
 382 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 Her ladyship said, " Oh !" and looked puzzled — awaited 
 enlightenment. Challis laughed, admitting jurisdiction. 
 But he pleaded in extenuation of his offence that it was 
 difficult to fight against the conviction that Mrs. Steptoe 
 was a good plain cook — v/hatever direct evidence there was 
 to the contrary — in the face of her apron and the material 
 of her dress, her punctual attendance at Chapel, her hand- 
 writing and its blots, her arithmetic and its totals. She 
 really had all the qualities of a good plain cook, except the 
 bald and crude ability to do plain cookery — a thing no one 
 who looks below the surface ever bothers over. 
 
 " I'm afraid the good woman's a bit of a humbug," was 
 Athelstan Taylor's conclusion. It was welcomed by the 
 lady, as a relief to the necessity for smiHng in a well-bred 
 way — a Debretticent way, call it — while queer arrivals 
 from below uttered paradoxes on Olympus. 
 
 Judith might be late ; she was at Thanes. Challis pre- 
 tended he hadn't known this. But he knew well enough 
 that the young lady had forgiven the Castle, because they 
 were going to have theatricals ; and she, with an imputed 
 experience, had been petitioned to accept the principal 
 part. All this was in her last letter, written to Challis at 
 his club. It had also told him that William Rufus, her 
 brother, would not be at Royd for a few days, as he was 
 busy in town over the Great Idea, which was going to be a 
 very great Idea indeed, as some men had come forward 
 and were going to put a good deal of Capital into it. 
 Challis had said, " Dear me ! — how like ! , . ." and had not 
 finished the sentence. 
 
 A little thing occurred that amused the novel-monger's 
 heart and stirred his sympatliies. When he began talking 
 with his hostess and the Rector, he had turned his back on 
 the chit and the young soldier. When, as the Rector's 
 departure provoked dispersal, he looked their way again — 
 behold ! — they had vanished, as by magic. " I think," said 
 the second chit, " they have gone for a walk to Fern 
 Hollow." And thenceforward there was a consciousness 
 about this young couple and their destiny between Mr. 
 Challis and the second chit. For had she not detected his 
 thought about them, when his eyes looked for them and 
 iound them not ? i ■.!> -j .^ : 
 
 ->4
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 383 
 
 The other visitors, some of whom were as identical with 
 those of September as circumstance permits in such a case, 
 were scattered about elsewhere, subject to well-grounded 
 confidences that they would be back to dinner. And the 
 only important variation of identity among these was that 
 one had become a Confirmed Christian Scientist. Challis 
 didn't know whether he was expected to be glad or sorry. 
 
 He became somehow aware that her ladyship was going 
 to drive to Thanes Castle accompanied by the second chit, 
 to bring Judith back. Also that he v/as not going to be 
 asked to accompany her. " What is Mr. ChalHs gomg to 
 do if we all forsake liim 1" spoken with a sweet smile, left 
 no doubt on the point. Mr. Chalhs had a letter he must 
 write ; so that was settled. 
 
 " You haven't got a letter to write, Chaihs," said the 
 Rector at the front gate, to which both had walked in 
 company. " Come some of the way with me, and talk as 
 profanely as you hke. I won't go fast." For the resolute 
 stride of a pedestrian had made Challis cry for mercy in 
 September. 
 
 " Yes— it was a lie about the letter," said he. " But 
 it was good and unselfish in me to tell it. Saved bother, 
 in fact ! Can you wait two minutes while I put on walking- 
 boots ?" 
 
 " I can wait five, luckily ; which I take it is your mean- 
 ing." He waited six, beguiling them by letting the gate 
 swing to and fro, and noting what a long time it took to 
 reach equilibrium. " Wait a second," said he to Chalhs, 
 arriving booted at the end of the fourth experiment. 
 " Let's see how long it means to go on !" And then, having 
 settled the point, the two were walking along the great 
 avenue through the murmur of the beeches, conscious of a 
 dispute between the woodlands and the hay-fields as to 
 which was adding the sweeter flavour to the air of heaven. 
 
 Neither spoke at first. Then Chalhs said, as though 
 still thinking over recent words : " Why ' as profanely as 
 I liked ' ^ I am a Profane Author, certainly, in the old 
 sense of the word. Was that what you meant ?" 
 
 " Why — yes ! That is, if that was the sense you used 
 the word in the last time we talked together, in September. 
 Do you remember ? You said you always had diabolical
 
 384 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 promptings towards profanity in the presence of anything 
 sacred. Then you said my cloth was conventionally sacred, 
 and that made matters worse." 
 
 " I remember. We were getting very candid. You said 
 you Uked it." 
 
 " So I did. I said what I said just now because I wanted 
 to go on where we left off. We were just going to quarrel 
 healthily when Mr. Brownrigg pointed out that in the 
 millennium of Graubosch the impious man would have no 
 cause for despondency. The class of Insulated Ideas, 
 evolved from the theory of Metaphysical Checks, will at 
 once provide the Dogmatist with materials, and the Blas- 
 phemer with an object to give his attention to. . . ." 
 
 " I remember. If I belonged to the latter class, I 
 shouldn't be a Grauboschite. Too much like Temperance 
 Drinks, that make you feel as if you were drunk. ..." 
 Challis arrested lus own speech, as if he had had enough 
 of triviality, and spoke seriously. " I want j^ou to tell me 
 something, without any reserve." 
 " Go on. I will, if I can." 
 
 " You read one of my books, I know . . . what ! — two 
 more since September ! — fancy that ! . . . Well — what was 
 your impression ? As to what we are speaking of, I mean. 
 Did it strike you that I made light of subjects usually held 
 sacred 1" 
 
 " It struck me that you did not hold them sacred. I do 
 not mean a S3dlable more than I say. Your writing, so far 
 as I have read it, is negative." 
 
 " I have wished to keep it so. Why should any author 
 try to disturb or unsettle beliefs that he cannot replace- 
 even by a Metaphysical Check ? You remember what I 
 said to you last year, just the other side of where the 
 brook runs across the road on its own account, by the little 
 footbridge ? . . . well !— it was quite true. I have no anti- 
 pathy to any beliefs of other people, having none of my 
 own. I merely take exception to the recitation of Creeds." 
 " Even when the reciter is free to choose silence." 
 " If he stands up it comes to the same thing." 
 " He needn't unless he likes. At least, in my Church." 
 " Then suppose he does believe some of it, is he to jump 
 up and down ? There must be what my Bob calls a good
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 385 
 
 few persons who believe the first seven and the last four 
 words of the Creed . . . well ! — the regular Creed — you 
 know which one I mean . . . and you could hardly expect 
 them to sit still all through the business part of the recita- 
 tion and cut in at the end." 
 
 " You're only half serious, Challis. Your inveterate 
 propensity to quips of thought and paradox, as it is called, 
 misleads you and spoils your talk. Surely a declaration of 
 faith is an intrinsic necessity in a communion ? How can it 
 exist otherwise ?" 
 
 " You must keep the disbelievers out — is that it ?" 
 Challis thought it time for a cigar. When he had got it 
 lighted, he resumed : " Yes ! — as a means of constructing 
 communions, Creeds are invaluable. The communion that 
 had none would be too big. As for me, I never can help 
 thinking of those lines : 
 
 " ' One all too sure of God to need 
 That token to the world without 
 Of homage paid by faith to doubt, 
 The recitation of a Creed.' 
 
 .... Where do they come from, did you say ? ' In 
 Memoriam,' I suppose." 
 
 " Can't recollect them ! . . . I wish you would tell me 
 what you understand by the word ' believe.' " 
 
 " I'm very doubtful. It just depends on how I use it. 
 When I tell my wife that I believe her letter has gone to the 
 Post, my meaning is clear. I mean that I didn't see it on 
 the hall- table when I last looked. When I say that I 
 believe I am engaged on Thursday, it is equally unmis- 
 takable. I mean that I don't want to meet the So-and-so's 
 at your house, morning-dress. But when I say, as I am 
 apt to do, that I believe in God Almighty, I do so with a 
 misgiving that my meaning is not intelligible to myself. 
 Perhaps I regard my speech as a civility to the absolutely 
 Unknown — I really couldn't say. Or it may be I only use 
 it in fulfilment of a convention which, so long as I comply 
 with its conditions, binds all the other signatories not to 
 bother." 
 
 " You always make me think you are going to be serious, 
 and then you go off at a tangent. I never have any doubt 
 what I mean by the word ..." 
 
 VOL. I. 25
 
 386 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " What, for instance ?" 
 
 " Whatever my mind does not question, I believe." 
 
 " Then the Creed might be reworded, ' I don't and won't 
 question the existence of God the Father,' and so on. 
 Somehow it doesn't sound convincing." 
 
 " Because it seems to imply that the question is an open 
 one." 
 
 " And saying you believe it doesn't ? I'm agreeable, if 
 you're satisfied. But, then, you see, I stop away from 
 Church, by hypothesis. And I should do so just the same 
 if the re-wording were made. Nokes and Stokes and 
 Styles and Brown and Thompson in a row, shouting that 
 they didn't and wouldn't question the existence of God 
 Almighty, would keep me out just as much as if they said 
 they ' believed ' in Him." 
 
 They walked on a little in silence, the Rector very 
 thoughtful. Presently he said, rather as one who comes 
 to a sudden conclusion : " My definition of the word doesn't 
 cover it. One means more . . ." 
 
 " And doesn't exactly know what," said Challis. 
 
 " Precisely. But isn't it possible that the common use 
 of a word long received among many people may, from 
 the habit of its usage, acquire a meaning to each and all 
 alike, and yet continue to baffle defuiition ?" 
 
 " Very possible indeed, and certain. I know a case in 
 point. I went to a sort of spiritualistic seance once, and 
 in the course of operations the audience was requested to 
 will powerfully. To my surprise, all the habitues seemed 
 prepared to comply as a matter of course. One young man 
 said, ' How V but was sat upon by public opinion. I 
 heard him after ask a friend, ' How did you will ?' And the 
 reply was : ' I held my breath and caught firmly hold of 
 four-and-sixpence in my breeches pocket. How did you V 
 He answered that he had shut liis eyes tight and thought 
 of his toes. But all the faithful — these two were outsiders, 
 like myself — seemed to know what to do ; and did it right, 
 I suppose, because an accordion played. They had found 
 out what willing meant, by habit and telepathic inter- 
 change. Probably believers know in the same way what 
 is meant by belief. But it's no use outsiders holding 
 their breath and thinking of their toes."
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 387 
 
 This sort of chat continued till the two reached the 
 Rectory. It is given in the story to throw light on the 
 friendship that sprang up between two such opposites, or 
 seeming opposites. 
 
 When one walks part of the way home \\dth a friend, 
 Euclid's axioms get flawed sometimes, for the whole of the 
 way is no greater than its part. Challis Avent all the way 
 to the Rectory, of course ; said he wouldn't come in, of 
 course ; said he mustn't sit down, of course ; did so, of 
 course ; and kept his eye on his watch, of course. Having 
 complied with all forms and precedents, he started to 
 walk back. 
 
 His short visit had given him odds and ends of human 
 things to think of. That was the Rector's sister-in-law, 
 that dry lady who had made him feel tolerated ; and that 
 other one who had begged him not to throw his cigar away 
 was only an old friend. Challis was sorry the reverse was 
 not the case, for the Rector's sake. He felt that the old 
 friend might be kissed with advantage to the kisser, while 
 the officially permissible peck of the dry lady's cheek could 
 not be a source of satisfaction to any connoisseur. It was 
 a thought entirely on his friend's behalf — he himself was 
 indifferent. However, he might be wrong. The dry lady 
 seemed very congenial to the two little girls, her nieces, 
 who, it appeared — hurriedly, for his visit was short — had 
 engaged a nurse for their baby. Challis suspected that a 
 dispute between the two children, which the dry lady 
 peremptorily silenced, turned on a question of paternity. 
 Which of them was to be the baby's papa ? It seemed late 
 in the day for considering the point, thought Challis. The 
 oldest sister was always the papa, said that claimant ; and 
 confirmed it by adding, " Eliza Ann says so, and she knows." 
 The colloquy was half-heard, but this seemed the upshot. 
 
 That little Eliza Ann in the blue cotton dress — the nurse 
 in this drama — was, of course, the little girl whose mouth 
 was too large for beauty ; Mrs. Steptoe's brother's child. 
 How small the world was ! " So is the kid herself, for 
 that matter," was Challis's reflection thereon ; a typical 
 instance of the whimsical way his mind twisted things. 
 He would have said it aloud with perfect gravity to any 
 hearer, had he had one. 
 
 25—2
 
 388 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 She was a nice little wench, anyhow, the nurse, with her 
 great big eyes and her Cockney-up-to-date accent. Also 
 Challis had noted her quickness in repeating words just 
 heard. " The biby is on no attount to be wyked," she 
 had said, mth an earnest sense of the reality of her part. 
 " Si sic omnes ./" Challis had thought to himself. 
 
 But the nurse forgot herself the moment after, saying : 
 " I must sow this biby to my daddy, tomollow — maten't 
 I ?" However, she resumed her part at once, on assurance 
 given. She was certainly to show that baby to her daddy. 
 And he would feel it, and see how fat it was. Thereon 
 Challis had remembered what had till then escaped his 
 mind, that Mrs. Steptoe's brother was eyeless and half 
 legless. Oh, what an indurated baby, for an appreciator 
 dependent on touch alone ! And, oh, the stony glare of its 
 eyes fixed on the zenith, when roused from sleep by a prac- 
 ticable \vire in its spine ! 
 
 A man with a permanent source of disquiet always lights 
 on something to remind liim of it, go where he may. 
 Challis had succeeded on his way from London in per- 
 suading himself that the warmth of his own farewell to 
 Marianne had been more than skin-deep, whatever hers 
 was ; and had felt that he could justifiably stand his own 
 self-reproaches over, and enjoy the day that was passing, 
 without remorse. And then Avhat must he needs come 
 across, of all things in the world, but a sister-in-law ! 
 Not one certainly resembling in the least the sister-in- 
 law of a decade past, whom she reminded him of ! There 
 was nothing in tliis one of the girl \^ ho then, in the language 
 of Oliver, bestowed herself like a ripe sister, and was 
 accepted with a sense that she more than made up for a 
 too mature mother-in-law, and put the advantages of 
 marriage outside all question. Nothing of Marianne then 
 or now, for that matter, in the drj^lady personally ; but much 
 to remind him of his own case in the way she had taken 
 over the two little girls, much as Marianne had taken over 
 Bob. 
 
 Was it his fault — the whole thing ? For there was a 
 " whole thing " by now. He could not disguise that whole 
 thing from himself, and that it was a thing that had some- 
 how grown, slowly and surely, since the first days when
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 389 
 
 he and Marianne were rejoicing together in the dark front 
 parlour of the Great Coram Street house over a letter just 
 come from the publishers, Saxby's, Ltd., which accepted 
 " The Spendthrift's Legacy," and named terms which led 
 to a calculation that success, followed by a book per 
 annum equally successful, would yield two thousand a 
 year ; and to castles in Spain, the building of which would 
 have cost that sum twice over. 
 
 Or, if not from that hour exactly, it had grown since the 
 days of the success that followed. It was hard to say 
 when it began. Was he aware of it — of " the whole 
 thing " — when Marianne refused to go with him to Lady 
 Horse's because the Honourable iNIrs. Diamonds had been 
 rude to her first, and encouraged her after ? These were 
 not the ladies' real names, but everything else held good. 
 Marianne had then said that once was quite enough, and 
 she knew all along exactly how it was going to be, ever 
 since that woman in skirts had given herself such airs — a 
 reference to a previous delinquent. Oh dear ! — now sup- 
 pose the Honourable Diamonds had not " encouraged " 
 her — how then ? Anyhow, Challis could see now, too 
 late, what he ought to have done. He ought to have 
 taken bulls by the horns, and bits in his teeth, and oppor- 
 tunities by their forelocks, and said flatly that he wouldn't 
 go to Lady Horse's unless Marianne came. too. It was his 
 going that once without her that had done it ! And all 
 because of the confounded good-nature of that diamond 
 woman, who must needs go encouraging her. That was 
 ^^hat hurt the most, a thousandfold. The Diamonds 
 might have stood on Marianne's lilac silk all day long, and 
 broken that little crickly man's arm with her fan, if she 
 chose, and her victim would have forgiven it. But when 
 she came off, she scarcely axjologized. And then, after 
 that, to eiicourage her ! 
 
 Still, in those days he was not aware of " the whole 
 thing " that had " come about." Suspicion that some- 
 thing was amiss was followed by belief that the something 
 had melted away. Intermittent phases succeeded, now 
 and then with an appearance of concession to Society on 
 Marianne's part ; occasional acceptances of invitations to 
 houses where Challis innocently hoped all had gone well, 
 
 I
 
 390 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 till he found himself driving home with a hurt and silent 
 lady, and came to know that the very things he had fondly 
 fancied almost angelic ebullitions of sweetness in their 
 hostess were really only the woman's impertinence ; and 
 that what seemed to him good-humoured informality in 
 her daughters was nothing but that sort of hoydenishness 
 that seemed to be thought the proper thing nowadays. 
 He could recall many incidents of this description, yet none 
 that seemed to warrant the evolution of married discomfort 
 — of disintegrated family Ufe — that kept on gaining slowly, 
 slowly on his resistance to it. 
 
 It had intensified, he knew, since his first visit to Royd 
 in September. It was mixed up with his professional 
 association mth Judith Arkroyd. It was a professional 
 relation, and nothing else. He called the ancestral beeches 
 of the family to bear witness to the utter impossibility of 
 its being anything else. If he, Alfred Challis, ex-ac- 
 countant, ephemeral scribbler of an empty day, was 
 conscious of a certain warmth in his admiration for that 
 lady, that was his concern — not even the business of the 
 beech-trees, or the new young fern he was treading under- 
 foot. It would remain a buried secret, unknown to all 
 men, most of all to Judith herself. He would even, as an 
 act of discipline, never think of it but to question its 
 reahty, as he did now. It was to die, and should do so. 
 At least he could keep his own counsel about this soul- 
 quake, heart- quake, self- quake — call it what you will ! — 
 admitting that one existed. If he failed to do so success- 
 fully, would he be the first man that had ever loved two 
 women, and been forced to hide away his love for one from 
 the other and herself ? But he was obliged to admit that 
 this was the first time he had allowed the word " love " to 
 be heard in his intercourse with himself on this subject, 
 even as an hypothesis. 
 
 He was relieved to observe the pleasure he felt in the 
 thought that, at any rate, Polly Anne need never know 
 anjiihing about it. She need never have any real cause 
 for a moment's disquiet. Of course, any grouiidless sus- 
 picions she might choose to nourish were entirely her own 
 look-out. He could only recognise those that had a war- 
 rant in reality. She should not be provided with materials
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 391 
 
 for any such. Of course, Polly Anne was Polly Anne, after 
 all, and her happiness must always be a first consideration 
 with him. Think of all their old days together ! Think 
 of his hours of acute misery, when that young monkey 
 Emmie, five years ago, must needs imperil her mother's 
 life and her own by her indecent haste to see the World. 
 Think, never too often, of his gratitude to her when she 
 took him, a mere derelict, in tow, ten years since, and 
 piloted him into safe waters. Think as much as possible 
 of her many nursings of him— of the many pipes they had 
 virtually had together, though he was the operative 
 smoker — of the many welcomes he had looked forward to. 
 And as httle as possible of the shortness of temper that 
 had certainly grown upon her, but was very likely only a 
 phase of health that would one day pass away and be for- 
 gotten. Remember that confounded little monkey — 
 bless her ! of course — and be forbearing to her mother. 
 
 There was one thought about her that twisted and 
 tortured this victim of over-self-examination beyond all 
 reason. Look how utterly, how almost terribly, Polly 
 Anne had replaced poor Kate ! Surely the Great Un- 
 known had made a record in cruelty when he created Love 
 the Monopohst ! Why feel shocked because, after Kate 
 had ceased, her sister had taken over her inheritance so 
 thoroughly ? Besides, this entire supersession of poor 
 Kate showed liim how really devoted he was to Marianne, 
 and how safe he and she were from intrusions from without. 
 It never struck him as strange that he should be seeking for 
 assurance that he loved his own wife. 
 
 It probably would have done so, in time, if his reflec- 
 tions had not been interrupted at this point. The sound 
 of the carriage— with Judith in it, no doubtr— returning from 
 Thanes. Saladin, the huge boarhound, coming on the 
 scene first, examined Mr. Chalhs without any sign of 
 recognition, and seemed to decide that he had nothing 
 contraband about him. Then he waited till the carriage 
 he had charge of came in sight, and trotted on. The 
 import of his demeanour was that an appointment awaited 
 him at the house, but that he could find time to see that 
 carriage and pair to the door — if only it wouldn't dawdle ! 
 
 Whether it was from consideration for Saladin, or
 
 392 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 because it was haughty, that carriage hardly stopped. 
 Its pause was barely long enough to say, through the 
 mixed and hurried inspirations of its occupants, that it 
 could bring itself to accommodate Mr. Challis on the front 
 seat. Mr. Challis, alive to the importance of not sitting 
 down on miscellanea, preferred walking ; for all that the 
 miscellanea professed readiness to be quite happy elsewhere. 
 It was only a step to the house now. And Saladin was 
 waiting. AH right — go on ! 
 
 Why should Challis feel something akin to pique be- 
 cause that carriage and pair took him at his word and 
 went on, all right ? Why need that unfortunate pro- 
 pensity of the foot-passenger beset him, the vice of mind 
 that ascribes every action of a two-horse carriage to aris- 
 tocratic pride ? Perhaps he wanted to file an accusation 
 against something or some one. and was not ready to admit 
 that Judith's majestic smile and head-inclination had any- 
 thing to do with it. Anyhow, the rest of his step to the 
 house associated itself Avith a warm forgiving feeling 
 towards Polly Anne the tiresome, the miffy ; and an 
 intensified sense of outsideness as to his o\mi social where- 
 abouts ; the insideness being that of a fold with Sir Bernard 
 Burke for shepherd, and Rouge Dragon and Garter King- 
 at-arms for collie dogs. 
 
 He arrived at the house to find the world flocking to 
 dress for dinner, or doing it already, out of sight. Flying 
 cordialities from members of the famil}^ unseen till then, 
 or visitors known to him previously, intercepted him in 
 his flight up the great staircase ; but innuendoes from well- 
 informed contemporaries that dinner was at a quarter to 
 eight justified abruptness and pointed to opportunities 
 for explanation. Chalhs escaped to his room, and found 
 his external self of the evening to come — all but the head 
 and hands he had on — laid out upon the bed, waiting 
 jDatiently to be scrambled into in a hurry, and have its 
 studs and buttons sworn at. 
 
 But he was not destined to be the last in the drawing- 
 room, although he thought it could not be othenv'ise. 
 For when he arrived at the foot of the stairs, it was with a 
 consciousness on him of having heard, as in a waking dream, 
 the sweetest possible drawl to the following effect : "It
 
 ITsNEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 393 
 
 was awl yaw fault. It wawsn't mine one bit," and a male 
 reply, with the climax of human contentment in every 
 syllable, " I'm jolly glad — it lasted so much longer !" 
 and then a headlong rush to a chaotic toilette. 
 
 And that young man's appearance seven minutes later, 
 looking as if butter wouldn't melt in his mouth, would have 
 done honour to a lightning transformationist. But the 
 distant manner of the guilty couple was carried too far, as 
 everybody guessed all about it, and would have done so 
 even without the furtive looks they exchanged from either 
 end of a long table.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 The story has scarcely room for anything that was said 
 or done at Royd until two days after the reunion that 
 closed the last chapter. All it wants may be told in a 
 few words. Challis was sulky all the rest of the first even- 
 ing, and would not admit it to himself. Judith was digni- 
 fied, ghttering, and universal ; talked to everybody, 
 whereas Challis wanted her to talk to him. She was 
 judicious, no doubt — woman of the world, and so on — 
 but was it necessary to carry it so far ? Surely Marianne 
 in the background safeguarded the situation ? 
 
 The party made itself at home rapidly, having begun at 
 an advantage from previous experience. On the third 
 day after its arrival any two members of it were ripe for 
 arranging their day in each other's pockets, and treating 
 their hosts as a sort of lay innkeepers of benevolent dis- 
 positions, but quite negligible. Challis had taken the 
 latter at their word when they said he was to stop in his 
 room and write all day if he liked. He had brought his 
 MS. of " Estrild " with him, and had made up his mind 
 to complete it. The play would have its value, even if 
 the Estrild he had set his heart on, and had written the 
 part for, decided on not attempting it. 
 
 For a doubt had crept into the scheme as it stood when 
 Challis paid that visit to the sprained- ankle patient in 
 Grosvenor Square. Sometliing had influenced Judith since 
 then ; probably some passages of arms with her family. 
 At least, so Challis surmised. But she had told him 
 next to notliing, so far. Her passing lameness had occa- 
 sioned a break in tentative readings of the play, in which 
 others than herseK had taken part ; and during this inter- 
 ruption it had been evident that the young lady's ambition 
 to fly in the face of Society and family tradition had under- 
 gone a change. But the invitation to Royd at Whitsuntide 
 remained in black and white, and could not be gainsaid. 
 
 394
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 395 
 
 Therefore, Challis had found himself on that well- 
 remembered lawn, as recorded in our last chapter, at the 
 time appointed, with no misgiving on him at the moment 
 as to the cordiality of his welcome. Nothing had hap- 
 pened to create one. But as the hours grew to a day, and 
 then to days, he began to be conscious somehow that his 
 hosts had towards him a feeling they were too well-bred to 
 show ; and not only that, but that an indefinable discom- 
 fort had arisen between himself and Judith. Something 
 had flawed the relation that each called friendship, and 
 refrained from speculating about any other designation 
 for. He had recognised tliis consciousness for the first 
 time at that moment beside the carriage. And the reason 
 he so readily accepted her ladyship's permission to indulge 
 his inspirations ad libitum in his own room was that he 
 felt it was a sort of release to him to do so. Was it a 
 release for them also ? — for Judith ? 
 
 If this visit was to be no more than the fulfilment of 
 an invitation to which liis hosts stood pledged, let him 
 work it out lilce a term of penal servitude, and go his ways 
 at the end of it. But he chafed at the impossibility of 
 challenging the position in any way. How in the name 
 of common-sense could he say to the Baronet or her lady- 
 ship, " I see through your persistent amiability of manner 
 that your feelings towards this eminent author are not the 
 same to a nicety as they were six months since, and I 
 should like to review the situation with you, with a view 
 to the removal of misunderstandings "? 
 
 Still less was it possible to say to Judith, " You know 
 that an indescribable change of manner has come over you 
 in your demeanour towards your humble admirer, and he 
 would give worlds to know the cause of it. But, in con- 
 sideration of a certain eifect you have upon him, of a 
 certain exaltation he experiences in your presence, a certain 
 depression at your absence, a very certain exasperation at 
 any suspicion of a slight to him in favour of another male, 
 he much doubts his powers of self-command through an 
 explanatory interview. So he cannot ask questions. But 
 if you could, with your womanly tact, frame some communi- 
 cation that would let him know what-the-anything it is 
 all about, he would feel very grateful."
 
 396 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 The position was a delicate one, with that necessity in 
 the background for locking his heart up tight, for the sake 
 of Polly Anne, of whom — odd though it may seem — he 
 never lost sight. Only he never actually formulated an 
 admission of its delicacy. The nearest approach to it was 
 when a sudden image of Mr. John Eldridge flashed across 
 his mental bioscope, shut one of its eyes, and said, " Rather 
 ticklish, Master Titus— eh ?" 
 
 Very few people will understand the odd freaks of Challis's 
 mind, but it is useless to write this story and omit them. 
 
 There was only one thing he was absolutely clear about. 
 Nothing the word dishonourable would apply to was ad- 
 missible into any hypothetical drama his mind would 
 construct, to cut the — rather hypothetical, please ! — 
 Gordian knot of his relation to Judith. He pictured him- 
 self to himself as potentially Don Juan, Captain Mache'ath, 
 Silenus, or the late Prince Regent, as far as his normal ideas 
 of morality went ; but he was one tiling, mind you, and 
 Judith was another ! She, being what she was, made any 
 speculations in that department irrelevant. They did not 
 arise from any question before the House. Besides — her 
 position ! Think of it ! 
 
 He never contrasted his estimation of Judith now with 
 his rough valuation of her at first sight. Just a handsome 
 woman — the fine contents of an expensive, well-cut dress 
 — a fit mate for fifty thousand a year, deer-forests in 
 Scotland, houses in Park Ijane, opera-boxes, and newspaper 
 paragraphs ! If he had done so, might he not have sus- 
 pected, in the exaggeration of thought that placed her 
 above and beyond suspicion, an element of danger more 
 formidable to him than the imaginary laxity he was so 
 ready to credit himself with. He might at least have 
 seen the moral imbecility of what was virtually an appeal 
 to Judith's self-respect and integrity to protect liim from 
 his own weakness. Perhaps he had subcutaneous mis- 
 givings of the correctness of his insight into her character 
 when he decided that it would never do to tempt confi- 
 dences of a personal nature. 
 
 If a friendship between a man and a woman is to remain 
 contented with itself, seeking neither promotion nor dis- 
 solution, there must not be present in it, on the part of
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 397 
 
 either, any longing to gain power over the other. Our own 
 belief is that if Mss Arkroyd's self-love had not felt hurt 
 at what seemed to her a too ready acceptance by Challis 
 of the position in which a slight change in her manner had 
 placed him, he might have paid his visit to Royd, gone 
 back home, and maybe j^retended to liimself that the still 
 waters of his inner soul had never been ruffled by Judith 
 or any other fashionable enchantress. But a woman's 
 pleasure in the power of her beauty is like that of dram- 
 drinking. She may " swear off," as Rip Van Winkle did, 
 a thousand times — but she will go back and do it again, 
 or die for it. How can she help it, when a glance, a move- 
 ment, a slight inexplicable intonation of her voice, is 
 enough to bring back to bondage the idiot that thinks he 
 has broken free ? Why should she try to help it, from 
 the point of view of self-interest, when she believes— as 
 Judith did, without misgiving — that she can throw her 
 end of the chain away at any moment, and wash her hands 
 of that booby, and go on to another ? 
 
 Judith believed her position was security itself, and was 
 a little piqued at the readiness with which Challis had 
 jumped at the permission to withdraw into his own sanc- 
 tum. Whatever behaviour of her own had influenced 
 this readiness, she resented it as an interruption to an 
 assertion of power she was beginning to feel herself entitled 
 to. Like the dram-drinker, she could not do without it. 
 So, after three days of cordial civiHty, too dexterous to 
 indite as a change of front, and equally dexterous post- 
 ponement of Estrild for some future discussion, the young 
 lady, without explanation, resumed the half-familiar, half- 
 patronising tone Challis had become accustomed to in 
 Grosvenor Square. 
 
 Some three days later it happened that tliis household 
 decided on a sort of picnic known to it as " half- a- mile- off 
 tea." A houseful of able-bodied servants made this 
 festivity, which was exactly what its name implies, easily 
 possible. All the most critical tea-drinker could want 
 had gone before, and the house-party, or most of it, was 
 straggling across the parkland to Fern Hollow, the place 
 appointed. ChalUs and Judith were accidentally last. 
 
 A chance left him the only hearer of a voice dropped
 
 398 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 languidly for the benefit of liis ears alone. " Let these 
 noisy people go on in front, Scroop," said its owner to him ; 
 and then, in reply to his amused look at hearing himself 
 so addressed, " I knew I should do it in the end, because 
 of the newspaper reviews. Do you mind my calling you 
 Scroop now and then, by accident ?" 
 
 " Notliing can please me better," said he. " Biggest 
 compliment you can pay me !" It started the soul-brush 
 afresh, and he had to settle whether it was to be submission 
 or protest. He fancied he could manage the latter even 
 though he acknowledged the voice, that continued, " Sup- 
 pose we go by Trout Bend ! It's nonsense hurrying. The 
 tea can wait. Or we can have fresh made." This was 
 concession, both in the proposed tete-d-tete, and something 
 in the familiarity of treatment, which seemed to savour 
 more of the Hermitage than Grosvenor Square. But it 
 was only the simple vocabulary common to all tea- worlds ; 
 they are above class distinctions. 
 
 " Suppose we do," said Challis. And they did. 
 
 Trout Bend is a small incident in Geography. But it 
 has a quality in common with — for instance — the Arctic 
 Circle. It is always the same. Its lower segment has the 
 same merry ripple over the same stones, and its upper 
 one spreads to the same pools, that foster here and there 
 each year the verj'^ selfsame bulrushes, to all appearance. 
 And in the middle of the best one — the one, that is, that 
 lends itself best to self-deception on the part of the fisher- 
 man — the fish that leaped last year, when you were looking 
 at it and wondering how deep it was in the middle, does it 
 again, and doesn't bore you. Because if he did, you 
 wouldn't watch for him a third time. Only then he 
 doesnH do it again, and that does bore you. And where 
 the pools end and the ripples begin are the same infatuated 
 stepping-stones, that think they can bear your weight, 
 and can't. And then you become spell-bound on them as 
 they wobble, and are rescued by extended walking-sticks 
 from either side, and get across quite dry, or only a very 
 little water in one shoe. 
 
 It was all the same this time, certainly, as when Challis 
 was here in the autumn ; all but a black swimming- bird, 
 who had nodded a great deal, and surprised him, but not
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 399 
 
 his companion — it was Athelstan Taylor — by diving sud- 
 denly and never coming up. The Rector had explained 
 the ways of waterhens, and that this slyboots was still 
 under some floating rubbish, with her nose out for breath. 
 Challis remembered wondering whether the whole of this 
 class of birds was feminine, and watercocks only existed 
 in connection with the Company. There was none this 
 time — neither cock nor hen — and the open pastureland this 
 side the beech-covert was all ablaze with buttercups in 
 the high grass. For the fallow-deer found their pasture 
 farther from the house, and never a little tail wagged on a 
 dappled back in sight of Challis and Judith as they crossed 
 the bridge — one slice of an elm-tree, A\-ith the outline 
 on it of its trunk of a hundred years ago. 
 
 " I suppose you know the legend of this bridge and the 
 convict," said the lady, turning to the gentleman. 
 
 " What legend of this bridge and what convict ?" His 
 inattention to his words was shown in the way he echoed 
 them — sounds without meaning. 
 
 " You must have heard it. When he was a boy — the 
 convict — he was sent with a small package containing a 
 ring to a lady at Tallack's Gate— one of the Cazenoves, I 
 think it was — and on the way he thought it would be good 
 fun to have a look inside his parcel. So he got the ring 
 out, and, standing near this bridge, dropped it. He 
 hunted for it in vain, and then, in terror at his mishap, ran 
 away. I never quite understood it, but I suppose in those 
 days they convicted people very easily ..." 
 
 " Much more than now ! Was this chap convicted ?" 
 
 " Yes — and sent to Botany Bay. Twenty years after, 
 having served his time, he came back to England, married, 
 and lived to be an old man, but always under a ban. One 
 day he came here, to this spot, with a grown-up daughter, 
 to whom he then told the whole tale for the first time. 
 When he finished he said to her ; ' I was standing just 
 where you are when I dropped it.' She said, ' Here on 
 the ground, or here on the bridge,' and touched the plank 
 with her parasol. The point of it slipped into a knot- 
 hole in the wood, and when she drew it out, something 
 glittered on it. It was the ring." 
 
 Challis was in the habit of inventing horrors for serials,
 
 400 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 and had had some success. But it chanced that he had 
 never before heard this story — which, by the way, is told 
 in connection with more than one locality in England — 
 and he envied the master-hand that had fashioned it. 
 He told in exchange the tale of the man who brought 
 what he thought was his wife out of a house on fire, too 
 black for recognition by his scorched and dazzled eye- 
 sight, and sat with his hand in hers till a strange voice 
 came from the lips, and asked if the lady had been got 
 out, naming his mfe, " But your story is more probable," 
 he said in conclusion. " A man would know. ..." 
 
 " Know his own wife's hand ? Of course he would ! 
 But are we under any obligation to sup full of horrors 
 on a day like tliis ?" Her voice was that of indifference, 
 dismissing an unpleasant topic. Challis slightly resented 
 its placidity, which looked as if the horrors had been easily 
 digested, at least. It seem to him to do injustice to a 
 sweetness of disposition he chose to consider inseparable 
 from the beautiful eyelids at ease under a slight protest of 
 raised brows — the beautiful lips that waited unclosed for 
 an answer to their question. 
 
 " What do you prefer me to talk about ?" said he. 
 " The crops ? The weather ?" 
 
 " Nonsense, Scroop !" She paused in her walk, so that 
 he had either to look round at her or show no wish to know 
 why. " I suppose you must have guessed," she said, 
 without logical continuity. A request for explanation 
 would have been warranted. 
 
 But Challis was in no mind for make-believe. He took 
 her meaning, which he knew quite well, for granted. " I 
 have had my suspicions," said he. " But I could not 
 catechize, as you seemed so silent. Tell me now ! . . . 
 Which is it ? — mother ? — father ? — sister ? . . . Is it 
 Sibyl ? — or the Bart ? — or the madre ?" The way in which 
 these familiar designations were accepted as a matter of 
 course showed how their relations of last September had 
 defined and strengthened themselves. 
 
 " All three. At least — I ought to be fair — my father 
 least of all ! Indeed, I believe that if an instance could be 
 found of any lady of William the Conqueror's taking part 
 in a Court performance, he would concede the point
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 401 
 
 altogether. Has he spoken to you about it ? . . . Well ! — 
 of course he wouldn't do that. But has he ' approached 
 the subject ' ? Of course, that is what he would do — 
 ' approach the subject.' " 
 
 " No — no one has said a word about it. But I guessed, 
 soon after I came down, that the play was doomed. I 
 did not at first suppose it was your family, as a matter of 
 course. I thought you might have settled to throw it up 
 on your own account." She made a sort of impatient 
 disclaimer — a head-shake that flung that possibility aside, 
 and forgot it. But she said nothing, and he continued : 
 " There was a row, I suppose ? Don't tell me more about it 
 than you like. Don't tell me anything if you. . . ." 
 
 " I prefer to tell you. Who is there that I can talk to 
 about it if not to you ?" This was the soul-brush again ; 
 and again Challis's inner consciousness gasped at the 
 choice he had to make between giving way to a luxury, a 
 dangerous intoxication, and attempting to freeze the con- 
 versation down to a safe temperature. 
 
 Duty dictated a struggle for the latter. He afifected a 
 manner of equable unconcern fairly well. " No one," 
 said he, " unless you were to make a confidante of . . ." 
 He stopped short of saying " Marianne," conscious of 
 difficulties ahead. But he could shelve the side-issue, 
 and fall back on the previous question with a sense of 
 getting out of shoal water. " There was a row, then . . . 
 well ! — a warm discussion, suppose we say 1 It's more 
 refined, certainly. What form did it take ?" 
 
 " Then we mustn't go so quick," said Judith. " Or I 
 shan't have time." She was inconsecutive ; but it was 
 clear, when she paused in her walk through the long grass, 
 that it was for an anchorage. " Suppose we sit down a 
 little here," she said. " Unless you mind ?" Challis didn't. 
 
 " Here " was an oak trunk that must have said to itself 
 when it was a sapling — four hundred years ago, maybe — ■" I 
 will see to it, when I am grown up, that my roots shall live 
 above ground, and be tliick with moss ; and one shall be 
 horizontal and a seat for a king, who shall lean against me 
 contented. But he shall go, that lovers may come ; and 
 they shall make up nijj contentment, and I shall hear their 
 voices in the twilight." ChalUs half made this little legend 
 
 VOL. I. 26
 
 402 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 as he took his place by Miss Arkroyd on that tree-trunk. 
 But he fought shy of the sequel their presence suggested — 
 what word ought his fancy to supply as the tree's imaginary 
 speech about themselves ? He shrank from it, and he 
 knew the reason why. It was because, as his own dis- 
 ordered passion grew, as he found himself more and more 
 at loggerheads with his lot, he became more and more alive 
 to the danger of relying on this woman herseli as his pro- 
 tection against ^mself. How if she gave way, too ? 
 
 As far as any conscious loss of self-control at that moment 
 went, on the part of Miss Judith Arkroyd, Challis need not 
 have fretted. Never was a young woman more perfectly 
 cool and collected, more equal to any occasion that might 
 arise in connection with a love of power that she just felt 
 this man was a satisfactory lay-figure for. That best 
 defines all the feeling she had on his account — so far. 
 
 She resumed the conversation where the question of 
 anchorage had interrupted her. " I don't think we have 
 rows in our family, in the ordinary sense of the word. 
 That is, if I understand it rightly. . . . No ! — I know what 
 you are going to say. It has notliing to do with that 
 repose that marks the caste of Vere de Vere. It is entirely 
 individual and local. We have our quarrels, of course, 
 but they take the form of distant civihty, entirely due, as 
 I understand, to our self-respect. There is nothing we 
 Arkroyds respect more than ourselves, not even the Bill 
 of Rights or the Protestant Succession. . . ." 
 
 Challis interrupted : " But the distant civility, this 
 time ? . . ." 
 
 " Followed naturally on my telling Sibyl that the first 
 act of Estrild was ready for rehearsal. She merely said 
 she supposed I must go my own way. But that day 
 after lunch she allowed me to leave the apartment first. 
 It had been a cold lunch, as far as emotions went ; and I 
 knew, when Sibyl stood courteously on one side to let 
 me pass, what was coming. So I wasn't the least surprised 
 to find a letter from my mother on the dressing-table next 
 morning." 
 
 " A letter from your mother !" Chalhs's tone was 
 puzzle, awaiting enlightenment. Judith was not to be 
 hurried, though. For one thing, she was engaged with a
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 403 
 
 beetle, who wanted either to go home or to get farther away 
 from home. She had been heading off his successive 
 rushes in different directions with an ungloved hand, which 
 he always refused to crawl upon. The perseverance she 
 gave to this seemed not altogether without its charm to 
 her companion, 
 
 " He seems to be praying for those that despitefully use 
 him," she said, referring to the action of his antennae. 
 Then, without discontinuing her amusement, she went back 
 to the conversation. " Yes — a letter, with ' My dearest 
 daughter ' at the beginning, and ' Your affectionate mother ' 
 at the end. Do you not believe me ? It's quite true — all 
 my family do it ! In fact, it was a long time before I found 
 out that other families didn't do it, too. I can tell you 
 this letter all through." 
 
 Then in a semi- humorous, indifferent way she gave alter- 
 nately its actual wording and the upshot of some of its 
 passages. Lady Arkroyd hoped she had been misinformed 
 about her daughter's intentions. She was aware that she 
 had no longer any legal control over her, and she made no 
 appeal to anything but her good feeling. She would not 
 comment on the character of the associates with whom her 
 daughter would probably be brought in contact. She would 
 limit what she had to say entirely to the underlined deep 
 grief that Sir M. and herself would experience if their child 
 persisted in a course which could only lead to degradation 
 and disgrace. She then forgot her promise to say nothing 
 against the profession, and gave a brief sketch of it founded 
 on Hogarth's " Strolling Players." After which she wound 
 up with an exhortation to her daughter not to break her 
 father's underlined heart in his underlined old age. " And 
 so on," said Judith, in placid conclusion, still continuing 
 her persecution of the beetle. Challis's infatuation be- 
 lieved that all tliis was farti pris — mere bravado ; and that 
 his insight saw truly a hinterland of devoted affection to 
 her parents, and consideration for the comfort of beetles. 
 Such is the power of beauty ! 
 
 " And that letter determined you to give up the drama ?" 
 
 " Oh no !— it was only the beginning of it. I wrote in 
 reply, saying I was sorry to give pain to such an exemplary 
 parent as my papa — that was not the wording, only the 
 
 26—2
 
 404 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 sense — but that I had made up my mind, and was not 
 prepared to disappoint you in order to keep up the tradi- 
 tions of a rather dreary respectability. I said you had 
 written this part for me, and I had promised to play it, 
 and that ended the matter. My ancestors had always 
 kept their promises, and I should keep mine. I laid a good 
 deal of stress on Sibyl." At tiiis point the beetle got awaj'- 
 cleverly, threatening a break in the conversation. This 
 was not what Challis wanted. 
 
 " I don't understand," said he. " Why ' stress on Sibyl ' ?" 
 
 " I mean on Sibyl's being allowed to indulge all her 
 fancies, at any cost ; and to take up trade, too — a thing that 
 our ancestors would not have tolerated for a moment. Why 
 is the Great Idea to be capitalised with thousands ? . . ." 
 
 " And Shakespeare's trade discountenanced ? I see, 
 and agree in the main. I suppose they said it wasn't a 
 trade — the Great Idea 1" 
 
 " They did. Sibyl said it was Guilds and Crafts, and Medi- 
 aeval, and quite another thing. Perhaps it is ; I don't know 
 But I'm sure ' Sibyl Arkroyd Limited,^ is neither Mediseval 
 nor Guilds, and that's what they propose to call it." 
 
 " It sounds like six three-farthings, and pay at the 
 desk. They can hardly be in earnest." 
 
 " Well, I don't know ! People of — of condition are 
 getting to take such curious views of things. It's nothing 
 nowadays for a Countess to promise punctual attention 
 to orders. Was it you told me there was a Curate who 
 preached a Sermon on the New Atheism in its relation to 
 Socialism ? . . . No ? — oh, then, it was somebody else !" 
 
 Challis suspected that Judith was talking in this way to 
 defer telling him the upshot of the family discussion. He 
 said nothing, and the flight of a heron filled out a lapse 
 into silence which followed. And then Judith, who had 
 risen from the tree-root to watch the vanishing bird, 
 turned to Challis, and resumed : 
 
 " Shall we go on ? . . . Oh, what was I talking about ? 
 Sibyl and the Great Idea. Well ! — you see, the thing 
 worked out like this : Papa had been wavering a good deal 
 about financing the Great Idea, and Sir Spender IngHs 
 had become very restive indeed, and was ready to jump 
 at any excuse for backing out of his undertaking. He saw
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 405 
 
 his opportunity, and pointed out — like Mr. Brownrigg— 
 that my logic was irresistible, and that it was impossible 
 to forbid my appearing on the boards if Sibyl was to be 
 allowed to go behind the counter. A recent slump in 
 Kaffirs had fostered economical impulses, I suppose. 
 Anyhow, if I surrender the stage conditionally, my parent 
 will keep his money in his pocket." 
 
 "Won't Sibyl Limited get it somewhere else ?" 
 " She thinks she will, and my brother thinks so, no 
 doubt. But will they ? Perhaps you know about these 
 things. I don't." 
 
 " I know little or notliing," said Challis. " But I 
 understand that the chief point is settled. You won't 
 play Estrild." There was no affectation of unconcern in 
 his manner now. 
 
 The two walked on together along the river- brink of 
 Trout Bend in silence ; until, leaving the river, a path, 
 winding through scattered gorse and fern, brought them 
 in sight of the picnic party in the shade of a great beech, 
 the vanguard of the deep woods beyond. Then Judith 
 stopped and said : " I suppose you are angry with me ?" 
 
 To which Challis replied, with vexation in his voice : 
 " I could have forgiven you more than that." Said as a 
 politeness this speech would have meant, " That is a 
 mighty small matter to forgive you for." Said with a 
 gasp, or something like it, it meant, to Judith's ears, that she 
 had been winding that skein — this man's life, you see ! — too 
 quickly round her finger. He might become embarrassing. 
 " You will find another Estrild," she said. An attempt 
 at a laugh failed, and its failure was worse than its omission 
 would have been. 
 
 " I shall not try," said he. And then his evil genius 
 saw his chance, and made Alfred Challis conceive that he 
 could, for the release of his soul, make a false fetch of what 
 he would have liked to say, in terms of a parallel line of 
 thought. " I care little or nothing for the play for its own 
 sake. My interest was in your presentation of the leading 
 part." The words were safe, so far as they went — might 
 have been spoken to a male actor who had taken another 
 engagement. But he could not leave it there. That Evil 
 Genius must needs make liim go on speaking, with more
 
 406 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 and more betrayal of the great share she whom he addressed 
 had personally in his visible chagrin. Visible in the rest- 
 less movement of his hand about his face. And audible 
 in the way he crushed his words out, cut them short on 
 their last letter, threw them behind him : " Listen to me, 
 and believe what I say. I count the play not worth com- 
 pletion now. With you the life goes out of it. It has 
 become nothing for me." Then his voice fell, and what- 
 ever it had of petulance settled down to determination. 
 " As for what is written of the play, I tell you plainly, I 
 shall destroy it. At least, it shall never be acted by any- 
 one else. . . . Stop one minute, and let me finish. I have 
 not a word or a thought of blame for you, Judith Arkroyd. 
 It was a mad idea — the whole thing ! Now I see plainly 
 that it never could have been. Let us forget it — all !" 
 
 The face that he spoke to was none the less beautiful 
 that its owner w^as frightened at his vehemence. It con- 
 tinued to be — to this fool of a man who had not the courage 
 to run away from it, but who was not at Uberty to love 
 it — the face of six months ago that had been growing on 
 him ever since. He would almost have been thankful — 
 though he would not confess it to himself — for visible flaws 
 in it ; a squint, a twist, an artificial tooth or two betraying 
 their extraction, or their predecessors'. A wig would have 
 spelt salvation, as the Press puts it. 
 
 As for Judith, she was perfectly alive, by now, to the sub- 
 intents of meaning woven into Challis's speech, for the 
 easement of a feeling he could neither tell nor conceal. 
 " Let us forget it all !" was so overtense in emphasis, if 
 referring only to a disappointment about a part in a play, 
 that it scarcely left room for an equable society response. 
 Her tone of voice had to keep at bay any hint of a meaning 
 that might have betrayed both into a recognition of the 
 precipice they were so close to. As might have been ex- 
 pected, she lost her presence of mind, and overdid it. "I 
 can't see any occasion for hysterics about it," said she. 
 " Of course, I am awfully sorry, and all that sort of tiling. 
 But we live in a world, after all ! And I suppose one must 
 sometimes accommodate one's views to the necessities of 
 Society. ... Oh dear ! — these people are quite close." 
 She referred to their near approach to the assembled tea-
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 407 
 
 drinkers, some of whom, at peace with all mankind under 
 its influence, were scattering abroad through the neigh- 
 bouring woods and dingles, discussing religious education 
 and the fighting power of nations, pigeon-shooting, and 
 Psychical Research. 
 
 " We came away from the tree too soon," Challis said. 
 " Can't we turn 1 . . ." 
 
 " Suppose we do. We can go round the coppice. . . . 
 What was I saying ? Oh — about Society ! Don't you 
 think it is so ? One has to reckon with one's Social Duties. 
 So I'm told." 
 
 " We could have thought of Society before," Challis said, 
 rather sullenly. And then he felt brutal. " No, Judith 
 Arkroyd, I won't say that. Forgive me ! All I mean is — 
 it was all just as true — what you say about Society — six 
 months ago as it is now. The mistake was then." 
 
 A small thing in his speech unnerved Judith — the way 
 he used her full name. This was the second time he had 
 done so. It seemed to imply some new aspect of their 
 relation — the throwing aside of some veil — the recognition 
 of some discarded formality. She was no longer " Miss 
 Arkroyd " ; and " Judith " would have been either patron- 
 age or impertinence. In her case there was no professional 
 name to build a half-way house to familiarity on. 
 
 She dropped her worldly tone as misplaced or useless, as 
 she said : " I had at one time half thought I would leave 
 you to finish the play before I cried off. But should I have 
 done you any service 1 I thought not, in the end, and I 
 wished to get it over." 
 
 He said : " It is over now. No harm is done. I would 
 not have had it otherwise." 
 
 She replied : " Your work will not be lost. You will 
 tliink better of it — better about destroying it, I mean. 
 You will finish it, I hope." 
 
 " No — I think I shall probably destroy it. I hate having 
 incomplete manuscripts hanging about. They keep me 
 always in doubt whether to go on with them or not." 
 
 " Then give this one the benefit of the doubt, and finish 
 it. Come !" She tried to hggierire the tone of the con- 
 versation, but it was a failure — worse than a failure, by 
 the speech that followed on its provocation.
 
 408 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 " I can have no woman play the leading part but you. 
 It was written for you, and I have kept you in my mind as 
 I wrote. I . . ." And then Alfred ChalHs stopped dead. 
 But his speech, had he let it all out of his heart, would 
 have been : " I have kept you in my mind, and now you 
 will not leave it. You have crept into its secret corners, 
 and rise up between me and my duty at every turn. It is 
 not for nothing that those eyes of yours have flashed 
 through every syllable of my very commonplace blank 
 verse, that that voice of yours has filled out my imagination 
 of a dozen soliloquies complying with the highest canons of 
 dramatic art, that that hand of yours has caressed unde- 
 serving tyrants and stabbed innocent persons on insufficient 
 provocation !" It would have been all this, for he would 
 not have been liimself if he had kept back his constant 
 sense of the ridiculous, a term in which his mind included 
 himself as a prime factor. But he said never a word 
 further than what we have reported. Only the last 
 particle, " I," as good as contained all the rest. 
 
 Judith understood it all now — all that was needed — and 
 began to find her breath and the pulsation of her heart — 
 things one usually forgets— forcing themselves on her 
 attention. Why need the former catch and trip, and clip 
 or magnify her words ? Could not the last keep still ? 
 Plague take human nature ! To think that she, Judith 
 Arkroyd, mistress of herself in her own conceit, should be 
 thus upset ; unable to steer her ship out of the currents of a 
 semi- flirtation — granted, that much, Sibyl ! — with a middle- 
 aged scribbler, who meant to be bald, in a year or so ! 
 
 Had ChaUis dared to look at her at that moment, he 
 would have seen that she had lost colour, as she stopped 
 beside a hawthorn with some pretence of gathering the 
 pink may-bloom. No one gathers may without a knife, 
 and what Judith really did was to get a passing stay, against 
 a slight dizziness, from a hand rested on a bough in easy 
 reach. The gathering pretence sanctioned Challis's half- 
 dozen paces in advance. But he did not look back at her — 
 and it was well for him, perhaps, so beautiful was she 
 against the may-tree — nor she at liim. She knew, and he 
 knew she knew. 
 
 Both were so conscious of their mutual consciousness
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 409 
 
 that they tacitly agreed to say nothing. But there was a 
 difference of feeling due to their positions. Challis could 
 not Live with a Tantalus cup held to his lips, and was, 
 moreover, constantly stung with the injustice to Marianne 
 of admission ot— entertainment of — submission to love for 
 another woman. Poor dear old Marianne, at home there by 
 herself ! So he honestly wished to fly — fly from himself if 
 you like to put it so — from Judith, at any rate, as her beauty 
 had become insupportable, and to liis home as a haven by 
 preference, just to live this folly down and forget it. 
 
 And as for the young woman — well ! — she didn't want to 
 lose Challis altogether. She could see no reason why a sort 
 of affectionate friendship should not be cherished between 
 them, not she ! It was in the nature of the animal, and it 
 may be Challis had been entirely at fault in casting the part 
 of Estrild, whom he had certainly not portrayed as a 
 person who would be content, like Bunthorne, with a 
 vegetable love. It may be also that the cold-blooded 
 faculty Sibyl objected to in her sister was part of this 
 nature. A pleasure in disconcerting married folks' confi- 
 dence in each other may belong to systems without a heart. 
 Only, biters are sometimes bit. 
 
 Whether or not what this lady said next, after the two 
 had walked, a Uttle way apart, exchanging neither look nor 
 speech, until the tea-party came again in view — for they 
 had made the circuit of the coppice-wood — whether this 
 had anything to do with her wish to avoid a complete 
 separation from her literary friend or not, we cannot guess. 
 It may have, and yet she herself may not have known it. 
 
 " Marianne has never answered my letter," she said. 
 " You knew I had written ?" 
 
 "No," he replied. " I did not. What had you to say 
 to Marianne ?" 
 
 " I wrote to beg her earnestly once more to change her 
 mind, and pay us a visit. We do wish her to come." 
 
 " What good would it do ?" His question vexed Judith. 
 Why could he not help her at least to shut her eyes to a 
 change in their relation each had to know of, yet to seem, 
 in self-defence, to ignore the other's knowledge of ? He 
 evidently had no intention of doing so. 
 
 " What good ?" she repeated. " What an odd way of
 
 • 410 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 
 
 putting it, Scroop ! Wliy — of course — only that it would 
 be pleasant, and that we should be glad to have her ! I 
 always feel that I should like to know her better, for my 
 own part." Her pique at his want of tact had been a 
 bracing stimulus, and enabled her to put their talk more 
 on its old footing. The subdued tone gave place to what 
 was almost like that of those thoughtless, unembarrassed 
 groups they were drawing so near to. How free from care 
 everyone else does seem when one meets him out ! 
 
 Of course, she threw off their late conversation — washed 
 her hands of it — quicker than he could. But by the time 
 they came within hearing of the nearest group, and heard 
 the word denominntional, and knew thereby that religious 
 education was under discussion, Challis had shaken off 
 the gloom or distraction that made his answer ring so false : 
 " You are kindness itself to Marianne. I wish she Avere 
 more tractable." Those were his words. They had 
 sounded rather civil than true or heart-felt. But behind 
 them, inexplicably, was a feeling akin to gratitude to 
 Judith, who had somehow made it easier to his mind to go 
 back to Marianne without a shock. Not that it would 
 have been good form in him to acknowledge it ! 
 
 In the pre-Shakespearian days of Love, did ever a King 
 Solomon, we wonder, feel grateful to the last Harem 
 capture for a courtesy shown to a disused, tolerated sur- 
 vival of other days ? 
 
 Challis was intercepted by the group of heated dis- 
 cutients, saturated Mith religious education. Judith passed 
 on without looking at him, merely referring to the abstract 
 truth, " There is tea," and leaving his teawardness to de- 
 velope itself at leisure, or die of neglect. The huge boar- 
 hound left a sweet biscuit to meet her, and after exchanging 
 a few words and a kiss, made believe that he had found her 
 in the wilderness, and brought her in safety to refreshments, 
 which it was distinctly understood that he was to share. 
 
 The conclave on religious education, like Polly's em- 
 ployers after Sukey had taken the kettle off again — pre- 
 sumably — had all had tea, and were horridly indifferent 
 about anyone else going without. 
 
 They were confident they might rely on Mr. Challis' s 
 impartiality to distinguish between things that to the
 
 IT NEVER CAN HAPPEN AGAIN 411 
 
 casual observer might seem identical ; to assign due weight 
 to considerations which the superficial observer would over- 
 look ; and to sift and examine evidence which the pre- 
 judiced observer would be only too prone to reject. 
 
 Mr. Challis, appealed to to give an impromptu casting- 
 vote on a variety of subjects, felt impartial and flattered. 
 He could only contribute, he said, an absolute freedom 
 from bias on the question of religious education. He re- 
 gretted his total absence of information, the possession of 
 which, in however small a degree, always adds weight to 
 the decisions of the most unbiassed judgment. However, 
 it soon became clear that all that was asked of him was 
 that he should listen impartially to all three disputants, 
 and hold his tongue sine die while they talked sixteen to 
 the dozen. As he was not in a humour for talking, he had 
 no objection to this. 
 
 END OF VOL. I. 
 
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