TEN HOURS CONSTANCE I. SMITH NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY 1921 COPYRIGHT, IQ2I, BY HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC. THE QUINN 8, BODEN COMPANY RAHWAY. N. J. CONTENTS PART I MORNING DUTIES CHAPTER PAGE I SHOPPING 3 II CELIA, FATHER, AND OTHERS . . . 22 III NOON 37 IV ROBERT 74 PART II GWENNIE V DINNER 8 9 VI AFTER DINNER . . " VII CELIA AND GWENNIE "9 VIII GWENNIE ALONE *39 PART III RESPONSIBILITY IX SITTING SEWING '59 X LEONARD HYDE ^6 XI LOVE 2 4 XII LURE 2 3* XIII EFFECTS .246 XIV FORESIGHT ....... 261 PART IV SUNSET XV TEA-TIME 285 XVI SIX O'CLOCK 296 2138002 PARTI MORNING DUTIES . . . Centered in the sphere Of common duties.'' TENNYSON. CHAPTER I SHOPPING THE curb lay beneath the toes of her shoes. Celia stared at it, and recognizing that Dean Street had now ended and that Lavender Road was sliding away on the other side of Wykeham Rise, she lifted her head, shot to left and right a glance which noted traffic, and then crossed alertly, conscious again for a few moments of the things stationary and moving which filled the gray morning light. 'Buses, cars, people, shops they all drew near and she surveyed them. Then her wide blue eyes dropped. Walking briskly and buoyantly, she looked only at the surface of pavement immediately before her. She saw the lines of brown earth between the paving-stones ; she saw innumerable legs waggling in front and beside her; masculine legs in yel- low gaiters, or baggy or tight, or light or dark, 3 4 TEN HOURS trousers; and feminine legs under a flop of skirt. Gusts of tobacco smoke and petroleum came to her nostrils; sharp sounds cut her ears; once or twice she sniffed, and all the time she hummed, not because she was happy; not for any reason at all but quite unconsciously. She was not think- ing, and yet her brain wheeled. Far away on the background of her mind little dim figures of thoughts moved, but they were too distant to have outline. They merely buzzed senselessly, and jostled each other like people moving in a fog, and they tired her brain without offering it the compensation of interest. Then that tooth began to ache. She was gripped and commanded by two sensations which were the only real things in a nebulous world of shifting gray and silver. Most sharp, most piercing, was the toothache. It was in her mouth, but it influenced almost every part of her body. A little fierce, red-hot thing, it screwed down into her, and her flesh and her nerves shrank from it. It screwed, and probed, and burnt; it jagged savagely; it was visualized as a malevolent thrust of pulsing heat. SHOPPING 5 Now her mouth was a furnace; her body cold. The other sensation was born of her heart, but seemed nevertheless to be in the pit of her stomach ; a heavy, laden, sickening sensation. Dis- content, self-pity, hopelessness it was any of these things, or perhaps, more truly, it was com- posed of all three. Celia, too, was usually so happy. It was all the tooth. II Her underlip pushed at her upper so that her mouth pouted resentfully. Her shoulders drooped, and her eyes in their protest became enormous. For the moment her step grew slow and heavy. She felt the wind to be a blade which slashed her face; she saw the interminable road riding whitely on between the gray banks of shops with, in its hardness and straightness and sharpness, an air almost of ferocity. To cut through thoroughfares, and houses, commons, fields, and hills, indifferent to the humanity it flung behind it, that was its purpose. Self- sufficing, staring, clean, it drove on, watching all 6 TEN HOURS the time the clouds which, beyond leagues of sil- very space, went with it. A cold, hard, brutal morning. This was the forlorn and self-pitying Celia; the rare Celia who saw the world as large and callous, and, where benefits for herself were con- cerned, stingy. The real Celia was not given to introspection, but with sunny acquiescence, re- ceived sorrow, and compensation, denial, and grants, as cognate parts of the day's evolution. A fresh and extremely intrigued expression usually dwelt in Celia's eyes. " It can't be helped. We must put up with it." That was her natural philosophy. But for the last few months there had been Gwennie . . . and Robert . . . and Mr. Hyde . . . Celia crimsoned. Her thoughts, to drown that last name, shrieked at her, " And the tooth the tooth the tooth! You must have it out. Don't think about it. Look at those apples." Frantically Celia's ego leaped beyond the radius of that grinding heat; that leaden weight; those naked facts; and concentrated itself on its sur- roundings. SHOPPING 7 III But one could not get beyond the pain. It was in the center of everything. Round its stab- bing fierceness as round a pivot, everything was grouped in shapes which for a dull moment seemed all geometrical : squares, triangles, circles, oblongs. One by one they lifted into vision, and stood down the clear pale light, and Celia stared at them, ignoring as much as possible, the waves of pain rolling round them. Lavender Road, at no time sluggish, was always crowded on Saturdays. Along its right-hand side where she was standing, stalls were set. You could hardly move, so many were the people look- ing at them, and at the shops, and coming and going up the strip of pavement between. Celia's mind ticked off comments. Those ap- ples looked good; cheap, too, if they got them from the front, and not from the back where they had a different kind altogether. Still, you could get right out into the street and stand behind the stall; people did. You had to be sharp, or they'd fob any old stuff off on you. Pah! how 8 TEN HOURS the fish smelt! How could people buy fish off stalls! Vegetables were different, but fish! Why, it had probably been in the man's bedroom all night! These costers only had one room for the entire family, and the stock as well. Bananas, a penny each ... but they were very soft. There was a doll's stall; heaps of kiddies round it. There was the cats' meat. Everybody catered for, you see ! Those dates looked nice. Perhaps she'd better get half a pound. Not if they were already done up in bags, though, so you couldn't see what you were buying. No, they weren't done up. Celia stopped before the stall. " Half a pound of dates, please." As, narrowly she watched selection and weight, toothache and heartache were both forgotten. Celia, the sensible, practical housewife, now pre- dominated over the other more imaginative Celias. The world was real enough now; no huge crea- ture, intent on evading the responsibility of look- ing after her and giving her adequately bright housing room, but a mere accretion of air, sky, SHOPPING 9 mold, brick, and exchangeable goods. There were no complexities, no insecurities, no arid places, no depths, no heights. Everything was simple and obvious. One bought, ate, slept, and served other people that was Life. As she walked away, deciding that Sunday's joint should be followed by a date-pudding, the wistfulness was smoothed from her face. She was engrossed and normal. From an aggressive personality, keen as steel, the road had dwindled to a width of macadam patiently bearing the blows of traffic. Her mind had recovered equil- ibrium, and the highly-colored pictures of its pre- vious nervous state were destroyed. Wind swept down the streets. After a night of almost continuous rain, stone and brick were washed and stood out sharp under a sky full of gray cloud and high white lights. The sun was a silver spot. Faint silvery gleams came and went in the air, never warming to yellow, but diffusing a chill brightness over the ridged roof and shelv- ing side-streets. The intense clarity of the day- light made all distances bold in outline and color. They pierced singly the fugitive lights, massed io TEN HOURS collectively in hard unevenness beneath the clouds. Long ropes of smoke stretched out and faded. Sounds were an assault upon the hearing so strid- ently they came from all quarters, a harsh core to the soft booming utterance of the wind. Celia looked calmly about her. With com- plete success she held off pain and discontent. Then suddenly these tossed aside her determined preoccupation; they swept down on her; they crushed her. She shook herself girlishly. " Oh dear, I am silly! I don't know what's the matter with me. It's all this tooth. I really must have it out. Let me see I want some sago." She turned into the corn-chandler's. Think hard of sago ignore that dancing blade of heat in one's mouth; that chill hand squeezing one's heart. IV It was brown and dim inside the corn- chandler's. Pale sacks stood everywhere, and there were piles of bright-colored packets, and lines of brown drawers. The girl who served Celia wore a blue cotton apron, and above it her SHOPPING ii long face was white, her nose red, her mouth a flaccid hole. She spoke thickly; she breathed audibly; she stared before her with dull pained eyes. " She's simply stuffed with cold." Celia re- flected, swiftly pitying. " She looks miserable. All the fuss I make about toothache ! Her head aches, I know." She gave a confirmatory jerk to her round chin. It was now an established fact that she, Celia, was a grumbler, rooted in egoism and cal- lous disregard for other people's aches and pains and sinking sensations. Fancying herself so ill- used! so alone in her misfortunes! "A visit to a hospital's what I want! " She left the shop, and in a perfect whirlwind of self-contempt, searched the faces of passers- by. The crowd was composed mostly of women; old women with red and brown places under their loose skins, and necks lined like the bark of a tree; younger women, nearly all of them in a cer- tain condition, their eyes intent on the shops, their movements leisurely, their gloveless shiny hands 12 TEN HOURS occupied with string bags, or the handles of a " pram " wherein sat babies fat white-faced babies who looked, Celia decided, " as if they'd bejen steamed." There were many children too ; boys with wiz- ened and calculating faces, and girls more childish and robust; here and there you saw a husband, his whole mind centered on the choice of Sun- day's joint, or Sunday morning's bloater; and in a monotonous line behind the stalls stood the costers thin, hoarse, cold, and vivacious. Occa- sionally a secretive filthy man or woman slid by. They looked neither to right nor left, but with lips mumbling and eyes at once vacant and veiled, drew gaping boots along the pavement, and loosed a wave of dust and foulness on the air. Tramps these. Smell of black garments, and flesh, and breath, and fish, and meat that was Lavender Road; that was life for some people. Celia's mouth, at all times pretty, grew beauti- ful in its compassion. Her eyes protested again, but this time impersonally. " If you were like them you might have cause SHOPPING 13 to be sorry for yourself," her conscience said acidly. " As it is you'll get a real sorrow if you're not careful." But her belief in the vengeful disposition of Fortune was less strong than her sense of humor. Very faintly she smiled. She was not afraid of being overtaken by calamity simply because she had indulged momentarily in discontent. Her complaints were culpable but not criminal. Never- theless, thinking about yourself was a bad habit to form. Celia's will sent messages to her feet, her shoulders, her eyes. She walked briskly, her body disciplined, her mouth level instead of droop- ing downward. She shook her fluffy head as if her cares were exterior things which hovered and wailed gnat-like about her ears. Now she was mistress of herself, valiant and resourceful. De- liberately she, as it were, took her circumstances in hand and re-cast them, abstracting sting, oblit- erating dark shades, emphasizing acknowledged brightnesses. Serenely she surveyed their new presentment. Yes, they were like that; just like that. I4 TEN HOURS She turned into the butcher's. V The smell of humanity and joints nauseated her. The red and cream of the meat, its coarse- ness, its quality, suddenly became horrible. The impression came and went within an in- stant. She refused to recognize it, but looked sharply at the tickets, seeking amid many " Im- ported Meat " for one " English." Automati- cally Celia the housewife rose supreme once more. So little habitual were these fluctuations between unrest in the face of vaguely realized apprehen- sions, and competent acceptance of the day's de- mands, that sight of the familiar objects which composed the mosaic of the latter, were sufficient to dull completely, if temporarily, those new and disquieting moods. Everything now became sub- ordinated to the pursuit of an English " neck," the introduction of nasty meat into the house meaning severe domestic trouble. She obtained the joint. Triumphantly she emerged into the street and hurried homeward, her mind intent on the division of scrag, and neck, SHOPPING 15 and best end, and their apportioning to various meals. Not till she had disposed of each sec- tion did she become consciously aware again that neither the tooth nor the heaviness of heart had been robbed of their corroding power by her at- tempts to reduce them to trivialities common to all humanity. The elaborate tissue of her arguments and reasoning was torn aside. She was in pain. She was unhappy. The tooth jumped with increased violence as she neared the side-road up which she would turn to gain Wykeham Common. Defensively she stared at a milliner's shop, and saw herself re- flected in its background of mirror. How frum- pish she looked! Tired too, and with features drawn a little with pain and dissatisfaction. Her black felt hat was utterly without character; her skirt hung unequally; her seal fur belonged to a fashion extinct for three years. She endured a sudden numbing vision of her- self at thirty-five. Eleven years separated her age from that, but as she inspected her reflection she realized vividly what she would be like then. Tall; not slender as now, but angular; face 1 6 TEN HOURS pinched into meanness; eyes wan; hands and feet flat and flapping; spinstery-looking despite the fact -that she was Mrs. Robert Jennings. " You look a maiden now; not a bit as if you've been married two years. You'll be bony then." Rather languidly her conscience prodded her away from the shop. She turned up the side- road, rallying herself. " I don't know what is the matter with me. I've got the blues, I expect. One does sometimes." There were three girls coming down the road and she looked at them. They wore beautiful costumes, and buff velours, and silk stockings and heavy furs. Earrings swung under piquant tufts of hair; their full figures were pliant and strong; they walked joyously. About them was an atmos- phere of richness and good-breeding, and Celia's expression grew unpleasant. Her eyes hardened; her upper lip lifted slightly so that cynicism sat on her mouth like a wasp on a rose. She looked narrow and young and acid. The girls passed. Celia was cloaked in dark- ness. All her weaknesses throbbed in her heart jealousy, prejudice, swift refusal to grant beauty SHOPPING 17 to those girls, and the unjustifiable sense that they had scanned her own appearance and placed her socially and physically several scales below them. Celia, educated at a private school, the daugh- ter of a clerk, the wife of a clerk, had her justice and her good sense blinded by hostility against the upper classes. They did not want her; she did not want them. With the silent forming of this opinion, her upper lip curled and her soft chin tilted upward. She looked neither imper- tinent nor defensive ; she merely became detached, and as unresponsive as a brick wall. Her naive- te, her spontaneous brightness withered. FOP tune had apportioned her a bourgeois position, She would keep it. In her old clothes those girls would have looked nothing. . . . What lovely hats! What cos- tumes! If Robert spent less money in books she could have more clothes. This nasty old felt, spotted with innumerable rains; these cheap woolen gloves; this miserable lean piece of fur . . . she hated them. If only the tooth would stop aching. 1 8 TEN HOURS VI Along the top of the road stretched Wyke- ham Common. As she crossed from the parallel line of small gray houses and walked through a grove of high leafless elms, only railings separat- ing her from the sodden grasses, the wind rolled strongly across the open space and drowned her in fresh but not cold air. On either side of the narrow asphalt path, the ground was black, and here and there glimmering with rain-pools. Re- peated rain had made the bare widths between the grass pulpy; the damp breath of soaked dead leaves and soaked grass and sod came to her nos- trils. Twigs and thin branches were scattered beneath the trees, and in the tops of the elms the wind roared; on the pensive skyline the lean bushes of poplars swung like pendulums. White lights flashed upon the green, and faded. Uniformly gray and sharp-cut, the houses near and distant stood round the common, wrapped in that abundance of earth-scented wind. No sun- light, no leaves, no warmth. Nevertheless, the common was singularly bright, full of rustlings SHOPPING 19 and melodious oozings; washed, perfumed. The tartness of winter was passing from it. There was softness in the clouds and in the shadows. The wilderness of the sky was not savage but tantalizing, and as it rolled low over the distant roofs, it spoke of coming blue and a yielded sun. She passed the pond. The three islands in its center were black and tangled. The water rose in tiny pyramids, some of their slopes wrinkled, while others were smooth like jelly. High against the stone wall, the water rubbed, and its lapping murmur and the sibilant whispering of the island trees and grasses, followed her for some way. Once she glanced back, and the pond, brown when she passed it, was now steel colored around its lean tufts of tree. She could see it heaving, but its sound was no longer audible. She went forward briskly. There was so much to do before dinner, and father would be getting up, and she liked to be in the house then. The common grew wilder. In low waves of yellow soil spaced with grass and gripped with gorse, it rushed to the railway lines driving through it. Single trees waved above its seats, 20 TEN HOURS and files of young saplings stood down its paths; and the keen odors of its pools, and decaying and sprouting allotments, were puffed across its ways, made acrid by the smoke of trains coming and going every minute. Sights, sounds, scents, were all too familiar to rouse Celia's attention. Often she had valued highly this open space, but to-day she saw it lying swarthy and limited under the sky, without beauty, and without grace. To-day it was characterless. No influence emanated from grass, bush, or tree. It lay in the thin, pure light, with its murmurs and movements empty of purpose, a mere auto- matic response to the great wind. Beyond it was hooped the white bridge with 'buses and cars rattling up and down. On the left of the bridge stretched a row of shops and houses divided by the railway and by side-roads. In one of these roads Celia lived. VII She reached the end of the common and crossed the road. The clouds were breaking apart, the common was swept with silver, blue tones stained SHOPPING 21 the gray, and then the sun stood out, barred above and below with cloud, and pale yellow gleams floated over the trees and gilded the houses. Windows flashed red-gold; a pale mist of gold broadened everywhere, and the smokes of the trains hung shining above the spikes of the railings. Of course it would turn nice just as she was going in! There was not much chance of get- ting out again to-day! She slammed her gate and walked up to the door. As she felt for her key she noted the step ; it needed hearthstoning again. As she opened the door she heard the reedy clamor of the wind in the plane-trees, the rumors of its march across the common. She entered the passage, and a dry smell of smoke, and chill vitiated air met her, and roused that same repulsion she had felt in the butcher's. She closed the door and stood in the brown dull light of the passage. The suburb was washed by the clean humming ocean of wind, sheeted with lemon-colored glows. The house was still, cold, dark. CHAPTER II CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS SHE took off her coat and hat and hung them on the hat-stand. In the room at the top of the stairs father was moving. The smell of smoke, and the metallic noises, showed that he was lighting the fire. She smoothed her hair with her palm and looked half with pleasure, half with wistfulness at her pale face, her pink mouth, her soft chin which in itself was round, but which viewed after her broad brow, appeared pointed; with a sudden spurt of vivacity, she said : "Well, your hair's straight enough, anyway! " and drove her fingers through it and drew it out wildly, and then looking owl-like and wondering and ruffled, entered the front room. This was the dining-room, but a small space was screened off for father's bed. She opened the window and then went into the CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS 23 kitchen, calling out as she passed the staircase: "Brekker's ready, father!" An " all right " floated down to her. Sharp inspection of the kitchener found her statement to be justifiable. His porridge was ready, and so was the jug of milk standing in the saucepan of boiling water. She put some coals on the fire, and then looked at the table. One corner of it was covered with a cloth laid with a blue-and- white soup plate, a napkin, cut- lery, sugar and salt. She put a chair ready for him, and then emptied her shopping basket. " Good morning, dear," he said in a high plain- tive voice. " Good morning, pup," Celia rejoined cheer- fully, and kissed him. " Had a good night?" " Oh, not very good. The wind made such a noise. I thought it would blow the window in, and I could feel it on my face." " Poor old pup ! you want a bit of cotton wool in your ears. Our window simply danced. Rob- ert couldn't find the wedge last night; consequence no end of a din! Are you ready? shall I pour your porridge out?" 24 TEN HOURS "Yes, quite ready, thank you." He seated himself at the table, and with trem- bling fingers opened the napkin and tucked it in his collar. " The fire didn't light very well," he said, his voice still more plaintive. " I thought the place smelt full of smoke. Never mind. Have your breakfast now and for- get all about it. ... I've got a lovely bit of Eng- lish meat." " Ah," father said, and watched with lusterless eyes as she poured out the porridge and added the hot milk to it. "All right now?" " Yes, thank you." " That's the way." She nodded her fair head at him, and he smiled feebly, eating the porridge slowly and without enthusiasm. II William Clarke was seventy-six, a small old man with a high narrow head, long fat pink cheeks, a rather red nose, a white beard, and wide, blue rheumy eyes with deep bags beneath them. CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS 25 He wore an old velvet jacket and a round velour cap edged with fur. This had once been the crown of Celia's honeymoon hat. She had cut off the brim this winter, bound it with fur, and given it to father in place of the greasy cap he was then wearing on his bald head. As he sat now at breakfast, his feet on the rung of his chair, a rheumy tear on his cheek, and the cap a little on one side, he looked a grotesque and not alto- gether pleasant figure. His movements were wav- ering; the droop of his thick eyelids almost sanc- timonious; the smoothness of his bulging cheeks, the looseness of his lower lip sharply sensual. Father had been a bank clerk. He had mar- ried when he was thirty-four a girl considerably younger than himself. There were five children of the marriage. Father was not the most satisfactory of men either as husband or parent. Without being a drunkard he was sufficiently addicted to billiards and beer, and sufficiently fuddled by a quite mod- erate amount of the latter for him to be a source of anxiety to his wife, and an object of fluctuating scorn to himself. Father, accompanied always 26 TEN HOURS by his family, given light domestic duties to occupy his mind, allowed daily two glasses of beer, petted and praised, was a temperate man, and if not a jovial at least a comparatively happy one. But father, unguarded, left to follow the inclinations which led him among boisterous companions and their stimulating amusements, would in these cir- cumstances have deteriorated rapidly. He would have sunk into a degraded and maudlin old age. Therefore, when twelve years ago his wife died, he became the first consideration of his family. As one by one its members entered matrimony, he passed from household to household, and finally when Celia became Mrs. Jennings, he took up an abode with her which was only to end with his death. Alice, the eldest, died a year ago; and her husband being a sailor, Celia had for six months given a home to Alice's daughter Gwennie, and expected to do so indefinitely. Gwennie was six- teen. Celia, the youngest of father's family, was twenty-four. Celia, bright, firm, sensible, was a splendid guardian for the irresolute old man. CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS 27 III The Clarkes were country people. Marriage alone had brought Celia to Wykeham, southwest suburb of London. Before that event she had lived always at Barnham, that little village ten miles from the metropolis, perched amid the winds on the bare ridge of Barnham Downs, with a view of Chelsea factory chimneys, and beyond these, on the skyline, the faint heights of Hamp- stead. Celia loved the country, but she did so sanely and without illusion. Imagination was not one of her most noticeable qualities. As a little girl she saw no fairies dancing in the humid half-lights of the woods, or passing like flickering flames across the hills. She had no fear of the rustlings in the leaves, made mysterious and ghostly by dark and stars; she would have adventured boldly out on the black windy uplands, and known the vague surrounding shapes to be bushes and trees, and not human creatures called forth by the night. When she grew older, she read no personality into the downs which rippled through pale mono- 28 TEN HOURS chromes and sank at last to the fields; the trees were only " green things standing in the way " ; earth was no Demeter, no " Bacchante mother," but a solid sphere spinning through ordered deeps of space. Celia, practical, downright, and inclined to flippancy, never juggled with facts. She loved the country, but she did not invest it with any magic. None the less, her love was a keen, sensitive thing which, raying and darting about Barnham, discovered obscure beauties as well as superficial ones. Amid many fair things, one or two shone with an especial brilliance, lingering in her mem- ory, to be recalled and visualized anew long after their actual inspection. The surpassing freshness and softness of a row of firs standing down the hill-slope and rocking their gray-green boughs in the blue air; after rainy days, the stream of mist which rose from the wet soil and widened beneath the sallow sunsets and the pale washed sky, into which moons dipped and stars probed; the regular columns of the beech-clump on the Brighton Road wind in their CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS 29 great crests, rotting leaves heaped about their boles, black bushes peering and shaking beyond, and across fields, beyond dark trailing hedge- rows, brimming up to the sweep of sky; Epsom Downs : to Celia, tripping home from school these were things to be noted and stored away for con- sideration when u bothers " attacked her. There were others as well, but these were some of the finest, or at least the clearest remembered per- haps because they recurred seasonably, subtle changes in them, but their essential beauty un- altered. Soil, grasslands, pools of flowers, the fall of stars into view, growing and dwindling moons, sudden careless scents and sounds, larks in windy heights; and above all, enclosing all, the tumult of the Downs, surging close at hand with roads sinuously banding them, and in the distances, breaking upon the sky and floating above the towns these were things, recondite and beautiful, in Celia's life. More human and less esthetical pleasure was given by school friendships. Celia had many 30 TEN HOURS friends. She was always in the center of girls, her fair head high above theirs, her glances speed- ing to left and right, her tongue as swift and pert as her glances. She indulged in no violent attach- ments, but, gregariously inclined, came and went with a dozen companions, talking all the time, preferring some to others, broadly classifying them, and generally not very far out in her esti- mates. These were pleasant days and scenes. Then there was father. Of the chiaroscuro of her young life, father was the shadow. Every day he went to a bank at Epsom and there were evenings when he was an hour late; when he came home " flopperty " about the legs, filmy-eyed, and discoursive and slow of speech; when a faint horrible smell of alcohol was loosed on the air of the room and hung there as a menace, a weight, a fear. . . . No one enlightened Celia as to the meaning of these physical and atmospheric facts. She was not to know of Father's weakness; she was so young; let her at least be spared the pain of knowledge. But Celia's sharp eyes saw he was "funny"; her round little nose sniffed and recognized; her CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS 31 ears caught the altered intonation of his voice and of mother's; Celia knew. Thus, very soon, she was sharing the respon- sibility of watching him; she became a small but stout link in the human chain which circled and restricted his movements. When mother died she entered into a wordless compact with Alice, the only other girl, to do all for father that could be done; to help the staid, serious-eyed, married sis- ter of twenty-eight, with all these feminine intui- tions and diplomacies and subterfuges which were beyond the boys' conception. And in this at once sordid and beautiful guardianship, she was as pert and brisk as in her school affairs. Father, weakly lashing himself for his failings and sin- cerely anxious to amend them, flinched under the thrust of her blue eyes, and the shake of her head with its two waves of hair and its pale blue bow, the poise of her long slim body, as if she were the parent and he the culpable child. He dreaded the derisive tilt of her chin, and the lift of her mouth. He was, poor man, so anxious to be re- spected and admired, and Celia had such a dis- concertingly straight look! She penetrated all 32 TEN HOURS humbug; she measured all protestations; she dis- cerned all motives; she was terribly honest, and keen, and blunt. Father loved her. She had her romantic side, though she did not display it to her girl friends and was disposed to ridicule it to herself. Sometimes, walking down the Brighton Road when the fields were filling with dusk and the sweeps of the hills were golden in the fading light, she had thought pensively of love and pictured some vague but radiant per- sonality bringing it to her. The fields dropped away in the blue silence; the burning brands above the woods died out; the sky, from a luminous pallor, turned green and then dark mauve. She saw the village, and the lights swinging above the glimmer of the road- way. Now woods, lanes, meadows, were black, and the moldings of the hills washed out by dark- ness. Starlight lay in the upper heights of air like silver smoke. Dreamy-eyed, drooping-lipped, Celia would go indoors, having glimpsed across the hush and perfumed breadth of the country, the stir and glitter of a life other than this; hav- ing breathed an unconscious summons to love. CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS 33 having advanced timidly to the borderland of unconscious desire. To be admired, beloved; to love, to serve; throbbing conception of happiness ! Too shy, too secret to endure in the hardy gaslight under the staring pictures, it slipped up amid the stars, not to be recalled till evening again found her alone and dreaming. The hall door closed on the night, the room settled about her, Celia became practical once more. " I don't want to get married, thank you," she replied to bantering questions. " I've seen too much of it. I should like to keep a cats' home." When she was twenty-two she met Robert Jen- nings. He was six years older than Celia, a quiet, taciturn solemn young man, to whom she appeared as the incarnation of sunlight. Celia liked him. She knew herself beloved, desired. She did not feel the thrill which had caught her heart in the twilight. She did not see marriage as an ecstasy but as a comfortable and inevitable condition. Robert loved her; she liked Robert; there were no impediments; one did not want to have to keep oneself for always. What 34 TEN HOURS possible reason could she have for refusing Rob- ert? No girl would. As for all that sentimental rubbish about adoring him " I doubt if I'm capa- ble of it," Celia said wisely. " It can't be a very- comfortable state either. I don't want always to be kissing; never get anything done 1 And he thinks I'm perfect. It's quite enough for one per- son to be silly." Celia married him. IV They came to live at Wykeham in a house over- looking Wykeham station. Father came with them. They were all three perfectly happy. Celia had a woman twice a week for the rough work; the other duties she delighted in attending to herself. Robert earned 250 a year, and it was engrossing work scheming how to run the house properly and yet save a little; engrossing for a while; then a little, a very little, harassing. Robert gave her enough for housekeeping, and no more. He did not smoke ; he made his clothes last, he had one extravagance only books. CELIA, FATHER AND OTHERS 35 Robert wanted to become an author. He bought foolscap-paper, typing paper; literary pe- riodicals, books, new and second-hand. With solemn ardor he " went in " for literature. Celia, brow puckered a little, looked at the books, etc., and reckoned the cost; looked at her wardrobe and pondered over prices. Things were very dear; one must have clothes sometimes; ob- viously Robert could not buy books and costumes as well; she was saving scarcely anything. Celia let the front bed-room to a young man Mr. Leonard Hyde. That meant three guineas a week extra. Her spirits rose. V She had been married a year when Alice died. For six months, Alice's husband, George Bur- gess, was at home with Gwennie. Then, Celia offered to take the girl. The sailor might be away for a number of years. " I'll look after her," said Celia. " I shall like it; and you'll know she's all right. She'll be better with me than with any of the boys. Their wives " Celia sniffed. Therefore Gwennie, sixteen, handsome, her 36 TEN HOURS personality as yet obscure, joined the Jennings' household. She went out as bookkeeper to a large provi- sion store up Wykeham Rise. The weekly ten shillings she paid to Celia was all " extra." Be- sides " You'll be company for me," her aunt stated. Gwennie shook her shoulders and giggled. " Of course you will," Celia repeated as if some one Gwennie by that movement, or her own heart had questioned the assertion. That was six months ago. This morning in Lavender Road, Celia's mind, offering reasons for depression, itemized " Gwennie, Robert, Mr. Hyde." Three reasons for discontent. Mad- deningly monotonous they revolved in Celia's head: " Gwennie, Robert, Mr. Hyde." CHAPTER III NOON WHILE father ate his porridge, Celia put her parcels away in a cupboard and talked to him. " It looks as if it's going to be a nice day. You'll get your walk to-night. Lavender Road was simply crowded. Such a poor miserable- looking lot of people too. I don't know how they manage to live; smelly rooms and no end of babies, and a few shillings a week, and they look so cheerful on it! " " I thought you said they looked miserable," father observed with wan interest. " Oh, I mean their clothes and their general appearance; most of them were awfully perky. There's some credit in being jolly under those circumstances, I should think." Father made an affirmative noise in his throat, and solemnly passed his spoon round the porridge now cooled into a jelly-like circle. 37 3 8 TEN HOURS Celia shut the cupboard door. Lavender Road, summoned by her remarks into a series of dreary mental pictures, both for herself and for father, offered the latter a subject for rumination, and served herself as a weapon with which vigorously to repel those nimble apprehensions, discontents, and jealousies which threatened to overcome her peace of mind. Recollection of haggard faces and malodorous garments was a stern corrective for the " blues." Father's meditations, however, did not crystal- lize into any suggestive speech. He sat with his gaze fixed on the diminishing island of oatmeal, the pale sunlight giving a faint gloss to the brown fur round his cap. His down-dropped lids, and face elongated by the slow movements of his jaw, emphasized the slight severity of his appearance. Celia, therefore, became silent. The tooth, in- active for the last few minutes, now thrust burn- ingly down into her neck and beat burningly in her gum. A haze of pain was round her head. She was thankful for father's silence. NOON 39 II The kitchen was a square, comfortable room. The window looked westward. From it you could see the black beds and paths of the garden; the small lawn, the reedy bushes ; the wet garden seat and also a space of sky; the traffic of white morn- ing clouds, and the rose-colored drifts at evening. Changing and beautiful lights fell softly into the room. Sometimes the dresser, the table, the wooden chairs, were bronzed into coppery rich- ness; sometimes they blazed golden; often it was a weak primrose glow which stole across the gray town and massed faintly on the walls. When all the other rooms were dim, the kitchen was almost certain to have its pool of spare illumination. In the center now it was full of colorless light; in the corners clear dun shadows lay. Birds were dropping short bead-like notes on the windy air; the garden trees tossed, and rustlings, and thun- derings, the sharp bang of gates or fall of dust- bin lids, sounded beyond the window. Into the room came the smell of smoke and rotting leaves and the moist soil of the box on the window-sill. 40 TEN HOURS Celia cut off the scrag end of the joint she had bought for dinner. Her thoughts impelled her dully to get from the pantry an enamel jar, a quarter filled with gravy; to put small pieces of meat in this, cover it with a lid and set it on a burner of the gas stove. By two o'clock the mut- ton would be as tender ! Now the tapioca she had soaked last night; the milkman would be here directly; the potatoes need not be seen to for an hour or so ; to go over all the floors with the car- pet-sweeper was the next thing. Like silver tissue, the light stretched round her hot face. The bird notes were like water chiming and falling, falling and chiming, without pause. She felt cool china under her hands; splinters in wood ; edges of knife-handles ; smooth door-knobs : they all bobbed up like flotsam rising through a burning sea. Waves of burning light rolled round her; the tooth jagged and probed, and bounded. She kept her mouth tightly closed, her wounded eyes fixed on the things she was touching. NOON 41 III Celia at twenty-four was as a rule passably pretty, at times lovely, and always disarmingly lovable. Her skin was good; her mouth with its pensive droop, its sudden curls, flowerlike, and worthy of the poet's " some bee had newly stung it; " the curve of her chin too, into her throat and the little hollow beneath her underlip were of an almost sensible softness, which irresistibly tempted one to stroke them; her nose was small and round; her eyes bluey-green and only beautiful in their expressiveness; her brows fair; her head a little too wide and round. She was tall, and as straight as a boy. In her plain skirt and blue flannel blouse with a broad turn-down collar and a blue tie she looked extraordinarily young. Her neck was very soft and slender; she drew her back hair high up from it, and this gave her a funny prim old- maidish appearance. Most attractive of all were her " ways." The way she placed her slim feet; the way she tilted her head and lowered her lashes and raised her upper lip; the way she shook her head till the 42 TEN HOURS waves of hair heaved on either side of their frag- rant parting; the way she clinched an argument by compressing that kissable mouth ; the little un- expected turns of her body; her position when she sat : knees close together, elbows close to her sides ; an instinctively maidenly position which was some- how more provocative of attention than a casual sprawl would have been: all these ways were Celia's chief charms. Each one captured affec- tion. IV Just now she was wistful. Vivacity made her less pretty than wistfulness. The pathetic subdued Celia was the one who had those moments of love- liness. She glanced at the brown clock hanging over the mantelpiece. No good going upstairs till the milkman had come. Father had finished breakfast. He got up and carried the crockery into the scullery, filled the washing bowl with hot water and washed up. Celia, motionless by the table surveyed him so- berly. NOON 43 She did not attempt to put the sugar and salt in the cupboard. Father had to be occupied with duties such as these or the days seemed so long for him. He usually dusted the downstairs rooms and the morning-room, washed the dishes, and his own clothes. He had his methods: slow compli- cated masculine ones which often raised a gust of impatience in Celia though she never criticized them. He would leave his washing in soak for days; dusting was a science which could be pro- longed for hours; no one else knew how to lay a fire; no one else polished the plates so beauti- fully. Contemplating his domestic virtues, father became sensible of a subdued complacency. Per- haps he saw in them also, beside their intrinsic value, some slight shade of atonement. The milkman came while he was still at the sink. Celia went to the scullery door with a jug and stood there while the man served her, wrapped in wind, staring at the ivy leaves plunging along the wall. The woman next door was calling from a window to her little girl. " Come off that wet grass or you'll catch your death of cold." 44 TEN HOURS The rumble of buses, the ring of horses' hoofs and the fainter rhythm of footsteps coming and going on the bridge just beyond the garden's end, made a pulse of sound beating steadily amid the creaking and scraping noises of inanimate things. The milkman departed, Celia shut the door, made the tapioca pudding, put it in the oven, and then armed herself with the carpet sweeper. " I'd better go and see how that fire's getting on," father said, in the tone of one who expected the worst. "Perhaps you might as well," Celia assented. They went upstairs, his slow shuffling tread following her light one. V Father entered the morning-room; Celia mounted the second flight of stairs and paused on the landing, her eyes traveling from her own bed- room door to Mr. Hyde's. With a jerk she turned and -went up the next flight of stairs; glanced through the landing window at the birds hopping on the damp flat roof NOON 45 of the morning-room, at the houses climbing up the milky sky, at the white railway signals; and then mounted the last four stairs and went into Gwennie's room. This was the back attic ; next to it was the bath- room and then the front attic. Celia looked round, her eyes a little hard, her mouth cynical. The ceiling slanted down to a wide low window, from which the bridge and the common beyond were visible. The window was shut. Of course it would be ! Gwennie never remembered to open it. How could she sleep with it shut all night! Celia's hardening gaze transfixed the other con- demnable items: the bed littered with a hat, a handbag , a half-knitted jumper ; a coat thrown over a chair back; one drawer of the dressing- table wide open; a rug ridged up. Celia opened the window, cleared the bed, shut the drawer sharply, and pulled the rug into shape. Then she began to drive the carpet-sweeper to and fro. The curtains blew out; sounds rippled up to the 46 TEN HOURS window and flowed into the room ; cloud-shadows gloomed the air, light blanched it. Celia did not lift her eyes from the rugs. From the mantelpiece photographs of Gwennie and Gwennie's friends stared pertly at her. There was Gwennie in profile ; Gwennie full-faced and laughing; Gwennie linked with a friend. Picture-postcards of actors and heroes of the V.C., a silver-framed photograph of Alice, one or two letters and a small china doll with a rolled eye, and its " fums up," completed the furniture of the mantelpiece. On a table by the bed were some gaudy magazines, a cheap novel, and a box of mauve stationery. The dressing-table was littered with a steel bag, a pink bead necklace, a phial of cheap scent, and the photograph of a youth with an unnaturally bright and alert expression. Celia, when she had finished the rugs and began to tidy up, glanced contemptuously at this youth. What a little silly Gwennie was ! Her accumulated indictments awoke a flurry of self-rebuke. "Alice's daughter don't forget that; very young, motherless; don't forget that." She was not like Alice though. NOON 47 " All the more reason to be patient with her and make her like Ally," Celia murmured half- audibly. A little sigh fluttered through her lips. She was tired of looking after people, enduring their humors, training, soothing, guarding. Gwennie was fast, empty headed and vain. The glances she gave Robert were too precocious. She was lazy and slovenly. She resented authority . . . Anyhow Mr. Hyde never looked at her! Celia swept out of the room. " Oh, you are out of sorts ! The sooner you go to the dentist the better." She charged down the silvered staircase as if she were fleeing from something: a demoniacal, grinning something, sure of its power, eager to grip her, master, and crush her. VI She went into Mr. Hyde's room. She closed the door and stood for a moment with her hands trembling on the stick of the carpet-sweeper, and her eyes, shamefaced, defiant, furtive, glancing round her. Panels of light, wedges of shadow in the angles 48 TEN HOURS of walls, the faded colors of the carpet, the flash of glass, white spaces of counterpane and marble and china : there was nothing terrifying here, there was nothing that was not commonplace and familiar. She moved away from the door, and head bent, lids down dropt, began to travel backwards and forwards over the rugs. Her cheeks were very hot, and her heart beat quickly. She traced the windings of red amid squares of blue in the carpet; she saw a little piece of dried mud, and a little gray blot of cigarette ash, she was conscious of chair legs, the hem of the counterpane, and the cream skirting of the wall. Her lids refused to lift. Her personality seemed to be shrinking far down into the fleshy shrine which was bared to the scrutiny of the room. It seemed to be trying to hide itself; by silence, by unresponsiveness, to all exterior sum- mons, to be as if non-existent, evading questions, consequences, sensation. The milkman was calling down the road and the rumble of his barrow over the stones was audible, together with the clanging of gates. NOON 49 Celia looked up. Her self-conscious glance wandered round the room. So much did it express to her the personality of the man who occupied it, so vividly could she see him in its midst, that walls and furniture seemed to have become full of sensi- bility, to throb with life and perception. Witness- ing her embarrassment, they understood its impli- cation and stared mercilessly. As if they were indeed sentient spectators who could betray her, she dissembled her vehement interest and looked about her coolly. On the table by the bed was a pipe, a pair of gloves, and a red cloth novel. She bent to see the title. It was a detective story. Her mouth twitched into a smile. She walked round the room, her head a little on one side like a bird's, her glances swift and veiled. All the furniture was her own, yet she forgot this and felt almost afraid to touch anything. The room was hers, yet she started at every sound and looked doorwards as if she dreaded being discovered here. Her interest in Mr. Hyde discomposed her, more because it 'was provoked by a man, than 5 o TEN HOURS because she saw any danger in it, or grasped the fact that it was a current on which she moved without resistance. The things he had said to her, his appearance, his candid smile, his youth, were all clear-cut in her memory. Her intuitions played among them. Rapidly she built up his character, knowledge of what actually was becoming a basis for knowledge of what she wished should be. She fashioned him as her predilections directed and did not realize that he, as she imagined him, embodied that fascinating ideal of her girlish dreams. By the dressing-table she paused and looked at herself in the mirror. In the strong light, her face was very pale, her skin might have been under a microscope so revealed was its texture. Ponder- ingly she studied herself: her glinting hair, her soft throat, the glaze on the cheek behind which the tooth throbbed, the little round brilliant brooch at her neck. Mirror, windows, walls receded. She saw the dim gold-brushed staircase, Mr. Hyde coming down, her own figure pressed against the wall, his open smiling glance, soft with admiration. She NOON 51 felt his hand-shake, warm, firm. . . . Then her brain jerked, shutting off that picture and throwing her back into the room. She felt as if she were bathed in platinum-colored light which searched all nooks both of herself and of the room, and allowed no secrecies. She was stunned by sounds which were hard as missiles. Mr. Hyde admired her ; he thought her pretty, awfully pretty. Her face relaxed. Robert never looked at her like that now; he never fussed her; he took everything for granted. Mr. Hyde's gaze was full of homage. For a moment she stood lost in dream, con- verging towards perilous emotions and yet imagin- ing herself stationary. Her brows were arched in resentment, her lips pouted in a smile. Then Celia the practical, the sensible, hustled the emotional Celia aside. She gave her head a twirl, gripped the carpet-sweeper and flew into her own room. VII The wind puffed the chimes of church bells into hearing. Eleven o'clock. A cup of coffee now, and a biscuit. 52 TEN HOURS She returned to the kitchen. VIII Father was washing out some handkerchiefs. A cloud of steam from the water misted his face; soapsuds frothed fragrantly over his hands. The kettle was boiling on the kitchener, and water, brimming over from the spout, hissed on the top of the stove. " Don't touch that water," father called out. " It's for my rinsing." "Oh, blow your rinsing!" Celia muttered without spleen. " I'm just going to take some of it for a cup of coffee. I'll fill it up at once and it'll be boiling in a jiffy." Father did not protest, but went on rubbing, the warm smell of the suds eddying round him and flowing into the kitchen. " The place smells like a laundry," Celia com- mented. " For goodness sake have a door open." She opened the scullery door, and glanced at the spare laburnums shaking their tatters of dead pods in the next garden, at the walls emerging gray through a golden smoke of sunshine; then NOON 53 she re-entered the kitchen and made the coffee. She put a biscuit in the saucer and sat down by the fire. The half-burnt coals were turning gray and lifeless in the strong daylight. She put on some more, and when they caught stared at the plumes of flame, withering to smoke and then burning again with a small splutter of sound. She drank some coffee, and at once she was soaked with pain as with red-hot lava. It bubbled up to her head and filled her eyes, sank to her heart and drowned it. She sat rigid. The next moment she seized on thought as on a weapon with which to repel sensation. Thoughts hammered in her brain, memories swept through it. Her surroundings became fluid and unessential. The things actually affecting her were those past experiences which did not seem so much to be re-acted by her brain, as to stand before her vision; completed dramatic scenes pro- jecting sharply from a background of bronzed light pain colored all things hotly and throb- bing with emotions which had stirred her heart when she passed through them. Without moving her eyes from the fire she 54 TEN HOURS could see father's small figure, the rising and fall- ing of his arms as he drew the handkerchiefs in and out of the water, the wringing motion of his hands. She heard the water swishing down the sink, the bowl set back, the drag of his slippers; but all these things and the persistent train whis- tles, thin distant voices, and the breaking of wind over the land, belonged to another world, one high above her from which she had fallen like a plummet into deeps of darkness filled with those still relevant memories. Pressing her fingers savagely against her gum, she surveyed them. She was miserable, chagrined, hopeless, and the causes which made her so were Robert and Gwennie, and and the tooth. Why Robert? Because he was wrapped up in his books, settled down into undemonstrative stolidity, careless whether she looked pretty or not, accustomed to her; very different from Robert the lover. She had said frequent kisses would be a nuisance; a pastime which clogged the brisk wheels of the work day's evolution; but now it was all work day, all fact, all plainness, all routine. NOON 55 Her lusterless eyes were fixed on the black and orange mass glowing and flickering above the bars of the grate. Slender fawn-colored sprays of smoke puffed out, flames, primrose-yellow, licked corrosively over the coal. The fire in her mouth was as hot as they and all the more malevolent for its silence. She was seized and shaken by a sudden hunger for kisses. She wanted an arm crooked about her, a mouth hard on hers, a chest heaving against her own. It was not passion which roused this desire. The giver of the embrace was featureless, it was neither Robert nor any other; merely an urgent demand from her tired body, and her uneasy heart, for protection and sympathy. It rose from the satiety of responsible independence. She was wearied with looking after people; she desired to be governed and guarded; to luxuriate in freedom from responsibility; to be a child in the arms of its mother, or a woman wrapped in the solicitude of a man. A scene in which Robert figured as ardent lover stood round her. A January afternoon soon after their marriage. 56 TEN HOURS Wykeham Rise with sunlight blooming in soft yellowness over it, and wind driving dried leaves and eddies of dust along the pavements. She saw the buildings in flight, one beyond another and finding ultimately the sheet of blue horizon. Tilted where the sky's wall curved upward into its hollow was the thin daylight half-moon. She felt the stuff of Robert's overcoat under her palm; she moved her body involuntarily as again in retrospect she kept pace with him. The road heaved up to the common with its plumes of tree, its black network of railings. She and Robert had looked at the shops. The furniture dealers were the most tempting. They had looked at sidepieces and tables, saying which they would have when they became rich. The various woods with all their carving daintier in memory than in fact, the black gleaming pools of the table tops, the wavy graining of doors, were all before her again, and the hot dry atmos- phere which had stolen through the open shop door to her nostrils, brooded thickly about her now. She saw Robert and herself threading the NOON 57 windy streets, while the afternoon light withdrew to the high places and lay there in gold and pink, leaving the town gray; she saw walls of dusk mass- ing like smoke at the ends of roads and on the distant parts of the common; lamps, pale and ineffectual, converging into the dusk; the sheets of lemon light fail and the sky lie like a white sea about the moon. Robert's hand was on her wrist; shadows cut the pavements, and London became a monstrous gloom humped under a sky darkening for the stars. She and Robert had entered the house as these pricked through and the green haze of the night sky swung like a silver-beaded curtain. In the passage Robert had crushed her against him and kissed her furiously. She drank some more coffee, its fumes and its flavor running like a pleasant dream beside a dark river of pain. Father came in from the scullery, mounted on a chair and hung his handkerchiefs on the line. He descended heavily and looked vaguely about him. " Some one's just opened the gate," he said in his mournful sing-song. " I daresay it's the baker. How many do you want? " 5 8 TEN HOURS Celia looked at him, her eyelids heavy on her pupils. " Two large white and two little brown. Crusty ones and we owe him for yesterday. There's some money on the dresser shelf." Her gaze returned to the fire. Drawn back momentarily into the present she listened to father and the baker, looked at the loaves he brought in, and had stamped on her mind a picture of the tea-table and Gwennie nibbling that golden crust with her little square teeth and looking sleepily, smilingly, at Robert. She heard Robert say, " What have you been doing to-day, Gwen? Getting on all right ? . . ." Smoke stung her nostrils. She looked at the fire, took up the kitchen poker and pushed in a piece of coke. Her thoughts began suddenly to whirl; those past experiences crowded about her again, and the room thinned, father was a shadow. She saw Gwennie as she had been the day she had come to live here : her figure, its curves hidden by a loose black coat, very youthful, her face flushed, her black eyes sober, under a little round black hat pushed rather to the back of her head. NOON 59 Her black hair was in a plait, she wore thick low boots and thick stockings and carried a plush muff. Rain sprinkled grayly on the muff and on her coat; her cheeks were damp and cold; she looked like Ally and very young, very passive. Now she wore her hair bobbed, a jumper clung to the womanly curves of her body; silk stockings and big-bowed shoes made her look up-to-date; she was not passive ; and her youth was no longer lovable, but exasperating since it teemed with all the faults of adolescence. Celia stirred in her chair. She finished the coffee and the biscuit. Last Monday moved into the perspective of memory. She saw the hall, the open door, Robert coming in, and she and Gwen- nie meeting him; Gwennie with a blue-black sheen on her short hair, her neck plump and creamy, her red lips tilted upward, her eyes as brilliant as coals between a mesh of lash. Robert had looked at her, and she had looked back and smiled, Celia heard the shriek of train whistles, saw squares of light in the houses opposite and lamps spacing with yellow the windy blackness, felt the cold air lap- ping over her ankles, felt her anger like water 60 TEN HOURS from her heart to her ears and babble there. . . . Mr. Hyde had come downstairs then, nodded to Robert, seemed scarcely to observe Gwennie, and wrapped Celia in a warm wide smile. He had gone out, and for one moment before she closed the door she had seen stars scattered over the ridge of roofs, and her personality had seemed to precipitate itself out of her body, and race across the common with its jerking trees and faintly gleaming pools to where the downs sprang in strong curves from the tilled land and rolled unim- peded, wind-bathed under those flaming stars. Her liberated spirit had been drowned in a huge bowl of darkness and wind, over which the stars shook and the curled moon was like a burning feather. Then the closing of the door clicked her imme- diate surroundings about her again. She was caught by a sudden rush of pity for Gwennie, motherless, like Ally sometimes too; had put her arm round the girl, felt the wool jumper's soft- ness, and the softness of the uncorseted figure; humming had led her into the dining room. ... NOON 61 IX . She jumped up, controlled by a force stronger than sadness since it was habitual whereas reverie was a rare indulgence. Commonsense it was that impelled her to her feet. Dreaming, regretting, wishing, to unbuild things which are established and left behind on not-to-be-recovered paths: all these were not only useless, but evil since they bit into her spirit and left scars there. She was not herself to-day; she needed a good shaking. " Now I'm going to have the oven on," she said briskly to father, " and make some little cakes, biscuits and a mince-pie. Will you put the things out while I wash these? " "Yes." Father's eye kindled. He liked Celia's biscuits. With accelerated movements he went to a cupboard, and one by one brought from it and placed on the table, oatmeal, self-raising flour, salt, sugar and rolling-pin. " Er mince meat, currants, lard and tins," he said aloud and went to the pantry. Celia returning with the cup and saucer glanced at the table. 62 TEN HOURS " Good boy! Now if you get a fork you may prick them." " One man in his time plays many parts," father observed, a smile crinkling his bags of cheeks. " You ought to do a poem on your domestic duties," Celia said, swinging from cupboard to table. " That's a very good idea." Father wrote poetry, a gift which had been encouraged by Celia because it extended the list of those activities which kept him from reverie, and the dark specters of desire and grievance and cunning latent in him, and responsive to solitude or thought. He now seated himself on a high stool by the table, and dangling the fork, brooded over stanza and meter, his eyes fixed on the white sky and the stiff restless boughs spreading like the spokes of a fan across it. Celia did not disturb him. She was accustomed to long periods of silence from father, Gwennie, and Robert. The first and last of these persons were both of taciturn and reflective dispositions. Gwennie did not talk simply because her mind was almost barren of ideas suitable for communication NOON 63 to such mature companions. With the girls at the office she could chatter volubly enough, but at home she was smiling and monosyllabic. Usually Celia herself talked without pause. Everything interested her. Her intelligence drove sharply into motives, actions, interactions, social problems, politics, hygiene. She formed opinions, not quickly, but by careful reasoning and deduc- tion. At times prejudice made her stupid, dulling her perceptions chiefly where those delicate social lines were drawn, where she felt herself and her status to be personally involved. Otherwise she was honest and well-balanced; she made allow- ances for temperament; admitted the fallibility of human insight; and was, without sentimentalizing, prone to merciful judgment. On two points only she was impervious to reason, justice, and good sense: those points were social class, and femi- nine beauty. She could therefore talk intelligently on a wide range of subjects. This morning, however, she was out of sorts, silly, grumpy, entirely repre- hensible, but none the less to be humored within reasonable limits. She must govern her thoughts, 64 TEN HOURS but her tongue at least should not be forced i.ito service. If father found her dull she could not help it. Besides, he was thinking out a poem. At once, with the rising of that last word into her mind, her heart felt chilled. She could not for the moment understand why. As she greased a cake tin, she pondered on the nature of this new darkness, the atmosphere of some unpleasantness which at an earlier hour had projected itself upon her consciousness, been hustled into the back- ground and so lost sight of, and which was now vibrating again through a chance touch. Poem: it had responded to that word. Remembrance flowed over her like a turgid tide. Of course; Robert's poems had come back this morning after he had gone up to town. The long envelope addressed and stamped by himself was now staring grimly from the morning-room table. She knew the poems were returned by its thickness. Sympathy was followed by a kind of mental grimace. Poor Celia too, since she would have to bear with added gloom and silence! Robert, NOON 65 when these MSS. came back, was not the most pleasant of companions. His depression grew to sulkiness, and Celia did so like happy people. Why could not Robert admit that he had no literary gift and cease wasting time and stamps, and wearing out his own spirit! Now he would be somber for days. One thing, he was going cycling this afternoon. " Will you pick the stalks off the currants, Father? It'll save my time." " You've put me out. I thought you knew I was making verses. I had the first two lines and now you've put me out. I wish you'd be more understanding, Celia." " Sorry." He turned his funereal face to her, gazed at her with eyes over which anger seemed to have drawn a film, and then dropped his thick lids and looked what she termed " mouthey." She stared at the cake tin, her lips drooping, and her face a white spot in the silvered room. The little round tins stared at her like black malevolent eyes; the lard was white and nauseat- ing, the gas fumes in the scullery puffed towards 66 TEN HOURS her, and the air grew suddenly thick and stifling. What was the good of standing over this table with these messy things; of hanging over the hot oven? Robert never praised the biscuits. She hardly ever burnt any, and they were beautifully light, but Robert never said so; he just munched stolidly. . . . Her limbs, her heart, were soaked and heavy with weariness as clothes are weighted with water. X At half-past one she went up to the morning- room to see to the fire. The first thing she noticed was Robert's MSS. She slid the envelope under a book on a side table. 'At least dinner should not be made unpleasant by it ! After the mince-pie he might be fortified for a blow ! When she had put on some coals she looked about her with hard eyes as though at a bristling array of enemies. The room was full of tilings which she would have liked to break, obliterate. His typewriter humping its shiny black case in a corner near the window, ugly clumsy thing I- the high pile of literary papers, the books staring NOON 67 at her from the walls, she viewed them all with hostility. In the shadowless light the books were squares of darkness as they filled the small book cases with their dim browns and dark blues. Their gold titles glinted; they were slender and alert; bulky and squat; massive and full of dignity. They detached themselves from the other things in the room. At once combative and aloof, they stood shoulder to shoulder in their own peculiar atmosphere, ignoring the homely things which occupied her, but ready to be keen weapons in the hands of a devotee. Set a little higher than her head they had an aspect of looking over her into some suitable cultured world which her intelligence could not attain. Celia cocked her head impertinently at them. The tooth was still at last; she had burnt neither the cakes nor the biscuits, and the mince-pie looked lovely! Father, soothed by their fragrant smell, their golden lightness, as she brought them from the oven, and complacent over the completed first verse which he had memorized, had grown posi- tively jocular; faint lights were probing the neutral tones of the house, and through open doors and 68 TEN HOURS windows the wind blew, a clean cool stream which agitated and freshened the inside air. Her spirits were mounting; her natural jauntiness returning. She hummed. . .. XI She said aloud, putting down the shovel, " There you are ! Everything ready to a tick ! Criticize as much as you like, my good people ! I defy you to say I'm not punctual and any one who doesn't like that pastry ! " She pouted her lips and nodded her head. "Oh dear! Don't be so emphatic, my child! You'll shake your chignon down ! And now to sit down for a few minutes if it's not too lazy to stop working! " Ironically she addressed that grim figure of duty which clanked about after the housewife, daring her for one moment to remove her manacles and become free and careless. Girls in offices shirked; they did as little work as possible ; chattered, lived only for their money, had their fixed hours, and when these were passed with a minimum of mental and physical output, they came home and enjoyed NOON 69 themselves; they went to dances and theaters. The housewife was always on. She mustn't stop. There was a pile of mending to be done in the evening, or shirts to make, or something. Dances indeed ! Celia sat down with a bump on a chair by the window. She shook her head over this outburst. All office girls weren't shirkers. " You shouldn't have married if you didn't like keeping house." Thus attacked, her mind sought defensively for extenuating circumstances, but desisted almost at once through sheer distaste for further introspec- tion. She'd been thinking about herself all* the morning. " Shocking bad habit. I shall have to take you in hand. You'll get a nasty, self-centered, moody little wretch. . . . Let's see what's happening in this giddy place. Hum: one torn cat, looks as if he's been out all night; a family of sparrows; the kiddies next door dancing on Papa's crocus, won't there be a shindy! " She stared through the window at the gardens. Their corners were brown and damp, and padded in soft moist masses with the fallen leaves 7 o TEN HOURS of successive seasons, and with twigs and thin boughs snapped off by winds; but the end walls and those facing south blazed golden, and em- phatic shadows cut the ground cleanly like blades or shutters. Spare bushes rocked along the walls ; on the soil were sprawling spaces of half-withered green, violas and saxifrage, and other low plants, whose sprouting new growth was not visible from this distance. The daffodils too, an inch high, were alike undistinguishable. Ivy covered the walls, shaking its brown sprays violently, and for some distance bare trees waved, the tiniest twigs distinct as a lace-like edging to the boughs. Sharply detached from the horizons, everything was angular and harsh. Even the trees seemed like metal rods, and the few stems and shoots were like wire, whipping the air which lapped above the stony soil. Celia looked across the plunging laurels and privets into the garden on the left. The cat was there, the sparrows, and the children. She watched the latter with interested but cool eyes. Her maternal instincts were not very strongly developed. She did not particularly want to have NOON 71 children. The moon-faces and comeiy legs of the boy and girl next door dragged at no cords of her heart. They were " jolly little things, that was all." In the garden beyond theirs a woman was at the dustbin. Presently she left this and walked down the garden to the rabbit hutches at its end. Celia could just perceive bounding brown bodies behind the wire doors. Another cat stalked along the path, a rough ugly creature with a broad face and misanthropical eyes. The sparrows were chattering shrilly, whirring up to walls where they stood round-bodied and stiff against the shimmer of light, descending again to the lawns, and hop- ping and pecking amid the grass. A train whistle split the air; a train rattled by. "Hum!" Celia ejaculated again, "and that's that. A fearfully exciting scene ! " The rounded contours of the downs, the soft- ness of the plowed fields, the depths of pine- woods perfumed by the yielding beds of cones and needles, the gentle fall of meadows to the hamlets, and the sweet lush grasses, tangled and drenched : these hovered beyond the aggressive suburb and 72 TEN HOURS she sighed. Barnham was so rich and large, Wykeham so meager. Look at these grass plots, tufted, and with pulpy trodden spaces; look at the next door garden; it was shamefully kept, paper on the beds, the white brittle stalks of uprooted flowers scattered about the grass, the rambler roses casting long trails over the paths, withered chrysanthemums and snap-dragons raggedly sway- ing, all despite the sunlight, melancholy and mean. She shivered. Recurrently during these last few weeks Barnham had come before her mental vision, oppressing her with longing for its easy flight of hill and its smokeless air, intensifying into positive dislike what had hitherto been merely indifference to the suburb. In her dreams it was always Barnham which surrounded her, never Wykeham. With an effort she roused herself. She ought to live in the slums for a little while. . . . In a month or two Robert would have his holi- days and then they would go away. Her eyes sparkled. She sniffed; the salt sea air, the wet sea fogs, seemed to steal to her across the town and hang on the warm air of the room with their NOON 73 haunting rumors of surf, and their recalled loveli- ness of dwindling foam. Beautiful. She sat, staring dreamily at the woman in the next garden but one. Those ghostly cliffs, and yellow sands, and windy caves faded suddenly; the woman was hanging out some handkerchiefs and Celia's keen eyes detected holes. Fancy hang- ing such shabby old things in the garden ! " I wouldn't show them off at any rate. She henpecks that poor man. I believe she secures all the cash and just allows him so much for tobacco. If I were a man I wouldn't put up with it, but he looks a mean-spirited little worm ! Sorry, I didn't mean to be so harsh." She shrugged her shoulders and stood up. " I'd better go and lay dinner now; five minutes, and Robert will be here. Thank goodness the tooth's stopped." She tripped to the door, casting a glance over her shoulder at the mirror and the reflection in it of her head, fluffy on a stem-like neck. CHAPTER IV ROBERT ROBERT came home just before two. He put his hat and coat on the hall-stand, glanced at the dining-room door behind which he could hear Celia moving, and then went up to the morning- room. It was more pleasant to sit till dinner-time over a coal fire than over a gas one. He found the morning-room empty. Appre- hensively his glance wandered round; then, his eyes mild with relief, he walked to the fire and stood there whistling softly, and with the aspect of one who has slipped off a burden. He thought of the MSS. It was three weeks since he sent them up. Surely they would have been returned by now if. ... He'd be satisfied if only one was taken. It would show Celia that he had it in him. She didn't believe that, he knew she didn't. . . . The one on " The Train " was jolly good. 74 ROBERT 75 He experienced a little thrill of hopeful expecta- tion. Again he glanced round the room, ap- proving the blue wall paper, the brown wood, the blue casement curtains, the fat arm chairs, and the lines of books. Hopefulness colored everything he surveyed. The sun was shining; a three hours cycle ride was before him; from the atmosphere of the hall he deduced that Celia had had the oven on; and the manuscript envelope w s not visible. His whistle grew louder. Robert Jennings was nearly thirty. He ap- peared less tall than he was because of the stout- ness of his figure, a stoutness which displeased him. His generous waist line and the fatness of his shoulders were, he considered, more suitable for a man of forty. Almost as unsatisfactory to him were his long face, his sober eyes, his rather snub nose, and his immature mouth. He looked like a pig, or a podgy baby. How Celia had ever come to have him, he could not imagine. Girls liked a good-looking fellow, and he was ugly. Perhaps it was this humility which had appealed to Celia, this and other physical attractions which he was ignorant he possessed. His eyes, for 76 TEN HOURS instance, were good, and so, too, was the shape of his head. He carried his solid body with a de- liberation which was not without dignity, and the repose of his movements was pleasant. Even his solemnity had its value, Celia having a glance as sharp as a rapier for the detection of " cheekiness," and a crushing brusqueness of man- ner towards " puppies." She had found Robert modest, unassuming, and reverential. If his plainness deterred her from placing him on that secret pedestal as the dreamt-of Prince Charming, she would not admit the fact. She refused to measure Robert by his minimum of good looks. "He can't help it, poor man! Handsome is ! He's really very nice! As if I'd marry a man because I liked the shape of his nose ! Why, my own's like a button ! " Nevertheless, his unromantic appearance had frustrated the growth of that capacity for ideal- istic and unreasoning worship, for that manifesta- tion of homage and awe, which lay dormant in her. With Celia, passion would be preluded, if not by fear, at least by a tremendous respect. The knowledge that one whom she considered high ROBERT 77 above her in status and beauty had stooped to love her would alone be sufficient to throw her off her balance. Robert inspired no such emotional ex- perience; no illusive glamor covered him; no fascinating speculations as to his character were possible. He was merely a good young man who showed to better advantage in common-place sur- roundings than on a pedestal. So Celia classified him. II He now stood listening to the sounds in the house, and to the sound of wind and birds in the garden, his equanimity pronounced; his figure up- right and immobile. A slow shuffle of feet became audible on the staircase, and he looked at the door. It opened and father came in. " Ah good morning, Robert." " Good morning," Robert nodded and smiled. Father smiled back and advancing to the hearth- rug took up a position there with a somewhat oratorical air. " And how are things? " he inquired, fixing his 78 TEN HOURS son-in-law with a protuberant and slightly water- ing eye. " They're all right," Robert replied, knowing the general term to refer particularly to office matters. "Quite all right, thanks. And you? All right?" " Yes. I am not in what I believe is called the * rosy ' but I mustn't grumble. I'm getting old." Father laughed, a thin cackle which broke forth high up in his head and which was entirely without muscular expression. Robert laughed too. Encouraged by this ap- preciation father put his hands behind him, palms turned firewards, rocked up and down on his heels, and continued in a still more monotonous drawl. " I have been combining the useful with the artistic; that is to say, pricking biscuits and writing some verses. Quite a small thing on my domestic duties. Celia suggested it." He ceased with a jerk. He had been about to mention the return of Robert's MSS. but remem- bered Celia's warning given just before he came upstairs. The narrowness of his escape dis- ordered him. He stared into space. ROBERT 79 "Oh, have you?" said Robert. "Rather a good idea. Can I see them, or hear them?" Father laughed again, self-consciously. He glanced sideways at Robert with an almost spright- ly expression. " I found the muse flowed freely," he stated and slid a hand in his pocket. " I was reminded of * Oh Duty who art a light to guide, a rod to check the erring and reprove.' It was the word * rod ' which ah which inspired me, if such a poor result can be called the fruit of inspiration." " Dunno what else it is," Robert said, his face perfectly blank and stodgy. He hoped to good- ness father hadn't run to length ! As the poet smoothed out a used envelope Robert stared at him, noticing the rakish tilt of the velour cap and the patches of flour on the velvet coat. His brain seemed to stop working; a pleasant languor stole over him. He was con- scious of the comfortable chair, the warmth of the fire, and the colorless haze of light streaming through the window. He saw the little golden hairs of father's brows standing out over the 8o TEN HOURS puffed lids; very thin and far away he heard father reading. " O Duty, in my days of manhood's prime, Not wholly mean and ne'er effeminate, What are you now in this slow present-time, Why bring you me unto a woman's state ? " The voice stopped. Robert roused himself and said, "That's jolly good; best you've ever done, father. I'll type it for you when it's finished; if the rest is as good as that! " u Ha! ha! You natter me, Robert." His laugh was more than usually cracked; his hands shook; embarrassed pleasure kept his eyes from Robert. " Jolly good," the latter repeated. There was a pause. Father, pretending to be doing nothing, furtively studied the envelope. The bang of the oven door came up the stairs. Presently father looked round. His eyes searched Robert rather vaguely; then his glance became fixed. He waggled a finger in the direction of Robert's chin. " You haven't got the mauve tie on to-day then. Why have you shed your glory? " ROBERT 8 1 " Oh, the chief's son's buried to-day, you know. I told you last night; thought I wouldn't blaze a color like that up there." " Ah, of course not, no." Father's vivacity withered. He looked with painful intentness at nothing, his brows very arched. Robert looked at the fire. There was a long pause. Ill Then Celia came in. " Hallo, Robert," she said. Robert echoed " Hallo." His face was ex- tremely wooden; his brain said to him, " Doesn't she look pretty? " " Everything's ready," Celia continued, " Just waiting for Gwennie. You're not changing before dinner then?" she added. " No, it won't take a minute." She smiled at them both, and then looked at her husband with an odd waiting expression, one con- siderate, reticent now but betraying eagerness to be expansive. Robert missed its shades as he missed a good many things. To him she appeared absolutely 82 TEN HOURS candid, and fragrant: revealed as a blown rose; not with the sealed seductiveness of the bud. Far as he was from thinking her shallow, he neverthe- less considered her transparent. Her briskness, her matter-of-fact, independent manner were so habitual that he imagined them to be the very es- sence of her character, just as he imagined the contradicting wistfulness of her eyes and mouth to be purely accidental. His conviction that she was without romance or sentiment, dreams, or emo- tional complexities of any kind made him shy of revealing his own depths. He was sentimental. He knew it. But he was also self-conscious. He dreaded her good-natured ridicule, he loved her little verbal thrusts, but he was afraid of making them malicious which now they never were. Often he wanted to caress her, to be caressed. He would have liked her to stroke his hair and flirt with him, but his tongue, his eyes, his hands, were rebels; they refused to obey his impulses; they seemed to be entirely without powers of volition. To say to Celia, when she was looking so business-like, and natural, and easy, "I wish you'd stroke my hair," this was a madness, contemplation of which made ROBERT 83 him shrink. She would stare, laugh, shake her bright head, and exclaim, " Gracious ! You are spoony! Dear little boy, does it want to be petted then ? " She would not understand that the fatuous request was the only outward expression he could manage of his towering love for her. The more he wanted to hold her, the more rigid his body became, and the blanker his face. Celia did not know this. Both were deceived by the other's superficial aspect, an aspect which each elaborated through fear of having if: pierced and the underlying softness exposed to misunder- standing. " I'm sure to let Robert see I'd like him to kiss and fuss me," Celia thought. " If he doesn't want to do it I'm not going to force him ! " " She'd think you a maudlin fool. She wants you to be a good pal. She doesn't like being mauled." Thus Robert. Now he looked at her stolidly. " You'll have a lovely day for your ride," she said. " Back about six, I suppose?" " Yes." " I'll put you up something to eat. Awfully risky I call it, having tea on a gate this time of year. 84 TEN HOURS But you know. If I did it; this tooth ! It'd start dancing at once. It's been going strong all the morning." "Has it?" Concern drove through his phlegmatic face, it thrilled his voice. Celia kindled. Her eyes dwelt softly on him. " Oh, it's my own fault," she said, hastening to disclaim martyrdom. " I ought to have it out. It's stopped now, thank goodness." Words of sympathy and love babbled in Rob- ert's heart and swelled to his lips. And at once the headlong impulse to hide his solicitude gripped him. "Of course you must have it out; it's silly to wait." Carefully he copied her careless manner. She was conscious of a chill. " Yes, it is," she agreed, her eyes widening a little, her voice flat. " Awfully silly, but one always makes a fuss over a little thing." " You don't make a fuss," Robert said dispassionately. " I'm sure she doesn't," father confirmed. She looked from one to the other, a wry smile on her lips. "Well, it hasn't prevented my having ROBERT 85 the oven on, anyway," she said, her voice brisk again. Neither answered her at once. She wondered whether they would take her speech as a simple statement of fact or suspect it to be an allusion to the fortitude expected of her. They accepted it as the former, and father who spoke next, only seemed to be answering it. As his second sentence proved, he was intent on his own achievements, not on Celia's He observed casually, " I've just been reading my literary effort to Robert. He has been kind enough to approve it." " It was jolly good," Robert said monotonously. " I'm longing to hear it," Celia exclaimed. " But wait till after dinner when there's more time. Then you must read it to me." A creaking of the front gate was followed by the ringing of the house bell. " There's Gwennie," said Celia, and ran downstairs. IV She opened the hall-door. On the step stood Gwennie looking narrowly at the road. She turned when the door opened and her black eyes 86 TEN HOURS smiled at Celia. Without speaking she stepped into the hall. " Here you are then ! Robert's in, and every- thing's ready." Celia shut the door. Her voice was studiously easy but her eyes were sharp and at the same time baffled. They scanned Gwennie defensively. Though she was not aware of it, her attitude was more upright and authoritative than it had been all the morning. When Gwennie smiled at her still without speaking she smiled back indulgently as from an altitude of accumulated years and wisdom. Her smile was intended to show that she saw nothing in Gwennie except extreme youth; no unusual prettiness; certainly no personality. When she moved towards the kitchen it was with a composed and assured air. " Take your things off and then call the others," she said. Gwennie said " All right." She walked upstairs putting her foot down firmly, unbuttoning her coat with leisurely fingers, looking straight before her, eyes vague, mouth serene. PART II GWENNIE The idle life I lead Is like a pleasant sleep, Wherein I rest and heed The dreams that by me sweep." ROBERT BRIDGES. CHAPTER V DINNER THE Jennings always had breakfast in the kitchen, lunch and dinner in the dining-room, and tea in the morning-room. On Saturday, dinner was at midday and then tea and supper were the meals had upstairs. This variety was observed on ac- count of the fires and convenience. Celia let the kitchen fire out at one o'clock, except on Saturdays when father bathed. It was easier to light the gas-fire in the front room and carry hot meals there than to take them up to the dining-room. But for the presence of father's bed the dining- room would have been used consistently as a living room. Father slept downstairs partly because it re- duced his traffic on the stairs, thus benefiting his heart and his rheumatism, and partly because all the other rooms were occupied. The front attic alone was empty, but then its position made it unsuitable for father's use. 90 TEN HOURS A high green screen patterned with green dragons was drawn modestly round the bed. The rest of the room was furnished with a light oak dining-room suite, arm-chairs, and two book-cases with glass doors. The bay window commanded a view of the road and the houses opposite. Celia, from the head of the table, could see the privet hedge, and the three laurels scraping each other in their peevish movements; she could see the spikes of the railings, and the hard-edged houses holding off the sky. The scene made no imme- diate impression on her, but often at night she would dream of the outlook from the home win- dows at Barnham: the rutted roadway with its screen of Scotch firs; the orchard trees beyond, and, leaping above them, the eastern sky from whence the dawn stole to her across the still silent and shadowy fields. She never dreamed of the railings, the laurels, the houses. Yet, in the day- time, it was only occasionally that she thought of Barnham. Now, as she served dinner, her mind was en- tirely occupied with the tenderness of the meat, the flouriness of the potatoes, and the freshness of the DINNER 91 brussels-sprouts. She told Robert all about Lavender Road, including father and Gwennie in the conversation with quick turns of the head. Robert nodded by way of response, and once or twice lifted his eyes from his plate to look unwinkingly at her. Father attended solely to his dinner, transforming it by his almost clerical sol- emnity into a kind of ritual; one, too, of a pleasant nature judging by the unctuousness of his mastica- tion. Frequently his eyes roved to the bottle of ale standing near Celia. She had grudgingly poured him out one glass and there was one left. This he would have for supper. His gaze now was inexpressive but lingering. Gwennie looked chiefly at her food and at the space of screen level with her eyes. Once or twice, however, she sent a deliberate inscrutable glance at Celia or Robert. She was nearly seventeen, tall, with a long full throat, and with round arms and breasts defined by a skimpy, buff-colored jumper. The thick black hair ending a little below her ears, and the fringe covering her brows, accentuated the breadth and shortness of her face. Her eyes were set well- 92 TEN HOURS apart. They were always half-closed and seemed on superficial inspection to be vacant and dull, but a second glance sometimes surprised a glint, an intelligence, which was so swiftly subdued that their momentary existence seemed a matter for doubt, and was often explained as an illusion of the spectator's brain. Her short broad nose was much nearer her eyes than her mouth. In the long upper lip was a perpendicular groove; the lips were scarlet, and their curves sharp cut; the chin was very broad. When she smiled two deep dim- ples came in her cheeks, and she showed small even teeth. She sat comfortably, drawing support from the chair back, the table, and the rungs of the chair, yet with a certain sensuous grace in the boneless subsidence of her body. Her laziness was so great that she would not even move her head. When she wanted to see anything she turned her eyes only. To Celia, all vitality and swiftness, this immo- bility was supremely aggravating. As she talked, her eyes wandered to Gwennie, and confronted with that lusterless fixity of gaze, that curving body surrendered to complete repose, she was DINNER 93 occupied once more with the insoluble problem: was Gwennie really inert, unthinking, childish, or did her mind, active all this time, receive clear impressions, her ears detect every shade of tone, her eyes miss no movement? What was Gwennie ? Presently, Robert, too, looked at the young girl. He was without suspicion. To him her out- ward simplicity was a true manifestation of char- acter. He was incapable of seeing this silence, this sleepiness, as a possible mask. He thought Gwennie looked " out of it." She always did. Of course the things he and Celia discussed could not interest a child. She must find Uncle and Aunt thunderingly prosy. And father in this flood of light, all the puffiness, rheuminess, and vacillation of father's face were inexorably appar- ent. She must think father antediluvian! A stir of sympathy awoke in him. "What have you been doing this morning, Gwen? " he asked. Celia glanced at him and then at Gwennie. Unconsciously her brows arched. As she waited for Gwennie's answer she was again aware of that 94 TEN HOURS baffled sense of being on strange ground, distrust- ful of its apparent openness, and yet ashamed of her distrust. " Oh, nothing much." Gwennie spoke through scarcely parted lips in a voice that had little more volume than a breath. Too much energy was re- quired for a throaty voice ! " We're not very busy." "So I suppose you sit and drink tea?" Rob- ert suggested. Gwennie giggled. "I only have one cup 'bout 'leven." She slurred her words into indistinctness. Her eyes, drowsily smiling, rested on Robert's which were also smiling. Celia turned to father. " More meat, father?" " Just a trifle, please." As she served him she listened to Robert. "How's that red-haired girl getting on?" he was saying. " The one you don't get on with. What was it she called you ? " " Sh' didn't call me anything; said there was too much fav'ritism. She meant me. I haven't seen her lately." DINNER 95 " Cessation of hostilities, I suppose," Robert murmured. " You couldn't have a real good ' hate,' Gwen; you're too lazy." Gwennie giggled again. She sent him a side- long glance and then bent her eyes on her plate. Sharp little reflections stung Celia. " He just nods when I talk, but he can chaff her. I can't think how he can find her amusing. I suppose he thinks her pretty. That covers a multitude of sins. And if she smiles like that at him of course he thinks she thinks him clever. Simpleton ! " A tide of self-reproach drowned these thoughts. " You are a mean beast, always snapping at some- thing. He wants to make Gwen happy, and of course she's what she seems. It's so silly to think she's posing. She's just a child and she doesn't know there's anything well, cheeky in her way of smiling. I don't know why you should think she's subtle. Ally wasn't." This flurry of self-judgment lasted a second; then it crystallized into speech. " Gwen's not lazy; she's only resting. You have to look alive at the office, don't you, Gwen? Of course you want to be quiet here." 96 TEN HOURS She smiled at Gwennie and then at Robert. " Anybody would seem quiet next to a chatterbox like me," she added. Robert regarded her gravely. " Oh you you're inconsequent; mere cackle." Celia grimaced at him. She stood up. " No mince-pie for that! None of your impertinence! . . . Father marked all round the edge. He did it beautifully, bless him ! " "A great task in which to excel," father commented. She swung out of the room. It made it so much nicer when they all talked instead of sitting there, glumly munching ! When she entered the kitchen she was only half aware of its hot stale smell. As she took from the oven the mince-pie and the pudding she approved their color, and cast a glance at the plate of bis- cuits. Those round ones were for Mr. Hyde's tea. The less perfect shapes did for the family. Mr. Hyde would be at home soon after three; he lunched in town. A slight heat pricked her skin and for a moment she heart beat unevenly. When she went from DINNER 97 the brilliant kitchen into the dim chill passage, she saw no outlines, only a well of brown shadow with a bar of silver the glass of the hall-door at its end. Her mind was like that: an empty well with light hovering distantly above it; a light unnam- able, vague, and not to be explained. She entered the dining-room. II Sharp and shadowless, the room lay before her. She saw Gwennie lolling back in her chair, her hands clasped on the cloth, her almost closed eyes smiling at Robert, her mouth closed, but curled and broadened in a smile. Robert was looking at her, not actually reflecting her expression, but friendly and interested. Father was drink- ing. Thoughts stormed Celia's mind, and emotions her heart. There was intimacy and understanding in the steady regard of Robert and Gwennie. They might have just shared a joke or a confi- dence, or, worse still, they might neither have spoken since Celia left the room, but simply estab- lished and found sufficient a silent communication. 98 TEN HOURS They seemed oblivious to Father, engrossed in their crossing glances. As jealousy thrust this point into her, common sense no less rapidly planted a defensive one. Gwennie smiled like that because Robert's stare embarrassed her; she felt self-conscious. Rob- ert had this habit of looking absently at peo- pie But there was no preoccupation in his gaze; Gwennie did not look self-conscious, but madden- ingly, languorously at ease, and content. . . . Celia set the things on the table. " There 1 I'm expecting this to be all right. I used heaps of lard." " Looks all right," Robert said. " When are we going to have a boiled pudding roly-poly, or apple, or something like that? " Celia's brow puckered. " Would you rather have that than this? " she asked. " Oh, no. I only meant we haven't had one for a long time, and we've had a lot of these." He nodded at the tapioca. Celia's eyes, large and without expression, moved in the same direction. " I suppose we DINNER 99 have. I didn't know you were tired of them. They're more digestible than suet puddings; not so heavy for father. Still I always like you to say what you want." Robert did not answer. He received his por- tion with perfect contentment, having made his remark with no sense of ill-usage. It did not for one moment occur to him that, Celia having been over the oven for an hour, that remark was tact- less and even ungracious. Gwennie, however, possessing the average amount of feminine perception, saw his maladroit- ness and its effect on Celia, unostentatious as this last was. Celia might hide her vexation and her sense of the ineptitude and density of her family, but Gwennie realized her emotions, not so much through intuition, as through knowledge of what her own feelings would be in the same circum- stances. When she thought at all she was accus- tomed to generalize. She attributed to Celia the irritation she would have felt herself, but she was not moved to sympathy. On the contrary, she found humor in Robert's innocent sting. She laughed. ioo TEN HOURS All three turned to her. Irrepressible giggles seized her. She humped -her shoulders and shook herself slightly; her face became scarlet with her efforts to regain sobriety. Robert and Father looked owlishly uncompre- hending. Celia, piercing unerringly to the cause of this mirth, flushed and then grew pale. Her mouth tightened. Now her eyes were hard as crystals. "Tell us the joke, Gwennie," she said. "I told you she wasn't lazy, Robert. She's far more intelligent than any of us. We haven't seen any- thing to laugh at yet, but she has. You might take pity on our, our obtuseness, Gwen, and tell us where the humor is." Her chin was up, her lip curled. Her eyes struck Gwennie's like blades. Underneath her soft skin her bones seemed rigid as steel. Gwennie stopped laughing but she did not look abashed. Naively she pressed her hand on her hot cheek. Celia did not repeat her challenge. She turned disdainfully to father. " Is there plenty of mince- meat in your piece, father? That's right. . . . DINNER 101 I'm longing to see that verse. I suppose you'll do the rest this afternoon? " She heard but did not attend to father's reply. Her eyes went to Robert. He looked uncom- fortable. As she studied him his glance roved apprehensively to Gwennie as if he feared to find her tearful with mortification. Of course he took Gwennie's part! He didn't see how rude Gwennie was; he didn't care if Celia was laughed at; it was Gwennie's feelings that mattered. She ate fiercely, the pastry like ash in her mouth, the pudding tasteless. In her annoyance she for- got to bite only on the side where the tooth was not, and at once, sunken in the hot pudding, it lunged into fiery, racking protest. Ill Robert had detected the edge in her voice, had seen the animosity of her eyes, but he could think of no adequate reason for such anger. He was innocent of any subtle alliance with Gwennie. The admiration and enjoyment Celia read into his glance were absent from his heart. To Gwen- 102 TEN HOURS nie he was a man and therefore one on whom to bestow smiles and dimples, but to Robert Gwennie was not a woman. He was blind to the precocity of her regard. She was a jolly kid that was all. He did not even think her very pretty since he thought Celia lovely and aunt and niece were most dissimilar. Celia fretted by pain, unaccustomed weariness and inexplicable unrest, distorted his kindly friendliness into a sexual interest which Robert was quite incapable of feeling for any woman but his wife. That Gwennie should be viewed as its object was an inconceivable thing which would fairly have stunned him had he recognized its existence in Celia's mind. Now, a few minutes having passed since Celia spoke, his thoughts slid away from the material objects about him and played among fascinating possibilities. Was there a chance that any or all of the poems had been accepted? If it were so His heart jumped a little; the pudding and pastry became suddenly delicious; the room was a shell, softly golden, and visited by the fluting ut- terance of the birds and the drumming traffic of DINNER 103 the wind. Tiny scenes swung into his mind, were reviewed, and faded, and were succeeded by others still more brilliant. The morning-room to- night and the seven o'clock post that was the first. He saw the long envelope, the slip inside and its outstanding sentences: " The poem en- titled ' The Train ' . . . two guineas . . . pub- lished in due course." This vanished, and another moved into vision: the check, Celia's delight, and deference ; the pur- chase of those two large volumes of the Morte D' Arthur which stood in the dun shadow of the bookshop at Wykeham Rise ; they were five shill- ings; Celia should have the rest for a hat. Sup- posing he had a poem taken every week; that would be two guineas extra and as his name became known he would be paid more. ... Of course he would bring them all out in book form. The vague outlines of a publisher's office, his own voice discussing terms of publication: his imagination could not soar beyond the splendor of this last scene. Its flame filled him; a dilating heart drove him into speech. 104 TEN HOURS Casually he turned to Celia. " Talking of poetry my flights haven't come back then? It's three weeks now." The middle sentence was an assertion, not a question. Father gave him a swift dismayed look and then averted his eyes. Celia looked at him, too. For an instant there was silence, and in it there became tartly audible, train whistles, voices of hawkers, and the hissing of trees, the pushing vehemence of the wind. He saw Celia sheeted in light, little glints in her hair, her eyes filmily staring at him, her cheeks flat on either side of a pinched nose, a glazed red blotch on her face. He came into sharp impact with the knowledge that she did not look well. His mouth opened. Concerned inquiry and the hazard that the tooth was aching were just about to be voiced when, tortured by pain, concentrated on that torture to the utter annihilation of all thought for other people's feelings, savagely desirous indeed to deal a blow and involve everybody in a trouble which she would view callously, Celia spoke. " They came back this morning; all of them. I DINNER 105 wasn't going to let you see them before dinner. I thought we'd have that in peace at any rate." Collision with this stunning fact drove from Robert's mind all thought of Celia's pallor. His darkness was accentuated by the brightness of those dreams, unjustifiably elaborated into prob- abilities. Frantically his brain strove to persuade him that neither he nor Celia had spoken; that the MSS. were still unreturned, the dreams, still fore- tastes of an actual future ; but its deception ceased almost at once ; it settled into blankness. For a moment he sat silent while he assimilated all the bitterness of disappointment. Then he turned blackly to his wife. " I like to be told at once. It's all rot about its spoiling a meal." " Oh." Celia's exclamation dismissed this pro- test as something not worthy of attention, dis- missed the whole affair, indeed, as an exasperating ineptitude. " We don't want to be worried during meals. What's the good? You might have known they would come back. They always do." The poison of this last statement sank into Rob- ert's heart and turbidly filled it. A crowd of ac- io6 TEN HOURS cusations, injuries, and judgments flocked into his mind. " They always do." The curt sentence, more deadly still for its truth, summed up Celia's view of his literary output, her lack of faith, her impatience. She never asked to read his poems; she talked when he was writing them, refusing by her vivacity to classify them among serious labors; she protested when he bought books; she was more than unsympathetic: she was actively hostile. He turned his face to her, his mouth stubborn, his eyes like points in their anger, his aspect one of subdued but -steadily smoldering temper. " I know that. You needn't point it out. But in future give them to me at once." " Certainly." She forced her mouth into a shapeless smile. "More pudding, Gwennie ?' T Robert's staring eyes moved towards the girl. Was this a cruel adroit reminder that Gwennie witnessed his discomfiture and his sulks? In any case, whether intentional or not, it did so remind him. He wished he had shown more dignity, and concealed his chagrin. " They always do." Gwennie knew that. She could tell it to the girls DINNER 107 at hei office. Deducting from Celia's offhand manner that he as a poet was no good, that this period of failure was not the mere temporary one of apprenticeship but a merited condition which would last as long as he persisted in sending his poems to papers, she too would grow contemptu- ous, she would think him conceited, unamenable to the repeated assurances that he was simply wasting his time ; blind, uncritical, fatuous. . . . His cheeks were hot. The intolerable distinct- ness of the bodies of his companions; the intoler- able silence charged with unspoken, but raging thoughts, with feelings carefully hidden but no less powerful; the dulling fragments of his dreams strewn about him; the knowledge that if Celia had shown him the manuscript at once he would have been spared the keener pain won through the prolonging of ignorance and its oc- cupation of castle-building; the sickening suspicion that the poems really were worthless; that he never would do anything; all weighed upon him like real substances, bruising and crushing him. "Where are they?" he said. " Upstairs, under a book on the side-table." io8 TEN HOURS " Hiding them like that, childish." His muttter drew a hard glance from Celia. The tooth was settling down into a dull throbbing but though it was the factor which had spurred on all her rebellions and angers, she now scarcely heeded it. Like Robert she was engaged with judgments, injuries, and complaints. Why couldn't he admit that he was a failure in this special line and abandon it? It was the cause of all their dissensions. He recognized her indifference and was made sore by it. He would be a far more agreeable companion if he were not always stuck over a book or the typewriter. She hadn't meant to be so tart, but it was all so silly. She had no patience with people wilfully deceiving them- selves ; it was much better to know the truth and admit it to be the truth, and have everything cleared up and done with. She looked with softening eyes at father. He at any rate, good man, didn't submit his effusions to an editor! She did not mind Robert scribbling, but it was the conceit of imagining the verses worthy of publication that was so irritating. Father, at least, recognized his unfitness for the DINNER 109 press and contented himself with the applause of his family. Why couldn't Robert? . . . Her glance traveled to Gwennie. With envy she saw the latter's placid survey of the road and the passers-by, the indolent attitude of shoulders and arms, the fresh smoothness of cheek and brow. Worries, responsibilities, jars, pains; none of these attacked Gwennie. Like a cat she blinked in the light, composed herself luxuriously, and with detached calm, watched the afflictions of others. An inaudible sigh parted Celia's lips. To be sixteen, with at once all the advantages of free- dom, and all the protection of the nest; without foresight, without memory; untroubled by regrets, unchastened by experience; to be thus was to be happy. In dignified straightness Celia sat in the strained silence and looked wistfully at the clouds climbing over the crisp roofs, at the smokes streaming out with steel-colored glitters in their gray folds. She was conscious of every line of Robert's figure, of his long heavy face and his brooding eyes. A hand, cold, and nervous, was probing her heart, was squeezing it. ... CHAPTER VI AFTER DINNER AFTER dinner she and Gwennie went into the scul- lery to wash up. Father and Robert withdrew upstairs. Father sat by the fire and filled a pipe. Robert lifted the books on the side-table and removed the envelope. He walked to the window and standing there with his back to father, slowly drew out the poems and stared distastefully at the folded sheets through which typewriting was faintly visible. As he shifted them the enclosed " editor's regrets " met his eyes. Angry repugnance shook him. He laid the papers on the hood of the typewriter and then stood staring moodily at the railway. He heard father's chair creaking, he smelt unlit tobacco, heard the contact of plate with plate downstairs, and close at hand, a puffing; now the pronounced smell of tobacco smoke was in the AFTER DINNER in room. He pondered over every noise, he knew the exact movement which inspired it, but all the time his mind wove swift intricate phrases, and placed clear scenes before him, and was full of bewildering energy. Presently the room and its sounds lost signifi- cance. He concentrated himself entirely on those subterranean workings of his mind. What was wrong with the poems? He was pinned to that question ; till he had answered it neither his brain nor his heart could have rest. His eyes followed the lines of roof traveling down the sky, the railway banks spaced with long grass and muddy growth, the gorse beyond, and the poplars, gray and impalpable as vapors, shaken by the wind. Across them all, pushing them back into shadowy unimportance, were the bold lines of his verses; what was wrong with these ? Tobacco smoke stole to him, strong-smelling, catching the light as it mounted in smooth eddying sweeps above his head. The scent was the one external thing of which he was conscious. Father smoked peacefully, having despite the ii2 TEN HOURS noises in the house and in the streets, a sense of profound quietude. His eyelids drooped. Pon- dering over his poem he was bothered by confused irrelevant images of golden pools and runnels of water stealing with the sound of saturation amid grasses. Water suggested by the swishing wind, the dewy bird-songs, obsessed him. He could almost see the stealthy shimmer of its descent; he heard it sinking in the woods; smelt stagnant pools, and steeped roots, endless marshes. He nodded. II At the end of ten minutes, Robert had found the verses dull, flat, commonplace. Of course they would not be taken. . . . His agreement with the editor's verdict relieved him, since it proved that he was not, as he had feared, without critical perceptions. The poems were not the best he could do. Had they been, then indeed their return would have plunged him into unbearable despondency, but once convinced of their faults, there came in natural sequence the hope that he could remedy these faults, turn out better work, and at last win success. His heart lightened. Slow, tenacious and per- AFTER DINNER 113 vasive, the determination to win this success seized on him; he held himself still more uprightly, and stared pugnaciously at a passing train. He would do it. No labor should be shirked. He would read and think and observe and practise; then some day he would do it. Calmly he turned to the clock; it was time to change. He moved from the window and regarded father, his glance almost benevo- lent. Father's head had fallen to one side, the pipe hung on his sagging underlip, his brows were knit uneasily, and the cap was awry. He did not look particularly pleasing, but Robert's expression re- mained mild. When a sound between a wheeze and a rattle broke forth in father's nose, alarm stamped his face. Regained ease of breathing, however, reassured him. Very quietly he left the room and went upstairs to change. Ill Presently he came down again to the hall. The bicycle stood in the second passage and he felt the tires as he passed it on his way to the kitchen. . . . They were hard as bricks. . ... ii 4 TEN HOURS He entered the kitchen. Gwennie was sitting on a chair, sitting squarely, comfortably. Celia was in the scullery. A corner of the table was spread with a cloth, a thermos flask, bread, a plate of buns and a cake-stand filled with Celia's biscuits. On the fire the kettle was boiling. Gwennie looked at him and smiled. He smiled in return and stood by the fire, his eyes on Celia. Again he was struck by the droop of her shoulders, the inward dip of her cheeks, the wanness of her eyes. Uneasily he asked Gwennie: "Is she all right?" Gwennie showed how superficial was her de- tachment from the scene and how thoroughly she lived in it by instantly understanding him. " Think so, she's had toothache, y'know." " Mm. Has she got it now? " " Don't know, she hasn't said. I expect she has." Their voices were low but they reached Celia's ears. The confidential murmur brought her eyes to the speakers. Secretive, companionable; no doubt Robert got on well with Gwennie. As she AFTER DINNER 115 met his eyes she missed their not very apparent concern and read into his attitude and his gaze only a reminder that he was waiting. " Shan't be a minute," she said pertly. Robert said, " No hurry." Celia's glance wandered to Gwennie. She was sitting down, of course. " Have you got every- thing for uncle's tea? " she demanded. "Yes," said Gwennie, "think so." She scanned the table. " Oh, I forgot the teapot." " And the sugar and milk," Robert supple- mented. " Poor uncle ! Scurry now; see how fast you can move." Gwennie laughed as she went to the dresser. " His highness has got over the jar," thought Celia. " He likes to chaff her. It's a good thing something makes him forget his troubles." She entered the kitchen and took up the loaf. " Where's the butter, Gwennie ? " " Haven't I put it on? Sorry." She moved to the pantry. Celia looked impassively at the loaf. A thin call came from the pantry, " Which shall I bring? There's two here." n6 TEN HOURS One was margarine, the other the weekly ration of butter. For a second Celia hesitated. She shot a furtive glance at her husband. His eyes were downcast. It was constraint that kept him silent but she imagined that he was still sulking and a sudden indignation smothered all scruples. Her mouth and her eyes hardened. He could be pleasant to Gwennie. Standing there so impatiently; bidding her to attend to his comfort! At the sight of his heavy face and body, all the morning's clouds seemed to culminate in an over- whelming gloom. She was swept up to brief hysterical fury. She hated the shackles of mar- riage; she hated Gwennie with her laziness, her plumpness, her ready response to Robert's friendli- ness; most of all she hated the kitchen with its smell of dried food and gas and steam. Blindingly she saw what she wanted. Through that acute sus- ceptibility to smell, those desires which had hither- to only influenced her dreams, found sudden com- munication with her conscious self. She wanted to get out into the air, into the light. Away from duties, away from this discordant bustling suburb, she wanted to stand, with downs swelling around AFTER DINNER 117 her, skies rushing down to clear distances, and the bitterness of newly turned furrows, the breath of sprouting leaves and rain pools, and washed roadways, sweeping hugely by. No smoke, no sound of toil. Space, fragrance, great spaces of light dipping over woodlands. . . . " Bring the roll," she said clearly. Gwennie came in and laid the margarine on the table. She looked intelligently at Celia. Those thrilling desires died, fury died. Miser- able and ashamed, Celia cut the bread. Her meanness was known to Gwennie, her petty revenge. " Put some hot water in the thermos," she said, and proudly beat down Gwennie's confidential smile. " I'll do that," said Robert " That's right, spare Gwennie." Like wasps, venomous thoughts seemed to flock through her head to-day. She was utterly odious. . . . Every time the knife went into the margarine she felt that Robert's glance was on her. . . . Any one could see it was marg. Her cheeks grew hot, she could not lift her eyes. \ n8 TEN HOURS IV The sun was moving into the west. Blackly the trees spread out across the light burning redly amid dispersing clouds. The wall facing the win- dow was yellow, splashes and bars of yellow were in other parts of the room, and sharp little flashes came from copper things and pewter. The garden held light as a cup holds water; its straggling growth folded into the soft glow and swayed more gracefully. Along the fence the rambler roses, already leafy, were a haze of greeny-gold. Robert did not notice that it was margarine; he had filled the flask, not to spare Gwennie, but to prevent accidents. He was thinking what a ripping day it was, how pretty Celia looked, how he wished she'd soften, how sorry he was about the tooth. He watched the movements of her soft wrists, the bends of her neck, the pouting beauty of her mouth. What a fool he had been to scowl at her; if only it wasn't so difficult to make the first advances ! He tried to think of something to say, but sub- AFTER DINNER 119 jects evaded him. Silently he watched her spreading jam, packing buns and biscuits. She was aware of his scrutiny, and her hands trembled, she moved jerkily. His regard was an accusation, she thought, of the margarine, the thickness of the bread, even of the shape of the biscqits. So unhabitual had been all the emotions of the day that tearfulness seemed almost an inevitable end to them. Nothing she did could surprise her now. Feelings whirled through her, she wanted to sit down, to be bathed in fresh air, to be held in some one's arms and soothed and kissed, to be considered, and waited on, and sympathized with. She was so terribly tired. . . . She lifted her appealing eyes to Robert just as he addressed Gwennie. " What are you going to do this afternoon, Gwen? " " Don't know, go out I expect, and muck about." His good-natured smile, Gwennie's breathy little voice, stung Celia into firmness. She made the tea. 120 TEN HOURS Robert came to the table, tipping up Gwennie's chair as he passed. Gwennie uttered a reedy little shriek. She jumped up with more agility than usual and struck him lightly. He chased her round the table and into the scullery. She was laughing, humping her shoulders, and glancing back over one, her eyes sparkling. Knowledge of Auntie's displeasure made her impish, and also she was avid for admiration. She threw open the scullery door and ran into the garden and stood with her head thrown back, her strong throat broadened, her teeth, her dimples, her impertinent nose, her narrow eyes, challenging him. She looked handsome and womanly. Her glance sped past Robert to Celia; and its triumph, its defiance, its equalizing directness, sank into Celia's heart. For the moment she could not dissemble. She watched Robert. " Now then, young lady," he was exclaiming. " I'll teach you how to treat uncle with a proper reverence." He put out his hands towards her shoulders meaning to shake her, but her body's fullness and AFTER DINNER 121 height, the slyness of her sidelong glance, were disconcerting, they checked and confused him. He had chased a child and found a coquettish warm palpitating girl. He had never before noticed how tall Gwennie was, how well-developed of body, how competently roguish of eye. He stared. Then unstirred by her prettiness, but irritated by the suspicion that she was fooling him, he turned and walked indoors. " Got my tea ready?" he asked Celia. " Yes. Don't be later than six, the best of the day's over long before then." She walked past him to the cupboard, her eyes indifferently averted. " All right, I won't. Good-by," he spoke with some helplessness. " Good-by." He stood looking soberly at the roll of hair about her long neck, at her shoulders, and at her flat back. He heard Gwennie come in and shut the door, but he did not turn. Gwennie was less to him than a shade. He wanted to kiss Celia. Irresolutely he stepped towards her. Gwennie entered the kitchen, her eyes on him. He was 122 TEN HOURS suddenly conscious that he must look absurd, hold- ing the flask and the packet of food, and gazing amorously at Celia's back. He went sharply into the passage. Confound everything! It was cheek of Gwennie to watch him, a kid like that; more cheek still if she wasn't such a kid after all. Why was Celia pro- longing her coldness so? In the passage it was shadowy, and cold, and dispiriting. V A little later he rode over the bridge, past the common and the shops, to Charwood Lane, dipping down between fences to cricket fields and allotments. The road went by him, lined with wheel marks, sparkling with puddles, stained here and there with motor oil ; trees were tossing wisps of black, lamp-posts came and stared and were gone, the shops ceased and now Charwood Lane leapt under the bicycle. In the face of the wind rolling and murmuring over him, he strove forward, great AFTER DINNER 123 heights of sky shooting above him and meeting in a plain marched over by shining clouds. His blood began to tingle. Wind was in his hair, his eyes, his nostrils; streaming like cool water through his sleeves, standing stiffly before him, and then suddenly yielding and breaking over and beyond him with a great resonant roar. He thought of Browning's line " We rode, it seemed my spirit flew." Like a bird his mind sped from point to point of thought, reconstruct- ing the day's scenes, seeing them not fragmen- tarily as when he had lived in them, but in their entirety, so that Gwennie's part, father's, Celia's, most of all, Celia's, were as plain to him as his own. He had brilliant insights as he pushed against the wind. Those manuscripts, how fed up Celia must have been with them ! And with his depressions, and his elation. Of course, she hadn't faith in him. How could she have when he had never given her the proof. Yes, and in the meantime, more snubs for her to endure ! more neglect. Neglect, eh? Yes, might she not consider herself 124 TEN HOURS neglected while he was poring over paper and furious if any one spoke to him? . . . The cricket fields and the allotments drew near, passed. Rows of mean houses closed upon him, the wind whistled down side streets and pierced him; he saw fluttering rags in gardens, attenuated bushes, broken fences, channels of mud. . . . People made a dark shifting pattern on the sunlight. . . . And the money he spent too ! She never asked for more housekeeping. What an egotistical, thoughtless fool he was ! She was the finest little thing; he adored her, and he was always hurting her. He wouldn't buy any more books, wouldn't let literary work make him morose. . . . He wouldn't stand this kind of frozen politeness with each other any longer. It was rotten having Celia on her dignity. When he got back he'd make her see that he was sorry. . . . He reached Wimbledon Common. Clusters of birches trembled above the flats of green, streaks of water gleamed, Kingsmere, filled with sky, rose into small pyramids, steel-colored and crim- son. Soft browns and grays, broad etchings of AFTER DINNER 125 black, brimmed up to horizons cut cleamy round them. He saw spaces of flooded grass, the blade tips pricking above the silvery sheet, the sound of its sinking amid the roots not audible but suggested to him. Small rustlings and pipings came to him from the tangled edges of ditches, and from the brown depths of the woods, they came as a slender underhum on the booming wind. The tops of the firs tarnished by the sun which moved above them, rocked violently, sudden ripples shook the birch boughs. Higher and higher Iiis spirits rose. He felt himself to be riding through a sea, strong yet kindly, sweet-breathed, deep. Gwennie, too; he had no idea she was growing up so; it wouldn't do to take too much notice of her. Rather rough on Celia, having to look after her, Celia so young herself, and Gwennie ob- viously beginning to feel her feet. No end of a responsibility. She'd be getting fast if they didn't look out. The way she challenged him when he chased her! Displeasure furrowed his brow. He didn't like a girl to be too old for her age. If Gwennie 126 TEN HOURS thought he admired her, she was making a thun- dering big mistake. More vividly still he saw Gwennie's expression. She did think so. Vain little thing! He'd never given her any cause to think so, but she did. She'd be flirting with him next. Alarm and annoyance seized him. He'd have to be careful; he'd have to show that he thought only one person pretty, Celia. Putney Vale Cemetery went by. Beverly Brook slid with a dun shimmer between its banks, grass darkened by wind into the semblance of smoke plunged away to south and west, the gates of Richmond Park sped by. Celia, there was only Celia. And to have Celia wounded, ignorant apparently of the singleness of his devotion. Swift and stabbing, came the suspicion left her imagining that he thought Gwennie pretty. The whole mosaic of dinner's events was now complete and distinct before him. Blinding illu- mination was on all things. Celia was jealous. Jealous of that silly, flighty, cropped headed little doll! . . Celia. , AFTER DINNER 127 Fixedly he stared at the road swimming through the cowslip-colored light. His mouth was set in a smile; the color in his cheeks was not only due to exercise . . . All around him stretched a world, depopulated, sucking moisture into its depths, heaped fragrantly with moldering leaves, hazed with sun, stormed by wind. No human being existed any longer, like shadows they melted, only trees and sod remained, grouped about Celia. He'd break anybody who came between him and Celia. . . . VI He entered Kingston. Without hesitation he went to the first jeweler's, leant the bicycle against the curb and then inspected the window. Outwardly imperturbable he was nevertheless thrilled with a slight excitement. In his contempt for Gwennie and for himself, the flame of his engagement days, never extinguished but a little dimmed, was burning again with a fine ardor. He and Celia were getting too stodgy. That glamor, that romance, must be re-captured. Somehow or other he must overcome the difficulties of self- 128 TEN HOURS expression and show Celia that his love was greater, not less. Impulsively he entered the shop. Celia would look splendid in earrings. CHAPTER VII CELIA AND GWENNIE CELIA and Gwennie finishing tidying up the kitchen. Gwennie would have stood motionless watching Celia working had not orders been given her, but when these came she obeyed them amiably enough. She evaded action whenever possible but she did not resent being forced into movement. She considered Celia to be as justified in giving her duties as she herself was in shirking them. You had to look after your own comfort in this world. By making Gwennie work Celia was looking after hers. Quite right. By being blind to all hints, all sarcasms, everything indeed short of actual commands, Gwennie was equally self-considering. It was all perfectly fair. Celia put the margarine away. As she did so she knew that Gwennie's gaze was on her, not sleepy now, but intelligent. Gwennie could be sharp enough sometimes, usually when one wanted 129 130 TEN HOURS her to be obtuse. Celia's suspicions as to the depths of this preoccupation were growing. She believed Gwennie was very much " all there," noting the immediate scenes and drawing infer- ences, not pondering extraneous subjects. The conviction did not deepen her affection for Gwen- nie. She liked straight people ; open people. II " That's done," she said, putting the broom behind the scullery door. " And now I'm going to tidy. Are you? " " Oh, not for a minute ; think I shall have a read in front of the fire." "All right; don't wake father if he's asleep." Gwennie uttered something which sounded like " Ner," but which was evidently meant for agreement. She went upstairs in front of Celia. The latter surveyed her broad shoulders and hips, her creamy neck with the hair turning in charmingly to it. She sighed a little, envying Gwennie's strength and plumpness. She wouldn't be scraggy when she was thirty 1 CELIA AND GWENNIE 131 Gwennie entered the morning-room, closed the door quietly, and stood for a minute regarding father. He still slumbered; the pipe had slid from his mouth and lay on a ridge of his waistcoat; his head, fallen to his shoulder, had a dislocated ap- pearance; he breathed noisily. Gwennie moved to the fire, knelt down by it, and put coal on. She was obediently quiet but the splutter of the coal as it caught fire, aroused father. His lids rose, his head regained its normal position, he looked at her dully. Gwennie sat back on her heels and smiled at him. " Hur," said father, and picked up the pipe; then surreptitiously passed the back of his hand over his moist mouth. " I've had forty winks." Gwennie's smile broadened but she did not speak. "Robert gone?" " Yes." "Celia?" " She's gone up to dress." " Ah." Father dusted some ash off his waist- coat and gazed vaguely at the pipe. 1 32 TEN HOURS "Want a spill?" Gwennie got up and took one from an ornament on the mantel-piece. She lit it and handed it to him. " Thank you, my dear." He puffed. Gwennie remained standing, her legs planted squarely, her eyes turned window-ward. A moment passed. Father smoked. Gwennie stood, her body slack, only her stirring breasts showing her to be alive. Her gaze rested without expression on a chair. She seemed to be waiting for a rise of energy into her limbs to propel her to it. Then father got up. " Ah, well, I think I shall do a little gardening. I must justify my existence. It is a beautiful afternoon; beautiful." He walked to the door, looking old and tremu- lous and uncertain. When the door had closed on him, Gwennie at once sat down in his armchair. She lay back in it, her hair pushed to her cheeks, her face pink and calm, her eyelids heavy on her pupils. There was nothing ethereal about her. Warmth flushed her; her breath coming regularly through her little round nostrils, slightly damped her nose and her CELIA AND GWENNIE 133 upper lip. She looked like a sunned cat, hot and soft to the touch. At the end of a quarter of an hour Celia joined her. Gwennie, who had not moved, was redder and warmer than ever, more thoroughly incarnate, more apparently without soul. Celia, on the contrary, seemed to be made " of spirit, fire and dew." She had put on a pale blue silk blouse, and brushed her hair, and washed her face. She was pale and serious. Her neck, bared now, gave her by its length and slenderness, a still more flower-like appearance. The little upward tilt in the middle of her mouth, making fullness, the droop of its thin corners, were alluring. She glanced at Gwennie, and then brought to the fire a small table and a work-box. " Where's father?" she asked. " Gone into the garden." Gwennie looked at her with heavy filmy eyes. " Sensible boy. It's simply beautiful out, but I want to finish this." She sat down and took from the work-box a roll of crochet lace. 134 TEN HOURS "What are you going to do?" she continued, scrutinizing her work. " Dunno." " Three treble, three chain, three treble, that's it" She twirled the cotton and began to crochet. " You ought to go out such a lovely afternoon." 11 'Spect I shall later on." Gwennie's lids drooped; only a line of lack-luster eye was visible. The warmth of her huddled position was broaden- ing her features a little. Celia, sitting erect, crocheted rapidly. She was aware of a slight excitement which ran up and down her like a live thing, communicating itself to all her nerves. She had felt it first when she went into her room to dress, and noticed that it was ten to three. Her heart had jumped as if the hour were somehow portentous, and, as if she dreaded the discovery of what made it so, she had scuttled to the dressing-table and pulled out hairpins and shaken her hair down with great briskness. Nevertheless the excitement remained, and it gov- erned her actions, making her put on this blue blouse, which was new; making her decide not to go out but to finish her crochet; making her deter- CELIA AND GWENNIE 135 mined to throw aside all moods and be sensible and cheerful. Now as she glanced from the crochet to Gwen- nie, she was reminded of Alice. Gwennie was frightfully like Ally sometimes. Ally, of course, was much more braced-up. A much better girl too, Celia's mind said tartly, wriggling out of the duty of being nice about Gwennie. Yes, but she was older; you can't remember what she was like when she was Gwen's age; Gwen'll improve; she wants looking after, that's all. You mustn't be too hard. " Four chain, one double-crochet in there, go in, four chain. It's a pretty pattern, isn't it?" " Mmm." "How are you getting on with your jumper?" "Allri'." " Have you made any more mistakes? " " One; doesn't show much though." " Good thing. . . . You ought really to have undone it, you know, when you went wrong; it's worth it. You want it to look decent, and you'll have little lumps all over it from what I can 136 TEN HOURS " Too much fag." " Oh, Gwennie, Gwennie, you are a lazy bones ! " Gwennie laughed briefly. Celia looked across at her kindly enough, and found those misted lines of eye fixed on the blue blouse. For a fraction of a second Gwennie's lids lifted and a glance, sharp, inscrutable, darted at Celia's face; then her lashes swept her cheeks again. She yawned. Celia was conscious of a jolt. Why did Gwen- nie look like that? Straight at the blouse, and then at the wearer? Her wide perturbed eyes stared at the hot face, the closed eyes, the col- lapsed body in the armchair. She must have dreamt that look. But she had not. Uncomfortably she returned to the crochet. She felt as she would have felt had she been standing without protection of any kind in a place raided by forked lightning. She wanted a shield, a covering. Gwennie's glance had stripped her, it had thrust right down into her heart. She knew, what she had so often suspected, that Gwennie watched her, watched every one; was alive to every piece of self-revelation. She was shaken momentarily not only by the CELIA AND GWENNIE 137 knowledge, but by the way it illuminated other disquieting facts. If it was justified it placed Gwennie in a very unlovable light; it showed her to be secretive, distrustful, cold, dissimulating. Dismay filled her as in this manner she estimated Gwennie afresh, yet she kept tenaciously to that subject, in an endeavor to avoid the other fact: she hated to have Gwennie observant because she did not wish to be observed. Why? She had nothing to conceal; nothing that she minded Gwennie discovering. Her hands trembled; waves of heat surged over her and subsided, leaving her shivering. There was something she wished to hide, some- thing which she had hidden even from herself, hidden so successfully that she did not know its nature, its lineaments were veiled to her. Only the conviction that something existed in her which was unfamiliar and of recent growth was palpable. If Gwennie discovered it. ... Rubbish. All this flurry because Gwennie had looked at her new blouse! But that was it. Somehow the blouse was connected with that hid- den possession. It was the outward manifesta- tion of it. 138 TEN HOURS And Gwennie knew this. . . . Ill A few minutes passed. At the end of them, Gwennie very slowly rose from the chair. " S'pose I must go and tidy," she said, and be- stowed her invariable smile on Celia. " I should, and then go for a walk. You're wasting all the best part of the day." " Feel dreadfully messy," Gwennie continued, smoothing her disordered hair. Celia's scrutiny was steady. Rather clumsily she tried to mask her expression, but her distrust and pain lay on her expressive mouth and in the bend of her fair brows. She showed that with quivering apprehension she was examining Gwen- nie afresh and at the same time trying to make herself unreadable. She betrayed also her in- ability to learn anything from Gwennie's rosy, good-tempered little face. With a slight jerk of her head, she directed hef gaze to the crochet. Gwennie went out. CHAPTER VIII GWENNIE ALONE THE staircase struck cold after the warmth of the fire and the chair, and Gwennie's movements quickened. She almost ran up the first flight and into her room. She closed the door and very quickly turned the key. Then she looked about her, her eyes more open, more frank, more childish. She went first to the dressing-table and sitting down before it, scrutinized herself with a pro- found and unwavering interest. She took up the comb and drew it through her hair, opened a drawer, produced a length of narrow velvet ribbon and tied it round her head as a fillet; then she picked up the hand-mirror and surveyed the effect from all angles. " Doesn't suit me," she said aloud, and removed the ribbon. For a few moments she remained 139 1 40 TEN HOURS without movement, still regarding her reflection. When her gaze shifted it fell on the photo of the youth which lay near the hair-brush. She smiled, and leaning forward, stared at the photo without touching it. There was, now, nothing enigmatical about her expression. She was girlishly simpering and confused. The salient features of a conversation, this morning with her friend at the office moved into her mind: their shoulders and heads touching, her own rapid, whispered confidences, Doris's ejacula- tions and looks of envy. " He wrote me four whole pages, quite close pages, and he asked me to go out with him to-night, but I wouldn't promise; said I didn't know." Thus Gwennie. Her smile broadened now, and her eyes glinted with sudden triumph. She raised her head and again looked in the mirror. Her cheeks were turning and she pressed her palms to them. She was pretty, awfully pretty, much prettier than Doris. ... It was nice to be pretty, it must be dreadful to be plain. " Shouldn't want people to see me if I was ugly, if I had a mouth like Ida Thome's. It was an accident, poor girl; must be GWENNIE ALONE 141 dreadful to have your face spoiled." . . . Then there was Nora Simpson, her nose " frightfully broad, takes up half her face and she makes it worse powdering it; don't like powder; makes you look mauve." She giggled. Rousing herself at last from these congratula- tory meditations, she put the pink beads round her neck. They looked ripping. She closed the drawer, walked to the wash-stand and washed her hands. II The sun was low now, poised, a great flaming bubble above the low roofs, bronzing them, send- ing a haze of gold up to the arch of the sky. The clouds were smaller, and longer, and darker than those of the morning. At the dip of the west they formed into headlands and smooth close banks, orange-edged but with gray hearts. The garden, the roads, and the common were all dark bronze. Only the eastern-facing house-fronts and the dis- tances vanishing into the cloudy rose of the west were cold and gray. Gwennie, indifferent to the external beauty, but 1 42 TEN HOURS appreciating the look and the feel of the light as a cat does, walked to the bed which was pooled with sunshine. She kicked off her slippers, turned down the counterpane and scrambled on to the bed. From the table by it she took a paper bag and a book. Then she lay down, covered herself with the counterpane, and opening the bag, extracted a chocolate and ate slowly and voluptuously. The windows rattled in the gusts of wind which beat against it; sibilant hissings went by; she could hear father's footsteps up and down the gravel path ; she could see a slip of pearly sky and clouds mounting into it and passing. The warmth of the bed rose round her and the pleasant smell and softness of clean linen. Through the counterpane she could feel the sunlight warm on her ankles and legs; the chocolates were delicious; all her senses were gratified. For a little while she reveled tranquilly in her sensations. Then, not with swift, strenuous effort, but placidly, somnolently, she began to think. She thought first, of the photo on the dressing- table, the letter which had accompanied it, and the GWENNIE ALONE 143 confidences to Doris. She had a " boy " ; one who was nineteen, and big, and adoring; who treated her to chocolates, and pictures; and who thought her frightfully pretty. These were the es- sentials of happiness, and she possessed them, but more than that, innumerable delicate little pleas- ures rose out of them; other girls' envy, jealousies, cutting innuendoes, coldnesses, manoeuvers; all these things added piquancy to office life. It was awfully nice to be admired, and to have every one know you were admired ! She smiled, snuggled deeper into the pillow, and ate another chocolate. Should she go out with Harry, the youth of the photo, to-night, or should she make him cross by not appearing? Her dimples grew very pronounced. The sense of power seduced her. Supposing she went. . . . She smoothed the pillow with her cheek; heat bathed her, the yellow sheen in the air caressed her eyes. She was drifting on a wave of dreamy speculation in which she saw herself going to meet Harry; going, she would tell auntie, to meet one of the girls at the office. The streets were about her, gray under a sky faintly mauve and in the 144 TEN HOURS west, coppery. Shops were alight, shadows stole from walls, and filled the ruts in the roadway and like smoke rose and hung, and rose higher, seeking the sky. She would meet Harry. Her conscious smile broadened, her face grew redder. She would meet him, and she would tuck her arm in his as they crossed the road, and then they would go to the pictures. When they came out again it would be quite dark and he would see her as far as the top of this road. Then they would stand in the blackness and say good-by. He would be silly and stammering, and perhaps, almost cer- tainly, he would try to kiss her like he did the other night. She gave a little convulsive jerk to her body; laughter shook her. It was all such fun. She had not let him kiss her. She had scuttled across the road through an instinctive, rather than a deliberate, stirring of coquetry, leav- ing him confused and tremulous. She did not particularly want to be kissed, but neither was she fastidiously opposed to such a proceeding. All she wanted was that he should have the desire for the caress. It was such fun ! GWENNIE ALONE 145 She sighed happily. It was awfully nice to be a girl, and pretty; to be able to make a boy look silly and buy you things, and do what he was told. For a few minutes she lingered on this fasci- nating subject; then she turned to the other alternative, that of piquing him by not " turn- ing up." Slow but diligent, her mind searched the mazes of each course, missing nothing, thirstily absorbing all the pleasure of the sex game which she was playing crudely and with restricted understanding but with increased zestfulness. Of course she never had deliberately deceived auntie before. Reservations there had been and distortions which almost amounted to untruths, but she had never lied outright. The other night, for example, when she said she was going out with Doris, she was speaking truthfully; what she withheld was that Harry and his friend would join them, and that formation into couples was likely, and possibly even a divergence of routes. There was no need to mention that; and when auntie asked, obviously by way of making con- versation, and not because she was suspicious, i 4 6 TEN HOURS whether Dons came all the way home with her, Gwennie had answered, " No, not all the way," and that again was true. If it established in auntie's mind a fact which was non-existent, that of Gwennie coming home alone, when all the time Harry was with her it was not Gwennie's place to confute chimeras of thought. She had an- swered candidly the spoken question; no more could be expected of her. But to-night was different. To say flatly, " I'm going out with Doris," when Doris would not appear on the scene at all, was an enormity from which she shrank. It- was not only uncom- promisingly wrong, it was also likely to involve her in a tissue of further lies which would be cer- tain to reduce her to a state of extreme embarrass- ment. Exposure was certain. Auntie was so sharp, and then: strict guard on her movements and endless restrictions ! On the other hand, if she said honestly, " I'm going with a boy I know," auntie was sure to bring up all her old fashioned notions and forbid Gwennie to move from the house. " She'd say it looked bad; people wouldn't like me; she GWENNIE ALONE 147 wouldn't have me running about with boys; or something awfully silly like that." The situation bristled with difficulties. Gwen- nie's brain grew fogged and bewildered. Such close seeking and examination of consequences was unusual with her and she found it exhausting. She ate another chocolate and sank, mind and body, into lethargy. Ill Gray shades grew up to the window and rolled into the room, the sunlight was at once shut off and the air smoked over. Straight up beyond the roofs, across the sun, a mass of cloud had leaped, and under it, controlled by it, rushes of air veered and whistled, and boughs yapped. Then the rain rattled on the window; and hissed down past it on to the rotten leaves and the lawns. Gwennie opened her eyes. The rain battered the glass; the scent of the garden steamed up more powerfully. There were distant murmurs of rain and wind : rain biting into the common, wind bow- ing its trees to the drenched grasses; there were 148 TEN HOURS whisperings close at hand as dead leaves were driven down the paths; continuous rustlings broke upon the house, and falling back, sank moaning, and rushed and chattered amid the low stems, and drew hissings from the heaped leaves. The room was quite dark. Gwennie watched the raindrops starting up on the window, breaking and falling. " Uncle'll get wet " she reflected. The name suggested a fresh subject-matter for her thoughts. Uncle considered her pretty. Closed mouth broadly smiling, damp lids heavy on her eyes, she recalled his expression as it had been when she had faced him in the garden. She felt the stream of wind sluicing her legs, and dabbing her bare neck, she saw Robert's stare and arrested arms; and beyond him, the kitchen and auntie standing by the table, watching her jealously. Again she was delighted. It was all " such fun." Auntie was frightfully cross with uncle, and all because he thought she, Gwennie, was pretty. . . . The swish of the shower was no longer audible. GWENNIE ALONE 149 She opened one eye. A line of sky stained into a deeper blue looked down on her. She stretched herself and sighed luxuriously. Her lazy thoughts dwelt on Robert. Little doubts of his admiration troubled her. If, when he stopped at the scullery door and stared, it was because he suddenly realized her prettiness, why did he frown, and return to the kitchen, and when she followed him, ignore her, and look at auntie? Vexation furrowed her brow. He had ignored her and gazed at auntie. . . . And he had been anxious about auntie's health. She believed he was really fearfully fond of auntie. The conviction at once intrigued and ruffled her. It was nice to watch romantic revelations, specu- late on his desires to kiss auntie, muse over the manifestations of his love and use them as a touch- stone for her own affairs, but on the other hand it was galling to be considered inferior in prettiness to some one else. She wanted uncle to admire her, she rather liked making auntie wild. She rolled over on her back. " Mustn't be greedy," she murmured. The protest was sincere enough. Gwennie was 1 50 TEN HOURS not wantonly cruel. Celia's displeasure was a stimulating side-issue, not an object. She desired Robert's admiration as food for her own vanity, not as a weapon with which to wound auntie. Merely annoying auntie was nothing, actually hurting her, however, was not sporting, " Beastly mean," Gwennie breathed, as she pondered the rules of the game. Languidly she dismissed all thought. Her nos- trils moved very slightly, her chest rose and fell, stirring the counterpane, her skin looked humid in the light which again flowed weakly in the room. She was floating on sun-warmed gentle currents, there were splashings and lapping all around her, and piercing sounds as well; gratings and screw- ings and vibrations, as of innumerable small tools all working together, and making a kind of musical shrillness. " Birds like the rain," she thought. IV She was perfectly happy. Had Celia seen her now and read the previous workings of her mind and its present apathy, she would have understood that Gwennie was neither very subtle nor very GWENNIE ALONE 151 vapid. She was merely normal, only she seemed to be alternately more or less than this because of her sphinx-like inscrutability. The qualities which were most mature in her were selfishness, laziness, and romance. All her actions were guided by these things. Her mother had spoiled her; the six months following Alice's death had been ones of entire independence. Father was a companion, not a director. When life with Celia began, Gwennie saw immediately that it held disciplines and she determined to thwart these disciplines. At all times it had been easier to smile than to speak; now inclination be- came diplomacy. She distrusted Celia as she would have distrusted any one invested with authority and the power to affect her comfort. Therefore like a little snail she curled her person- ality up in her shell and refused to respond to any amount of prodding. Her silences, her unrespon- siveness, were temperamental. She had displayed them ever since she was a child, but she now saw their advantages and she elaborated them for the purpose of throwing dust in the eyes of spectators. She knew that, conceiving her to be half-asleep, 152 TEN HOURS people talked unreservedly in her presence; and she discovered the charm of reclining in an arm- chair and following the windings of unguarded and allusive conversations. She learnt all sorts of things that way; it was most interesting. The third powerful emotion in her was romance. She was saturated with sentiment, with, in its crudest form, the interest of sex. To her a boy was a prey. With sidelong glances, murmurs of laughter, natural girlish confusions, and premedi- tated neglects and refusals, she won the attention of masculine adolescence. To her, admiration was a sun. She flushed under it, basked in it, and preened herself, as in a warm and gracious atmo- sphere. Though she was hardly conscious of the nature of the power she was exerting, its effects were plain to her, and its delights also. She looked at the boys she passed in the streets; she fluttered her lashes at her friend's brothers; she spent long languorous hours musing on her conquests, on coming meetings, on the features, and very super- ficially, on the natures, of her admirers. Her ambitions were most elementary; recurrent male glances, the tribute of embarrassed manners, GWENNIE ALONE 153 " treats " at the cinemas, chocolates, flowers, the envy of her girl friends, for the time she desired no more than these, and when her fancy strayed into the future, its demands were scarcely more mature. The horizon of that future was flushed with love; it was filled with love; but Gwennie's conception of love was the slavery, the gifts, pleasures, and privileges of an engagement, not the physical and spiritual joys of union. She was not innocent but neither was she sophisticated. She was merely intent on the securing of all things which gratified her and though these things were in themselves harmless and trivial, inordinate de- sire for them and a lack of scruple in their pursuit, were not having the best effect on her character. There was, too, a latent sensuousness in her which rendered her susceptible to the appeal of those evening walks, to the influence of the dim, windy side streets, the stars burning and shaking above the bulk of the town, and the warm contact of an arm, of a hand, knocking hers, and a face bending to her own. She was barely aware of the response of her body, far less of the meaning of that re- sponse, but she knew that the walk with Harry 154 TEN HOURS held a thrilling delight, which was absent when Doris was her companion. The ring of their foot- steps; the immediate silence broken only by the slipping of the wind through the dry trees and laurels; at the core of the town that swelling rhythm of sound advancing and receding like water over stones; the immediate darkness sweep- ing up to the jets of the stars; at the street-ends, a mist of yellow, and the luminous scarves of the smokes blown out against chimney-stacks they all contributed to her enjoyment. They gave to the walk a romance, a secrecy, which would not have been possible in the daylight. She did not look at the stars, the wind passed almost unheeded, the dark common with its lines of trees drawn sharply beneath the lower and fainter stars, re- ceived no glance, but nevertheless they influenced her. The very breath of romance stole to her across their spaces, and the night, with its con- stellations and its murmurs, inspired in her the exquisite sense of being abroad with a huge com- pany of lovers. All lovers met at twilight. She was one of them, she was one with them. GWENNIE ALONE 155 V At last she sat up, yawned, shook her hair out of her eyes and looked about her. Slowly she swung her legs off the bed, thumped on to the floor and padded across the room to her coat which was hanging behind the door. From its pocket she took a newspaper and a novel. Return- ing to the bed she slid under the counterpane again and opened the newspaper. She searched through it till she found the headline : " Soldier's Divorce Suit," and then she began to read. Her face was grave and her eyes did not wander from the letterpress. Very far away and completely detached from her, she heard the hall door open and shut, and some one come up to the landing below hers. Mr. Hyde had returned. Her brain merely ticked off the knowledge but passed no comment on it. She had forgotten all actual cir- cumstances; uncle, auntie, dinner-time, after din- ner, the blue blouse, the wonder why auntie was wearing anything so new and dainty on an ordinary week-day; they were all forgotten. The sounds in the house, and in the garden, and in the streets, 156 TEN HOURS did not pierce through to her intelligence. She lay in a nest of warmth and fragrance, greedily reading the love-letters of a neurotic girl. By her, on the pillow, the novel was a dark crimson splash. . . . The door on the landing below was opened and then shut; footsteps went down to the morning- room, its door opened and closed. The house was quiet again. PART III RESPONSIBILITY "Till the house called hers, not mine, With a growing weight Seems to suffocate, If she break not its leaden line, And escape from its close confine." ROBERT BROWNING. CHAPTER IX SITTING SEWING FOR a little while after Gwennie had gone upstairs, Celia did not move from the fireside. Then she reflected that it might be as well to see what father was doing. He was certain to be in the garden; he had never been known to slip out and seek a public-house; tender supervision had apparently dulled those inclinations. Nevertheless, it was best to be on the safe side ! She took her crochet to the chair by the window. The first thing she saw was father. A black velvet Homburg hat had replaced the cap; he wore an overcoat and gardening gloves, and he was bending over the rockery at the end of the garden, removing from it handsful of the stone- colored skeleton leaves fallen from the poplars. Celia watched him affectionately. She saw the little heap of leaves on the path beside him grow- ing larger; she knew, though she could not at this distance see, the nature of the litter on the sticky 159 160 TEN HOURS mold: dry curled creeper leaves which chattered when touched; brown tangles of last year's ferns, and amid them the tight little golden knots of the new fronds; white sapless stems, trails of jenny- creeper and budding masses of rock arabis. " Poor old garden," she thought, " I'd like to have it filled with flowers, not just a few lanky things. I'd like violas, and pansies, and roses; all the ducky little low plants. It would cost such a lot though." She sighed, shaking her head. Say she bought a few roots, they wouldn't make much of a show; you wanted great splashes of color. She would like to have it all mauve and white. It would cost a frightful lot. Her glance wandered deliberately to the type- writer, the periodicals, and then rose to the book- shelves. They cost a lot too. For half their value she could have the garden splashed with violas, frothed with marguerites, and auriculas, and white Paris daisies. . . . The withered rags of dead chrysanthemums and the fawn hummocks of dead thrift lay mournfully under the window. The books stared at her, the typewriter glittered. SITTING SEWING 161 Her gaze returned to father. Then she looked across the bridge to the common. Cloud towered above its rim, threatening but not yet engulfing the sun. The allotment holders were out on their plots, and the sound of spade striking against stone came clearly through the air. Her mood was not such as to find beauty or interest in the common. Playing silently and sedulously within her was that craving for the country, for its liberal heights poised above the breast of the fields, for the mildness of its grays and greens, the warm tones of its villages. Though she had driven these discontents from her mind and regained something at least of her usual se- renity, the rising and falling of pistons, and the smokes drowning the perfume of the garden, jarred on her nerves. She wanted profound un- ending silence; great wells of silence in which one could lie and watch the soundless traffic of the clouds, and the noiseless movements of ants, and tiny flies, and snails, while in the distances horses drew the plows down between the markings of the tilled land. The cloud mounted over the sun, the burning 162 TEN HOURS fires amid the trees in the side roads flickered out, rain sheeted down, and all the savagery, all the sullenness of the open space, leapt to meet the wind. The meager trees rocked violently; the gorse bushes gripped the sand, shaking themselves like black humped animals; the grass with its stony patches and its fawn widths rotted in last year's drought, its gravel paths thrusting here and there, all seemed to greet the squall with a ferocious pleasure, writhing angular boughs, baring soil to the stabs of the rain, rattling and hissing. . . . Father came hurrying up the path and she heard the scullery door slam. "Poor Robert!" she thought, "but he's sure to have his poncho, and he can stand up some- where." Then, " Mr. Hyde'll get caught." Involuntarily her eyes sought the clock. Ten minutes past three. She bent her eyes over the crochet, her mouth in a nonchalant pout. Father came in. " Ha, ha ! I was driven indoors, but it's only a passing shower. You can see the end of it." " Have a rest while you're waiting," Celia sug- gested. " Then you can go out again." SITTING SEWING 163 " Yes. I'm not sorry for the chance as I've done two more verses. The inspiration of man- ual labor, you see ! Ha ! ha ! " He sat down and began to write. After a few minutes he looked consciously at her. " Read it out," she said, her eyes dwelling on him with that tolerant, wise, and yet faintly pro- testing look. " I haven't heard the first yet, you know." " I'll read all three." In his high drone he recited, " O duty, in my days of manhood's prime Not wholly mean, and ne'er effeminate, What are you now in this slow present time? Why bring you me unto a woman's state? " A rod by Celia wielded every day, You check my movements and direct the same; 1 A light to guide ! ' But in this winter gray You shine but as a winter candle flame. " Such little tasks to fill the manly mind, And yet each plays no unimportant part In that machine the household, and I find E'en pricking biscuits can its peace impart." He paused. " That's ripping," his daughter said, " simply ripping. I like that line, ' You check my move- 164 TEN HOURS ments and and ' I forget the rest, but it came in awfully pat." Father waved a deprecating and shaky hand. " It suggested Pope to you, perhaps, if that isn't too large a claim to make. 1 think I belong to the classical school rather than to the ro- mantic." His eyes brooded over the poem. II When the rain stopped he roused himself, and after a few rambling remarks, left her alone. In a moment she saw him walking down the gar- den again. " He really ought not be out in all that damp," she reflected. " It's fearfully bad for his rheu- matism still, he seems happy enough. I'd better leave him alone. He's on the gravel too." The house was very quiet. Then the front gate creaked. She heard the sound of a key inserted in the lock, the opening and closing of the front door, and light firm steps on the staircase. Two red spots appeared in her cheeks. Her crochet needle stabbed at the close pattern, and SITTING SEWING 165 missed its hole. She was aware from head to foot of the strong light which bathed her, of the silence of the little room, and its warm fire- smelling air. The footsteps passed the door and went up to the next landing. She began to hum breathlessly, her mind bent on the evolution of the crochet pattern. Her ears seemed to tremble with the strain of listening to the movements in the front bedroom. The steps descended again. Her breath came in pants; gold and blue currents swirled before her eyes; the steel crochet hook was the one firm thing in a world slipping away from her with the smooth facility of water. Outside the door, which was slightly open, the steps paused. A voice said weakly, "Are you there, Mrs. Jennings?" Her heart jerked. Solid things emerged from that flowing tide and touched and supported her: floor, walls, the chair, the window-frame. " Yes. I'm in here." "May I come in?" " Certainly." Mr. Hyde came in. CHAPTER X LEONARD HYDE CELIA turned her head and looked at him. The light behind her made her hair like yellow smoke ; her face was in shadow, but her eyes and her mouth were noticeable, and the wildness of the former and the blossomy bunch of the latter made Leonard think of Rossetti's Blessed Damozel. He came slowly into the middle of the room. Neither spoke but their glances held and their attitudes, imperceptibly changing as each felt the influence of the other's personality were expressive. Celia's right shoulder had risen to her ear and she looked at him over it as over a barricade; her knees had come together and her elbows were pressed to her sides. Leonard was hollowing his chest and lessening his height as he came to her as if in involuntary deference or submission. He smiled, too, although timidly. 166 LEONARD HYDE 167 Celia smiled back with a suddenly regained composure, " Do you want to know if you can dry your overcoat in front of the kitchen fire?" she said, giving her head a pert little shake. " I expect you were caught? " " No, I was in the tram. I saw the door open and and I thought I'd just like to like to look in." " Very kind of you," Celia said briskly, and scanned his overcoat and the hat he was carrying. He laughed nervously and his glance shifted to the window. His mouth twitched a little. Celia said no more. She thought Mr. Hyde a tremendous gentleman and she was at once de- fensive and impressed. She was not going to trouble to be nice to him. On the other hand, no one could deny that he was very nice to her. Her sharpest gaze could detect no patronage in his manner. Leonard Hyde was twenty-six. He was tall and compactly built but his stoop now made him appear slighter and shorter than he actually was. He had a broad white brow which furrowed 1 68 TEN HOURS deeply when he smiled; brushed straight back from it was a high sweep of slightly waving black hair. His eyes were golden brown and rather humorous and pleasant; his nose straight, and the flesh beneath it full though the lips themselves were thin. He wore a navy blue overcoat, and showed a good deal of shirt front, which together with a black bow at his neck, and light mauve socks, gave him a dandyish appearance. Celia thought him extremely good-looking. This opinion stirred in her again now though she would not admit its existence. She continued her crochet, every nerve aware of his figure, his uneasiness, and his fading smile. Her mind felt like an empty room with thoughts whispering and pushing outside its door. She did not think; she did not even reflect that she ought to speak to him or offer him a chair. She was made utterly numb and helpless by his presence. Yet she was un- aware of what his influence over her portended; she hardly realized its intensity. He was scarcely less constrained. His eyes wandered to the nearest chair; his lips moved \n LEONARD HYDE 169 unspoken words. When at last she glanced des- perately at him, he crimsoned. " May may I stop for a minute? I mean > I'm not bothering you? I ... There are one or two things I'd like to say." Her sensible briskness returned now that his visit was partially explained, or at least justified. " Of course you're not bothering me. Sit down. I can do this without looking at it almost." She shook the crochet and smiled at him in a friendly manner which at once reassured him. He pulled the chair near to hers and sat down. " Thanks." He beamed, looking at her from the corners of his eyes with an engagingly mirthful expression which was yet free from any familiarity. Because she liked the expression, and because she was overwhelmed by his nearness, Celia's momentary return of ease withered suddenly. Her head drooped, but the flush of her face sank down to her throat and burnt there. Leonard plunged into rapid speech. " It's so awfully cozy in here, and I get fed up with myself; I feel I want to talk to some one, you know. Of 170 TEN HOURS course there are the fellows at the office, but well, they are fellows, and I think a man wants a woman to talk to sometimes, don't you? " Celia's greeny-blue eyes darted a rather per- plexed glance at him. Involuntarily her shoulder lifted and she made a funny reticent little mouth. The three movements charmed him. He smiled so broadly that his brow became corrugated and small lines spread fan-wise from the corners of his eyes. He crooked one arm over the chair back and leant nearer. "It sounds funny, doesn't it? But you know what I mean. Some one sympathetic. There's nothing like a woman for that." In any one else Celia would have found these views and the air of sagacity and experience with which they were delivered, extremely amusing. Coming from him they touched her, though her humor could not resist a little dig. " It sounds rather pathetic, I think." Leonard laughed. " That's always the way. A thing a fellow feels deeply always sounds terrible when it's expressed. If I told you all I felt I expect I should only make you laugh." LEONARD HYDE 171 His lips remained smiling, 'but his eyes as they met hers were not quite candid. There was inter- rogation in them, uneasiness, and some other emo- tion which she could not name. The glance and the way in which he drew one hand over the other betrayed nervousness, and she was infected with the same unreasonable agitation which she detected in him. Her heart fluttered and she averted her eyes. " No, I shouldn't laugh. I don't mind any one stammering. I don't like people to talk as if they've rehearsed every word beforehand. It isn't natural." " No, that's so. And you can always tell when a fellow's posing. I mean every word I say, and I daresay I'm frightfully egotistical, but living in one room by yourself, miles away from your people well, how can you help getting self- centered?" " Of course you can't," Celia agreed. " You're acquitted of that charge, Mr. Hyde !" He placed his hand on his shirt-front and bowed. They both laughed, exchanging intimate and sympathetic glances. Both received sharp 172 TEN HOURS little impressions: Leonard noticed the softness of Celia's cheeks and throat, and the dips and curls of that enchanting mouth; Celia the texture of his skin and hair, and the little woolly balls on his overcoat. His foot was almost touching hers. As he leant forward, rounding his shoulders, his crumpled shirt-front, the black bow, and his white restless hands, seemed to be smothering her, to be blotting out the room, driving her to the wall. She crocheted wildly. " I value that awfully being acquitted by you, I mean," he said. " I'd I'd rather have your good opinion than that of any one I know." He ended breathlessly, and there was a moment's silence. Then Celia, without looking at him, said casu- ally, " Because I'm a woman, -I suppose, and can give you that sympathy you need so badly." " That's it." His laugh sounded forced. " Oh well, if you don't confess any very terrible sins to me, I won't judge you very hardly." "Thanks; that's comforting." His voice was strained, and he did not continue. Celia's brain whirled, seeking for subjects for LEONARD HYDE 173 small-talk; whirled in a blankness, a black- ness. . . . The room was saturated in silence; the walls strained away from that silence; the spurts and thrills of the fire were strangled by it. A great wash of sound flowed by the window but it be- longed to another world. They sat in solitude; they swung in a little pearl cage somewhere near the immense races of the sky, in the very heart of such established and irremovable things as sun, space, light. Earth was leagues beneath them. Then with a bump the cage struck the earth. Leonard spoke, breaking the spell, dispersing the hush. " I could talk to you for hours only I suppose you'd think me a most thundering bore, but if you didn't there are all sorts of things I want advice on; things that want a woman's common-sense, you know, and intuition. Fellows are so thick- witted. They don't understand that you want to think sometimes, not always go fooling round, larking. I think you want to think sometimes, don't you, not go butting into a thing, but consider it first, look at it all round, and try and see what 174 TEN HOURS you really ought to do what it's right to do, don't you ? " Celia's speculative eyes dwelt on his. Surprise helped her to forget her own sensations. She was engrossed. His expansiveness and his look of worry and appeal went straight to her heart, and roused impulses which were irresistibly strong. She felt herself to be in touch not only with his body but with his soul. Responsiveness rose in her like a tide, drowning her heart, surging to her lips and her eyes. She spoke with a rush as if her words had in- deed been borne out on a wave of feeling. "Cer- tainly, I do. You get yourself into all kinds of scrapes if you don't. What particular bother are you thinking of? ... There! That sounds as if I'm pumping you, doesn't it? I didn't mean to put it that way. . . . Could you pass me that work-box, please ? Thank you." Her heart was hammering against her sides. Her affrighted self was flying desperately into its fastnesses, huddling and hiding there. Gracious ! to ask him to confide in her! Most improper! Absolutely preposterous. LEONARD HYDE 175 She sat very straight, her ankles touching, her knees hard against each other, her mouth non- chalantly composed. " But I want to be pumped ! " Leonard ex- claimed nai'vely. " That's my difficulty finding some one who'll straighten things out for me, and be serious and and. . . ." " Helpful," Celia supplied in a firm practical voice. " Well, I'm not a Methusaleh, you know. My vision's limited! But if there's anything of value to you in my vast experience . . . ! " Leonard laughed, but only shortly. His harassed weighty look settled down upon him again almost at once. " I'd be awfully glad if you would let me run on," he said with solemn feeling. " Things are so important and if you muddle them it's a mat- ter of your whole life." Celia's irrepressible flippancy broke out. " Gracious ! That sounds rather alarming. I don't think I want the responsibility of arranging your future, Mr. Hyde." Her pertness amused him again. They both laughed, with a recurrence of that intimate and 176 TEN HOURS confiding glance. Both were at ease. The little shining room with its shadows floating up from the floor to the dipping light, seemed suddenly full of comfort and security. Behind it the whole solid silent weight of the house was set protectively. " Well, fire away," Celia continued, " and you shall have the benefit of a womanly adviser if that's what you want." She looked softly at him, and then through the window at father, who was still working in the garden. II After a moment Leonard began jerkily. " I went down home this week. My brother was married and I had to be best man." "How interesting! You didn't tell me at the time." Faint reproach was in her voice and her glance. " I love weddings." " Do you? I didn't think you'd be interested." " Frightfully interested, of course. What did the bride look like? I think a wedding's awful fun." She squeezed her elbows impulsively to her sides and turned her animated face to him. LEONARD HYDE 177 He stared soberly at her. "Do you? They never struck me as fun. I think they're rather rather awful. So solemn, I mean, a matter of your whole life." " His life seems to weigh upon him," Celia reflected. Aloud she answered. " Oh well, of course, I know they are really, but not if you're only a spectator. It's great fun then, looking at the dresses and watching other people being tied up. It's more fun to be a spectator than an actor," she added, the words driven out of her by a little swift ebullition of bitterness. Other people had watched her and Robert being " tied up " ; had known the glamor would fade, and the romance wither. " Yes, that's what I should think," Leonard assented. " You'd be so awfully worried whether you'd made the right choice." Celia shot a sharp glance at him. Was there a personal application in this? He was gazing seriously through the window and she felt assured. " Still if you were in love, you wouldn't be worried, I suppose? " she said, a little dryly. " It 178 TEN HOURS wouldn't be much of a compliment to the lady.'' He did not smile. " I should think if you would be in love the risk would be greater," he said, " because then you'd be blind, and not see any faults. You'd find 'em out when it was too late and be tied for life to 'em." Celia shrugged her shoulders. " That's a part of the fun of the thing. It's no good expecting any one to be perfect. They find faults in you too, and they're tied to you for life. It's the same both sides. . . . Gracious ! we are getting moral- istic! Are you contemplating matrimony and is that what you want advice on? " She said the words lightly, but directly they were uttered she was conscious of a sudden stab at her heart. "Oh no," Leonard disclaimed, ''I'm not; not at all; I was thinking of my brother." Celia smiled. " I was only thinking what an awful risk it was," Leonard continued, " not knowing whether you'd be happy or not, and bound down in any case ; not able to get away; your whole life ruined." " Oh, but that's the blackest side! " Celia pro- LEONARD HYDE 179 tested. Ruin was such a strong term! She couldn't pretend that marriage was a perpetual ecstasy, a dream, an intoxication, as it might have been, as perhaps it was, during those first few hours when Robert was so loving and consider- ate. But ruin! " People's hearts don't break so easily, Mr. Hyde. You rub along all right, even if you're not in the seventh heaven any longer. It would be silly to talk about the world being shattered and all that kind of thing just because you find your partner can say " She paused with a gleam of roguery. "Ssh!" she breathed, and shook her head. " It's a case for euphuism, isn't it? Can shout a one-syllable objurgation at you ! " Leonard laughed. His eyes absorbed her face. " I believe you'd be fine enough to stand anything and face it like a brick!" he exclaimed rapidly, his voice vibrating. Celia started and flushed. A thrill caught her, paralyzing her heart, making her hands and feet feel cold and the rest of her body warm. Again the inner and romantic Celia fled, and i8o TEN HOURS the sensible Mrs. Jennings became apparent, de- murely upright and stiff. " Dear! dear! I'm afraid I don't deserve that tribute. But you haven't told me yet what your brother's wedding was like." She forced herself to look composedly at him, and slight waves of agitation moistened her skin, and drew her breath in flutters through her lips, as she saw his flush, his nervous movements, and the warmth of his eyes. She endured an extraordinary sense of being alone in the center of a great space brushed rud- dily with light which did not illuminate but ob- scure, and she felt herself to be advancing through that light towards something which lay beyond its sheet. She looked at Leonard, yet she hardly saw him. A mist stretched thinly between them. She could not see him nor the quiet room because of the light which blinded her, which drowned her. She trembled. Desire to move her chair farther from his became overpowering, but she was un- able to stir. Her mind darted out towards Robert, seeking support, seeking anchor and safety. With swift strokes her imagination drew LEONARD HYDE 181 his face, good and placid. Then it shrank from its own faithful presentation. Robert was noth- ing. . . . With wide blank eyes she pierced that mist and looked at Leonard, concentrating herself on his straight features, his clear eyes, the mobile sensi- tiveness of his mouth. Then she looked at her hand, shaking on her knee. Stupidly a voice in her said, " What's the matter with me? What on earth is the matter with me?" The question remained unanswered. III Leonard shifted his position. His growing excitement dismayed him. He could neither order nor control his thoughts; they danced like imps along forbidden routes. His sensations mastered him. They urged him to reckless terrifying ac- tion, and though he did not lessen the distance between himself and Celia, though he plunged again into impersonal speech, he was nevertheless following them, not directly but by devious and 1 82 TEN HOURS stealthy ways; he was deliberately deceiving him- self; shutting his eyes to his progress. " Oh, it was all right," he said, answering her question about the wedding. " I've a photo of the bride. Perhaps you'd like to see it." He took out his pocketbook. Some uncontrollable impulse made Celia bend towards him. Her movements had become auto- matic. She was no longer mistress of herself. All familiar and accepted ideals, standpoints, conven- tions, rules, seemed to have ebbed away. She moved in a waste under the guidance of some new force, never before felt, not now definable, but recognized as strong and sure; a force which de- manded and obtained her acquiescence; before which these ideals, standpoints, conventions, rules, went down like straws. Nothing in all her experi- ence was competent to deal with it. She did not even know as yet whether it should be dealt with as an enemy or obeyed as a virtue. Her mind had not as yet scrutinized it; only her body knew it, and obeyed it unhesitatingly. She looked at the pocketbook, but her gaze saw also, still through that thin luminous mist, his LEONARD HYDE 183 hands, his well-kept nails, his wrist. Breathing thickly, Leonard too leant nearer. His temple touched her hair and the contact drove his strength from him. He could smell its fragrance, he could see the curve of eyelash, and cheek-bone. Mutely he extended the photo; greedily he absorbed the enervating influence of her nearness. Celia stared at the photo; the warmth of his cheek came in a gust to hers; she heard his irregu- lar breathing, she sat in a dream, not moving, not thinking, desiring only to perpetuate this moment indefinitely. . . . Then gradually exterior things communicated with her. She was conscious again of impressions, and of painful ones. The photo was of a group, and her eyes wandered from the bride, classically unsmiling, to the bridegroom, and the wedding- guests. Subtly they expressed good-breeding. She could name no particular thing as belonging to a social scale above her own, she only knew that the woman looked " high-school," the men university. She was " private school." The unthinking ecstasy of the moment was 1 84 TEN HOURS destroyed. She was back again amid displeasing facts, her heart heavier for that brief inexplicable state of joy. " It's very good," she said, her voice thin and hard, " awfully good." She did not lift her eyes from it. Jealously she examined the youngest and prettiest of the women. If she were dressed like that she would look as nice. She was tall and slender, her feet and hands were well shaped. Was there among those girls one who had provoked Leonard to his interest in marriage? She shivered. " I must make the fire up," she said. " It's getting cold in here." She went to the fire and knelt down on the rug. Blindly she felt for the shovel. Her hands were like ice, and shivers crept along her flesh. Again her mind said, " What is the matter with me? " She heard a movement and Leonard was bend- ing over her, drawing the shovel from her hands. She sat back on her heels and watched him. Then she got up and stood by the table, her contracted LEONARD HYDE 185 attitude, her bent head, eloquent of apprehension and alarmed modesty. When he had finished he faced her. She did not look up nor speak, and his gaze became passion- ate. The beat of his heart and pulses quickened. IV Leonard loved Celia. He was a cautious and rather selfish young man. To him the preeminent thing on earth was the happiness of his own life. He had observed people and conditions, and he conceived the superficial knowledge thus gained to be a vast wisdom and experience. A man of the world, unemotional, discerning, skeptical, and without illusions such was his estimate of his own psychology. You could not come through four years of the Army without " knowing everything." Vices, pit-falls, snares, defeats he had seen them all and, alarmed at their devastating effects, he had de- termined to step warily, probing with mistrustful eyes everything that came to him. He was not going to be thrown, to make a mess of his life for 1 86 TEN HOURS the sake of a momentary intoxication. Conse- quences these obsessed him. You had to pay. He did not mean to spend all his life paying for a pleasure which had swiftly become stale. He foresaw in what direction his own tempta- tion lay. He was profoundly romantic, a mixture of sensuality and sentiment, of freshness and sophistication. Sex engrossed him, but he was re- solved that it should not master him. A liaison with a French girl had initiated him into the com- plexities of passion. While admitting its power, he was also dismayed at its transitoriness. Satiety had come to the girl with equal swiftness, and he was left at the termination of the affair with a towering thankfulness that his mistress was so variable, and an illuminating vision of what his position would have been had she remained loving and he, his ardor burnt out, been chafed with the ugliness of an unwanted pursuit. Following this apprehension came the still more discomforting one had she been his wife and not a light love whom he could after all desert, what a chain would have been around him, what a perpetual cloud upon his days! He was fresh enough to hold LEONARD HYDE 187 exalted ideas of marriage. He respected its bonds, and its risks and responsibilities were all the more intimidating because he knew that he would not break them without severe self-judg- ment, and even actual misery. Full of idealisms and sentimentalities as he was, it was partly the desire to preserve these which made him, after he had broken with Eugenie, resist the same tempta- tion again, and arm himself at all points against its attack and the possible consequence of being " taken in." He suspected every woman he met to be of predatory instincts. He doubted the spontaneity of every smile, glance, or flippancy. They were deliberate artifices, destined for his undoing. Con- temptuously he mocked the power of a tantalizing curl, or a charming dress; more snares these; he saw through them ; there was no fooling him. All this watchfulness and dissection of motives meant that he was continually pondering on love. He became full of sententious opinions which highly diverted the older men to whom he stated them. He began to look out for a " good woman." Sooner or later he must marry he admitted can- 1 88 TEN HOURS didly that celibacy did not appeal to him but he must show the greatest discretion and wisdom in selecting a wife. He must have some one good, modest, sedate, unstained, unkissed, full of do- mestic virtues, without wiles or coquetries, a per- fect helpmeet. " After all I've seen I You can't be too careful. You're landed in the divorce court before you know where you are." Imbued with these fears and distrusts, he came to the Jennings. He fell in love with Celia. At first it was merely a tremendous respect which she aroused in him. She embodied all his ideals. A fellow would feel safe with a girl like this for wife. She wouldn't land him in the di- vorce court. His respect glowed in his smile, he conveyed it in his handshake. She was pretty too, with a look of fresh innocence and immaturity which could not but appeal to a jaded man of the world. She made him feel very soiled and ex- perienced. He found pleasure in treating her with pronounced deference. Worldliness hum- bling itself to purity it was not without satisfac- tion that he saw himself in this light. / Thus, dwelling on his dangers, his incapacity LEONARD HYDE 189 for lasting love, and Celia's virtues and physical charms, he became vulnerable at all points. Con- templation of her and the perpetual inspection of passion kindled a flame. He told himself that he loved her but that it was a fine sexless romantic love which asked no return, which was ennobling, not debasing. For several months he rather enjoyed this pos- session of a chivalrous passion; then some of the fineness went out of it. It became earthy and clamoring. He was wretched, frightened, tempted. He took steps which would cut it out of his life. . V Now, borne on an irresistible current of desire, he stood looking hotly at her, his thoughts scorch- ing him. So passive had his love primarily been that it had not led him to penetrate the depths of her life nor her emotions. He imagined, as did Robert, that she was without subtleties. Having at once established her as the ideal wife and house- wife, he had never questioned the validity of this conception, nor searched for other qualities in her. 190 TEN HOURS He assumed that she was happy. It was this very idea of her absorption in home duties which en- slaved him. Had he seen her nursing a child, his picture would have been the finer for embracing motherhood as well as wifehood. He never thought of her as a woman who could be tempted, drawn to an illicit love, broken. Until quite re- cently he had desired not to possess her but to have her as the object of a platonic and reverential worship. Now, his view of her altered. Throbbingly he wondered at her embarrassment, her flush, her averted eyes. To silence those problems whose solution held peril, he began to speak, stammering through lips which seemed to have thickened. " I That wasn't only what I wanted to say to you. I mean. ... I came in here for a reason." Celia looked up. Her brows were slightly knit; her face spoke of repression. She waited, still looking at him. His eyes did not drop from hers, but they seemed to be steadied by a will other than his own. Their expression said that his own will was LEONARD HYDE 191 endeavoring, though vainly, to avert them. His features had sharpened and he looked older. " I came to say " Her appearance was as a hand on his throat, choking him. Her pale hair, her pale face, her fixed expressionless eyes, her soft mouth, her soft throat, her immobile body, set in brilliant colorless light they were possessed of an irresistible and assailing power. His blood burnt, his words were forced back; and he was dominated by a cruel, hungry, unscrupulous, desire. His dismay infected Celia. Shivers of fear swept across her heart; she leant against the table, and drew courage from its solidity. " Yes," she said. " What did you want to say to me?" That fear of making a fool of himself warred with his passion. All his instincts leapt up mili- tantly. Selfishness, distrust, caution, skepticism of the endurance of this raging force, they were all springing to meet it, they were all fighting for their existence. They spurred on his rehearsed sentences so that he uttered these stupidly. " I'm hoping to set up an office of my own, and start as a chartered ac- 192 TEN HOURS countant, down at Felgate. I shan't want this room any longer." Celia repeated " Down at Felgate. You won't want this room any longer." Then, " I see." The sound of father's dragging footsteps rose to the window, and ceased. The pants and moans of the wind, the continuous lispings of the boughs, worried the air. VI Celia said again " I see." Then understanding of his words sank into her like a knife turning and twisting till it reached her heart; then she quiv- ered; the light rose and fell in bright hard waves, her knees shook. Deliberately, carefully she crossed the rocking floor and sat down in an armchair. " So that's what you came to tell me. ... I think I've heard of Felgate." She listened to her thin voice, and to that other voice which shrieked at her, " What's the matter with me? Why do I care whether he goes or not? . . . When is he going? . . . Why is he so stiff ? . . . Why do I mind ? . . . LEONARD HYDE 193 Under the veils of pride, goodness, common- sense, and strength of will, the answer was stir- ring, was agonizedly beginning to form, was striving to become audible. She fastened her eyes on him. " It's in Surrey, isn't it? " The light was behind him, and she saw him only as a black bar. " Yes, on the Thames. I'm buying the business there. I shall stay at a cottage near the woods. . . . Awfully pretty. My people are traveling, you see; I only waited for the wedding so I shall be on my own. I've thought about it for some- time, but didn't mention it I. . . ." His voice trailed away. " I see," Celia said quietly. Her lips were dry, her eyes smarting; she shivered so violently that her teeth chattered. With a rigid intensity and calm her eyes observed his hair, his shadowy face, his hands fingering the edges of his coat. Like lightning the answer to all her unrests and apprehensions and sickening discontents, rayed through her, tearing her, blind- ing her. She loved him. She, Celia Jennings, Robert's wife, father's daughter she, sane, prac- 194 TEN HOURS tical, unsentimental, loved a man for the first time ; not with the indulgent sensible affection she had felt for Robert, but in a way which was shaming and hideous. Her eyelids dropped. For a moment she was shut in darkness, enduring torments of shame and misery. Then all those old established rules, con- ventions, standpoints came to her support. She was beset by trembling but powerful urgencies; bidden to conceal everything, assisted to repres- sion and composure. Her limbs relaxed. She looked up again, her eyes filmy but direct, two burning spots on her white cheeks, but her voice controlled, her body disciplined. " It will be very nice for you. It sounds lovely. When will you be going?" " At once. I suppose I ought to have told you sooner, but I'm going down there to-night." Then he muttered something about a week's rent and a cold anger filled and steeled her. She was the landlady; some one who let a room to get more money; his people were traveling. Her mouth was stern and lifted in the old aloof LEONARD HYDE 195 way. At her heart a dull pain beat but it was quiescent; she was mistress of it; her thoughts, her movements, were all under control. She spoke sharply. " Not at all. You can tell me when you choose. It makes no difference to me. I shouldthink you must be glad to get away from London. A cot- tage near a wood, did you say? That sounds lovely." " Yes." Leonard was too occupied with rending convic- tions to be able to speak. He had observed all her movements and shades of expression. At every quiver of eyelid or mouth, he had guessed the emotion which provoked it. Having once grasped the fact that there existed another Celia than that capable and friendly one, he read correctly the subtle language in which that other Celia be- trayed herself. He was convinced that she loved him. His thoughts flew from point to point, seeking further knowledge, seeking wisdom, pointing out abysses, and escapes, mad joys, and bitter penal- ties. He thought of Robert, stodgy and ugly; of 196 TEN HOURS course she could not love him. He thought of himself, and those distrusts flocked round him. He looked suspiciously at her, only to be touched again with flame. He adored her and she loved him. Beautiful, good, reserved, and at heart pas- sionate what a woman! He wanted her; he must have her. He made a step nearer her, and was arrested by that cold caution and dread. It wouldn't last. It was fine now preeminent but it wouldn't last. He had been like this with Eugenie, and possession. ... It wouldn't last. Was he to throw everything overboard; be the co-respondent in a divorce suit; ruin his career, and then find that the fire had burnt out, that he must offer marriage to a woman whom he had ceased to love? " Don't for heaven's sake, make a fool of yourself!" , A minute's silence was long enough for him to toss between these extremities. During it Celia, too, had been racked with fresh sensations and convictions. That dull pain was spreading over her limbs and numbing them. Now that she had broken through the uream, and the mist, and come LEONARD HYDE 197 out into her everyday surroundings, the change in her was more poignantly understood. She was in her own room, seeing every material object clearly, smelling the fire, hearing the wind, and father's movements, and the whispering trees, but placed among them all as a different person; conscious of a knowledge which altered everything she looked on, making its familiarity unbearable. The room, the house, the earth, were all the same but she had changed, and things which had been endurable to the first Celia were as so many weapons turned against this new woman. When she had absorbed the poison of this knowledge, she glanced at Leonard and saw his agitation. Her mind swerved from herself to him, and as she watched him, painfully endeavor- ing to explain his aspect, he made that step to- wards her. Her heart leapt, her head swam. Then he stopped, and she was precipitated from a height of fear back into the quiet room. She had thought he was about to touch her and she did not know whether it was desire or dread which had brought that faintness upon her. Now, with- out attempting to analyze her emotions, she 198 TEN HOURS gripped the problem of those impulses which had driven him towards her and then stopped him. Why? Why? From sheer exhaustion her brain became stationary. Dully she spoke. " Riverside too? You'll be able to have plenty of boating. I should think you must be looking forward to a good time." Leonard answered as lifelessly. " Yes, of course. It's a ripping little place; still I shall be sorry to leave here for some reasons. . . . I've been very. . . ." Caution prodded him warn- ingly. " Comfortable," he concluded. " That's good," Celia said in a dry little voice, and with the palest of smiles. " But you'll be more than comfortable now. That's a very tame condition after all, isn't it?" She scarcely heeded his assent. Her mind might be motionless through fatigue, but her body was alert, and piteously it craved for explanation of his constraint. Her flesh yearned towards him though she maintained her repressed attitude and endured with horror those uncontrollable demands. LEONARD HYDE 199 " Yes, tame. I suppose so. But tame things are the safest. I don't know whether I want any- thing wild. It's shattering. You'd have to be so certain it was worth it." Then he looked at her and his selfishness crum- bled. She was like a white flame, sitting there in the light. Worth it! His miserable little safeguards! His face kindled; his eyes folded her in passion. " But if you knew it was worth it you wouldn't care; you'd let everything go," he exclaimed. " You don't think of safety and comfort when you're in. . . ." Her expression stopped him. He crimsoned, and turned to the fire. His hand rose to his full upper lip and smoothed it shakily. He was with- out thought. Celia looked straight before her. She under- stood that he loved her and she was stupefied. She saw the black window-frame, and beyond it the ridged glows of the west. Roofs were sun- gilt, slates struck with shadow; smokes, blue, and white, and gray, strove lightly over them. Her 200 TEN HOURS eyes dilated. Her brain hammered out mo- notonously, " He loves you." Robert, his long heavy face, his kind blue eyes, his stout body: she wanted Robert. She wanted him because he symbolized safety, protection, and sanity. . . . Then she knew that if he came into the room she would scream, she would shrink from his touch, detesting him. Gwennie was upstairs. In the garden father was contentedly piling up dead leaves. All the other rooms were empty and silent. And she sat here, in the morning-room knowing that a man loved her and she loved him. She trembled again. Her terrified gaze stole round the room, seeking for that old security, that proved repose, that absorption in trivialities. If only she could get back to the Celia of twenty minutes ago! If only this were a dream, and she could awake, concentrated tranquilly on her cro- chet and on father, bearing no worse pain than that of a decayed tooth ! A sob rose in her heart. She stared at the table with its faded blue cloth, at the blue walls, at the prints of MacWhirter and Kate Greenaway, and LEONARD HYDE 201 Watts, at Robert's books, at her workbox, and tried to associate herself with them, to draw them about her as so many atmospheres which would pervade her with the sense of home and wifehood. But they failed her. They were not allies, but enemies, critics. No, they were not even that; they were virtually non-existent; not one of them meant anything to her. She could conjure up no sanity, no normal calmness with them, nor with the names of father and Gwennie. Insubstantial and irrelevant as shadows they lay about her. Only one thing counted, was solid, real, mastering, and that was Leonard. He loved her. Keen shoots of realization went through her. He loved her. She savored the implication of the words: he wanted to kiss and caress her. She was shaken with a savage desire for his lips and his arms. She was sick with horror and eagerness. He wanted to kiss her he whom she had thought of with such timidity and awe. He loved her. That she was married made no differ- ence to him. He thought her perfect and he so perfect himself ! He did not want to go to Fel- gate. . . . He was going because he was noble. 202 TEN HOURS . . . All romance, all wonder, all miracles, were hers. She was glorified beyond measure. Her thoughts raced on. Waves of heat rose and fell over her body. Waves of torturing shame succeeded them. She moved her damp hands outward. She tried to stand up but languor seized her. She tried to speak but her dry lips only twitched. She sat mo* tionless, rocking from great breadths of light to waters of darkness; swept by happiness seared with shame. Leonard looked at her. For a moment he re- sisted, dealing with conflicting emotions. Then he dropped down on his knees beside the chair, and put passionate and timid arms about her. " Celia. . . . Celia. . . ." He kissed her lips and her cheeks, softly but with burning ardor. Her heart seemed to stop beating, and then thundered on. She tried to grasp supports which she could neither see nor name, which her sub- conscious self said existed, but which were less than bubbles to her. Her instinct groped wildly for them. LEONARD HYDE 203 Then all calls to resistance ceased, one sur- rendered herself to this sweetness. Her arms lifted and clasped him; she moved her head so that her cheek pressed his ; she was fainting with a pro- found happiness. CHAPTER XI LOVE LEONARD held her closely, kissing her, and mur- muring unmeaning words in her ear. He was without doubts, and without regrets. Love com- manded him and his happiness was flawless. He felt her breast against him, her cheek moving on his, caressing it, and her hair fluffing into his eyes. Exultation made him dizzy; desire turned his em- brace rough. His tightening clasp roused Celia from her half swoon. That moment of abandon with its free- dom from thought and its supreme simplicity was gone. Now only its significance remained. All its stern meanings and issues were before her. The old Celia, though she could not be detached from the new Celia, but must bear all the torments and joys of the latter, could nevertheless govern the latter, read lier clearly, and trace the strength and perils of her impulses. Her mind too could be neutral, swerving from the old to the new with 204 LOVE 205 stunning swiftness, seeing things from cither's standpoint and all the time sustaining a fierce argument. Now the old Celia rose to the surface. She twisted in Leonard's arms, thrust him away, and lifted her hands to her hair. Horror and anger gave her a superficial composure. All her in- stincts, flaming into activity, advised dissimulation. She was not angry with him, but she must seem to be so. She had betrayed her love; now she must strenuously deny it. She had been drawn to a height of unprecedented happiness, and this was criminal; contemplation of her weakness filled her with repulsion for herself. How could she have been so mad, so wicked? Then her brain froze. It was no longer ca- pable of analyzing the situation, but her physical strength was returning, and she was thankful for the cessation of thought. Action now, not feeling, had become necessary and she knew how she must act. She forced her eyes to his, hardening them, and setting her mouth. She tried to speak but that for the moment was impossible. 206 TEN HOURS Leonard understood her, but as he had expected pride and rebuke, he was not troubled by them. Resistance, spirit she would show them both. Every new phase of the position found her splen- did. He was made all the more ardent by her coldness. He pressed near her. " Celia, I love you. Do you know? And you love me. . . . Celia. . . ." " Don't touch me." Her voice was sharp, it was almost a cry. Her brows, her mouth, con- tracted with dread. " Don't you ought not. . . . You are behaving shamefully." Knowledge of the right actions was easily at- tained, but here her power to execute the demands of the crisis ended. She saw every part of the situation, and every separate danger, and the weapon which would destroy that danger, but she could not composedly use the advantages given by her insight. As she recognized this, her sense of her peril and of her inadequacy to meet it flooded her with fear. She sprang up, obeying her instinct since its demands seemed simpler than those of her intelligence. " You mustn't come near me. I don't know LOVE 207 what made me I'm hysterical to-day. I've had toothache, and I've been silly and you frightened me. . . . You're to forget everything." She panted out the sentences, standing, looking, not like a woman but like a schoolgirl. Her mind shrieked its scorn at her; it stabbed her with those suitable speeches and attitudes: dignity, impas- sivity, quiet rebuke. Her depths were full of activity; they rushed to examine and subdue this horror, which was also a glory, but her surfaces were paralyzed, no, worse still, they were full of weak and pitiable movements straws put up to oppose a torrent. " I know you didn't mean to to say any- thing like that," she went on. " We've both been very silly. ... I wish please if you'd go." Then she stopped, quietly abandoning the at- tempt to face the affair. His steady passionate gaze made her flinch; she drooped under it as under a burning sun. That horrible joy struggled in her, beating down her hitherto untried resources of strength, which, now that they were called into service, betrayed their slightness. She stood, pas- sively enduring her sensations, without thought, 208 TEN HOURS but quivering with every flick of her feelings. Leonard's emotions were all exultant He respected her for her abasement and loved her the more, but it did not deter him in his pursuit. Now that he had broken through his restraints, nothing was powerful enough to stop him. He had one object only that of winning her. The obstacles she threw up were not deterrents but spurs; they goaded him to a hotter desire. Still egotistical as he was, his egotism had taken the form now not of self-preservation but of self-indulgence. He wanted her, and he must have her. Almost he said that he could have her. Of her powers of resistance he was not yet certain; he suspected their strength to be less than that of her natural desires, but he had not proved this. He set him- self to do so. " I haven't been very silly, Celia. I'm in deadly earnest. I've loved you for a long time, only I didn't think there was any chance. Darling, if you love me-, there's nothing silly in it. It's all- great. I can't believe it." She looked at him with eyes suffering made vacant and peculiarly unseeing. " You mustn't LOVE 209 talk like this. I didn't think you would be so so wrong, and cruel. I've asked you to go." He was momentarily restrained by her subdued voice and manner. That spirituality he had ad- mired in her was very manifest now. In her slen- derness and pallor she looked virginal. He forgot that she was a wife; aware of the acts of passion, and experienced in them. He saw her as a girl confronted for the first time with the problems of sex, and scared into frozen reserve. This he would soon destroy. He put out his hands and laid them on her arms, but her convulsive start, her glance of terror and reproach, checked him, and he let them fall again to his sides. He was baffled and mystified; unable to harmonize her abandon of a few minutes ago with this repulsion. He began to feel less sure of his perceptions. Was she really angry, really pained, and outraged? Trouble clouded his eyes; he spoke uncertainly. " Are you really angry? I don't see why you should mind my loving you. Don't be angry with me, Celia. I can't help loving you. I don't under- stand you. I thought at first that you . . . that you cared and now. . . ." 210 TEN HOURS He stopped. He clasped and unclasped his hands, an almost childishly distressed expression lining his face. Celia drank in the sweetness of his expressions of love. Her body expanded, and seemed again to crave out towards him. Hurriedly her eyes went to his face and she was pierced again with the. knowledge of his dearness. Her youthful judgment, which, dazzled by a few features, had constructed others, and out of the real and the fancied, built up a godlike char- acter, found him irresistibly appealing. His good looks were to her the outward manifestation of an ideal nature. His refinement, his naivete, his can- did eyes, his obvious poses and subterfuges she loved them all. There was a grace and youthful- ness about him which Robert would never possess. He harmonized admirably*with the ardent atmo- sphere he had created; Robert would have ap- peared ridiculous in it. All her longing for protection; and love, and caresses; all her only half-recognized desires for the glamor and rush of an unreasoning worship, found their answer in him. Those dreams which had stirred in the deep LOVE 211 silences and dusks of the countryside, which had breathed of a world where service and ecstasy were synonymous, where love was never staled, but everyday things were transmuted by its per- renial freshness; those romantic imaginings, were all justified when she looked at him. Such things could be; such love could be. She had known she could not find them with Robert; only placid and humdrum partnership was possible there. Just as confidently had she met Leonard first she would have known that she could find them in him. But she had married Robert. Stings and jars had prodded up through the placidity, and now the real love was at hand, was offered, and she returned it, and by so doing, she sinned. Trembling she moved away from him. The room seemed to tilt towards her, reproaching her, reminding her of her wifehood. She saw Rob- ert's face with numbing vividness, but it was with- out reality; it was a phantasm which she ques- tioned stupidly, "What was it to her?" What was anything beside the dearness of Leonard's face, beside his trouble, and his unhappiness? Over her limbs spread a dreadful heaviness; 212 TEN HOURS her head throbbed. Through the half-open door which she was nearing stole the dry chill air of the house. Beyond the door were walls of silence and brown shadow, and she longed for them; every part of her sick body and mind urged her to escape from this merciless light into a darkness and coldness away from Leonard. If she could escape from him, touch bannisters and door-knobs, see the white counterpane of her bed and Robert's, hear Gwennie moving overhead, lie down under the familiar white ceiling and amid the familiar furniture then the old Celia might root out these unspeakable emotions, and, like a pendulum, swing back to that blessed state of common-sense from which this emotion would seem degrading and absurd. Steadily she moved backward, the pallid flame of the daylight before her, and behind her the thin wall, dimness, and silence. Then Leonard moved too. If she once passed that door she was lost to him. The house would seize her. With a thousand tentacles it would fasten itself into her. Memories, habits, duties, familiarities, all these, crowding her heart, would LOVE 213 be stronger than passion because they were known, whereas passion was new and as much terrifying as sweet. With a stride he cleared the space between them. His sensitive face was marked by alarm, it was made shapeless and twitching by it. " Celia, darling . . . don't go. It's not right to let me think you love me, and then turn me down. You do love me. . . . It's you who are treating me badly. I love you. ... I shall go mad if you look at me like that. You must hear me out." Her heart bounded at each sentence, unques- tioningly accepting its truth. Love tore her. Too large for her body, it swelled tormentingly through her. She looked at his entreating face, and at his hands stretched towards her but refraining from contact. Currents of attraction linked her to him. They conquered. All those impulses of re- sistance dropped from her, and her mind was silenced like a machine stopped by a hand. He found confederates in her blood, in her pulses, in her breath. Her mouth arched in hopeless protest but her eyes were kindling; above them her brows smoothed out almost joyously. 2i 4 TEN HOURS He put his arms round her and pressed her against him, kissing her gently. II She was now governed entirely by the dictates of her body. The call of the house was to her mind, and this made no response. She allowed him to draw her back to her chair, and force her into it. Then he knelt by her, still holding her, and she sat passive, her eyes dwelling on him. He began his attack, his whole attitude one of humility, adoration, and solicitude. u I didn't come down meaning to tell you, darling. I've loved you ever since I saw you, 1 think. . . . But I haven't thought about trying to make you love me. I haven't tried, have I ? You must have done it on your own. I never thought you would; it didn't occur to me. At first it was enough to see you, and know you were alive any one so beautiful and good; just what I think a woman ought to be. I've met a good many; there's not much I don't know about 'em. I have hun- dreds of girls making eyes at me and doing all their silly little things as if I couldn't see through LOVE 215 them ! I wasn't to be caught that way. And when I saw you, I knew you were different; so natural, and sweet, and sensible. I don't like a woman who thinks every fellow who looks at her is in love with her. They do think that, you know; some of them, most of them, but you don't. You look as if you think a fellow can be platonically interested in a woman. I don't say he can. I've proved he can't, in fact, because I thought I loved you platonically at first, and I don't. I adore you, and I'm not going to stop there. I must have something more, Celia. And I felt that the last few weeks, and I didn't know you thought anything about me, so I determined to clear out. But everything's different now; you love me, and it alters my course. All my plans come to nothing, because you weren't in them. Now I we must make others, with you in the center. I'm not going to let you go, dear. We must make other plans make them now." He paused breathlessly, beaming on her with eyes which saw no obstacles, no moral laws, noth- ing but the consummation of desire. She had missed his first sentences. Stunned by 216 TEN HOURS the impact of events, she could only look at him without thought, without movement. Gradually, however, her brain threw off its lethargy, and re- ceived his words, considering them, and making pictures out of them. His embrace, and her absorption in him and in his words were helping her to dissociate hersfelf from her surroundings, were obliterating knowledge of bonds and respon- sibilities. She felt herself to be independent, the mistress of her own actions, and in this state all instincts urged her to link herself to him. She was almost coming to feel that her duty now lay in pondering these new circumstances, and discover- ing their legitimate demands. Encouraged by her intent look and her repose in his arms, Leonard plunged on again. " We must make plans. Good Lord, when I think I came down to-day to say good-by and clear out for ever! If I hadn't spoken, and had gone away not knowing you cared ! What a bit of good luck it's all been ! You've always seemed so wonderful to me -the kind of woman I've always been looking for." LOVE 217 Her brain seized on that and cast it into a picture. She had a vision of his life as her lodger. She saw the staircase and, looking on her own face and figure through his eyes, saw how she must have appeared to him as she stood in the silvery shadow of the landing. The woman he had always been looking for! Warmth flushed her. " And now I've got you. I know you love me though you haven't said so. Celia, say you do. Do say you love me, Celia. I'm mad to hear you say that." The mere thought of formulating her illicit desires in words jerked her back towards realiza- tion of the horror of her position. He saw her returning misery and rushed in, sweeping her back into forgetfulness of all but love. " Darling, we must make plans. I'm going down to Felgate, and as I told you I want to open a business there. I've taken a room in a cot- tage near the woods. It's the most glorious place. You'll love it, Celia. It'll drive you wild. It's all pines and then there's the river." 218 TEN HOURS He poured out descriptions, but her mind busied itself with the cottage before it attended to these. She built the white walls, the slanting roof, the little windows lost amid creepers, and behind it she piled the dark rustling masses of the wood, shaped the long boles and cast the mist of gray- green crests under the stars. . . . He was going there. What was he saying now? He was describing the environment of the cottage, speaking of the Thames. "You like the river, don't you, dearest? It's awfully pretty round there meadows, you know and then there are the shops, and fields and copses before you come to the cottages, and then the pines on St. Mary's Hill. After this little hole ! Celia, shan't we be happy there ? " He pressed her furiously against him but he did not, as he had hoped, intoxicate her. That " we " had stabbed through her dreaming and rent it. Her physical side no longer governed her. She was awake again to all perils and laws and in- exorable sequels. " We." He took her consent LOVE 219 for granted. He imagined that she would go with him, that she would leave Robert, father, Gwen- nie that she would break her marriage vows. Half of her moaned with abhorrence, half of her was shaken by a storm of excitement as the alternatives towered up before her. She had as yet scarcely realized her freedom. She could go. She was bound, not by material chains but by spiritual. She could break these, and go. Sub-consciously she said these things; her con- scious self revolted from his words. She seized his hands and threw them off her. She stood up. " Mr. Hyde, you must go at once. You've no right to say such things to me, and 1 mustn't listen. It's wicked and it's mad and ridiculous. You only fancy you're in love with me." " You know that isn't true, Celia. And why do you say Mr. Hyde ? You know you love me. Say Leonard. You know it's not ridiculous." He came towards her, his bright eyes subduing her. " It is ridiculous," she repeated tartly, whipping herself into anger with him. u If I hadn't been 220 TEN HOURS silly all day I should never have listened to you like this. I'm hysterical." " No, you're not You're deceiving yourself and trying to deceive me, but you can't. We both know the truth. We love each other, and there's nothing ridiculous about it. It's no good taking that line, you can't keep it up." Her eyes wavered before his honest earnest gaze. That look of youth and helplessness settled down upon her again. " Celia, darling, admit that you love me, and then go on with what you want to say, but be honest." He clasped her wrists and bent over her. Her knees trembled. Once more she stood in momentary brightness as she tasted the sweetness of his proximity and his passion, but advancing on her with all those dark shapes shame, moral laws, pride, purity. " Oh, don't don't. . . . Yes, I do love you. . . . Leonard. . . . Let me go. . . . Please." He stepped away from her. " I must hear what you have to say first. I won't touch you LOVE 221 I'll try not to, anyway. You say you love me, and yet you're sending me away. Why?" Her face flamed. She became lovably embarrassed and petulant. "How can you ask anything so silly?" The ghost of the sensible Celia appeared and clinched the matter with that involuntary tilt of the head, that compression of the mouth. " Because I'm married, of course. That's why." She tried to look matronly and dignified, but the significance of her answer crushed her with shame. Her head drooped till he could see only her white parting and the glinting waves of her hair springing away from it. " Oh Celia, you are an angel, but. . . . You don't love your husband, and you do love me. Celia. . . ." He approached her and again caressed her. " Celia, you'll make us all miserable for the sake of prejudice, for silly forms which aren't recognized now like they used to be. Marriage wants reforming. You owe more to me than to him. Dearest. . . ." He felt that words were not trustworthy allies ; 222 TEN HOURS he felt, despite the affair with Eugenie, terribly inexperienced. His cheeks burnt at the thought of the crudities he might utter. He was on fire with desire to corrupt her, but he shrank from the bald coarse statement of his aims. He was, also, anxious to be all that was chivalrous and respect- ful, and it was not easy to harmonize the two things. He was convinced of the deep roots of his love, convinced that his ideal of married life was to be fulfilled despite the miry paths he must tra- verse before he secured it. He had found the one woman, and he would be to her noble and pro- tective and loving, but he would be so first as her lover and then as her husband. If it crossed his mind that the noblest proof of his love lay in crucifying it, he speedily dismissed the thought. He was bent not upon renunciation but posses- sion. Distrusting his tongue, then, he adopted those easier and equally insidious weapons of caresses and endearments; feeling, dimly, that he would find an advocate in her own loving emotions, that these would supply her with all the tempting soph- istries of speech which he could not utter. LOVE 223 Occasionally he murmured fragmentary sen- tences : " It would be a crime to live with him, loving me. . . . We can be married afterwards. . . . Dear, think of it; right away from this smoky hole . . . begin life. . . . Celia, I love you so much. If you send me away, I shall go mad. . . . There's only one right thing to do. It's making a mockery of marriage to stop with him. You be- long to me now." Then he became silent, holding her closely. She rested against him, unresponsive, and unrepelling. She heard his words, and heard, too, the more eloquent language of his heart beating against her, of his hands pressing her. Weariedly her brain worked, delving amid a chaos of thoughts and laying certain of them bare for her heavy inspection. She loved him most passionately, and that was shame. He loved her and was urging her to go with him, to secure a new life away from this acrid and noisy place; a life full of romance and love and happiness Yes, but wrong, utterly wrong, and to be gained only by the loss of everything 224 TEN HOURS that was right. . . . He ought not to urge her. That thought was stifled at once. She lifted cloudy eyes to his. Her face was haggard. She wondered simply why she could not say to him all she felt; why she could not caress him, and explain her desire to give him what he wanted, and the instincts which deterred her, the invisible and hated but clinging chains which linked her to the house and all that it represented. She was fettered by her temperament. Her habit- ual impulse to conceal deep feeling was still strong in her. She was sickened when she thought how much she had already shown. She longed to extricate herself from these surging emotions, and be able to attack the position with the keen weapon of ridicule, but simultaneously she longed for free expression, for complete surrender. Assailed by the two desires, she gazed at him tragically, her mouth vivid and soft amid the pale flatness of her face, her eyes brooding and singu- larly old and wise as they pierced the future and found only darkness there. Leonard turned cold with fear as he looked at her. LOVE 225 " Celia, for Heaven's sake you're not going to ruin our lives for the sake of convention, for what seems right in other people's eyes but isn't right at all? You're not going to be hypocritical? It's the right thing to leave him and come to me. Love's the only thing that matters. . . . Celia, don't look like that. We shall be so happy; we're so young; do you think we can stand giving each other up? Think of it: the country and the whole place to ourselves. It's all so easy to get. Come with me now this afternoon. I'm going down there to-night. Don't make me the most miserable fellow in the world; make me the happiest." She looked beyond him, beyond the light-bathed suburb into a world evoked by his words, a world soft and hushed and small, nested in woods near the green goodness of meadows and the repose of fields and lanes; warm, remote from bustle, illumined by the steady flame of love. She panted feverishly. The common swung up before her mental gaze, menacing her with its gorse clumps, and its rimming houses. She saw the stark garden trees, the lawn striped with sun- 226 TEN HOURS beams, and father cutting away dead strands of jenny creeper. . . . She was cold, exhausted, trembling. She moved out of his arms. " This is enough. We've got to stop now. We've got to be firm and sensible. I'm not going to say anything more about it. I'm ashamed of myself. No don't say anything, Leonard. It's all done with. It's got to be. There's no other way none. . . ." " There is, there's only one way and it's not yours, not staying, but coming." " No, I couldn't do that, and neither could you. You ought to be able to see that. We're not that kind of people. We shouldn't be happy; if we were for the time it wouldn't last, I know." In this moment of illumination she repeated more strongly, " I know it wouldn't last, and we should both be done for. . . . You're to go now. I won't have anything more said about it." "I won't have it settled like this; it can't be settled. Do you mean to tell me that when two people love . . . ? " " Leonard, you're not to say any more. I've LOVE 227 listened to you too long. I'm not going to be weak any longer. ... If you really love me you won't hurt me, you'll do what I ask you and go. You'll see I'm right. It's the only way." He looked at her steady body, her inflexible mouth, her suffering eyes. " Celia, don't, Celia, I can't stand it. I want to do everything you want me to do, but I can't this, not this, I'm sure you're wrong. . . . " No, I'm right, and whether I'm right or wrong, it's what I'm going to do. After all, we know we love each other, that's something. . . . That's everything. . . ." " Not for me. I don't call it love when you won't give up anything. Love's giving up every- thing, caring for nothing." " I'm asking you to give up, give up love itself; that's just what we are doing. . . ." " That's not what I mean." u I can't help it, and I'm not going to say any- thing more. You've been talking about ruining your life, and this would do it." " Yes, but I said if it was worth it I shouldn't care a hang, and this is worth it. Do you think I 228 TEN HOURS should let any paltry conventions oh! It's un- bearable. You're afraid of other people, you'll sacrifice me and yourself for. . . ." Her expression stemmed him. He became si- lent, shifting his feet, darting impotent glances round the room, and twitching his fingers. Then new resolves formed in his mind. He approached her, and spoke quietly. " Very well then, I'll go. I want to be every- thing that you wish me to be. I'm yours. I'll give myself over to you to do what you like with. If you say go, I'll go; even though I know you're wrong. But I do ask one thing: I'm going up to town now to make a few last arrangements, and to-night I'm going down to Felgate. I shan't come back. I've packed my things and I shall send for them. You won't see me again unless you want to. Celia, will you promise me if I go now to think it over this afternoon, to remember that it's a matter of our whole lives, to think which is most important us or a few ceremonies. Will you think it over and if you find I'm right come up to town and meet me and go with me? If you don't come I shall know you've turned me LOVE 229 down, and we shall never see each other again. But if you do oh Celia, for heaven's sake look honestly at the matter and don't be blinded! If you do find I'm right I'll be at Waterloo at let's see there's a train leaves here at 6.5 catch that and come to me. Celia, promise me this, and I'll go at once." Her heart beat wildly as all the possibilities, agonies, and dangers of those intervening hours became apparent to her. " Oh Leonard, if I think any more about it I. ... We'd much better settle it now. I say no now while I'm strong, but don't ask me to begin it all over again. I can't. I want it closed." Confidence warmed him, as he saw the ally those hours, with their solitude and their silence, would prove. " Darling, you refuse me everything. I don't know how you can be so cruel. Don't refuse me this. You know you'll have to think about it. You won't be able to help it, so I'm not really ask- ing you to do anything for me, only to promise me that you won't be blinded by social conven- tions; that you'll be just. Celia, think it over and 230 TEN HOURS come to me if you can. Will you ? Say you will. Because it's not a thing that can be settled at once; it's so big; there's so much to consider. Remem- ber what it means to us both. I'm going now, and you won't see me again unless you want to." He was touching her, bending his appealing and harassed face to hers, drowning her in the ardor of his expression. " Very well, only go now, please go now. I'll think it over, but I'm certain my answer will be the same it must be the same." He kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her throat. Then he said: " To-night soon after six, or not at all. Good- by, Celia." She felt the stuff of his coat and the warmth of his lips; then she was in contact with nothing. The floor shifted like dark water; in her ears was a humming, dreadful and monotonous. She saw him open the door, turn, and smile troublously at her. Then she was staring at the four white panels of the wood. She sat down. CHAPTER XII THE LURE THERE succeeded an age of blankness, of torpor for mind and body. Occasionally a shudder passed over her, but for the most part she sat without movement, her brow on her hand, and her eyes closed. Very far away, meaningless, and unreal, sounded the noises of the external world. Then, gradually and with pain, her body regained its sensitiveness, her mind, grown perceptive once more, flinched as thought struck it. She began to live over again the scene with Leonard. At first dully but soon with nervous swiftness, her brain reconstructed its moments from the time when he entered the room to the time when he left it. How had it all happened? How did it all appear now that it was composed and in focus? She recalled his features, movements, and glances. She was again subjected to his caresses, 231 232 TEN HOURS but her retrospects did not inflame her. She shifted her position, pressing her cold palms be- tween her knees, opening her eyes and staring vacantly before her, but as if through satiety of sensation her body responded to her thoughts only by painful starts which were not compli- cated by underlying pleasure. At the time she had found his kisses perfect, but now in memory the sweetness had gone from them; as she felt their ghostliness on her cheeks and lips she was conscious only of a corroding shame. Moving on through the scene she reached his plans for their life at Felgate. Every one of his descriptive sentences flamed across her vision, and now she thrilled. Her pulses began to sing; now longing broke over her and carried her out beyond the room, the town, into the desired loveli- ness of the woods. Her unconscious self which had spoken in all those nightly dreams with their recurrent scenery of down and open spaces, found its possible grati- fication in the life now offered her. Feverishly it drove its messages through to her imagination which, hearing and responding, built rapid pictures THE LURE 233 out of the few sentences with which Leonard had described Felgate. II She saw the cottage, low, white-walled, with its deep garden whispering round it and gloomed with the night's black. She saw the broad rutted road, its ridges crisp in frosty weather, and after rain muddy above brown water. The road went down past a copse, past a hedgerow, tangled and wet, and past a grassy space rimmed with bushes and hazels where field mice slipped stealthily amid the roots; it forked off to left and right and went straight on between meadows searching away into the gray distances, until it caught the hovering cloud of pinewoods, and was swept by the breath of their hanging and fallen cones, their murmuring needles, their beds of broken boughs. A voice in her said over and over again, " You'll have all this you'll have all this." Swiftly in fancy she retraced her steps along the road, seeing its surface flowing on either side of her smoothly as a stream; receiving the wind as it plunged down from the hill and rolled on 234 TEN HOURS across bowing grasses and communing trees. She reached the cottage. Her mind halted, selecting the most magical of hours and seasons. Dusk Spring It whirled again, its energies heating her cheeks and catching her breath. She and Leonard would go up past the cottage into the wood when all the fields were gray except those stretching under the pink and coppery flats of the west. They would see the dark road wind- ing up beside banks heaped with leaves and branches and trails of unbudded weeds; they would see the deep hollows filled wit*h dusk, and the stems speeding up through the unbroken bush, through an atmosphere hazed over into smoky blueness by innumerable boles and crests. Rotting pads of growth would breathe out towards them; slight noises would rise and cease: sinuous shak- ings and cracklings by which one could trace the retreat of stealthy creatures. Through gaps they would see the light flickering out and the west smoldering into gray. Leonard's arm would be round her. For miles and miles there would be neither sound nor movement. She would walk THE LURE 235 with him, suiting her step to his, watching the distant trees fade into vapors, the darkness brush- ing the empty ways beyond, the west cooling, and one star blazing over the huddled woodlands in the east. She lifted her head and stared unseeingly round the room. " You can have all this. It will be like this." Ill She pressed her cheeks against her palms and thought once more. There would be the warmth and comfort of the cottage. No tall blank moody house like this, but a squat and friendly place, visited by fugitive scents, sudden hurries of wind, sudden trepidations of bough. From its window would be visible the frosts of winter crusting grass and twig and cut- ting distances out against a leaden sky; fogs belt- ing the fields; rains lisping into the lush grasses and the bushes, blowing and rippling over flat- nesses, splashing down slopes into pools and chan- nels. There would be the blackthorn now flower- ing in this premature spring, gorse carrying its 236 TEN HOURS little flames, sap steaming, leaves unfolding, every- where the rush of quickening life. There would be the blue dusks, and the stars swinging down, and distantly beyond the untilled land, beyond the glimmering skeins of roads, the lights of the town, large and yellow beneath those other lights stand- ing as fires, as jets all across the sky. And most of all no sound; no movement except the slow rocking of the pines. A train whistle hurt her nerves. She looked through the window at the stiff gorse crawling over the stones, at the staring walls, the aching vacancy of windows, the unending lines of wire and pole and railing. She shivered. Her mind chattered. " You can get away from all this ; get away to the country. You're ill, tired; you want rest. You can have it. He loves you. He'll look after you. Think of the spring coming, and the summer." IV There would be primroses pushing up through the mold, and lighting low fires amid the browns of the trees; there would be bluebells. . . . THE LURE 237 She could go down the road and give to the eye reasts of plowed land where the great lumps of earth were rough and dark and good, where the jingling of harness came on the wind, where birds dipped and mounted steeply. She would see thin blue plumes of smoke rising up the skyline from suggested villages, levels of light along the van- ishing rims of fields, the pines notched blackly under ridged cloud, the road racing on, bending into valleys, striving up hills, falling again to the hamlets. She could have all this so easily; one step gained it. O God ! what was she to do ? V She did not perceive how it was the back- ground, and not the figure, which dragged at her heart. She was blind to the nature of her love. This had no root in the most real and unshakable parts of her character. It was a passion born of disillusion, discontents, and bodily fatigue. Slight but stinging things had called it into being; slight things, despite its seeming strength, would be suffi- cient to destroy it. Pain at Robert's supposed solidity, dislike of the suburb, the ceaseless de- 2 3 8 TEN HOURS mands of that underlying love of Barnham work- ing in her and producing nostalgia, nerves frayed by toothache, the seduction of Leonard's admir- ing deference contrasted with Robert's matter-of- fact calm, Leonard's physical attractions all these had shaped a passion, huge, possessive and overwhelming, but nevertheless, without real body. She imagined herself to be torn by a last- ing love, but actually she was merely expanded by a balloon-like mass of feelings which, once pricked, would dissipate harmlessly, leaving her foundations unbroken. But she did not know this, and her torment, her conflict, were intense ; for the time her tempta- tion racked her. VI If she liked she could leave home to-night. She had only to go to the station, and the train would take her to London, to Leonard. What had he said? What was it he offered? If she went what would follow? They would leave London behind the dark- ness, the smoke, the sonorous throb of its spaces, THE LURE 239 and pass into the repose and perfume of the coun- tryside. She would be wrapped in love, bowed to, protected, ardently considered. They would be well off a little house a few rooms a maid no dusty streets with their traffic, and their files of haggard and malodorous people; no coarse smell of meat and fish; no tearing noises, no hard pavements, nor strangling unescapable network of houses. There would be the river brimming up to its banks, the cows stationary in the boun- dary fields, church spires and roofs, and strag- gling farms with their quiet sounds and the com- ing and going of carts. VII Again she lifted her head and looked round the room. Her feverish excitement drove her into movement. She got up and began to walk back- wards and forwards, thoughts cutting like swords through her sick brain. "What madness you're thinking of! ... It hasn't happened; it's a dream. . . . What have you done? What are you doing? For heaven's sake, get back to your old self. . . . Oh, I can't 240 TEN HOURS stand it! Oh God, why do you let these things happen? ... I love him. . . . Do I? How can I? I'm married. How did I ever get like this? Why didn't I see it coming and stop it? That's why I felt so rotten. I loved him and didn't know it." She paused, visualizing his room and her agi- tation in it. All recent tremors and excitements were remembered, were explained. She clenched her hands. " What a fool I am ! I must stop this. He ought not to have told me. He was cruel. . . . No, he loved me. He had to tell me. Why should I expect him to be strong when I'm not? . . . What are we to do? I can't go. It's im- possible. I'm not made for it. . . . How do I know whether I'm made for it, or not? I've never felt before. I've vegetated. I'm young. It's my whole life. What am I *o do? I've got to make up my mind before six. I shall never see him again. It will all end at six. I shall stop here for always; things will go on the same oh, what am I to do ? If I go ... I can't go. If I go what shall I have? . . . Everything I THE LURE 241 want everything I want. . . . O what a fool I am! How did I ever come to get like this? If only it hadn't happened! If only I could wake up!" She sat down again by the window, and relapsed into heavy lethargy. Another age of dark and featureless languor passed over her. She seemed to be drifting on a river sluggish and black, drifting through long nights of emptiness and dread. Then the sur- face was ruffled; things pushed up; scenes formed, and were studied, and understood. The house was beginning to move. Silencing the countryside, it stretched its pervasive influ- ence over her; it compelled her attention; inexora- bly it controlled her. VIII She did not think; she saw. Picture after picture sped before her. Felgate was beaten back into fantastic unreality. She was in the house, looking on its every "orner "and in- cident. She saw all the day's routine the cooking, the 242 TEN HOURS dusting, the shopping. The staircase was round her, with its glazed paper, the white beams slant- ing through the frosted landing window, and the glint of the stair-rods. She saw the grandfather's clock in the hall, and heard its ticking. She saw her bedroom, and Robert putting on his collar; she felt the pillow bulging about her face as she watched him sleepily. She revisualized the engagement the walks down the Brighton road to the railway, his fond- ness, and her contentment She heard the thun- der in the beech tops and saw the wagons rum- bling slowly down from the harvest fields, the sheaves standing in rows, and birds hopping amid the stubble. He had held her and kissed her. His face was clear in her memory, and she looked at it, but whether with horror or pity or affection she did not know. She remembered an evening when they had walked through a copse and come out into fields where the haymaking was started. The sun had gone from the sky, but hot crimsons fired the trees and burnt upon the fields. They had walked for a long time, smelling the prone grass, seeing the THE LURE 243 stars shoot through, and the moon rise above screens of mist. Robert had been passionate then, pressing her against his side, saying little, but staring at her with sober and devoted eyes. She saw her wedding night. Unbearable heat rushed over her. She was bound to him, body and soul. She was a wife. She knew what Leonard wanted. If she went, she went knowing the sequel. Her dull eyes lifted and gazed at the walls, the books, the typewriter. Robert was by her; he was holding her, and detaining her. She remembered his shirt that wanted a button sewn on it, and his socks that wanted darning. She felt him sleeping beside her. She felt his tranquil kiss, sustained his gaze, saw his overcoat and hat on the hall stand. She saw him riding through the country, riding home to her. She saw six o'clock come and go; herself still here; to-night with its sleeplessness, its ago- nizing regrets, his regular breathing, the vision of Leonard's pale reproachful jealous face. 244 TEN HOURS, IX < She sprang up,' and going to the fire, put on coal, poked it, and set the shovel and poker down with a clatter. . . . She could not go. She could not stay. She could not face Robert. She dared not leave him. If only she could wake! If only it had never happened ! She pressed distracted hands to her temples. Whimperings broke from her. She saw the great red sun staring in at the window; she heard the life of the allotments. Now the hand of the house was on her heart suffocating it. Its silence trammeled her. The old Celia and the new rocked together in a death struggle. The country met the house and the two flashed about her, striv- ing to possess her. She saw Leonard and Rob- ert with equal clearness and feared them both. She was pulled both ways and in turn she hated each alternative. At one moment she strove vio- lently towards the happiness promised by Leon- ard; at the next she shrank from it as from an THE LURE 245 unspeakable mire. At one moment the house was a prison; at the next a refuge. " I want to go. I want to go. I want to be happy to be loved. ... I shouldn't be happy I could never be happy having acted so. ... I shall never be able to settle down here. I shall hate it after all this knowing he is miserable wanting me thinking me cowardly. Am I a coward? Which is right? Can there be any doubt? Do I owe more to him than to Robert? Am I thinking of forms instead of the real thing? Is it worse to stay than to go hypocritical cruel to Robert? Am I prejudiced? Is nature right or social law? Which shall I break, a moral or a social law? Which is right? Apart from my own happiness which is right?" At the top of the house there was the sound of a door opening and closing; footsteps were on the staircase. Steeled and cold, Celia turned round. The door opened and Gwennie came in. CHAPTER XIII EFFECTS SHE closed the door with her usual deliberation and stepped away from it, moving her legs slowly, and placing her feet gently. All over her face was a soft scarlet flush; her lips were moist, her nose slightly shiny, her eyes almost shut but bright and intelligent. Her hair was disordered, and her jumper rucked up. She brought into the room an atmosphere, hot, colorful, and despite her slow- ness, singularly vital. She looked very strong and very baffling, a child, a girl, a woman. Celia gazed at her. With that boundless capacity for bearing an unsympathetic scrutiny without speech or self- consciousness she drew nearer, smiling. To Celia her appearance was like a douche of cold water. It was the victory of the house. It meant the temporary banishment of all problems, 246 EFFECTS 247 the complete readjustment of the room about her. She felt as if she had been thrown from a height of tragedy down to commonplace and calming levels. As she stood watching Gwennie, the wild- ness faded from her face. She was very tired, very shaken, and very numb, but she had recovered equilibrium. Much as she dreaded inspection, it was almost with relief that she knew herself to be back amid everyday things, with hysterics kept at bay by the urgent need of dissimulation. She sat down in the armchair. " Well, Gwen ? " she said. " What have you been doing? " " Nothing much." Gwennie too sat down, and tucking her hands under her armpits gave herself a little sudden squeeze. Her color grew deeper, and she sat more uprightly than usual. Celia stared at the fire. " Aren't you going out? It's getting late; it'll soon be tea-time." Involuntarily her eyes rose to the clock four at six. . . . " Mmm. I don't want to go out though." There was a short pause. Gwennie watched Celia with eyes which were burning with life. Then with a little breathless rush she said: 248 TEN HOURS " Auntie think I ought to tell you 1 heard Mr. Hyde and you heard what he said that he loves you." She broke into an excited giggle. Celia jerked round. The shock went through her with a jarring force. She looked sightlessly at Gwennie. The latter was thrilling with zestfulness. " I came downstairs thought I'd sit in here and I heard him talking. The door was open and I couldn't help hearing." Her mouth closed firmly. She did not add that, startled, fascinated, and enthralled into for- getfulness of all honorable retreat, she had crouched against the wall, drinking in Leonard's words, blissfully picturing his amatory stress, and feeling herself to be against the pulsing heart of a real love-affair. " You heard," Celia spoke in a dry harsh voice. " You listened. Gwennie! " The rebuke, the supreme pain of that cry, pierced Gwennie's innocent enjoyment of the sit- uation and impressed her heart. She was star- tled out of her callousness. Celia's suffering and EFFECTS 249 her own reprehensible conduct were*both apparent to her. " Awfully sorry, auntie, but I couldn't help hear- ing and it doesn't matter, as it's only me. I shan't say anything." Anger forced Celia into composure. Gwennie to know ! Gwennie, silly shallow little schoolgirl, to treat the matter as a confidence safely reposed in her and which should not be passed on to the girls in the office! Gwennie reveling in confed- eracy, seizing on the situation as on a blessed break in the day's monotony ! She was thoroughly in command of herself now. " I'm ashamed of you, Gwennie. You're a very naughty girl." Gwennie's expression stopped her by its merci- less illumination of the absurdity of her words. Unabashed and easy, Gwennie looked at her, her mouth smiling, her eyes knowing. The droop of her lids, the faint lift of her brows, the indolent swing of one foot, all pointed out the precarious^ ness of Celia's position, and her dependence on Gwennie's honor, her unfitness for the part of mentor. 250 TEN HOURS Celia went cold. All the subtleties of Gwen- nie's character were revealed; all her selfishness, womanliness, girlish perversities, ruthless inspec- tions, and narrow judgments. She saw them all and knew herself to be in their power. She was aware at last of Gwennie's personality, was pit- ted against it when she was least capable of se- lecting weapons and raising defenses. Color flooded her face, and ebbed away. She sat with her shoulders bowed, her mouth help- lessly pouted, and her eyes, younger than Gwen- nie's own, fixed on the girl. Crushed by this last shock, she could, for the moment, neither speak nor move. Gwennie enjoyed her triumph. She was im- mersed in the situation. Every moment she learnt more of it, and saw fresh aspects, and tingled as her own relation to them became clear. Auntie was in love frightfully in love, and not with her husband. Mr. Hyde was frightfully in love with auntie. He wanted her to run away with him at six o'clock. Gwennie's gaze sought the clock. EFFECTS 251 " Past four," she said allusively. Celia started. The tension at her heart in- creased. She was still unable to deal with Gwennie. Gwennie continued, her thoughts too fascinat- ing to be hidden. " He said six, auntie are you going?" Celia's brain whirled. She could have groveled for shame; she could have beaten herself because by her own actions she had subjected herself to this unpardonable inquisition, from Gwennie, a child, her niece. Her brain cleared. At last in the emergency of the moment, her supports rallied round her; pride, clear-sightedness, composure. She spoke slowly, looking at Gwennie with hard expressionless eyes. " You forget yourself, Gwennie." Once more she was stabbed by Gwennie' s as- pect. The flickering eyelid, the inscrutable smile, the growing laxity of her position in the chair, they were not childish, they were womanly. Their impertinence did not lessen their force. When 252 TEN HOURS Gwennie spoke, her girlish phraseology was in be- wildering contrast to them, but they, not it, seemed the true manifestation of her character. u I don't mean to be oh, you know don't mean to hurt you. But it's so frightfully in- t' resting. He's awfully nice, isn't he? " Temper spurted in Celia. She could have taken Gwennie by her plump shoulders and shaken her. " I don't wish to discuss it with you," she ex- claimed sharply. " It was shameful of you to listen, and you forget your age and mine when you question me. As you have heard I can't pre- tend to you that nothing's happened, but nothing more's to be said about it." Her shame tortured her, but she kept her eyes on Gwennie, her face remained set and deter- mined. "Has father come in yet?" she con- tinued. Gwennie slid into a still more sprawling posi- tion. " Ner," she muttered. Her eyes filmed over; she smiled at the fire. Celia ignored her rudeness. " It's time he did. It's getting cold and damp." EFFECTS 253 She walked to the window. Gwennie sent a dark look after her. She was angry, and when she was angry her intuitions were sharpened, and she knew where to plant her stings. Auntie to talk like this ! Gwennie's age indeed! Gwennie was no child. She understood the significance of the scene with Leonard, and since she had been in the room she had discov- ered auntie's suffering. When she came in she had been on fire with curiosity she had been sym- pathetic too. Had she not her boy? Did she not know the intoxicating appeal of these rela- tions? But now auntie auntie, who let a man make love to her to take this tone! Why, if she, Gwennie liked, she could tell uncle, and then there'd be a scene ! She would show auntie that she was neither young nor harmless. She wanted to be an ally, but she could be an enemy. Auntie should be made to tell her what turn events were going to take I Shaken out of her habitual caution and reserve by the power of the scene, she spoke drawlingly but distinctly. "You needn't fly out, auntie. I didn't mean anything. Of course I want to know 254 TEN HOURS if you're going. It's such a difficult question, isn't it?" Celia looked at the garden full of soft rosy light but no longer sunny, and at father tipping the leaves into the dustbin; then she turned round and laughed harshly. "You are ridiculous, Gwennie! If you knew how absurd you are making yourself, besides be- ing impertinent ! When I asked you to remember that it is not your place to question me, I meant what I said. I think you don't understand that. . . . Why don't you get your jumper down, and do some before tea? There's time for a row if you start at once." Gwennie looked at her from under swollen lids. Her mouth grew obstinate; she had become wil- ful, lowering, and secretive. She did not answer, but resting her cheek on her hand, gazed at the fire. Her silence, her pose, were insulting. Celia turned back to the window. She opened it and put out her head. " Coming in, father?" His long mournful face was uplifted. " Eh? " " Are you coming in? " EFFECTS 255 " Not just yet. I've a little more tidying." " Mind you don't get cold." " It's quite safe. I should like to finish this." " All right." She closed the window, so great a loneliness and misery surging over her that tears stung her throat. She would not look at Gwennie but she was conscious of every curve of the opulent fig- ure, of the exposed outstretched legs, the warm face, and the black untidy hair. The room, the house, were leaden weights which crushed her into torpor. Gwennie, after laborious thought, spoke with- out temper. " I don't see why you should mind my know- ing. As I heard, it can't be helped, and I'm not so young as you think. And I shan't tell any- body." She heard but disregarded Celia's quiet " Gwennie." " I know a lot more than you think," she went on, " and sometimes it's better if you talk it over with some one seems to clear it up. . . ." " Gwennie," Celia said again. 256 TEN HOURS Impressed momentarily, Gwennie looked at her. "Will you go down and put the kettle on?" Celia continued. " The gas not too much up." " In a minute," Gwennie replied. Celia's lips tightened. While she considered the wisdom of a more pointed rebuke, Gwennie reviewed the advantages of the situation. Her distrust was dwindling rapidly now that she saw auntie in a new light, no longer matronly, sedate, without understanding of the joys which swayed Gwennie, and possessed of legitimate au- thority to thwart these, but possessed of the same impulses; filled with the same conception of love as the essential good; in Gwennie's power, too, since her secret was known. She stood now on the same level as Gwennie. She was no longer to be suspected or deceived. Those confidences which Gwennie poured fluently into the ears of the girls at the office would be understood here ; they could be made safely since Gwennie was, in her own phraseology, " top dog." This reasoning led her into rapid earnest speech. EFFECTS 257 " Fancy him falling in love with you fright- fully exciting! Did you guess, or did it come as a surprise? I thought you'd seemed quiet lately but I knew it might be the tooth. Of course if you go, uncle will divorce you, I s'pose? It's very hard, isn't it to know what to do, I mean. You must be worried. . . . Auntie which will you do? You've got to make up your mind so quickly." She glanced at the clock, and then eagerly, sym- pathetically, even affectionately, at Celia. Celia did not stop her now. A change had taken place in her mind. Lacerating as this un- pardonable commentary was, she did not now de- sire to silence it. She saw that it disclosed Gwen- nie's character. She felt as if she were standing on the edge of a pit hitherto veiled, but now stripped and exposed by every sentence. She felt that she must know what lay at the bottom; how deep, how shallow, how light, how dark, Gwen- nie's innermost being might be. She had a dread- ful choking fear of finding horrors in the sedi- ment at the bottom. Sitting immobile, her back to the window, her 258 TEN HOURS face in shadow, she listened, watching Gwennie. The latter, encouraged by silence and thrilled by a feeling of competence, flowed on in her thin effortless little voice. " I can understand something of what you feel. I've got my own friends, you know. I've never said anything because I didn't think you'd under- stand, but it's different now. . . . His name's Harry. I've known him for a month. That's his photo on my dressing-table. 'Spect you've seen it. He's awfully nice." She paused. Caution stirred in her, driving her to measure Celia again with eyes which had lost their girlish candor and grown lusterless, but she read neither warning nor menace in Celia's shadowed face and drooping body. The charm of her confidences lulled her. She was enjoying herself too much to mask herself again. Her vanity was gratified by this display of her own powers of attracting admirers. Auntie was not the only one who was loved ! She resumed. " He's awf'ly smitten. He's quite a bother sometimes wanting me to go out with him. I have been once or twice in the EFFECTS 259 evenings. Doris came too, but . . . sometimes we've lost her." She laughed, shaking her shoulders. " He doesn't want Doris. He's awf 'ly generous treats me well buys me chocolates and takes me to the pictures. . . . It's lovely. ... I can't under- stand how a girl can want only girl friends, can you?" The naivete of this demand drew a faint smile to Celia's lips, yet she did not feel mirthful. She was fascinated. Advancing on her was a black sea of unhappiness, but she had power to prevent it engulfing her too prematurely. She must hear Gwennie out first. Again the latter resumed. " He's awf'ly fond of me. I daresay we shall be engaged some day if I don't see some one I like better first. He wants me to go out with him to-night. I wouldn't promise, but I expect I shall." She was silenced by the prospect evoked by her words the twilight, the streets, Harry. Her imagination, fired by Leonard's ardent avowals, progressed farther than usual. " Once . . ." Her eyes came from the fire to Celia; suspicion 26o TEN HOURS peeped out of them, and died. She looked self- conscious, shy, and elated. " Once he tried to kiss me. I didn't let him. I like to tease him. . . . 'Spect he'll try again . . . soon." After a silence which was only of moments, though it seemed timeless, Celia said, " I see." Above her sunken cheeks her eyes were round and staring. . Gwennie waited, expecting reciprocity of con- fidence. When Celia still remained mute she got up. " 'Spect I'd better put the kettle on." She stretched herself, hollowing her back and advancing her bosom. Her languorous eyes smiled at Celia ; the tips of her moist teeth showed between her lips. " Should think it must be nice to be kissed. I know how to make him do it," she said with a silly excited laugh. After that speech she could no longer remain in the room. She slid sinuously round the door. The enormity of her statement made her gasp. She forgot the kettle ; she forgot auntie's alterna- tives. Laughing she sped upstairs to her room. CHAPTER XIV FORESIGHT CELIA sat quite still. She looked at the fire ; she heard the dustbin lid being moved; she heard Gwennie's door shut; and then silence a silence which was not a negation of sound but a real and sentient thing gripped the house and sucked away everything preventive of thought. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, her heart-beat scarcely quickened, but with thoughts and pictures flashing through her head so quickly and yet in such com- pleteness that she felt herself to be moving rac- ing from one point to another, and always pro- gressing. Gwennie; Gwennie, revealed and known; Gwennie now and in the future. For the first time Celia realized the greatness of her responsi- bility, and she was shaken, she was almost broken, by it. In her hands lay Gwennie's perverse, diffi- cult, and complex nature. Gwennie's maturity would be the resultant of Celia's training. 261 262 TEN HOURS Supposing she, Celia, went to Leonard, what would happen? Gwennie, free, and unchecked by discipline, would become what would she be- come? Gwennie Ally's daughter. II All the romance, growing rankly in the girl's heart, was plain to Celia. All those sensuous impulses, harmless enough now perhaps, but tend- ing to grow destructive; all the vanity, wilfulness, and secretiveness, the egotism and selfishness, were scored in flaming boldness before her. Gwennie needed more than she had ever yet suspected a strong, wise, and controlling hand. She was not straight. Confessedly she had deceived Celia; she had lived a silly sentimental life. While ap- pearing unthinking and inert, she was managing an innocent but malforming flirtation; one which would make her thirsty for further ventures, for further conquests. She was lowering herself and her sexual knowledge was increasing. " Should think it must be nice to be kissed." " I know how to make him do it." Celia shivered. Why had she not watched FORESIGHT 263 Gwennie more closely, suspected the trend of thought and desire, carefully, delicately, set her- self to gain the girl's confidence and respect and obedience ? Why? Because she was young herself younger far than Gwennie in some ways unsus- pecting no, she had suspected but she had been baffled. Baffled by a girl of sixteen? She had failed Ally, but it was not too late; there was yet time to train the child. Yes, if she stayed, but if she went. . . . Oh, Leonard, if only you hadn't told me! If only I could undo it all ! If only I didn't love you ! If she went, what would Gwennie become? Ill She saw again the luxurious expansion of Gwennie's full body as she stood up the rich curves of cheek and chin and the womanliness of all her contours. She saw the significant roguish glance of the eyes looking sideways from under the thick lids. Gwennie would not long remain young. If she were left unguarded and free to enjoy those evening walks with boys, she 264 TEN HOURS would soon grow skilled in the art of rousing adolescent passion. The giggling, the inept jokes, the shy silences, the awkward knocking of hand against hand would not last, they would not long satisfy her. Already she glimpsed the delights of a kiss, and knew crudely the way to obtain them. Soon her glance would be expert, and her bearing full of subtle incitement. The innocuous dallyings would be succeeded by coarser familiari- ties; her waist, her hands, her lips would be cheap- ened by repeated attacks, and the pastime would fire her blood, and intoxicate her so that her head would whirl with gratified vanity. She would be- come a familiar figure among the callow lovers on the common, the matrons would condemn her as a little minx; from no one would she win respect. There were hundreds of girls like her no doubt, but she was Gwennie, Ally's daughter, Celia's charge. Never before had Celia trodden this path of thought with such sureness, nor probed the psy- chology of a flirt with such understanding. Con- tempt, pity, and dismay filled her successively. Or FORESIGHT 265 there was another and even more perilous phase possible for Gwennie. Suppose she became not a systematic flirt but a sincere seeker after iove. Her obsession might take that form. Excited by Celia's choice of all things flung aside for love, she might find in the incident a noble and roman- tic example. Placing love as the preeminent thing before which nothing could nor should stand, she might fall in love with love ; she might be whirled into headlong unconsidered action; caught in some vortex of passion when complete surrender would seem right, fine, and flaming; the glory of life; all lost for love. Undirected, untaught, and ig- norant, Gwennie might well see Celia fallen as Celia exalted; blinded by romance she might fol- low the same path. Icy coldness, burning heat, subdued Celia's body. She moistened her dry lips. Stunned by the speed of her insights, she looked unthinkingly about her and heard the sound of a rake on the garden path : father was finishing the rockery. Her thoughts veered from Gwennie to him. 266 TEN HOURS She had seen the probable effect of her fligh 4 : on Gwennie; and now she passed to a consideration of its influence over him. She grew tender as her mind rayed into the fu- ture father's future. If Gwennie needed control, what of him? He had been watched ever since she could remem- ber. Mother, Ally, the boys, she herself, had all accepted him as a responsibility. He was happy now, occupied, temperate, in every way satisfac- tory. But father broken by trouble, seared with shame, and stupefied by the loss of Celia and the circumstances of that loss what then? She could hardly breathe. Go, leave father, leave Gwennie, how could she contemplate such action ? " He'd be done at once," she murmured aloud. " He'd crumple up." Guardianship removed, freedom thrust on him, before him long dark days populous with broodings and agonies and weak accusations, in these circumstances that old temptation could not remain dormant. It would, with its promise of forgetfulness, renew its power over him. Celia FORESIGHT 267 had degraded him; further degradation through his own acts must inevitably follow. Celia had broken his pride; what matter then if he tramped further into the mire? His name was already stained. To calm herself she smoothed her hair, shook the curtain into a straighter fold, and breathed deeply. Thought was half dementing her. Of course she could not go. The affair must no longer be allowed to torture her thus. Leon- ard would have to resign himself to defeat; she would have to forget him. For a few hours mad- ness had possessed her. Another Celia altogether had lived and acted in this room, but now that was passed. She derided her weakness; she chas- tised herself for her wickedness. " Nearly tea-time," she said aloud in a strange metallic voice, and straightened her shoulders, and shook her head. Then a mist darkened across her eyes, and her heart strove against sobs. Great crushing unhap- piness was on her like a storm. 268 TEN HOURS IV Again Leonard was by her side, kissing her. She loved him. The impossibility-of yielding to him made sur- render all the more desired. Now that happiness seemed to be speeding beyond her reach, she painted it in more glowing colors. It gained beauty and splendor through its recession. Young and beautiful, Leonard stood calling her to ecstasy, to gracious surroundings, to perpetual deification. He loved her and he would give up anything for her ; she would give up nothing. She placed Gwennie and father first; she considered their future but not his. Did she owe nothing to him ? Was she always to sacrifice herself and sacrifice him too? Forms, laws, feverish and probably baseless imaginings must they keep her from love and happiness? Was she to deny her- self everything because of the utterance of her too morbid conscience? Right or wrong what did it matter? Were other people so good, so austere? After all this flame, and this glory which one FORESIGHT 269 step would secure her, she must settle down to the gray monotony of the house and the suburb ! She would not be able to endure it. The house would suffocate her; the little snarling common, the harsh smells, the roads biting through those low banks of houses she would hate them all. Daily they would grind her spirit into nothingness; at night in her dreams she would see Leonard and the fertile country side. Her nerves would be on edge, Robert's contact would be pain, and his prosaic manner maddening after Leonard's ardor. It was all Robert's fault. Had he remained loving she would not have been sapped by these discontents. Why had he so soon grown prac- tical? When did the charm and freshness of marriage first fade? Would Leonard too cool and grow careless? . . . She thrust that dis- quietude aside. Leonard was different; he was capable of deeper emotion than Robert. She paused. Robert's face as it had been on his wedding day came before her, white and strained. Robert was not shallow. Her honesty stung her. With quivering dread 270 TEN HOURS she examined again that mental picture of Leon- ard. He was perfect, was he not? The tension at her heart became agony. She rushed into thought, evading critical judgment. How could she stay here with Gwennie know- ing her secret, holding it over, defying her si- lently? What power would she now have over Gwennie? This last scene had shown the effects of knowledge on that youthful and untender mind. Gwennie had perceived and grasped her advan- tages; deliberately she had reconstructed the re- lationship between herself and Celia. They were equals now; there must be no further mention of authority. Celia was weak, peccable, drifting. Gwennie could ignore the commands of such a one. How could she, Celia, think of training and gov- erning Gwennie now? Granted then the misery of staying. But if she went if she went? She turned her gaze to the clock. It was nearly half-past four. Six o'clock. If she went. . . . She trembled violently The train left at six; she would go up to town and there meet Leonard. FORESIGHT 271 She saw the platform, and the glinting railway lines, heard the throbbing of the engines, felt Leonard's hand on her arm as he led her out of the station. London was about her, stretching into horizons of fading light. Together they crossed the road, threaded through traffic, saw the lamps swinging in mid-air, and the gentle swell of the sky faintly green around the first stars. They entered the train for Felgate. She had never before known such uncon- trollable excitement. The quiet country town spread about her; the Thames flowed on, a dark glimmer amid the darker meadows; there were the lights of the town behind her, and before her the blue night sweeping away to the stars lit above the earth's end. She reached the cot- tage. , Her mind stopped. She did not know whether it was shameful desire, or sickening repulsion which governed her now. She only knew that emotion had succeeded those swift accurate etch- ings of the future. But only for a second. Then again they burnt before her vision. 272 TEN HOURS Leaping the night with its horror or its bliss, her brain drew Sunday morning the calmness of the air vexed by no sirens, fouled by no factory smokes, the sounds from the allotments mingling with distant church bells; the house dim and calm, the breakfast table and Gwennie and fa- ther and Robert there and no Celia. She watched them prepare the meal, and stirred fretfully over their incompetence. The bacon would be curled up; the eggs hard-boiled; they would muddle everything. Her plans for din- ner absorbed her. Gwennie would never do the meat properly; she would be certain to burn the potatoes. The whole house would be disor- ganized, it would be shattered by shame and misery. The influence of the house was strong upon her. For one tender and beautiful moment that as- pect of it as a burden, a cage, was ripped away, and she saw it as home, as her territory, as her possession. She kept it so beautifully; ran it so smoothly; mastered it, guided it. She was the head and the other three were all happily domi- nated by her. FORESIGHT 273 She saw Robert going off to town after a good breakfast; coming home to dinner; peacefully set- tling himself for the evening. If he had not taken everything so much for granted; if he had remained the lover as well as the husband, how happy she would be ! Those strong and at root unassailable convic- tions were conquering her; they were attacking the swollen bubbles of discontent; they were bear- ing her into sanity, and, at once, glimpsing their power, their inevitable victory, she rebelled. It was not so much that she found satisfaction in whipping herself to increased wretchedness as that for the present there was more pain in not lov- ing than in loving? To recognize this tragedy as evanescent, a mere emotional interlude which like storm upon the land would pass and be suc- ceeded by tranquillity, was tormenting. To be- lieve herself elastic, to doubt her love for Leon- ard, to doubt him these were poisons. Although, or rather because, she saw in them the first signs of convalescence, she buried them away and concentrated herself once more upon the future as it would be if she went to Leonard. 274 TEN HOURS She tried to see the cottage as home with her- self in it, serving Leonard, ruling his life. Was she not necessary to him? Remembrance of his people entered her mind. Again she imaged the wedding group and imme- diately those old prejudices stirred. Leonard's people would despise her; they would think she had inveigled him ; they would refuse to recognize her, ostensibly because of her broken reputation, but actually because she was bourgeois, because she lived in Suburbia, and let a room. She knew how they would be, how they would look, and how she would hate them! She stiffened, and her mouth grew defiant. She would not care for them; their scorn would not trouble her; Leonard thought her the perfect woman; what else mattered? He had not fallen in love with any of those girls at the wedding any- how ! He had fallen in love with her. The flash of spirit flickered out. Heavily she forecast the two futures, seeing them now as al- most equally dark; doubting the advantages of- fered by goodness, and by sin; doubting herself, doubting Leonard; shrinking from the continued FORESIGHT 275 shelter of the house, and yet desiring some lonely featureless place empty of everything but the wind and the birds rather than the cottage with its pen- alties and its memories. V She thought again of Gwennie. That she should be like this so silly, so romantic, so sensu- ous ! Ally was quite different. Now memories were all about her like a flock of birds. The bedroom she had shared with Ally was very distinctly recalled, and Ally brushing her long brown hair, and seriously discussing father. Dear Ally, sedate, good, tranquil. She saw her mother: the little lines and browii places on her skin, the kind eyes, the way of standing with her stomach slightly advanced so that her skirt was shorter in front than at the back. She stood beside the boys. What good times they had had together! Bird-nesting, picking sloes and blackberries and hazel-nuts burying each other in hay or in bracken the strong smell of the latter eddied about the room now swing- 276 TEN HOURS ing down through the twilight fields, laughing and tussling, and with Ally always peacemaker if any acrimony arose. If she went the boys would say, " Celia do this? Celia ! She was never like this. Not Celia." If she went she would betray her double trust to mother and to Ally. They had given her fa- ther and Gwennie. She was indissolubly tied to both. The last pages of father's life, and all of Gwennie's life, were in Celia's hands; they were her responsibilities. And finally there was Robert, her husband. Poor Robert. A warm maternal rush of feel- ing subdued her. He couldn't look after him- self; he couldn't manage the house and his com- panions. She viewed his appearance, placing him beside Leonard and dispassionately contrasting them. Her face began to respond to the emotion mov- ing in her. Most bewilderingly she felt herself to be necessary to both men. Then with sud- den freezing intuition she knew herself to be most necessary to Robert. She penetrated Leonard's character: his combating caution and impulsive- FORESIGHT 277 ness, his sentiment, his fluency. He had said too much. He should have been more reticent under the stress of the situation. Would he cool off? Would he, too, grow accustomed to her? If he did it would be worse, far worse, in him since for his sake she had given up everything. She drew a long quivering sigh. Her eyes sought the garden. Father was coming up the path trailing the rake behind him. She looked at the common and again she was overpowered by a feeling of suffocation. The houses drew in round her, hiding all the sinking distances of sky and cloud; the common mocked her with its meager portion of the liberal beauties of earth. A train raced by and she mused on its power. It could take her away from all this and place her on heights where only the clouds would roof and wall her; where there was space for eye and soul. Tempted, throbbing, she swung back to the standpoint of blind belief in Leonard and the stability of the happiness he offered. Love was all; morals, duties, responsibilities were but names; bloodless and lifeless things. Love was the one vital need. She was so young; why should she 278 TEN HOURS not have romance and rapture and the joys of self-indulgence? In either case self-immolation was necessary; the sacrifice of the loving and pas- sionate or of the honorable and pure Celia. Why should she not offer up the last at the altar of love and snatch the happiness the other offered? VI She looked at the clock. Then she got up and went downstairs to see to the tea. She entered the scullery and filled the kettle. Her eyes wandered over the brass taps, the white tiles and the green, the bowl filled with watercress, the gas-cooker, and the little window looking out on the garden. She started as she surveyed every fresh object almost as if silently they communi- cated with her. Each, indeed, did send a mes- sage to her brain. They spoke eloquently of this morning and of those other mornings stretching back into the past, so uniform and calm, so bless- edly uneventful. How far away they seemed! How remote were the affairs of this morning? The cooking, the toothache, the broodings, dinnertime, Robert's FORESIGHT 279 poems. Each had played its part in preparing her for Leonard's visit, in making her malleable to his touch. . . . How far was her love for him composed of irritation and discontent? Her lambent views of herself were maddening. She did love him, really, truly. ... It was real love. The vehemence of her protests filled her with shame. There was nothing to be proud of in that! . She put the kettle on the gas-cooker, and then went into the kitchen and began to lay the tray. The familiarity of every movement, and of every- thing she touched had an effect at once soothing and painful. She felt herself to be in an atmos- phere hostile to romance and yet full of repose. She was netted by a thousand little delicate fibers which bound her down to the house and which were fastened so securely into her that breaking them would mean acute moral pain. Yet, the next moment, she chafed at their strength, she despaired when she imagined herself wearing them forever. As she moved about she tested herself by re- 280 TEN HOURS calling memories attached to almost everything she placed on the tray that she might find what influence those memories had on her. The straight tea-cups white with a blue line the sil- ver apostle spoons, the little squat tea-pot, the d'oyleys edged with lace which she had crocheted herself she remembered buying every one of them. Robert had been with her. How they had enjoyed it all! Swiftly she desisted in her examinations. There were tears in her throat. She wondered stupidly why she had not once cried during this after- noon. She looked blindly round the room and- beyond the window at the low sun, its bottom rim lost in cloud. As she gazed father came in from the garden. " Finished at last," he said. " A healthy aft- ernoon's work. The scent of the earth is really beautiful, and the plants are beginning to bud most beautifully too. If we don't get any late frosts ... ! " " If ! " Celia echoed. " But I daresay we shall. Still you never know. Tea will be ready, in a FORESIGHT 281 jiffy. You've been out there a long time. I sup- pose it was safe? " " I think so. I felt quite warm and I was moving all the time. Now to polish myself up a little for a period of social intercourse ! " He laughed. Celia laughed too, averting her face. " My boots have suffered," he pursued. " I am afraid I have been like the little boys not care- ful to avoid puddles." " Dreadful ! you'll have to be punished." Father laughed again and rambled out of the room. Celia stared at the tray, her eyes blurring with tears. Father's voice, his high laugh, his wan- dering movements, had caught at her heart and she had become a mere bundle of soft susceptibili- ties. Desire to caress and be caressed overpow- ered her. A cry of " Leonard ! " and then " I do love him, I do," rose from her heart. Very young, very lonely, very helpless, she longed to be able to slip down to the floor and hide herself in a woman's arms her mother's Ally's. 282 TEN HOURS VII Presently she picked up the tray and went into the dining-room. She put the tray on the table and opening the doors at the bottom of the sidepiece, took out the silver cake-basket, the butter-dish, and the Worces- ter marmalade pot. She remembered the pleas- ure with which she had bought the last; the other two were wedding presents. She put them on the tray and then an impulse led her to the mirror over the mantelpiece. She looked carefully at herself, at her pale haggard cheeks, her trembling mouth, lovely in its shape, its color, and its childishness ; her eyes very round and intent, her brows full of pain. Behind that face the wall and the top of fa- ther's screen were reflected. Unprovoked by thought or feeling a change took place in her. Her face hardened and grew obstinate; her eyes became somber. She would go. PART IV SUNSET " The object, or the experience, as it will be in memory is really the chief thing to care for from first to last." WALTER PATER. CHAPTER XV TEA-TIME WHEN she entered the morning-room, Gwennie was standing by the fire, engaged also in the pur- suit of inspecting herself in the overmantel. She turned when she heard Celia and smiled. "Anything I can do?" she said. " Plenty. If you look you'll see what I've left." Celia spoke without emotion; she was now en- tirely cold and impassive. Gwennie's glance discovered this; and auntie's insensibility increased her own pleasant excite- ment. It was quite impossbile to tell what auntie intended doing; frightfully exciting! Gwennie's blood thrilled in her veins. Her own plans were clear-cut; she felt competent and alert; ready to transfix every piece of self-revelation. " All right, I know what to get." She moved from the fire, considering the things on the table. As she reached Celia, she directed 285 286 TEN HOURS her glance to the latter's face, an oblique, veiled glance, because she did not turn her head. With a low laugh, she put her arm round Celia's tall still body and hugged it. "Oh, dear!" she exclaimed, alluding breath- lessly to the tension of the moment. Her eyes, open, eloquent, without respect, without reticence, met Celia's. The latter disengaged herself. " You can lay the table while I make the tea." She left the room composedly. Gwennie smiled. " Doesn't like my knowing. Wonder if she's going or not. I'm sure to find out. Fancy anything like that happening." She arranged the table. " If she goes, I shall have to tell uncle. Hoo ! " She shook herself convulsively. " Shan't know what to say; 'spect he'll be fearfully upset. . . ." Her smile faded and she looked soberly at the cloth. Her mind up to the present had been ab- sorbed in the romance of the affair, to the exclu- sion of all other aspects. The greatness of Celia's love and Leonard's; the tingling suspense preceding action; the effect of their movements on TEA-TIME 287 her own life; the recollection of similar cases in novels and newspapers; these had occupied Gwen- nie's mind since half-past three. Now, however, she peeped apprehensively at the darker side of this passion. She glimpsed a few of the things which would follow auntie's flight; she was brought into contact with the knowledge that how- ever much she might exonerate, nay justify auntie, uncle, and father and the world would see her thrust outside the social pale. Gwennie's ideas of morality were vague. She said her prayers every night, but like John Donne, with a mind distracted by " an anything, a nothing, a fancy, a chimera." . . . She knew it was wrong to lie, but she always adjusted her de- ceptions so that to her own mind they were excused by their necessity. She knew that it was sin for a married woman to take a lover, but she thought it wrong that it should be a sin. Marriage be- came terrifying if it was to be regarded as indis- soluble. To Gwennie the one good, the one con- dition which should be attainable to all, and broken by nothing, was happiness. Everything which prevented happiness, was in its essence wrong and 288 TEN HOURS therefore legitimately, abhorrent. This, so far, was her creed; but it was not an unshakable one. She was governed by impressions, and she was quite ready to discard past ones in favor of new, always, however, viewing her own comfort as a thing to be most sedulously preserved. Contemplation of uncle's arrival, and the in- evitable explanation proving troublesome, she put it aside and moved about the table voluptuously memorizing Leonard's most ardent speeches, and applying them to herself. She wondered if Harry would ever talk to her like that. Certainly she would go to meet him to-night. . . . II Celia and father returned together, father rub- bing his palms against each other, and looking washed and slightly mauve under the fur-edged cap. " Ah, Gwennie," he observed, " we meet again. Our intercourse seems limited to the table ! Ha I Ha!" Gwennie giggled. " Why did you not come into the garden and TEA-TIME 289 help me? It was beautiful there, beautiful. I cannot say that the * scent of the rose is blown ' but the smell of the earth is delightful. The good red earth, to which we must all return, to which I shall soon return. . . . ' Into the breast that gives the rose shall I with shuddering fall.' " "Gracious, you are getting dismal, father!" Celia exclaimed. " You want a stimulant, I can see. Get his chair, Gwen, and your own." " The cup that cheers," father remarked. " Thank you, my dear." Tremblingly he seated himself beside Gwennie. The latter propped her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands. Celia glanced at her. "Elbows off, Gwen!" she commanded. For a second Gwennie hesitated, then she smiled, and buried her fists deeper in her full cheeks. Her eyes without temper, but rude in their directness, challenged Celia. Level, staring, Celia's gaze met the girl's. " Gwennie, I spoke to you; elbows off." Gwennie did not move. Her smile grew fixed. " It's more comfy." 290 TEN HOURS Father turned a rebuking face to her, but her gaze did not waver from Celia. The latter sat, battling with anger, shame, and sickening fear. Before she could choose out of a chaos of words father interposed. " Gwennie, auntie spoke to you. That isn't the way a lady sits." Gwennie laughed. Leisurely, she removed her arms. " Do it for you," she said. " Not too much milk; like to taste the tea." Unruffled by the silence of her elders, she re- ceived her cup and saucer, and then went on, drawlingly, " Saw in the paper this morning, about a young girl who'd been murdered, quite a young girl, eighteen I think she was, soldier shot her, her lover." " We aren't interested in these edifying events," Celia said. " You can find plenty in the paper more worth reading about than that if you look." " It was most interesting," Gwennie said, her lids flickering. " She was an office girl, like my- self, lived at Kingston, they found her body . . ." " Exactly. . . . Did I give you enough sugar, TEA-TIME 291 father? He's such a useful boy making the home beautiful, only it's the garden in this case, but the principle's the same that he deserves a little reward." " I should like a trifle more, please." "Jam, Gwennie?" " No, thanks. They found the body in a third- class railway carriage. . . ." " For goodness' sake, Gwen, don't be so grewsome. You're not healthy-minded. These sort of things aren't worth discussing." She looked firmly at Gwennie. Her heart was not fluttering now; she was insensate again, proof against the significance of Gwennie's demeanor, impenetrable to the appeal of the teatable, and the room, and father's unsteady hands. Her mind had made its resolution. She was going. She did not know what had determined her, the resolve had simply voiced itself, and at once all thought and emotion had been cleared away. She felt as empty and cold as a shell. She was able to read motives and expressions and see their se- quels without finding them personally related to herself. Gwennie defied her. If she were stay- 292 TEN HOURS ing that meant much; as she was going. . . . Gwennie was assuming independence; that had grave bearing on Gwennie's future, but on Celia's? None. She would be remote from it all, with Leonard, her lover. Absolutely passionlessly she looked at father. He represented no duty, he awoke no memories. " Pass the marmalade, Gwennie, please. Thank you." She could eat, though the food was tasteless. She could say the little natural things. She could look round the room, knowing this to be her last tea here. Funny that she wasn't more excited! She felt as hard as a rock, positively she did not care at all whether she hurt them. Everything seemed simple and unessential. Ill Gwennie watched her, not openly and confi- dentially now, but covertly and with a return of distrust. She was baffled. Auntie's calm was im- penetrable. It was impossible to tell whether it portended surrender or renunciation, but whatever its meaning, one thing was clear; Gwennie was TEA-TIME 293 not to receive confidence. Till the last moment auntie would maintain her reserve and her dignity, would attempt strenuously to maintain authority. In this final attitude, Gwennie was determined she should not succeed. Auntie might decline to rec- ognize that she had forfeited her right to com- mand, but Gwennie could, and would, show her intention of being no longer obedient. If auntie turned nasty, well, then, Gwennie had a weapon to use : knowledge. . . . Complacently, she drank tea. Then uncom- fortable doubt attacked her. That was all very well if auntie went, but if auntie stayed? She would make Gwennie pay for this brief season of independence. Certainly the weapon would still be at hand, but, its usage at tea now was dif- ferent from its usage through weeks and months. That last meant discussions, questions from uncle; scenes, tears, endless trouble and discomfort. Frightfully tiring! Rows made one awfully fagged. Gwennie hated having to explain. If she threatened to use the weapon but did not, per- haps that would keep auntie in subjection. . . . But it would be awfully uncomfortable, living at 294 TEN HOURS daggers drawn with any one ! It would mean per- petual warfare, not less wearing because it was concealed. Besides ; sudden generosity warmed Gwennie; it would be mean, beastly mean. Gwen- nie had her own code of honor in these matters. If auntie stayed, it would be sporting of her, aw- fully fine and good; to give up love, give up every- thing for duty, that would be splendid. Why, she, Gwennie, wouldn't mind obeying any one who did that! Auntie would be a heroine. Gwennie, threatening her, would be a mean beast. Dear, this was tiring! . . . Gwennie's head cleared. " May I have some water-cress, auntie, please." " Certainly." Celia passed it. She had missed the significance of Gwennie's sentence. Percep- tions dulled, eyes unobservant, she did not notice that Gwennie no longer demanded; she asked. IV " Will you have some water-cress, father? " " Thank you. . . . Robert has had a nice aft- ernoon, only that one shower. The sunset looks rainy though." TEA-TIME 295 All three glanced through the window at the ruddy flames, and at the dark gray below them, rifted and parted with the aspect of sand printed with the sea's flux. Their faces were touched with this lemon glow, but up the walls, dusk stole. Soon the twilight would possess the house, it would gather upon the town, stealthily subduing the last fires burnishing the streets. Stars would come . . . and the half- moon. Involuntarily Gwennie looked at the clock: past five ; her glance went to Celia. It penetrated the latter's frozen heart. Celia started, crimsoned, and then grew deadly pale. Her eyes fell. She had been about to lift her cup but she was forced to wait till her hand trembled less. " She's going," thought Gwennie. CHAPTER XVI SIX O'CLOCK THEY finished tea, but did not at once move from the table. Silently they watched the shadows rip- pling up the walls and misting the ceiling, and the wild bright radiance narrow about them. Gwen- nie mused over the probabilities of the evening, quickened at the thought that Harry might attempt to kiss her, and decided to let him. . . . Celia listened to the trains'; she saw under the sunset, the pines breaking in soft pointed lengths, mur- muring amid silences, burying their roots in fra- grant mold, shaking their crests to the skies. . . . Father sat, looking old and puffy in the yellow- ing glow, his head full of formless dreaming. Presently, he spoke, his words coming out in a sigh. " A beautiful evening, I shall enjoy my walk to-night. ..." Celia was jerked back from her visions. She 296 SIX O'CLOCK 297 turned upon him eyes dilating with dismay. Fa- ther's walk; she had forgotten all about that. With the lengthening days, father had a short walk after tea. Celia took him round the com- mon for half an hour. The air made him sleep well, and the sights encountered on the way oc- cupied his mind. They started at a quarter to six, and returned at a quarter-past, when twilight was becoming dark. She had forgotten all about it; a quarter-to-six; she was to start for Leon- ard at six. In her ears was a drumming, the atmosphere shifted before her eyes like a thin screen, and father's face seemed to recede and advance gro- tesquely. " We will go down Charwood Lane," he pur- sued. " There will be no dust and everything will smell beautiful after the rain." He smiled at her. She pressed her palms on the cold tablecloth. She heard herself say jerkily, " I'm going out to- night, father, by myself. I've got to go, can't put it off, didn't I tell you? . . . you must " Out of black, whirling terror, a merciful solution 298 TEN HOURS rose. " You must go with Gwennie to-night. You don't mind, do you? . . . Gwennie will go with you." She forced herself to look at Gwen- nie. The latter did not at once look back. She had scarcely heeded the last sentences, so deeply had the first bitten into her mind. Auntie was going then! Gwennie breathed in funny little puffs. She looked at Celia, and in her eyes wonder, admira- tion, even respect, rioted together. Auntie was going, was throwing aside everything for love. How wonderful, how dreadful; how fearfully, painfully exciting ! The hard table was the only thing that assured Celia of the reality of this nightmare. Gwennie's eyes made her want to shriek, they were burning darts which thrust down into her. She spoke through withered lips. " You'll go with father, Gwennie; just round the common, wherever he wants to go, for about half-an-hour." Father turned and smiled at his grand-daughter. She ignored him. In the short silence she con- sidered Celia's words; take father out; Harry SIX O'CLOCK 299 would be waiting for her at six; potter round the common with this old man! that she would not. ... It was not her concern, performing auntie's duties. She was going to meet Harry, that was what she was going to do. "Sorry, auntie, I'm going out myself. I've ar- ranged to meet some one, at six. ... I must go " Celia flung her a fierce look and met one bold, heavy-lidded, defiant. Like woLcs, those fore- sights rushed howling upon her. This was the beginning, Gwennie's first recognition and use of freedom. " Nonsense, Gwen, yours can't be important. You must take father round the common. I wish you to." " Sorry, can't. ... I really must keep my ap- pointment. . . ." Serene, calm, Gwennie looked at her. She slid down in her chair till its back pushed her hair up and out, she became a mere soft curving bundle, with eyes glinting narrowly. " Oh come, my dear, you mustn't talk to auntie like that, I'm sure you don't mean to be rude. Our 300 TEN HOURS walk is only a short one ; you can go and meet your friend afterwards, can't she, Celia? " " She is to take you round the common," Celia said, her voice controlled and keen. " Do you understand, Gwennie, for half-an-hour? . . ." Gwennie's chin sank on her chest. " I'm not going, I can't, I told you why, sorry." The roads were turning cold; over the com- mon bronze reflections shone, and puddles and veins of water burnt redly. Brilliant visions seared Celia's eyes: a countryside soaked in crim- son, trees like fiery swords; woods where damp odors rose more strongly as the dark passed over the flats and flowed upward to the heights; the station, Leonard, and then that awful featureless gloom of irrevocable action, of consequences not to be escaped, of lives swept beyond her control. "Gwennie, how can you? Just for half-an- hour, you know you ought to, you know you ought not refuse." Her eyes begged Gwennie, they humbled themselves. Guilty, dark with pain, they asked Gwennie's merciful obedience. Gwennie stared back unmoved, almost scorn- ful. Celia, broken, shivering, tasted all the poison SIX O'CLOCK 301 of degradation; she cowed beneath judgment, and felt herself already stained and discarded. . . . Oh, Leonard. " Take him yourself, if you want him to go. I shan't." It was Gwennie's rudest speech. Her own heart sank with apprehension after she had made it. With dignity, father spoke. " You are a very insolent little girl. If I were Celia I should pun- ish you severely. . . ." He turned to his daugh- ter, " My dear, Gwennie need not be forced to do anything she resents so strongly, and neither are you to be put out. I will go by myself." II " By yourself." Celia echoed the words with a dim numb sense that they meant tragedy more near, more poignant than any yet conceived. " Yes, certainly. It is not necessary for any one to come with me, not necessary at all, I can go by myself very well. I am not, ha! ha! so decrepit as all that." His hands shook on the cloth, his eyes icily in- 302 TEN HOURS spected Gwennie, and then softened as they left her for Celia. The unprecedented situation dis- ordered him. He rambled on, " Quite well go by myself, no need at all for any one to come with me, of course not. . . ." Dully Celia thought; " go by himself! " How many years was it since he had gone out by him- self? Mother, Ally, the boys, Celia not since those old wounding days when his weakness so constantly betrayed itself, had he been left alone, unaccompanied by none of them. Now he was to have freedom. . . . " Of course, yes, you could go by yourself, but nicer to have Gwennie with you, -company Gwennie, you will?" Already regrets were harassing Gwennie but she refused to yield to them. " Don't see why I should," she muttered. " I'm not going to, I've got to keep my appointment, you keep yours." Celia quivered. It was nearly six. Leonard would be wondering, longing. " Perhaps, you needn't go to-night, father. It .is rather windy. . . ." SIX O'CLOCK 303 " Nonsense." His voice cracked sharply. " Why should I not go by myself ! One would think you expected something to happen to me." Her eyes fell from his. " No, no, of course not, father, but it's not so nice by yourself." " It will be just as nice," he corrected peevishly. " I am not so afflicted that I cannot take a short walk without support. . . ." He straightened his thin body. " Of course I can go by myself." He assumed a capable and impressive air which contrasted piteously with his shaking hands and the cap with its ragged fringe. " What is the time? Getting on for six; nearly time to start. I shall be back about a quarter past; don't hurry, Celia, I have my key." He looked at his wrinkled hands resting on the shiny cloth of his trousers; but he did not see them; broodingly he constructed the walk. Celia looked from him to Gwennie; fits of shiv- ering attacked her body, but her face and hands were burning. She saw Gwennie's lips thickened and glazed, her somber eyes, the creamy fleshi- ness of her chin and throat. She saw the long mauve ridges of father's cheeks, his working 304 TEN HOURS mouth, the expression growing in his pale eyes. She saw the darkening room and beyond it color- swept widths of land, and Leonard, Leonard who was counting the moments, who was racked with anxiety as six approached. " Gwennie." The name was scarcely audible. Gwennie drew a deep breath but made no other response. Feeling Celia turn towards him, father looked up, and gave her a furtive ugly glance. It made her flesh creep. Instantly withdrawn as it was the impression of it remained so that she watched him with horror and saw his face coarsened, and full of twitching unrest. He spoke at random. " Of course I'll go by myself. It will be a change a pleasant change. No one need put themselves out for me. I have my key." The room became silent; the fire was burning without noise; only the wind wrapped the house in long throbbing harmonies. Ill He would go by himself. Celia's mind drew the scene with sure rapid SIX O'CLOCK 305 strokes. He would go by himself. He would see the empty common stretching round him, the gray streets raying away from it, the town set- tling its lights down the dusk and hazed over with light as the sky darkened and the stars ap- peared. He would be thrilled with the sense of freedom. The whistling common would repel him, the town invite. For sheer terror her brain stopped. Her gaze went to Gwennie. Gwennie, rebellious, independ- ent, governed by uncontrollable only half-compre- hended excitement, would go out too; she would go to meet that boy. Celia's hot palms came stiffly together. She pierced Gwennie's preoccupation and detected all the crude but throbbing sensualties engrossing the girl's mind: the wanton determination, the re- sponse to lures, the unbridled desire for con- quest. Her throat was so dry that she felt choked; her knees knocked together. Father Gwennie. The room was now nearly dark. The brands in the west were burning down, but daylight still lay blue and luminous over the suburb. 306 TEN HOURS In the soft shadow beyond the table she saw figures moving her mother Ally. She saw them both, not as they had been in life but as they had appeared to her young fearful eyes when she saw them dead. Mother with the pillow white and smooth on either side of her little gray face; very composed, very still; the gray hair misting her brow; her body a small mound under the counterpane. Ally she shud- dered. Ally had looked dreadful. Her face had grown like an animal's, so thin, so sharp, had dis- ease made it. The luxuriance of her dark hair seemed a mockery. From each from mother, from Ally, she had received a charge father, Gwennie. Now these two were going their own way. Father was moistening his lips and passing his tongue over them. She knew the movement and it filled her with all the profound pity and alarm she had en- dured as a child. If father went out to-night by himself the good of these years of guardian- ship would be broken. He was foreseeing the chances of freedom; he would not have strength SIX O'CLOCK 307 to resist those chances when they were actually about him. Gwennie, Ally's daughter, was inquisitively peering into sexual mysteries; she was intent on fanning flames whose consuming peril she only half realized. These were the aspects of the room. Outside, in the murmurous evening, Robert was coming home past meadows with hedgerows trailing like ropes across them, about him horizons embrowned by dusk. Robert . . . It was five to six. Leonard was walking to the station. . . . She heard him entreating and urging her. For one moment she looked on his face, and her heart leapt and strained towards him. Then the room cleared. She saw father and Gwennie. She knew that if she went she would forever after look back upon this day with an agony of remorse and self-loathing. In the calendar of her life it would stand out as the forerunner of black and terrible duplicates, all populous with regrets, all stretch- ing grimly to her life's end. Happiness ! Hap- 308 TEN HOURS piness would lie in the days which preceded it. No joys could subdue the memory of its decision. Branded in her heart, this memory would forever drain the life out of all pleasures. . . . Something in her seemed to click. That new and tortured Celia born to-day, belonging to to- day, was pressed back and buried in to-day. She had no part in any to-morrows. The old Celia, pale, weak, and immobile, was now full in possession of her heart and body. High above her, retreating into some dim region of not-to-be-secured flame, and romance, and won- derment went all the joys and torments of these hours, and she was glad to see them go. She remained safe and unharmed, in the house; she was anchored there ; she was indissolubly part of it. Almost happy in the end of her conflict, she looked at father. " I'm not going to have your walk spoilt, father. My business isn't important. I can easily put it off. Gwennie and I will both go with you and we'd better make haste or it will be dark." She smiled at them both. SIX O'CLOCK 309 Gwennie straightened; father stared and strove bitterly for speech. " My business was nothing," Celia repeated. " Get your hat and coat, Gwennie." " My dear, there is no need to put anything off on my account. I can quite well go by myself." Neither Celia nor Gwennie heeded him. With a common impulse they stood up and faced each other across the table. Celia was in the short- ening strip of light, Gwennie stood in shadow. " Get your hat and coat, Gwen, and we'll all go together." " You're not going then? " Gwennie shot out. " No." Proudly, even smilingly, Celia confronted her. Her body was stiffening; she threw all her strength into her glance and commanded Gwennie's respect and obedience. The disconcerted father watched them inno- cently. For an instant Gwennie clung to her desires. Her mind rushed to and fro seeking words, eva- sions, flat defiances; then these became unessential. Celia, white, inflexible, victorious, was all-impor- 310 TEN HOURS tant. She had resisted the charm of Leonard's fervent speeches. She was staying here, deliber- ately fastening on herself the cold shackles of duty. Her appearance, her action, cast over the impres- sionable Gwennie a spell which for the time at least was stronger than all other appeals. She spoke explosively. " All right, I'll come." Celia's knees shook suddenly. She sank down into the chair. " Good," she said. Ashamed at the revival of those old vicious in- clinations, father lowered his flushed face. She divined his penitence and spoke with a tremulous briskness. " Nothing must do father out of his walk, bless him!" Leaning forward, she kissed him, the fur of the cap tickling her cheek. The daylight splashed whitely round the win- dow. Across the town blocked darkly in the pal- ing lights, six o'clock boomed resonantly. . . . THE END UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles NOV 21&7 NOV 07l987i- 3 115801202 9962 A 000030839 5