Bffl HBHi
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES 
 
 GIFT
 
 
 t
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 J. D. BERESFORD
 
 THE INVISIBLE 
 EVENT 
 
 BY 
 
 J. D. BERESFORD 
 
 AUTHOR or "THE HOUSE IN DEMETRIUS ROAD." "JACOB STAHL,' 
 "A WORLD OF WOMEN" ETC., ETC. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 Copyright, 1915, 
 By GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 PR- 
 
 TO 
 BEATRICE
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK I 
 
 TWO DAYS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I MORNING n 
 
 II BLOOMSBURY 19 
 
 III BEECHCOMBE 40 
 
 'IV DECISION 58 
 
 BOOK II 
 
 SEPARATION 
 
 V POOR MRS. PARMENTER 75 
 
 VI PARTNERS AND A PARTNERSHIP 90 
 
 VII A WEDDING 108 
 
 VIII THE AMAZING LETTER 119 
 
 BOOK III 
 SOLITUDE 
 IX JACOB IN CORNWALL 135 
 
 BOOK IV 
 THE COLLABORATORS 
 
 X ARRIVAL 177 
 
 XI GREAT ARGUMENT 193 
 
 XII ABOUT IT AND ABOUT .... 222
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 BOOK V 
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 
 
 CHAPTER p AGE 
 
 XIII VARIOUS ENCOUNTERS 263 
 
 XIV "JOHN TRISTRAM" 295 
 
 XV MRS. PARMENTER 318 
 
 XVI THE NEOPHYTE 336 
 
 XVII REINSTATEMENT 353 
 
 XVIII RECOGNITION 376 
 
 XIX THE INVISIBLE EVENT 389 
 
 XX THE BEGINNING OF LIFE 398 
 
 ENVOY: THE RENEWAL OF EFFORT 404
 
 BOOK I 
 TWO DAYS
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 i 
 
 MORNING 
 
 IT won't be for long." 
 Last night that little colloquial sentence had seemed a 
 message of hope. All the vacillations, doubts, anxieties of 
 the preceding weeks had been dissipated. When he had 
 come back after that long day's absence which had so har- 
 assed and perplexed her she had not been able to drive 
 away the doubts and fear of calamity after their misunder- 
 standing of the night before he had come back strangely 
 resolute and determined, and she had been utterly relieved. 
 Her nerves had been on edge for weeks. Not only his argu- 
 ment^ had worn out her patience, but his whole attitude. 
 That look of pain she had seen in his face, the look which 
 had often moved her to tenderness, had become a source of 
 irritation. She had doubted its origin. She had become 
 more and more inclined to attribute it to the war of doubt 
 that must be raging in his mind. He must have known that 
 his arguments, his intentions, were more than questionable; 
 he must have known that he could not reasonably defend his 
 proposal. 
 
 As she had waited and looked for him last night on the 
 steps of that house, she had longed for and dreaded the 
 sight of him. It had been such a burning day, and, strong 
 as she was, she was worn out. 
 
 She had never before felt the burden of her household 
 duties so distasteful and arduous. Her mind, tortured by 
 suspense, had reacted upon her body. She had stood there 
 by the railings and trembled, physically overcome and weak 
 
 11
 
 12 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 washed out, as she expressed it. Even Mrs. Parmenter 
 had noticed it ; Betty had had a good excuse in the heat. 
 
 He would never guess how critical the moment had been. 
 If he had come weak, apologetically pleading, with anxious, 
 pitiful eyes and sad mouth, she would have broken away 
 from him. However sorry for him she might have felt in 
 the past, she would have had no pity for him then. That 
 emotion had been used up, she could no longer respond to 
 that note. If he had faced her with question and unspoken 
 pleading in his face, she would have been cruel ; she would 
 have given up the boarding-house and gone home ; she would 
 have left him; she would never have seen him nor written 
 to him again. 
 
 Instead of that he had commanded her. He had taken all 
 responsibility to himself, taken her acquiescence for granted. 
 That attitude had seemed to resolve all uncertainties. It 
 had brought relief and the still ecstasy of nerves relaxed 
 after unbearable tension, the perfect pleasure of conscious 
 freedom from pain. Everything had been harmonised ; her 
 way had appeared so easy and so pleasant last night. She 
 had accepted destiny; she had swung into the right drift. 
 Surely all about her had been an applauding influence, en- 
 couraging and upholding. She had not thought last night. 
 
 This morning. . . . 
 
 The day had come. From her bed she could see a flag of 
 sunlight flung on the dirty yellow bricks of the yard-wall. 
 In an hour she must get up and set about that routine of 
 housework to which they had returned last night, full of joy 
 in the knowledge that it would not be for long. 
 
 She had waked with those words in her mind, but they 
 no longer brought consolation. They had come as a re- 
 minder, cold and brutal. She was alone, deserted, aware of 
 the stillness of a bare, material world. That applauding 
 influence had done its work and left her terribly alone. She 
 must come down to the level of thought again, of realisa- 
 tion, of ugly, straight-faced common sense. 
 
 She had always prided herself upon her common sense, 
 and it wore a disgustingly plain aspect this morning.
 
 TWO DAYS 13 
 
 ii 
 
 She had amazingly promised to go and live with this 
 man live with him as his wife, although he had a wife 
 living. 
 
 She hid her face from the sunlight for a time. 
 
 The incredible thing was that she was still herself. She 
 had not changed in any way. She was still Betty Gale, the 
 daughter of a Buckinghamshire rector; the partner in a 
 Montague Place boarding-house, in which she did all the 
 work the practical housekeeper, the manager and cook of 
 the whole establishment. Mrs. Parmenter, her partner, did 
 almost nothing. These descriptions of herself were mere 
 labels perhaps ; but inside she was still the same. 
 
 According to the poets and the romancers, Love made a 
 great change in one's whole being, in one's outlook on life. 
 (She had read little enough she had been too busy but she 
 knew enough for that.) If that were true, she was not in 
 love. Apart from this test of literature, she was not at all 
 sure on that point. She could find this morning no differ- 
 ence in herself, save a certain amazement at her relieved 
 acquiescence on the previous night. Why had she said 
 "Yes," and said it so gladly? 
 
 This morning the thought of the future filled her with 
 fear. She was going to do something which would make her 
 a social outcast. She was going to brand herself as "a "bad 
 woman" that was her only phrase for it. And she had no 
 excuse for taking this fatal step ; she was precisely the same 
 Betty who had scolded her younger sisters for carrying on 
 the most harmless flirtations. They had often called her a 
 "prude," said she was "too good to live." She had never 
 flirted, not even with a curate. She had always stopped 
 the least tendency to foolishness in a curate a recognisable 
 tendency which she had considered as an inexplicable failing 
 in the unbeneficed clergy. Her only knowledge of them 
 was among the Evangelicals; the type of ascetic High 
 Churchman was almost unknown to her. 
 
 Worst of all was that she knew nothing about the man
 
 14 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 with whom she had promised to run away. She had known 
 him for just eight months. 
 
 His name was Jacob Stahl, the name of a German Jew ; 
 but she could see no evidence of either strain in him. 
 His dark hair and blue eyes suggested the Celt. He had said 
 that his mother was Irish. 
 
 How could she know that he was not unprincipled, that 
 he would not tire of her in a few months, and leave her 
 to her own resources? He had told her that he had been 
 unfaithful to his wife while he was living with her unfaith- 
 ful with some beautiful woman whom he had known and 
 loved before he married. That was a record which should 
 make her hesitate, and how could she know that that was 
 all? He might have kept back other delinquencies; this 
 one admission had been made by accident. 
 
 Nevertheless she trusted him. There were certain marks 
 of intellectuality and tenderness in his face which induced 
 trust. Undoubtedly she trusted him, but if she were forced 
 to make out a case to her sisters Hilda and Violet, for in- 
 stance how could she possibly convince them that he was 
 to be trusted ? She knew that it would be impossible. The 
 mere facts would condemn him from the outset. 
 
 She gave no thought, then, to the fact that he had no 
 money. The issue upon which she was engaged was too 
 great for that consideration. She went round and round her 
 one tedious circle, until the freshness of her morning thought 
 was dulled, and once more it was a relief to say: "Well, 
 I've done it, anyway. I've promised, and I mean to stick 
 to it." 
 
 How often those doubts were to come back, how often 
 she was to find no solution but by an acceptance of destiny ! 
 Yet at the beginning she always wondered whether her clear 
 morning thoughts were not those she ought to follow. She 
 was so divided. Her instinct told her . . . she was not clear 
 what it told her. Were her morning thoughts instinctive? 
 Or was that longing to surrender instinctive? She had 
 always been too reasonable ; she had prided herself too much 
 upon her common sense.
 
 TWO DAYS 15 
 
 in 
 
 Unhappily it was Sunday morning j worse still, it was the 
 day before the August Bank Holiday. The house was 
 nearly empty, and there was very little for her to do. She 
 wanted work to-day; she wanted not to think. 
 
 She got up at half-past seven, put on a much-worn dress- 
 ing-gown, hastily knotted up her hair in front of the glass, 
 slipped her feet into bedroom slippers, picked up sponge 
 and towel, and made her way up to the bathroom on the 
 first floor. She left her sponge and bath-towel there, and 
 climbed up two more floors to wake the maids, who slept in 
 the attics. When she had made sure that they were get- 
 ting up, she returned to the bathroom. She did not mind 
 going about the house in a dressing-gown at this hour; no 
 one was ever moving. 
 
 While she was in the bathroom she listened for the two 
 maids to come downstairs sometimes they had to be called 
 a second time. It was almost impossible to get good serv- 
 ants in a boarding-house. 
 
 When she returned to her basement bedroom, she dressed 
 quickly, and apparently spent not a single thought on her 
 personal appearance. Yet, when her toilet was completed 
 by a dark blue overall, and she entered the kitchen to begin 
 the serious work of the day, she looked fresh and neat a 
 marked contrast to the two heavy-eyed and tousled maids, 
 one of them on her knees before the kitchen grate, and the 
 other looking up at the area railings through the kitchen 
 window. 
 
 "Olive, will you do the steps and the hall?" said Betty 
 with a touch of asperity ; and the girl by the window moved 
 away, moody and reluctant, without replying. 
 
 There had been trouble with Olive a few days before, and 
 she was under notice. After the manner of her class, she 
 struck the mean between rebellion and servitude the use- 
 less, unhappy mean that serves no purpose. 
 
 "I wonder if we could do without a second girl until the 
 house fills up again," reflected Betty, as she made her way
 
 16 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 upstairs to sweep and dust the dining-room. Her partner, 
 Mrs. Parmenter, had promised to go to the registry-office; 
 but she postponed the visit from day to day. She always 
 had some excuse, and she was over sixty. The young and 
 capable Betty was willing to make allowances for her. 
 
 As she ran the sweeper briskly over the worn Axminster, 
 she was entirely absorbed with the problems of the moment ; 
 she was wondering whether Alice, the second maid, would 
 consent to do the hall and front steps, if no substitute for 
 Olive could be found immediately. Those steps marked 
 Betty's limitation; in no circumstances would she consent 
 to be seen kneeling in Montague Place. 
 
 When the carpet was swept, she frowned at the grate. 
 Why would the boarders throw their cigarette-ends and 
 ashes into the fireplace? There were plenty of ash-trays. 
 It was one of those stupid fenders with curly iron-work that 
 guarded secret hiding-places for dust and bits. It had to be 
 tilted and shaken; the hearthbrush did not reach those re- 
 cesses behind the overhanging curb, and the thing was 
 heavy. Every morning Betty frowned at the grate. 
 
 At half-past eight the dining-room was "done," and she 
 went down to the kitchen to cook the breakfast. At ten 
 minutes to nine Olive was still pottering about the hall. 
 Betty called up to her sharply, telling her to lay the cloth 
 in the dining-room. 
 
 At five minutes past nine she heard the first boarders 
 come down. She paused at her work to listen, and Alice 
 looked at her quickly out of the corner of her eye. 
 
 Olive was coming down with the empty tray; she was 
 coming very deliberately, and humming to herself. 
 
 "Is anyone down?" asked Betty, when the girl at last 
 entered the kitchen. 
 
 "Two of 'em, miss," replied Olive carelessly, and ex- 
 changed a sly glance with Alice. 
 
 Betty was leaning over the gas-cooker, boiling out the 
 frying-pan. "Who?" she asked, without looking up. 
 
 "I'm sure, miss, I didn't think to notice," replied Olive;
 
 TWO DAYS 17 
 
 and this time she winked at Alice, who giggled surrepti- 
 tiously. 
 
 "Is the dining-room door shut?" asked Betty. 
 
 "I'm sure I couldn't say, miss," said Olive. 
 
 Betty set her lips together and made a little grimace at the 
 frying-pan, then she straightened her back, took off the 
 coarse apron, which had served as a protection to her over- 
 all, and made her way very quietly up the basement stairs. 
 
 The dining-room door was ajar, and she crept past it 
 almost stealthily, and made her way quickly up to the sec- 
 ond floor. One of the bedroom-doors was standing open 
 wide, and she looked relieved. She went in and set about 
 the work of a housemaid with the same brisk decision that 
 she had shown in every action that morning. 
 
 Yet, while she occupied herself in making ready the room 
 of the man to whom she had given that promise last night, 
 the cloud of depression, that had threatened her since she 
 was dressed, grew heavier. She worked, conscious of a feel- 
 ing of dread. She might have been sentenced by some 
 surgeon to undergo a critical operation. She was afraid. 
 
 She did not pause in her work to examine the cloud that 
 hung over her ; she was hurrying to finish the room and get 
 away, before Jacob Stahl should have finished his breakfast 
 and return to the tiny apartment he used as a study by day. 
 She did not want to see him until after the midday dinner. 
 In the meantime she proposed to lose herself in her work, 
 and give no thought to the future. 
 
 One thought, however, would intrude itself, a thought too 
 nearly related to her work to be pushed aside. How much 
 did the maids guess? Olive had shown a marked inclina- 
 tion towards impertinence that morning. Olive was going, 
 but, if she knew anything, Alice would know as well. Of 
 course they chattered. They knew everybody's business. 
 They did not know, certainly, the damning fact that Jacob 
 Stahl was married ; but it was bad enough for them to see 
 that she was carrying on a more or less clandestine flirta- 
 tion with one of the boarders. 
 
 As she patted and smoothed the quilt with deft, rapid
 
 18 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 movements, Betty was stirred by a brief feeling of irrita- 
 tion. Why had she been put into such an invidious posi- 
 tion ? He had no right to make love to her. 
 
 Her attentive ear caught the sound of a closing door and 
 footsteps in the hall. She pushed the bed back against the 
 wall with her knees, looked quickly round the room, made a 
 perfunctory sweep with the duster, and then, with an "Oh ! 
 that will have to do for to-day," she slipped quietly out of 
 the room and went up to the third floor. 
 
 On the upper landing she waited and listened. She heard 
 someone come upstairs and pause at the open door of the 
 room below. He was waiting for her. Perhaps he had 
 heard her go upstairs. She stood perfectly still, and heard 
 the door closed gently. 
 
 She crept quietly down, afraid lest he might come out 
 again and look for her; he did sometimes. But when she 
 was safely past his door, a picture suddenly presented itself 
 very clearly to her mind. She saw the man behind that 
 closed door settling down to write. His eyes were wistful 
 and longing. She saw reproach in them. "Why had she 
 avoided him?" his expression said. He would not have 
 kept her from her work, and it was quite safe; everyone 
 was in the dining-room. 
 
 She stopped halfway down the stairs to the first floor, and 
 the vision seemed to her infinitely pathetic. What wonder- 
 ful power was hers! By the most trivial act she could 
 make the man miserable or happy for the whole morning. 
 A great yearning to make him happy surged through her, a 
 feeling that was in part recognisably physical. Her breast 
 seemed to lift and widen. 
 
 She turned and went back. At his door she waited and 
 listened. She heard him draw a chair forward to the table 
 and sit down. Then she knocked very timidly, and heard 
 him jump up, knocking the chair over. The door opened, 
 and he stood before her with his face all aglow. 
 
 She put a finger to her lips, leaned forward and kissed 
 him. "I can't stay," she said. "Be happy!" and, putting 
 aside his detaining hands, she ran swiftly downstairs.
 
 II 
 
 BLOOMSBURY 
 
 BETTY did not go up to dinner, but dined, as she had 
 breakfasted, in her own room. She disliked the untidi- 
 ness of such meals, but she did not want to face Jacob 
 Stahl before the other boarders and Mrs. Parmenter. After 
 dinner Mrs. Parmenter would go upstairs and lie down, and 
 the two Germans who had not gone away for the holiday 
 would be sure to go out. 
 
 It was nearly three o'clock before Betty went up to the 
 drawing-room. There had been the dinner things to wash 
 up, and Alice, whose turn it was to go out, had been per- 
 mitted to depart early. That permission had marked a 
 weakness on Betty's part ; she knew she was trying to pro- 
 pitiate Alice. After the washing-up was accomplished, 
 Betty had to change her dress. 
 
 She looked into the dining-room as she went by, noted 
 that Olive had not swept up the crumbs from the carpet, 
 and then, after a final moment of hesitation outside the 
 door, entered the drawing-room. 
 
 Jacob was standing by the mantelpiece, looking, she 
 thought, a little stern. "Well," she said, "here I am at 
 last." She went straight over to the sofa and sat down. 
 
 "I thought you were never coming," he said, and he came 
 and sat down near her, but not very near. 
 
 "It's Alice's afternoon out," replied Betty, and looked at 
 him questioningly, trying to read his mood. He was not 
 usually so restrained when they were alone together. She 
 wondered whether he was regretting so soon the responsi- 
 bility he had assumed last night, or was he merely vexed? 
 Did he think she had been trying to avoid him ? 
 
 19
 
 20 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I had to help Olive, you see," she went on quickly. 
 "She's leaving in a few days, and she's being rather tire- 
 some." 
 
 "Curse Olive!" said Jacob. "Was that why you didn't 
 come up to lunch?" 
 
 She nodded. "Were you expecting me ?" she asked fool- 
 ishly. 
 
 "I hoped," he said. 
 
 She felt that she must break through this restraint of his. 
 "Is anything the matter ?" she said. 
 
 "Matter? No! Why?" 
 
 "Oh, well, you are rather funny this afternoon." 
 
 He came a little nearer and took her hand. "You meant 
 what you said last night, dear ?" he asked. 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 Now that she was with him, she did not want to think of 
 the future ; she was satisfied with the present. She felt that 
 she could be content to let things go on as they had been 
 going for the past eight months, if only he, too, would be 
 content. 
 
 "That's not a very convincing answer," he said. 
 
 "I don't know what else I can say," returned Betty. 
 
 "It was the tone more than the words," said Jacob. 
 
 "Of course I meant what I said," she repeated. 
 
 She saw a flicker of doubt cross his face, but he went on : 
 "Will you come soon ?" 
 
 She fenced. "Where are you suggesting we should go?" 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "Does that matter? I 
 thought of Cornwall. One can live cheaply down there." 
 
 "We shall have to live very cheaply, shan't we?" said 
 Betty, and her tone and expression suggested a whimsical 
 doubt as to whether they would be able to live at all. 
 
 "Oh, I think we shall have enough," he replied with con- 
 fidence. "I've got nearly a hundred pounds in the bank, 
 and I'm making on an average about ten pounds a month by 
 reviewing, counting what I get by selling some of the 
 books."
 
 TWO DAYS 81 
 
 "And supposing," said Betty, "that your editor didn't 
 send you any more books to review ?" 
 
 "Oh, of course, if you are going to start supposing," said 
 Jacob, with a touch of temper, and added: "Supposing I 
 died, for instance. . . ." 
 
 "What would become of me?" continued Betty thought- 
 fully. 
 
 "Betty !" he said sharply. 
 
 "What?" She looked up at him for a moment, and then 
 looked away again. She could not meet the reproach in his 
 face. 
 
 "You mean that you want to get out of it," he said. 
 
 That was what she had meant, and she was quite aware 
 of it. "No, no, I don't, dear," was her answer ; "only, surely 
 we must be a little practical about it, and consider the 
 future." 
 
 "Back again at the old place," said Jacob. He got up 
 quickly from the sofa, went over to the window, and stood 
 there with his back to the room. 
 
 Betty sat still. The choice was still unmade then, she 
 thought. That cloud which had hung over her all the morn- 
 ing might still be dissipated. Already she was conscious of 
 a feeling of relief. Why should she not end everything 
 now, once and for ever ? There would be a scene quite a 
 short scene, probably and then he would go away and for- 
 get her. She put her head back on the sofa-cushions and 
 shut her eyes. 
 
 For quite five minutes neither of them moved or spoke. 
 The green-veined marble clock on the mantelpiece let off a 
 single sharp "ping." At that Jacob turned quickly. "Surely 
 it isn't half-past three yet," he said. 
 
 "I think it's fast," replied Betty. 
 
 "Must be. Quite a quarter of an hour." 
 
 "About that, I think," she agreed. 
 
 Jacob moved out of the window and sat down in a chair a 
 few feet from the sofa. "Doesn't matter smoking in here 
 this afternoon?" he asked; and when she shook her head, 
 he lighted a cigarette.
 
 22 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 This was to be the end, was the thought in Betty's mind. 
 Perhaps there would not even be a scene. 
 
 "In a sense," began Jacob suddenly, and without apparent 
 reference to anything that had gone before "in a sense, I 
 am acting a part. 'I am to-day what yesterday I was, to- 
 morrow I shall not be less' or more. But in the right 
 sense, as I see it, I am merely expressing something that 
 was potential in me before, which I had not had the cour- 
 age to express.'' 
 
 She looked at him, wondering. She was not sure what he 
 intended as yet. 
 
 "Something happened to me yesterday," he went on. "At 
 six o'clock or thereabouts I had quite determined to drown 
 myself. I had decided the place and the method and all 
 the details." He looked at her thoughtfully, and noted that 
 she winced ever so slightly. 
 
 "You can forget that," he said quickly. "I haven't the 
 least intention of doing that now, whatever you decide. I 
 had a moment of inspiration yesterday ; I saw what was the 
 matter with you, and me, and all of us." 
 
 "What?" asked Betty. 
 
 "Cowardice," replied Jacob. "Beastly, cringing, sloppy 
 fear ! We are afraid, you and me and all the lot of us. We 
 are afraid of what people will say and think ; we are afraid 
 to do anything that is not strictly conventional ; we are afraid 
 to be ourselves ; and we are even afraid of all sorts of con- 
 tingencies and eventualities in the future loss of work or 
 death. I'm not putting all this on to you, dear. I admit 
 that I have been and still am afraid ; that I try to count up 
 the cost and work it all out, as if I could see the future and 
 understand the present. Only if one is going to conduct all 
 one's life on those principles, it seems to me that it is best 
 to acknowledge it. Don't let us pretend that we are being 
 awfully wise and reasonable and full of common sense, be- 
 cause we are not. Let's just admit that we are two rotten 
 cowards, and that we won't fight for happiness because we 
 are so beastly afraid of what'll happen to us if we are so 
 outrageously daring. Let's be quite, quite honest and say
 
 TWO DAYS 23 
 
 that we are going to slave and be miserable, because we have 
 the spirits of slaves, and are going to do what Mrs. Par- 
 menter and the rest of the Parmenters of this world want 
 us to do. Shall we?" 
 
 "Oh! but, darling, it isn't only that," Betty broke out. 
 She had been listening intently, half impressed; but she 
 thought she saw the flaw in his argument. 
 
 "What then?" asked Jacob grimly. 
 
 "If if you weren't married," she stammered. "If it 
 was only a question of the money, I wouldn't mind, not for 
 an instant, you know I wouldn't. I would come to-morrow, 
 only 
 
 "Why didn't you say that last night?" he interrupted her. 
 
 "I wasn't quite myself last night," said Betty. She puck- 
 ered her forehead and drew her brows together. 
 
 "Meaning to say that you want to take it all back?" sug- 
 gested Jacob. 
 
 "No, not exactly; I ..." She paused, for Jacob was 
 smiling. His face expressed a genuine, if somewhat wist- 
 ful, amusement. 
 
 "What?" asked Betty succinctly. 
 
 "Oh, my Lord !" said Jacob, "it is awfully difficult. Do 
 you know that I have only just realised that I have been 
 doing the old thing all over again, only in a new way 
 arguing, and all the rest of it, only from another stand- 
 point. Oh, Betty, my dear, it is hard not to be oneself." 
 
 She was puzzled. "What do you mean, dear ?" she asked. 
 
 He was still smiling. He came and sat beside her on the 
 sofa and put his arms about her. "Why didn't you tell 
 me?" he said. 
 
 "I don't understand," expostulated Betty ; but she leaned 
 her head against him and let him kiss her. 
 
 "That was all wrong, that argument," he said. "That 
 wasn't part of the inspiration at all. I am going to do it 
 properly now." 
 
 "How ?" she put in. 
 
 He held her closer still. "Like this, dear," he went on. 
 "We aren't going to argue any more. You are just coming
 
 24 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 away with me soon; and you're not to talk any more non- 
 sense about money and my dying, and all the rest of it. 
 Leave that to me. And it's no good saying 'no,' for I say 
 'yes/ and I'm not going to accept any excuses. You've got 
 to come." 
 
 And again a feeling of rest and peace came to Betty. 
 The applauding influences were round about her once more. 
 Why should she worry? Why should she not leave every- 
 thing to him? He took all the responsibility. She was 
 about to answer him, when they heard soft and rather slov- 
 enly footsteps descending the stairs. 
 
 "Damn it!" said Jacob. "Here's that cursed old Par- 
 menter !" 
 
 They moved apart quickly. 
 
 II 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter looked into the room, advancing her head 
 round the door, while her body as yet remained invisible. 
 "Oh !" she ejaculated ; "I didn't know you were here" ; and 
 she hesitated a moment before coming into the room. 
 
 Jacob leaned back in the chair to which he had escaped, 
 with a movement of impatience, and then, frowning, pro- 
 duced and lighted another cigarette. 
 
 "Come in, dear," said Betty, smiling. "Couldn't you get 
 to sleep this afternoon?" 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter lifted her chin and swallowed. "It's the 
 heat, I think," she remarked, as she sat down. "I must say 
 I find it very trying. I don't remember when I felt it more 
 than I have the past few days." She drifted into a stream 
 of reminiscence concerning her past experience of hot 
 weather. 
 
 Jacob paid no attention. He was wondering whether 
 Betty had not been genuinely relieved by this interruption 
 of his pleading. He looked at her, and noted that she was 
 smiling, gracious. Why could she not let this intruding old 
 woman see that she was not wanted ? He, on his part, was 
 doing his best. There were plenty of other rooms in which
 
 TWO DAYS 25 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter might sit. Was it not because Betty was 
 afraid? If she intended to face the world, why should she 
 not make a beginning here, at once? She could have no 
 deep-seated intention, or why should she go out of her way 
 to propitiate Mrs. Parmenter to pretend that she preferred 
 her to stay in the room ? 
 
 The marble clock chimed four, catching its breath between 
 each stroke as if it feared interruption before its precious 
 message was delivered. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter peered up, short-sightedly, at the dial. 
 "Four o'clock," she remarked, apparently anxious to re- 
 assure the clock that due attention had been given to its 
 claim upon their attention. 
 
 Jacob was about to say that the clock was a quarter of an 
 hour fast, but Betty got up from the sofa and remarked 
 that she had better see about getting the tea, and it came to 
 him that after tea they might get rid of Mrs. Parmenter. 
 
 When he was alone with the older woman, it occurred to 
 him that he might cut the ground from under Betty's feet by 
 making some announcement of their intention. "It's only 
 a question of courage," he said to himself, and then there 
 came the suggestion, Would it be fair to Betty? Had he 
 the right to make any such announcement without her per- 
 mission ? After all, there were limits to one's influence over 
 another human being; there were definite cases in which 
 prudence was necessary. It was not all a question of fear. 
 
 As if in reply to his first impulse, Mrs. Parmenter gave 
 him an opening. 
 
 "And aren't you going to take any holiday this year, Mr. 
 Stoll?" she asked. "I'm surprised that you care to stay in 
 London through the heat, when you've nothing to keep 
 you." 
 
 "I am thinking of going away soon," said Jacob. 
 
 "You were saying something about Cornwall soon after 
 you first came, I remember six months or more ago it must 
 be now. Dear me! How time flies! Perhaps you were 
 thinking of going there ?" 
 
 "If I did go to Cornwall, I should stay there," said Jacob
 
 26 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 tentatively. He looked keenly at the ageing woman before 
 him to see if she would give any sign of comprehending the 
 thought in his mind. He noticed, for the first time, that her 
 lips drew together mechanically now and again ; it was an 
 incipient form of the "mouthing" of the aged. Already she 
 had begun to die, he thought; she had got nothing out of 
 life, and now there was no hope for her ! 
 
 "Well, well, we should be sorry to lose you, of course," 
 said Mrs. Parmenter ; "but I've noticed you've been looking 
 a little peaked lately, and, after all, health's the first con- 
 sideration." 
 
 Jacob was startled. This was a hint that could not be 
 mistaken. He remembered Mrs. Parmenter's eagerness to 
 keep him on that occasion six months ago when he had ex- 
 pressed his determination to leave. She suspected some- 
 thing, and he wondered whether she could possibly have 
 learned in some roundabout way that he was married. 
 
 "Do you want to get rid of me ?" he asked, with an air of 
 banter. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter's head quivered slightly, and again Jacob 
 thought, "She has begun to die." 
 
 "Not in that sense, of course," she replied vaguely. "Of 
 course, we should be very sorry to lose you. I do so like to 
 have literary gentlemen in the house. . . ." 
 
 "In what sense, then ?" prompted Jacob, as she paused. 
 
 "Well, as I'm sure you'll understand, Mr. Stoll," said 
 Mrs. Parmenter, and the signs of senile decay became more 
 marked as her nervousness increased, "we have to be very 
 careful in our position. And though I feel quite sure 
 quite sure that there's nothing more than harmless friend- 
 ship between you and Miss Gale perfectly harmless friend- 
 ship and I should be the last person to object in any way, 
 we have to think of people who are not perhaps too par- 
 ticular themselves, and aren't above thinking the worst of 
 other people. There are the German young gentlemen, for 
 instance very nice, well-behaved young gentlemen, I'm 
 sure, and I've no complaint to make against them ; but, being 
 foreigners, and used, no doubt, to different ways and so on,
 
 TWO DAYS 37 
 
 I'm afraid they don't look at friendship in quite the same 
 light as you and I. I know there's been talking, and I'm 
 sure you'll take a hint from me in the spirit in which it's 
 offered, Mr. Stoll." 
 
 Jacob had grown very red during this long speech, and 
 once or twice he had been on the verge of interruption. 
 Now he hesitated. He was afraid to compromise Betty in 
 any way without her consent. If he said that they were 
 "engaged," Betty might deny the statement when she re- 
 turned with the tea. Then embarrassment made him angry. 
 He was in a false position, and afraid to commit himself to 
 the truth. 
 
 "What rot !" he murmured. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter was affronted. Her head shook more 
 violently. "I don't think 'rot' " she approached the word 
 delicately, as if afraid of contamination "is quite a nice 
 word to use, Mr. Stoll," she said. 
 
 "Oh, well, perhaps not. I'm sorry," returned Jacob. 
 "But I do hate all this leering and suspicion among the 
 German boys, of course as if no one could be decently civil 
 to any woman without being well, beastly." 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter sucked in her lips and raised her eye- 
 brows. She was shocked now, as well as affronted. Jacob 
 had put the thing too plainly for decency, in her opinion, 
 and had thereby condemned himself. 
 
 "Well, I'm sure you'll think it over, Mr. Stoll," she said 
 with dignity. 
 
 Jacob sighed, got up, and walked over to the window. 
 He was trying to think of the right, convincing thing to say, 
 and he was conscious that nothing, however convincing to 
 the ordinary individual, could alter the opinion of this old 
 woman, who had long passed the stage when she could ac- 
 cept a new point of view. Her mind had become petrified. 
 Her very body was turning to stone, or ossifying, which 
 came to much the same thing. She was still the same out- 
 wardly, but, in fact, she was dead, had been dead ever since 
 any form of growth had become impossible for her. She
 
 28 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 should be labelled, thought Jacob savagely, "Here lies the 
 mind and spirit of one who has ceased to grow." 
 
 Before he had made up his mind how to reply, he heard 
 Betty bringing up the tea. 
 
 in 
 
 The air of constraint and artificiality which had followed 
 Mrs. Parmenter's coming, was even more pronounced when 
 Betty returned. She was instantly conscious that her part- 
 ner and Jacob had had some disagreement. She looked at 
 Jacob suspiciously, and the rather sulky, half -deprecating 
 glance he returned made her still more uneasy. "Was it 
 possible," she wondered, "that he had made some prema- 
 ture announcement?" Dread seized her. Outwardly she 
 appeared calm and practical as ever, inwardly she was shak- 
 ing with fear. If he had spoken without her consent, she 
 would deny everything he had said. He had no right to 
 attempt coercion. If she did take such a desperate step as 
 this, she must be a free agent. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter, with a black-bordered handkerchief 
 spread in her lap, was unusually* silent ; but she replied to 
 any remarks offered by Betty at sufficient length to show 
 that she had no specific cause of offence against her part- 
 ner. There was an air of deliberate gentility about these 
 conversational efforts of the older woman; she appeared 
 anxious to demonstrate that she could maintain a semblance 
 of decent calm, however ruffled. 
 
 At last, to Jacob's infinite relief, she gathered together the 
 corners of her handkerchief and carefully shook into the 
 slop-basin a few crumbs of rice-cake. Then she rose, and, 
 turning to Betty, said : "Could you come up to my room in 
 a quarter of an hour, dear?" 
 
 "Very well," returned Betty. 
 
 Jacob opened the door, and Mrs. Parmenter acknowledged 
 the courtesy by a slight bow as she passed him. 
 
 To Jacob she appeared as a dying woman, to Betty as the 
 representative of public opinion.
 
 TWO DAYS 29 
 
 "What have you been saying?" she asked, with a spurt 
 of anger, when Jacob had come back to the tea-table. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "I said nothing. It was 
 she who said things," he returned. "She has given me 
 notice." 
 
 Betty frowned. "Why? You must have told her some- 
 thing given her some hint." 
 
 "I didn't. I felt inclined to." 
 
 "Oh, but you mustn't!" she broke out vehemently. 
 "You've no right to. I haven't promised." 
 
 Jacob's eyebrows went up. "No ?" he asked bitterly. 
 
 "I have said I will come, and I will, of course," said 
 Betty ; "but I never said when. I won't be rushed into it." 
 
 Jacob looked at her and hesitated. How impossible it 
 seemed now to play the strong man, to put his arm round 
 her and insist! She would repulse him pettishly. She 
 would know that he was playing a part; he would know it 
 himself. In a mood of disgust with his own weakness, he 
 sought an outlet in ill-temper. 
 
 "Oh, I see!" he said. "There was a Jesuitical reserva- 
 tion. You promised the act, but not the time ; you can go on 
 putting it off and putting it off till we're both sick of each 
 other, and then ask me to release you from your promise." 
 
 "You haven't told me what Mrs. Parmenter said," pre- 
 varicated Betty. 
 
 "Oh, the usual rot!" He shrugged his shoulders again. 
 "She knew, of course, that everything was perfectly re- 
 spectable and genteel, but the German boys 'gentlemen' 
 she said had filthy minds, and were making horrible in- 
 sinuations, and perhaps, in the circumstances, it would be 
 better if I went to live in the Straits Settlements. I am not 
 trying to quote her exact words. That was the effect of it." 
 
 "And what did you say?" 
 
 "I said it was all rot." 
 
 "And then?" 
 
 "She sniffed as though the word was indecent." 
 
 "You didn't give her the least hint ?" 
 
 "Oh no, not the least. In the eyes of Mrs. Parmenter and
 
 30 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 the gentility she represents, you are still a pattern of re- 
 spectability. You are not compromised. You still have a 
 chance to attain your supreme destiny. You may still hope, 
 if you work hard enough, to become even as Mrs. Parmenter 
 some day." 
 
 Betty looked distressed. "You can't realise my position," 
 she said. "You can't put yourself in my place." 
 
 "I can," returned Jacob. "I can, but I don't want to. I 
 know what is the right thing for us to do. Yes, I do, I 
 know. And I don't want to dwell on all the things that will 
 make me afraid. I want to be brave, and you won't help 
 me." 
 
 She smiled faintly at that final admission of weakness ; it 
 made her long to help him. 
 
 "I'm sorry, dear," she said, and held out her hand. 
 
 He came and sat beside her. "It's a funny thing, isn't 
 it," he asked, "that at one moment you despise me for my 
 weakness, and the next moment it seems to be the only thing 
 that appeals to you. Why is it ?" 
 
 She shook her head. "I don't know; it's like that," she 
 said, and neither of them could find any other explanation. 
 
 "I must go and see Mrs. Parmenter," said Betty a few 
 minutes later. 
 
 Jacob frowned. "Why ?" he asked. 
 
 "You heard me say I would," she reminded him. 
 
 "Anyway, there's no hurry." 
 
 "Yes, I must go now. When I've seen Mrs. Parmenter, 
 I've got the sweets to make." 
 
 "Oh Lord !" ejaculated Jacob. 
 
 "Oh, well, never mind," said Betty soothingly, as she 
 stood up. "Everyone will be out to-morrow; we can do 
 what we like." 
 
 "That's a promise," urged Jacob. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Even if old Parmenter makes a fuss ?" 
 
 "You're sure you haven't said anything?" asked Betty, 
 suddenly alarmed again.
 
 TWO DAYS 31 
 
 "My dear, haven't I told you?" he said, with a touch of 
 irritation. 
 
 She smiled. "And hadn't you better go upstairs and do 
 some work?" she asked. 
 
 "There's not much to do just now," he said. "Holidays 
 and all that, you know. There are very few books coming 
 in." 
 
 Nevertheless, after Betty had gone, he went up to his 
 tiny box of a bedroom, and set himself to write a review. 
 He was intimidated by the thought that something of his 
 old incompetence was returning. It was true that he had 
 not been working much lately, and it was so easy to find an 
 excuse. And while it was also true that he had few books 
 in hand for review, and that these books were unimportant, 
 he realised that he might make work for himself; might 
 attempt articles, short stories. 
 
 This was a version of his old trouble. He could do the 
 work that was put before him, but he was seized with a 
 feeling of ennui and incapacity when called upon for inven- 
 tion or initiative. He had struggled against that weakness, 
 and once he had so far conquered it, apparently, as to write 
 a novel. He had written it against the grain by an effort 
 of will, and when the thing was finished, he knew it to be 
 worthless. He had never submitted it to a publisher, and 
 now he was thankful that he had destroyed the manuscript. 
 "Rotten" was the only word he ever used to describe that 
 novel to himself. That was his final and perfectly sincere 
 criticism. 
 
 But when he had finished his review, he still sat, pen in 
 hand, looking at the clean sheets of foolscap which lay be- 
 fore him, and a sudden urgent desire to write came to him. 
 He had no plan in his mind, no idea whether for a novel, 
 an article, or a short story. He only wanted to put words 
 on paper ; what words he did not know. Surely no man or 
 woman ever began a book with less regard for Meredith's 
 advice ! 
 
 He got up and paced the room two steps to the door and 
 two back to the table. In his mind a fierce argument was
 
 32 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 in progress. One part of himself was logically opposing 
 another, a quite unreasonable part. His thoughts fell into 
 dialogue, and the reasonable side said pettishly : "How can 
 I write, you fool, when I haven't the least idea what to write 
 about?" "Never mind," came the answer, "sit down 
 and write!" "But how can I begin?" still more peevishly 
 asked the logical Jacob. "Sit down and try," was the fool- 
 ish response. 
 
 "Oh, all right!" said Jacob aloud, still defiant, still bent 
 on demonstrating his inability. 
 
 He sat down and picked up his pen, and the action seemed 
 to bring that other side of him into command. "Something, 
 anything," he murmured, and almost unconsciously began. 
 This is what he wrote : 
 
 "He awoke and sat up. He was afraid of the darkness. 
 He held his breath and listened. Had they had prayers? 
 Were they all gone to bed ? He could not remember whether 
 his mother had been in to say good-night . . ." 
 
 "I haven't the least idea what it's all about," chuckled 
 Jacob, "but it's a beginning." 
 
 He had a picture in his mind of a little boy in bed, terri- 
 fied at the darkness, and, as he wrote, the feeling of the 
 scene grew upon him ; he experienced ; he shivered with 
 dread ; his hands and feet grew cold. 
 
 He went on to describe the sound of a footstep in the hall 
 below, and he followed the sound slowly up the stairs, paus- 
 ing frequently for some word to convey the value of the 
 noises he himself could hear so vividly in imagination. 
 
 When the sound of footsteps reached the door, the boy 
 cried out. He was convinced that it was a burglar, and 
 despite his terrors he jumped out of bed and opened the 
 door, only to discover his father in a dressing-gown with a 
 candle in his hand. 
 
 At that point Jacob laid down his pen and sat for a long 
 time staring out of the window. The urgent desire to write 
 had gone, but in place of it had come a vision of the story's 
 continuation. He saw that what he had written was in 
 some sense an allegory, a parable of the boy's determination
 
 TWO DAYS 33 
 
 to investigate life in face of all terrors. And he saw the 
 story of the boy's future developing in a novel without plot 
 or climax. Scenes came to him without effort, episodes that 
 related his hero in some degree to the experiences of Jacob's 
 own life. But the figure of the boy was not his own, and it 
 was miraculously clear. He could see with perfect distinct- 
 ness every detail of the boy's face and expression, and when 
 the period of the story was suddenly shifted, the boy ap- 
 peared as a youth, as middle-aged man, as an old man, and 
 in each vision he could trace a resemblance to the child who 
 sat up in bed and was afraid of the darkness. 
 
 "Now, that's a story I could write," thought Jacob ; "but 
 I suppose no publisher would look at it." 
 
 Nevertheless he felt extraordinarily elated and happy. 
 He felt strong and capable, he was conscious of wonderful 
 power. 
 
 A tap at the door startled him. 
 
 "Are you coming down to supper?" asked Betty, putting 
 her head into the room. 
 
 "Oh yes. Is it ready ?" he asked. 
 
 "All but," she said. 
 
 "Come in one minute, dear," he said excitedly. "I've 
 got something to read to you. I want to know what you 
 think of it." 
 
 "Is there time now ?" she asked. 
 
 "Yes, rather. It's only three pages," said Jacob. "You 
 can leave the door open. Come and sit on the bed." 
 
 She hesitated a moment, but she came in and sat down. 
 He read his three pages to her. 
 
 "What do you think of it?" he asked eagerly. 
 
 "It's awfully real," she said. "What happened after- 
 wards ?" 
 
 He made a gesture. "That's a whole book," he explained. 
 "I'll tell you after supper if we get a chance. But, honestly, 
 do you really like that bit ?" 
 
 "I do! I like it very much," said Betty. "I want to 
 hear some more. Are you going to write the whole book ?" 
 
 He nodded emphatically. "It's an inspiration," he said ;
 
 34 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 and then characteristically, "but I don't suppose any pub- 
 lisher would take it." 
 
 "Don't be so silly!" Betty encouraged him. "How can 
 you possibly tell? Personally, that's the sort of writing I 
 love. I love the detail of it." 
 
 "Did it make you feel like the boy felt?" he asked, still 
 longing for praise. 
 
 "Absolutely," said Betty. 
 
 "Good!" said Jacob. He got up and stood in front of 
 her. "That's the sort of book I can write," he explained. 
 
 "Well, you shall," she returned. 
 
 "I will, if you'll help me," he said. 
 
 "How can / help you ?" she asked. 
 
 "By doing what you've done this evening. You've no 
 idea what a difference it makes oh ! all the difference in the 
 world. With you, I could do anything." 
 
 Betty looked faintly distressed. "Help me up," she said, 
 and held out her hands to him. 
 
 "I've been talking to Mrs. Parmenter," she said. 
 
 "What did she say?" he asked. 
 
 "Lots of things. Come on; supper's all ready. I'll tell 
 you afterwards," replied Betty. 
 
 The little room was growing dark. Outside, the landing 
 was darker still. But when they had come out of Jacob's 
 bedroom and closed the door behind them, Betty was con- 
 scious of a feeling of relief and of safety. Here, in the 
 darkness of the public landing, she could speak of things 
 with greater freedom. She stopped and took Jacob's hand. 
 
 "Do you really want me so much ?" she whispered. 
 
 "More than I can tell you," he replied, and for a moment 
 they stood quite still, peering at each other in the dusk. 
 
 "I will come," she said at last. 
 
 IV 
 
 Her interview with Mrs. Parmenter had been anything 
 but satisfactory.
 
 TWO DAYS 35 
 
 Betty had found her partner sitting at the window with an 
 air of exaggerated resignation. Her bony hands lay placidly 
 in her lap, seamed hands, the backs corrugated with an en- 
 tangled cordage of hard upstanding veins. At her thin and 
 hollowed temples, also, the veins stood out as if they thrust 
 their way with difficulty between the bone and the shrunken 
 skin. Her cap and toupe were arranged with precision. 
 Her whole attitude expressed a dry and faded dignity. 
 
 Betty closed the door softly behind her and came forward 
 and stood by the little table in the window. The room 
 affected her unpleasantly. It was unlike the rest of the 
 house. This bedroom contained all the few mementoes of 
 Mrs. Parmenter's earlier life, typified, in some sense, by 
 crocheted lace and wool, by the plush of the photograph 
 frames, by the pleated silk behind the glass of the tall, nar- 
 row bookcase silk that appeared brown unless one un- 
 folded the pleats, to be startled by the original, vivid green 
 by old and dirty macrame work, by bulging glass letter- 
 weights that disclosed magnified, distorted views of 
 Brighton or St. Paul's Cathedral, by all the meaningless 
 ornament and fussy, dusty material that marked the middle- 
 class home in the period conveniently dubbed Mid-Victorian. 
 It was all faded and dry; the room smelt faintly musty, 
 the smell of old, stale lavender. 
 
 "Sit down, dear," said Mrs. Parmenter; and Betty sat 
 down in an unsteady chair, with legs that were turned to 
 represent a string of welded balls. The chair was still black 
 and shiny, but the glory of its pristine gilding could be seen 
 in those covered retreats which had escaped polishing. 
 
 "I want to know what you're going to do ?" said Mrs. Par- 
 menter. 
 
 "About what?" prevaricated Betty. 
 
 "Things can't go on like this," returned Mrs. Parmenter. 
 "There ought to be some understanding. It isn't only the 
 German young gentlemen, there's Mrs. Blakey coming back 
 Tuesday, and she's shown plainly enough already what she 
 thinks of it, besides Miss Dalkeith and Mr. Franklin. I 
 don't say there's anything wrong I'm quite sure there
 
 36 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 isn't but I feel there ought to be some sort of under- 
 standing." 
 
 "Yes," said Betty. 
 
 "If he hasn't spoken . . ." continued Mrs. Parmenter, but 
 Betty interrupted her. 
 
 "He has," she said, and felt tempted to add that he had 
 spoken of nothing else for three months. 
 
 "Very well, that clears the way," said Mrs. Parmenter. 
 "If, as you say, he has spoken and you've accepted him" 
 she paused, but Betty made no reply "and you've accepted 
 him, the engagement ought to be announced, and Mr. Stoll 
 ought to go and live in another house until he can afford to 
 get married. He could come here, perhaps, to dinner once 
 a week, and you might see him now and again outside ; and 
 he might take you to a theatre when he could afford it. I 
 understand that he hasn't any means to speak of . . ." 
 
 Betty lost the drift of her partner's thin, even monologue. 
 She was wondering if she dare tell the truth. She saw 
 clearly enough the selfishness of this dry, elderly woman, 
 knew that all this creaking, conventional speech covered a 
 living eagerness to retain her services in the boarding-house. 
 That was the essential from Mrs. Parmenter's point of 
 view; the failing creature knew well enough that without 
 the help of this active, vital young woman, the boarding- 
 house could not be kept decent. Betty was not only man- 
 ager and caterer, she was also cook and head-housemaid ; 
 she did the work of two servants, and did it better than any 
 two servants could have done it. She was so keen and so 
 practical, she took such an interest in her work, was so 
 anxious that the venture should succeed and it was suc- 
 ceeding. 
 
 Betty saw her partner's point of view clearly enough, but 
 she did not resent it. She was sorry for the older woman. 
 Mrs. Parmenter's life had not been a success, and Betty, 
 with her warm, generous impulses, wished to make the poor 
 creature's last days as happy as might be. Mrs. Parmenter 
 was a distant connection by marriage. She had married a 
 cousin of Betty's mother's, a man who had failed in his
 
 TWO DAYS 87 
 
 business and then absconded. No one knew whether he 
 were alive or dead. He had eluded pursuit. But most 
 damning of all, from the present point of view, Mr. Par- 
 menter had run away with another woman. Betty knew all 
 too well what her partner's attitude would be towards un- 
 faithful husbands. And she herself, when she was sur- 
 rounded by this atmosphere of gentility, could appreciate 
 that attitude. It did not appear either foolish or lifeless. 
 It agreed with all she had been taught, with all that she 
 had believed until a few months ago. 
 
 She tapped her lower teeth with her thumb-nail and stared 
 out of the window. 
 
 ". .. . to say nothing of your own future," her elderly, 
 worldly-wise partner was saying. "Don't think as I've 
 anything to say against Mr. Stoll, who's a nice, quiet, well- 
 behaved young gentleman enough, so far as I've been able 
 to judge, but I have my doubts whether he'll ever be able to 
 provide you with a home. I should be the last person to 
 say anything against him behind his back, but" and her 
 old head trembled with the effort to suppress her emotion 
 "it doesn't seem to me as he'll ever do much ; a little lacka- 
 daisical, I've thought, and perhaps not too fond of work, or 
 how does it come about that he's so badly off ? and I suppose 
 he must be past thirty. I've had some experience, my 
 dear, as you know well enough, and when a young man has 
 got no prospects at his age, it's fairly certain as he never will 
 have. . . ." 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter was adopting the worst possible line of 
 argument. Age had dulled her powers of insight. Betty's 
 change of attitude, from that listless fidgeting with her teeth 
 to the slight frown, the determined set of the mouth and the 
 still hands, seemed a good sign to Mrs. Parmenter. Her 
 dull, slow eyes watched and noted, but her spirit could no 
 longer influence the inertia of the failing flesh; she merely 
 saw, she could not comprehend. She thought that her cause 
 was won. She searched her mind for the final, compelling 
 argument. 
 
 Betty was thinking now of Jacob. She was freed from
 
 38 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 the bonds of that musty room. A great thrill o-f unselfish 
 love had swept through her. It was in her power to save 
 him from failure. She knew his weaknesses and loved him 
 for them. It was hers to give. She could help him, he had 
 told her so a hundred times. It was for her to sacrifice her- 
 self, to face all the contempt she dreaded. She dare not 
 even express the truth to this poor, incipiently paralytic old 
 woman. 
 
 "I love him," said Betty suddenly in the middle of Mrs. 
 Parmenter's final argument. 
 
 The older woman looked shocked, and the trembling of 
 her head became so marked that she had to make strange, 
 stretching movements of her neck to hide her agitation. 
 She appeared to be swallowing some obstinate, unmasticated 
 crumb. 
 
 "Of course, in that case . . ." she began with an affecta- 
 tion of dignity. 
 
 "Only," continued Betty, "there's there's a reason why 
 we shouldn't be married just yet." 
 
 Panic had been responsible for the last two words. On 
 the verge of full confession, she had been overwhelmed with 
 shame. She could not dare the truth. She hid her face in 
 her hands. 
 
 "Well, to be sure there is," returned the blind woman in 
 the stiff armchair. "You'd hardly get married on twopence 
 a week, I suppose, even if you only had your two selves to 
 think of, and to bring children into the world . . ." 
 
 Betty rose quickly. "There's no question of that," she 
 said. "But I don't see that we shall do any good by talking. 
 I'll do something. You're quite right things can't go on. 
 I must go now. I've got the sweets to make for supper." 
 
 She went out quickly and ran down into the kitchen. She 
 felt the necessity for active occupation. She was always 
 somewhat impetuous in her actions, but this evening she 
 almost scared Olive by the urgency of her movements. 
 
 But when her sweet-making was accomplished, there was 
 still half an hour to be lived before supper, and she went 
 into her gloomy, underground bedroom and tried desper-
 
 TWO DAYS 39 
 
 ately to think. Yet she did not, could not, think ; she only 
 felt, and the one clear solution which came to her was that 
 this war within herself could not continue. She must 
 choose. She must decide definitely. If she adopted one 
 course or the other, she could be at peace again. Either 
 course would bring a restful certainty, and really, at that 
 moment, she did not care which she adopted, if only the 
 whole affair could be settled for ever. 
 
 She went up to Jacob's bedroom at a quarter past eight, 
 intending to break her promise of the night before, to tell 
 him he must go away and never see her again. 
 
 On the stairs she changed her mind, and decided to put off 
 decision until the next morning. 
 
 And then she had found him, full of enthusiasm ; his face 
 alight with the glow of success. She had listened to his 
 work, and she had believed in it and in him. He would do 
 great things with her to help him, she had thought. His 
 little room was throbbing with the promise of achieve- 
 ment. . 
 
 "I will come," she said in the darkness of the landing. 
 
 He put his arms round her and held her tightly. 
 
 "With you, darling," he whispered, "anything, everything 
 is possible." 
 
 "But I must go home first. Just for one day to see my 
 father and my sisters," she said. 
 
 "They won't influence you?" 
 
 "No oh no." 
 
 "Shall you tell them everything?" 
 
 "I don't know. Perhaps." 
 
 They were so near together, their faces touching, that 
 they whispered their brief interchanges of question and 
 answer into each other's ears. But her final whisper was 
 so soft, that, even so, he could hardly hear her. 
 
 "There can't . . . there won't be ... anyone but us, 
 ever, I mean, unless we could be properly married ?" 
 
 He was ready to promise her anything she wished.
 
 Ill 
 
 BEECHCOMBE 
 
 THE train had been very full, and even the orderly 
 crowd which had been going to spend its day in the 
 space and sunlight of the Chiltern Hills had shown its con- 
 sciousness that this was the August Bank Holiday. There 
 had been an air of anticipation and eagerness about them all, 
 and their excitement had for the moment partly dominated 
 their natural middle-class reserve. Even the two middle- 
 aged young women who had at first attempted an appear- 
 ance of detachment, had begun to talk to the other occupants 
 of the compartment before they reached Chorley Wood. 
 Everyone had essayed some embroidery of the satisfactory 
 and conclusive statement that it was "perfect weather," 
 and, failing to improve the effect by mere phrase, had fallen 
 back upon presenting the contrast of earlier bank holidays 
 they had known. Sometimes they so far lost themselves in 
 reminiscence as to lose momentarily their sense of present 
 enjoyment until recalled by a young man in the corner, who 
 invariably wound up every such retrospect by saying cheer- 
 fully: "Well, it's all right to-day, anyhow." Betty had 
 tried in vain to forget herself in this jolly atmosphere of 
 pleased expectation. She felt miserably alone and apart 
 from the happy crowd. She could not forget the cloud 
 which hung over her, the dread of the future, the knowl- 
 edge that she was purposing to do something which, as she 
 phrased it, would cut her off for ever from all decent 
 people. 
 
 Now that she was away from Jacob, she saw the problem 
 so clearly from the old point of view. She had always been 
 taught to renounce the lusts of the flesh, and however re- 
 
 40
 
 TWO DAYS 41 
 
 mote was the clear purpose of her mind from any concep- 
 tion of lust, she saw but this one antithesis. That was the 
 alternative which every relation or friend she had ever had 
 would set up as the indisputable test. It was a choice be- 
 tween becoming the mistress of a married man and continu- 
 ing the struggle of her ordinary life. They would tell her 
 that she must "renounce," and no words of hers could ever 
 make plain to them that to do what they would call the im- 
 moral thing needed the greater courage, was the greater act 
 of renunciation. That was a perfectly clear issue she could 
 never make these relations of hers understand, and it seemed 
 to her that surely the mass of opinion must be right, and 
 that all Jacob's argument must be one elusive sophistry 
 Jesuitical was her only word for it but her intention was 
 the same. Jacob had his own purpose to serve ; her father 
 and sisters would be comparatively detached in giving their 
 advice. Nevertheless, she did not esteem Jacob's purpose as 
 any less worthy than her own. He loved her, and she did 
 not doubt the quality of his love. 
 
 And that one warm thought brought the only glow of 
 comfort and happiness which upheld her in her distress 
 she was loved for the first time in her life, and the fact had 
 altered her relations even to the commonplace circumstances 
 of existence. To-day she had not been offended by the 
 mute admiration of the unattached optimist who had re- 
 turned so persistently to his reminder of present serenity. 
 His surreptitious glances had been a cause of interest, 
 whereas six months ago they would have seemed to her 
 offensive. She was newly awake to an aspect of life she had 
 never before understood. She saw how universal and im- 
 mensely important was this strange stimulus which she had 
 so persistently misread. 
 
 As she walked slowly up the long steep hill from the 
 station, she felt that she was not the same person who had 
 so often traversed that familiar road. She remembered 
 how she had first been brought to see the wonder of the 
 new station at Great Missenden, and had been slightly in- 
 timidated by her sight of the enormous, noisy train. But
 
 42 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 that childish figure with the loose mane of fair hair was 
 less remote from her present self than her vision of the 
 sedate young woman returning to Bloomsbury just a year 
 ago, the Betty who had reproved her younger sister for 
 "larking" with the curate. She had said it was not "nice," 
 and at Hilda's retort had warmed to the insult that it was 
 "so common." 
 
 Yet here was this same Betty secretly unashamed of the 
 knowledge that she was wooed by a man who had a wife 
 living, a Betty who had been interested in the bashful ad- 
 miration of a young bank-holiday clerk. 
 
 Even when she had reached the plateau, and was making 
 her way along the dull straight mile of straggling village, 
 subject to constant recognition by her father's parishioners, 
 some of whom complimented her on her appearance and la- 
 mented that she never came to see them now, even then, in 
 the midst of the familiar associations which had made up 
 the greater part of her life, she was intensely conscious of 
 the new, strange spirit within her. "If you only knew," 
 she thought, "I wonder whether you would care to speak to 
 me at all." In imagination she saw the leers and winks 
 which would be exchanged after her back was turned ; she 
 heard the gossip : "She's no better than she should be." 
 
 ii 
 
 When she reached the Rectory gate, the sound of voices 
 came to her from the lawn, and she stopped and listened, 
 hidden from the speakers by the thick shrubbery of laurel 
 which shielded the garden from the drive. 
 
 The voices were those of her two sisters. They were 
 playing tennis, not very seriously, if Betty could judge by 
 the comments they made on each other's play, but evidently 
 with considerable animation. "Oh, Violet, you booby, fancy 
 missing that!" she heard; and the reply: "Well, it's too 
 hot to run. Go on ; that's thirty-all, isn't it ? You're in the 
 wrong court, duffer !" 
 
 They had always been different from her, those two, less
 
 TWO DAYS 43 
 
 serious, less practical. She had always had some sense of 
 superiority; she had been something more than an elder 
 sister, her attitude towards them had been that of an older 
 generation. She was only separated from Violet by three 
 years, and from Hilda by five, but they had seemed to re- 
 gard her as belonging to another set of interests. They had 
 combined against her, like children with common delights 
 of which she knew nothing. 
 
 But never had she felt so apart from them as now. Al- 
 ready she was cut off by interests so divergent that she felt 
 like a stranger in this, the only home she had ever known. 
 She was aware of a feeling of shyness, as if she intruded 
 her presence on a strange family. 
 
 She drew herself up and walked quickly through the wire 
 arch that gave access to the lawn. 
 
 "Hallo, you two!" was her greeting. 
 
 "Good Heavens ! It's Betty !" exclaimed Violet. "Where 
 on earth did you spring from ? Got a holiday ?" 
 
 And Hilda, on the far side of the net, opened her eyes to 
 their widest, feigning extravagant and gawky surprise. 
 
 Their kisses were the most perfunctory acknowledgment 
 of sisterhood, and when the three had sat down on the old 
 garden-seat under the elms, their inquiries into Betty's news 
 and her reasons for this unexpected visit displayed a lack 
 of interest, that they made little attempt to disguise. 
 
 It was plain at once that they were bursting with some 
 secret of their own. They exchanged glances, giggled, and 
 Hilda constantly entreated Violet to "shut up !" although her 
 tone and manner showed the delight she took in this, to 
 Betty, meaningless badinage. 
 
 "Oh, come on," said Betty at last, "do tell me what you're 
 giggling about ?" 
 
 "Ask the kid," responded Violet. 
 
 "Look here, Vi, you'll have to drop calling me 'the kid' 
 now," said Hilda, and smacked at her sister's foot with the 
 tennis-racquet she was still holding. 
 
 "The kid's grown up now," explained Violet.
 
 44 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Oh, shut up, old girl !" put in Hilda ; "you needn't make 
 a joke of it." Her tone was suddenly more serious. 
 
 "I wasn't making a joke of it, touchy," returned Violet. 
 "Tell her yourself." 
 
 "Oh, I can't !" said Hilda, blushing furiously. 
 
 "Well, do one of you tell me," urged Betty. "She hasn't 
 got engaged, has she ?" 
 
 Violet nodded vehemently, and Hilda began to take an 
 enormous interest in patting the gravel with her racquet. 
 
 "Who to?" asked Betty. 
 
 "Mr. Phelps. We call him Frank now," said Violet. 
 
 "But . . ." began Betty. 
 
 "He's got a living in Worcestershire," said Violet, antici- 
 pating her sister's objection. "Last week." 
 
 "Well, I think you might have written to me," expostu- 
 lated Betty ; and, turning to Hilda, she put an arm round her 
 shoulders and said: "I'm awfully glad, old girl!" 
 
 "Thanks, dear, it is rather ripping," replied Hilda, with- 
 out looking up from her work on the path. 
 
 "We haven't had time to write," explained Violet. "It 
 only happened last night. After supper. They went out to 
 look at the moon or something, and then Frank came back 
 looking as if he'd just come down from Mount Sinai . . ." 
 
 "Oh, shut up, Vi !" interpolated Hilda. 
 
 "And after prayers he told father that he and Hilda were 
 engaged, and was father prepared to give them his bless- 
 
 ing 
 
 'When is it going to be?" asked Betty. 
 
 "I don't know," said Hilda, still intent on spoiling her 
 racquet. "Ages yet, I expect." 
 
 "What bosh !" said Violet. "It is going to be pretty soon. 
 Frank's going to be inducted in September, and he told 
 father that he doesn't see any reason why it shouldn't be in 
 October. Hilda's twenty-one. It'll be jolly rotten for me 
 after she's gone," Violet went on. "Father's been talking 
 this morning about your coming back, Betty. Funny your 
 turning up like this. I don't know whether he really meant 
 it, though. Aunt Mary's here. She came down for the
 
 TWO DAYS 45 
 
 holidays, and perhaps she'll come for good." Violet's tone 
 did not indicate which of the two evils she would dislike 
 more the return of her sister or the permanent residence 
 of Aunt Mary. 
 
 Betty drew her own inferences, and determined that noth- 
 ing should ever induce her to return to the Rectory as 
 housekeeper and chaperone; but she avoided any comment 
 on that issue by asking : 
 
 "Will Mr. Phelps be here to lunch?" 
 
 "No, he's gone down to see his own people and spread 
 the glad tidings," said Violet. 
 
 "Oh, come on !" said Hilda, getting to her feet. "Aren't 
 you going in to see father, Bet ? He's in his study, I ex- 
 pect." 
 
 "All right," said Betty. "Go and tell him I'm here. I'll 
 come directly. I've hardly got cool yet after that walk from 
 the station." 
 
 "We'd have met you if you'd let us know," said Violet. 
 
 "I didn't know myself till this morning," replied Betty. 
 "I didn't want to wire. A two-mile walk won't kill me." 
 
 She watched her two sisters move away across the lawn 
 locked in a school-girl embrace. They were curiously 
 young, she thought. Hilda was not unlike herself in ap- 
 pearance, fair and blue-eyed, but Hilda was taller and 
 slighter. Violet, dark and noticeably thin, was unlike 
 either of them. 
 
 When they had passed out of sight round the corner of 
 the house, Betty's thoughts turned to the contemplation of 
 the coming interview with her father. Dare she tell him, 
 she wondered, and then, ought she to tell him ? There was 
 Hilda to be considered, and Violet, her father, Aunt Mary, 
 the family generally, and, incidentally, Mr. Phelps. (Betty 
 remembered him as a rather commonplace young man, with 
 a thick, fair moustache, whose chief characteristics were a 
 conscientious interest in the parish and a passion for fish- 
 ing.) How could she spring a terrible scandal on this com- 
 posed, convinced group of people? They had only one 
 standard of propriety and ethics, and it was her own stand-
 
 46 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 ard. She recalled the last serious interview she had had 
 with her father, when she had faced him in his study and 
 declared her intention of earning her own living. He had 
 been shocked then. Her intention had evidently appeared 
 to him as not quite "seemly" his own word, to which he 
 had reverted more than once in the course of their argu- 
 ment. He had confessed that he was unable to see his 
 daughter's point of view. 
 
 But on that occasion she had had sound and convincing 
 reasons to adduce for her proposal. The economic point 
 was too good to be passed by. "I don't suppose I shall ever 
 marry," she had said ; "I don't think I'm that sort, and I 
 feel I ought to begin to do something now . . ." She had 
 hesitated to make a complete statement, but her father had 
 understood. 
 
 "Of course, of course," he had said, "I quite see your 
 point, my dear girl. If anything happens to me, as it in- 
 evitably will in God's good time, it may become necessary 
 for you to support yourself but . . ." He had hesitated, 
 and looked past Betty at the bookcase with a certain wrin- 
 kling of the forehead she knew so well. "But Mrs. Parmen- 
 ter a dear, good creature, of course, and very worthy 
 her husband, I'm afraid, was a blackguard still she's not 
 er quite one of us, you know, my dear, and ... do you 
 really think a boarding-house, eh?" 
 
 "It's a chance," Betty had replied stubbornly, without 
 touching on the subsidiary question, "and chances aren't 
 easy to find." 
 
 He had given in on that occasion, but she could not doubt 
 that he had clearly recognised his own interests. Betty's 
 departure would reduce household expenses. And his final 
 display of temper was, almost certainly, a mark of his weak- 
 ness. He had been angry with her for putting the tempta- 
 tion to selfishness before him. 
 
 There had been an excuse for her then ; there was none 
 now. And would not Jacob Stahl, from her description of 
 him, most surely rank with Mrs. Parmenter as "not er 
 quite one of us, you know" ?
 
 TWO DAYS 47 
 
 Betty grew suddenly warm at the thought of that expres- 
 sion. If it came to a championship of Jacob, she would be 
 quite equal to the occasion. 
 
 "I am a coward," she reflected. "I don't believe I can 
 ever face telling them." It was certainly a consolation to 
 feel that duty and inclination coincided. "In any case, I 
 can't say anything about it until Hilda is married," was her 
 final decision, and she got up from the seat with a very real 
 sense of relief. 
 
 After that decision the interview had no longer any ter- 
 rors for her, but as she walked towards the house, Hilda 
 and Violet returned to say that their father and Aunt Mary 
 had gone out into the parish, so she resumed her seat and 
 watched her two sisters finish their interrupted set. 
 
 in 
 
 Her father's greeting was warmer than she had antici- 
 pated, and his grievance that she had not been down to see 
 them for so long wore an aspect of paternal tenderness. 
 Aunt Mary was quite effusive, but that was to be expected. 
 She was a warm-hearted, generous little woman, and lived 
 her religion with a sincerity that was often embarrassing. 
 
 The old familiar influences were taking hold of Betty, 
 drawing her back to the comfort and serenity of this coun- 
 try Rectory. The dining-room had a certain solid dignity 
 of its own, despite the shabbiness of some of the furniture, 
 and there was a feeling of assurance, of position, in the 
 whole air of the place, which strongly appealed to her after 
 twelve months in a Bloomsbury boarding-house. She found 
 herself wondering, in face of her recent determination, 
 whether it would not be possible for her to return and live 
 the old life again ? Without question that would be the line 
 of least resistance. 
 
 The contrast between her two lives was brought home to 
 her by Aunt Mary's persistent inquiries about the house in 
 Montague Place. 
 
 "Do you have family prayers, dear ?" the good lady asked.
 
 48 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I do think it is so essential that we should unite in common 
 worship at least once every day." 
 
 Betty thought of the "German young gentlemen," of Mrs. 
 Blakey, and her agnostic lover, Jacob, uniting in common 
 worship, and that incredible idea made her smile ; but she 
 could not refrain from asking herself why it should be so 
 absurd. She believed, theoretically, in the truth of her 
 aunt's standard. Why did she not practise her beliefs ? 
 
 "I'm afraid we don't, aunt," was all the answer she could 
 find. 
 
 Aunt Mary looked grieved. "There is a terrible tendency 
 towards carelessness in these days," she said. "It is so sad. 
 The spirit of Anti-Christ is spreading everywhere, one of 
 the signs of the last days, as we are told." 
 
 "It's a little difficult, no doubt, in a boarding-house, 
 Mary," the Rector suggested. "Irregularity of times, I ex- 
 pect, and so forth. Young men hurrying off to business, in 
 the morning, eh, Betty ? and er perhaps some differences 
 of creed, no doubt, among your boarders ?" 
 
 "Oh yes, of course, father," answered Betty, glad of an 
 escape. 
 
 Mrs. Lynneker shook her head. "You've no Roman 
 Catholics, I hope, dear?" she asked. 
 
 "Oh no at least I don't think so," replied Betty. 
 
 "I hope you will set your face against that, dear," said 
 her aunt earnestly, with a note of reproof, which implied 
 that her niece ought surely to know whether she harboured 
 such dangerous guests ; and Betty tried to picture herself in- 
 quiring into the tenets of possible boarders. That Blooms- 
 bury house was so impossibly far away, and the Betty who 
 worked there seemed to be quite another person to the 
 Betty in the Rectory dining-room. 
 
 Mr. Gale saved further embarrassments by turning the 
 conversation to the subject of the Great Central Railway. 
 He announced that work was already beginning at the Lon- 
 don terminus, and that the line was to pass under Lord's 
 Cricket Ground. 
 
 "It will probably make a great difference to us down
 
 TWO DAYS 49 
 
 here," he said. "The Metropolitan has changed the country 
 a great deal. When we first came here our nearest station 
 was High Wycombe, and Beechcombe was buried in the 
 heart of the Chilterns. A great pity in some ways that the 
 country should be lost to us. London is a terrible monster, 
 always hungry for more land. I suppose you noticed, Betty, 
 the new houses that are going up in the village? We are 
 becoming terribly urbanized. A great pity, in my opinion." 
 
 "I don't think I noticed the houses, father," said Betty; 
 but she did notice, in her practical way, many defects in the 
 conduct of the Rectory menage, particularly in the cooking 
 and serving of the lunch. She made no comment, but she 
 looked once or twice at Violet, who seemed to avoid her 
 sister's glance. 
 
 "I'd soon alter that, if I came back," was Betty's unspoken 
 thought, with reference to household management. 
 
 And after lunch, when her father took Betty off by her- 
 self to the far end of the garden, he made it quite clear to 
 her that he also appreciated the difference in the conduct of 
 his household. 
 
 "And is this boarding-house a success, eh, dear?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Well, I don't know that we are making much money 
 yet," replied Betty. "We were rather empty in the early 
 spring, and we have not been very full since the Jubilee. 
 But people will be coming back soon. Oh yes, I think it will 
 be a success." 
 
 "Ah !" Mr. Gale gave full value to his exclamations ; 
 they were sonorous, and slightly prolonged. "Did the girls 
 say anything to you about coming back here after Hilda's 
 marriage? A good fellow, Phelps, by the way. Not bril- 
 liant, perhaps, but a thoroughly good fellow." 
 
 "They did mention it," said Betty, keeping to the main 
 issue. 
 
 "I need hardly say, of course," said her father, "how glad 
 I should be if you saw your way to return, my dear. Violet 
 does her best, but she lacks that splendid quality of thor- 
 oughness that my little Betty displays so markedly. You're
 
 50 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 a wonderful little housekeeper, my dear; I'm sure if anyone 
 could make a boarding-house a success . . . Well, well, I 
 hope you'll think it over. Your aunt has offered to come, if 
 necessary, although I know she prefers Bournemouth. She 
 finds our air a little too strong for her, I fancy. And I may 
 tell you that she, too, is a little against your remaining on in 
 Bloomsbury indefinitely. She has told me that neither you 
 nor Violet need have any er fears for the future, so you 
 need not let those practical considerations stand in your way 
 any longer. Such a very practical little woman is my dear 
 Betty, eh?" 
 
 "I don't think I could leave Mrs. Parmenter just yet," 
 faltered Betty. Her father was making it very difficult for 
 her. She had always had a great respect for him, but there 
 was some quality of insincerity in the man that had stood 
 between them. Betty liked and admired her father, but she 
 had never been able to love him. She was conscious at this 
 moment that a certain selfishness underlay his anxiety for 
 her return. 
 
 "She's not quite capable, perhaps, in your opinion, of con- 
 ducting the house alone, eh?" asked Mr. Gale. 
 
 "She's getting very old," replied Betty. 
 
 "Dear, dear, yes; I suppose she must be. Let me 
 see . . ." 
 
 "Oh, she's not much over sixty," interposed Betty; "but 
 she's had rather a terrible life, hasn't she?" 
 
 "Yes, yes, of course," said Mr. Gale. "Terrible fellow, 
 George Parmenter ; a blackguard, I'm sorely afraid." 
 
 "And, in any case, I must find her another partner. It 
 would only be fair, wouldn't it ?" asked Betty, inspired to a 
 line of defence which was greatly to influence her immedi- 
 ate future. 
 
 "I suppose one could advertise?" suggested her father. 
 "One seems able to do anything by advertisement in these 
 days." 
 
 "I suppose so," agreed Betty. 
 
 "Well, well, the wedding won't be until the end of Oc- 
 tober," said Mr. Gale. "That gives you three months, my
 
 TWO DAYS 51 
 
 dear. I do not wish to influence you unduly, and I have a 
 great admiration, a very great admiration, for your courage 
 in embarking on this venture at all. Still, if you can see 
 your way. . . . Your father would be very glad to have his 
 practical little woman home again, I assure you." 
 
 He laid his hand caressingly on her shoulder, but Betty 
 did not look up. . . . 
 
 Afterwards Aunt Mary questioned Betty very closely with 
 regard to her Sunday observances. What church did she go 
 to? Did she attend Communion regularly? Aunt Mary 
 was far more evangelical than her brother, who always de- 
 scribed himself vaguely as a Broad Churchman. 
 
 Betty's answers to this searching examination were not 
 altogether satisfactory, and she was ashamed to realise how 
 far she had neglected her church-going. She went now and 
 again to Evensong in Hart Street, but with those exceptions 
 she had hardly been to church since she had left home. 
 There was so much to do in the house. 
 
 She left her aunt in a very anxious frame of mind. 
 
 And through it all, Betty was conscious that she was being 
 false to her family and false to herself. She was carrying 
 about with her a thought which, if it had been expressed, 
 would have startled these four people little less than the 
 explosion of an infernal machine. She was, indeed, poten- 
 tially an anarchist ! How much easier for her would be the 
 way of virtue, the broad, plain road of convention ! 
 
 IV 
 
 "We'll drive you to the station," said Violet, when Betty 
 announced that it was necessary for her to catch the 8.11 
 back to Baker Street. "Tommy does not get half enough 
 exercise." 
 
 "Tommy" was a stout, long-maned, little chestnut, safe to 
 drive, but a pony of remarkable personality. His eccen- 
 tricities were a staple of conversation at the Rectory. The 
 three girls had always found him an excellent subject 
 wherewith to entertain nervous strangers.
 
 52 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Betty remembered Hilda, the shy hoyden of four years 
 earlier, blushing at the necessity to amuse some visitor at a 
 Rectory garden-party. "Betty, what am I to talk about?" 
 she had asked; and Betty had said: "Oh, tell them about 
 Tommy." 
 
 The phrase had passed into use as one of the recognised 
 family jokes, and when the three girls had started for the 
 station in the little bandbox of a governess cart, it came as a 
 shock to Betty to find that Violet was remembering a new 
 anecdote about the sturdy little eccentric, who was stepping 
 out at the moment with such admirable determination. 
 
 Betty waited until the story was finished, and then said 
 quietly : "Telling me about Tommy ?" 
 
 "Oh, well . . ." began Violet on a note of excuse, but 
 Hilda broke in quickly. 
 
 "It isn't that, old girl, really, only you have been away 
 such a long time, haven't you? And we feel rather out of 
 it about your boarding-house, and all that. You haven't 
 been particularly confidential about your own affairs, have 
 you?" 
 
 "You're not interested," returned Betty. 
 
 "We are," mumbled Violet. 
 
 "Rather of course we are," supplemented Hilda. "Only 
 I think you might make some allowances, just to-day, you 
 know. Naturally, I'm a bit excited. . . ." 
 
 "And I'm as interested as I can be," said Betty ; "but you 
 haven't bothered to tell me much about Mr. Phelps, have 
 you?" 
 
 "Well, you hardly know him, do you ?" asked Hilda. 
 
 "I remember him quite well," said Betty. 
 
 "It's so difficult to talk to you about some things, Bet," 
 complained Hilda, wrinkling her forehead in the manner of 
 her father. "You always bossed us, you see, when you were 
 at home." 
 
 "I didn't mean to," said Betty. 
 
 "And then . . ." began Hilda. 
 
 "What?" asked Betty. 
 
 "I don't know," returned Hilda.
 
 TWO DAYS 53 
 
 Violet was apparently engrossed in her management of 
 Tommy. 
 
 "And then . . . What?" repeated Betty. 
 
 "Well, we always feel that you're such a born old maid," 
 said Violet, her gaze still intent on the broad expanse of 
 Tommy's jogging back, 
 
 "Oh !" said Betty, and then she laughed a laugh in which 
 the bitterness was not entirely due to the cruelty of her 
 sister's remark. 
 
 "Well, aren't you?" muttered Violet. "You've said so 
 yourself, practically. Heaps of times. When you were go- 
 ing away you said you never meant to marry. Didn't 
 you?" 
 
 "Did I? Very likely," said Betty. "Only isn't there 
 rather a difference?" 
 
 "Don't get huffed, old girl," put in Hilda affectionately. 
 
 "I know I shall be twenty-seven next month," persisted 
 Betty. 
 
 "Twenty-seven's young these days," said Hilda. "I shall 
 be twenty-two in December, and Vi's twenty-five." 
 
 "Only just," interpolated Violet, and changed the con- 
 versation effectively by poking Tommy with the whip- 
 handle. 
 
 Tommy immediately stopped dead. 
 
 "Oh, Vi, you are an idiot! You know he won't stand 
 that," protested Hilda. "Now we shall never get him to 
 start again, and Betty'll miss her train." 
 
 It did, as a matter of fact, take them several minutes 
 to pacify the insulted Tommy, and induce him to resume 
 the even tenor of his way to the station ; and half-way 
 down the hill, which Tommy always took seriously and 
 exceedingly slowly, Betty suggested that she had better 
 get out and run. 
 
 "It must be ten past now," she said. 
 
 "I'll go with you," said Hilda, "and Vi can come on. I 
 expect the train '11 be late." 
 
 There was a hurried exchange of kisses between the 
 two elder sisters "in case," as they said.
 
 54 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 But when Hilda and Betty arrived at the station they 
 found that they had plenty of time, and when presently 
 Tommy had ambled complacently into the yard, the three 
 sisters made their way together to the front of the plat- 
 form to await the overdue train. 
 
 There was quite a crowd in the station, and Betty recog- 
 nised, with a curious sense of familiarity, the young optimist 
 who had travelled in the same compartment with her coming 
 down. He was looking very sunburnt, his face inflamed to a 
 high, rich red. --No doubt he had exposed himself to the 
 sun with the deliberate intention of getting as brown as 
 possible in the time. And if Betty could judge by his ex- 
 pression, he was very well satisfied with the result he had 
 obtained. She turned her eyes away quickly, afraid that 
 he might claim her acquaintance. 
 
 "How that hot-looking person stared!" Hilda remarked, 
 when they came out of earshot. 
 
 "Not at you, though," thought Betty, with a gleam of 
 satisfaction ; but she made no comment. They might think 
 she was a "born old maid" if they liked. Perhaps it was 
 better that they should. 
 
 The train came in at last. 
 
 Hilda was effusive over her good-byes. 
 
 "You'll come and stay with us later. You know? In 
 Worcestershire?" she said shyly. 
 
 Betty nodded. That invitation hurt her more than 
 Violet's coldness. 
 
 The early stages of Betty's journey back to town affected 
 her in much the same way as her journey out. In the morn- 
 ing she had left Baker Street influenced by the familiar cir- 
 cumstance she was leaving behind, and she had looked for- 
 ward with dread to the interview before her. Then it had 
 seemed to her that her life in Bloomsbury was the essential 
 thing; it had represented in some sense her standard of 
 values. She came out of it for a moment only to return, as 
 she supposed, unaffected by her brief absence.
 
 TWO DAYS 55 
 
 Now she looked forward to her return to Montague 
 Place with something of the same dread that she had felt 
 in leaving. Eight hours at Beechcombe had revived so 
 strongly all her original associations, that she could only 
 regard the boarding-house as an alien and curiously inferior 
 place. It represented drudgery and the fatigue of her 
 common routine; it represented also the strife of her war 
 with Jacob Stahl. 
 
 This contrast, however, was entirely superficial. She 
 recognised how ephemeral was each influence, even as she 
 wondered at the apparently powerful effect upon herself. 
 "To-morrow," she thought, "I shall be back in the thick of 
 it all again, and to-day will be like a sort of dream. And 
 if I went back home for good, I suppose I should soon find 
 it difficult to believe I had ever been away." 
 
 And then, quite deliberately, she turned her thoughts to 
 Jacob and to the future. 
 
 At first the issue was confused by all the conventions 
 which ruled her. She could not disentangle her present 
 and, possibly, future relations with Jacob from the influ- 
 ences of both Beechcombe and Bloomsbury. She was dis- 
 tracted by the individualities of the other people in the 
 carriage. She could not help wondering, for instance, what 
 that anaemic young wife with the two children would think 
 of a woman, who ran away with a man who was not free 
 to marry her. 
 
 That little, tired creature, whose lack of blood was merely 
 emphasised by the flush of sunburn across her cheek- 
 bones, had her supreme idea of respectability; all that was 
 conveyed to her by the one miraculous word "marriage." 
 She might be a failure, her husband might end his days in 
 prison or the workhouse, her children might be ricketty and 
 consumptive, and live only long enough to pass on their 
 weakness and disabilities to a third generation ; the mother 
 herself might be the worst of citizens, a slattern she bore 
 the marks already feeble-willed, an evil influence on the 
 character of her offspring, a woman who might sink into 
 drunkenness, if she contrived to maintain sufficiently long
 
 56 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 her uncertain tenure of life. But, according to the amaz- 
 ing morality of her class, a morality that was no less Betty's 
 own, this woman was essentially virtuous. That weedy- 
 looking youth, her husband, had paid his necessary shillings 
 to some authorised person, whether minister or registrar, 
 and had obtained a certificate of virtue for himself and 
 his wife. Henceforth they were licensed by the State, 
 with the full approval of the Church, to indulge their de- 
 sires and beget children. He might be a sensualist, and 
 she a prostitute, living together without love, the man 
 regarding the woman as a convenient outlet for his passion, 
 the woman selling herself for the means of subsistence which 
 he provided. No one knew, and no one cared. The only 
 essential required of them was that they should spend 
 ten minutes in making certain promises before a properly 
 constituted authority, and so could produce on demand the 
 certificate which endorsed their entire respectability. Ethics 
 and morality and the true understanding of love and duty 
 weighed not a featherweight in the scale against that slip 
 of paper. . . . Betty could not realise these things as 
 yet, but dimly she became aware that this woman's censure 
 was something of small account, that her life, however hal- 
 lowed by a ten-minute ceremony, was open to criticism. 
 
 The couple got out at Harrow, but the compartment 
 filled again at once, and this time Betty had a vision of 
 how such marriages are sometimes made. 
 
 The young woman opposite to her was slightly dishevelled, 
 and her companion looked tired and somewhat bored. He 
 was self-conscious when the girl pressed her shoulder 
 against him, and tried to keep possession of his loose-jointed, 
 big-knuckled hand. He wore a faint air of being ashamed 
 and sorry for his day's work, she of being proud and 
 possessive. Almost Betty could hear her say: "You will 
 marry me, won't you?" and his conscientious, yet too per- 
 functory, reply: "Of course I will." And he would, no 
 one could doubt it. He, too, had his ideal of respectability, 
 and no doubt his firm, arbiters of their employes' virtue,
 
 TWO DAYS 57 
 
 would regard with extreme disfavour an affiliation suit in 
 some local police-court. 
 
 Betty pursed her lips and looked out of the window. She 
 regarded with unseeing eyes the vision of shadows flying 
 across the darkness ; she was thinking of Jacob Stahl's love 
 for herself. Was it not a true and wonderful thing, even 
 if he could not face the great effort of renunciation ? That, 
 for him, would be the highest sacrifice. But for her, the 
 final demand was to dare the scorn of Beechcombe, Blooms- 
 bury, and those couples in the railway-carriage. It seemed 
 to her that this was the essential contrast between a man's 
 love and a woman's. 
 
 And yet was not his love for her the greatest and most 
 desirable thing in her life? Something cherished, which she 
 had carried with her through every changing prospect of 
 her day's experience? Bloomsbury and Beechcombe might 
 wear this semblance or that, but her love for Jacob was the 
 thread upon which all the circumstance of her life was now 
 strung.
 
 IV 
 DECISION 
 
 SHE found Jacob waiting for her at Baker Street Sta- 
 tion. With a certain consideration for Mrs. Parmenter 
 in her mind, Betty had asked him not to meet her. She 
 had explained that it was impossible for her to say which 
 train she would be able to catch. His coming put her in 
 another of those false situations that were so irritating. 
 She had intended to save Mrs. Parmenter from any further 
 embarrassment, and now. . . . His first words aggravated 
 the offence. 
 
 "How did you know which train I should come by ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "I didn't," he said. "I've been here over an hour. I 
 met the seven-fifty-something, and I was prepared to meet 
 every train until midnight." 
 
 "You've been here over an hour?" she repeated, and 
 added : "Did you tell Mrs. Parmenter you were coming ?" 
 
 "Rather not," replied Jacob. "What business is it of 
 hers? Besides, I've been out since two o'clock. It's been 
 such a glorious afternoon." 
 
 "Of course she'll think we've been together all day," said 
 Betty. 
 
 "Well, what if she does ?" said Jacob. "Look here, can't 
 we go and have supper somewhere? I want to hear all 
 about it." 
 
 "Oh, no! I must go straight back." Betty's tone was 
 cold and determined. "My ticket takes me to Gower Street. 
 We must go on by the Underground." 
 
 Jacob's face fell. "And when shall I have a minute to 
 
 58
 
 TWO DAYS 59 
 
 talk to you?" he asked. "I think you might guess how 
 eager I am to hear about everything." 
 
 "Nothing happened," replied Betty. "Absolutely nothing. 
 I didn't say a word to them about about us. Besides," 
 she went on quickly, seeing the frown of disapproval which 
 greeted her announcement, "I shall be able to talk to you 
 when we get back." 
 
 "You won't," returned Jacob. "The Blakey woman will 
 be there, confound her ! There was a telegram from her this 
 morning. I suppose she's coming up by an excursion to 
 save a shilling on her fare. She's a stingy old beast!" 
 
 "Goodness !" exclaimed Betty ; "and her room won't be 
 ready or anything. I must fly!" 
 
 She moved away quickly, but Jacob came after her and 
 caught her arm. 
 
 "Betty!" he said, on a note of urgency. 
 
 "Oh ! what is it ?" she asked impatiently. 
 
 "No, you mustn't ask me like that. It's too important," 
 he protested. 
 
 "I must go !" returned Betty, with even more impatience. 
 
 "Have you altered your mind?" he asked. 
 
 She shook her head. "No. Do let me go !" she said. 
 
 "Well, then, what does it matter if old Parmenter and 
 one of the maids have to get Mrs. Blakey's room ready? 
 Why must you be a slave ?" 
 
 "I can't argue about it now. I must get back at once," 
 was Betty's only defence. 
 
 He was suddenly resentful and angry. "Very well," he 
 said viciously, "I've been on tenter-hooks all day, simply 
 in agony to know what you've decided, and now the only 
 thing that appears to you of the least consequence is that 
 you should get Mrs. Blakey's room ready. There's a servant 
 and Mrs. Parmenter to do it, but you consider this room 
 of more importance than the whole of your future and 
 mine. All right, you go on ; I'm not coming." 
 
 He had her attention now. She turned and faced him in 
 perplexity. 
 
 "Oh, don't let us quarrel in the station!" she pleaded.
 
 60 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "And I've told you everything that matters. I've told you 
 that I haven't said a word about us to anyone at home, and 
 that I haven't changed my mind. What more is there ?" 
 
 "All right, you can go on," said Jacob bitterly. 
 
 "What is the matter ?" asked Betty. 
 
 "Many things." 
 
 "Do be sensible," she besought him. 
 
 "Will you come with me to supper somewhere and talk 
 quietly?" he asked. 
 
 "I can't," said Betty. "You must see I can't." 
 
 "You can, but you're afraid," said Jacob. "You were 
 afraid to tell your people to-day; you're afraid to upset 
 Mrs. Parmenter; you're afraid of what Mrs. Blakey may 
 say; you're afraid of every mortal thing; and yet you de- 
 ceive yourself into the belief that somehow, most miracu- 
 lously, you won't be afraid to snap your fingers at them 
 all and come away with me. Fairly absurd, isn't it?" 
 
 "I've said I'd come," said Betty. 
 
 "Yes, and no doubt you think you mean it, but you 
 don't," replied Jacob. 
 
 "It's no good arguing about it, is it ?" she said. She was 
 suddenly weak and unstrung. She was seized with a ter- 
 rible doubt of herself. She wondered if all that Jacob had 
 said were not perfectly true. She might make up her mind, 
 but she had not the moral courage to face the actual situ- 
 ation. Yesterday she had not dared to make confession to 
 Mrs. Parmenter; this morning she had eagerly welcomed 
 the excuse which relieved her of the necessity to confide in 
 her father; and now she was afraid of the disapproval of 
 Mrs. Blakey and the boarders. That had not been in her 
 thoughts when she had said she must hurry back to Mon- 
 tague Place. Her practical mind had instantly seized on 
 her obvious duty, as she saw it, in the management of the 
 boarding-house. But she was ready to admit now that she 
 was forced to face the situation, that she was afraid of the 
 strictures, spoken or unspoken, of Mrs. Parmenter and Mrs. 
 Blakey. 
 
 "It's no good arguing about it," she repeated feebly.
 
 TWO DAYS 61 
 
 "Not a bit," returned Jacob. "We've got to do things, 
 not talk about them." 
 
 "We're going to," she urged. 
 
 "Well, put your courage to the test here and now," he 
 said. "Hang the boarding-house and all the Parmenters 
 and Blakeys, and come out with me to supper." 
 
 "Oh ! but . . ." she began. 
 
 "Precisely," returned Jacob. " 'But,' and then again 
 'but.' In other words, you're afraid." 
 
 She hesitated a moment, staring down at the platform, 
 gently tapping her foot, and then she raised her head and 
 looked at him. "Very well, dear," she said, "where shall 
 we go? Only you mustn't be cross all the time." 
 
 "Oh, Betty!" said Jacob. 
 
 Regardless of the traffic of the station, he put his hands 
 on her shoulders and gazed down into her eyes. 
 
 "Jimmy!" she protested, "everyone's staring at us." 
 
 He disregarded that. "No, you shan't come, dear," he 
 said. "I was a brute to make you. We'll go back now, at 
 once. I know it '11 be all right now." 
 
 "Come along," said Betty, "we're going out to supper." 
 
 "Not if you don't want to," he protested. 
 
 "I do," she said. 
 
 ii 
 
 In one respect, at least, she had made up her mind. She 
 must be left alone, uninfluenced. This was her own per- 
 sonal problem. Not Beechcombe, nor Bloomsbury, nor even 
 Jacob must be allowed to dominate her. She must try, 
 however ineffectually, to think everything out for herself, 
 without pressure, without bullying. It had been her fate 
 to be bullied, she thought. Her father, her sisters, Mrs. 
 Parmenter, the boarders, Jacob, were always demanding 
 something from her. All the life around her was insistently 
 begging for help, and, whenever it had been possible, she 
 had done her best to supply their needs. She was not re- 
 bellious against this call upon her. It appeared to her a 
 natural and in many ways a pleasant thing. She loved
 
 62 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 to help and to give. But this new and most urgent demand 
 was of an entirely new kind. It divided her. She could 
 not give to either side without taking from the other. She 
 was becoming the rope of a tug of war. If Jacob pulled 
 harder than the forces arrayed against him, he would win. 
 She refused to be a rope. In this thing she must be the 
 arbiter. 
 
 Jacob, recklessly, had driven her in a hansom to a little 
 Italian restaurant in Holborn, near the mouth of the Gray's 
 Inn Road. He knew the place well. To him it represented 
 his feeble efforts at economy in the days when he had been 
 writing advertisements at ten pounds a month, and had been 
 gradually eating up his tiny capital. He thought this mag- 
 nificently named "Firenze" restaurant would be quiet on 
 a bank holiday. It was too far East for the crowd. 
 
 His forecast had been a correct one. The long, narrow, 
 rather dirty rooms were almost empty, and he led Betty 
 through the arch to the farthest of the little oblong mar- 
 ble tables, which, at this extremity, were not even cov- 
 ered by the coarse, spotted cloths which dignified the 
 tables nearer the entrance. 
 
 "It's not much of a place," he whispered apologetically, 
 one eye on the smiling padrone, "but I knew we should be 
 quiet here." 
 
 "It's all right," Betty reassured him. "I don't want any- 
 thing to eat." 
 
 It was true that she was not in the least inclined for 
 food, but she always dreaded to eat in such restaurants as 
 these. She had an expert analytical eye for the constituents 
 of "made" dishes. Her experiences as a cook gave her 
 too much knowledge in these matters. 
 
 "Coffee?" suggested Jacob. 
 
 She nodded. 
 
 "Bring us some coffee, Giuseppe," said Jacob, with a 
 touch of self-consciousness. He wanted, foolishly, to apolo- 
 gise to the waiter for the smallness of the order, but he was 
 consoled by the fact that Giuseppe remembered him as an 
 old customer.
 
 TWO DAYS 63 
 
 "But aren't you going to eat anything?" asked Betty. 
 "I had supper before I came away ; but you've had nothing, 
 I suppose, since lunch?" 
 
 "I don't want anything," replied Jacob. 
 
 Giuseppe put temptation before them in the shape of 
 two small hard rolls and two thin little circles of butter 
 when he brought the coffee. 
 
 Jacob ate part of his roll absent-mindedly, and then be- 
 gan to smoke. 
 
 "Well?" he said. 
 
 "I didn't say anything at home," said Betty, making the 
 plunge, "because one of my sisters is going to be married 
 in October, and . . . well, I can't say anything before 
 them." 
 
 Jacob reflected for a moment. "You always sacrifice 
 yourself," he said. 
 
 They sat facing each other across the narrow marble 
 slab, figured in one place by the pencil account of a domino 
 score. They had to talk in low voices by reason of the 
 not very distant presence of the padrone, whose box under 
 the arch overlooked both his magnificent rooms. They 
 did, indeed, appear quite magnificent to the padrone. 
 
 "I'm not going to spoil Hilda's chances," replied Betty, 
 and set her lips firmly. 
 
 "I suppose it would do that?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "It might," she said. 
 
 "The man she's engaged to might want to back out if 
 he knew?" 
 
 "He might. He's in the Church." 
 
 "Oh, the wonderful charity of the Church!" commented 
 Jacob. 
 
 "We needn't quarrel about that," said Betty. 
 
 "Oh, Lord, no !" he replied. 
 
 For a few seconds they were silent, and then Jacob said : 
 "Well, it means postponement, does it?" 
 
 "Yes, for a little time," said Betty. "And, Jimmy, there's 
 one other thing: I must find Mrs. Parmenter another part- 
 ner before I come away."
 
 64 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I see," replied Jacob. 
 
 Betty wondered at his sudden docility, and doubted the 
 quality of it. She looked at him a little anxiously, trying 
 to read his mood. 
 
 He was apparently intent on the domino score made on 
 a conveniently white streak in the veining of the marble. 
 He took out a pencil and drew a ring round the group 
 of figures, and then began to black in the circle with elabo- 
 rate precision. 
 
 "What are you doing, dear?" asked Betty. 
 
 "Nothing," returned Jacob. "Thinking." 
 
 "I couldn't leave Mrs. Parmenter all alone there," said 
 Betty, desperately. "I couldn't have that on my conscience. 
 She might die, or go bankrupt, and then I should never 
 forgive myself." 
 
 "Quite," murmured Jacob. 
 
 "Oh ! what is the matter ?" pleaded Betty. "Do be sen- 
 sible." 
 
 "I'm going to be," replied Jacob. He lifted his head and 
 looked into her eyes. "I'm going to be," he repeated. 
 "Quite sensible. I'm a little bit done just now, I think. 
 Beaten. It's an admission of weakness, I know, but you've 
 been too strong for me. You've been so elusive. And now 
 you've got all the best of the argument, and I feel that I 
 can't go over all the old ground again. I'm too tired, for 
 one thing." 
 
 He paused for a moment, watching the trouble in Betty's 
 eyes, and then he went on : "It seems that I've got to wait, 
 anyway. I've got to go away and leave you to look at 
 things quietly. Two months, three months, till your sister's 
 married, and you've found another partner for old Parmen- 
 ter. It's all perfectly sensible and reasonable. I see that, 
 and I give in absolutely. I'll write to Meredith and find 
 out about rooms 'or something. ... I wonder whether I 
 shall ever see you again?" 
 
 "Oh, Jimmy!" expostulated Betty. 
 
 "Why?" he asked. "I'm being 'good,' aren't I?" 
 
 Betty wrinkled her forehead, and looked past him at a
 
 TWO DAYS 65 
 
 coloured advertisement of somebody's sauce that hung on 
 the wall behind him. She was vividly conscious of the na- 
 ture of the sauce; the graphic representation of the bottle 
 which contained it brought before her the atmosphere of 
 the Montague Place kitchen. She thought quite distinctly 
 that she could smell it. 
 
 "I don't know what to do," she said petulantly. 
 
 Jacob leaned over the table and took her hand. "But, 
 Betty, dear," he said, "it's all so easy now. I'm complacent. 
 I've given in, really I have. I mean it. I'll wait." 
 
 "Oh, I can't let you go away like that!" said Betty. 
 
 "Would you sooner I went in a temper?" 
 
 "I don't want you to go away at all," said Betty. She 
 drew her hand away from him and covered her eyes. Life 
 was so impossibly difficult. 
 
 "But I must," continued Jacob relentlessly. "Neither you 
 nor I could stand three more months of this sort of thing. 
 You must see that." He looked at her, but her hands were 
 still over her eyes, and she made no response. 
 
 "You do see that, don't you ?" he urged. 
 
 She dropped her hands on the table and looked at him. 
 "Oh, I'll come!" she said. "What does it matter? Let's 
 go to-night, at once. I'll come back with you and get my 
 things, and we'll go to an hotel to-night, and to Cornwall 
 by the first train to-morrow. Only we must get it over at 
 once." 
 
 In his mind, Jacob hesitated. Outwardly he gave no sign 
 of his uncertainty, but a picture of taking Betty instantly 
 away with him presented itself as a thing exquisitely at- 
 tractive. Yet even as his desire for that accomplishment 
 leapt into life, he saw with even greater distinctness a pic- 
 ture of an unwilling Betty, burdened with remorse and 
 regret. He saw her miserable and fearful, depressed and 
 ashamed. She would come to hate him as the cause of 
 her unhappiness. That was not the thing he desired; no 
 satisfaction could come by that road. 
 
 His hesitation was so slight that Betty, strung up momen- 
 tarily to the thought of an instant purpose which would
 
 66 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 leave all doubts behind her, did not notice his pause. She 
 was hardly thinking of him. She was concentrating all her 
 energies to maintain the strength of her resolution. 
 
 "What a dear you are!" said Jacob. "I know you'd 
 sacrifice yourself, but it won't do." 
 
 "Why not?" she asked, with a touch of asperity. "Will 
 nothing satisfy you?" 
 
 He smiled grimly. "I'm afraid I'm rather difficult," he 
 said. "But, darling, don't think I'm cross or anything; 
 really I'm not. It's only that I see so clearly that you'd 
 be miserable." 
 
 "What does that matter?" she asked. "I shall be mis- 
 erable in any case." 
 
 He shook his head. "No you won't," he said. "It'll be 
 all right. I'll go away for three months, and leave you 
 to think it over and find a new partner for the boarding- 
 house. I shall write to you, of course, but not miserable 
 letters. . . ." 
 
 "But I don't want you to go away," she interrupted. 
 
 "Oh, it '11 be all right," was all the answer he could 
 find. 
 
 "Jimmy," said Betty, on an urgent note, "you believe 
 that I will come at the end of three months?" 
 
 "Yes, of course," he said. 
 
 The see-saw which had swung so vainly and so unceas- 
 ingly for forty-eight hours, was still tilting aimlessly up 
 and down. At her hint of agreement he was on the ground 
 again, doubting. When she was willing, he opposed her; 
 when she agreed to a parting, he desired fiercely to wring 
 from her again another admission that she would come 
 with him at once if he willed it. 
 
 But even as he realised this alternation, he saw clearly 
 perhaps for the first time the utter futility of their un- 
 ending strife. He saw, too, that it must end in disgust. 
 They would come to hate each other. He must be strong 
 now, resolute, inflexible. His mind had accepted the neces- 
 sity for a truce, and he must abide by that. It was a tem- 
 porary solution, but the only one.
 
 TWO DAYS 67 
 
 "Yes, yes, dear, I'm sure you will," he said. "We'll 
 count it as settled, agreed upon. I do see your argument. 
 It '11 be all right. I'll go away for three months." 
 
 They were both conscious of relief. 
 
 "It will be all right, dear," she said, and gave him her 
 hand again across the table, without any thought of Giu- 
 seppe hovering in the background. 
 
 And then she spoilt it all by adding : "And perhaps some- 
 thing might happen . . ." 
 
 He understood the reference. They had avoided open 
 mention of the possibility that his wife might die, but the 
 thought of it, he knew, had been sometimes on Betty's mind 
 as a miraculous solution. 
 
 "Oh no, darling," he said, "don't think of it in that way ! 
 Face it all in the next three months. Don't hope for mira- 
 cles. Don't even think of them. It's just the whole essence 
 of the thing that you must come, because you know that it's 
 the sensible thing to do." 
 
 She nodded and sighed. 
 
 The cloud hung, imminent once more, but he dissolved 
 it by an effort of will. 
 
 "Don't sigh, dear," he said manfully. "You'll see things 
 more clearly when I'm gone." And mentally he was doubt- 
 ing the strength of her resolution while he held on to his 
 own. He had even a sense of being uplifted. He had 
 been strong, after all, he thought, self-sacrificing, magnani- 
 mous. . . . 
 
 "Do not see you vair often now," remarked Giuseppe, as 
 he smilingly accepted a too-generous tip Jacob's indul- 
 gence to his own self-esteem, the bill had been so ridicu- 
 lously small. 
 
 "No. And you won't see me again for goodness knows 
 how long," returned Jacob. "I'm going away to Corn- 
 wall." 
 
 "To Cornwall!" repeated Giuseppe, with the necessary 
 show of astonishment, although he had no idea where Corn- 
 wall might be.
 
 68 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 The padrone bowed them out as if they had made his 
 fortune. 
 
 in 
 
 They were almost cheerful as they walked home together. 
 
 Betty was so conscious of her present integrity that she 
 had forgotten her qualms about the arrangements for Mrs. 
 Blakey's reception. Betty saw only the prospect of three 
 months' energy before her, the kind of energy which she 
 could expend without effort. She would find a new part- 
 ner who would be capable of running the place efficiently, 
 and she would work up "the place" itself into a valuable 
 property. September was a splendid month for getting new 
 boarders. She would advertise in the Daily Telegraph. 
 She would spend all the little capital left to her, some fifty 
 pounds or so, in providing for Mrs. Parmenter's future 
 welfare. 
 
 She spoke of her plans to Jacob as they walked, and he 
 listened and made suggestions. He was still upheld by the 
 glow of approval he felt for his own decision. For him 
 there should be no backsliding or hint of return. He was 
 weak in many ways he saw himself so plainly to-night 
 but he was gaining strength. He would work desperately 
 hard at that novel of his in Cornwall. , 
 
 IV 
 
 And, indeed, their resolution and agreement held during 
 the week that followed. A stillness had fallen upon them, 
 and when they were alone together, they spoke quietly of 
 their separate determinations to work during the months 
 that were coming. Beyond that interval they hardly dared 
 to peer. A certain peace had come to them. For the mo- 
 ment both were content to wait. 
 
 Meredith, Jacob's friend, had risen to the occasion. There 
 was a house, he wrote, at Trevarrian, in North Cornwall, 
 which had not been let all the summer. It was a fair-sized 
 place, and generally commanded a high rent during the
 
 TWO DAYS 69 
 
 holiday season; but the owner, who was the principal far- 
 mer in the village, had been unlucky this year, and would 
 be glad to take ten shillings a week for the autumn and 
 winter. Meredith offered to make arrangements. He was 
 living at Forth, some three miles away, and had walked 
 over and seen the farmer. 
 
 To Jacob and Betty the opportunity seemed a good one, 
 but she was a little doubtful whether she approved the idea 
 of his living all alone in that "fair-sized" house. 
 
 "Of course, I shall get some woman to cook for me, and 
 wash up, and that kind of thing," explained Jacob. 
 
 "Well, of course," said Betty, with a smile. 
 
 "Meredith doesn't," returned Jacob. "He does every 
 blessed thing for himself." 
 
 "I wonder what sort of a mess he makes of it?" mused 
 Betty, with pity. 
 
 "You don't think men can do anything for themselves?" 
 
 "Not of that sort," replied Betty, and looked at him with 
 a sudden tenderness. 
 
 "Oh, well, I admit I'm not good at it," said Jacob ; "but 
 I shall manage all right with a woman from the village. 
 There is a little village of about ten houses there, Mere- 
 dith says." 
 
 "Won't you be horribly lonely?" asked Betty. 
 
 "Of course I shall," said Jacob, and trenched on for- 
 bidden ground by adding: "But I shall know that it will 
 only be for three months." 
 
 "Yes, it will only be for three months," agreed Betty. 
 She tried to put enthusiasm into her acknowledgment, and 
 did at least succeed in deceiving him, for he looked at her 
 with fond and grateful eyes. But she had seen at that mo- 
 ment, with some return of the old pain, that she would be 
 finally committed by this agreement, pledged beyond all 
 hope of escape. If she did not go at the end of three 
 months, what would become of him? She never conceived 
 the possibility that he would change that separation would 
 affect his feeling for her. It might have been better for 
 Jacob if he had been less devoted at times. If she had
 
 70 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 been less sure of him, she might earlier have realised the 
 wonderful quality of her feeling for him. 
 
 One concession she made, at which Jacob fondly grasped 
 as if it were some kind of definite endorsement to their 
 agreement. She allowed him to buy a wedding-ring for 
 her to wear when she came to Trevarrian. She even per- 
 mitted him to put it on her finger when they were alone in 
 the drawing-room that evening. 
 
 "You're full of contradictions, you know," she said, as 
 she looked down at her hand; and then she frowned, and 
 almost hastily took off the ring. 
 
 "I don't see why," Jacob said. 
 
 "One minute you don't believe in marriage at all," she 
 said, "and the next well, you buy this." 
 
 "It's only a symbol," he explained. "And if I don't 
 believe in marriage in theory, I may believe in the prac- 
 tice, in certain circumstances. You know that I would 
 put any belief of mine on one side to make you happy. You 
 know that I would marry you if I could." 
 
 She had it in her mind to say that his beliefs accorded 
 with his desires on occasion, but she did not want to stir 
 up again the old controversy, so she nodded and said quietly, 
 "Oh, yes, I know," as she gave back the ring to him. 
 
 "Won't you keep it?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh no, you must keep it," she said. 
 
 After that he kept it in his pocket, and looked at it many 
 times a day. He found some feeling of certainty in the 
 sight of that pledge. She would never have allowed him 
 to buy it if she had not meant to keep her promise, he 
 thought. 
 
 VI 
 
 And she gave him a more faithful sign of that true 
 feeling of hers when the actual parting came. 
 During all those months in Montague Place Jacob had
 
 TWO DAYS 71 
 
 been looking eagerly for some such sign as this ; never had 
 he felt sure of her love for him. That had been his tragedy 
 through life, he believed : he had never been able to inspire 
 lasting affection. Both his first love and the woman he 
 had married had failed him ; neither had been able to give 
 him that strong and enduring affection he so earnestly de- 
 sired. He found the fault in himself. He was too weak, 
 he believed, and too eager for love. He was still influenced 
 by the romantic conceptions of the Victorian novel. He 
 saw the ideal of the woman as the strong, masterful male 
 of sentimental fiction, and had not realised that everyone 
 may find his complement, and that woman is certainly not 
 less various than man. And through all this affair with 
 Betty he had been the aggressor, although his attack had 
 been carried on by pleading and the admission of weak- 
 ness. Not once had she met him quite half-way. Little 
 wonder, then, that he doubted if here, at last, was the ideal 
 for which he had lived, or that he was inclined to self-pity 
 for his constant failure to win love. 
 
 Yet, at the last, he hoped. 
 
 Their farewell was made, compromisingly and most un- 
 comfortably, in the tiny lobby which separated the coaches 
 of the corridor train. He had marked his seat in a smok- 
 ing-compartment by depositing book, hat, umbrella, and 
 hand-bag; and now they had sought this little eddy, where, 
 in the brief intervals between the passage of travellers 
 and porters, they might snatch an instant's solitude. 
 
 Jacob was faintly elated by this embarkation on adven- 
 ture, a little distracted by the stir of life about him; and 
 it was Betty who took the initiative for the first time, and 
 showed that she was the more single-minded of the two. 
 
 She took him by the arm, almost roughly, and snatched 
 his attention from the bustle of the train. "Oh, you will 
 take care of yourself, won't you?" she asked passionately. 
 
 "Take care of myself ? Oh yes, of course," he said. Then 
 he saw that she was crying. 
 
 "Betty," he said, "do you really care so much?" 
 
 She clung to him then, unheeding. "I will come!" she
 
 72 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 said ; "I will come ! Do look after yourself properly. Don't 
 go playing about on the cliffs, or taking any risks." 
 
 "Not for three months, anyway," he replied. 
 
 ''I shall be there to look after you then," said Betty. She 
 was fumbling for a handkerchief. 
 
 And even the anti-climax that followed as he tried to 
 oust another passenger from a window in the corridor, and 
 could only wave a miserable good-bye to the pathetic figure 
 of Betty, standing lonely and apparently deserted on the 
 platform did not destroy the new hope and confidence 
 which her whole-hearted protest had given him.
 
 BOOK II 
 SEPARATION
 
 V 
 
 POOR MRS. PARMENTER 
 
 WHEN Jacob had gone, Betty found that the boarding- 
 house in Montague Place had changed its character. 
 It was thus that the phenomenon was presented to her ; she 
 did not realise that the change was solely in her own vision 
 of the house, in all the thoughts that she brought to her 
 knowledge of it. To her it seemed like a place newly white- 
 washed. It had a strange emptiness, and yet, despite its 
 air of desertion and coldness, it held for her a promise 
 of peace, the spiritual comfort of a place of worship. She 
 turned to it with a sigh of resignation and relief as she 
 had sometimes turned to a church service. Here she could 
 find the comfort of easy relinquishment to a destiny that 
 required from her no desperate opposition to the forces she 
 had always regarded as her ethical guides. Her father, her 
 aunt, her sisters, Mrs. Parmenter, even Mrs. Blakey, would 
 all applaud her separation from Jacob, her choice of the 
 plain, easy duty that was, they would tell her, so obviously 
 right and good for her to choose. She had found a sanc- 
 tuary, fleeing from life as a nun to her convent. Here 
 she might follow the way of the Church in barren, satisfied 
 self-approval. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter confirmed that view of life the same 
 afternoon when she came down to the drawing-room for tea. 
 Mrs. Blakey, the only boarder then staying in the house 
 who was ever in for that meal, had gone to tea with a 
 friend. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter, as was natural to her temperament, ap- 
 proached the topic openly, but with a certain characteristic 
 obliqueness. 
 
 75
 
 76 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I suppose Mr. Stoll won't get in till nearly dark," she 
 began, and passed from that, momentarily, to a considera- 
 tion of the many empty rooms in the house, and so finally 
 to a consideration of Betty's future plans. 
 
 "I suppose you'll be hardly leaving here now, dear, for 
 some long time to come?" she suggested, and only the 
 faintest trembling of her head indicated her nervousness 
 in approaching the central topic. 
 
 "Certainly not for at least three months," returned Betty, 
 bravely indicating the proposed limit to her conventual dis- 
 traction. 
 
 "Oh, well," said Mrs. Parmenter, with evident relief, "a 
 lot may happen in three months. Maybe you'll both have 
 changed your minds before then." 
 
 Betty, still poised, although wrapped for a moment in a 
 feeling of comforting security, was uncertain whether the 
 prospect was agreeable or not. "We may," she said ten- 
 tatively. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter carefully gathered up the corners of her 
 outspread handkerchief and shook the crumbs it contained 
 into the slop-basin. "It's wonderful what a difference it 
 makes when you don't see each other for a while," she re- 
 marked. "Not, as I've always said, that I've anything 
 against Mr. Stoll, only that under the circumstances it was 
 better that he should go away just now." 
 
 "Well, he's gone," said Betty. 
 
 "And, of course, you'll please yourself as to when you'll 
 see him again." 
 
 Betty nodded without much confidence. She was sud- 
 denly aware of her solitude. None of her acquaintances 
 knew the facts, and there was no one in whom she could 
 confide, to whom she could go for advice. Every mem- 
 ber of that little circle about her would so inevitably be 
 shocked and outraged, would so certainly say precisely the 
 same things. She was shut into her convent, and must 
 content herself within the limit of its consolations. She 
 might as well expect to be encouraged in the utterance of 
 blasphemy as in her feeling for Jacob Stahl.
 
 SEPARATION 77 
 
 "Although," continued Mrs. Parmenter, "I should be the 
 last person to stand in your way, dear, if I thought you were 
 going to make yourself any happier by marryin' him." 
 
 "I expect I shall, you know," put in Betty quickly. She 
 felt that her escape was being cut off, and that she must, 
 with whatever important reservations, make it quite clear 
 that this parting was not final. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter firmly closed her eyes. She may have 
 been praying for guidance, but if so none apparently was 
 vouchsafed, for she took an undoubtedly weak line when, 
 after a recognisable interval, she opened them again. 
 
 "Well, of course, you know best how you feel about 
 it," she said, with a faint sniff of disapproval. 
 
 "Yes, I suppose I do," Betty replied ; and anticipating any 
 repetition of the futile objections she had already heard 
 advanced by her partner, she got to her feet and packed the 
 tea-tray. 
 
 "Alice can very well do that," remonstrated Mrs. Par- 
 menter. She thought the present occasion peculiarly suit- 
 able for the discussion of the topic of Mr. Stahl. She was 
 warmed now to speak her mind openly, and did not wish 
 to lose the opportunity. There were times when she was 
 a little afraid of Miss Betty Gale. 
 
 "Oh, Alice has quite enough to do," returned Betty. 
 "Besides, I must go now to see about the dinner." 
 
 "Hadn't we better look out for another maid in place of 
 Olive?" asked Mrs. Parmenter, feebly relinquishing her de- 
 sire. 
 
 Betty wrinkled her forehead. "Not till the house is likely 
 to fill up again," she said. "We can manage till then. Alice 
 works a hundred times better now she's alone." She picked 
 up the tray, and then stood for a moment with it in her 
 hands, looking down at her partner. 
 
 "And it's really no use talking about it, you know," she 
 said. "I've told you that it won't be for three months at 
 least, and you needn't be afraid that I shall go off and leave 
 you in the lurch. If I do go away any time, I shall find you 
 another partner first."
 
 78 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter appeared to be swallowing a belated 
 crumb. "It isn't that, my dear," she said. "I'm sure there's 
 no reason why you should consider me. It's only . . ." 
 
 But Betty could not hear that. "Of course, there's every 
 reason why I should consider you," she returned quickly. 
 "I couldn't possibly go away and leave you here all alone, 
 and I don't mean to. But please don't argue with me about 
 it. It isn't any use, really." She took a step towards the 
 door, and then, possessed by a sudden spirit of courage, 
 she half turned and added : "If it were only a question of 
 our not having enough money, I should go to-morrow." 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter did not understand, but in the moment 
 that elapsed before she replied, Betty realised with a thrill 
 of fear that she dare not burn her boats as yet. How could 
 she stand three months' nagging? Moreover, Mrs. Par- 
 menter, if she knew the truth, might consider it necessary 
 to inform Beechcombe Rectory of its daughter's mad, im- 
 moral project, and then . . . Betty could have gasped with 
 relief when her partner, evidently choosing her words with 
 some deliberation, said: 
 
 "Well, no, perhaps not, dear ; and I don't know that that 
 is after all the chief objection. . . ." 
 
 She was going to say more, but Betty had no wish to 
 hear any definition of that "chief objection," and cut it off 
 at once by saying: "I must go and put the meat in, or it'll 
 never be done by half-past seven." She might have added 
 that it was hardly possible for her to discuss so desperate 
 a subject while she stood in the middle of the room with a 
 tea-tray in her hands. 
 
 "That was silly of me," she reflected as she went down 
 into the kitchen, and sighed at the realisation, so plainly 
 brought before her, that there was no one in whom she 
 could confide. 
 
 Certainly the house was very empty, and it was haunted 
 by the ghost of a departed Jacob. When her immediate 
 occupation with the preparing of dinner was over, Betty 
 went up to the second floor and looked at his deserted 
 room.
 
 SEPARATION 79 
 
 "I will come, dear," she whispered to the spirit that lived 
 there. 
 
 ii 
 
 But if Mrs. Parmenter's too obvious absorption in her 
 own interests was an influence that might have played Ja- 
 cob's game for him, and more subtly than he had played 
 it for himself, other forces more than counterbalanced 
 the effect of the old woman's selfishness. There was, for 
 instance, the advice of Mrs. Blakey, at once shrewd and 
 apparently disinterested. 
 
 Betty found her alone in the drawing-room one night 
 some four or five days after Jacob had gone. It was after 
 ten o'clock, and she was sipping her whisky-and-water in 
 solitary state, evidently bored by her own company. She 
 had, as usual, a book in her lap, but no one had ever seen 
 her actually reading. 
 
 "Oh, come in, my dear, for charity's sake," she said, when 
 Betty looked in to see if the room were empty. "Every- 
 one's out or gone to bed, and I'm dying for someone to 
 talk to." 
 
 "Even me," suggested Betty, as she accepted the invi- 
 tation. 
 
 "You'll get no compliments from me," returned Mrs. 
 Blakey with an assumption of asperity, "though I dare say 
 you've been missing them the last few days, now that our 
 Mr. Stahl has taken himself off to the seaside and left 
 you in the lurch. But I suppose he'll be back again before 
 long?" 
 
 "He didn't say anything about coming back," said Betty 
 quietly. "I believe he's going to stay in Cornwall ; anyway, 
 for the winter." 
 
 "Dear, dear, what a tragedy!" said Mrs. Blakey briskly; 
 "and soon there'll be nothing for it but double dummy with 
 Mr. Franklin, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh, I can come up and play when you want me," replied 
 Betty. "There isn't very much for me to do just now while 
 the house is so empty."
 
 80 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Mrs. Blakey made a noise that may be rendered as "Cht !" 
 
 Betty looked up and smiled. 
 
 "Oh, you needn't be afraid of an old woman's tongue," 
 said Mrs. Blakey. "I can keep it still enough when I've 
 a mind to. And I shan't be offended either if you don't 
 want to confide in me; you're a quiet little mouse at the 
 best of times. But you needn't pretend, my dear, that I 
 don't know all about it." 
 
 "There isn't anything to know," protested Betty. 
 
 "Quite enough,," said Mrs. Blakey. "I fancy I shouldn't 
 ,be far out, for instance, if I guessed that the young man 
 we're talking about had asked you to spend the winter in 
 Cornwall with him." 
 
 Betty blushed and a sudden doubt shook her. Had the 
 shrewd Mrs. Blakey perhaps guessed also that there was 
 some obstacle in the way? Her next speech brought re- 
 assurance. 
 
 "And perhaps I shouldn't be so very wrong either, if I 
 said that he hasn't given up all hope of it yet," she con- 
 tinued. "But I think you're a wise young woman in per- 
 suading him to give you both time to think it over. I'm 
 not one of those who're always saying 'Marry in haste 
 and repent at leisure,' but you two have been cooped up 
 in one house for the best part of a year, and you can't be 
 expected to know your own minds till you've had a chance 
 of seeing how you get on without each other." 
 
 "You think that he . . ." began Betty, admitting the 
 accuracy of the general hypothesis. 
 
 "Well, to tell you the truth, I was thinking more about 
 you, my dear," returned Mrs. Blakey; "for it seems to me 
 that it's you that has the most to lose." 
 
 "Oh, it isn't that," interposed Betty. 
 
 "Ah yes, but it is just that," replied Mrs. Blakey, and 
 took a quick sip of whisky-and-water. "It is that, because 
 you're just one of those dear creatures who're ready to 
 sacrifice themselves. Now, now, hear me out," she went 
 on quickly, anticipating Betty's denial, "and give me credit 
 for knowing something about the world after living in it for
 
 SEPARATION 81 
 
 sixty-five years. What I mean, child, is that you're al- 
 ways looking after other people, and I wish there were 
 more like you, and I've wondered sometimes whether you 
 haven't been a little inclined to be too sorry for our Mr. 
 Stahl. He's a nice young man a little hasty-tempered 
 sometimes, perhaps and I like him, but he's got the sort 
 of face that makes women want to take care of him. He's 
 come in here sometimes looking such a picture of loneli- 
 ness that I've had a mind to kiss him myself just to cheer 
 him up a bit; and I know well enough that you've often 
 felt the same, and your kisses, I've no doubt, were much 
 more effective than any of mine could have been. Only 
 that isn't a safe ground for marriage, my dear. I don't 
 say that you couldn't and wouldn't go on mothering him 
 till the end of the chapter, but the time would come when 
 he'd see through you, and want the sort of love you mightn't 
 be able to give him. It may be so, I say, I don't know; 
 but, if I were you, I should give myself a nice long, quiet 
 time to think it over before you tie yourself up for life, 
 and if you find that you're only sorry for him at the end 
 of that time well, if you'll take my advice, my dear, you 
 won't marry him, for it won't lead to happiness for either 
 of you. There now, I've made my throat dry by talking 
 so much; I'll just have one little drop more of whisky, 
 and then we'll go to bed." 
 
 And for a time Betty was inclined to attach some im- 
 portance to that shrewd analysis of the situation. It had 
 revived that wondering doubt of hers as to whether she 
 were indeed in love with Jacob, or only sorry for him, and 
 so gave her opportunity on that ground to defend her action, 
 apart from any consideration of that wearing ethical ques- 
 tion which so perplexed and harassed her. More than once, 
 she almost decided that the three months they had agreed 
 upon was altogether too short a period in which to test 
 their feelings for one another. 
 
 She might have suffered something of a reaction if she 
 could have heard a certain conversation between her partner 
 and Mrs. Blakey on the following afternoon, but just at
 
 82 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 this time the accidents of life were tending to separate Betty 
 and Jacob. It was as if the unknown arbiters of fate had 
 grown tired of their effort, and, piqued and defeated, were 
 endeavouring to undo their own work. 
 
 "I had a nice long talk with Miss Betty last night, my 
 dear," Mrs. Blakey reported, "and I think I may pride my- 
 self that I did her a little good. To tell you the truth, 
 dear, she's sorry for the man; so take my advice, and 
 whenever you talk to her about him, don't go telling her 
 she's unwise to think of marrying him because they won't 
 have enough to live on, for that's just the way to send her 
 rushing off to see if he's drowned himself yet or not. She 
 isn't in love with him yet, and the longer he's away the 
 less she'll think of him; so, if you take my advice, you'll 
 say as little as maybe about him, and give her a chance to 
 forget his pitying looks." 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter waggled her head and looked exceedingly 
 wise. 
 
 Curiously enough, Jacob himself had never liked Mrs. 
 Blakey. 
 
 in 
 
 Another influence that tended to confirm Betty in her 
 relative placidity during the weeks that followed was the 
 contented tone of Jacob's letters. He seemed to be happy 
 in his new surroundings. He wrote of his joy in the free- 
 dom of open country, of his delight in the sea. He displayed 
 a new sense of optimism and of strength that was new to 
 her. He told her that he was working well and steadily, 
 that he had written three little sketches that had been ac- 
 cepted by the Daily Post he asked her to look out for 
 them and that he was getting on splendidly with his novel ; 
 and in one letter, written at the end of September, he quoted 
 with evident pride a note he had received from the editor 
 of the Daily Post, expressing satisfaction with the work 
 Jacob had done, and promising to send him more books 
 for review. "I believe I shall really be able to save money 
 down here," he concluded. "My total living expenses are
 
 SEPARATION 83 
 
 under thirty shillings a week, and I'm making at least 
 three pounds." 
 
 "He seems perfectly happy without me," Betty reflected ; 
 but the thought brought to her no conviction of loneliness. 
 She knew that he was trying to keep his promise, to leave 
 her uninfluenced during those three months of probation, 
 in order that she might finally act without persuasion. 
 Moreover, although his letters spoke openly of his present 
 contentment, were almost free from any phrase of endear- 
 ment he had settled down to a stereotyped opening in 
 the form of "Betty, dear," a form that she copied in her 
 replies and made no reference to her joining him at the 
 beginning of November, she read clearly enough the spirit 
 that informed his mood. It was all part of the assumption 
 that he would no longer try to influence her; but his ex- 
 pectation was implicit in every line, and particularly plain, 
 she thought, in his references to the saving of money. She 
 could see him composing those letters with conscious de- 
 termination to avoid the one issue that was ever present 
 in his mind; she could hear him saying, "I will be good," 
 as he had sometimes said it to her when her patience had 
 been nearly worn out. And the inference composed her, 
 permitted her to avoid for the moment the necessity of 
 action. She found consolation in the thought that she need 
 not make instant decision it might quite well be, she 
 thought, that the period of three months could be pro- 
 longed. 
 
 But in the first week of October, she was aroused from 
 her brief complacency by her realisation of the fact that 
 the boarding-house was once more full. While it had 
 remained partly empty she could persuade herself that it 
 was unreasonable to advertise for a partner to take her 
 place, the conditions were unfavourable ; but now she had 
 no excuse for delay, and her innate honesty would not 
 permit her to shirk any longer the fulfilment of her prom- 
 ise. She saw that she must either decide to give up any 
 intention of joining Jacob Stahl in Cornwall, or make some 
 preparation for taking that irrevocable step.
 
 84 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 And at this critical moment of her hesitation she was 
 suddenly helped on her appointed road by a letter from 
 her father. The date of Hilda's wedding had been fixed 
 for the twenty-eighth of October, he wrote; and after a 
 few platitudes with reference to that event, he came to his 
 real purpose in writing, by making a warm appeal in which 
 he urged Betty to return and take up again the household 
 cares of Beechcombe Rectory. The reason upon which 
 he chiefly dwelt was that Betty was "rather out of her 
 sphere" in Bloomsbury (she pursed her mouth at that) ; 
 and he enclosed a letter from his sister, Mrs. Lynneker, 
 temporarily returned to Bournemouth, a letter that ex- 
 plicitly stated the assurance already hinted, that neither 
 Betty nor Violet need have any fear for the future so far 
 as money was concerned. Aunt Mary was evidently no 
 less anxious than her brother that Betty should give up her 
 boarding-house, and she wondered how far this anxiety was 
 attributable to fear of the lax observances so clearly con- 
 veyed by her own admission two months ago. She smiled 
 at the memory, while she appreciated the earnestness of 
 her aunt's motives. Mrs. Lynneker, at least, had no per- 
 sonal intent to serve. 
 
 The first effect of these letters appeared to Betty as that 
 of a further barrier building up between her and Jacob, but 
 she recognised that a way had been opened for her to ap- 
 proach Mrs. Parmenter. The chief cause for hesitation, 
 the assignment of a reason for breaking up the partner- 
 ship, had been smoothed out; here was unassailable cause. 
 Nevertheless, Betty suffered a twinge of conscience at the 
 reflection that she was acting under false pretences. 
 
 IV 
 
 She opened the subject that same afternoon by pro- 
 ducing her two letters. 
 
 "I want you to read these ; I got them this morning," she 
 said. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter read them in trembling silence, and then,
 
 SEPARATION 85 
 
 with dismay in her face, asked what Betty proposed to do. 
 
 "I thought of trying to find you another partner," Betty 
 said. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter folded her hands with the resignation 
 of one confirmed in a disastrous premonition. 
 
 "I suppose it's what I might have expected," was how 
 shr phrased it. 
 
 "I don't think that's quite fair," remonstrated Betty. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter misapplied that comment, adapting it to 
 her own grievance. "One mustn't look for fairness in 
 this world," she groaned, "and no one should know it better 
 than me ; but I'm getting a very old woman, and I've come 
 to that time of life when I do look for a little considera- 
 tion." 
 
 Betty pressed her lips together and looked out of the 
 window. "But I won't go," she said, after a short pause, 
 "until I've found you another partner." 
 
 "Where?" snapped Mrs. Parmenter. 
 
 "I thought of advertising." 
 
 "And a nice lot of answers you'll get, no doubt," re- 
 turned the older woman. "And the end of it'll be someone 
 coming in to squeeze all she can out of the place, and then 
 leaving me to manage as best I can. It's well enough for 
 you, Elizabeth. As I see by your aunt's letter, you've 
 no call to worry about the future ; but it's different for me, 
 left at my time of life to the mercy of strangers who'll 
 only come here to rob me." 
 
 "Oh, come!" protested Betty. She was thinking that 
 Mrs. Parmenter's arguments against that theoretical mar- 
 riage with Jacob Stahl were shown to have been of re- 
 markably small account. The old woman had only one 
 interest to serve, and now that sophistry no longer availed 
 her, she had shown her self-interest with astonishing clear- 
 ness. Nevertheless, Betty was more influenced by this 
 frank admission than she had been by any profession of 
 disinterested advice. This new attitude was at least gen- 
 uine, and she understood the old woman's fears and doubts
 
 86 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 for her future safety, and appreciated them at their full 
 value. 
 
 "I think you might trust me to do more for you than 
 that," she said. "You surely don't think that I would go 
 off and leave you if I wasn't quite certain that we'd got 
 someone we could trust to take my place." 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter began to cry. "How can anybody be 
 certain of that?" she asked presently. 
 
 "Well, I won't go until you are satisfied," promised Betty 
 in the eagerness of the moment, and instantly suffered a 
 qualm of doubt if she had been wise in pledging herself 
 so specifically. Beechcombe and her father could afford 
 to wait for a year, if necessary, but she knew that Jacob 
 would be less continent, and her partner might be hard to 
 please. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter grasped the advantage, even as she 
 clung fondly to her grievance. 
 
 "Yes, you must promise me that, dear," she said, still 
 making use, not without obvious reason, of her handker- 
 chief, "though whoever it is you may get to come in your 
 place, it can't ever be the same as having you here." She 
 gulped as a fresh outburst of tears overcame her; a stranger 
 would have found the sight of her deeply affecting. "But 
 if it must be," she continued, speaking in spasmodic gasps, 
 "I suppose I must put up with it though I did think 
 that you were happy here. I'm sure I've done what I could. 
 . . ." The thought of her own devotion overpowered her 
 completely. 
 
 Betty fidgeted uneasily. She found that she had no 
 argument to advance, no consolation to offer. She realised 
 now, all too clearly, that she was playing a part. 
 
 "It isn't always a blessing to be too much wanted," she 
 remarked inconsequently, with a thought of her own private 
 trouble. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter controlled herself sufficiently to take up 
 that allusion. "Of course, I know that your father has the 
 first claim on you," she said, sniffing violently, "and I 
 should be the last one to stand in your way. It isn't to
 
 SEPARATION 87 
 
 be expected that you'll have the comforts here that you're 
 accustomed to at home, and I can't blame you for wanting 
 to be at home again. No one knows better than I do all 
 the troubles and worries of keeping a boarding-house." 
 
 "Oh, but it isn't that," Betty broke in. "You know it 
 isn't that. I have been perfectly happy here. 7 don't want 
 to go. At least . . ." She broke off, conscious that she 
 was not being quite honest. There had been times when 
 she had longed to leave Bloomsbury, and she knew that 
 if that obstacle had not been interposed, she might have 
 gone six months ago. But it was not the comfort of 
 Beechcombe that tempted her. 
 
 "Well, there's your sister still there," explained Mrs. 
 Parmenter, with a faint gleam of hope. 
 
 "It's partly on her account they want me," said Betty. 
 
 "And I should have thought your aunt, Mrs. Lynneker, 
 might have kept house for them." 
 
 "The place doesn't suit her," returned Betty. "She's 
 never well away from Bournemouth." 
 
 "Oh, it's always me that has to suffer!" said the old 
 woman. "I'm sure I ought to be used to it by this time, 
 I've had enough of it." The stage of tears seemed to have 
 passed, and left her in a mood of resentment. 
 
 "I don't see that you need suffer in any way7' said Betty 
 gently. "I expect I shall be able to find someone who'll be 
 much more use than I am. It's a splendid time to look out, 
 anyway, with the house full and all that." 
 
 "I don't take kindly to strangers no one does at my age," 
 was the last explicit objection to the proposed change, an 
 objection of considerable weight, as Betty was soon to 
 find. 
 
 But for the time the change was outwardly accepted by 
 Mrs. Parmenter as being a part of the inevitable, perverse 
 scheme of her tortured life. 
 
 Betty wrote Jacob the next day, and told him that she 
 was advertising for someone to take her place in the board- 
 ing-house. She knew that she was pledging herself by 
 making the announcement, but she was moved by a desire
 
 88 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 to test his response. He had been almost too self-contained 
 in his recent letters. 
 
 The abounding enthusiasm of his reply left her in no 
 doubt as to the intensity of his desire for her. 
 
 He had so clearly permitted himself the relief of this 
 one magnificat. His letter rang with the note of exulta- 
 tion, and yet he still refrained from pressing his advan- 
 tage. He made his point unequivocally as if to hold what 
 he had gained, but he pressed her no further. 
 
 She read the letter half a dozen times in the course of 
 the morning, and something of her old dread and gloom 
 returned. She could not relate herself to life. It came 
 to her again that her very unselfishness had made her the 
 tool of other people's comfort. Her father, Mrs. Par- 
 menter, Jacob, were all bidding for her, and no plain way of 
 self-sacrifice would solve her doubt. Whatever she did, 
 two parties out of three must remain unsatisfied, probably 
 resentful, blaming her for any decision she might make. 
 She seemed so utterly alone, the sport of another's desire. 
 
 At first her natural inclination was to consider what action 
 of hers would cause the least distress to others, but while 
 it appeared in this aspect that Jacob must certainly be 
 sacrificed, she found a qualification in the fact that, while 
 he was one against many, he would suffer more intensely 
 than anyone of the circle of her relations, although she 
 hesitated noticeably over her consideration of Aunt Mary 
 Lynneker. 
 
 And it was the thought of this exception curiously 
 classed in Betty's mind with Jacob himself as one of the 
 two people, who had varied in some inexplicable way from 
 the general rule of her experience that brought her back 
 to that second test of courage which seemed in some ways 
 so admirable. Weighed in that scale she was, as she frankly 
 admitted to herself, a failure. Already she had shirked 
 the plain issue. She had not dared to admit the true rea-
 
 SEPARATION 89 
 
 son of her preparations for leaving Montague Place. She 
 had all the support of worldly wisdom on her side. Mrs. 
 Parmenter would have probably informed Beechcombe, and 
 even if Betty had kept back the one damning fact that 
 Jacob Stahl had a wife living, she would have been pes- 
 tered and besought to give him up. There would have 
 been a fuss, an immense conflict. But she found no con- 
 solation in her regard of any conventional prudence. She 
 saw it truly as casuistical, an excuse to defend her cow- 
 ardice. The truth of the matter was that she could not 
 face that immense conflict. More than that, she had mo- 
 ments when she realised why she was afraid, for she did 
 herself the justice to admit that, never until this awful 
 hesitation, had she lacked the courage of her opinions. She 
 failed here because doubt was deeply rooted in her own 
 mind. She could not defend her action to herself. All 
 her training, all the influences and circumstances of her 
 life, hedged her in and told her that the thing she proposed 
 to do was a violation of the laws of God and man. 
 
 And yet in her heart some instinct, some fount of life 
 that no training had been able to stifle, urged her forward 
 on the forbidden path. She prayed long and shed many 
 tears in the quiet of her own bedroom, but discovered no 
 relief from her difficulty. Once she found herself quoting, 
 "Father, remove this cup from me," and making applica- 
 tion of the verse, was suddenly aghast at the sacrilege of 
 her comparison. . . .
 
 VI 
 
 PARTNERS AND A PARTNERSHIP 
 
 A TEMPORARY distraction from her intimate prob- 
 lem was provided by the difficult business of choos- 
 ing a partner. She had had several answers to her adver- 
 tisement in the Daily Telegraph, but had been forced to 
 admit that none of the applicants were ideally suitable. The 
 majority of them were decayed gentlewomen, eager to find 
 some support for their declining years. They had neither 
 money nor experience, nor, unless volubility could be 
 counted an asset, any recommendations whatever for the 
 management of a boarding-house. The small minority 
 were more various, and one of them, a Mrs. Letchworth, 
 had certain qualifications which seemed to Betty quite prom- 
 ising. 
 
 The refusal of this applicant clearly presented the crux 
 which threatened to leave the problem permanently in- 
 soluble. 
 
 Mrs. Letchworth was a plump, active widow of forty or 
 so, who was even then running a small boarding-house of 
 her own in St. John's Wood, but was anxious to find a 
 more promising sphere for the exercise of her talents. 
 "St. John's Wood isn't the right part," she explained, "at 
 least, my little place isn't. I haven't done so bad out of 
 it, take it all round anyway, I haven't lost any money, 
 which is more than most of us can say, I fancy but I want 
 a bigger place for one thing, and I want to get more cen- 
 tral." 
 
 She was distinctly practical in her suggestions, was will- 
 ing to do a share of the cooking, and to bring in a hundred 
 pounds of capital on the condition that she had a full half 
 share in the profits. 
 
 Betty judged her as eligible, but Mrs. Parmenter sat 
 through the interview with an air of impenetrable gloom. 
 
 90
 
 SEPARATION 91 
 
 "I'm sorry, dear," she said, when Mrs. Letchworth had 
 gone; "but, of course, she isn't a lady, and I'm sure we 
 should never get on together." 
 
 Betty drummed her fingers on the table and reflected that 
 this sort of thing might go on interminably. 
 
 "There'll always be something," she said. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter gave indications of coming tears. "I'm 
 sure I don't know what has set you against me," she said. 
 "I've done everything I can ; I've agreed to let you find me 
 another partner, little as I like the idea of any stranger 
 coming into the place; but I don't think you can expect 
 me to take the very first that offers, especially someone 
 not a lady like this one that's just been, who I never could 
 take to, as you must very well know." Her voice qua- 
 vered, and her head began to tremble violently. 
 
 "Oh, very well," returned Betty gently. "Well put Mrs. 
 Letchworth out of it, and I suppose I had better repeat 
 the advertisement." 
 
 She sighed as she went out of the room, wondering if 
 the ideal partner existed, and whether Mrs. Parmenter 
 would accept her if she amazingly answered their adver- 
 tisement. 
 
 Betty was inclined to consider the former speculation 
 as the more probable of the two. Moreover, she was be- 
 ginning to suspect a secret adversary in Mrs. Blakey, 
 thereby adding another to the list of those who were work- 
 ing to serve their own ends, by keeping her back from 
 the fulfilment of her destiny. Nevertheless, she found a 
 certain grim consolation in the thought that the postpone- 
 ment of that destiny was being brought about through no 
 fault of her own. 
 
 ii 
 
 The second advertisement brought fewer replies than the 
 first. Indeed, the only possible partner, from a practical 
 point of view, was a tall, overbearing woman, who looked 
 with disapproval on everything, and left Mrs. Parmenter 
 in a state of nervous collapse.
 
 92 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Betty anticipated the inevitable on that occasion by an 
 instant condemnation of the departed tyrant, and momen- 
 tarily dispirited by the hopelessness of her task, she allowed 
 three or four days to elapse before she made a further 
 effort. 
 
 It was a letter from Jacob that stirred her to new exer- 
 tion. The tone of it differed little from that of the ma- 
 jority of letters she had received from him, but he con- 
 cluded by asking : "Have you been successful yet in finding 
 a partner for old Parmenter? You didn't refer to that 
 all-important question when you wrote last." Betty found 
 something pathetic in the restraint of that simple question. 
 
 She answered it the same day, and told him some par- 
 ticulars of her failure; but she gave him no hint of Mrs. 
 Parmenter's attitude, and explained that fresh advertise- 
 ments on a somewhat grander scale were to be tried at 
 once. And having thus made a new decision, she drafted 
 a more elaborate prospectus of her requirements and 
 despatched it to three papers, including this time the Daily 
 Post, which she knew Jacob would see in Cornwall. 
 
 in 
 
 Two days later, Alice announced that a lady was in the 
 drawing-room and wished to see the proprietress. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter always interviewed possible boarders, 
 but Betty had 'arranged, for obvious reasons, to be present 
 when a prospective partner was in question; and taking it 
 for granted that this call was the first answer to her ad- 
 vertisement, she made a hasty toilet by discarding her 
 overall, and went up to the drawing-room. 
 
 She liked the visitor at first sight. She saw in her some 
 curious physical resemblance to herself, and inwardly she 
 came to an instant decision that here, at last, was someone 
 who would "have to do." Mrs. Parmenter's possible ob- 
 jections must be vigorously countered if, as Betty con- 
 jectured, those objections would still be forthcoming. 
 
 "I suppose you've seen our advertisement," was her
 
 SEPARATION 93 
 
 opening, as she came into the room, and she looked a 
 friendly approval of so promising an applicant. 
 
 The visitor smiled responsively. "No," she said, "I 
 didn't. I just came on chance. I've been to two other 
 places, but they didn't do at all." 
 
 Betty was puzzled. "But aren't you . . ." she began. 
 
 "Oh yes, I am," replied the other one at once. "At least, 
 I'm looking for a boarding-house. This is a boarding-house, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 "Yes, oh! yes, it is," Betty agreed on a note of disap- 
 pointment. "You mean you are just looking for rooms?" 
 
 "You don't seem particularly pleased," laughed the visi- 
 tor. "But perhaps you've nothing to do with the place. 
 I asked for the proprietress, and I took it for granted . . ." 
 
 "I am the proprietress one of them," put in Betty. "I'm 
 sorry I made a mistake. I have been advertising for a 
 partner, and I thought . . ." 
 
 "You thought I should do?" 
 
 "I'm sure you would splendidly." 
 
 "I'm so sorry. I think I should rather like to be your 
 partner." 
 
 "That's nice of you," said Betty. "But, anyway, it isn't for 
 me. You would have had to be my partner's partner, you see." 
 
 "Do you mean that you're giving it up?" 
 
 Betty nodded. "I want to," she said. 
 
 "Then I'm afraid we are both going to be disappointed," 
 was the response. "For I thought what a delightful land- 
 lady you would be the moment you came into the room ; and 
 now . . ." 
 
 "I'm not going at once," said Betty, with a late recogni- 
 tion of the fact that one bedroom would be empty again 
 at the end of the week. "In fact, I can't go until that real 
 partner presents herself. When did you want to come?" 
 
 The visitor's face became suddenly grave. "There's some- 
 thing I want to tell you first," she said. "But perhaps you 
 will know my name. I'm called Mrs. Philip Laurence." She 
 lifted her firm, round chin, and gave out the information 
 with a touch of defiance.
 
 94 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Betty shook her head. "No, I don't know," she said. 
 "Why do you say you're called Mrs. Philip Laurence ?" 
 
 "Well, I'm not married, you see." 
 
 "Oh!" ejaculated Betty. 
 
 "I don't believe in marriage," Mrs. Laurence continued 
 quietly. "And I've been living with Philip Laurence he's 
 the poet, you know, but I see you've never heard of him 
 for over two years now. And I won't go into any place 
 under false pretences. But if you won't have me, I really 
 think I must give up the idea of a boarding-house. The 
 receptions I had at the other two places ! You might have 
 thought I was a desperate criminal." 
 
 Betty was thinking rapidly. She seemed to see in this 
 quiet, resolute little woman a strangely altered version 
 of the essential Betty Gale. Their spirits had touched from 
 the first moment of meeting; a confidence had been es- 
 tablished without the clumsy necessity for speech. And 
 Betty, reaching out intuitively, had found a quick response, 
 had felt even before she heard that declaration of inde- 
 pendence from the bond of marriage, that she had found 
 a friend who would understand her present difficulty. 
 
 "Oh, can't we come to some arrangement ?" she asked in a 
 tone of despair. 
 
 Mrs. Laurence smiled. "An arrangement?" she asked. 
 
 "I should so like you to stay here for a time," explained 
 Betty eagerly. "It isn't that I want another boarder. 
 We're really full up, all except one room that will be empty 
 on Saturday. But Mrs. Parmenter that's my partner 
 wouldn't have you if she knew; and, besides, there are 
 other people here a Mrs. Blakey, for instance who would 
 make it impossible. Must you tell everyone? Couldn't 
 you just come in and say nothing about not being mar- 
 ried? Is Mr. Laurence coming too? Would he mind?" 
 
 "Oh, he wouldn't mind. He would prefer it." 
 
 "But why, then?" 
 
 "I'm not ashamed of it," said Mrs. Laurence. "Why 
 should I pretend?" 
 
 Betty wonderingly admired her courage. "It must be
 
 SEPARATION 95 
 
 glorious to be so brave," she said, and went on quickly: 
 "But there is a reason in this case, because if you won't 
 pretend, you won't be able to come here, and then I shall 
 lose you." 
 
 "Oh no, you won't do that in any case," said Mrs. 
 Laurence, and drew her chair nearer to Betty's. "I felt 
 that we were going to be friends directly you came in, and 
 I felt, too, that I have known you for ever so long." 
 
 "Yes, I know," agreed Betty, and added : "but I've never 
 felt like that with anyone before." 
 
 They dwelt on that fascinating topic for some minutes, 
 before they returned to a discussion of the practical prob- 
 lem. 
 
 "As I said, Philip would sooner say nothing about it," 
 Mrs. Laurence explained when they had come back to the 
 question at issue. "He hates a fuss, and will say anything 
 for the sake of peace. He can't write when he's worried, 
 you see; but I've never done it, and it seems like the 
 beginning of the end if you once start that sort of thing." 
 
 Betty wrinkled her forehead. "If you take rooms some- 
 where else, it's sure to be at the other end of London," 
 she said, "and I can't get out much just now." 
 
 "But you're going away." 
 
 "It isn't settled," Betty said, with a faint show of con- 
 fusion. "I want to talk to you about that sometime." 
 
 "Why not now?" 
 
 "We haven't time at least, I haven't," was Betty's eva- 
 sion. She felt that she could not open that curious page 
 of her history quite so soon. She had shrunk from exhibit- 
 ing it at Beechcombe, partly because she saw the impossi- 
 bility of displaying by any words of hers Jacob's claim to 
 recognition, his right to be judged and not condemned. And 
 now she shrank from any hint of that enormous project for 
 a reason that was strangely similar; she feared too ready 
 encouragement, almost as she had feared instant reproof. 
 Neither could satisfy her. She wanted to understand ; she 
 wanted advice that was unbiassed. 
 
 "Of course, you're awfully busy," said Mrs. Laurence,
 
 96 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 with a slight access of formality. "I've been so idle myself 
 lately, one forgets." There was a touch of wistfulness in 
 her acknowledgment, as if she deplored a forced inactivity. 
 
 "You don't look as if you were idle ever," said Betty. 
 "I don't believe you are." 
 
 "I've been on the stage, you see," Mrs. Laurence ex- 
 plained; "but I wasn't a success. And now I've really 
 nothing to do just at present." 
 
 "But you are sure to find something soon," urged Betty, 
 suddenly eager to play the part of a comforter. "You'll get 
 another part, or something." 
 
 "I may," agreed the other, without enthusiasm. "But 
 here I am still wasting your really valuable time. . . ." 
 
 "It doesn't matter," put in Betty. 
 
 "But you said. . . ." 
 
 "That I hadn't time for that. It's such a long story." 
 
 "Come and tell it to me this afternoon," Mrs. Laurence 
 said, with a return to the old note of understanding. "We're 
 in rooms at present, quite near here in Store Street, only 
 they don't do very well at all events, not for Philip. Do 
 come, and we can talk everything over. If you come early, 
 we shall be quite alone. Couldn't you?" 
 
 "Oh yes, I will I should like to," replied Betty, with- 
 out hesitation. "And perhaps I can persuade you to come 
 here, after all." 
 
 Mrs. Laurence smiled and shook her head. "Not on your 
 conditions," she said as she stood up. "You don't under- 
 stand quite. I'll explain it all to you. Will you come soon 
 after lunch? About half -past two?" 
 
 Betty said she would ; but when her visitor had gone, she 
 had a brief reaction. She wondered if she had been quite 
 wise in offering so intimate a friendship. Why had she 
 assumed so readily that this unknown Mrs. Philip Laurence, 
 an actress living with a man who was not her husband, was 
 a desirable friend, who might be made the first recipient of 
 so delicate a confidence? She had been, in Betty's opinion, 
 rather overdressed that long fur coat she had been wearing 
 was, to say the least of it, unseasonable.
 
 SEPARATION 97 
 
 IV 
 
 Betty's first sight of the Store Street apartments was 
 hardly reassuring. The large sitting-room into which she 
 was shown by the slatternly maid, displayed certain familiar 
 indications of the cheap lodging. The shoddy furniture 
 had so little relation to the generous proportions and high 
 ceiling of the room itself, but seemed to stand self-con- 
 sciously abashed by its surroundings. 
 
 Freda Laurence did not keep her visitor waiting. She 
 came in at once through one of the great folding doors, that 
 covered nearly the whole of one wall with their depressing 
 waste of drab surface. i 
 
 She was no longer overdressed; her fresh white blouse, 
 with its crisp frilling at her rather short, round neck, the 
 leather belt and plain serge skirt, gave her the air of a 
 capable little business woman. Her manner added to the ef- 
 fect ; she was brisk and practical. "How nice of you to come 
 so early!" she said. "Now we'll have a real good talk." 
 
 Betty, shy and constrained, recognised in the other's atti- 
 tude a different expression of her own nervousness. "She 
 has something to hide," Betty thought. Her rapid criticism 
 of the room, added to her observations of the morning, were 
 suddenly summed up in the reflection that the Laurences 
 had come down in the world. 
 
 Neither of them made any open confession of her em- 
 barrassment. They talked quickly, almost eagerly, on non- 
 committal subjects for a time, chiefly on the subject of 
 Freda Laurence's career as an actress a career that had 
 been confined almost exclusively to parts of secondary im- 
 portance in Philip Laurence's blank verse plays. 
 
 "The stage isn't my vocation," was Freda's conclusion. 
 "I can play a few comedy parts decently enough, but I'm too 
 stocky for anything else. I shall probably be a tub at 
 forty." 
 
 Betty shook her head. "It's not that sort of stockiness," 
 she said; "and you're such a long way off forty that you 
 needn't let it worry you yet, need you ?"
 
 98 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I'm twenty-two," returned Freda. 
 
 Betty had judged her older, but she made no comment, 
 returning the confidence by saying, "I was twenty-seven 
 last month." 
 
 Freda laughed. "You thought I was more than that, 
 didn't you?" she asked. "I know I look more. . . ." 
 
 Betty hesitated, and then said honestly : "Yes, I thought 
 you were about my age." 
 
 "I've put on five years in the last six months," said Freda ; 
 and then, to cover the gravity of her admission, she went on 
 quickly : "but we won't talk about that, will we ? You see, 
 I can't very well just now ; and besides, I do so want to hear 
 all about you. I know you've got something to tell me. I 
 saw it in your manner this morning, and it would be so 
 splendid if we could be friends. I haven't any real friends." 
 
 The first stiffness of their meeting was being smoothed 
 away. Betty's objective criticisms were being overruled by 
 her intuitive feeling of sympathy for this girl who looked 
 five years more than her age. There was so little of the 
 actress about her, so much that was brave, courageous even, 
 and honest. 
 
 "I think we might," agreed Betty, still a little shy. "I 
 haven't any real friends either." 
 
 But when they had confided their Christian names to each 
 other, and the pledge of friendship had been signed verbally 
 and sealed with a kiss, Betty still hesitated to make full 
 confession. 
 
 "I want you to tell me," she said, "why you haven't mar- 
 ried Mr. Laurence. Is there any any obstacle?" 
 
 "A big one," returned Freda, smiling; "but not of the 
 sort you mean, I expect. We aren't either of us married 
 already, for instance." 
 
 Betty looked puzzled. "But why, then . . . ?" she began. 
 
 "Because I don't believe in it," Freda said ; and her eyes 
 grew a little hard, the set of her firm figure a trifle more 
 obstinate. "I was brought up not to believe in marriage." 
 
 "By your mother?" 
 
 "No; my mother died when I was ten. By my father.
 
 SEPARATION 99 
 
 And when I put his principles into practice, he turned against 
 me." 
 
 "He didn't believe in them, then ?" 
 
 "In theory." Freda's tone had a scornful ring. "Only he 
 wants to regenerate the world before he puts them into prac- 
 tice. He says we must educate people first. To me it always 
 seems like refusing to bathe until you've learnt to swim." 
 
 "But what's your objection to marriage?" was the per- 
 plexed Betty's next question. 
 
 "I don't know a thing in favour of it, except to provide a 
 home for the children," said Freda, still speaking with some 
 excitement. "And they ought, of course, to belong to the 
 mother, and they would under any sensible agreement, if 
 the mother was provided for and able to earn a decent living 
 for herself. It all comes back to the economic question, and 
 that's got to be settled first, of course." She paused a 
 moment, and then said: "You see, I'm an advocate for 
 woman's rights, Betty dear. Do you hate me for that?" 
 
 "I I don't know anything about it," admitted Betty. 
 
 "But you're earning your own living, aren't you?" 
 
 "Oh yes." 
 
 "Perhaps you haven't got a home ?" 
 
 "I have, and they want me to go back there and look after 
 the house." 
 
 "And why don't you?" 
 
 "Sometimes I think I will," Betty murmured, a little 
 ashamed of the admission. 
 
 "Oh, don't, dear! please don't!" Freda pleaded, with 
 great earnestness. "Be independent ; it's so splendid. Don't 
 you feel prouder of yourself when you're doing something 
 that helps you to be free?" 
 
 "Oh, free!" exclaimed Betty. "I should be much freer 
 at home in most ways." 
 
 "You wouldn't! you wouldn't!" urged Freda. "You 
 might have more time to spare, and that sort of thing, but 
 your soul would be all cramped. You'd have to do what 
 your people did, and think what they thought. What is 
 your father, by the way ?"
 
 100 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "He's got a living in Buckinghamshire/' said Betty. 
 
 "Then your soul certainly wouldn't be your own unless, 
 perhaps, you believe in all that sort of thing. Do you?" 
 
 "Yes. I don't know. I did." Betty wanted to be quite 
 truthful, but she was quite uncertain what she believed at 
 that moment. 
 
 "Which means you don't!" exclaimed Freda. "If you 
 did, you'd know." 
 
 "I did three months ago," Betty asserted. 
 
 "And then . . . ?" 
 
 Betty leaned forward in her rather uncomfortable arm- 
 chair and sighed desperately. "I'm in a horrible muddle!" 
 she admitted. 
 
 "Who is he?" asked Freda. 
 
 "I don't really know much about him," Betty replied, quite 
 unconscious of any irrelevancy in the question. "He came to 
 the boarding-house last Christmas. But he's . . .married." 
 
 "Was his wife there too ?" 
 
 "Oh no!" Betty's tone expressed the full extent of her 
 horror at the suggestion. "He hasn't seen her for years. 
 But she's religious, or something, and won't divorce him. 
 They weren't a bit happy ever," she added, stating what 
 seemed to her the most essential point of the case. 
 
 "What's his name?" asked Freda, coming to other facts 
 of importance. 
 
 Betty hesitated. The name, she felt, so misrepresented 
 him. "Stahl," she said, and then spelt it. "I call him 
 Jimmy, but I believe his real name's Jacob. But he isn't 
 a Jew, or a German. He's quite English." 
 
 Freda had drawn her brows together. "Jacob Stahl !" she 
 repeated thoughtfully, and then, with a sudden burst : "Oh, 
 but my dear Betty, I know him ! Of course ! Such a dear ! 
 I could have fallen in love with him myself if I hadn't met 
 Philip. He was working with Cecil Barker in Camden 
 Town three years ago, and disappeared suddenly, and I 
 never heard what became of him. Oh, this is tremendously 
 exciting! What a tiny place London is!" 
 
 Betty's face had brightened amazingly. All the difficulties
 
 SEPARATION 101 
 
 of confession, of tedious, unconvincing explanations, had 
 been cleared away; and, what affected her even more, she 
 suddenly saw Jacob in a new light. Freda's brief summary 
 had presented him in another aspect. Betty saw him, not 
 as the social outcast he must appear to her father and sis- 
 ters, or to Mrs. Parmenter, but as an intimate member of 
 the great human family. She had heard from Jacob himself 
 some account of his life with Cecil Barker in Camden Town, 
 but this unprejudiced description of him as "a dear" gave 
 some familiar quality to his relations that she had never 
 before realised. 
 
 "Oh, how funny !" she exclaimed. "Did you really know 
 him well?" 
 
 "Hardly that," Freda said; "but I dare say he would 
 remember me. Tell me, are you very much in love with 
 one another?" 
 
 Betty blushed vividly. "I don't know," she said, hiding 
 her face. "I mean, how is one to know?" she asked. 
 
 "It's like the other thing, religion," returned Freda ; "you 
 always know when you've really got it." 
 
 "Do you mean that I haven't?" said Betty, on a note of 
 perplexity. 
 
 "Tell me more about it," returned Freda cautiously. 
 
 And, somewhat disjointedly, with the help of many ques- 
 tions, Betty succeeded in giving some account of the salient 
 happenings of the past ten months, a resume with, as she 
 felt, all the accents in the wrong places, of the little culmina- 
 tions and reactions that had ended in her promise to join 
 Jacob in Cornwall at the beginning of November. 
 
 "It's only three weeks from now," she concluded ; "but 
 I can't go until I've found a partner for Mrs. Parmenter. 
 Do you think I ought to go ?" 
 
 "I suppose you'd go soon enough if he weren't married?" 
 asked Freda. 
 
 "Oh, I should have married him myself long ago, if it 
 hadn't been for that !" Betty admitted. 
 
 Freda smiled, and made a little gesture with her hands. 
 "There you are," she said. "The chances you'd take if it
 
 102 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 were to be a perpetual contract ! You'd never think of the 
 risks then. But now, because the risk is a different one 
 new to you, anyhow you want to be, oh! so dreadfully 
 sure before you'll take it." 
 
 Betty saw that this statement did not include all the diffi- 
 culties of her particular problem, but she recognised a vein 
 of truth in it that she was not prepared to deny. 
 
 "Do you think I ought to go?" she repeated rather help- 
 lessly. 
 
 Freda shook her head. "No one can advise you about 
 that," she said ; "you must decide for yourself." She paused, 
 and then added : "I should go in your place. If you don't 
 like it, you can give it up. Or will he want you to have 
 children?" 
 
 "He has promised that there shan't be any not yet, at all 
 events," murmured the embarrassed Betty. 
 
 "Then there's simply no problem," was Freda's conclusion. 
 
 Betty could not agree to that, but she felt that her essential 
 difficulty could never be made plain to Freda. She was no 
 less prejudiced on one side than was Aunt Mary on the 
 other. Each of those two antagonists had been so biassed 
 by training and the circumstances of her life, that she was 
 unable to give a free opinion ; each of them had one measure, 
 and could use no other. But if Betty was unable to state her 
 personal problems that sheer reconciliation of her own con- 
 science which no confidant of hers, not even Jacob himself, 
 seemed the least able to understand she could put another 
 side of the question that her companion seemed to have 
 overlooked. 
 
 "Oh, but there is !" she protested. "If I went and lived 
 with him for a year, and then we agreed to part, I should 
 have cut myself off from my family and my work. I could 
 not get anything to do. I should find it very difficult even 
 to get a place as a cook, without references." 
 
 Freda looked thoughtful. "I know," she said. "I've got 
 that to face very soon. But I think it's worth while. We've 
 got to fight for our opinions and our independence. I'm 
 not afraid that I shall starve."
 
 SEPARATION 103 
 
 "But I thought you . . ." hesitated Betty. 
 
 "Yes, I know. I didn't mean to tell you. I don't think 
 I ought to have told you, but it came out. However, let's 
 leave it at that; the present arrangement isn't permanent, 
 and I don't think it will last much longer. The point is, are 
 you afraid of risking the 'afterwards' that's facing me, and 
 might face you? I wasn't ever, and I'm not now." 
 
 "No," Betty admitted, "that wouldn't prevent my going." 
 
 "Well, then . . ." began Freda, but she was interrupted 
 by the banging of the front door, and the sound of heavy 
 footsteps coming upstairs. "There's Philip," she said. "I 
 didn't expect him quite so soon. You'll stop and have tea, 
 won't you ?" 
 
 Before Betty could reply, Philip Laurence blundered into 
 the room. 
 
 His great presence was more in keeping with the propor- 
 tions of the apartment than any of its present furnishings. 
 He snatched off his soft hat when he saw a stranger, and 
 bowed courteously as Freda made the formal introduction. 
 Then he flung his weight into one of the cheap armchairs, 
 and Betty's nerves jumped, she felt so sure that something 
 must give way; and she saw that even Freda cast a quick 
 appraising glance at the overburdened piece of furniture. 
 
 Laurence himself appeared quite oblivious of the covert 
 piece of feminine criticism. 
 
 "You've nothing to do with the stage, I hope, Miss Gale," 
 he said, grunting slightly, as he sought to accommodate his 
 large person to the obviously inadequate limits of his chair. 
 "It's the most cursed profession in the world !" 
 
 Betty was not at her ease. She had disliked Philip 
 Laurence at first sight, and had been prepared to dislike him 
 before he entered the room. 
 
 "No, I've never had anything to do with the stage," she 
 said nervously. She wanted to be gone, but she felt that 
 she must wait now for tea. 
 
 Laurence rolled on to the other arm of his chair, which
 
 104. THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 creaked loudly. "Good," he said, in a warm, encouraging 
 voice. "Very good. I implore you never to think of it as 
 a profession." 
 
 "I never should," returned Betty. She wondered if he 
 assumed that all young women had an ambition to go on 
 the stage. 
 
 "Philip's taking it for granted that any friend of mine 
 must have something to do with the profession," put in 
 Freda, understanding Betty's thought. 
 
 "We meet so many of them," Laurence explained. 
 "They're always turning up on the least excuse to badger 
 me for a part. You know the sort of girl, Miss Gale no 
 talent, no appearance, no voice, but they've a God-sent 
 inspiration that they can act." 
 
 "I'm afraid I don't know anything about it," murmured 
 Betty. "I haven't . . ." 
 
 "So much the better for you," Laurence interrupted. 
 "It's a tremendous relief to talk to someone who knows 
 nothing about the stage. I'm sick to death of the whole 
 business. I was lured into it by the hope of making money 
 quickly. My play, 'The Independents' you saw it, no 
 doubt was a succ&s d'estime, and I spent golden hopes on 
 it; I thought I saw my way to writing a play that should 
 be a succes fou. You know, of course, how one gets led on 
 into the belief that the next play is really going to do the 
 trick, and that one will have enough money afterwards to 
 do good work. But I've made up my mind now that this 
 thing I'm rehearsing shall be the last, whether it succeeds or 
 not. I'm going to get away from all these false values be- 
 fore it's too late. It's a damnable thing to be the slave 
 of popularity, and you are perfectly right in condemning 
 me for having prostituted my gifts, such as they are, for 
 so long; but you see how it has been with me. I've had 
 Freda to think of as well as myself. Thank God, she agrees 
 with me that I've been a fool to waste myself on trying to 
 appeal to this sentimental, uneducated theatre-public we 
 have in London ! You can't teach them ; they haven't the 
 wit to learn." And he continued to abuse the theatre and
 
 SEPARATION 105 
 
 all connected with it, rolling uneasily in the groaning chair. 
 
 Betty, with slightly drooping head, listened patiently, con- 
 tent so long as she was not called upon to provide conversa- 
 tion. She was untouched by Laurence's constant tributes 
 to her own assumed knowledge and clarity of judgment, but 
 she found something rather fine and stirring in the declara- 
 tion of his independence. His talk rolled on while the lodg- 
 ing-house servant set the tea-tray, and hardly paused as he 
 somewhat greedily ate and drank. He demanded nothing 
 more from his hearer than an assumption of intelligent in- 
 terest, and he talked of nothing but the theatre-public's 
 failure to appreciate his own work, and of his final irrevo- 
 cable determination to be true to his own best instincts, and 
 to starve in a garret rather than prostitute his gifts "such 
 as they are" was his invariable qualification to such base 
 uses. 
 
 Through it all Freda sat with a faint air of boredom. 
 Once or twice she put in a remark that tentatively questioned 
 the accuracy of Laurence's statements of fact, but he either 
 ignored the interruption or beat down her feeble contradic- 
 tion with a fresh bludgeon of argument. It seemed to Betty 
 that Freda must have heard all these criticisms and asser- 
 tions many times before, and thus doubted the quality and 
 the integrity of them. If they were not wearisomely familiar 
 to her, she certainly displayed a strange lack of sympathy. 
 
 But all Laurence's long, redundant discussion was ad- 
 dressed most markedly to his visitor; Freda was only 
 dragged in as evidence or as an excuse for the prostitution 
 of his talents, and there were moments when his exagger- 
 ated statements of respect for Betty's opinion and the con- 
 centration of his effort to create, as it seemed, an effect of 
 his personality and ambitions produced in her a feeling of 
 almost physical discomfort. She felt as if he were making 
 love to her before her new friend, before the woman who 
 passed as his wife. 
 
 That impression was not lessened by his manner of saying 
 good-bye, when at last she was able to extricate herself 
 from the toils of his conversation. His compliments on her
 
 106 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 understanding were so florid, and he insisted, despite her 
 weak protestations, in accompanying her down to the front 
 door. 
 
 She shuddered and gave herself a vehement shake when 
 she was safely out in the street. She felt as if she had just 
 thankfully awakened from a particularly unpleasant dream. 
 
 VI 
 
 As she walked home through the gloom of the Blooms- 
 bury streets, her thoughts were distracted from her own 
 problem by her consideration of those two people in the 
 Store Street lodgings. She had come into touch with a 
 tragedy of a kind familiar by repute, but hitherto quite out- 
 side her personal experience. This was a drama precisely 
 similar in kind to those she had seen acted upon the stage 
 or described in the pages of a novel, but until it was viewed 
 in perspective, it wore the commonplace air of every day. 
 She had observed a single scene full of suggestion, but so 
 separated from the story that all the broad aspects of ro- 
 mance had been lost. The past she might, in some fashion, 
 reconstruct for herself, but the future was hidden, and 
 the simple incident had been presented with no didactic 
 preparations or hint of inevitable poetic justice. Freda was, 
 Betty reflected, the same woman she had seen that morning, 
 the woman for whom she had felt a strangely spontaneous 
 affection. This recognition of Philip Laurence as a gross 
 egotist, who inspired her with a peculiar aversion, in no way 
 altered the character of the woman with whom he was living. 
 And yet, to Betty, Freda had appeared utterly changed in 
 the last hour. She had been a human being, and now she 
 had fallen into a category. Betty was seeing her with the 
 eyes of a Mrs. Lynneker or a Mrs. Parmenter, condemning 
 her because she was so obviously ranked with a well-de- 
 scribed class. If Philip Laurence had been of another type, 
 if they had not both been connected with that disreputable 
 profession of the stage, they might have figured more hu- 
 manly; but for the moment, at least, they were presented
 
 SEPARATION 107 
 
 in a romantic setting, and so had become ranged with the 
 whole type pictured in romance the type that must suffer 
 for its sinning. 
 
 Nevertheless, Betty knew, even in the very heart of her 
 reaction, that she and Freda would meet again. Freda's 
 judgment was descending ; that unblessed union was on the 
 verge of dissolution ; and whatever Betty's private criticism, 
 she was determined to do anything that lay in her power to 
 help Freda when she was in trouble. She might come, then, 
 to the boarding-house in Montague Place, and if she were 
 in financial low water, she would not be troubled to pay 
 any rent. That could be arranged without any difficulty. 
 
 By the time she reached home, Betty had forgotten her 
 criticisms in her eager planning to help, and as soon as she 
 was in her own room she wrote an impulsive letter to Freda, 
 begging her to come to Montague Place when she gave up 
 the Store Street lodgings. "You can do it awfully cheaply 
 here, if you don't mind a small room," was Betty's way of 
 suggesting what was in her mind. 
 
 Meanwhile she had to plunge again into this difficult 
 business of finding a partner. Mrs. Parmenter told her 
 that two "quite impossible" applicants had called that after- 
 noon. 
 
 Also Betty remembered with a touch of impatience, that 
 she would have to go down to Beechcombe on the following 
 Thursday for Hilda's wedding. That prospect gave her no 
 pleasure. Already she felt cut off from her own family, and 
 her disinclination to attend the ceremony was aggravated 
 by the fact that she ought to get a new dress for the occa- 
 sion, and that she could not afford it. 
 
 She settled the latter question by deciding that she must 
 make the best of what she had. What did it matter if she 
 appeared dowdy, or if she offended them all? In a very few 
 weeks she would offend them much more, and it might be 
 the last time that she "would see any of them. 
 
 She sighed rather hopelessly, as if life were becoming too 
 much for her. That cloud of dread had formed again, more 
 gloomy, more inevitable than ever before.
 
 VII 
 A WEDDING 
 
 BETTY'S last advertisement produced many applicants, 
 but not the ideal partner. The answers fell into two 
 main categories the well-bred incompetent and the vulgar 
 practical and while the vulgar incompetent formed a small 
 but recognisable sub-group, the fourth combination was not 
 represented by a single inquiry. Outside these four con- 
 siderable divisions were the "perfect idiots" a despairing 
 classification of Betty's whose replies had little or no bear- 
 ing on the subject of the advertisement. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter had assumed a manner of resolute for- 
 bearance that expressed both her willingness to go through 
 the farce with exemplary patience, and her calm certainty 
 that the whole business was foredoomed to failure. She 
 read through the letters that came with a quivering sigh of 
 despair, as if some last wild hope had been crushed, and 
 when she was called in to decide upon the claims of some 
 nearly possible applicant who had been interviewed by 
 Betty, the old lady had a half-eager air, as if she were doing 
 her utmost to find those hypothetical qualifications she so 
 unavailingly desired. 
 
 Betty looked her despair, but she was conscious that her 
 very despair had its alleviations ; and there were times when 
 she was inclined to shift her burden to the shoulders of 
 Fate, declaring that she had done her best, and that nothing 
 more could be expected of her. She still clung somewhat 
 desperately to the idea that she could not leave the board- 
 ing-house until she had found someone to take her place. 
 
 A letter she received from Jacob on the day before her 
 sister's wedding helped to confirm her in this attitude of 
 
 108
 
 SEPARATION 109 
 
 resignation. She had written to him, giving him an account 
 of her meeting with Freda, and also telling him of the many 
 replies stimulated by her last advertisement. The general 
 tone of her letter had been encouraging, she thought; she 
 imagined him cheered, and prepared to wait a few more 
 weeks if necessary now that the climax was assured. His 
 answer, however, exhibited no mark of cheerfulness. "Of 
 course I remember Miss Cairns," he wrote, "and her affair 
 with Laurence ; but I hope you won't compare me with him. 
 I never thought that affair would be a success ; he isn't the 
 sort of man who could stick to one woman for long. I'm 
 sorry for her, of course ; but she must have known the sort 
 of man he was he had it written all over him. I liked 
 her; she was a little like you in some ways." His only 
 comment on the advertisement was, "I'm sorry you are hav- 
 ing so much trouble about finding a partner; it does seem 
 rather hopeless, doesn't it?" 
 
 Betty wondered whether Jacob's desire for her presence 
 in Cornwall was beginning to weaken, and if he could not 
 now be persuaded to wait at least until the spring? The 
 thought of that possible procrastination came as a great 
 relief to her, and when she answered his letter that after- 
 noon, she admitted the failure of her great advertisement 
 by way of preparing him for further delay. 
 
 And so, with a mind rather more at ease, she faced the 
 ordeal of the Beechcombe ceremony. 
 
 ii 
 
 She found a hired waggonette that had been sent both to 
 meet her and another guest expected by the up-train, due in 
 another twenty minutes. The driver of the waggonette was 
 a stranger to Betty. "I was told to bring two fares, miss, 
 one by the down and the other by the up," was all the infor- 
 mation he could give in answer to her question as to the 
 name of the second visitor. 
 
 She was chilled at the outset. Her common sense told her 
 that the Rectory was in the throes of preparation, and also
 
 110 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 that an economy of conveyances was no doubt very neces- 
 sary. But something within her she wondered if it were 
 the consciousness of her own guilty intentions persisted in 
 urging that "they" might have given her some kind of wel- 
 come. She had a sense of being neglected, and all the 
 reasonable explanations that so admirably excused this ap- 
 parent neglect failed to alter her sense of it. 
 
 She would have walked on, but it had begun to rain, and 
 she did not wish further to accentuate her dowdiness by 
 arriving mud-stained and draggled. Already she was bit- 
 terly regretting that she had not bought a new dress for the 
 occasion. 
 
 Her incipient distress was not relieved when she discov- 
 ered that the second passenger was the "Northampton 
 aunt," as they called her at home Mr. Gale's sister-in-law, 
 who had a house that was quite distinctively a "place" near 
 Kingsthorpe. Betty had not seen her for many years, but 
 she had a vivid recollection of her as an overpowering, in- 
 tolerant woman, who condescended on rare occasions to 
 admit the relationship between her late husband and the 
 Rector of Beechcombe. The money had been all her own, 
 and she had lifted her husband from an ignominious curacy 
 to a leisured retirement at the Kingsthorpe place. 
 
 She greeted Betty with the carelessness of assured posi- 
 tion. "Let me see, it's Violet, isn't it?" she asked, and ap- 
 parently overlooking the offered correction, persisted in the 
 use of that name. Her conversation during the drive was 
 almost entirely confined to an account of the difficulties of 
 her journey. It appeared that she had come a cross-country 
 route by way of Cheddington and Aylesbury, and that the 
 train service had been "disgraceful." 
 
 Only once did she branch from the absorbing topic to 
 make a brief reference to the object for which she had so 
 incomprehensively suffered all this inconvenience. 
 
 "Let me see, what is the bridegroom's name ?" she asked. 
 
 "Phelps," replied Betty. 
 
 "One of the Hertfordshire people?" asked Mrs. Gale, 
 with a first flicker of interest.
 
 SEPARATION 111 
 
 "I have no idea," Betty was compelled to admit, and felt 
 more insignificant and middle-class than ever. 
 
 And when she had arrived at the Rectory and could evade 
 further conversation with the overpowering Mrs. Gale, 
 Betty still felt hopelessly out of it, as she phrased her sense 
 of pariahism. There was nothing for her to do. If she 
 could have gone into the kitchen and helped to prepare the 
 somewhat ostentatious luncheon, she would have been 
 happy. But all the arrangements had been made, and were 
 being overlooked by Violet. Her father and Mrs. Lynneker 
 were fully occupied with Mrs. Gale in the drawing-room, 
 and Hilda had momentarily fled from the bustle of prepara- 
 tions, and gone up the village with two cousins from Ox- 
 ford, who had come earlier in the morning by way of High 
 Wycombe. 
 
 After a brief hesitation, Betty decided that she also would 
 find some sanctuary from the hurrying urgency that per- 
 vaded the whole house. The eddy of her choice was "the 
 girls' " bedroom, where she found Hilda's wedding-dress 
 displayed full length upon the bed. 
 
 Betty examined this symbol with a faint, inexplicable 
 sense of repulsion. It was a pretty dress, not too elaborate, 
 although the prevailing fashion had demanded a reasonable 
 flouncing of the rather full skirt. But outstretched there, 
 empty and prostrate, the dress had no humanity, and its 
 symbolism seemed part of the idea of sacrifice. Betty won- 
 dered vaguely what her sister's feelings were for this almost 
 unknown Mr. Phelps, whether she had ever considered the 
 significance of the rite of marriage? 
 
 She was still frowning perplexedly over the tangle of her 
 thoughts when she heard Hilda's voice in the garden below, 
 and a minute or two later, the young bride-elect raced up the 
 stairs and burst into the room. 
 
 "Hullo, Bet, how lovely to find you here !" was her greet- 
 ing. "They never told me you'd come." Her pleasure was 
 unmistakably genuine, as was also the warmth of her em- 
 brace, and Betty suddenly thrilled to an awakening of
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 emotional interest in all that had till now appeared so ortho- 
 dox and mechanical. 
 
 They had hardly drawn apart when the luncheon-bell 
 rang. 
 
 "Oh, bother ! Look here, darling," Hilda broke out, "I'm 
 not going down; they're going to bring me something up 
 here. I'm supposed to be dressing, of course. Stay and 
 have something to eat here with me, will you, dear? And 
 then you can help me to dress." 
 
 "Rather," assented Betty eagerly. "But what about 
 Violet?" she added. "Won't she want to help you?" 
 
 "Oh, she'll come up later," Hilda said, with a hint of im- 
 patience in her voice. "She's got to be in for the lunch, of 
 course, and Heaven knows how long they'll talk over it with 
 the Northampton aunt and all." 
 
 "I'd love to have it up here with you, dear," Betty re- 
 turned. "I was only afraid ... I didn't want to be in the 
 way, I mean, if you and Violet . . ." 
 
 "Thafs all right. You needn't worry about that," replied 
 Hilda. She was plainly in a state of considerable nervous 
 excitement, but Betty guessed that there had been some 
 estrangement between her two younger sisters since she had 
 seen them nearly three months ago. Possibly, that recog- 
 nisably acid strain in Violet had been more in evidence since 
 the engagement. It might have been difficult for her to hide 
 a little spinsterish jealousy of Hilda's success; and Hilda, 
 no doubt, had found new interests, had been partly absorbed 
 in a new life, new hopes, that Violet could not share with 
 her. 
 
 in 
 
 "I suppose you're frightfully happy?" Betty asked pres- 
 ently. She put the question quietly, controlling by her tone 
 and expression the somewhat hectic hilarity of her sister's 
 mood. 
 
 "What do you mean by that, Bet?" Hilda returned, 
 dropping her voice from the high note of excitement on 
 which it had been pitched since she entered the room.
 
 SEPARATION 113 
 
 "Nothing," Betty said. "Only just that you are happy, 
 aren't you ?" 
 
 "Oh, of course I am," Hilda said. She propped her chin 
 in the cup of her two hands and stared past Betty at the 
 window behind her. 
 
 "You're tremendously in love with him?" continued Betty 
 earnestly. 
 
 Hilda nodded vehemently, and then said : "Why do you 
 ask like that, Bet? Don't you think I am?" 
 
 "Oh yes, as far as I know. I've never seen you together, 
 you see," Betty explained. "Only I wanted you to tell me. 
 You seem to be so excited." 
 
 Hilda frowned, and the superficial likeness between the 
 two sisters became more remarkable. "You're such a seri- 
 ous mouse, Bet," she said ; and then she got up and came and 
 sat at her sister's feet, and leaned her head against her. 
 
 "It isn't that, dear," she went on, when she had settled 
 herself in her new position. "But you understand, don't 
 you, how I hate to-day?" 
 
 "Tell me," murmured Betty, bending affectionately over 
 her. 
 
 "I can tell you," Hilda said in a low voice. "Violet 
 wouldn't understand. She's been funny, rather, lately. We 
 haven't been nearly such good pals since I've been engaged. 
 But you're such a quiet old darling! I have missed you 
 awfully, Bet, really." 
 
 Betty's arm tightened about her sister's shoulder, and she 
 leaned her cheek on Hilda's hair. "Dear old girl !" she said. 
 "Tell me why you hate to-day so much." 
 
 "It's being stuck up to be stared at and made a show of," 
 Hilda explained. "I wish Frank and I could have just run 
 away somewhere together, and got married quietly after- 
 wards with no one knowing anything about it. I I feel so 
 ashamed somehow, Bet. I was reading through the service 
 this morning before breakfast. I've often heard it, of 
 course, but I never understood it before. When you think 
 of yourself saying these things it's so different. And and 
 it's rather horrid, Bet, in some ways, I think. I don't much
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 like other people looking at me while father's reading all 
 that about you know. I feel as if getting married is just 
 something that only concerns Frank and me, and I hate the 
 thought of them, that dreadful Aunt Gale and all, staring 
 at me. I met her in the hall when I came in, and she looked 
 at me as if I were up for sale sort of sizing me up, you 
 know. And the two Oxford cousins were funny, I thought. 
 I dare say it's all imagination, but oh ! Bet darling, I do wish 
 it was all over. I simply hate dressing up for the beastly 
 ceremony !" 
 
 "I understand ; I should hate it, too," said Betty quietly. 
 A sudden impulse stirred her to confide in Hilda ; they had 
 never been so much in sympathy as at that moment. 
 
 "I think if I were going to to get married, I should run 
 away," she said, "and and perhaps chance the wedding 
 afterwards." 
 
 "Oh, I didn't mean that!" said Hilda, straightening her- 
 self, and turning, so that she could look up into her sister's 
 face. "You don't think I meant anything wicked like that, 
 Bet?" 
 
 "You think that would be wicked ?" asked Betty. 
 "Well, of course," returned Hilda, with absolute con- 
 viction. 
 
 "But suppose you and Frank couldn't get married," Betty 
 hesitated. "I mean suppose there was some obstacle in the 
 way. . . ." 
 
 "How could there be ?" Hilda interpolated. 
 "Well, suppose he had been married very young to a hor- 
 rid sort of a woman, and that they couldn't get on, and had 
 lived apart for years, would you run off with him and chance 
 getting married afterwards ?" 
 
 Hilda had returned to her thoughtful attitude ; she was 
 sitting on the floor, her knees drawn up far enough to sup- 
 port her elbows, her chin resting on her knuckles. She was 
 evidently trying to consider the question with a fine detach- 
 ment. "I don't think Frank would ask me to," was her 
 verdict. 
 
 "But if he did?"
 
 SEPARATION 115 
 
 "He wouldn't be Frank if he did It would all be dif- 
 ferent." 
 
 It was an unsatisfactory answer, but enough for Betty. 
 She saw that her own troubles must wait. She would not 
 intrude them on a Hilda so naturally absorbed in her own 
 affairs. But that was not all. As Mrs. Blakey had said, 
 Betty was one of those dear kind creatures who were always 
 looking after other people. She had to sacrifice herself. 
 The others she must add Hilda to the growing list were 
 eager for her sympathy and support, but they did not want 
 to be bothered with her personal worries. 
 
 "I say, old girl, it's after half-past one ; oughtn't you to be 
 getting dressed ?" she suggested. 
 
 "Great Scott, yes !" agreed Hilda, jumping to her feet. 
 "If we're not married by three o'clock it isn't legal. Come 
 on!" 
 
 IV 
 
 Sitting in the Rectory pew an hour later, Betty's thoughts 
 returned to that conversation in the bedroom. Next to her 
 Mrs. Gale, absolved by her social position from anything 
 more than a formal reverence, stared critically about her; 
 and farther down, one of the Oxford cousins was holding a 
 whispered conversation with Violet. None of them seemed 
 to feel that this brief interval of waiting was a solemn in- 
 troduction to the ceremony during which two young people, 
 almost unknown to one another, were about to take the most 
 binding vows of fidelity before God, pledging their lives 
 blindly to a future of which they had not taken, were not 
 able to take, serious thought. That most certainly was not 
 the attitude of her overbearing aunt, nor probably of any 
 other member of the rustling congregation. This affair to 
 them was a show, the most interesting incident in the life of 
 a young woman, for it was round her that all the interest 
 centred ; the man, despite all conventions, is in some way 
 exempted from the letter of the contract. Marriage is by 
 common consent a less important affair in his life; he can, 
 in one particular, generally avoid that vow of constancy. It
 
 116 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 seemed to Betty that the ritual of the affair was, perhaps, as 
 Jacob had said, a farce, and if it were not performed by 
 three o'clock it would be null and void Hilda and her lover 
 would be no more married in the eyes of the law than Jacob 
 and Betty down in Cornwall, making their vows to each 
 other without any witnesses to record the fact in some dingy 
 ledger. Surely before God it would be the result that 
 counted, the keeping of the promise, not the form and man- 
 ner in which the promise was made. . . . 
 
 If only she were not such a coward, if she did not fear so 
 foolishly the strictures of all these people. Probably there 
 was not a single person in this big congregation who would 
 care to speak to her if she omitted this ceremony before go- 
 ing to live with Jacob. The Oxford boy cousin, perhaps, 
 might think it "rather sporting," and look unpleasantly sly, 
 as if she had put herself in the class of women with whom 
 certain familiarities were possible. . . . 
 
 At last an unrecognisable Hilda came up the aisle on the 
 arm of her uncle their mother's brother upon whom had 
 devolved the honour of "giving away" the bride ; they were 
 followed by two little girl bridesmaids, self-consciously pre- 
 occupied with the management of the satin train they were 
 carrying. "What did all these rites mean ?" Betty wondered. 
 She had begun to examine them for the first time in her life ; 
 she had not the knowledge to trace them back to their dim 
 origins, but vaguely she recognised some idea of a bargain 
 in them all. In the old days, she seemed to remember, mar- 
 riage had been a matter of arrangement between the parents, 
 of arrangement and barter. . . . 
 
 She listened intelligently to the words of the service, fol- 
 lowing it in her Prayer-Book. Hilda's comments in the 
 bedroom had stirred her curiosity. She had attended many 
 weddings, but she had to confess that the actual meaning 
 and purport of the ritual was unknown to her. And here, 
 too, she found again that hint of bargaining, that and the 
 admission that marriage was a kind of licensed and permis- 
 sible fornication. . . . 
 
 Her father took the service, making the most of his fine
 
 SEPARATION 117 
 
 voice, and the bridegroom's father he had come down with 
 his son, and Betty had not seen him before -afterwards 
 gave a short address from the altar-rails. He was an oldish 
 man with a white beard, and he confined himself to a few 
 pompous remarks on the sanctity of the marriage vows. 
 Betty was no wiser for the address, and she wondered if 
 old Mr. Phelps had ever examined the inner meaning of the 
 marriage service. He was reputed, she remembered, to be 
 a great classical scholar. 
 
 She walked back to the station after the reception, glad 
 to get away from the crowd of chattering relations. She 
 had hardly seen Hilda again. When they had left the 
 church, Betty had been fully occupied for a time by the 
 many relatives and friends whom she had not spoken to 
 before. She had meant to go upstairs with Hilda while she 
 changed her dress, but that design had been frustrated. 
 
 And later, when Hilda had come down to say good-bye, 
 she had evidently been only too anxious to escape. "You're 
 coming to stay with us, Bet, aren't you ?" she had said hur- 
 riedly as she kissed Betty; and Betty had nodded, too con- 
 fused with the general bustle even to wonder whether she 
 would ever be able to accept that invitation, or if Hilda 
 would care to renew it if her sister disgraced the family. 
 
 But she thought of that in the train, and it seemed to her 
 that the loss of Hilda would be almost the only thing that 
 mattered. She had felt so separated from all that crowd. 
 And had she not already disgraced the family in the opin- 
 ion of the Northampton aunt, for instance by running a 
 boarding-house ? 
 
 She had been terribly "out of it," she reflected, and she 
 felt lonely and miserable. There were only two people she 
 could confide in now Freda Laurence and Jacob. The 
 first of them, at least, she might see very soon. And, in- 
 deed, she saw her sooner than she expected, for when she 
 arrived in Montague Place Mrs. Parmenter greeted her
 
 118 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 with the announcement that a ' new boarder had come in 
 to take "Mr. Stoll's old room. A Miss Cairns, dear; she 
 says she knows you." 
 
 Betty went straight up to Freda's bedroom. 
 
 "Oh, how nice to find you here!" she said. "Have you 
 really come to stay? I'm so glad!"
 
 VIII 
 THE AMAZING LETTER 
 
 FREDA'S affair with Philip Laurence was, she confessed, 
 finally settled. "We have agreed to part," she told 
 Betty. "It has been inevitable for a long time now, but we 
 dragged on for one reason or another." 
 
 She would give no details. "It isn't that I mind talking 
 about it," she said, "so far as the sentimental side of it 
 goes; but it would not be fair to him." 
 
 Betty did not press her questions. She had no doubt 
 that Freda was justified in breaking the relation, and in 
 refusing the offer of marriage which Philip Laurence 
 seemed astoundingly to have made a few days before the 
 final separation. 
 
 Freda's presence in the house made a great difference to 
 Betty. She had, for the first time, someone to whom she 
 could confide an intelligible statement of her perplexities, 
 someone who was glad to listen. The effect of this friend- 
 ship, however, was not primarily to help the cause of the 
 desolate Jacob. 
 
 Freda's prejudice was of another type to that of Beech- 
 combe. In this matter she could keep an open mind. She 
 had no desire to bring these two together that was com- 
 parable to Beechcombe's desire to keep them apart. Her 
 first question as to Betty's feeling for Jacob had not been 
 satisfactorily answered, and before she had been in the 
 house a week, Mrs. Blakey, shrewd enough to sight a new 
 ally, cornered Freda in the drawing-room one evening, and 
 in her own plain manner gave her a version of the affair that 
 strengthened Freda's earlier inference. 
 
 "She's sorry for him, Miss Cairns," was the substance of 
 
 119
 
 120 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Mrs. Blakey's opinion ; and she was careful to say no word 
 in disparagement of Jacob that might come back to Betty, 
 and so put weight in what was, according to Mrs. Blakey, 
 the wrong scale. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter followed the admirable lead given to 
 her, and probably under instruction from her superior in 
 tact, took up much the same line of argument, only adding 
 on her own account that she was sure Betty would never 
 be happy with Mr. Stoll, for reasons that were not explicitly 
 stated. 
 
 One curious result of these intrigues a result that seemed 
 at the time to have no bearing on the essential question 
 was the receiving of Freda both by Mrs. Parmenter and 
 Mrs. Blakey into a confidence that distinguished her posi- 
 tion from that of the ordinary boarder. She had given 
 these two ladies no hint of her failing from their standard 
 of righteousness she had promised Betty to make that 
 reserve and they had, in Mrs. Blakey's phrase, "taken to 
 her from the first" ; and they took to her even more when 
 they found that she was working on their side. 
 
 And these influences were being supported by another that 
 was, it seemed to Betty, even more important Jacob had al- 
 most ceased to write to her. 
 
 He replied after an interval of five days an interval 
 filled for her with many qualms of anxiety to the letter 
 in which she had confessed the failure of her advertisement ; 
 but he made no reference to that most important admission. 
 Betty had expected protests and pleadings, and when her 
 relief of being spared was over, she had a shiver of doubt. 
 She was not expert enough in her criticism of the literary 
 manner to note that this letter of Jacob's was even more 
 carelessly worded than that which had preceded it; but she 
 did not fail to read a certain feebleness of spirit into the 
 matter of his unusually short account of his doings. Her 
 inference a perfectly natural one was that he no longer 
 desired her presence with the same fervour, and that the 
 writing of letters to her was becoming a mere duty an in- 
 ference that found her curiously resentful. She answered
 
 SEPARATION 
 
 him at once, and although she made no reference to her 
 future plans, the tone was fonder than it had been since 
 the first month of his absence. 
 
 To that letter she received no answer for over a week, and 
 then it was no more than a few lines, plainly written in a 
 hurry. 
 
 She was piqued. If he had reproached her, she would 
 have been stricken with the consciousness that she had not 
 kept her promise. But she felt that she could put but one 
 construction on this apparent carelessness. He wanted to 
 get out of it, she thought, and she found the reflection un- 
 believably painful. She carried it about with her, a secret 
 wound, suddenly aware that now the sense of compulsion 
 was removed, something else had gone with it something 
 desirable that had been the source of a new joy in life. 
 
 She tried to keep it from Freda, but that proved to be 
 impossible. 
 
 ii 
 
 "I think you might tell me what's happened," was the 
 first hint Betty received that her trouble was not to be dis- 
 guised by mere silence. 
 
 They were in the kitchen ; Freda had been taking lessons 
 in cooking. "Failing the stage," she had said, "it's a way of 
 making a living. I believe in making myself capable in as 
 many ways as possible." 
 
 "Nothing," Betty replied with attempted surprise. "Noth- 
 ing's happened. Why?" 
 
 "Of course something's happened," Freda said. "Has he 
 written ? Is he pressing you to run away ?" 
 
 The intermittent presence of Alice interfered with any 
 confession at that time, but later that evening Betty went 
 up and sat in her friend's bedroom, which, small as it was, 
 had the advantage of being supplied with a gas fire. 
 
 "Don't you want to tell me about it, old girl?" Freda 
 asked irrelevantly at the first pause. "Is he trying to per- 
 suade you ?"
 
 122 THE 'INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Betty shook her head. "Anything but," she murmured. 
 
 "You don't mean that ... ?" said Freda. Their conver- 
 sation was very elliptical now, when they were alone to- 
 gether. The smallest intimation was sufficient. 
 
 "I don't know," Betty returned, staring very hard at the 
 dull glow of the gas fire. "He has hardly troubled to write 
 the last fortnight, and then not a word about my going to 
 him." 
 
 "You don't think that he's found anyone else?" 
 
 Betty shivered slightly. "It seems impossible to me, 
 somehow," she said. "But I suppose it isn't. Men do, 
 don't they?" 
 
 "Some," returned Freda, obviously making an application 
 in her own mind. 
 
 "He didn't seem a bit like that," Betty continued. "I 
 thought . . ." 
 
 "Are you only judging by his letter ?" Freda asked. 
 
 "Oh yes." 
 
 "Has he said anything at all definite?" 
 
 "He hasn't said anything. That's what's so funny. The 
 three months are up, and I thought he would be furious. I 
 wrote a fortnight ago, telling him that I couldn't find a 
 partner, and I expected . . ." Her voice trembled, and she 
 stopped abruptly. 
 
 Freda made no reply, and for a minute or two they sat 
 in silence, neither looking at the other. 
 
 "I don't care," said Betty at last, looking very determined. 
 
 "Oughtn't you to give him some chance to explain him- 
 self?" returned Freda. 
 
 "Why should I ?" 
 
 "You're only guessing, are you?" 
 
 "What else could it mean? If you knew how he used to 
 implore me. . . ." 
 
 "I do, more or less, don't I ? But you promised you would 
 go to him at the end of three months. He may feel now that 
 you must go of your own free will. Perhaps he thinks that 
 if you don't care enough for him to keep your promise, it 
 would be better that you shouldn't go at all."
 
 SEPARATION 123 
 
 "I know ; it sounds all right, but it isn't like him somehow, 
 except just at the last. Then he was rather like that. But 
 the tone of his letter is so different. . . ." 
 
 "What are you going to do ?" asked Freda, after another 
 pause. 
 
 "I can't do anything, can I ?" said Betty, with a tiny shrug 
 of her shoulders. "Except wait," she added. 
 
 "Aren't you going to write?" 
 
 "Not yet, anyway." 
 
 "Then he'll think you don't care." 
 
 "Well, if he thinks that. . . ." Betty paused, and then 
 went on bravely: "I don't know that I do care." 
 
 "You do," Freda said. "I thought you didn't much. 
 But you keep yourself in so." 
 
 "I've had to," Betty admitted. 
 
 "I think you ought to write," said Freda. 
 
 "I shall wait for a few days in any case," was Betty's 
 decision. "I I don't know what to say." 
 
 "Why not ask him what's the matter?" 
 
 "Oh, I can't!" was all Betty's explanation; but Freda 
 seemed to understand it. 
 
 in 
 
 A week later her letter was still unwritten, and she had 
 had no further word from Jacob. A certain stubborn resig- 
 nation was coming to her, but she felt that she could not 
 endure the suspense. Every morning she found excuses for 
 him; and while she eagerly awaited the coming of the first 
 post the letters from him never came by any other she 
 found half a dozen versions to explain his silence and his 
 change of tone. Then the sound of that declamatory 
 double-knock would reverberate through the house, and she 
 would go up from the kitchen to find one of the German 
 boarders sorting the letters in the hall, and would be met 
 by the invariable "Nozzing for you, Miss Gale," and always 
 she suffered a reaction. It was as if that daily failure was 
 perpetually a fresh insult to her. She had an unpleasant 
 feeling that the smiling Mr. Meyer must guess the reason
 
 124 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 of her expectation, and that he grinned exultingly over her 
 disappointment. For two days now she had been unable 
 to face him, and had waited until she had heard him go 
 into the dining-room, before she had dared miserably to 
 investigate the letters on the hall-stand. 
 
 She wrote at last in order to end the suspense, and she 
 said nothing to Freda until the letter was posted. 
 
 "I suggested that we should wait another six months," 
 she said, when she went to Freda's room that evening and 
 confessed that she had delivered her ultimatum. 
 
 "Was that all?" Freda asked. 
 
 "Practically," Betty said. "I was frightfully stiff and 
 formal. I said that I hadn't heard from him for some time, 
 and I didn't know whether he remembered that the three 
 months were up, and that I hadn't been able to find a part- 
 ner yet for Mrs. Parmenter, and hadn't we better wait. I 
 suggested six months. I wanted to give him a chance to 
 back out of it if he wished to. He can easily now. He has 
 only got to say 'yes,' and not write any more." 
 
 "Do you think he would do that? Wouldn't it be rather 
 a sneaky way of getting out of it?" 
 
 "I don't know," said Betty defiantly. "I thought I 
 understood him, but evidently I didn't. If I had written like 
 that a month ago, I should have expected him to come up 
 by the next train. But I don't now." 
 
 "Anyhow, he's sure to write," suggested Freda. 
 
 "I should think so," agreed Betty, a little doubtfully. 
 
 "I can't help thinking you're doing him an injustice some- 
 where," said Freda thoughtfully, after a pause. "It's quite 
 natural, of course. You've got a reaction. But I shouldn't 
 think he's a sneak. I know I didn't see much of him, but he 
 didn't strike me a bit like that." 
 
 "Oh, well, we shall soon see," returned Betty. She felt 
 cold and heartless now that she had taken a definite step. 
 Nothing seemed to matter. 
 
 For quite a long time they sat without speaking, and then 
 Betty said suddenly, "This was his room." The announce- 
 ment appeared to her a tremendous confession, a final dis-
 
 SEPARATION 125 
 
 solution of the last bond between her and Jacob. Freda 
 got up quickly and put her arms round her. "Oh, Betty, 
 old girl, you mustn't take it like that!" she said. 
 
 "I don't care," Betty protested, holding herself very 
 stiffly ; and then the strength seemed to go out of her ; she 
 clung weakly to Freda, and her whole body trembled. 
 "What's the good of caring?" she tried to say, but the words 
 would not come; they were too poignant to be spoken. 
 She felt that her life was ended, and the realisation broke 
 down the last remnant of her determined self-control. She 
 began to cry hopelessly. "I don't care," she repeated fool- 
 ishly, between her sobs. 
 
 Freda, trying to comfort her, felt a sudden hatred for 
 Jacob. He appeared as another representative of the brutal 
 sex that had always misused women. 
 
 IV 
 
 Betty ignored the post next morning. All that day she 
 felt detached from life. She had made her confession. She 
 did not care, she had protested, and Jacob was but one 
 item in all the dull, uninteresting world that offered no as- 
 pect of attractiveness. She thought her curious love-affair 
 the only one she had ever had was finished for ever, and 
 she was glad, she imagined, that all the strain and anxiety of 
 it was over. She was free now either to stay on in Monta- 
 gue Place or to return to Beechcombe, and although neither 
 prospect appeared even remotely inviting at that moment, 
 she had, at least, the consolation of knowing that she need 
 not act under any compulsion. 
 
 Yet her very emancipation wore a barren air. It was as 
 if she had come from the confinement of a walled garden 
 out into some bleak, open space. Life itself appeared wide 
 and desolate, so arid that the freedom of her choice became 
 valueless. She might go whither she would, but there was 
 no place to which she wanted to go. From her present 
 standpoint, one horizon was as little attractive as another. 
 Subconsciously she missed the stimulus of the thrust she had
 
 126 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 so long resisted ; and even on that day her thoughts returned 
 with a vacant desire for the compulsion she had in one 
 form almost thankfully abandoned to the contemplation 
 of the religion that had become somewhat remote from her 
 during the past ten months. Having regained her inde- 
 pendence, she was eager once again to abandon it. ... 
 
 She went straight into the dining-room next morning, 
 without a glance at the stand in the hall on which the letters 
 were generally left. But even before she entered the room, 
 she knew that Jacob had answered her. 
 
 For one moment she believed that her intuition had failed 
 her, for the letter she saw lying beside her plate differed 
 materially from the one she had seen so clearly in imagina- 
 tion. This was a bulging foolscap envelope, and in the 
 instant that elapsed while she moved from the door to the 
 table, the thought leapt bright and clear to her mind that 
 Jacob had returned her letters to her, that this was the 
 final seal of their parting. 
 
 And with that thought she realised that her coldness, the 
 strange anaesthesia of all emotions she had suffered the day 
 before, had been unreal, had been induced by her own 
 imaginings. Now she was to suffer the real pain to which 
 her former stillness had been no more than an introduction. 
 In future she would be truly dead and cold through all the 
 endless days that stretched inimitably out to some unknown, 
 undesired end. . . . 
 
 Mr. Meyer, standing on the hearthrug, was the only other 
 occupant of the room as yet. 
 
 "You haf to-day your letter, Miss Gale," he said genially. 
 "I bring it in for you." 
 
 "Oh, thank you; it's nothing important," Betty said 
 quietly. "Hasn't Alice sent up breakfast yet? I'll go and 
 hurry her up." 
 
 The excuse came to her automatically. She picked up 
 the letter and left the room, unheeding Mr. Meyer's sur- 
 prised expostulation that the breakfast was already on the 
 table. 
 
 She went straight to her own room and locked herself in.
 
 SEPARATION 187 
 
 She could not bear the thought that anyone should guess 
 her humiliation. But when she was alone and safe from 
 interruption, she hesitated. She realised then that the- con- 
 tents of the envelope in her hand could not be her own 
 letters returned to her ; it was the wrong shape ; it was too 
 smooth and regular for a package of that sort. 
 
 At last, fumblingly, she tore it open. 
 
 She found half a dozen sheets of foolscap, closely cov- 
 ered with writing. At the top of the first sheet he had writ- 
 ten and twice underlined, "Read my letter first." 
 
 She found the letter still in the envelope. 
 
 "After I got your letter," he had begun, without any con- 
 ventional form of address, "I decided to send you the 
 enclosed. It is a sort of diary that I have been keeping for 
 the last fortnight. I finished it to-day. I never meant to 
 send it to you, and I feel that I ought not to send it now; 
 but I must. Don't let it influence you more than you can 
 help. I dare say much of it is very silly, and probably I shall 
 be all right again in a few months." After that he had 
 written again, "I never meant to send it to you," and had 
 run his pen through the sentence and concluded: "You 
 must do what you think is right." 
 
 Betty frowned in perplexity. What did he mean by say- 
 ing that he would "probably be all right again in a few 
 months"? Had he been ill? Was he still ill? She read 
 the letter again before she turned to the "diary." 
 
 "To-day has been the worst day yet," was the opening 
 sentence, "a day of more unhappiness and loneliness and 
 longing for you than was yesterday or Tuesday. There has 
 been an intolerable wind and a fine mist of rain that never- 
 theless stings like sand. I went out for a few minutes up 
 to the pillar-box, and was glad to get back. But as though 
 it were not enough that I cannot get out, more personal 
 inconvenience has been heaped upon me by the fact that 
 the fire has smoked unbearably, so that I have had no peace
 
 128 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 or comfort. It is these small annoyances which, if they 
 persist, drive one to desperation. I have been cursing fate 
 and destiny and all the gods there be this afternoon. And 
 as I cursed I realised my tiny impotence. I saw myself as 
 some useless, petulant insect, as the smallest of midges vent- 
 ing its fury on an elephant. It is this sense of impotence 
 which brings one to the last despair. I can't write or read. 
 I am sick of myself and my thoughts and my futility. And 
 this putting of my mood on to paper without any trouble 
 to choose my phrases and avoid repetition is the only relief 
 I can find. I am thinking of it, Betty, at this moment, as a 
 letter to you. I know, of course, that I shall never send it, 
 whatever happens. It would be too much like a feeble 
 whining to you to have pity on me. I don't want to get you 
 like that. But it is a relief to address you in some way, 
 to feel that I am writing to you, although that other person 
 who is and isn't me knows about and tries to remind me 
 that I'm not writing to you at all. I don't care; I shall 
 think of this as a sort of dreadful last hope. I change 
 my mind every five minutes. Perhaps I shall send it to you 
 in one eventuality. I shall if I want to. Nothing could 
 possibly be worse than this. The woman has washed up 
 now and gone. I shan't see another soul until ten o'clock 
 to-morrow morning sixteen hours; not that I ..." 
 
 Betty turned the page quickly, but could find no con- 
 tinuation of the unfinished sentence. Apparently one or 
 more sheets was missing. Then her eye caught the words 
 at the head of a page : "Realise that the only thing is for 
 you to come of your own free will," and she went on from 
 that point; ". . . but will you ever come? It is so impos- 
 sible for me to believe that nothing but a sense of duty to the 
 Parmenter woman keeps you back. She is old and selfish, 
 and, of course, she wants you (who wouldn't?) ; but it isn't 
 credible that no one could be found to take your place as 
 the manager of a rotten boarding-house. It's just that the 
 old beast doen't like a change. She's got you, and she means 
 to keep you if she can, and she doesn't care a hang what's 
 best for you. Perhaps you think I don't either. I admit it
 
 SEPARATION 129 
 
 looks like that. But I do, although that's something that 
 you can't understand yet. You can't believe that I really 
 think that it's better to do what you think is wicked than 
 kill your soul by routine and narrowness, as you will if you 
 go on at that beastly place. I know we should be happy 
 together. It's a good thing to have to face the world, face 
 people, and tell them you don't care a hang what they think 
 of you. It braces you. It's a tonic. And that brings me 
 back to my own weakness. I do so want you to come of 
 your own free will, Betty dear. I ought to have learnt, I 
 suppose, that if I want you I must take you, order you, make 
 you come, and then shoulder the responsibility. But for 
 the most part I can't see it like that. I feel that in this 
 particular thing it is necessary for you to choose for your- 
 self. If I make you come by sending you this, for in- 
 stance you would never forget it. You would always have 
 the feeling that you had been forced into coming, and that 
 would stand between us; it would prevent you from ever 
 loving me. . . ." 
 
 Betty was startled to see a drop of water splash on to 
 the page she was reading. She was not aware that she had 
 been crying. She lifted her head, and the room seemed to be 
 ringing still with Jacob's voice. 
 
 She put down the manuscript, and buried her face in her 
 hands. She could see him and hear him. He seemed to 
 be actually present with her there in her own room, and his 
 face was drawn and pleading. How could she ever have 
 misjudged him? How could she have doubted that he 
 wanted her more than anyone had ever wanted her ? 
 
 Her tears were coming quickly, but quietly, without pain. 
 She was not wrenched and hurt as she had been when she 
 had cried in Freda's room. She was not sure that her tears 
 were not tears of happiness. 
 
 Presently she wiped her eyes and picked up the diary 
 again. She found that she was reading the last page. 
 
 ". . . for another six months," the page began, "it is so 
 tragic that it is almost funny. I did laugh when I read your
 
 130 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 letter, but I don't think my laugh had much humour in it. 
 Six months more of this, as if I could . . ." 
 
 After that he had drawn a whole row of capital "B's" 
 across the page and partly crossed them out. Then the 
 manuscript began again in a more careful writing: "I have 
 been down to Livelow. The wind has gone down, but the 
 sea is magnificent. It puts strength into me. I have decided 
 to send you this, and I will write a note with it telling you 
 how to read it. I don't care and I don't care. Only, of 
 course, you may not come even after reading this. Well, if 
 you don't, I shall know that you don't care, and that it is 
 better you shouldn't come." Then came a long dash, and 
 two lines lower down he had written and underlined : "I 
 shan't commit suicide. I had meant to, but I see that that 
 isn't fair. Believe that, Betty believe that absolutely. 
 Whatever you do, I shall go on living in my own haphazard 
 way, however blank life may be." 
 
 VI 
 
 She could read no more then. She got up and put back 
 the manuscript in the envelope, unlocked her door, and went 
 upstairs. 
 
 She met Freda by the dining-room door. 
 
 "I was just coming down to make inquiries," she said; 
 and then, catching sight of Betty's face in the gloom of the 
 lobby, she dropped her voice and went on : "You've heard 
 from him ? Come up to my room. Is it all right ?" 
 
 "Yes, it's all right," said Betty quietly. "I'm going this 
 morning," she explained, when they were in Freda's bed- 
 room. "I know everything now. All this," she explained, 
 holding up the long envelope. "I haven't read it all yet, but 
 quite enough. Freda, I want you to help me. I'm going to 
 run away. I don't want to say anything to anyone but you 
 till I'm gone. I couldn't stand a fuss this morning." 
 
 Freda nodded. "I shall miss you frightfully," she said; 
 "but I'm sure you're right."
 
 SEPARATION 131 
 
 "You needn't explain anything to Mrs. Parmenter or 
 anyone, if you don't want to," suggested Betty. 
 
 "Oh, I don't mind that," laughed Freda. "I'll tell her. 
 I think I shall take your place for a time. I believe L'm the 
 perfect partner you've been advertising for so long." 
 
 Betty's face lighted. "Really?" she said. "Oh, how 
 splendid of you ! I never thought of that. Oh, it would be 
 such a relief to me if you did." 
 
 "I think it's a great idea for me, if Mrs. Parmenter 
 doesn't mind," said Freda. "But what about you? What 
 train are you going to catch? Have you got any money? 
 And you haven't had any breakfast, have you?" 
 
 "The train goes at eleven o'clock from Paddington," Betty 
 explained. "It's the one he went by." 
 
 "And what about money?" 
 
 "I've got three pounds. I think it'll be enough. All the 
 rest is in the Post Office. But what about my getting away ? 
 I think I'll pack now, and then would you mind taking my 
 things to the station? Mrs. Parmenter and Mrs. Blakey 
 won't be down yet, and the German boys will have gone 
 out. There'll only be Alice, and I'll send her up to do the 
 bedrooms." 
 
 Her thoughts were hurrying so, that her words would not 
 keep pace with them. "I must telegraph to him," she said. 
 "I ought to do that at once." 
 
 "I'll go and do that while you pack," said Freda. "What's 
 his address?" 
 
 "Trevarrian, Mawgan, St. Columb, Cornwall. Say, Tm 
 coming by the eleven o'clock train from Paddington. Meet 
 me. Betty.' " 
 
 "Oh, my dear, you must write it down," expostulated 
 Freda. 
 
 VII 
 
 "I don't mind much whether Alice saw my things go out 
 or not," Betty explained, as she and Freda waited in Pad- 
 dington Station. "Only I can't get rid of the feeling that I 
 must hurry. I've read all his letter through now, and I'm
 
 132 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 afraid. I don't know what he might do. You did send that 
 telegram, didn't you?" 
 
 "It went at a quarter past nine," Freda said. "It's bound 
 to be all right. He'd get it by ten o'clock." 
 
 "It is bound to be all right, isn't it?" Betty persisted. 
 
 She had no thought in her mind now, save her anxiety 
 to be with Jacob and to reassure him. 
 
 But she had before her eight uninterrupted hours in the 
 train time enough to reconsider the decision she had at 
 last so impulsively made.
 
 BOOK III 
 SOLITUDE
 
 IX 
 JACOB IN CORNWALL 
 
 WHATEVER doubts and fears Jacob may have suf- 
 fered during the first two hours of his journey into 
 Cornwall were finally dissipated after the train left Bristol. 
 Already he was in the West Country, and the spirit of his 
 splendid adventure was warming him to a glow of excite- 
 ment. The parting with Betty no longer depressed him. 
 He saw it as a temporary necessity, and was full of a glori- 
 ous certainty that in three months she would come to share 
 with him this intoxicating release from the gloom of Lon- 
 don. 
 
 He was definitely conscious of release. During all his 
 adult life London had held him. He had been unable to 
 break away from her. He remembered how more than three 
 years before he had come first to Cornwall, sunk in depres- 
 sion, a failure without money or prospects, thrown over 
 both by his wife and the beautiful Madeline, who had been 
 killed so tragically a few months ago. And even then, in 
 face of all his loneliness and difficulties, that wild coast 
 had put new heart into him, had given to him on one bright 
 April morning fresh power and courage to return to the 
 city of doubt and despair which had been the scene of all 
 his misery, but from which he could not then escape. 
 
 He had had wonderful experiences during the interim. 
 The Jacob Stahl of three and a half years ago was a 
 strangely different being from himself. He saw that 
 younger version objectively, as it were the figure of some- 
 one whom he had known with an incredible intimacy, some- 
 one who had died and whose place he had taken. Un- 
 doubtedly he was not the same man who had sat on a well- 
 
 135
 
 136 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 remembered rock, and, looking out over the Atlantic, had 
 said : "I have had to learn in bitterness, but I have not lost 
 my ideals." He felt that he might give expression to. the 
 same thought now, but with a different intention. 
 
 In these days of doubt and despair he had always been 
 struggling against some unseen power that relentlessly drove 
 him into bondage. He had wanted to be free, to be quit of 
 office drudgery and the authority of any urgent superior. 
 But when he tried to write, some cloud had been interposed 
 between him and his vision. He knew that all he had 
 attempted in those days had been poor, worthless stuff. It 
 seemed as if that hated control of his had been deliberately 
 guiding his destiny. He had been able to fight it and he 
 had fought it, but he had always lost in the end. Some- 
 times sheer necessity had beaten him, and sometimes his 
 resolution had failed, and all struggle had suddenly appeared 
 as futile. But always when he submitted, when he had 
 been willing to relinquish himself to the ease of being 
 bidden, the control had taken a new form and stirred him 
 again to effort. He remembered how three years before 
 he had paced that little sitting-room of Cecil Barker's in 
 Camden Town, and wondered why he was so goaded and 
 driven. . . . 
 
 Now, as he looked back on his life, it seemed to him that 
 none of that struggle could have been purposeless. He 
 had been guided from childhood to the present hour. All 
 that he had learned and suffered had been necessary for 
 him before he was fitted to meet Betty and to take up the 
 task of letters. He knew now that he could write. For 
 a time his thoughts played eagerly with the novel he had 
 planned, and every scene of it was lit with the brightness of 
 reality. 
 
 Nevertheless, he had no illusions as to his own capacity. 
 He knew that he would never become a great writer. He 
 did not greatly desire to be either famous or rich. He 
 knew, as in some way he had always known, that ultimately 
 he must find expression in literature, but that expression
 
 SOLITUDE 137 
 
 was a means only; the end was his own spiritual develop- 
 ment. . . . 
 
 Betty was in that also. She had some immense lesson 
 to teach him. . . . 
 
 He came back to the present and to his exquisite con- 
 sciousness of release as the train ran along the sea's edge 
 by Dawlish. The English Channel sparkled in a fresh south- 
 westerly breeze, and he read his own joy into the leap and 
 flicker of the crisp sea. Here were colour and movement 
 under the great freedom of the sky. It came to him afresh 
 with a flood of thankfulness that he was going to live within 
 sight and sound of the sea. 
 
 He fell to a tender consideration of the restrictions of his 
 fellow-travellers. They, poor souls, were going to Devon 
 and Cornwall for a little fortnight's or three weeks' holi- 
 day. He was going to stay in that splendid freedom for as 
 long as he would. He could have shouted for joy at the 
 thought. It became imperative that he should tell some- 
 one. 
 
 A man some few years younger than himself was stand- 
 ing near him, also intent apparently on the beauty of Daw- 
 lish sands. Jacob looked up and caught his eye. 
 
 "Jolly day," he remarked, by way of introduction. 
 
 "If you like this sort of thing," returned the stranger, and 
 added: "I'm fair sick of it! Been up to London, for my 
 holiday, and had a high old time, I can tell you; and now 
 I've got another twelve months of Plymouth in front of 
 me. Ever been to that hole?" 
 
 Jacob shook his head. 
 
 "Lucky for you," said the young man. "Take my advice 
 and keep out of it." 
 
 Jacob changed his mind as to the necessity of sharing his 
 joy with this stranger. "You might get as sick of London 
 as you have of Plymouth," he suggested. 
 
 "Likely enough in time. I could do with a bit more of 
 it, though," replied the stranger. "You live there ?" 
 
 "I have for twelve years," Jacob explained. "I'm not 
 going back there."
 
 138 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Doesn't seem to have broken your heart." 
 
 Jacob shook his head. He could not speak his ecstasy to 
 this unsympathetic person from Plymouth. Some day, per- 
 haps, he would try to write of it. 
 
 "I loathe London," was all he found to say, and evidently 
 the stranger found Jacob no less failing in understanding 
 than Jacob had found the stranger, for he made no other 
 remark, and presently went back to his own compartment. 
 Jacob saw him there later, idly turning over the pages of an 
 illustrated magazine, and generously pitied the man for his 
 blindness. He was happily unconscious of spiritual snob- 
 bery. The glory of his new title to life was such a dazzling 
 affair. . . . 
 
 And the day that had so magnificently blossomed at 
 Dawlish was not destined to droop prematurely. His friend, 
 Hubert Meredith, met him at Newquay, and announced his 
 intention of coming out to Trevarrian and seeing him com- 
 fortably settled in his new quarters. 
 
 "You'll find the Cornish people a little difficult at first," 
 Meredith said; "but once they accept you, they are your 
 friends for life." 
 
 Jacob felt that he was coming to a strange country and 
 strange people. If he had been alone, he would have been 
 intimidated by the thought of all the energy and initiative 
 that would be required of him before he could settle down to 
 some kind of routine in this alien place. Meredith's offer of 
 help instantly relieved that fear. Alone, Jacob suffered 
 strange spasms of helplessness; with an audience, even a 
 passive one, he was equal to an undertaking that might be 
 increased in proportion to the amount of admiration he 
 received. 
 
 Meredith proved to be a rare cicerone. He talked of the 
 town of Newquay as they drove a mile in the wrong direc- 
 tion in order to send a telegram to Betty Newquay was 
 almost negligible from his point of view but after they 
 had turned into Forth, he offered no tedious topographical 
 introductions; he waited a little anxiously, perhaps to 
 judge the effect of the place upon his companion.
 
 SOLITUDE 139 
 
 Jacob's response was all that any critic could have de- 
 sired. He, too, was silent, thrilling to some appeal he could ' 
 not as yet understand; some hitherto hidden expression of 
 the Celtic strain in him that in all his thirty- four years 
 of life had been forced to seek another outlet, and had 
 peered out, cramped, distorted, almost unrecognisable. 
 
 Here was an aspect of himself that he had never under- 
 stood, that he was still unable to understand without an- 
 other's help. He had known that he was capable of curious 
 emotions, had even taken a secret joy in them; but he had 
 believed these responses to be a form of weakness, some- 
 thing to be fought against and conquered. Many times in 
 his life he had sought relief from the burdens that threat- 
 ened to break him by taking queer, lonely pilgrimages into 
 some piece of country unknown to him ; futile explorations 
 that had been made when his duty had plainly forbidden 
 any release from the routine of necessary work. He had 
 on such occasions played truant from his office, trying to 
 console himself with the thought that these excursions were 
 essential as a relief from the pressure of anxiety, opposing 
 the vague stir of conscience that suggested laziness, inertia, 
 as the true desire of his mind. Never had he traced these 
 sudden flights from duty to any impulse of a primitive 
 wander-lust, to any inborn eagerness to throw off the bonds 
 of necessity and march out, unshackled, into the free spaces 
 of earth. The desire had moved feebly within him, like 
 a child in the womb, and he had restlessly shaken himself, 
 desiring to quiet the irk and pain of its struggle. 
 
 And even now, when no duty withheld him, he feared the 
 familiar emotion to this response to beauty as some wild, 
 incomprehensible thing that was antagonistic to his well- 
 being ; something to be ashamed of, something that must be 
 repressed. But now, for the first time, the emotion was too 
 strong for him. 
 
 The waggonette had climbed the hill, crossed the open 
 spaces of the common, and now faced the descent of the 
 winding road that seemed as if it must lead straight over 
 the cliff's edge. Below, the wide blue of the Atlantic lay
 
 140 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 spread in one brilliant field to the deep horizon, until their 
 approach revealed the broad curves of its laced border, 
 where the eternal procession of little waves laid, one by 
 one, a pattern of whitest, vanishing foam on the golden- 
 brown bed of the shell beach. The sound of it came to them 
 on the heights as a tiny recurrent crash, with whispered 
 undertones, a hesitating little melody endlessly repeated, 
 that held always one dragging moment of suspense. To the 
 right of them the crooked valley lay between broken hills 
 that stood high-shouldered and, as it were, with something 
 of obstinate resolution and aloofness, savagely patient in 
 their age-long expectation of invasion by the creeping 
 strength of that delicately threatening sea. 
 
 Jacob leaned far over the side of the waggonette, trying 
 to hide the inexplicable tears that had sprung to his eyes. 
 His spirit shouted that all this beauty was his for just as 
 long as he cared to stay and enjoy it. 
 
 n 
 
 The consciousness of all this sheer gain, this added inter- 
 est in life, served to relieve in some degree the perplexities 
 and small labours that confronted him before he could 
 count himself settled in the house that Meredith had taken 
 for him. In another mood, Jacob would have hesitated be- 
 fore the unfamiliar duties that were necessarily to become 
 a part of his new life. He had never cooked a meal for 
 himself, nor ordered the materials for it direct from trades- 
 men, and the whole complicated domestic problem appeared 
 at first sight as terrifyingly mysterious and difficult. In 
 London he had contemplated this problem without dismay ; 
 he had pictured some accessible general shop from which 
 he might order everything that he required ; had conceived 
 an ideal of the woman who was to "do for" him as a re- 
 sourceful, willing creature, who would be always at his 
 beck and call. 
 
 The reality that faced him soon dissolved these illusions. 
 The one tiny shop in the hamlet of Trevarrian was almost
 
 SOLITUDE 141 
 
 useless onions, ginger-beer, yellow soap, and oil, proved 
 on inquiry to be the only produce he was ever likely to 
 require from it, and the hopeful qualification that they 
 "belonged to" keep tinned salmon was of little material 
 assistance. 
 
 "Where can I get bread and meat and groceries and 
 things, then?" asked Jacob, with a touch of anxiety, and 
 learned that a baker came over from St. Columb twice a 
 week, a butcher from Newquay once a week, and a grocer, 
 also from Newquay, once a fortnight. The grocer alone 
 was particularised by name as Mr. Stout a distinction ac- 
 corded to him, Jacob found later, in deference to his posi- 
 tion as a local preacher of some note. 
 
 The proprietress of the tiny shop seemed to give this 
 information with a show of uncertainty, even of unwill- 
 ingness. Her "There do be a baker as comes over from 
 St. Cullum" had a contemptuous significance to Jacob's 
 ears. 
 
 "Is there anything wrong with his bread ?" he asked, a 
 question that was met with a look of surprise ; but Meredith 
 cut in by saying: 
 
 "Can you tell us where to find Mrs. Andrew? She is 
 going to 'do' for my friend, I believe." 
 
 "Aw! yes, she'm a few doors up the street," replied 
 Miss Curnow carelessly. "She be poaly, though, they tell 
 me." 
 
 Jacob was conscious of an enormous helplessness. Had he 
 been alone, he might even have returned to Newquay rather 
 than face the blankness of this reception ; but with Meredith 
 at his elbow, and the glow of that delight waiting to be 
 enjoyed when these perplexities were unravelled, he was 
 able to overcome the inertia that would have paralysed him 
 in other circumstances. 
 
 "Can't we go up to the farm and see Mrs. Olver?" he 
 suggested to Meredith. Mr. Olver was his landlord. 
 
 "That shop doesn't seem particularly anxious to do busi- 
 ness with me," he remarked when they were outside. 
 
 "Oh, that's nothing!" returned Meredith. "They're al-
 
 142 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 ways like that at first. Even in the towns they give you 
 the feeling that they would rather not serve you. But I 
 am a little surprised that Mrs. Olver hasn't got the place 
 more ready for you, and ordered provisions." 
 
 "And where are we to find a substitute for Mrs. Andrew, 
 who is poorly, they tell me?" 
 
 "We'll ask Mrs. Olver," said Meredith. 
 
 "It's all an immense joke, of course," Jacob went on 
 gaily, upholding himself in his newly-found courage, and 
 consciously delighting in it. 
 
 "That's the only way to take it," Meredith agreed. 
 
 Mrs. Olver, however, an old lady of nearly seventy, 
 proved a present help in trouble. She was shocked to hear 
 that no preparations beyond an unlocked door and a fire 
 in the kitchen had been made for her new tenant. 
 
 "Why, I give Mrs. Andrew the things myself !" she said, 
 and went on rapidly to explain that she would have super- 
 intended everything personally, had she not been suddenly 
 called away to visit a daughter in Padstow, a journey from 
 which she had but that moment returned. 
 
 "I hear that Mrs. Andrew is ill," put in Jacob, when an 
 opening was at last presented. 
 
 Little Mrs. Olver's face crumpled into a perplexed frown. 
 
 "She isn't 'ealthy, but 'er 'usband works for us," were the 
 only relevant statements in her long reply. 
 
 "Is there another woman in the place who could do the 
 work for me ?" asked Jacob, and found himself involved in 
 an intricate piece of local history. 
 
 Trevarrian, with its thirty inhabitants, was, it appeared, 
 mainly divided into two camps. Two years ago there had 
 been a lawsuit in St. Columb, an action for assault, de- 
 fended by a counter-action that brought a charge of theft 
 against the complainant. Unhappily, neither action had suc- 
 ceeded, and each party had had to pay its own costs, and 
 so the feud between the families of Andrew and Curnow 
 remained undecided, leaving a permanent cause of quarrel. 
 
 "Of course, it 'asn't anything to do with us," Mrs. 
 Olver explained, permitting her hearers to see that the
 
 SOLITUDE 143 
 
 Olvers were, by virtue of their class and position, far re- 
 moved from any personal interest in the petty intrigues of 
 their inferiors. "But Mrs. Andrew's 'usband works for 
 us, and if I was to recommend you Millie Curnow, Mrs. An- 
 drew might make trouble." 
 
 "But you think Mrs. Curnow . . ." 
 
 "She isn't been married," explained Mrs. Olver. "She's 
 been unfortunate, poor girl!" 
 
 Meredith understood. "She's got a child to look after, 
 then?" he asked. 
 
 "Two," Mrs. Olver admitted ; "but the youngest is nearly 
 four, and she lives with her family." 
 
 "Then you think that Miss Curnow . . ." Jacob began 
 again. 
 
 "Well, you mustn't take it from me, you know," said 
 old Mrs. Olver, "and you mustn't mention my name." 
 
 "I see," put in Meredith quickly. "And about bread and 
 butter, and milk and eggs . . . ?" 
 
 Mrs. Olver was prepared to supply her tenant with any- 
 thing he needed at the moment, if only he would not mention 
 her name to Millie Curnow. 
 
 "Perhaps we'd better look in on Mrs. Andrew," sug- 
 gested Meredith; and Mrs. Olver indicated the required 
 house from her own front door. 
 
 Millie Curnow's direction alone would have been quite 
 useless, for, indeed, there was nothing that could have been 
 dignified by the name of a street. The three or four rugged 
 groups of cottages, the Olvers' house, a smaller farm, and 
 the little inn that turned its back on the hamlet and alone 
 faced the main road, were clustered here and there with 
 no relation to each other. They might have been square 
 boulders fallen haphazard from some vanished cliff, and 
 converted to dwelling-houses by the simplest possible proc- 
 ess. The material of the two cottages in one of which lived 
 the ailing Mrs. Andrew (the other was empty and ruinous) 
 had without question been quarried from the slope that 
 lifted it above the road, for the cottage was perched within 
 a few feet of the edge of a miniature cliff that presented
 
 144 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 a rock face of precisely similar quality to that of the build- 
 ing itself. But the whole village had evidently grown out 
 of the rock, which in its natural, unquarried condition 
 formed the visible foundation of most of the houses, in 
 some cases roughly bonded into the masonry of the walls 
 two or three feet above the general ground level. 
 
 "It's tremendously picturesque," was Jacob's comment; 
 and he looked across with a certain satisfaction at the house 
 he had taken, standing two hundred yards away from the 
 village. Like the other houses, it was a cubical piece of grey 
 stone, pierced with small windows, and covered by a low- 
 pitched roof of blue slate, relieved by patches of golden 
 lichen. But on that side of the valley there was, at least, 
 some deposit of earth above the rock, and a grass road led 
 to his front gate. There was even something that might be 
 described as a garden. 
 
 The village itself was a sheer quarry. 
 
 "People say it's rather like some of the villages in the 
 West of Ireland," remarked Meredith. 
 
 "Is it? I Tike it," replied Jacob. 
 
 The tide of his domestic misfortunes had begun to ebb 
 from the time of his visit to Mrs. Olver. Mrs. Andrew, 
 they found, was temporarily confined to her bed, and quite 
 unable to work for him ; and so, in place of that respectable 
 slattern, he was enabled to bespeak the services of Millie 
 Curnow unfortunate, no doubt, but, as he was to find, 
 clean, competent, and willing. 
 
 She was more complacent when they returned to beg her 
 assistance. It is true that she made some demur, and 
 finally accepted only on condition that her hours should be 
 from 9.30 to 1 1 a.m. and from 6 to 7 p.m., the only time she 
 could spare ; but she volunteered to order Jacob's provisions 
 for him from the travelling tradesmen, and to take them in 
 if he should be out when they called a great relief, for he 
 had pictured himself miserably glued to his front door for 
 at least three afternoons a week, waiting to catch these 
 casual purveyors as they passed through the village. Fur- 
 thermore, she was willing to begin her duties at once, come
 
 SOLITUDE 145 
 
 in, air the bed, and perform any other work that might be 
 required ; finally, to bring some oil, the one useful commod- 
 ity she could supply from her store. 
 
 Now that his difficulties were overcome, Jacob could 
 surrender himself still more freely to the feeling of adven- 
 ture and romance that had been with him throughout the 
 day. He had a sense of having triumphed over circum- 
 stance, and he savoured the sweetness of the air and the 
 murmur of the sea that came to them from Beacon Cave, 
 half a mile away down the valley. 
 
 "By Jove ! this is a ripping place !" he said. 
 
 ."Good!" murmured Meredith, and explained himself by 
 adding: "I wasn't quite sure how it would strike you. I 
 was rather afraid you might not like it. It's such a respon- 
 sibility taking a place for another man, and I was a little 
 uncertain about you, you know; I've only seen you in 
 London." 
 
 "Thank God to be out of London !" murmured Jacob. 
 
 "Yes; it was just that I didn't know about you." 
 
 "I don't think I knew it myself," replied Jacob. 
 
 One further piece of information completed the day for 
 him. 
 
 "How light it is down here!" he had said to Mere- 
 dith. "It must be past eight. I suppose the air is so much 
 clearer." 
 
 "Partly," Meredith had agreed, and had added: "And, 
 of course, we're five degrees west of Greenwich, twenty 
 minutes later in time." 
 
 Jacob felt that he was in another country, infinitely far 
 removed from London. 
 
 If only he had Betty. . . . But she would come in three 
 months. She had promised. 
 
 in 
 
 And the ecstasy of that first evening gave colour to all 
 the experience of the next few weeks. The sweet exhilara- 
 tion of the morning air opened each day for him. He woke
 
 146 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 to a sense of joy in life, and found beauty in the crying 
 of seagulls, the chatter of starlings, even in the raucous 
 screams of the many geese that roamed perpetually about 
 the village. The business of getting his own breakfast be- 
 came a source of delight; he was so full of energy, so glad 
 to have occupation. 
 
 "What I have always wanted," he thought, "was a spur 
 to independence." He realised that even in his worst times 
 he had been parasitic, as helpless as a slave-keeping ant; 
 that he had hardly ever thought of the possibility of doing 
 things for himself. The common business of life had been 
 made too easy for him, and when energy had been de- 
 manded, he had been too enervated to reply. 
 
 Here in Trevarrian he awoke each morning to the knowl- 
 edge that he alone was responsible for himself. If his 
 affairs went wrong, he had no one but himself to blame ; and 
 the sense of his independence, and the pride he took in his 
 competency to perform the little necessary duties of life 
 such things as the lighting of fires, the provision for his 
 meals, and the cooking of them gave him confidence, a 
 sense of ability, and the energy for that more familiar rou- 
 tine of earning a living, chiefly by reviewing for the Daily 
 Post. 
 
 Moreover, the development of his novel began to attract 
 him more and more. With his usual habit of self-deprecia- 
 tion, he regarded the work as little likely to be taken by a 
 publisher, but he took an increasing pleasure in the writing 
 of it. 
 
 The story came so easily. He found himself in the posi- 
 tion of a witness and recorder rather than in that of a 
 creator. The phenomenon interested and at the same time 
 slightly scared him. It seemed so possible that at any mo- 
 ment this unfolding might cease and leave him without ma- 
 terial. 
 
 He saw that the detail of the story was provided by the 
 experience of his own life; yet the central character, John 
 Tristram, that boy who had struggled with fear in the 
 night, differed in so many ways from himself. It was as
 
 SOLITUDE 147 
 
 if the writer stood outside his own personality, to select 
 certain traits and reject others. 
 
 The setting, also, was the familiar village of Ashby- 
 Sutton, in which Jacob had lived; but Tristram had been 
 lifted in the social scale, and figured as the son of the Rector 
 the latter a frank portrait of the man who had been 
 Jacob's tutor. 
 
 These differences, which seemed so considerable to him- 
 self, gave the story an air of adventure. He felt that he was 
 writing a romance that had nothing in common with so 
 tedious a business as autobiography. In the next chapter 
 some delightfully unforeseen development might be awaiting 
 him, and he was eager to explore the further history of his 
 hero, and to share with him those new experiences that were 
 so like and yet so unlike his own. And, above all, he was 
 fascinated by the realisation that the story he was writing 
 was so unlike the conventional ideal of the novel. He had 
 not read Flaubert or the Russians, and in 1897 there was no 
 English realist to provide him with a model. Nevertheless, 
 the thought that he was a pioneer of an English school of 
 realism never suggested itself; indeed, there were days 
 when he sought eagerly for the precedent of some conven- 
 tion to give countenance to a method that he imagined might 
 be breaking some essential rule of the novelist's art. His 
 story, interesting as he believed it to be in the verisimilitude 
 of the detail, appeared so purposeless to him in his more 
 critical moods. It led up to no possible climax; it hardly 
 developed the character of his hero certainly not towards 
 any accepted ideal of the triumph of virtue, or the final deg- 
 radation of vice. It did not, so far as he could judge, ex- 
 press any very distinctive attitude of his own. 
 
 All these failures he regarded as quite reprehensible 
 faults, but when he attempted by a deliberate effort of con- 
 centration to bend his story towards a foreseen and inferen- 
 tially desirable end, all the drama and movement of it fell 
 suddenly flat and stale ; the life and reality were paralysed, 
 and his hero became a feeble doll jerking at the end of an 
 all too visible wire.
 
 148 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob consoled himself with the thought that he need 
 never send in his manuscript to a publisher. The writing 
 of the book was experience, a lesson in technique ; he would 
 finish it, and then put it aside. No one but himself and 
 Betty should ever know he had written it. He would, of 
 course, read it to Betty. He was writing it for her, and 
 when she came they could talk it over together. 
 
 IV 
 
 Sometimes he approached the subject obliquely when he 
 was with Meredith, by discussing the purpose and method 
 of the novel ; but Meredith was inclined to shirk the argu- 
 ment. He was, he explained, just finishing another novel 
 himself, and was afraid of any suggestion that might invade 
 his present clear conception of the last three or four chap- 
 ters. He advanced the same reason when Jacob asked if 
 he might be allowed to read the novel in question. 
 
 "When it's finished I shall be tremendously glad if you'll 
 bother to read it," Meredith said ; "but it's absolutely fatal 
 to show a book to anyone while you're writing it. Any 
 criticism upsets you, whether it's justified or not ; and it's no 
 good, absolutely no good whatever, then. It may help you 
 to write a better book next time ; but if once you begin to 
 tinker with the thing you've done, it's all up at least, that's 
 my experience." 
 
 That pronouncement effectually closed the way against all 
 possible confidences of Jacob's for the time being, and it 
 was not until nearly the end of October that he dared his 
 great experiment. 
 
 He had read Meredith's novel in typescript, and was 
 dreading the necessity to give an opinion on it. The book 
 had not interested him, had not aroused in him one flush of 
 enthusiasm. Here was the classical form that was so im- 
 possible to himself, and the steady flow of careful, rather 
 wordy prose that always expressed the writer's well-marked 
 literary style, even when it purported to be repeating the 
 speech of characters, many of whom obviously differed in
 
 SOLITUDE 149 
 
 opinion, culture, and social position, both from the writer 
 and from each other. Jacob was willing enough to admit 
 the cleverness and the rather too evident artistry of the 
 book, but the clear complaint he had to make was that the 
 book did not live that the effect produced was not that 
 of life. 
 
 He remembered the discussion that he had had with 
 Meredith twelve months before in Torrington Square how 
 long ago it seemed! on precisely the same question, and 
 found that he could only emphasise the arguments he had 
 then tried to formulate. It appeared useless now to repeat 
 that criticism, and he decided to give praise where it was 
 due as enthusiastically as he was able, and then to speak of 
 his own book. He had written already nearly sixty thou- 
 sand words, and there was apparently no reason why he 
 should not write at least sixty thousand more. Meredith's 
 novel, completed, was not more than one hundred thousand 
 words. Jacob had made a careful computation, and was 
 inclined to be proud of his own fecundity. 
 
 He walked over to Forth that afternoon, carrying Mere- 
 dith's manuscript with him. He climbed down the cliffs on 
 to the sands of Watergate Bay wondering now that he had 
 ever been daunted by that descent and met Meredith at 
 the foot of the Forth Steps, two miles farther along the 
 beach. 
 
 "I was just coming over to you!" Meredith exclaimed. 
 
 "Oh, good ! Come along," said Jacob, "and we can talk 
 as we go. I've read your book. It's splendid! It dis- 
 courages me dreadfully. It is so absolutely the sort of thing 
 I couldn't ever do myself." He was looking out at the rip- 
 pling edge of the calm sea, but he saw a picture of his old 
 rooms in Torrington Square. 
 
 "Oh, I've said all that before," he went on quickly. "I 
 wish I were more articulate." A sudden desire for confi- 
 dence had seized him. This should have been Meredith's 
 afternoon, but he wanted to make it his own. More than 
 that, he wanted to know Meredith.
 
 150 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "We're all on the surface of things," he said hesitatingly. 
 
 "As how?" asked Meredith, with a smile. 
 
 "You and I," Jacob explained. "Let's sit down a minute ; 
 I want to have this out." 
 
 But when they had found a comfortable rock, and Mere- 
 dith had lighted his pipe, and Jacob a cigarette, the emotion 
 that had been so near the surface a moment before, had 
 become curiously difficult to express. 
 
 "/ don't know," remarked Jacob, after a long pause. 
 
 "Is it about the book ?" Meredith prompted him. 
 
 "Yes, about the book and you ; it's all of a piece." 
 
 "I hope so," replied Meredith quietly. 
 
 "Well, the fact of the matter is," said Jacob, feeling 
 oddly uncomfortable, and much as if he were making a pro- 
 posal of marriage to some woman whose inclinations were 
 quite unknown to him "well, that there's something a little 
 inhuman about your book." 
 
 "Sounds pretty dreadful," murmured Meredith. 
 
 "Well, look here," went on Jacob, "when we met how 
 long ago is it? two or three years, anyway we sort of cot- 
 toned on to one another, and in the last three months or so 
 we've met three or four times a week; but I'm hanged if I 
 know any more of you or you of me than I did after ten 
 minutes' talk at old Lee Perry's." 
 
 Meredith smoked reflectively. He seemed curiously un- 
 responsive. "What more do you want to know ?" he asked. 
 
 Jacob shrugged his shoulders. "There's a good deal of 
 me you don't know, anyway," he said, "so I suppose the 
 same's true of you." 
 
 "I think my books express all of me that is worth know- 
 ing," Meredith said. 
 
 "Do they?" muttered Jacob. He felt baffled and de- 
 pressed. Here was a new example of his old experience. 
 He had had so many heroes, representative of so many vary- 
 ing virtues, and they all had failed him in some respect. 
 He thought of them Farrell, Bradley, Cairns, Barker. 
 There had been times when he had consciously tried to shape 
 himself on their models, and always some revelation of them
 
 SOLITUDE 151 
 
 had succeeded, some aspect of incompleteness that had in- 
 validated their heroism. Was the fault in himself? If so, 
 was it a fault at all? Was it not rather an evidence of 
 growth ? 
 
 "What are you trying to get at?" asked Meredith un- 
 sympathetically. 
 
 Jacob shirked the straight issue ; he was afraid of it. "I 
 want to get at the meaning and . . . and the use of litera- 
 ture ; and ... oh ! of life, I suppose," he said. 
 
 "I suppose we all want to do that," returned Meredith, 
 without enthusiasm. "It's a largeish problem," he added. 
 
 "Well, why can't we discuss it ?" said Jacob. "It may be 
 futile, but it may help may help me a bit, anyway." 
 
 "I'm quite willing. Fire away !" was the discouragement 
 he received. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, frowning at the eager procession 
 of little waves that endlessly hurried' to curl and break and 
 stretch a tongue of water up the sand, as if that were the 
 vital business for which they had come into being. They 
 were of all kinds, those waves. Some seemed to become 
 perplexed, were met too soon by the return of their pred- 
 ecessor, and broke ineffectually retreated quickly and, as 
 it were, ignominiously. Others were typically efficient, good 
 average little waves, that must surely have retired with a 
 quiet consciousness of work decently performed. And every 
 now and again came a series always three or four together 
 of bigger waves that overrode all opposition, that an- 
 nounced their consummation with a louder voice intent, 
 rather self-important waves, that had an air of showing 
 how the thing should be done, so it seemed to Jacob. He 
 saw himself as the wave that broke ineffectually, that ex- 
 ploded too soon. 
 
 "Why shouldn't a novelist describe life as he sees it?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "That's what I try to do," said Meredith. 
 
 "Transmuted, and all the rest of it, by your own tempera- 
 ment?" 
 
 "Necessarily."
 
 152 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I simply don't understand all that stuff about art," 
 replied Jacob boldly. "Method, technique, yes. You've 
 got to find words to express what you've seen, and you've 
 got to join 'em up in decent grammatical order, so that they 
 won't offend your sense of sequence, is it? But what I 
 don't understand is the necessity for translating all your 
 impressions into a sort of phantasmagoria, a sort of general 
 effect, and trying to hint that there's a hidden value under- 
 neath it, if your readers will bother to look for it. . . ." 
 
 "Is this a criticism of me?" put in Meredith. 
 
 "I suppose so." Jacob blurted out his assent, afraid lest 
 he might be tempted to qualify it. 
 
 "That's my natural form of expression, you see," ex- 
 plained Meredith, after a little hesitation. "That's the way 
 I have to write the only way in which I can get anywhere 
 near expressing what I want to say." 
 
 "Then I think you ought to write verse or essays," said 
 Jacob. "I don't think the novel is your right medium." 
 
 Meredith whistled. "Is that what you'll say if you get 
 my book to review for the Daily Post?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, Lord! I never thought of that," exclaimed Jacob. 
 "That's a practical way of looking at it." 
 
 "Well, would you?" 
 
 "I don't suppose I should." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Probably because I haven't enough faith in my own 
 critical ability," remarked Jacob, after a short considera- 
 tion. "You see, that's my trouble," he went on. "I don't 
 know. I want to talk about all these things, and I'm afraid 
 to say what I think, generally, because I know so jolly 
 little." 
 
 "None of us knows much," commented Meredith. 
 
 And then the conversation was finally diverted from the 
 subject of art in the abstract by Jacob's coming to the re- 
 quest he had had at the back of his mind throughout the 
 discussion. 
 
 "You know a good deal more than I do, though," he said, 
 "and I wish ... I should be awfully glad if you would give
 
 SOLITUDE 153 
 
 me an opinion on the stuff I've done. I ... I expect it's 
 all utterly rotten, and I shan't mind your saying so in the 
 least; but I'd like to know. It's hardly worth while going 
 on if the book's no good at all." 
 
 "Rather ! Of course I will," agreed Meredith quietly. 
 
 He was by no means a narrow-minded or small-hearted 
 man ; but, plodder as he was, he had something of the artist 
 in him, and that something had been offended by the drastic 
 criticism of himself as no novelist; for that was, in effect, 
 the summary. The feeble strain of passion in him had been 
 stirred to a mild resentment, which, weak as it was, was of 
 the quality that endures. 
 
 ' Jacob, as usual, had been unhappy in his choice of the 
 time and method for an attempt at plain speaking. He was 
 content to admire and to agree for so long ; but whenever he 
 was stirred to opposition, he had the unfortunate knack of 
 presenting himself as captious, self-opinionated, even rude. 
 His qualifications, his assertions of ignorance, or sudden 
 hesitations, in no way mitigated the effect. They appeared 
 as a cloak carelessly assumed to cover the real man, so un- 
 expectedly revealed. In one such expression of himself as 
 that he had just given, Jacob could permanently injure the 
 friendship of years. 
 
 He was conscious that he had blundered on the present 
 occasion. "I suppose I am really rather an unpleasant 
 character," was the way he expressed it in his thoughts. 
 
 He saw now that he had been inept, almost insulting, and 
 on the way back to Trevarrian he tried to make some 
 amends ; but Meredith, with no show of temper, and only 
 indicating his hurt by a slight change of manner, would 
 listen to no apology. 
 
 "Why try to take it back?" he asked. "You've a per- 
 fect right to your own opinion, and you were obviously say- 
 ing what you meant to say. Honestly, I prefer that you 
 should be candid."
 
 154 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob was fumbling in his mind for an explanation. He 
 wanted Meredith to make allowances. 
 
 "You see," he got out at last, "for the last few weeks I've 
 been rather engrossed in the thing I'm doing, and I suppose 
 I was, in a sense, standing up for my own method ; not that 
 I really think it is a method, but, you know, I've been sort 
 of hoping it might be. And when your book came along, it 
 upset me, if you know what I mean made me feel that all 
 my stuff was rot, and well, I had to defend it." 
 
 "Oh yes, obviously! Why apologise?" returned Mere- 
 dith ; and Jacob felt that his explanation had been quite use- 
 less. For a few minutes he nursed a sense of injury. 
 Meredith could not understand, he thought, and went on to 
 discover that that was what was wrong with Meredith as a 
 novelist: he was out of sympathy with life somewhere. 
 His confounded art was too academic ; he was afraid to face 
 realities. 
 
 And if the exhibition of his novel had depended upon 
 Jacob's initiative, the manuscript would certainly not have 
 been produced that evening. But after tea Meredith quietly 
 insisted. 
 
 "You'll never be able to read my writing," protested 
 Jacob. 
 
 "Would you like to read it aloud ?" 
 
 "Good Lord, no ! Not for the world !" Jacob was terri- 
 fied at the mere suggestion. 
 
 "Well, let me have a look at it, anyway," said Meredith. 
 "As a matter of fact, I find your writing fairly easy to make 
 out." 
 
 Jacob honestly tried to put him off. 
 
 And when the manuscript had at last been produced, he 
 found that it was clearly impossible to sit in the same room 
 with Meredith while he read it. He read so rapidly, and 
 without the least change of expression ; and when Jacob took 
 up a book and tried to forget the ordeal he was undergoing, 
 he found that Meredith's turning of the pages, his least 
 movement, was utterly distracting. 
 
 "It's awfully good of you, but I really wish you wouldn't
 
 SOLITUDE 155 
 
 bother to read it," he said desperately, after the minutes of 
 discomfort. 
 
 Meredith looked up. "You go and sit in the kitchen, and 
 I'll get it finished before supper," he said. 
 
 Jacob took his advice, and presently talked to Millie Cur- 
 now as she washed up his dinner things. When she had 
 gone, he began to get the supper. 
 
 At half-past seven he looked into the sitting-room. 
 
 "Have you finished?" he asked. 
 
 "Pretty nearly," replied Meredith, fluttering the twenty 
 pages or so of foolscap that still remained. 
 
 "Oh, well, that's quite enough ! The last bit wants re- 
 writing," said Jacob. "Come on; everything's practically 
 ready." 
 
 Meredith obeyed with a disgusting readiness. 
 
 "It's quite good, you know," he began, as soon as they 
 had sat down to the bacon and eggs Jacob had cooked. He 
 had all his meals in the kitchen for practical reasons. 
 
 Jacob looked up eagerly. "Do you really think so?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Oh yes. For that kind of thing, I think it's decidedly 
 good," said Meredith. 
 
 "What kind?" 
 
 "Realistic fiction. Haven't you read Madame Bovary?" 
 
 Jacob was obliged to admit that he had not. 
 
 "It's a recognised school, you know," Meredith continued. 
 "I don't quite know anyone in England who's doing it, but 
 it's recognised in France, of course. I don't quite know 
 how to define it, but perhaps the main distinction is in the 
 choice of the typical incidents and emotions. The realists 
 don't concentrate on the larger emotions, you see quite the 
 reverse; they find the common feelings and happenings of 
 everyday life more representative. You may have a big 
 scene, but the essential thing is the accurate presentation of 
 the commonplace." 
 
 "Yes, I think that's pretty much what I have tried to do," 
 commented Jacob. He was greatly relieved to learn that 
 his was an accepted method. "I think that's what interests
 
 156 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 me. It's what I know of life. I've never murdered anyone, 
 for instance, or talked to a murderer, and I don't know how 
 it feels, or what one would do in a position of that sort." 
 
 "Oh, there are plenty of arguments for realism !" Mere- 
 dith said, in a tone that implied he had no intention of re- 
 opening that discussion. 
 
 "And do you really think my stuff is passable of its 
 kind?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "Oh yes, quite," returned Meredith, with a repulsive flat- 
 ness. "You see, I don't admire the school. I'm not in the 
 least a proper person to criticise you. . . ." 
 
 "Any more than I am a proper person to criticise you ?" 
 
 "Yes, that might follow, in a way." 
 
 It seemed that Meredith's criticism was finished, but Jacob 
 wanted much more than that. "Do you mind my asking 
 you a few questions?" he said, and was immediately con- 
 scious that Meredith also had written a book, and was prob- 
 ably equally anxious to talk about it. Yet the making of 
 any sort of bargain was so obviously impossible. 
 
 "You 4 see," Jacob went on quickly, "I'm such an absolute 
 beginner, and I don't know anything about writing a novel 
 yet. You can help me; I couldn't possibly presume to help 
 you. You've got there. You've published two books, and 
 finished a third, and had splendid reviews, and fairly good 
 sales . . ." 
 
 "I can't say that I've 'got there' yet," returned Meredith ; 
 "but never mind that. Go on with your questions ; I'll tell 
 you anything I can." 
 
 "Well, to begin with, does my book seem rather purpose- 
 less to you, and . . . and rather inconsequent ?" 
 
 "No, it isn't at all inconsequent," Meredith decided, after 
 a judicial pause. "There's the natural thread of Tristram's 
 development at least, of his growing older. As to being 
 purposeless, it depends on what your particular purpose is. 
 If it is just to show a little piece of life as you know it, 
 you've done that ; but I don't see that anything can come out 
 of it. I mean that your piece is a slice cut off from the rest
 
 SOLITUDE 157 
 
 and put under a microscope. It hasn't any relation to the 
 whole." 
 
 "I don't know the whole, you see," apologised Jacob. 
 
 Meredith avoided that difficult issue. "But you might 
 have shown some thread of development, progress, advance 
 towards a clearly conceived end," he suggested. 
 
 Jacob sighed. "When I try to do that," he said, "the 
 whole thing becomes mechanical." 
 
 "One has to go on trying," was Meredith's platitudinous 
 comment. 
 
 "I'm not that sort," Jacob admitted feebly. He realised 
 the force of Meredith's illustration. It was true that he had 
 put a piece of life under the microscope, and not related it 
 to the whole. But he would have liked to point out that he 
 did not pretend to be a genius, that his story had only been 
 an attempt to do the thing that he thought he could do, and 
 that he made no claim to having tried to write a master- 
 piece. What he had wanted Meredith to do was to give an 
 opinion on the book as an item in that, no doubt, lower class 
 to which it belonged. 
 
 And, with a growing resentment, Jacob was feeling that it 
 was better to have done well what he had done if he had 
 done it well than to have attempted to write a novel that 
 was altogether beyond his powers, as, perhaps, Meredith 
 had tried to do. Jacob remembered those impressionist 
 characters in his friend's book, composite portraits of rather 
 stereotyped people, who never had lived and never could. 
 That method was, perhaps, the way of escape. If your 
 characters would become mechanical when you tried to 
 force them into ready-made situations, you avoided the diffi- 
 culty by using plastic models from the outset. . . . 
 
 The rest of the evening was spent in desultory conversa- 
 tion. Meredith left early. 
 
 "I'm going up to town at the end of the week," he said, 
 as he was at the door. "I don't know whether I shall see 
 you again before I go." 
 
 "Rotten!" was Jacob's comment. "Shall you be away 
 long?"
 
 158 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "A month, I expect," Meredith said. 
 
 Jacob walked down the grass drive with him as far as the 
 gate on to the road. 
 
 "I shall see you when you come back, of course?" he said. 
 
 "Of course," replied Meredith. He hesitated a moment, 
 and then said: "Looks like rain, doesn't it? Well, good- 
 bye." 
 
 "Good-bye, old chap," returned Jacob. 
 
 He stayed at the gate until he could hear no longer Mere- 
 dith's footsteps on the road, and then sauntered back to the 
 house. He was suddenly conscious of a feeling of depres- 
 sion, and when he entered the house it seemed unusually 
 empty, inhospitable, gloomy. 
 
 He sighed as he bolted the front door behind him. 
 
 The lamp in the sitting-room had not been filled that 
 morning and was burning low. A little puff of smoke came 
 from the fireplace. 
 
 "Damn that chimney!" Jacob said aloud. "I hope to 
 goodness it isn't going to smoke again !" He looked at the 
 lamp and mentally cursed that also. He must not get into 
 the habit of talking aloud in his solitude, he thought. 
 
 He wished that Betty was there. Her time was nearly up, 
 but she had said nothing in her letters as to any particular 
 date on which he might expect her. 
 
 She might not come ! 
 
 He looked round the darkening sitting-room with a new 
 sense of disgust. If she did not come after all, he could 
 never stand this place alone all the winter. But she must 
 oh, surely she would come ! She had promised. 
 
 He saw the manuscript of his novel on the table, sighed 
 again and shrugged his shoulders. He saw now that it was 
 poor stuff. He had not needed Meredith's criticism to tell 
 him that. 
 
 VI 
 
 He woke the next morning to the consciousness of some 
 unaccountable misery that waited upon him. It was hardly 
 light yet, and the rain was crashing violently against the
 
 SOLITUDE 159 
 
 window by his bed. He had kept that window closed while 
 he slept, ever since he had been awakened one September 
 night by a perfect douche of cold water. It had amused 
 him then to see that the force of the squall had driven the 
 rain clear across the room and wetted the farther wall. It 
 was another of those phenomena, peculiar to this strange, 
 adventurous county of Cornwall. He liked to remember 
 that he was on a peninsula stretching out into the Atlantic, 
 and that he might at any time witness some prodigious man- 
 ifestation of natural forces. 
 
 This morning, the dull gloom of the sky and the shatter- 
 ing onslaught of the squall only added to his dejection. He 
 got up, closed the little window at the other end of the room, 
 and then returned to bed. He was wide awake, and had no 
 further inclination to sleep, but the thought of going down 
 to light the kitchen fire brought a feeling of weariness and 
 disgust. 
 
 Something had been taken from him. The book upon 
 which he had spent so much time, was a futility. He had 
 told himself that it would never be submitted to a publisher, 
 but he recognised the foolishness of that deception this 
 morning. Subconsciously, he had always pictured his book 
 in the hands of discriminating reviewers and an admiring 
 public. But that was not all not a half of the trouble that 
 faced him. Betty was not coming. He felt perfectly cer- 
 tain now that he would never see her again. This mood of 
 his was not depression ; there was no particular cause" why 
 he should be more depressed to-day than any other day; it 
 was a realisation of facts. He had been living in a fool's 
 paradise, and now he saw things clearly. 
 
 He was a failure. He had always been a failure, and only 
 the deceptive workings of his imagination had ever stood 
 between him and the realisation. He fooled himself into a 
 false belief in his own virtues and ability. He had neither, 
 and there were moments when he stood naked before his 
 own judgment, and saw himself as he was. He would cer- 
 tainly gravitate at last to his proper level, the gutter, as a 
 man he had once known had fallen before him. He began
 
 T60 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 mentally to write a realistic account of his descent, that 
 ended surprisingly with his resuscitation on the publication 
 of "one of the most wonderful pieces of descriptive writing 
 ever given to the world," as an imaginary reviewer of his, 
 described the work. 
 
 He got up then, with a sort of vicious determination ; and 
 as it was not of the least consequence what he did that morn- 
 ing, abused himself aloud as he dressed. There was no one 
 to overhear him ; the nearest cottage was three or four hun- 
 dred yards away. 
 
 "Silly, dreaming idiot!" he said brutally, to the sunburnt 
 image in the looking-glass. . . . 
 
 The sitting-room fire smoked. He had known that it 
 would, with the wind in the south-west and blowing a gale ; 
 but he made an experiment, nevertheless, and was half 
 choked in the attempt. That chimney was another of the 
 curiosities peculiar to Trevarrian. In the gusts of a wind 
 such as this, the flames roared out into the room through 
 the bottom bars of the grate, and blew the ashes over the 
 hearthrug, even up on to the table. There was only one 
 remedy a partial one at best and that was to sit with the 
 window closed and the door of the sitting-room and the 
 inner and outer doors of the kitchen all wide open. This 
 method necessitated sitting in an overcoat; the carpet bil- 
 lowed up, sometimes moving the chairs, and everything in 
 the house banged and crashed in the hurricane that hurled 
 through the passages a hardly bearable discomfort. 
 
 There was nothing for it to-day but to sit in the kitchen, 
 a bare, stone-flagged, badly lighted place, with whitewashed 
 walls, and ill-fitting outer door that opened direct into the 
 yard. 
 
 He gave up all thought of work with a faint sense of re- 
 lief at the unquestionable validity of his excuse an excuse 
 good enough, surely, to satisfy even that cursed demon of 
 conscience that sat on his shoulders and for ever goaded 
 him to the exertion he found it so hard to make. But no 
 alternative held out any prospect of enjoyment. He meant 
 to read some book that was not for review, preferably some
 
 SOLITUDE 161 
 
 book that he had read before ; but when he turned over his 
 very limited stock, he hated the sight of them all. Not one 
 of them offered the least hope of distraction from the misery 
 of his surroundings. . . . 
 
 He went to the front door after Millie Curnow had gone, 
 and looked out, wondering whether it would be worth while 
 to face the rain that drove horizontally across the grass 
 drive before him and obscured all sight of the village. So 
 fierce, indeed, was the wind that on this, the sheltered side 
 of the house, he could walk out two or three yards into the 
 open without getting wet. 
 
 "Couldn't face it," he decided, and filled half an hour by 
 boiling some water, and shaving. 
 
 At a quarter to twelve a postman arrived and brought a 
 letter from Betty ; but he found nothing in it to relieve his 
 depression. She gave him an account of her meeting with 
 Freda Cairns and Philip Laurence, and Jacob wondered 
 whether Betty had not been adversely influenced by her 
 sight of that menage. Plainly, the flouting of the marriage 
 service had not been a great success in that case, and she 
 might make an altogether false application of the instance. 
 
 He sat down to answer her letter at once the wall letter- 
 box was cleared at half-past two but a sense of wasted 
 effort overcame him after he tried to point out that she must 
 not be influenced by her sight of the Laurences. Moreover, 
 any argument of that kind inevitably led to pleading his own 
 case, and he had promised not to put any compulsion upon 
 her. She must come of her own free will; she must will- 
 ingly fulfil her promise, or there could be no happiness for 
 either of them. He had seen that once so clearly that he 
 could never forget it. He saw at that moment, with perfect 
 distinctness, the very shape of the domino score he had oblit- 
 erated on the marble table of the little restaurant in Hoi- 
 born. . . . 
 
 What he wrote was, he knew, a merely perfunctory an- 
 swer to her letter, and he found great difficulty in express- 
 ing himself. There were several "doubles" he noticed, but
 
 162 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 he could not bother to alter his phrases. After all, it would 
 make no difference to anyone what he wrote. 
 
 The journey back from the pillar-box was an adventure. 
 He was forced to keep his face hidden, for the rain stung 
 like driven sand, and more than once in his short journey he 
 had to stop and brace himself against some fiercer gust that 
 threatened to blow him off his feet. 
 
 He gasped with relief as he reached the lee of the house, 
 but he was slightly invigorated by the struggle. He could 
 hear the dull thunder of the sea at Livelow as an intermit- 
 tent theme that filled the intervals when the wild shouting 
 of the gale dropped momentarily to a less aggressive note ; 
 and in those intervals he could hear, too, a dull, reverberat- 
 ing boom overhead, as though the whole vast shell of the 
 sky had been wonderfully rung by the enormous onslaught 
 of the wind. 
 
 "Gad, what a day !" muttered Jacob, with a touch of glee. 
 He wished that he could watch the sea, but he knew that 
 even if he could battle his way down the half-mile of valley 
 that separated him from Livelow, he would not be able to 
 open his eyes in face of the tearing spray that would be 
 hurled at him. He had caught a glimpse of a white tongue, 
 that had leapt above a rent in the cliffs as he had fought 
 his way back from the post, and the cliff even at that gap 
 was nearly a hundred feet above high-water mark. . . . 
 
 At half-past five came a perceptible lull, and when a few 
 minutes later the uproar began again it had another note, 
 and the kitchen door no longer chattered. 
 
 "Got back to the south a bit," said Jacob aloud. "I 
 wonder if I could get that fire to go now." 
 
 He went into the sitting-room and held a lighted match up 
 the chimney. The flame was almost instantly extinguished, 
 but it leapt up now instead of down. "Good !" murmured 
 Jacob, and started the fire, which immediately began to roar 
 fiercely. For, as Jacob had learned, a variation of a few 
 points in the direction of the wind meant the difference 
 between a tremendous down-draught and an equally power- 
 ful up-draught.
 
 SOLITUDE 163 
 
 When Millie Curnow came to wash up at six o'clock, she 
 found Jacob taking a sort of proprietorial pride in the force 
 of the storm. 
 
 "It 'as been rough," she agreed. "Mr. Giver's 'ad one of 
 his ricks blown down." 
 
 "You don't often get it as bad as this, I suppose?" sug- 
 gested Jacob. 
 
 ' Twas worse'n this a year back, last March month," said 
 Miss Curnow. "There was a boat come in to Trevarrian 
 sands then, and they couldn't use the rocket. Seven of'm 
 drowned there was. Aw! that was a tur'ble gale, sure 
 'nough. Worst we've 'ad in forty years, they tell me. . . ." 
 
 VII 
 
 The next day the wind had abated somewhat, but it had 
 veered in the night, and it was again impossible to light the 
 sitting-room fire. 
 
 Jacob mooned about the house most of the morning it 
 was too wet to go out ; but after the post had come, bring- 
 ing him two review proofs and his copy of yesterday's 
 paper, he had a sudden inclination to work, took out the 
 manuscript of his novel, and read through three or four of 
 the earlier chapters. 
 
 "It isn't half bad," he said modestly "not half bad. I 
 think I'll go on with it, anyway. Damn Meredith ! he's pre- 
 judiced." And then he once more registered a vow that he 
 must give up talking to himself. "It's a sign of madness," 
 he said aloud, as though he would impress the sub-conscious 
 listener he presumably addressed. "You'll have to chuck 
 it," he continued, and added : "I wonder how often I do it 
 without noticing." On this occasion he took preventive 
 measures by persistently whistling. 
 
 He did not do much work that day. He had come to 
 the end of a chapter, and was uncertain of his material for 
 the next. But after supper he found his imagination play- 
 ing with a development that might come later in the book, 
 and he decided to write this more interesting material at
 
 164 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 once and fill in the gap afterwards. Some argument with 
 that ghostly mentor of his was necessary before this plan 
 was settled. He had a guilty feeling that he was shirking 
 the harder task, and he had to make it quite clear that if he 
 did not write that chapter while it was fresh and bright in 
 his mind, he would forget the essential touches. Con- 
 clusively, if he did not do this, he would probably do noth- 
 ing at all. It was almost a threat. 
 
 He went to bed with a rather triumphant sense of having 
 scored. 
 
 And when he woke in the morning, the wind had dropped 
 and the sky was clear. When he had dressed he went into 
 one of the unused bedrooms in the front of the house and 
 watched the day break. He thought he would like to write 
 the story of a man who had lain in the gorse all night and 
 longed for the sunrise, describing all the exquisite slow 
 process of the dawn. "But things of that sort aren't sale- 
 able," he reflected, as he cooked his breakfast. 
 
 Nevertheless, he attempted a few phrases of the story 
 before he began his new chapter. 
 
 He was warm with enthusiasm when the postman came 
 and brought him another letter from Betty. 
 
 The contents of it effectually damped his momentary 
 elation. She was going to her sister's wedding the next day, 
 and she had been unable to find another partner for Mrs. 
 Parmenter. Those were her only items of news, which 
 Jacob coupled, putting upon them the worst possible con- 
 struction. In effect she was going to break her promise. 
 She was not coming. Two days ago he had thought that 
 this was in her mind, but since then hope had revived. Now 
 he was finally certain. And she had not had the courage 
 to tell him openly; she had tried to prepare him by this 
 ominous letter the whole tone of it was formal, unaffec- 
 tionate. 
 
 What was he to do? That was the bewildering, impos- 
 sible problem that he had in some way to solve. Where 
 could he go ? Impossible for him to face the loneliness of a 
 winter in this awful place ; equally impossible to picture any
 
 SOLITUDE 165 
 
 other kind of life that could conceivably be even tolerable. 
 He thought of London with loathing, and he hesitated for a 
 time over the contemplation of a boarding-house at New- 
 quay. He could have the sea and the rocks there, and yet 
 find some sort of companionship that he must have. That 
 idea seemed almost possible, until he reflected that the 
 boarders he would meet would almost certainly be old ladies 
 and invalids. He could not go to the various boarding- 
 houses and ask if anyone was staying there who would be 
 glad to take a peculiar interest in a lonely man with literary 
 ambitions. Sympathy was what he wanted. But it was 
 just as well that Betty was not coming. If her love for him 
 was not strong enough to overcome her little conventional 
 scruples, they would certainly be miserable together. She 
 would loathe the sight of him after a month. 
 
 He was such a poor creature. ,He had no grit, no big, fine 
 qualities. It was obvious that he could never inspire a real 
 affection in anyone. Also, he would get no dinner if he did 
 not go and cook it. He only had to boil potatoes ; there was 
 some cold mutton in the house that Millie had baked yester- 
 day morning. But he felt that boiling potatoes would be in- 
 tolerably irksome just then, and the whole business involved 
 laying the table. No, he could not be bothered. He would 
 have eggs for supper. And his boots wanting mending. 
 He had only one pair of brown boots, and he would have to 
 walk a mile and a half across the fields to St. Mawgan in 
 black boots an unthinkable thing. 
 
 He would give up struggling with all these dreadful 
 exigencies. He would wear his boots till they were worn 
 out, and then go barefoot. He would degenerate, take no 
 more trouble about anything, let his work slide, and when 
 he had no money left, he would turn tramp and beg. 
 
 He made a beginning by eating a dinner of bread and 
 cheese, untidily, from the larder shelf. Afterwards he 
 slouched down to Mawgan Forth, sat on a rock, and 
 watched the tide come in. It was a warm, still afternoon, 
 the beginning of that short spell of fine weather known as 
 "St. Martin's Summer." . . .
 
 166 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Presently he fell to making a story of his misery, and then 
 cursed himself as a hypocrite. "You deliberately slouched 
 dov/n there," he said to himself, "and now you're trying to 
 turn the thing into literature. Oh, I wish to God you'd 
 come real!" He stood up, and wondered if he could face 
 drowning. "I don't believe I should mind it a bit," he 
 thought, "I am so utterly sick of myself." 
 
 He might have made experiment at once, but a backward 
 glance at the cliff discovered a coastguard leaning his elbows 
 on the low, whitewashed wall that tied in the short line of 
 staring cottages. And the knowledge that he was being 
 watched not only induced a return of self -consciousness, 
 but also started his introspective analysis on a new theme. 
 "I'm so much more real," he thought, "when I'm with other 
 people. It's when I'm by myself that I seem such a ghastly 
 humbug." 
 
 His walk home exhibited no sign of a "slouch." He had 
 forgotten the tramp ideal. But the sight of his empty house 
 chilled and depressed him. "I must fight this," he thought, 
 and determined to make an instant beginning by having 
 toast for tea. Moreover, he would face the inevitable, and 
 take those boots over to Mawgan the next day. 
 
 VIII 
 
 He waited four days before he answered Betty's letter. 
 In the interval he had returned to a more normal frame of 
 mind. The weather was still warm and clear, and he had 
 been down to Livelow every morning for half an hour after 
 breakfast, and to Trevarrian sands or Bedruthan every af- 
 ternoon. He had avoided Mawgan Forth because he dis- 
 liked the feeling that he was being watched by the coast- 
 guard. His boots, however, were still unmended. He had 
 decided that it would be better to hire the Olvers' jingle 
 and drive into Newquay, where he might buy a new pair 
 of brown boots and leave the old ones to be properly re- 
 soled old Nye at Mawgan was only a cobbler, and clumsy 
 at that.
 
 SOLITUDE 167 
 
 He had put his book aside for the moment, but he had 
 written four reviews for the Daily Post, and felt that he had 
 not altogether wasted his time. But when he sat down to 
 write to Betty, the old feeling of inertia and hopelessness 
 overcame him again. What could he say? This was un- 
 doubtedly the critical moment, and therefore precisely the 
 moment when he must leave the decision to her. And with 
 that reflection his thoughts began to run in the old weary 
 round, until he believed that he would be thankful to know 
 certainly that it was impossible for her ever to come. The 
 letter he wrote at last fully expressed, he thought, the effect 
 of a tired mind, and he sent it with a faint hope that she 
 might read his misery between the lines. He made no ref- 
 erence to the failure of her advertisement, because he felt 
 that, if once he touched on that subject, he would be tempted 
 to say too much. 
 
 Her reply, two days later, only served to confirm his most 
 gloomy suspicions. It was certainly more affectionate than 
 any she had written for some weeks, but no doubt she was 
 afraid to make her announcement too abruptly. Perhaps 
 she imagined that he would gradually forget her ! That he 
 had already forgotten her promise to come in three months. 
 And the time was up within a day or two, and she made not 
 the least reference to that perfectly definite arrangement; 
 nor had she noticed the manner of his last letter. Perhaps 
 she preferred to ignore it? Perhaps she had not read it? 
 
 A feeling of lassitude came over him that afternoon, very 
 different in kind from the vexed inertia that was so fa- 
 miliar. His mentor seemed to be withdrawn from him, and 
 he was no longer harassed by the thought of little duties 
 left unperformed. He found this new sense of ease quite 
 distinctly pleasant. All his bothers were over. He was no 
 longer perplexed and harried by the necessity to do the 
 things he disliked, such infernally worrying things as order- 
 ing the Givers' jingle, for example. He could let things 
 slide now ; nothing mattered. He had often wondered how 
 it was that any man could sink as low as that fellow Wood- 
 house had sunk. Well, he knew at last. Woodhouse and
 
 168 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 his like had no mentor. Lucky devils! He was a lucky 
 devil himself now. He had only one fear his cursed men- 
 tor might return. 
 
 But the days passed, and still he remained in peace. He 
 did no work, he ate his meals anyhow, he gave up shaving, 
 and his conscience was free of the least offence. The 
 weather had broken up, but the wind was in the north-east ; 
 and although it blew the rain in under the front door, the 
 sitting-room fire did not smoke. 
 
 And with this blessed change of mood, a new relation to 
 life generally was growing up. He was, he thought, becom- 
 ing more real, himself he was certainly vexed no longer by 
 any consciousness of hypocrisy and at the same time the 
 things about him were becoming almost fantastically unreal. 
 He often looked at the furniture in his sitting-room and 
 wondered why it was there. Plainly, it had no connection 
 whatever with himself. Once or twice his interest was 
 sufficiently stirred to get up and feel the outlines of a chair- 
 back, but he found that his sense of touch afforded him no 
 more satisfaction than the sight of the thing. The chair 
 might be there or it might not ; he could not possibly be sure 
 either way. 
 
 He had the same feeling, intensified if anything, about the 
 cliffs and the sea. They had all the appearance of being il- 
 lusory. The "head" at Mawgan Forth, for example, was 
 just a flat outline against the sky in some lights. Was that 
 the real cliff, or was it more real when you saw the crevices 
 and broken spurs of rock in the full sunshine? The prob- 
 lem did not worry him in any way, it merely furnished ma- 
 terial for idle speculation ; but he found that he was forming 
 a habit of touching things. One night he got out of bed to 
 touch the chest of drawers. . . . 
 
 His boot-soles were wearing so thin that he walked with 
 great circumspection, avoiding the stones. His boots were 
 certainly becoming less real, he thought, and chuckled over 
 what seemed to him a very subtle point of humour.
 
 SOLITUDE 169 
 
 IX 
 
 On Sunday morning, the fourteenth of November, he 
 awoke to a knowledge of change and oppression. The old 
 note of the wind had returned, the rain was slashing at the 
 window by his bed, and he could hear, downstairs, the pro- 
 testing chatter of the kitchen door. But these ominous 
 symptoms threatened him at the moment less than some 
 vague disaster; the realisation still hung on the border of 
 consciousness, a threat that suddenly sprung up, a vivid 
 cause for self-denunciation. 
 
 "Good God, I've never had those boots mended !" he said 
 aloud. 
 
 He sat up in bed and rumpled his already untidy hair. 
 Those boots were in the foreground of his mind, but only 
 as the head of a procession of neglected things among 
 them an unopened parcel of books from the Daily Post. 
 Further reflection disclosed the fact that he had written a 
 short note to Betty some days ago and had, as yet, received 
 no reply. 
 
 He shook his head wearily. Life was revealed to him as 
 one enormous task that he had no energy to tackle. Ten 
 days' complete idleness had left him hopelessly in arrears. 
 He could never make up all that lost time, never straighten 
 out the infinite muddle of his affairs. If only he could be- 
 gin again, he would have a chance. If he could leave Eng- 
 land, cut himself off from all the old associations, and start 
 by working as a carpenter, say, or even a common labourer. 
 
 In any case he would have to get a new pair of boots, and 
 that was out of the question to-day. He could not drive to 
 Newquay in this weather "Atlantic weather," he called it, 
 with a certain pride in its violence. The other end of the 
 room was simply flooded. 
 
 He got out of bed reluctantly and closed the farther win- 
 dow, stood shivering for a moment, and then went into one 
 of the front rooms and had a cold bath. 
 
 Presently he stood for a time before the glass, and con- 
 templated the repulsive sight of his ten-day-old beard.
 
 170 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 He found that his razors were rusting; he had meant to 
 put some grease on them, and had forgotten, or thought of 
 it at the wrong moment or something. Nevertheless, he 
 shaved after breakfast, and, as he afterwards ruefully 
 rubbed his sore skin, reflected that he would have to buy a 
 couple of new razors when he went into Newquay. There 
 were several things that he must get when he went into 
 Newquay; but that journey was out of the question to-day. 
 
 He did not attempt to light the sitting-room fire. When 
 he went into that room after breakfast, he found the ashes 
 of last night blown over the hearthrug, and a strong smell of 
 soot prevailed. He opened the window and took the un- 
 opened parcel of books into the kitchen. 
 
 The Atlantic weather had apparently come to stay, but as 
 the week went by he recovered a little courage, a faint 
 energy to oppose the tremendous conflict of life. He had 
 begun a kind of diary that gave him a little relief. He knew 
 that it was carelessly written, and he wished that he had 
 sufficient powers of concentration to make it a worthy testa- 
 ment; but his mind was too dull and tired to do that no 
 metaphors came to him and at least it was something to 
 have a means of expression, however feeble. 
 
 He had only one desperate hope left now the hope that 
 Betty might be induced to come and help him. He would 
 not take the next step, he would leave her, as he had prom- 
 ised, uninfluenced ; but he could write to her day by day in 
 this diary of his, and possibly he might send it to her in 
 certain eventualities. He need not decide that as yet. In 
 any event, he would wait until she wrote to him again. 
 
 And at night, when the wind had shifted a point or two, 
 and he could light the sitting-room fire, he had moments 
 that were glorified by a mirage in which Betty wrote at last 
 to say that she was coming ; that everything was arranged ; 
 that she could no longer bear to live without him; that he 
 was to meet her by the 6.25 at Newquay. He pictured all 
 the essential details, even his explanations to the Olvers 
 and Millie Curnow. He had told them long ago that he 
 was married, and that his wife might come to join him later
 
 SOLITUDE 171 
 
 on, and had skilfully intimated money difficulties, giving 
 them a hint that his wife was working in London. . . . 
 
 Her letter came to him on Thursday morning. Every- 
 thing had looked brighter that day. The wind had gone 
 down, and he had been able to light the sitting-room fire. 
 He was writing a review when the postman came, but Jacob 
 stopped and talked to him for a minute or two about the 
 weather, although that long-expected letter was come at 
 last, and his hand tingled to the pressure of it. 
 
 He laughed when he had read it. She suggested another 
 six months of waiting! He wondered what she would say 
 if she could know what six months would mean to him. Six 
 months more of this ! Oh, well, that settled it ! He would 
 write and send her his diary, and then. . . . 
 
 He found his letter very difficult to express. The old per- 
 plexity had returned. He was using compulsion. This was 
 the thing he had always meant to avoid. But he was deter- 
 mined that she must know, must realise what he had gone 
 through. His diary wouFd give her some idea of it. He 
 need not write it again. But what ought he to do? What 
 was the real, right thing? He found that he was aimlessly 
 drawing capital "B's" on the paper in front of him, and 
 got up quickly. 
 
 "I'll go down to Livelow and look at the sea," he said. 
 "And perhaps I shall never come back," he added. . . . 
 
 He had never seen quite so magnificent a sea as the one 
 that was breaking against the cliffs of Livelow that morn- 
 ing. The wind had fallen to a mere breeze, and huge rollers 
 were coming in, their crests no longer teased and broken 
 by the harry of the following gale. 
 
 The immense roar and crash of the breakers as they burst 
 tremendously against the cliff, or leapt and fell tumultuously 
 over some obstruction of submerged rock, put new heart 
 into him. Here was incalculable force and energy, the won- 
 derful meeting of power and resistance. He leaned farther 
 over the cliff's edge and let a fierce uprush of fine spray 
 sting his face. This was the meaning of life to oppose 
 with all one's might, no matter whether one's expenditure of
 
 172 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 force showed any result or not. For how many thousand 
 years had this wonderful sea battered vainly at these basalt 
 rocks? The struggle had gone on for all known time, and 
 would continue while wind and sea and earth remained. . . . 
 
 He remembered that he had sat on this very rock years 
 ago, and how the sight of the sea had put fresh heart into 
 him. "I have not lost my ideals," he had thought then; 
 "they stretch out beyond the limits of this little world." 
 And was that not still true ? He had been so concerned with 
 the small worries of life that he had forgotten his ideals. 
 Now he must recover them. And the essential for him, the 
 one clear need, was to fight. Oh! he would fight; not for 
 any temporary gain, but for the welfare of his soul, for the 
 sake of those ideals that were beyond space and time. He 
 would go on battering at the senseless rocks, and be content 
 with the knowledge that he had done what he could. He 
 would not commit suicide, but he would send his diary to 
 Betty; he would cease this useless prevarication and make 
 one bold attempt to win her. If she came, and if she after- 
 wards regretted her coming, he would take the responsibil- 
 ity, shoulder it, live with it, if necessary. . . . 
 
 Thank God for this great splendid sea ! . . . 
 
 His mind was so full of resolution that he could not pause 
 to re-write his letter, but on re-reading it he realised that 
 Betty might find that it contained the threat of suicide. He 
 could not allow that misapprehension. He was going to 
 live now, even if he had to face the annoyance of old ladies 
 and invalids in a Newquay boarding-house. So he added a 
 paragraph which he thought would at least prevent any mis- 
 understanding on that score. He left all the disfigurements, 
 the line of meaningless capital letters and the rest, because 
 he regarded them as evidence of his late weakness; and 
 Betty must know everything. He would not actually 
 threaten her, but she must understand. . . . 
 
 And there were forty-eight hours or so to be lived through 
 before he could receive an answer. He turned back with 
 splendid determination to his unfinished review.
 
 SOLITUDE 173 
 
 He had not received a telegram since he had been in Tre- 
 varrian, and did not recognise the un-uniformed boy on a 
 bicycle who rode over from Mawgan Post Office. 
 
 "A telegram? For me?" he asked stupidly, and won- 
 dered vaguely if it were from Meredith. And even when he 
 had read the message : "Coming by eleven train meet me 
 Newquay. Betty," he could not at once grasp the wonder- 
 ful significance of it. 
 
 "There can't possibly be any answer," he said to the boy, 
 who was interestedly watching the geese on the common. 
 
 The impossible had come to pass, and the suddenness of 
 it almost stunned him. But, by Gad! he had a lot to do 
 before she came and she was coming to-day, to-day she 
 would be there to dinner that same blessed evening ! Good 
 Lord! he must tell Millie to get everything ready, and he 
 must order the Givers' waggonette. He must get some 
 bacon in Newquay, and Heaven knew what else! Millie 
 would know. . . . 
 
 "Oh! I want the waggonette, if I can have it I must 
 have it, if possible," he said to Mrs. Olver a quarter of an 
 hour later, "to meet the 6.25 at Newquay to-night. My 
 wife's coming. I had a wire this morning. She's she's 
 given up her work in London, and is coming down to spend 
 the rest of the winter here. We we really can't get on 
 without one another any longer, you know. And can I have 
 the waggonette about four o'clock, because I've a tremen- 
 dous lot of things to get in Newquay before the train's due ? 
 Some boots for myself and heaps of things." 
 
 Mrs. Olver showed no surprise nor any interest in his 
 extraordinary news. One of her best fowls had been 
 accidentally killed that morning.
 
 BOOK IV 
 THE COLLABORATORS
 
 JACOB'S shopping in Newquay was finished long before 
 Betty's train was due. He had been nervous and anx- 
 ious during the drive, making repeated calculations of the 
 time he supposed would be necessary for all that he had to 
 do, and chafing at the slowness of the Givers' horse, the 
 steepness of the hills, and the complete lack of sympathy 
 exhibited by Andrews, the driver. Now he found himself 
 with at least fifty endless minutes to be lived through, be- 
 fore the 6.25 could reasonably be expected. 
 
 He found a time-table in a dark corner of the station, 
 and explored it with the help of a match. She would be 
 between St. Blazey and Luxulyan at that moment, he cal- 
 culated, and he made a note of the times at which she would 
 reach Bugle, Roche, and St. Columb Road. He wondered 
 whether she would be a little thrilled by those queer names, 
 as he himself had been more than three months before; 
 whether she would feel, as he had, that she was coming into 
 a strange, romantic country? 
 
 But when he could see the headlights of the incoming 
 train, he felt suddenly unprepared ; he almost found it in his 
 heart to wish that he might have had a little more time be- 
 fore he greeted her. Not until then had he realised the sense 
 of her actual presence. He had spoken to her a hundred 
 times in imagination during that interminable period of wait- 
 ing ; but now she seemed to him, in some indefinable way, a 
 stranger, difficult to address, a little intimidating. . . . 
 
 She was in the through carriage at the back of the train, 
 and she was already standing on the platform before he saw 
 her. For one moment he had thought that she was not 
 
 177
 
 178 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 there, and the awful blankness of dread that had fallen on 
 him had instantly dissipated any desire to postpone her 
 coming. Nevertheless, he was very self-conscious as he 
 said 
 
 "So you've really come?" He could not have used any 
 term of endearment just then, nor even have spoken her 
 name. 
 
 She hardly looked at him. 
 
 "There's a dress-basket thing in the van," she said, with- 
 out any form of greeting. "Could you find it?" 
 
 He was glad of an excuse for some activity, some oppor- 
 tunity to display his apprehension of her wish to postpone 
 any approach to more intimate conversation until they were 
 alone. 
 
 He missed her again when he had found the dress-basket 
 and a porter to carry it out to the waggonette, but as he 
 stared round with some bewilderment, she emerged from 
 the shadow of the wall under which she had been standing, 
 and came up to him. 
 
 "I couldn't see you," he said, with a laugh that was meant 
 to be reassuringly commonplace, but that, even to his own 
 ears, sounded a trifle hysterical. "Here, let me have that," 
 he went on quickly, and took the valise she was holding. 
 "Nothing else, is there?" 
 
 She shook her head. "We have to drive, don't we ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Drive? Rather!" he said; and, finding speech essential 
 to cover his embarrassment, he continued : "It's over four 
 miles, you know, even if we go by Watergate Bay, and I 
 don't know whether Andrews will care to risk the hill going 
 back. The other way, by Mawgan Cross, is nearly six, and 
 there are a beastly lot of gates. . . ." He had a subject 
 here, and made the most of it, including Andrews in his 
 audience, when they reached the waggonette, by a discussion 
 of routes. 
 
 "If you don't mind walking up the hill," he said to Betty, 
 when some understanding had been reached, "we'll go by 
 Watergate. It's much quicker."
 
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 179 
 
 She shook her head again, and then, as if afraid her sign 
 might be ambiguous, she added : "I don't mind." 
 
 "I expect you're pretty tired," he began, when they had 
 started. 
 
 She nodded faintly, keeping her eyes down. She had not 
 yet looked at him, so far as he knew. She seemed afraid to 
 speak. 
 
 "You're not ill ?" he asked, dropping his voice. 
 
 They were sitting facing each other, close under the lee of 
 Andrews' back, and she gave a quick glance up at that in- 
 efficient shelter as she once more answered him by a move- 
 ment of her head. 
 
 Jacob understood her suggestion that her every word 
 must be overheard, but he wondered if her policy were a 
 wise one. If Andrews were able to draw any inferences 
 from their behaviour, it was surely better for them to talk. 
 They were supposed to have been married for years, and a 
 long separated, and presumably desolated, husband and wife 
 would hardly sit in absolute silence during a tedious four- 
 mile drive immediately after their reunion. He fumbled for 
 some reasonable account to lay before the driver, but found 
 nothing more convincing than 
 
 "You're absolutely tired out. . . ." He said it in a voice 
 that was meant to reach Andrews, but it seemed a poor 
 excuse for their silence, he thought. 
 
 "I am tired," Betty murmured; and after that he tried 
 to contain the nervous excitement that with him demanded 
 speech. 
 
 The night had been overcast as they drove out of the 
 town; but as they came into Forth the clouds were thin- 
 ning, and a rising moon, some three or four days short of 
 the full, showed dimly through a blurred veil of scud. The 
 sea was ebbing, but still high enough to cover the flat beach 
 and send tiny tidal waves up the stream of the little river 
 they were crossing. 
 
 Jacob, intensely conscious of everything about him, could 
 keep silence no longer.
 
 180 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "It is rather a ripping place, don't you think?" he asked 
 in a low voice. 
 
 Betty had apparently been unaware of her surroundings, 
 and when he spoke she looked round at the sea and shiv- 
 ered. 
 
 "Are we nearly there?" she asked. 
 
 "I'm afraid not nearly," he said. "You're cold, aren't 
 you?" and then, as the waggonette stopped, he added: 
 "That's for us to get out. We shall have to walk up this 
 hill. Do you mind ? It may warm you a bit." 
 
 "I should like to walk," she said ; and when he had helped 
 her out of the waggonette, he drew her hand through his 
 arm and hurried forward, so that they might be out of ear- 
 shot of Andrews toiling leadenly behind them. 
 
 "You aren't sorry you've come?" Jacob asked a trifle 
 anxiously, when he judged that his purpose was attained. 
 
 She looked back over her shoulder. 
 
 "He can't possibly hear," pleaded Jacob, with a first weak 
 suggestion of irritation in his voice. 
 
 "No, of course I'm not sorry," she said. And then: 
 "Please don't worry me yet. I shall be all right." 
 
 This was an ominous beginning, he thought, and the glow 
 of life that had come to him since he had felt the joy of her 
 actual presence, was momentarily chilled by a weak attack 
 of the old perplexity. "If she had come against her 
 will. . . ." But he would not consider that confusing, use- 
 less problem again. She had come. She was compromised, 
 and no return was possible. They must face the future now 
 with determination, with splendid courage and disregard 
 of any other opinion. He had said to himself that he would 
 take the responsibility. And he felt able to take it, at this 
 very minute. He was full of vigour and pride. He had 
 her, and he meant to keep her. 
 
 He drew her closer to him. "Take off your left glove," 
 he said; "I want to give you that ring. I've got it in my 
 pocket"
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 181 
 
 "Must I wear it ?" she asked. 
 
 "Must you?" he said. "But Betty . . . what do you 
 mean ?" 
 
 "Have you told the people in the village that we're mar- 
 ried ?" she said. 
 
 "I've told the Olvers the farmer and his wife, you know 
 my landlord, and Millie Curnow, the woman who works 
 for me." 
 
 "Of course they'll know it isn't true." 
 
 "Of course they won't." He wondered if she was dread- 
 ing her reception, the possibility of a slight. "I've abso- 
 lutely arranged all that," he went on. "They think that 
 we're awfully poor, and that you've been working in Lon- 
 don that was true enough while I came down here to 
 write a book. It's a likely enough story surely. Besides, 
 you don't know these people they're not a bit curious about 
 one, in the first place ; and then, Mrs. Olver, for example, is 
 quite a broad-minded woman in some ways, I should think." 
 
 "How do you mean ?" asked Betty. 
 
 He was sorry that he had opened this aspect ; he saw now 
 that the parallel he had had in mind was hardly a compli- 
 mentary one; but he tried to soften it as well as he could. 
 
 "Oh, I only meant that when I first came she said some- 
 thing to me about one of the women in the village who had 
 got two illegitimate children, and she spoke quite nicely 
 about her. She said that she had been unfortunate, that 
 was all." 
 
 "Why did she mention her at all ?" 
 
 "She recommended her to me to do my work." 
 
 "Is that the woman you've got now what was her 
 name ?" 
 
 "Millie Curnow. Yes." Jacob was aware that he had 
 undoubtedly said the wrong thing. 
 
 Betty withdrew her hand from his arm. "Please give me 
 the ring," she said coldly. "I'd sooner Mrs. Olver didn't 
 think me 'unfortunate' too." 
 
 "Oh, Betty! . . ." he began; but he was interrupted by 
 the sound of the waggonette coming after them at a trot.
 
 182 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I didn't notice that we'd got to the top of the hill/' said 
 Jacob. . . . 
 
 Undoubtedly it was going to be a little difficult. When 
 they were on the way again he relapsed into silence, and 
 tried to confront the new trouble as he saw it. She had 
 come to him under stress of a threat, he supposed, and she 
 was already regretting her sudden decision. They must 
 have this out when they got back. He could persuade her 
 then, convince her that she had done the right, the only 
 thing. They would never have had this horrible misunder- 
 standing if they had been alone, if they could have talked. 
 His analysis was cut short by the touch of Betty's hand on 
 his knee. 
 
 He put out his own hand eagerly and took hers, to find 
 that she was not taking steps towards the understanding 
 that was in his mind. She withdrew her hand and made a 
 sign to him, touching her third finger. 
 
 He took the ring from his pocket and gave it to her. He 
 had meant to put it on for her, to make some little ceremony 
 in the doing of it, and he felt slightly aggrieved by the half- 
 furtive way in which she slipped it on her finger and covered 
 it quickly by putting on her glove. If only he could explain, 
 if only he could put his arms round her. It would have 
 been better in many ways if he had not met her at the 
 station. . . . 
 
 He made no attempt to take her arm again as they toiled 
 up the steep hill from Watergate Bay. They walked in 
 silence, this time behind the lumbering waggonette. Indeed, 
 he offered no further remark until they were jolting over 
 the grass field that led up to the Trevarrian house. 
 
 "Here we are at last," he said then, making an effort to 
 appear cheerful. Millie Curnow was standing at the open 
 door, and he wondered how Betty would greet her, or if she 
 would greet her at all. 
 
 And then one more surprise was added to the general 
 unexpectedness of everything that had followed Betty's 
 coming, for she was suddenly gracious and sweet to Millie, 
 admired the house, begged Millie to show her where every-
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 183 
 
 thing was kept, and, when she addressed Jacob, spoke with 
 an easy familiarity, as if that awful drive had completely 
 overcome any awkwardness she might naturally have felt 
 after a three months' absence from him. 
 
 He recovered his spirits at once. Everything would be all 
 right now. He realised that he was curiously nervous and 
 excited still. 
 
 in 
 
 The fatigue that Betty had admitted so readily during the 
 drive seemed to have wonderfully vanished. She was full 
 of brisk energy, impatient to set about the detail of house- 
 hold management. She examined the stock of china and the 
 cooking apparatus, with many comments on the poverty of 
 the supply. "How do you manage without a steamer ?" she 
 asked Millie. "And isn't there a fish-kettle?" 
 
 "We 'ave to use the saucepan, mum," Millie explained; 
 but she appeared to sympathise with Betty's criticisms. 
 
 "Oh! you're over-civilised, you know," put in Jacob. 
 He had entered the kitchen with no scruple as to the fitness 
 of his presence there. That was a familiar living-room to 
 him. 
 
 "You've no business in here at all," said Betty. "The 
 front of the house is your place." 
 
 "Oh! I have all my meals in here," he returned; "and 
 when the wind's in the south-west, I sometimes have to sit 
 here all day." 
 
 "Well, you won't now," said Betty, with a laugh. "You 
 go in and clear that table in the other room, so that we can 
 lay the supper." 
 
 "Is it worth while ? . . ." he began ; but she clapped her 
 hands at him, and cut him short by saying : 
 
 "That's my business. Now, will you go and clear up some 
 of the mess on that table of yours?" 
 
 He went with a delighted sense that no trouble could ever 
 touch him in future, if only Betty would be happy. And as 
 he cleared the books and papers from his table, and made 
 a praiseworthy attempt to straighten and tidy the room
 
 184 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 generally, it seemed to him that he and she could hardly fail 
 to be happy there, with that jolly house all to themselves, 
 and the glorious country and sea outside all new ground 
 for her, to be explored in his company. This was life, he 
 thought, and savoured the exquisite intensity of it the 
 present, realisable happiness, the perfect enjoyment of the 
 moment that did not depend on anticipation. 
 
 When he had put the room straight and swept up the 
 hearth with a newspaper Betty, he knew, hated an untidy 
 grate he stood on the hearthrug and added further redun- 
 dancies to express his realisation of perfect satisfaction. 
 They had the whole of life before them, he reflected glee- 
 fully, full of boundless possibilities of enjoyment, and yet 
 there was no need for impatient longings after some ideal 
 of future achievement that might never be fulfilled. He 
 was content. He wanted nothing more than life with Betty 
 in this delightful, inconvenient house. It was enough that 
 she was there in the kitchen, cooking the fish that he had 
 brought from Newquay. He might go in and see her at 
 any moment, if he chose. . . . The bliss of it was almost 
 too great to be borne. . . . 
 
 Millie laid the supper. He had expected Betty to do that, 
 but he was not impatient. She must come soon, and he 
 could revel in that knowledge, almost wishing that this 
 period of happy waiting could be prolonged. 
 
 And when she came, apologising for the time she had 
 taken, and explaining the deficiencies of his household 
 requisites, she was still in the same brisk, practical mood she 
 had shown since she had first set foot in the house. He had 
 not yet dared a single caress, nor any approach to one 
 unless the holding of her arms on the Forth Hill could be 
 counted and this preoccupation with housewifely duties 
 seemed to hold him at arm's length. Nevertheless, as he 
 passed round the table to the place that had been laid for 
 him, he let his hand rest for a moment on her shoulder. 
 And if she had given him the least sign of encouragement, 
 he was ready then to postpone the eating of his supper in-
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 185 
 
 definitely; but she appeared to be unconscious that he had 
 even touched her. 
 
 "We mustn't be too long," she said, when he had sat 
 down. "Millie has promised to stay, just this once, to help 
 me wash up afterwards." 
 
 "Need you do that to-night?" he asked. He wanted now 
 to be alone with her, to tell her all that he had endured, and 
 all the relief of her coming. He wanted to be near her 
 again not the physical nearness of an embrace, but the 
 sense that he and she understood one another, that they 
 were at the outset of a wonderful life together, with com- 
 mon aims, sharing the delight of each other's love and 
 understanding. 
 
 "Oh, we're going to do things properly now," replied 
 Betty. "I can guess the awful hole-and-corner way you've 
 been living by yourself. I may be over-civilised, as you said, 
 but you've been simply a savage !" 
 
 "It wasn't worth while, you see, to be anything else," 
 Jacob said. "Of course, now you've come . . ." 
 
 "It'll take me a week to get things straight," she put in 
 quickly, and launched out into an account of all the things 
 she proposed to do in the house, indicating his share in the 
 preparations for the new regime by saying that he would 
 certainly have to get more cooking utensils from Mrs. Olver, 
 or, failing that, go over to Newquay and buy some. 
 
 "Oh, we'll buy 'em !" Jacob said. "They'll be ours then, 
 and I don't suppose old Mrs. Olver has got anything to 
 spare." 
 
 Betty thought they might try Mrs. Olver first. "We 
 aren't so rich as all that," she added. 
 
 The meal was soon finished. When Jacob protested that 
 she had hardly eaten anything, she excused herself first by 
 saying that she had had lunch in the train, and then by the 
 statement that she never could eat directly after a long 
 journey. And she cut short his reply by getting up and 
 packing the black tin tray that had been left on a chair by 
 the door. 
 
 "Look here, can't I help?" asked Jacob.
 
 186 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "You'd only hinder," Betty said. "You stop here and 
 smoke. I shan't be long." 
 
 But it seemed to Jacob that she was never coming back. 
 Surely it did not usually take all that time to wash up a few 
 supper things! His mind was no longer content to con- 
 template his present bliss; he was a little anxious as to 
 Betty's attitude towards himself. She had been so terribly 
 matter-of-fact since she had arrived, and he wanted the 
 relief of that long talk which was to inaugurate their perfect 
 understanding, the beginning of their new life. Without 
 question, his own life had begun to-day. 
 
 He got up once or twice and went to the door. He could 
 hear the sound of voices in the kitchen, and wondered what 
 Betty and Millie had found to talk about. He was glad, 
 nevertheless, that Betty had not treated Millie as an ordinary 
 servant. 
 
 It was ten o'clock when he heard the back-door slam, and 
 knew that Millie had gone at last. He sat quite still and 
 waited. He felt unaccountably nervous now that the mo- 
 ment had come. There was no wind to-night, and every- 
 thing was extraordinarily still. He could hear his heart 
 beating. 
 
 The sound of the kitchen-door startled him. She was 
 coming. He heard her footsteps in the passage slow, re- 
 luctant footsteps, they sounded to him. She hesitated at the 
 door, and then he heard her run upstairs. 
 
 The sudden disappointment stirred a feeling of resent- 
 ment in him. He could not bear to sit still another instant, 
 and began to pace restlessly up and down the room. He 
 remembered how, many months ago, before there had been 
 any understanding between him and Betty, he had paced the 
 Montague Place drawing-room waiting for her. But this 
 was a thousand times more agonising. What could she be 
 doing upstairs? What should he do if she did not come 
 down? He looked at the repulsively uneven surface of the 
 sofa, and wondered if he could manage to sleep on it. 
 
 He went to the door again and listened. He could hear 
 no sound in all that quiet house, and when desperately he
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 187 
 
 called "Betty!" his voice sounded discordantly loud and 
 harsh. 
 
 She did not answer him at once, but when he had sum- 
 moned up courage to intrude a second time on that forbid- 
 ding silence, he heard her say: "All right, I'm coming." 
 She must have spoken the words in her ordinary voice, but 
 every syllable was audible, and he knew that she must have 
 heard him when he had first called to her. He felt chilled 
 and miserable. He went over to the fire and knelt on the 
 hearthrug. What could be the matter? Had he offended 
 her in any way? . . . 
 
 When he heard her coming slowly, quietly, down the 
 stairs he waited until he knew that she must be standing in 
 the doorway before he got up and turned towards her. He 
 looked at her keenly, wondering if she had been crying, but 
 he could see no mark of tears on her face only that same 
 look of resolute aloofness she had worn during the drive 
 from Newquay. 
 
 It came to him that he had been a fool, that he should at 
 least have had another bed made up. Perhaps it was not 
 too late now. At the last resort there was that lumpy sofa. 
 
 He took out his cigarette-case and lighted a cigarette. 
 "I expect you're frightfully tired," he said, with an effort 
 to be casual. "And, I say, I can perfectly well sleep on the 
 sofa to-night." 
 
 IV 
 
 She came into the room and sat down in one of the two 
 uncomfortable armchairs by the fireplace. 
 
 "I think I should like a cigarette, too," she said, and held 
 out her hand towards him with a gesture that might have 
 been conciliatory. 
 
 Jacob preferred to regard it as a part of her request for a 
 cigarette, and gave her his case and a box of matches. If he 
 had, in a sense, compelled her to come down here, she must 
 understand that he had no intention of presuming on her 
 confidence in him. She must realise that she was still a per- 
 fectly free agent, that if she preferred to live apart from
 
 188 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 him in this house, he would not urge her to any relation she 
 was not prepared to enter upon. He was content to wait, if 
 only she would stay. 
 
 He sat down on the opposite side of the fireplace and 
 tried to find delicate phrases to express his attitude. For 
 quite five minutes they smoked in silence, and then Jacob 
 said, somewhat with the feeling of continuing an old con- 
 versation : 
 
 "I do want you to stay, but I want nothing else until you 
 are well, until you feel as I do about it." 
 
 She was leaning forward, staring into the fire, and she 
 turned her head and looked at him for an instant before she 
 said: 
 
 "I don't mind. It can't make any difference now." 
 
 *'Oh! but it can make all the difference," he returned. 
 "It does make all the difference to me." He waited for her 
 to answer him, and then, as she made no sign, he went on : 
 "Why did you come, if you felt like this ?" 
 
 "You frightened me," she said. 
 
 "Frightened you?" 
 
 She nodded. "I thought you were going to kill yourself." 
 
 "But I said I wouldn't, quite definitely, in my letter." 
 
 "I know. I hardly realised that at the time. It was that 
 diary you sent me." 
 
 "Were you only frightened because you felt the responsi- 
 bility rested with you, because you had promised?" 
 
 She shook her head impatiently. 
 
 "You did care what became of me?" he asked. 
 
 "Of course." 
 
 "But, then, why . . .?" 
 
 "Your letter," she said, "made me so sorry for you. You 
 seemed so lonely and so deserted. I cried over it." 
 
 "Then you do care? For me ?" he ventured. 
 
 She threw away the end of her cigarette and looked at 
 him, wrinkling her forehead in a perplexed frown. 
 
 "All the way down in the train," she said, "I was won- 
 dering if I should be too late. It was silly, I know ; but I 
 thought of you as being weak and ill, and somehow helpless.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 189 
 
 I kept thinking of that all those hours, and it saved me from 
 worrying about what I had done. It made me feel that I 
 had to come. And then . . ." 
 
 She stopped, and he prompted her with a murmured 
 "Yes?" 
 
 "Oh ! you looked so brown, so strong and well, . . . and 
 . . . and confident. I felt as if I had been taken in, that 
 you had . . . can't you understand ?" 
 
 He understood very well. He saw the case against him- 
 self with revolting clearness. And what evidence could he 
 bring to refute the implied charge? Was it not to a certain 
 extent justified ? He had worked himself up into a state of 
 nerves, but that state must have been purely emotional. 
 Since her telegram had come that morning he had been in 
 the soundest of health and the best of spirits. There was 
 nothing whatever the matter with him. Had there ever been 
 anything more than a self-induced emotionalism? 
 
 "I wish you could have seen me the night before last," he 
 faltered. 
 
 "Why? Were you ill then?" 
 
 "Not ill ; not physically ill," he said, struggling to give a 
 just account of his condition. "It was a state of mind," he 
 continued; "but it is so difficult to explain. It seems to 
 involve my whole life. I don't think I'm neurotic" she 
 smiled faintly at that "but I've got some inherent weakness 
 of mind. There come times when I can't do things any- 
 thing; when I can't fight against . . . life; when it's too 
 much for me, and I just want to chuck it, or go right away 
 somewhere, and begin again without all the handicap I've 
 been piling up. I know I'm making myself out a pretty poor 
 sort of creature, but I can do some things, and go on doing 
 them only I want encouragement, help, love someone to 
 understand me. And since my Aunt Hester died more than 
 ten years ago she was my mother, practically I've never 
 had anyone who could or would understand me. I suppose 
 you think I'm awfully weak?" he interjected. 
 
 She smiled again, with a suggestion of grimness this time. 
 "I haven't found you weak," she said quietly. "Go on."
 
 190 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Well, when I met you," he said, "I began a new life. 
 I'd never wanted anything before as much as I wanted your 
 love. It was the most real thing that had ever come to me. 
 The only real thing, I think. And that's why I could, in a 
 way, fight for -you. . . . But when I thought you weren't 
 coming, I crumpled up mentally. I was worse than I had 
 ever been before. I hadn't even the initiative to go over to 
 Mawgan and get my boots mended. I wore them right 
 through the soles. I just couldn't. I can't explain it. And 
 I didn't shave, and I ate all my meals from the larder shelf. 
 Nothing ever got cooked unless Millie did it. I didn't care. 
 I felt that my life was over, that nothing mattered so long 
 as I didn't have to make an effort." 
 ^ "Didn't you try to fight it ?" put in Betty. 
 
 "Oh, that's just the trouble," he explained. "It's the 
 will to fight anything that goes. It's a sort of madness at 
 least, mental paralysis. I felt as if I hadn't got a soul. It 
 was much worse than being physically ill, Betty it was, 
 really. I'm sorry that I don't show it in my face now. Of 
 course, the brown's nothing. You can be dying, practically, 
 and still look brown. But although, apparently, every sign 
 of it's gone since I had your telegram, I have been danger- 
 ously ill. It was an illness of the soul, perhaps, but it was 
 far more deadly than an illness of the body. Oh ! can you 
 understand ?" 
 
 She did not answer him immediately. She was stooping 
 towards the fire, her hands up to her face. "Wouldn't any- 
 one else have done as well ?" she asked at last in a low voice. 
 
 He guessed what was in her mind. He had been mar- 
 ried, and he had told her also of his young love for Made- 
 line. He had had two women, at least, in his life, and had 
 parted from both of them. His need that he had tried to 
 explain had not been* satisfied by his earlier loves. It might 
 be that he would tire again ; that his desire was nothing 
 more than a longing for a temporary stimulus; that any 
 other decently suitable woman might have filled that need 
 of his. And he knew that no explanation or protestations 
 could possibly carry conviction.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 191 
 
 "I can only say 'No,' " he said simply. "But if you feel 
 like that, I am, as I said before, quite content that we should 
 live apart. You know what I mean. There are four other 
 bedrooms here. You needn't think that I should worry you 
 or that I should blame you in any way. I shouldn't really 
 I shouldn't." 
 
 She made no attempt to answer that, so he went on. "I 
 see how tremendously selfish that suggestion is. You would 
 be just as much compromised as you are now, and I should 
 have no right whatever to keep you. I have no right to ask 
 you, of course. But I'm not standing on any rights. I must 
 keep you here as a housekeeper, if you like ; but I can't let 
 you go. I'm not pleading, Betty. I'm stating a decision. 
 I must have you near me. It just makes the difference 
 between heaven and hell." 
 
 Betty leaned back in her chair and smiled a tender smile 
 now, the smile he had longed to see for three months. "Oh, 
 you funny dear !" she said. 
 
 "Am I?" He got up and stood on the hearthrug. 
 "Why?" he asked cheerfully. 
 
 "Because you are always so careful to leave me quite free 
 to go my own way, and you always end by commanding 
 me." 
 
 "I don't mean to." 
 
 "But you always do it, and you always 
 
 "Do you hate it?" 
 
 "Come here," she said, and pointed to the floor by her 
 chair. 
 
 He went and knelt at her feet, and then gently put his 
 arms round her. 
 
 "I sometimes think you do care for me a little," he said. 
 "I'm hanged if I know why." 
 
 She put her hands on his shoulders, and softly pushed' 
 him away from her, so that she could see his face. "Be- 
 cause you're so weak and so strong," she said ; and then she 
 drew him close to her, and bent over him, "and because you 
 are such a baby," she added, "and because you do love me 
 so much. You do, don't you ? . . ."
 
 192 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Darling, why are you trembling?" she asked him a 
 minute later. 
 
 He held her closer still. "I think you're trembling a little, 
 too," he said. 
 
 "After all, it's only you and me," Betty murmured, as if 
 she sought some ultimate justification.
 
 XI 
 GREAT ARGUMENT 
 
 SHE insisted on his sitting down to work at nine o'clock 
 the next morning. 
 
 "Oh ! I shan't do any work to-day of all days," he pro- 
 tested. 
 
 "Why not?" she asked. 
 
 "I want to be with you every minute," he said, "and to 
 show you everything." 
 
 "I know where everything is now," Betty said. "Besides, 
 Millie will be here presently." 
 
 He laughed happily. "I didn't mean that," he explained. 
 "I meant the sea and the cliffs, Livelow and Mawgan Forth, 
 and dozens of places. They've always been beautiful, but 
 now . . ." 
 
 "That's for the afternoons," Betty decided. "In the 
 morning we've got work, both of us. It'll take me days to 
 get this house straight, and if you don't work, we shall have 
 nothing to live on. Besides," she added, "we've plenty of 
 time." 
 
 He sighed ecstatically. "The rest of our lives," he agreed, 
 and stretched out his hands towards her. 
 
 She took them quietly, and as it were obediently. "But 
 we must work," she said. 
 
 "Of course," he admitted ; "but to-day . . ." 
 
 "We may just as well begin to-day," she said. "And I 
 want that book of yours written. When are you going to 
 read me what you have done all these months ?" 
 
 "Do you want to hear it before it's finished?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, I couldn't possibly wait till then," she said. 
 
 "Well, we might begin it after tea if you feel like it, 
 that is," he suggested. 
 
 "I'm longing to hear it," Betty said; and if her words 
 
 193
 
 194. THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 were simple, her tone was convincing. "And now you must 
 go and write some more of it," she added. 
 
 His face fell. "I wish to goodness I could," he said ; "but 
 if I work this morning, I simply must get on with my re- 
 viewing. I'm frightfully behind with it. It'll take me quite 
 a week to get straight." 
 
 Her sense of the practical did not extend as yet to the 
 detail of his work. 
 
 "Must you?" she asked, answering his first statement. 
 "Does it matter?" 
 
 "I must, absolutely," he said. "It matters tremendously." 
 Already he was resigned to the facing of a task that a few 
 days before had seemed overwhelmingly impossible. 
 
 She was still holding his hands, and she swung them to 
 and fro energetically as she answered: 
 
 "Then, my dear, go and begin at once, this very moment. 
 You shall have the room all to yoursell. I won't interrupt 
 you." 
 
 "But I want to be interrupted," he protested "once every 
 half-hour at least." 
 
 "Well, you won't be," she said; and she dropped his 
 hands, and began to push him gently out of the kitchen. 
 They had agreed that it was better to have breakfast there. 
 
 Jacob allowed himself to be urged towards the sitting- 
 room, but he insisted that he must be allowed to light the 
 fire before he settled down. 
 
 When he returned from the outhouse with an armful of 
 sticks, he found Betty in an apron on her knees at the grate. 
 
 "I don't like your doing that," he said on a note of re- 
 monstrance. 
 
 "Rubbish !" replied Betty. "Someone must do it." 
 
 "Well, why shouldn't I ?" he asked. 
 
 "You've got your own work," she said ; "and I must find 
 something to occupy me." 
 
 II 
 
 The significance of that last speech of hers did not then 
 engage his attention. He was conscious of ability this
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 195 
 
 morning. The pile of books that awaited him was no longer 
 a cause for dismay. He knew that he could deal with them, 
 could understand and criticise them. His mind was alert, 
 was even eager for material to work upon. 
 
 He went over to the table in the window, on which he had 
 stacked the books when he had tidied up the room, and 
 glanced through the titles. Three or four he had read, and 
 he decided to review those at once. If he were to work 
 now, he must have material that would absorb his energy; 
 if he attempted to read, his mind would begin to construct, 
 not criticisms, but theories of its own. 
 
 He brought his books, paper, ink, and pens to the central 
 table, which was moderately steady, sat down, and wrote 
 the title, publisher, and price of the most important volume 
 at the head of a sheet of foolscap, glanced through the notes 
 he had made, and prepared to write his review. He knew 
 precisely what he wanted to say ; his only difficulty was the 
 opening sentence. 
 
 He tried over half a dozen in his mind, and began one or 
 two on paper ; but he was particularly fastidious this morn- 
 ing, and the precise attitude he wanted to express would not 
 take shape in a phrase. He found that he could not quite 
 focus his thoughts on that opening ; they had such wonder- 
 ful, exciting material to occupy them. He lit a cigarette, 
 and allowed himself for a moment to dwell on the ecstasy of 
 that morning's awakening. . . . 
 
 He had waked early and had lain very still, while his mind 
 had sung enchanted songs of thankfulness. He was no 
 longer alone. She was there beside him would be always 
 there with him in future. An almost unrealisable bliss had 
 filled him at the thought that his loneliness was ended as 
 only Betty had the power to end it. Without her he must 
 for ever remain alone. . . . 
 
 The joy in his knowledge of her near presence was not to 
 be borne sitting down, and he got up and began to pace the 
 room. He could hear her moving about in the kitchen, and 
 once or twice he went to the door and listened to that most
 
 196 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 reassuring sound. Presently he heard Millie arrive, and 
 found that it was ten o'clock. 
 
 "It's absurd to try and work to-day," he thought, and 
 then wondered what Betty would say when he had to con- 
 fess that he had done nothing all the morning. He re- 
 turned to the table and stared at the repulsive blankness of 
 his foolscap. "I can't work," he murmured; and again 
 came the reflection that, although he might cheat his own 
 mentor, he could not deceive Betty. She would want to 
 know what he had done perhaps ask him to read his re- 
 views to her. And it was not only to-day that this would 
 happen, it would be the same every day. He had his happi- 
 ness, but he was no longer free. He could not procrastinate 
 any more ; he had undertaken a great responsibility, and he 
 must fulfil it by the discipline of steady work. He could 
 not afford to dream of miraculous fortune, however de- 
 lightful the process, when, as now, his imagination was so 
 vividly constructive ; he must face the tedium of concentra- 
 tion, of steadily applied mental effort. 
 
 And he must begin at once. 
 
 He sat down, picked up the book he had chosen for his 
 first effort, and then, glancing in the direction of the kitchen, 
 he said in a low voice : "This isn't a game any more, Betty 
 darling; it's toil, hard work, repugnant effort, undertaken 
 for you. I've got to take life more seriously." He had in- 
 tended to begin his notice with an epigram ; instead of that 
 he began with the name of the author, and followed it with 
 a cliche. . . . 
 
 When Betty came in at one o'clock to tell him that lunch 
 was ready in the kitchen, she found him flushed and trium- 
 phant. 
 
 "That isn't bad for one morning, is it?" he asked, and 
 displayed half a dozen sheets of well-covered foolscap. 
 "I've done three books fairly decently, too, I think. At 
 this rate, I shall soon be straight again." 
 
 "Splendid!" she said. "I do want you to .get on with 
 your book."
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 197 
 
 "Oh, Betty darling ! it's all so easy now I've got you," he 
 said. "I could write a hundred books." 
 
 She smiled at him a little sadly, he thought. 
 
 in 
 
 The afternoon walk was spoilt by a fine drizzle that blew 
 in from the sea, coming in ragged clouds, that looked first 
 like smoke, and then like mist, and wrapped them in a pass- 
 ing haze of drifting sleet, so that the air was suddenly alive 
 with little hurrying drops of moisture that fled by them and 
 hastened intently up the valley. The black bluff of Mawgan 
 Forth loomed immense and melancholy over the half-veiled 
 darkness of the calm sea. 
 
 "It isn't really rain," Jacob explained ; "it's cloud, right 
 down on the earth." He found a symbol in it. "I am in 
 the clouds to-day, dear, in any case," he said. "Aren't 
 you?" 
 
 He asked the question with some anxiety in his voice. 
 She had been very quiet as they walked down to the beach. 
 He had taken her first to the wall letter-box, at her request, 
 and she had posted two or three letters ; but as she had vol- 
 unteered no information, he had not asked her any ques- 
 tions about them. He was wondering now if these letters 
 had been a sort of farewell to her old life, and if she were 
 regretting the inevitableness of her exile. 
 
 Betty looked up at the gloomy mass of the cliff-head, and 
 shivered. "It's rather lonely," she said. 
 
 He drew her hand through his arm and pressed his shoul- 
 der against her. "It isn't," he returned defiantly. "We can 
 never be lonely again while we've got each other." 
 
 She did not answer that ; she stood frowning, staring out 
 into the grey mist. "And it's so sad," she said, after a 
 pause. 
 
 "Wait till you see it all in sunshine," replied Jacob. "I'll 
 admit it is a bit gloomy this afternoon, but it's very beauti- 
 ful ; don't you think so big and splendid and grand ?" 
 
 "Oh yes," agreed Betty, without enthusiasm.
 
 198 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "It has its moods, you know," Jacob continued. "Real 
 expressions of its own, and not just the things one puts into 
 it. This afternoon, for instance, I'm just as full of happi- 
 ness as I can be, but the sea and the cliffs and the valley 
 don't reflect my feeling." 
 
 "They do mine," murmured Betty, without thought. 
 
 "Oh, Betty darling!" He was checked and frightened. 
 "Do you really mind so much about the silly little world 
 outside ?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "What, then ?" he asked ; and as she still made no answer, 
 he began to plead with her. "Oh, tell me you must tell 
 me !" he argued. "You mustn't hide yourself from me. Is 
 it my fault ? At least tell me that. Are you disappointed in 
 me? Is it that you don't care for me?" 
 
 "No, not that," she said ; and before he could question 
 her again she went on: "Leave me alone, dear. I'm all 
 right. It hasn't anything to do with you, and I shall soon 
 get over it. But let's go in now ; I can't bear the depression 
 of those awful cliffs, and the sea, and everything. Let's get 
 back to a cheerful fire." 
 
 They hardly spoke as they made their way back up the 
 long hill. Jacob was a little disappointed. He had wanted 
 her so much to share his delight in the sombre beauty of 
 Mawgan Forth. And something of her depression had been 
 communicated to him. Surely she would not always feel 
 like this about her coming? 
 
 And when they were back again in the house, and sitting 
 over their tea in the front room before a bright and well- 
 behaved fire, she tried to deceive him by a display of cheer- 
 fulness. 
 
 "Now you're going to read the book to me," she an- 
 nounced. 
 
 He went and knelt at her feet. 
 
 "I'll do anything in the world to make you happy," he 
 said. 
 
 She put her hand on his hair and looked down at him. 
 "I'm quite happy," she said.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 199 
 
 "Quite?" he asked. 
 
 She nodded ; and if he was hardly convinced, he thought 
 it better not to press her then for any further reassurances. 
 "She'll be all right in a day or two," he persuaded himself. 
 "It is a tremendous thing for her to have done, I suppose." 
 
 IV 
 
 The reading of his novel was a great success. He read 
 steadily on until seven o'clock, with only one distraction 
 caused by the arrival of Millie, and then he helped Betty to 
 lay their supper, and to make cocoa, and boil eggs on the 
 sitting-room fire. Betty gave him all the praise and en- 
 couragement he had sighed for. His novel had appealed to 
 her. She had found the stuff of reality in it. 
 
 "It's all so true and so alive," she said, as they had sup- 
 per. "I haven't read many novels I never seem to have 
 had time but all those I have read were always full of 
 things that never could have happened. Yours is like life." 
 
 "Well, it is life in a way, isn't it?" Jacob said. "I mean 
 that, although I have mixed it all up, and John Tristram's 
 adventures didn't actually happen to me like that, I have 
 only written of the things I really know something about. 
 There isn't much imagination in it all." 
 
 "It's wonderfully real," she said, and then asked : "Didn't 
 those things happen to you?" 
 
 "Oh, in a way." Jacob had treated that first love-affair 
 of his, and was not very anxious that Betty should believe 
 his version to be a detailed record of fact. In some way 
 the romance of it had faded in the telling. He had found it 
 difficult to recover the early rapture of his admiration for 
 Madeline, and Tristram's liaison appeared less defensible 
 than his own had seemed at the time. 
 
 "In a way," he repeated. "Not quite like that, you know. 
 I've put a part of my experience into a different setting." 
 
 "But Tristram is you," Betty said. 
 
 He denied that. "He's only a part of me," he explained. 
 "The most consistent part, I think. If I had only had
 
 200 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Tristram's qualities, I might have made a success of things." 
 
 "Well, he's awfully like you," Betty persisted. 
 
 "Is he? I suppose he is," Jacob said. "And yet I don't 
 picture myself when I'm writing about him. I can see him 
 quite clearly in my mind, and facially he isn't like me. He's 
 more hatchet-faced than I am, and he has got straighter 
 hair, and his nose is rather longer and more aquiline." 
 
 "Yours isn't aquiline at all," remarked Betty; "it's per- 
 fectly straight." 
 
 "Yes, you'd never think I had any Jew in me, would 
 you?" he asked. 
 
 "I certainly shouldn't," she said. 
 
 "I suppose I take after my mother," he returned, "as I 
 do in other things. Aunt Hester used to tell me that she 
 was always putting off her work, and expecting a miracle to 
 happen that would make it all right for her." 
 
 "But you're not like that," Betty said. 
 
 "I- am," he told her. "That's why I've made such a mess 
 of everything." 
 
 "Well, you aren't going to make a mess of this book," 
 Betty assured him, and he was willing to believe her. 
 
 They went back to their reading when the supper had 
 been cleared away, and Jacob read on until ten o'clock. By 
 that time he was not more than half through his pile of 
 manuscript. 
 
 "I can't go on any more; my voice is giving way," he 
 remarked, as he put the book down ; "but there's a heap left 
 still." 
 
 "I wish there were twenty times as much," Betty said. 
 
 "Oh, I can't tell you what a difference it makes to me 
 having you," Jacob broke out "all that it means having 
 your encouragement. And you do like it, darling; I know 
 you do by the way you say it." 
 
 He was kneeling beside her again, and he laid his head on 
 her shoulder. "This is my success," he said ; "I don't want 
 anything more than this." 
 
 All her heart went out to him at that moment. He had 
 taken her away from herself, helped her to forget for a
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 201 
 
 time the indefinable reproach and fear that had darkened 
 her outlook for the past twenty-four hours. She was warm 
 with the thought that he was worth any sacrifice she might 
 make. 
 
 "I think you're a genius, dear," she said, putting her face 
 down to his. 
 
 He denied it blissfully. . . . 
 
 "And we are going to be unspeakably happy down here, 
 aren't we?" he asked presently. "I can do anything, write 
 anything, beloved, if I have you, and you're happy." 
 
 She had no doubt at all that night. 
 
 The next day was Sunday a festival, as Jacob pointed 
 out, differentiated only by the fact that if you wanted your 
 post you must walk to Mawgan and fetch it for yourself. 
 
 Betty discovered no eagerness for letters, nor did she 
 suggest that they should go to church. Jacob had wondered 
 if she might show any inclination towards a more rigid 
 piety as some sort of compensation for the disregard of a 
 certain precept they had broken. 
 
 He said nothing to her before their mid-day dinner he 
 worked with great steadfastness all the morning but as 
 they were preparing to go out afterwards, he asked her if 
 she would care to walk over to St. Eval for three o'clock 
 evensong. 
 
 "Have you ever been?" she asked. 
 
 "No, of course not," he said ; "but, then, I don't believe 
 in the Christian dogma." 
 
 "I don't know that I do either," was Betty's astonishing 
 answer ; and then, as he was evidently about to express his 
 delight in her unexpected admission, she cut him short by 
 saying: "But I don't want to discuss it, please, dear, nor 
 . . . nor anything ... of that sort. I want to forget all 
 about it, and if you really want to see me happy, you'll leave 
 that subject alone. And I am happy to-day," she added. 
 
 He had a feeling that this attempt to suppress and bury
 
 202 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 her qualms she must have them still ; she had admitted that 
 in what she had said was unwise, was little likely to lead to 
 any real peace of mind for her. But he had not the de- 
 termination to face the trouble just then. She had said she 
 was happy, and she appeared to be ; he would wait until her 
 malady had manifested itself before he attempted to cure it. 
 And his intuition might be quite false. It might, after all, 
 be better for her to forget, if she could. 
 
 "Good !" he said happily. "We'll go and explore Water- 
 gate ; it's more cheerful than Mawgan Forth." 
 
 They finished his book that evening. 
 
 "Oh, do get on with your old reviewing, and write some 
 more," was the essence of Betty's criticism; and she began 
 to ply him with questions as to the further development of 
 John Tristram's career. 
 
 They talked until half-past eleven, and Jacob felt sure that 
 his intuition had been at fault. In six months' time, he 
 thought, we shall be able to discuss that question of con- 
 science without a tremor; it's all too fresh now. . . . 
 
 He heard her hurry out to the front-door when the post 
 arrived the next morning, and after a moment's interval she 
 came into the sitting-room. 
 
 "Anything ?" he asked. 
 
 "Two papers and a letter for you," she said, and put them 
 down before him. 
 
 "Only proofs," he commented ; "some stuff I sent in just 
 before you came. Was there anything for you ?" 
 
 "I didn't expect anything," she said, "except, perhaps, a 
 letter from Freda." 
 
 "You wouldn't get that till to-morrow," Jacob said. "No 
 post out from London till midnight, you know." 
 
 "You wouldn't get country letters, then, either?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "I don't expect so," he said; "not letters written yester- 
 day." 
 
 She sighed with a touch of impatience, and he got up and 
 went over to her. 
 
 "What was that sigh for ?" he said.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 203 
 
 "Nothing," she told him. "Are you still reviewing? 
 When are you going on with your book ?" 
 
 "In a couple of days," he said. "I shall sit down to it 
 with an easy mind when I've got this stuff off." 
 
 "Well, hurry up," she returned. "You can work after 
 tea to-night; there's nothing more to read." 
 
 "And what will you do?" 
 
 "Oh, I'll find something to do," she assured him. 
 
 He wondered, when she had gone, whether she had 
 enough to occupy her, and remembered the admission she 
 had made on that first morning when she had been doing 
 the hearth. What was there to distract her mind down 
 here from brooding on that problem of hers? Was she, 
 perhaps, engaged in a perpetual struggle to thrust it down 
 out of her consciousness? 
 
 "I must find something else to read aloud," he thought; 
 but after tea she insisted that he should go on with his work. 
 He succeeded in doing a little while she was out of the 
 room. 
 
 After supper he read two chapters of a new novel he had 
 for review, and then she confessed that it did not interest 
 her. Afterwards they talked for a time, but Jacob found 
 that ordinary conversation was beset with pitfalls. The 
 forbidden subjects were lurking behind the most improb- 
 able cdrners. 
 
 "I wish we could be open about these things," he said at 
 last, when the topic of the Laurences had left him facing 
 another blank wall. 
 
 "Not yet," pleaded Betty. "In a little while I will, per- 
 haps." 
 
 And again he wondered if he ought to insist. He had a 
 queer picture in his mind of all those inhibited thoughts 
 being thrust down and growing malignantly under the sur- 
 face. . . . 
 
 VI 
 
 Tuesday's post always brought him his weekly tale of 
 books from the office, but he had sent in no list to the editor
 
 204 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 on the previous Saturday, and was divided between anxiety 
 lest there should be no books at all and a fear that there 
 might be too many. He jumped to his feet when he heard 
 the postman knock, but Betty was before him. He heard 
 her footsteps in the passage, and waited for her to come in, 
 but she returned to the kitchen, stayed there a moment, and 
 then ran upstairs. 
 
 He found two parcels of books on the kitchen table. His 
 anxiety was relieved ; there were too many. And although 
 he sighed in anticipation of the new burden they would 
 impose, he was pleased by this evidence that the editor had 
 not forgotten him. Moreover, an investigation of the par- 
 cels revealed the fact that two of the volumes were of some 
 importance, that reviews of them would be required by the 
 day of publication a week hence, and that "space" could 
 be given to them. Jacob was flattered. He felt that he was 
 still in touch with the world of letters, and that his criticisms 
 were of some account in that world. Meredith had said 
 that since Gresswell had been editing the Daily Post the 
 literary side of the paper had improved enormously. 
 
 The statement had intimidated Jacob at the time, had 
 made him nervous and over-anxious; but this morning he 
 felt equal to any demand that might be made on his critical 
 powers. He wanted immediately to go and tell Betty. 
 
 He looked at his watch, and found that it was not yet 
 twelve, and then deliberately sat down to finish the work 
 he had been doing before the interruption. "Discipline," 
 he said to himself curtly. 
 
 He disciplined himself so well that it was a quarter past 
 one before he permitted himself to reflect that Betty was 
 very long in coming. 
 
 He found the kitchen empty, and no sign of any prepara- 
 tion for a meal. "Had she been upstairs since half-past 
 eleven?" he wondered. He listened attentively, but could 
 hear no sounds overhead. The doors of that house were 
 ill-fitting, but the floors were solid enough. 
 
 He went back to the sitting-room, and stood irresolutely 
 by the table. What could she have been doing all that time ?
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 205 
 
 It was so unlike her to neglect the housework. He was 
 afraid to go upstairs. 
 
 When he went at last, he went noisily to warn her of 
 his coming. 
 
 He found her standing by the window with her back to 
 the room. 
 
 "Hal lo!" he said, "do you know what the time is?" 
 
 "I'm afraid I'm rather late," she said, without turning 
 her head. "I'll be down in a minute." 
 
 "Is anything the matter, dear?" he asked. He was still 
 standing by the door. Something in her attitude told him 
 that she wished to be left alone. 
 
 "No, nothing's the matter," she said. "You might put 
 the potatoes on; they're all ready. I'm coming in a few 
 minutes." 
 
 "All right ; don't be long," he replied, with an assumption 
 of cheerfulness as he went out. 
 
 She was worrying herself, he reflected, as he made up 
 the kitchen fire with wood from the outhouse. They must 
 have this out between them, talk everything over quietly 
 and reasonably. It was absurd for her to nurse this scruple 
 of conscience. The thing was done now, and they must 
 face the consequences bravely. And there would not be 
 any consequences. Who had a right to criticise them? 
 Certainly no one here in Trevarrian. No one knew; and 
 if they did know, they wouldn't care. He worked himself 
 up into quite a fervour of conviction for the righteousness 
 of their cause. 
 
 But when Betty came down she made no further reference 
 to her neglect of duty, and he could not be quite certain 
 whether or not she had been crying. 
 
 They were very quiet over their postponed dinner. Jacob 
 was still revolving his defence, going back into history 
 for precedents; and Betty evidently did not wish to talk. 
 And afterwards she seemed quite composed and cheerful 
 again, and he thought that, perhaps, she had faced the prob- 
 lem herself that morning and conquered her weakness. He
 
 206 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 decided that it would be better to say nothing more just 
 then. 
 
 She received his news with regard to Mr. Gresswell's im- 
 plied compliment on his reviewer's ability as a matter of 
 course. 
 
 "It has bucked me up, rather, all the same," Jacob as- 
 serted, eager for her to share his elation. 
 
 "You are too modest about your work," Betty said, and 
 added : "I suppose this means that you won't get on with 
 your book this week?" 
 
 "I think I can put in a couple of days on it," Jacob said. 
 
 But even that promise seemed to give her no real pleasure. 
 
 She did not come into the sitting-room between tea and 
 supper ; and Jacob's attention was not very successfully con- 
 centrated on the reading of one of those two important 
 books. 
 
 He was anxious about her. "If only she could be happy 
 here," he thought again and again, "it would all be so abso- 
 lutely splendid. I could work now." 
 
 She had said nothing about having received any letters 
 that morning. 
 
 VII 
 
 In the night he woke with a feeling of uneasiness. Some- 
 thing had recalled him to consciousness, some sound that 
 he had recognised in sleep, and had instantly forgotten on 
 waking. He lay very still, staring into the darkness of 
 the room, listening. 
 
 For a moment he heard nothing, and then he realised that 
 Betty was whistling under her breath, a tiny, sibilant whistle 
 that shaped itself into the ghost of a tune. 
 
 He did not speak at once, and, called out of a deep 
 sleep, he was vaguely annoyed at being disturbed. That 
 faint, whispered tune was curiously irritating. 
 
 "What is it, dear? Can't you sleep?" he asked gently. 
 He had not moved nor made any sound since he woke, but 
 it seemed to him that Betty must know he had been listen- 
 ing to her.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 207 
 
 The ghostly whistle stopped instantly, almost disconcert- 
 ingly, but she did not answer his question. 
 
 "What is it, Betty, dear?" he asked again; and then, as 
 she still made no reply, he raised himself on his elbow 
 and tried to distinguish her face in the darkness. "Can't 
 you sleep?" he repeated. 
 
 "It's nothing. I'm all right," she said in a low voice that 
 shook a little, as if it were hardly under her control. 
 
 "Betty! You're not crying," he said. 
 
 "Do leave me alone. I'm quite all right," she returned, 
 more steadily. 
 
 "But you're not!" he exclaimed. "Oh! we can't go on 
 like this. I can't bear to think of you lying awake and 
 miserable. Betty, do speak to me! Do tell me what's the 
 matter." 
 
 He sat up and felt for the matches on the table by the 
 bed. But when he had lighted the candle, he still could 
 not see her face; her back was towards him, and her face 
 was pressed into the pillow. 
 
 He put his hand on her shoulder and tried to draw her 
 to him. She resisted him with a touch of petulance. 
 
 "Why can't you leave me alone?" she said. There could 
 be no doubt now that she was crying. 
 
 How long had she been crying, he wondered? For how 
 long had she lain trying to keep back her tears by repeat- 
 ing that distressing little whistle? Surely she had allowed 
 him to gauge at last the depths of her misery. All the old 
 doubts and fears had returned. He had foreseen many re- 
 sponsibilities, and had been willing to take them upon him- 
 self, but how could he deal with this ultimate unhappiness? 
 
 "You must confide in me," he said suddenly, continuing 
 his own line of thought. "It's this suppression that is 
 making you miserable. If we could share it all; if you 
 would only talk to me about it. . . ." 
 
 She did not answer him, but he found speech a relief. 
 "It's the end of everything," he went on. "If you have 
 found out that you don't love me, you must tell me so. I 
 won't threaten you. I'll go on living somehow, but I can't
 
 208 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 bear this. I simply can't bear it the uncertainty of it 
 ... to be in heaven one minute, and then to find out that 
 you have only been pretending to care." 
 
 "It isn't that! it isn't that!" she put in. 
 
 "Oh! then tell me what it is," he besought her. 
 
 She sat up in the bed beside him. She had recovered 
 her self-control, and although her face was still wet with 
 tears, her voice was steady again. 
 
 "Why can't you go to sleep and leave me alone?" she 
 asked. "I shall be all right if you'll only give me a little 
 time." 
 
 "You won't!" he returned obstinately. "You'll never be 
 all right while you keep things to yourself like this." 
 
 "I didn't think you'd hear me," she said. 
 
 "I heard you in my sleep," he protested. "You can't 
 keep things from me like that. I feel your unhappiness." 
 He paused, trying to remember the quotation that had in- 
 evitably suggested itself as the climax of his expression of 
 devotion. " 'My heart would hear you and beat if I'd lain 
 for a century dead/ " he concluded. 
 
 "Couldn't we both die together?" she said. 
 
 He was suddenly, terribly shaken. Not till then had he 
 faced the reality of her trouble. That single expression 
 of feeling revealed awful deeps of anguish. She had spoken 
 so quietly and earnestly. It was as if she had found words 
 for a vital desire that she had long been hiding from him. 
 
 "Betty, you don't mean that !" he said harshly. He could 
 not bear to lie still any longer, and he got out of bed and 
 put on his dressing-gown. For a minute he walked up and 
 down the room; then he came and sat by her on the bed. 
 
 She looked so young, so girlish with her hair hanging 
 down in a great plait ; and the expression of her face, how- 
 ever sad and determined, was also young, almost childish. 
 
 "Oh, my dear, you don't mean that !" he repeated. 
 
 She put out her arms to him, drew him to her, and leaned 
 her head on his shoulder. 
 
 "I don't know, I don't know," she said. "It would be 
 the end of everything."
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 209 
 
 "You want me to die too," he said. He had a faint hope 
 that the thought of that might in some way break through 
 this strange, inexplicable mood of hers. 
 
 "I couldn't leave you alone," she said. 
 
 He shuddered, and held her desperately. There was no 
 need for the pitiful "No, no, no" he despairingly repeated 
 to prove that he could never again face life without her. 
 
 They lost all restraint then. They were so utterly alone 
 together, there in the stillness of the night, so separated 
 from all humanity, so free from any need for the least 
 reserve. They were like two little children who had wan- 
 dered out into the unknown and were faced with the dread 
 of coming night. And they clung to each other as though 
 only so could they find refuge from the terror that was 
 so near them. . . . 
 
 VIII 
 
 But in the morning all that outpouring and revelation, 
 their natural and direct expression of emotion, wore an 
 air of being something dramatic and overstrained. When 
 they had put on those garments of everyday civilisation 
 that ranged them with the rest of their kind they had 
 put on also some invisible cloak of restraint that hid them 
 from each other. They looked at one another shyly, as if 
 they were aware of a secret that must for ever be hidden 
 from the world. Betty, at least, had revealed a wish of 
 which she was now ashamed. 
 
 And her constraint was greater than Jacob's. He had 
 confessed what he regarded as the unmanly weakness of un- 
 restrained tears, but in a sense he had been the victor. By 
 his very weakness, he thought, he had convinced her that 
 she could never leave him. 
 
 He made no reference to their night's emotion at break- 
 fast, but when he was alone in the sitting-room, faced by 
 his morning's work, he knew that no work was possible 
 for him until he and she had come to a clearer under- 
 standing. 
 
 He found her upstairs making the bed.
 
 210 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "How long shall you be over that?" he asked. 
 
 She looked up as if he had threatened her. "Why? 
 What do you want?" she said. 
 
 Her apparent timidity gave him courage. She had said 
 that he always ended by commanding her, and he felt able 
 to command her now. 
 
 "We must talk about all this," he said firmly; and the 
 memory of his own tears stiffened him yet more in his reso- 
 lution. "I can't possibly work until we've had it all out, 
 and the sooner the better." 
 
 Betty sat down on the bed. "It can't do any good," she 
 persisted feebly. 
 
 "I suppose your people have been writing to you ?" Jacob 
 ventured. 
 
 "Why do you think so?" Her defences, she knew, were 
 becoming very weak. 
 
 "Not a difficult inference to draw," he returned. "Nat- 
 urally they would. And I suppose from their point of 
 view . . ." 
 
 She interrupted him. "It isn't that that matters," she 
 said. 
 
 "What, then?" 
 
 "You wouldn't understand. You would only argue with 
 me, as you have so often before, and you can't put your- 
 self in my place." 
 
 "Oh, but that isn't true !" he broke out. "I can I can 
 so easily. But why should I? The thing's done now 
 done for all time. Let's face it. Why should I make my- 
 self wretched by deliberately trying to take your old point 
 of view, and encouraging you to exaggerate all those 
 scruples that you ought to face and and get rid of ? Why 
 shouldn't you make a big effort and try to look at every- 
 thing from the common-sense point of view? . . ." 
 
 He was going on, but she stopped him by getting up 
 and opening her trunk. "I suppose you had better see 
 those letters," she said, "and then, perhaps, you'll be able 
 to understand." 
 
 N
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 211 
 
 "I'll try," he returned resolutely, quite undaunted as 
 yet. 
 
 She lifted the tray of the box and thrust her arm down 
 under a pile of clothes. "I began to pack yesterday morn- 
 ing," she remarked. 
 
 "Began to pack?" Jacob repeated in wonder. He was 
 more than ever anxious now to explore all this drama that 
 Betty had been playing unknown to him. 
 
 "I meant to go away," she said, and stood up, holding 
 two envelopes in her hand. "I never meant to show you 
 these," she went on. "But you'd better read them now. 
 One is from my father to you, with just a note inside for 
 me; and the other is from my Aunt Mary. Will you go 
 downstairs and read them? I'll come to you in a few min- 
 utes." 
 
 She looked at him with a hard defiance, as if the mere 
 touch of those letters had evoked some feeling of enmity 
 towards him, or it may have been that she challenged his 
 criticism of those opinions that he was about to pass judg- 
 ment upon. 
 
 "I suppose you think I'm being rather brutal," he said; 
 "but I must be, for both our sakes." 
 
 "We can talk about that when you've read the letters," 
 she returned. 
 
 "Will that make such a difference?" he asked. 
 
 "It may not make much difference to you," she said. 
 
 "To you, then?" 
 
 "Well, I hope you'll remember that my aunt is a very 
 dear woman, and that I'm very, very fond of her," Betty 
 said; and Jacob had a sight of the attitude she expected 
 him to take. This logical firmness and resolution of his 
 was already involving certain penalties. 
 
 "I will try to understand your position, dear," he said, 
 with the first sign of relenting. 
 
 She softened instantly. "It's so different for me," she 
 urged. 
 
 "I know it is," he returned. "But we must face it and 
 talk it out together, mustn't we?"
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Perhaps it's better," she admitted. But as he was leav- 
 ing the room she changed her mind in one particular, and 
 called to him. 
 
 He turned and looked at her. 
 
 "Don't read father's .letter," she said. "Give it back to 
 me." 
 
 "I suppose he hasn't been very polite," Jacob suggested. 
 
 "Oh, well, what could you expect?" she asked. "Any- 
 how, I'd sooner you didn't read it." 
 
 "I'm going to read them all," Jacob said firmly. "You 
 don't quite do me justice. You think I'm prejudiced that 
 I can only see one point of view ; you think I shall be in- 
 sulted and abusive and bigoted, don't you now?" 
 
 "It must be so difficult for you . . ." she began; but he 
 interrupted her by saying: 
 
 "Oh, my dear little Betty, can't you remember that I was 
 brought up in that atmosphere, that I was educated by a 
 parson, and that I know precisely what parsons think and 
 write about people like myself ? Trust me, dear. Besides," 1 
 he added, "we're going to understand one another to-day, 
 and it's just as well that I should have my lesson as well 
 as you. We've got to find some middle ground for agree- 
 ment." 
 
 There was no sign of conviction in her expression, but 
 sne allowed him to go. 
 
 IX 
 
 That short exposition of Jacob's, the statement of his 
 willingness to find some middle ground, saved him from 
 the mistake he would inevitably have made if his mind had 
 not been cleared by definite and, as he believed, illuminat- 
 ing speech. Nevertheless, he was glad that Betty was not 
 in the room when he read her father's letter. 
 
 Mr. Gale had written in the heat of the moment, without 
 tact or consideration, an exhortation that might have driven 
 to defiance a more pliable man than Jacob. 
 
 "Sir," the letter began, "I have heard from my daughter 
 that, absolutely incredible as it appears to me, she has al-
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 213 
 
 lowed herself to be deceived into accompanying you to 
 Cornwall. What compulsion you have put upon her I have 
 no idea, but knowing as I do my daughter's great, if not 
 too discriminating, gift of sympathy, I conclude that you 
 must in some way have played upon her tenderer feelings. 
 I infer from your name that you are not a Christian, but 
 I trust that your sense of what is right and honourable is 
 not so perverted but that you will be able to see that the 
 only course now open to you is that of at once surrender- 
 ing all claim to my daughter's affection, and permitting her 
 to return home immediately upon receipt of this letter. 
 If, however, you still persist in restraining her, if not against 
 her will, most certainly against all the dictates of her con- 
 science and her sense of what she owes to her family, I 
 shall be compelled to take steps towards recalling her to a 
 proper state of mind. I cannot but feel, however, that 
 you will repent your outrage upon morals and all decency 
 when you come to consider the dastardly aspect your con- 
 duct must wear in the eyes of all right-minded people." 
 He had subscribed himself, without any conventional for- 
 mula, "Charles Owen Gale." 
 
 Never before had Jacob suffered such a feeling of furious 
 impotence. For a few moments he was dominated by a 
 passion to take the Rev. Charles Owen Gale by the throat 
 and strangle him. That was the only method of revenging 
 himself. No argument, no true presentation of facts, could 
 ever touch the awful, complacent superiority of the man 
 who had written that letter. Betty's father was as sure 
 of his own righteousness as he was of his social position, 
 and to him Betty's lover was a Jew and a cad. 
 
 Jacob struggled to compose himself. He opened the 
 window and tried to cool his burning face by leaning out 
 into the air, but the memory of a phrase in that letter 
 brought him back into the room again. . . . "Your sense 
 of what is right and honourable is not so perverted . . ." 
 he read, and clenched his hands, and swore viciously under 
 his breath. He was utterly exasperated by the knowledge
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 that he had no power to vindicate himself; no weapon 
 wherewith to pierce that dreadful Pharisaism. 
 
 But the scene upstairs was still vividly in his mind. He 
 had been grossly insulted and misunderstood; he furiously 
 desired revenge; but this man was Betty's father, and 
 Jacob realised that he must control himself when Betty 
 came down. He had promised to find a basis for compro- 
 mise, and that was not to be discovered by violent recrimi- 
 nations and abuse. 
 
 He picked up the other letter and read it hurriedly; but 
 Mrs. Lynneker's appeal to her niece conveyed no impression 
 to him. His mind refused to occupy itself with anything 
 but the composition of replies to Mr. Gale, that varied 
 between somewhat abusive reflections on the bigotry and 
 stupidity of country parsons and dignified, brilliantly 
 phrased expositions of Jacob's attitude towards morals and 
 decency, including a definition of the class labelled "right- 
 minded people." 
 
 He was in the middle of a most impressive sentence when 
 Betty opened the door. 
 
 She looked at him anxiously, as if she was afraid that 
 he might be greatly distressed. "Have you read them ?" she 
 asked. 
 
 Jacob made a gallant effort to appear unconcerned. "Yes, 
 I've read them," he said. "Come in and sit down. I want 
 to talk to you quietly about everything." 
 
 "Of course, you're very angry," she said. 
 
 "I was," he prevaricated. "Just for a minute or two." 
 
 "And you've read Aunt Mary's letter as well?" 
 
 "Yes, I think so." He took it up and glanced at it. "I 
 don't know that I quite understood it. I I was rather 
 upset by the other. I want to talk to you about that 
 first." 
 
 "It isn't really of the least importance," she put in quickly. 
 "It didn't have any effect whatever upon me. I knew he 
 would write like that. He was frightfully angry, of course. 
 You must make allowances for that. He doesn't know any- 
 thing about you, you see, and probably didn't believe half
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 215 
 
 the things I said in my letter I don't think he could have 
 read most of them. . . ." 
 
 "I must answer him," Jacob said. 
 
 "I shouldn't," Betty urged. "It won't do any good. 
 It'll only . . ." 
 
 "I know it won't do any good," interrupted Jacob ; "not to 
 him or to you ; but it'll do me good. I've got to recover a 
 little of my self-esteem. One always thinks of oneself as 
 privileged in some way, as the centre of everything. I've 
 never seen myself from the point of view your father 
 takes, and I can't bear it. It'll stick in my mind if I don't 
 work it off somehow. I shall always remember that your 
 father thinks of me as a little Jewish cad who has disgust- 
 ingly seduced his daughter." 
 
 "Oh, darling, he doesn't ! . . ." Betty began ; but he would 
 not listen to her. 
 
 "He does ; of course he does. He has said it in so many 
 words," he broke out, losing his self-control. "He has 
 tried his best to insult me as badly as ever he can, and 
 naturally he has been at pains to point out that I'm neither 
 a gentleman nor a member of the Church of England. He 
 puts them in that order, I notice. Well, I know I'm neither, 
 but I have some sense of decency all the same. . . ." He 
 stopped abruptly and looked at Betty. "Is that how you 
 see me?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh, darling, come here!" she said, and held out her 
 arms to him. 
 
 He hesitated a moment, and then went to her. 
 
 "I think you're the dearest, silliest old thing in the world," 
 she told him. 
 
 "But you must have been influenced by that letter. You 
 must have wondered . . ." he suggested. 
 
 "Do you really believe that?" she asked tenderly. 
 
 He smiled, and then, growing serious again, he said: 
 "Well, why were you so miserable last night, and why 
 did you begin to pack yesterday morning, and why did 
 you suggest that we should go and kill ourselves?"
 
 216 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "It was Aunt Mary who made me feel like that," she said ; 
 "and you haven't read her letter yet." 
 
 "Does she abuse me too ?" 
 
 Betty shook her head. "Don't you think you'd like to 
 read her letter now?" she asked. "That really is im- 
 portant." 
 
 He could not, however, appreciate the undoubted impor- 
 tance of that letter until he had come many steps nearer 
 to that middle ground he had so hopefully indicated. The 
 urgencies of Mrs. Lynneker, when he came to read them a 
 second time, appeared to him as the commonplace expres- 
 sions of Evangelical piety, and they irritated him hardly 
 less than the abuse of her brother. Jacob felt that he 
 was being badgered attacked by those forces against which 
 he had been in revolt for so many years. He wanted to 
 make some immense demonstration that would finally expose 
 the futility and narrow-mindedness of these foolish be- 
 liefs in the immediate concern and watchfulness of a higher 
 power ; he wanted to convince Betty, as the immediate repre- 
 sentative of all mankind, that such religion as this was the 
 absurdest superstition, a development of animism, of the 
 terror and propitiatory rites of the savage. 
 
 He looked up at her with a frown, mentally seeking those 
 graphic, illuminating phrases which should dispel the dark- 
 ness of primitive fear from her mind. 
 
 "This seems to you important?" he asked. 
 
 They had passed through many moments that Jacob, at 
 least, had definitely diagnosed as "critical," but this quiet 
 opening of what was intended to be a calm, almost imper- 
 sonal discussion, was not included by him in that category. 
 Yet never had he been so near to losing Betty as then. 
 He had displayed to her, not for the first time, but never 
 before so definitely, an attitude that seemed to her little 
 less than fanatic. That in itself was of small importance; 
 but sympathy and understanding were so essential for her 
 just then, that to be met by argument she foresaw it in-
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 217 
 
 stantly when he spoke seemed to her to open out a gulf 
 between them that could never be bridged. 
 
 She winced. "You don't understand it?" she asked. 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders. "I've heard and read this 
 kind of thing so often," he said. 
 
 She looked at him coldly, and stretched out her hand for 
 the letter. "Give it to me," she said. "Of course, if you 
 feel like that about it there's nothing more to be said." 
 
 "Oh, but there is!" he protested; "everything. This is 
 just what we've come in here to talk about, to discuss. This 
 piety is at the bottom of all your unhappiness. On Sunday 
 you said you didn't believe in it any more, but you do, and 
 we shall never be happy till you get all these absurd super- 
 stitions out of your mind." 
 
 "You don't understand," she repeated, and felt hopelessly 
 that she could never make him understand. 
 
 They were within sight of separation then for the first 
 time. 
 
 Jacob was biassed by the struggle through which he had 
 come, by his old revolt against religion. He had examined 
 it all after he had grown old enough to think for himself, 
 and long after he had rejected many another teaching of his 
 youth, once regarded as infallible. And he was eager now 
 to pass on the light to Betty. The whole thing was so 
 plain to him that he was sure that if he could but find words 
 he would make it equally plain to her. 
 
 "Oh, I do understand!" he said, petulantly. "I under- 
 stand, for instance, that if you make the tenets of Chris- 
 tianity the touchstone for all moral conduct, you and I are 
 doomed to burn in hell for eternity." 
 
 Betty shook her head wearily and sighed. "It isn't that," 
 she said. 
 
 "Partly, isn't it?" 
 
 "I don't think so." 
 
 "That is what your aunt would say. That's the stand- 
 point she argues from." 
 
 Betty opened the letter in debate and turned to the third 
 page of it. She knew that there was something she might
 
 218 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 say that would put everything straight, but she could not 
 express it. "Listen ! Can't you understand this?" she said, 
 and read: 
 
 " 'My dear, what I want you to do is to look into your 
 own heart and ask yourself whether some still small voice 
 is not earnestly telling you that you have done wrong.' " 
 
 Betty stopped there and looked up at him. 
 
 Jacob had passed that sentence as a cliche, dismissing it 
 with a faint disdain for the mixed metaphor. And in other 
 circumstances he would have ridiculed the sentiment and 
 the manner of it, and have gone on to prove that that "still, 
 small voice" of conscience was merely an echo of early 
 habit and education. He saw the whole shape of his argu- 
 ment quite clearly in his mind, a fascinating, demonstrable 
 proposition ; but with his eyes he saw Betty's .distress. And 
 suddenly his irritation and rigidity left him, taking all his 
 logic and prepared oratory with them. He realised with a 
 shock that from Betty's point of view she had sacrificed 
 everything for him, and that he was unwilling, or unable, 
 to meet gift with gift. 
 
 "Does your heart tell you that you have done wrong, 
 darling?" he asked. 
 
 She responded at once to the change in his voice. "Some- 
 times," she said. "It has more than once; I've felt that 
 it was more than I could bear." 
 
 He gently pushed her into a chair, and then sat at her 
 feet and leaned his head against her knees. "And I've 
 been such an unsympathetic beast!" he said. "But now, 
 dear, you must tell me all about it." 
 
 She put out her hand and stroked his hair. "I don't know 
 that I can put it into words," she told him. "You knew 
 I was miserable ; what else could it have been ?" 
 
 "I thought, perhaps, that you were disappointed in me; 
 that you had found out that you didn't care for me. You 
 don't know how wonderful it is that you should. I can't 
 always believe that it's possible." 
 
 She leaned over him. "What are we to do?" she asked.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 219 
 
 "Can't we go on as we are?" he replied. "Is your con- 
 science too much for you ?" 
 
 "Almost. Sometimes," she said. 
 
 "And won't it ever get any better?" 
 
 "I don't know. How can I know?" 
 
 "Why doesn't my conscience tell me I'm doing wrong?" 
 he asked. 
 
 She took that up with a touch of eagerness. "Doesn't 
 it?" she said. "Haven't you ever once felt that it was 
 was wicked for us to be together ; that you ought to go back 
 again to try to live with that other woman?" 
 
 "Never once!" he replied, with magnificent assurance. 
 "And as to the other woman, she has definitely refused to 
 have anything more to say to me." 
 
 "Why did she?" asked Betty, lured away from the point 
 at issue. 
 
 "We hated one another, that's all," he explained. "And 
 I should never have made advances in the first instance if 
 it hadn't been for Barker the parson, you know." 
 
 "You do try to do what you believe is right, don't you?" 
 she pathetically asked. 
 
 "I think I really do," Jacob admitted. 
 
 "And you really think it's right for us to be together?" 
 
 "Good Lord, yes !" he said emphatically ; and so came to 
 his long-postponed dissertation on the relation of conscience 
 to morals. 
 
 She listened quietly enough, but it was not his argument 
 that affected her at that time. Later it was all woven into 
 the fabric of her re-education, but as yet she had not learnt 
 to quote him. 
 
 XI 
 
 Jacob had given in to her on all essentials. He had come 
 over to consider her point of view, to admit that she had a 
 conscience that would not be denied on logical grounds 
 and that must be tenderly treated. But he was firm on one 
 point. He must answer her father's letter. She might 
 write what she would to Mrs. Lynneker, and he would not
 
 220 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 criticise any admission that Betty might feel moved to make. 
 But he must re-establish himself in his own self-esteem by 
 making his declaration of independence to Mr. Gale. Jacob 
 intended that answer of his to be a model, an essay in right- 
 mindedness. 
 
 He set about it as soon as Betty had gone to cook their 
 dinner. 
 
 If he had not had one gift of the novelist, he might have 
 succeeded, but his too great ability for adaptation spoiled 
 his essay most completely. In argument with Betty he was 
 able to display at times a restful definiteness ; he could 
 hold his own point of view, and work himself up into a 
 satisfying condemnation of any other. But when he sat 
 down to express himself on paper, his fastidious search 
 for a definite and conclusive statement of his own position 
 left him with the feeling that he was quite incompetent 
 to convince the adversary he so clearly visualised. 
 
 He pictured his correspondent as a model of self-satisfied 
 righteousness, and then attempted all too successfully to see 
 things from his opponent's point of view. He thought that 
 this, the means of the novel, was the only one by which 
 he could penetrate those defences, and after half an hour's 
 concentration, he was forced to admit that they were im- 
 penetrable by any argument of his. 
 
 His act of intuition revealed to him that his logic would 
 inevitably appear as prejudiced to Mr. Gale as Mr. Gale's 
 own diatribes appeared to Jacob ; and once he had recog- 
 nised that indisputable fact, he felt that it would be a waste 
 of effort to enter upon a futile controversy in which he, 
 as the more flexible of the two disputants, would probably 
 be worsted. . . . 
 
 When Betty came in to tell him that dinner was ready she 
 found him smiling happily. 
 
 "Have you written?" she asked, with a touch of anxiety. 
 
 "No," Jacob said gleefully ; "but I've worked out a really 
 fundamental point of psychology that will be very useful 
 to me when I come to write novels." 
 
 "Well?" she encouraged him.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 
 
 "I've discovered that the only use of argument is to con- 
 firm one's own point of view at least, that is what it comes 
 to," he said. "If you want to convince anyone, you must 
 fill them up with their own theories until they are sick of 
 them; and you must never, on any account, disagree with 
 a person you mean to convert." 
 
 "So you are not going to write to father?" 
 
 "Waste of time," returned Jacob. 
 
 "I'm glad," Betty said. "You'd only irritate him." 
 
 "I suppose you knew that intuitively?" he asked. 
 
 "I knew it, I don't know how," she said. 
 
 "Well, I've learnt it for myself by thinking about it," 
 replied Jacob ; "and if it's a slower method, it's the one 
 most useful to the potential novelist." 
 
 "Come along, dear, the dinner will be all cold," was 
 Betty's only comment on his re-discovery.
 
 XII 
 
 ABOUT IT AND ABOUT 
 
 THE great discussion had not been of the quality that 
 Jacob had anticipated; it had been vague and capri- 
 cious, failing, as such conversations always fail, to keep 
 to the point at issue; but it had nevertheless opened the 
 way for him to understand something of what Betty was 
 suffering. When he read hesitation or depression in her 
 face now, he could attribute those signs to some fresh stir 
 of conscience; he was less perplexed by the fear that she 
 had repented her sacrifice because she was disappointed in 
 the object of it. 
 
 And that little piece of knowledge was of considerable 
 service to him during the next two weeks, a period that 
 was marked by the arrival of many letters from Betty's 
 relations, none of them in the least degree congratulatory. 
 
 He had a solid ground now for his invasion of those 
 thoughts which by force of long habit she would have kept 
 to herself. At first each attack of his was vigorously de- 
 fended, but he had learned the disposition of her forces, 
 and nothing but patience was needed to break down her 
 resistance. 
 
 "I shall be all right if you'll only let me alone," was her 
 almost invariable evasion when he questioned her as to the 
 cause of any new evidences of depression. 
 
 "But you must share your trouble with me," was his 
 obvious reply. "I want all your confidence." 
 
 "It only upsets you and interferes with your work," 
 she said on one typical occasion, ten days after her coming 
 to Trevarrian. 
 
 "That's such a secondary thing," he retorted. 
 
 222
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 223 
 
 "Is it?" she asked, trying desperately to forget the letter 
 she had received that morning. "And what are we going 
 to live on if you don't work?" 
 
 It was a warm, still day, and they were sitting among the 
 rocks at the end of Watergate Bay, retreating every few 
 minutes before the threat of the incoming tide, a game in 
 which Jacob found perpetual delight. 
 
 "Secondary for the moment," he replied. "And can't 
 you see, dear, that it's worse for me when you will keep 
 these things to yourself? It isn't as if I didn't know. I 
 know directly I see you if you're worrying again." 
 "I'm not worrying," was Betty's evasion. 
 "Do you mean to tell me that you haven't had another 
 beastly letter from one of your relations this morning?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "It wasn't beastly," she said. 
 
 "Good Lord! are there many more of 'em?" he asked. 
 "No more that count." 
 "Who was this one from?" 
 "My sister Hilda." 
 "What did she say?" 
 
 "Hadn't we better move back a little?" asked Betty. 
 "We shall get wet in a minute." 
 
 "Yes, we'd better. There's quite a big swell this after- 
 noon," he remarked, "although it's so still ; I expect there's 
 wind coming from the south-west. And then you'll know 
 the joy of that sitting-room chimney." 
 
 "Oh, Betty, isn't it glorious here?" he went on, when 
 they had settled themselves again some way farther up the 
 rocks. "We shall never have quite such a perfect time 
 again. Do be happy." 
 "I am happy," she said. 
 
 "You're not; but never mind. What did your sister 
 say?" 
 
 "Nothing particular." 
 
 "Is it worth while to put me off like this every time? 
 he persisted. "I shall go on nagging until you tell me."
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 And even then the instinct to nurse her secrets was so 
 strong that she could not tell him at once. 
 
 Hilda's letter was so unlike the others that Jacob could 
 not, at first, understand why Betty should have been dis- 
 tressed by it. She had brought it with her, and he read it 
 there on the rocks, and protested. 
 
 "But she says that it will make no difference to her feel- 
 ing for you," he urged. "What more can she say?" 
 
 "Yes; and she says that of course it won't be easy for 
 us to meet now, but we might manage it if I was in London 
 and she came up," Betty quoted. 
 
 "Well?" commented Jacob. 
 
 "Do you think I would meet her in some hole-and-corner 
 way, when her husband didn't know anything about it?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Do you know him?" 
 
 "Hardly; I think I met him once before the wedding." 
 
 "Well, what's he got to do with it if your sister still 
 feels the same about you?" 
 
 "If she did ; but she doesn't, or she wouldn't be ashamed 
 to see me." 
 
 "You're so frightfully sensitive," Jacob said. "I don't 
 see how you can make out that she is ashamed." 
 
 "It's there in her letter, in every word of it," Betty 
 said bitterly. "Not so much in the things she says as in 
 those she hasn't said. I know Hilda, you see, and you 
 don't." 
 
 Jacob was only half -convinced, but he gave way on that 
 point, making a mental note that his impudence in having 
 attempted to describe a woman in his novel was nothing 
 less than colossal. 
 
 "Do you mind very much?" he asked. 
 
 "Not the least," Betty said. "I'm sorry, of course; but 
 I have seen very little of Hilda the last year or two, and 
 I don't know that we were ever very great friends." 
 
 "And yet this letter makes you miserable?" 
 
 She did not answer him immediately, and he took her 
 hand and held it. "Can't you explain, dear?" he insisted.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 225 
 
 He felt so sure that it was necessary for her to confess 
 her heart-searchings. 
 
 "It's so difficult," she hesitated. "You can't understand, 
 and you'll argue with me. I shall get over it." 
 
 "I do understand," he said ; "and I promise you faithfully 
 that I won't argue this afternoon." 
 
 She turned her head and looked at him. "Well, can't you 
 see that it isn't so much that I care tremendously for my 
 people I'm afraid I don't, in a way but they are my 
 people, and they've let me see pretty plainly what they 
 think of me. Even Hilda's patronising and forgiving in 
 a condescending sort of way. I know she doesn't mean to 
 be, but she simply couldn't help it. They all think I'm 
 wicked, disgraced for ever, and they make me feel that they 
 must be right. It isn't as if I'd felt as you do about it to 
 begin with. I have done it against my conscience, as Aunt 
 Mary says; she understands me the best of all of them." 
 
 Jacob remembered that he had promised not to argue, 
 and he knew no other way of combating Beechcombe 
 opinion. 
 
 "Well, what's to be done about it, beloved?" he asked. 
 
 "There's nothing to be done," Betty said; and then she 
 expressed a wish that had never before found speech be- 
 tween them. "Oh, I wish she would die," she said. 
 
 Jacob winced. "Would it relieve all your distress if we 
 could spend ten minutes in a registrar's office ?" he asked. 
 
 "It isn't that I really care about that" she tried to ex- 
 plain. "I know that that wouldn't make me virtuous 
 again. . . ." 
 
 "What, then?" 
 
 "Well, you have got two wives, haven't you? And I've 
 got no real claim on you." 
 
 "You've got ten million times more claim on me than the 
 other one has," Jacob said, with a note of passion in his 
 voice. "If ever there was a truly sacred vow of lifelong 
 devotion made by two people, it was ours. We didn't make 
 it before a government official, I know, and perhaps we
 
 226 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 haven't actually spoken it in words; but it's the most tre- 
 mendous thing in my life, for all that." 
 
 He had put his arm round her, and she drew close to 
 him as she said: "You wouldn't ever give me up, would 
 you ?" 
 
 "It's utterly unthinkable," Jacob replied solemnly. 
 
 And for that time, at least, she appeared comforted and 
 almost content. They sat on until it was nearly dark and 
 the sea had driven them back to the face of the cliff. 
 
 "I will be happy," Betty said, as they climbed the path 
 on their way home. 
 
 "If you're happy, I've nothing left to wish for," was 
 Jacob's fervent answer. 
 
 ii 
 
 The south-westerly gale that he had prophesied began to 
 blow that same evening, at first in little, uncertain gusts 
 from the west, and afterwards backing and increasing stead- 
 ily in force. 
 
 They were still in the sitting-room at ten o'clock when 
 the first intimation that the wind had got back towards the 
 south was furnished by the celebrated chimney. The little 
 column of smoke that had lifted so steadily for the past 
 ten days suddenly gave a little dip, as if it had curtsied, and 
 a thin wraith of vapour crept up under the mantelpiece. 
 
 "It's coming," remarked Jacob gloomily. That smoking 
 chimney was so full of horrible associations for him that 
 even now, in Betty's company, he could not shake off the 
 feeling that there was some omen of dread in the threat of 
 another spell of discomfort. 
 
 "I don't think much of that," Betty replied cheerfully. 
 
 "You wait," he said. "It hasn't begun yet, but it will. 
 We probably shan't be able to use this room to-morrow." 
 
 He was a little vexed that she was not more apprehen- 
 sive, and insisted at some length on the terrors that were 
 in store for them. 
 
 "Well, what about the other room?" she asked, still un- 
 daunted.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 227 
 
 "I've never had a fire there," he said. "The room's full 
 of cases and things." 
 
 "They could be cleared out." 
 
 "I expect that chimney's just as bad," he remarked. 
 
 "Well, if this chimney does smoke very badly to-morrow, 
 we can try the other room and see," Betty suggested. 
 "There's no need to get depressed about it yet," she added. 
 
 "I'm not the least depressed," Jacob assured her. 
 
 Nevertheless, he found it necessary to indicate further 
 portents when they went upstairs. 
 
 "Come and listen," he said. 
 
 She stood beside him at the open window, and they 
 leaned out together. In the intervals of the gale they could 
 hear the long moaning of the sea half a mile away down 
 the valley. 
 
 "It always booms like that just before and after a gale," 
 Jacob said. 
 
 Betty, pressed close against him, did not reply. 
 
 "It's very wonderful, isn't it?" he asked, after a pause. 
 "We'll go down to Livelow after breakfast to-morrow if it 
 isn't too fierce." 
 
 "It makes me feel rather miserable," Betty said, with a 
 shiver. 
 
 "It makes me feel excited," Jacob replied. . . . 
 
 They both exulted in small triumphs the next morning. 
 
 There was no need to make any experiments with the 
 sitting-room fire. Betty, much to her disgust, found the 
 hearthrug covered with ashes, and the down-draught made 
 itself felt plainly enough without the superfluous test that 
 Jacob made with lighted paper. 
 
 He could not let the occasion pass without some expatia- 
 tions on the amazing resources of that chimney, and on 
 the miseries he had endured during the time that he always 
 referred to as "the awful week." 
 
 Betty smiled and kissed him. "Let's try the other room," 
 she said. She appeared perfectly happy that morning. 
 
 And in the smaller room on the other side of the passage
 
 228 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 she had her triumph, for the flue there proved to be a model 
 for all Cornish chimneys. 
 
 "Well, why ever didn't you think of coming here when 
 it blew?" she asked. 
 
 "I don't know. It didn't occur to me," Jacob confessed. 
 "I suppose I thought it would be rather a fag moving every- 
 thing." 
 
 "That won't take long," returned Betty briskly. "Sup- 
 pose you begin by taking those two cases out into the 
 kitchen." 
 
 "Yes," Jacob said ; but he made no attempt to move. 
 
 "What are you thinking about?" she asked. 
 
 "I was thinking how different my life would have been 
 if I had met you ten years ago," he said. 
 
 "I should have been just seventeen," commented Betty. 
 
 He did not reply to that. "I could have done anything 
 if I had had you," he went on. 
 
 She was still kneeling before the grate, but she got up 
 then, put her hands on his shoulders, and gently shook 
 him. 
 
 "You're going to do wonderful things now," she said. 
 
 "I can do anything with you to help me," he said. "You 
 give me strength and courage." 
 
 "Even to go from one room to another," she put in. 
 
 "It is just those things that I fail in so helplessly," he 
 said. "I've no initiative; I always anticipate failure. I've 
 no faith in myself. That's to say, I hadn't. I have every- 
 thing in the world I want now." 
 
 "Are you going on with that book of yours this morn- 
 ing?" she asked. 
 
 "Darling dear, I'll do anything you tell me to do," he said. 
 
 But before he settled down to work in his new surround- 
 ings he spent several minutes in reflecting that he owed 
 something of the brightness and confidence of his present 
 mood to the vagaries of that sitting-room chimney. It had 
 driven him to despair in the first place a despair that 
 had been an important factor in bringing Betty to him in 
 Cornwall ; and in the second place it had illustrated for him
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 229 
 
 an aspect of his own weakness, and the glorious way in 
 which those deficiencies of his would now be overcome. 
 
 Betty was his perfect complement, his strength and his 
 feebleness so wonderfully dovetailed with hers. 
 
 "I am a lucky beggar," Jacob murmured, as he forced 
 himself to concentrate on the subject-matter of his novel. 
 There was no evasion possible to him now. Betty would 
 insist upon his reading his morning's work to her after 
 lunch, even if he had only written a single page. He was 
 almost too happy to write. 
 
 111 
 
 The broad process of change that had begun to influence 
 Betty that had, indeed, been working in her unperceived 
 for many months was so gradual that neither she nor 
 Jacob could appreciate any difference in her attitude from 
 week to week. 
 
 He may have been right in believing that it was better 
 for her to take him completely into her confidence, but the 
 wonderful element of self-sacrifice that was an essential 
 part of her continually counselled the disguise of any un- 
 happiness she might be suffering. She felt that her confes- 
 sions must react upon him, interfere with his work, and by 
 degrees, perhaps, kill his love for her. Moreover, she had 
 always had a tendency to take burdens upon herself with 
 just so much recognition of the self-sacrifice involved as 
 partly to justify her sisters' accusation that she often "made 
 a martyr" of herself unnecessarily. 
 
 And in the old days at Beechcombe, and later in Mon- 
 tague Place, the tendency had been fostered by the attitude 
 first of her father and sisters, and afterwards of Mrs. 
 Parmenter. For in their different ways those four people 
 had all taken advantage of Betty's willingness to save them 
 from small troubles, while at the same time criticising her 
 to that effect which Hilda and Violet had perhaps most ade- 
 quately phrased. 
 
 Her father's "My dear, there was really no necessity for 
 you to have bothered yourself," or Mrs. Parmenter's,
 
 230 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Surely, Elizabeth, one of the maids could have done that," 
 contained the implication that once again Betty was making 
 a martyr of herself. And she had accepted the aspersion 
 without question of its truth, or any reflection on those 
 who had cast it upon her. She was willing to admit that 
 while she never gloated over her martyrdom afterwards, 
 she was often conscious of her own magnanimity, when si- 
 lently and unasked she took upon herself another's duties. 
 
 And it is possible that this very willingness of hers to 
 take trouble on behalf of others might have developed into 
 something very like a vice if it had been too long fostered 
 by the selfishness of the people with whom she lived if 
 she had grown old in the management of a Bloomsbury 
 boarding-house, for example. But Jacob saved her from 
 that. If he was selfish, it was in another manner, and she 
 could not doubt that he would have been at any pains to 
 save her distress, anxiety, or even the fret of small house- 
 hold duties. They had had a dispute as to the lighting of 
 the kitchen fire two mornings after she came to Trevar- 
 rian, but Jacob had insisted that that was his affair, and 
 it was he who now first came down in the bleak December 
 darkness to a cold kitchen. It was true that he liked her 
 to make occasional reference to his heroism, but she knew 
 that he never made a martyr of himself. What he did, he 
 did for the joy of helping her. 
 
 Nevertheless, on various occasions, at increasingly larger 
 intervals during the first months of her life with Jacob, 
 Betty's trouble came to the surface, and was the subject 
 of conversation between them. When he was anxious and 
 perturbed, beseeching her with questions as to whether or 
 not she was happy, she instinctively tried to hide her 
 thoughts from him, to reassure him, and to wear an ap- 
 pearance of happiness generally so well simulated that it 
 completely deceived him. But when he seemed inclined to 
 take too much for granted, to assume that she must be con- 
 tent, and that her scruples were disappearing under the 
 influence of his reasonable attack upon them, a spirit of 
 contradiction sometimes moved her to revive his anxiety
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 231 
 
 by displaying again those tremors of fear, doubt, and shame 
 which still haunted her. And one such occasion which 
 touched a climax they never afterwards reached was pre- 
 sented on the evening of Christmas Day, six weeks after 
 she had come to Trevarrian. 
 
 IV 
 
 Jacob was particularly solicitous in the morning, moved 
 rather by a sense that the festival would be an unusually 
 dull one for her than by the consideration that the religious 
 and sentimental aspect of the anniversary might revive pain- 
 ful associations. 
 
 "Couldn't we do something to-day?" he asked at break- 
 fast. "Have a celebration of some kind? It's our first 
 Christmas Day together." 
 
 "What could we do here?" Betty said. 
 
 "Well, there's Newquay, you know," he suggested. "We 
 might drive in and have dinner at an hotel, or some- 
 thing." 
 
 "And what about the chicken I got from Mrs. Olver?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "That would keep till to-morrow." 
 
 "I don't want to go to Newquay. It would only be 
 spending money for nothing at all," Betty said. 
 
 "I thought it might cheer you up a bit," he persisted. 
 
 "I'm not un-cheered," she returned, smiling. 
 
 "Aren't you? I thought you looked a little down this 
 morning," he went on. "And it wouldn't cost much to go 
 in to Newquay and have dinner there." 
 
 "I don't think I want to much," she said. 
 
 "Why not?" He put the question a little uneasily. He 
 wondered if she were afraid that she might possibly meet 
 someone she had known. 
 
 "Because I'd much sooner have dinner here with you," 
 she said. 
 
 "Yes, but you do that every day . . ." he began.
 
 232 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I believe you're getting tired of me," she interrupted, 
 and so effectively changed the conversation. 
 
 And she succeeded so well in her assumption of happi- 
 ness during the morning and afternoon, that Jacob believed 
 himself justified in indulging in a fit of high spirits. He 
 gave free vent to his enjoyment of life that day, rejoicing 
 with a careless, boyish glee that was new to her. 
 
 "I didn't know you could be so silly," she said, when he 
 entered into a portentous conversation with a stray goose 
 they met in the lane going down to Livelow. 
 
 "Merely happy," he returned ; "you haven't seen me really 
 happy before, have you?" 
 
 She encouraged him in his light-heartedness then, but 
 while she was alone in the kitchen after tea her own de- 
 pression returned, and she made little effort to hide it as 
 they ate their imitation of a Christmas dinner. Jacob, 
 however, seemed for once to overlook the signs he usually 
 diagnosed so quickly. He displayed a determined cheer- 
 fulness that slightly irritated her. 
 
 And when they were in the sitting-room after the dinner 
 had been cleared away, she deliberately brought up the topic 
 she had always avoided with such steady persistence. 
 
 "We neither of us had a letter of any kind this morning," 
 she remarked suddenly. 
 
 "Why should we ?" he returned. "I don't want letters 
 when I've got you." 
 
 She did not respond to that note of affection. "I think 
 Hilda might have written," she said. 
 
 Jacob's heart fell. "You're not worrying about that, are 
 you?" he asked. "Oh, don't, Betty darling! There's no 
 reason on earth why you should. Let's be happy to-night." 
 
 She made an effort to respond to his appeal, but her re- 
 action was too strong, and the tears came to her eyes even 
 as she tried to smile. 
 
 "Oh, darling, what is it?" he implored. "Tell me what's 
 the matter." 
 
 "Oh, it's nothing," she said; and then, inconsequently, 
 "Sometimes I feel as if I can't go on."
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 233 
 
 He went over to her and put his arms round her. "Do 
 you really mean that?" he asked. 
 
 "I felt to-day as if I must go away from here," she said. 
 
 That hurt him. He had been happier there than he had 
 been in all his life, and to him the place was wonderful and 
 beautiful as no other place could ever be. He had hoped, 
 fondly, it seemed, that Betty would come to share his love 
 for Trevarrian. "We can go somewhere else, if you like," 
 he said coldly. 
 
 "No other place would be any better," she said. "I 
 daren't go back to London." 
 
 He got up and began to pace the room. 
 
 "I thought you were getting over that feeling," he ven- 
 tured. 
 
 "I don't believe I shall ever get over it," she replied. 
 
 "What will you do, then ?" 
 
 "Nothing. There isn't anything to do." 
 
 "Do you want to go away from me ?" He put the ques- 
 tion without the least uncertainty in his own mind as to 
 her answer, and he was shocked and suddenly afraid when 
 she said drearily: 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 He stopped in his walk and looked a.t her. She was lean- 
 ing forward, her elbows on her knees, the picture of de- 
 jection. And the old doubt sprang up again in his mind. 
 Was she tired of him? he wondered. It seemed so impos- 
 sible that she could have no other motive than a mere un- 
 easiness of conscience after six weeks. 
 
 "What could you do if you went away?" he asked. 
 "Would you go home? Would your people overlook this 
 episode?" 
 
 "I couldn't go home again," Betty said positively. "That's 
 all done with." 
 
 "Where could you go, then?" 
 
 "I could always take a place as cook, if it came to the 
 worst." 
 
 He looked his despair. "You are just torturing yourself
 
 234, THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 and me for nothing," he broke out. "What is it all about ? 
 Have I disappointed you?" 
 
 "Oh, it isn't you," she said. "You can't understand; 
 you'll never understand how I feel about it." 
 
 "Still conscience?" he asked; and although she made no 
 reply, he knew that he need look no farther for the reason 
 of her present mood. 
 
 And argument, the only effective weapon, as it seemed, 
 was denied to him, not only because she had begged him 
 not to reason with her, but also because he had seen for 
 himself how useless was logic against her sense of convic- 
 tion. She believed him to be prejudiced, and his most 
 earnest statement wore an air of sophistry. He knew how 
 she stiffened herself and set her mind against argument. 
 But if they were ever to be happy together, he must devise 
 some means to counter this depression of hers. If it were 
 allowed to take hold of her, it would, in time, destroy them 
 both. And no means presented itself to him but the appeal 
 to common sense. 
 
 "Of course, you won't listen to me," he said, after a long 
 interval spent in steering a meticulous course up and down 
 the room. 
 
 She sighed, as if she were already weary of talking. 
 
 "Oh, Betty darling, won't you use your common sense in 
 this as in other things?" he pleaded. 
 
 "I do try," she said. 
 
 That upset the attack he had finally determined to make. 
 He realised that he had been about to use a useless blud- 
 geon, that he had failed again in intuition, that he had not, 
 indeed, understood her. 
 
 "But I can't get over the feeling that I'm doing wrong," 
 she added, before he had time to applaud her effort. 
 
 "And you don't think I could help you ?" he asked feebly. 
 
 She looked up at him. "I don't see how you can," she 
 said "how anybody can." 
 
 He felt checked and helpless before a return of the old 
 inertia. The task was too much for him ; he could not com-
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 235 
 
 bat this opposition of hers. He gave up his pacing of the 
 room, and sat down. 
 
 "Well, then, what's to be done?" he asked. "We can't 
 go on like this. If you feel all the time that you're acting 
 against your conscience, you mustn't stay. It doesn't matter 
 about me." 
 
 "Would you let me go ?" she said, with a new note in her 
 voice that he wrongly attributed to relief at the prospect 
 of release. 
 
 "I'm not going to keep you here to make you miserable," 
 he returned. "If you find that you can never be happy with 
 me, the sooner we separate the better for both of us." He 
 spoke without bitterness or resentment. It seemed to him at 
 that moment as if he only wanted the ease of certainty. 
 
 "And what would you do if I went ?" she asked. 
 
 "Oh, what does it matter what I do?" he said, with the 
 same unemotional detachment. "I don't see that we need 
 consider me at all." 
 
 She got up quickly and came over to him. He was lean- 
 ing forward, and she gently pushed him back into the chair 
 and sat down on his knee. 
 
 "I will be good," she said softly. 
 
 He clutched her tightly as if she had nearly slipped from 
 him. "But can you be happy?" he asked. 
 
 "It's only now and then I feel like this," she said. "I 
 shall get over it. I know it's very silly, but sometimes I 
 can't help it." 
 
 They both realised that she had made an immense admis- 
 sion. If she knew that her feeling of shame and remorse 
 was "silly" and was determined to fight it, the worst was 
 over. 
 
 And Jacob's thought, transcending for an instant the little 
 limitations of time, urged him to say: 
 
 "How we shall both laugh at these crises of ours in five 
 years' time." 
 
 "We shan't believe they ever happened," returned Betty.
 
 236 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 She was materially assisted in her efforts towards recov- 
 ery by the single attitude adopted by her own people. They 
 had now ceased to write to her, and none of them had at- 
 tempted to deal directly with the slightly pathetic state- 
 ment of feeling she had tentatively urged as an excuse for 
 her amazing depravity. Aunt Mary had weakened her first 
 appeal by repeating it; her father and Violet had each in 
 their own way painted again the picture of the only form 
 of virtue that could lead to spiritual and social salvation; 
 Hilda had temporized on the side issue of how difficult it 
 would be for her to meet Betty if she ever went back to 
 town ; and only the intimidating Northampton aunt had ap- 
 proached the real issue in a terrific argument that was 
 summed up in an opening phrase to the effect that "this kind 
 of thing never answered" the emphasis of the word twice 
 underlined, demonstrating the certainty won by Mrs. Gale's 
 inferentially unlimited experience. 
 
 Betty grew increasingly ready to dismiss her family with 
 a shrug of her shoulders. All her relations had combined 
 to condemn her without a trial. They were so magnificently 
 certain of what God and Society would say, that they evi- 
 dently felt it superfluous to make any inquiry as to the 
 possible merits of a particular case. And this absolute 
 refusal to condescend to argument, this unhesitating as- 
 sumption that every question with regard to sexual morality 
 had been finally settled in the Garden of Eden, precisely 
 four thousand and four years before the birth of Christ, 
 had given Betty far more cause for doubt than the whole 
 volume of reason that Jacob was willing to pour out, if ever 
 he were given the least encouragement. She felt that if the 
 others had too little to say, he had too much ; that his very 
 eloquence gave his arguments the semblance of special 
 pleading; but the application of her father's ready-made 
 morality to a particular case set her wondering if any life 
 could be guided by hard and fast rules. She saw so clearly
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 237 
 
 that her own case was an exception, and her father's re- 
 ligion held no place for exceptions. 
 
 Moreover, she was more than a little disgusted by her 
 sisters' lack of charity. Violet was acidly superior, and 
 Hilda's concessions seemed to be due rather to an admis- 
 sion of personal weakness than to any willingness to allow 
 that Betty might have been justified by peculiar circum- 
 stances. And Betty realised very clearly that, if the cases 
 had been reversed, if Hilda, for example, had broken the 
 laws of Beechcombe by a similar or even a far worse' irregu- 
 larity, she herself would have been full of sympathy and 
 love for the offender would, in fact, have considered the 
 person rather than the offence. Was it the influence of re- 
 ligion, she wondered, or of individual character that made 
 so much difference? 
 
 One day in January she put the question to Jacob. 
 
 He laughed, and asked her if she were not tempting him 
 to display his forbidden powers of argument. 
 
 "I have been trying to argue it out for myself," Betty 
 admitted. 
 
 "You will get farther that way than by listening to me," 
 Jacob said eagerly. "That was what I always wanted you 
 to do; I only wanted to start you . . ." 
 
 "In a certain direction," she put in. 
 
 "Well, not necessarily," he said thoughtfully. "The 
 point is that I wanted you to examine the whole question 
 for yourself, instead of taking everything you had been 
 taught for granted. I knew that if once you began to 
 think . . ." 
 
 "I should, come over to your point of view?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You know you're just as certain you're right on one side 
 as my father is on the other," Betty said. 
 
 He saw no way out of that except by submitting that he 
 had looked at both sides and her father only at one. 
 
 "And you think if anyone looks at both sides . . ." Betty 
 began.
 
 238 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Honestly and conscientiously, without prejudice," he 
 interpolated. 
 
 "Well, without prejudice as far as possible," Betty con- 
 tinued, "you think anyone who does that is sure to come 
 over to your side?" 
 
 "Any reasonable person," he said, by way of qualifica- 
 tion. "But there are heaps of people who can't get rid 
 of prejudice and can't see things for themselves." He 
 paused a moment, and then made a frontal attack by adding : 
 "Well, you are coming round to my point of view, any- 
 way." 
 
 "I've got to, if I'm to have any peace of mind," said 
 Betty, pointing the essential he had overlooked. 
 
 He had to admit that the wish to believe was an aspect of 
 prejudice that would not be denied. 
 
 Betty returned to her original question. 
 
 "Is it only religion that makes people so narrow-minded ?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "It must influence them that way, mustn't it?" replied 
 Jacob, trying to be very fair and reasonable. "If you are 
 absolutely certain where we come from and where we'll 
 go to, and who made the rules, and what the rules are, you 
 must stick to it all. And of all the religions of the last 
 two or three thousand years, Christianity has been the most 
 clearly defined and the most ferocious. And you know the 
 more definite a religion is, the better chance it has of sur- 
 viving. The majority of people don't want to think things 
 out for themselves, they aren't capable of doing it; and so 
 they are thankful to have a set of rules to meet every 
 case." 
 
 "Isn't it a good thing for most people that they should 
 have a religion like that to help them?" Betty put in. 
 
 "Oh, very likely," Jacob replied; "the point is is it 
 true?" 
 
 "Many clever men and women have believed in it." 
 
 "Heaps and heaps of others, equally clever, haven't. But 
 that's no argument."
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 239 
 
 "I don't think argument helps much," Betty said. "It's 
 what one feels about things." 
 
 "Argument, reason, helped me," returned Jacob; "but I 
 don't want to force it on you. But, Betty, darling, you are 
 beginning to feel that I may be right, aren't you? That's 
 the important thing so far as we are concerned." 
 
 "I think my relations have been so unfair," she said. 
 "Not one of them, not even Aunt Mary, has troubled to find 
 out the truth about us." 
 
 "But that's only a particular application of what I've just 
 been saying," protested Jacob. 
 
 "Is it?" Betty said innocently. "Well, I can understand 
 the application, you see." 
 
 And by whatever road she came to understanding, she 
 was certainly less troubled than she had been. The "crises" 
 grew less frequent and less severe. A certain stubbornness 
 of character helped her. The lack of charity displayed by 
 her family aroused her opposition. She was not so per- 
 verted as they seemed to believe, and by a constant defence 
 of her own conduct, she was coming to an ever firmer 
 conviction in her own and Jacob's rectitude of motive. 
 
 The first intrusion of the outside world into their Cor- 
 nish solitudes served, happily, to confirm her confidence. 
 
 VI 
 
 Meredith's return to Forth had been repeatedly post- 
 poned. He had written two or three times to Jacob placid, 
 friendly letters, proving that he had not gone away with 
 any feeling of enmity, after that evening's criticism. His 
 book was to be published at the end of April, and he seemed 
 to think that it had a fair chance of success. 
 
 Jacob had answered in the same vein, but he had said 
 nothing of Betty's presence at Trevarrian; and, when he 
 heard one Tuesday at the end of January that Meredith 
 was coming back to Forth on the following Thursday, 
 there was one brief moment of consternation. 
 
 "Need he know that I'm here?" Betty asked; and Ja-
 
 240 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 cob, losing his presence of mind, suggested that the fiction 
 of a private marriage might be maintained. 
 
 "But he knows that you're married already," protested 
 Betty. 
 
 "She might have died," Jacob hazarded. 
 
 Betty looked down at her ring and pursed her mouth. 
 "It doesn't sound convincing," she said, and added : "Did 
 he ever meet her?" 
 
 "Lola ? Oh, Lord, no ! I met him first, long after that," 
 Jacob answered. 
 
 "Couldn't I go out when he comes?" was Betty's next 
 suggestion. 
 
 But by that time Jacob had recovered his common sense. 
 "Oh, my dear, no!" he said. "I don't know what I was 
 thinking about, to suggest that we should tell him we were 
 married. Meredith's a perfectly open-minded chap, if he 
 does write rather old-fashioned books; he won't care two- 
 pence. We must be honest about it of course we must." 
 
 Betty blushed vividly. "I'd much sooner not see him," 
 she said. 
 
 "Darling, we must meet people sometimes," Jacob pro- 
 tested; "and how could we make a better beginning than 
 this?" 
 
 "I don't see why we should ever jneet people," Betty said ; 
 and cancelled her statement immediately by adding: "Well, 
 you must go over and see him first and tell him." 
 
 "And afterwards he can come over here?" 
 
 "We'll see what he says." 
 
 "Oh, he'll be all right," Jacob confidently pronounced. 
 
 Nevertheless, he was conscious both of nervousness and 
 reluctance when he was actually sitting in Meredith's room 
 on the following Friday morning. His story bore such a 
 different aspect in those surroundings and in the presence 
 of Meredith, with nearly all the tan blanched from his 
 face, talking about London and literature and the people 
 he had seen. It appeared that he had met several writers 
 of contemporary fame, writers who had asked to be intro- 
 duced to him. He told his successes modestly enough, but
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 241 
 
 he was obviously flattered, and Jacob had a faint twinge 
 of jealousy. His own book seemed suddenly trivial and 
 worthless, himself a nonentity, and his beautiful love-story 
 no more than a common intrigue. 
 
 He hesitated for more than an hour, listening to stories 
 concerning the perquisites of literary success, before he 
 dared to open his own confidence. But the inevitable pause 
 came at last, and when he was asked, not for the first time, 
 what he had been doing and how his own book was "go- 
 ing," he screwed himself up to his recital of adventure. 
 He was so overwhelmingly anxious to display his story in 
 its true colours and proportions. 
 
 He yawned nervously and got out of his chair. "Well, 
 something tremendous has happened to me since you've 
 been away," he began. 
 
 Meredith looked his surprise, and encouraged him by 
 saying: "What a chap you are! Why have you kept it 
 dark all this time, and let me go on gassing about myself ?" 
 
 "I don't know," Jacob said. "I was very interested in 
 all those people you've met. And besides, I find it rather 
 difficult to tell you; I don't know why I should, but I do. 
 I say, do you remember Mrs. Parmenter's boarding-house 
 in Montague Place, and her partner, Miss Gale?" 
 
 "Well, rather, of course I do," replied Meredith, still 
 obviously puzzled. "I didn't often see Miss Gale, she was 
 down in the kitchen most of the time; pretty, rather shy 
 girl wasn't she?" 
 
 Jacob grew hotter still. He was glad that Meredith al- 
 ready knew Betty, that saved much tedious explanation; 
 but this description of her was so utterly inadequate and 
 banal. 
 
 "Yes," he said deliberately. "Her father's got a living 
 in Buckinghamshire, at a place called Beechcombe." He 
 felt that it was quite essential that he should lay some stress 
 upon Betty's social position; it seemed to give the whole 
 affair a value of dignity and sincerity. 
 
 "Well ?" Meredith prompted him, quite at a loss to fore- 
 see the climax.
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "She and I fell in love with one another when I was at 
 Montague Place," Jacob went on desperately. "Irrevocably, 
 you know. It's the most wonderful thing that ever hap- 
 pened to me." 
 
 "Great Scott! and you never gave me the least hint 
 before I went away," said Meredith. "What a secretive 
 person you are!" 
 
 "Well, you know I'm married," put in Jacob. 
 
 "And now I suppose you're going to get a divorce?" 
 
 "I can't. It isn't possible. She won't and I can't," Jacob 
 explained. 
 
 "What are you going to do, then?" 
 
 "She's here Miss Gale, I mean," Jacob blurted out, 
 "living with me at Trevarrian." 
 
 Meredith whistled. 
 
 "Now, don't for God's sake think that she's that sort 
 of person !" Jacob said fiercely. 
 
 Meredith looked a trifle abashed. "What sort ?" he asked. 
 
 "The sort you whistle at and look rather furtive about," 
 Jacob said, fumbling for language. "I want you to come 
 over and see us, but you must understand. She's terribly 
 sensitive. She's had it all tremendously on her conscience. 
 She only did it for my sake. I don't mean that she doesn't 
 care for me I think she does, incredible as it seems but 
 she realises all she has given up, and she . . . Oh, look 
 here, what I want you to understand is that unless you 
 can be most awfully decent to her, I don't want you to come 
 over. I shall tell her you've broken your leg, or your neck, 
 or something. I suppose, as a matter of fact, that you don't 
 'disapprove,' do you?" 
 
 "Good heavens, no!" returned Meredith. "Why should 
 I? How long has she been here?" 
 
 "Since the middle of November. You're very quiet 
 about it." 
 
 "You haven't given me much chance yet," said Meredith, 
 smiling. "Do you want me to congratulate you?" 
 
 "She must have spent all her time in the kitchen when
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 243 
 
 you were at Montague Place, I should think," was Jacob's 
 reply. 
 
 "I certainly didn't see much of her," Meredith said. 
 
 "Well, what are you going to do ?" Jacob asked. 
 
 "I'll certainly come over if you'll let me." 
 
 "Come to dinner to-night?" 
 
 "All right. Thanks. I will." 
 
 "I must get back now," Jacob concluded. "She's been 
 alone all the morning. She wouldn't see you until I'd found 
 out how you felt about it. Good Lord, old chap! I don't 
 envy you your success now." 
 
 As he walked back, he felt that he had closed on the right 
 note; that he had at least partly expressed his attitude at 
 the end. And, on reflection, he took himself to task for the 
 one twinge of jealousy he had suffered when he had 
 listened to all that talk of literary society. What could 
 he ever want with literary society while he had Betty ? And 
 what an odd fish Meredith was! He practised the art of 
 a romantic novelist, and yet he had not asked a single 
 question as to the psychology of all the marvellous things 
 that had been happening to Jacob. "He knows nothing 
 about love or life," was Jacob's dismissal of Meredith, 
 "and he isn't even willing to learn." And Meredith's novels 
 were a success! 
 
 VII 
 
 Jacob was comfortably assured of the success of his mis- 
 sion, but his report of it was not particularly convincing 
 to Betty. 
 
 "But what did he say?" she persisted, when Jacob had 
 given a further exposition of his own part in the conver- 
 sation. 
 
 "Well, he didn't say much. He took it all so much for 
 granted," Jacob explained, trying vainly to remember any 
 categorical expression of Meredith's opinion. "He didn't 
 hold forth, you know; but I asked him once if he disap- 
 proved in any way, and he said he didn't quite definitely.
 
 244 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 On reflection, that appeared the only plain statement that 
 Meredith had made. 
 
 Betty looked uneasy. 
 
 "Really it's all right, darling," Jacob assured her. "I've 
 reported it very badly, but I'm absolutely sure that you 
 needn't mind meeting him." 
 
 "It's all very well for you," was her retort. 
 
 "Well, I don't know what more you expected him to 
 say," said Jacob. "What more could he say?" 
 
 "Didn't he seem surprised?" she asked. 
 
 "A little, at first," Jacob said. "Not at the fact, I take 
 it, but at its being you and me." 
 
 "He wouldn't have expected us to do anything of that 
 sort, you mean?" 
 
 "Oh, now you're going to twist it all round," Jacob ex- 
 postulated. "He would probably have been far more sur- 
 prised if I had told him that we were married. But, you 
 see, he was naturally astonished to hear the news in a 
 general way, if only because I'd never said a word to him 
 about it before." 
 
 "Oh, I dare say you're right," Betty conceded, and then 
 added : "But I wish he wasn't coming, all the same. Jimmy 
 dear, must we see people? I would so much sooner not." 
 
 "Stay here always?" he suggested, frowning. 
 
 "I thought you liked this place so much." 
 
 "So I do; but . . ." 
 
 "You're getting a little tired of it and of me?" 
 
 "Oh", my dear!" he said happily, and his reply to that 
 second point was so assuringly, almost complacently, ready, 
 that the question of meeting people or leaving Trevarrian 
 was temporarily abandoned. He was thrilled by the sug- 
 gestion that his devotion had become necessary to her. 
 This response had been the ideal he had always cherished, 
 and now that he found it for the first time, he recognised 
 that it filled his need. 
 
 "We'll stay here for ever, if you like," was his final assur- 
 ance. "I don't want to meet anyone else while I have 
 you." At that moment he spoke with perfect conviction.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 245 
 
 But Meredith opened out that topic again when he came, 
 and left them both in doubt as to the ultimate wisdom of 
 a lifelong sojourn in Cornwall. 
 
 His manner was irreproachable, and he gravely addressed 
 Betty as "Mrs. Stahl," an assumption that Jacob after- 
 wards explained to be perfectly justified. Nevertheless, she 
 was very shy and silent during dinner, which was cere- 
 monially "late" for the occasion. Afterwards, she was 
 stirred to sound a trumpet that Jacob steadfastly refused to 
 blow for himself. 
 
 Indeed, he had an exaggerated fit of modesty that even- 
 ing, and persistently talked about Meredith's success as a 
 novelist without any reference to his own ambitions. 
 
 Betty listened quietly at first, but when Meredith asked 
 Jacob how his own book was getting on, and he instantly 
 dismissed the subject, she returned to it by saying: 
 
 "It's getting on splendidly; I think it's very good." 
 
 "You're prejudiced," Jacob put in; but Meredith said: 
 
 "Oh, you've read it, of course. I thought it was very 
 good too." 
 
 "I'm so anxious for him to hurry up and finish it," said 
 Betty. 
 
 "Yes, why don't you?" Meredith asked. 
 
 Jacob smiled. "I've got so much reviewing to do," he 
 said. "It takes me a lot of time, and it's all we have to 
 live on. And when the book's done, it won't sell enough 
 to pay the cost of the typing." 
 
 "My first book didn't," Meredith admitted. 
 
 "Please don't discourage him about it," Betty said quickly. 
 "He's always saying that no publisher will take it when 
 it is written." 
 
 "Oh, he'll get it taken easily enough," Meredith said. 
 "There'll be no difficulty about that." 
 
 "But it won't sell afterwards ?" Jacob suggested. 
 
 "Impossible to tell," Meredith replied. "No one ever 
 knows." 
 
 "I've often heard that about plays," Jacob said, "but I 
 didn r t know that it applied to novels."
 
 246 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Absolutely," Meredith assured him. "You can't account 
 for the popularity of one novel and the utter failure of the 
 next, in most cases. We were talking about that when I 
 was up in town." 
 
 Betty and Jacob encouraged him to give them more 
 "shop." To them it was all news and intensely interest- 
 ing. They knew nothing of literary traffic by experience 
 Jacob had never entered that circle of writers and critics 
 in which the business *of literature is discussed with just 
 as little respect as the business of any other profession. 
 He had picked up a few cliches from Meredith, and the 
 reviewing he had done during the past twelve months had 
 stimulated him to analyse the material and methods of his 
 trade. But the achievement of being an accepted novelist 
 he still conceived romantically. He thought of that glory 
 in the terms of his own experience. From the debased 
 level of an architect's assistant or of a writer of advertise- 
 ments, the altitude of the novelist had seemed to him hope- 
 lessly unattainable. In earlier days, when he had dreamed 
 of making a living by writing, he had known that he only 
 dreamed. And many times in the last year, he had been 
 deliciously startled by the reflection that he was, indeed, a 
 writer now himself; secretly he cherished the thought of 
 meeting one of his old office acquaintances and modestly 
 making the boast of his present occupation. 
 
 "It must be awfully interesting to meet all these people," 
 Jacob said, commenting on a quotation from the obiter dicta 
 of a well-known writer. 
 
 Meredith agreed ; the fact of his recent recognition by a 
 larger public was still a source of considerable pleasure to 
 him with his last novel, the third he had published, he had 
 attained a circulation of nearly three thousand copies; be- 
 fore that, he had achieved no more than the dry reward of 
 a succes d'estime. 
 
 "It is interesting," he said, and then: "I'm thinking of 
 taking rooms in town. I shall go up about the end of March 
 and stay there until the middle of July. Next autumn I
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 247 
 
 shall probably give up my cottage at Forth altogether." 
 
 "Sick of solitude?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "No, it isn't that," Meredith said ; "but I think it's rather 
 a mistake for me to be away from London so much just 
 for the next year or two. It isn't that I want to be log- 
 rolled; I haven't the right sort of influence for that, and I 
 don't believe in it either; but I'm sure that it helps me, to 
 meet people and so on." 
 
 "Oh, yes, I dare say it does," Jacob agreed. He was 
 suddenly conscious of his own isolation. He pictured an 
 intellectual, competent society, willing now to receive Mere- 
 dith into the inner circle of the cognoscenti. He had 
 achieved something by native talent and hard work; he 
 was on the high road to success. His next book would 
 probably sell five thousand copies, and he would be dis- 
 cussed as one of the young writers who counted. And, 
 by contrast, Jacob's own book again appeared to him as 
 little more than an impertinence. He wanted to tear it 
 up and begin again ; to write another novel on an improved 
 model. He blushed at the thought of ever submitting John 
 Tristram's story to a publisher ; it was so formless, so 
 unlike the accepted convention. He looked at Betty and 
 saw that she too looked a little depressed. 
 
 But her next speech showed that her doubt was due to 
 a cause other than his own. 
 
 "I think we ought to go back to London too," she said. 
 "We were talking about it to-day." 
 
 Meredith expressed some polite agreement, but Jacob 
 knew that it was to him her speech was addressed. He 
 felt slightly embarrassed. He was willing now to stay on 
 at Trevarrian both for her sake and his own, but he could 
 not, he thought, discuss the essential question before a third 
 person. 
 
 Betty seemed to have no such hesitation. "I think it 
 would be better for both of us," she went on. "He ought 
 to know more people people who write too, I mean. He 
 hasn't enough confidence in himself. I'm certain his book 
 js going to be a success, but he gets so down about it"
 
 248 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "You haven't said why it would be better for you," Jacob 
 ventured. Her praise of his work made him uncomfort- 
 able in that company. It was altogether delightful that she 
 should rate him so highly, but the very fact that she was 
 biassed in his favour, however thrilling in itself, vitiated 
 her criticism of him as a novelist. 
 
 "You can't imagine that I could want ever to see my 
 friends again now, I suppose?" she said lightly, and turned 
 to him with a smile. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I can," said Jacob, wondering what friends, 
 and not understanding the boast that her next sentence 
 elaborated. 
 
 "Freda, for instance," she said, "and my married sister." 
 She hesitated a moment, and then, as if to give value to 
 her distinction and all that it implied, she added: "The 
 other one, I suppose, would cut me if she met me." 
 
 Jacob accepted his cue. "She's getting rather bored with 
 me," he said, turning to Meredith. 
 
 "Well, of course," Betty replied quickly. "But I'm sure 
 it would be better for you too." 
 
 "Why not come up when I do, before Easter?" asked 
 Meredith. "Where should you go ? Back to the boarding- 
 house, or into rooms?" 
 
 "It would have to be rooms, I think," Betty said. "There 
 would be no place for him to work in a boarding-house." 
 
 "Oh, well, there's plenty of time to discuss that," said 
 Jacob. He wanted to change the conversation. It was all 
 a pretence, he thought, and it was better not to overdo it. 
 They had vaunted that the irregularity of their menage 
 did not preclude a return to London and society, even to 
 such creditable society as that of Betty's married sister; 
 over-emphasis would destroy the effect. 
 
 Meredith, however, appeared quite innocent of their in- 
 tention to impress him. He may have been reckoning the 
 success of his next novel.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 249 
 
 VIII 
 
 "Do you like him?" Jacob asked, when Meredith had 
 gone. "Yes," Betty said briefly, as if she had abruptly 
 clipped some qualification, and added: "Is he really very 
 clever ?" 
 
 "I think so," Jacob replied, moved rather by an instinct 
 to depreciate himself and his own work than by any peculiar 
 admiration of his friend's capacity. "He writes awfully 
 well," he explained ; "fine English, you know, and descrip- 
 tions the sort of thing I could never do." 
 
 "You can do something better than that," Betty said. 
 
 He smiled his deprecation of her partiality. 
 
 "You can," she insisted. "You can write about real 
 people." 
 
 "How do you know that Meredith can't do that too ?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "He isn't interested enough in them." 
 
 "You've seen him once, practically," urged Jacob. 
 
 "Quite enough. Aren't I right ?" she persisted. 
 
 "Wonderfully, I think you are," he admitted. 
 
 "I know," Betty said, with an air of wisdom. 
 
 "By intuition?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "Perhaps not altogether. I was watching him to-night, 
 and he wasn't interested in you and me, not a bit. He never 
 asked any questions." 
 
 "Perhaps he thought that it was more tactful not to." 
 
 "I dare say he's very tactful," Betty said, in a tone that 
 expressed no superlative admiration of the quality in this 
 relation. 
 
 "Well, don't you think that was nice of him?" Jacob 
 asked. 
 
 She pursed her mouth. "It wasn't the sort of tact that 
 made me feel at home with him," she said. "I should have 
 felt far more comfortable and liked him better if he had 
 taken a friendly interest in us, instead of putting on a
 
 250 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 polite manner and pretending to take everything so much 
 for granted." 
 
 "I suppose he did his best," commented Jacob. 
 
 'Tm not running him down," returned Betty. "Only I 
 don't think he's really as clever as you seem to think he is." 
 
 "I believe you know more about him after talking to him 
 once than I do after three years," admitted Jacob. "But, 
 you know, funnily enough, I was thinking just the same 
 thing about him this morning about his not being interested 
 in us. I'm sure we should have been interested if it had 
 been anyone else before we made the great experiment 
 ourselves, I mean." 
 
 "Of course we should," agreed Betty. 
 
 For a few moments Jacob reflected happily on the fact 
 that he had always been interested in people. It had not 
 occurred to him before that this fact was in some sense his 
 credential as a novelist. The depression that he had suf- 
 fered earlier in the evening had been charmed away by 
 Betty's belief in him. He owed everything to her, he re- 
 flected, and then wondered if her expressed desire to return 
 to London had been something more than a vaunt of inde- 
 pendence, if she had meant to sacrifice herself and her own 
 wishes still further for his sake. 
 
 "I say, you didn't mean that about going back to town, 
 dear?" he said. 
 
 She looked quickly up at him, a look partly defensive, 
 partly scrutinising. "You want to go, don't you?" she 
 asked. 
 
 He hesitated, trying to analyse his own desires ; he wanted 
 to be perfectly truthful, and yet he wanted still more to do 
 what was best for Betty. "I don't know that I do," he said. 
 "I'm quite happy here." 
 
 She did not appreciate the honesty of his statement, and, 
 reading into it something of that defensive attitude which 
 was characteristic of her own habit : "You needn't mind 
 telling me if you do want to go back," she said. 
 
 Jacob was still trying to regard the problem with a lofty 
 detachment. "Of course not," he said. "I shouldn't mind
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 251 
 
 telling you anything. The point is, really, do you want to 
 go?" 
 
 "I should like to see Freda again," was all Betty found 
 to say. 
 
 "Well, why not ask her down here for a week?" 
 
 "She couldn't come. She has to look after the boarding- 
 house." 
 
 "Couldn't old Parmenter manage by herself for once?" 
 
 "She isn't well enough." 
 
 "Betty, do you want to go back to town?" Jacob asked. 
 
 "I don't know. Yes. Sometimes I think I do," she said. 
 
 They were both eager to hide their own wishes, fearing 
 lest they should not fully accord with the wishes of the 
 other. Each of them was ready to make a sacrifice, if 
 necessary, and they fenced in order to expose the other's 
 secret desire. 
 
 "I thought you didn't want to meet people yet." 
 
 "I'm getting over that. I didn't mind meeting Mr. Mere- 
 dith. I thought I should, but I didn't." 
 
 "I don't believe you want to go; you think it would be 
 good for me." 
 
 "I'm sure it would." 
 
 "I'm not; and, anyway, that's not the point. You may 
 be certain it wouldn't be good for me if you were miserable 
 up there." 
 
 "I shouldn't be." 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "Why should I be miserable?" 
 
 "There's no reason on earth why you should, but . . ." 
 
 "I've got over that." 
 
 "I think you're getting over it," Jacob admitted. "I 
 wonder if you would be happier in town with more things 
 to distract you?" 
 
 In her heart she dreaded the return still, but she thought 
 now that she had read his desire. "I expect I should be 
 happier in some ways," she said, but could find no other illus- 
 tration of the "ways" than a repetition of her former wish 
 to see Freda.
 
 252 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob signified his approval of that friendship. "Freda 
 will be so sensible about the whole affair," he said. 
 
 But Betty shrank a little from that statement of her diffi- 
 culties. She had no wish to be comforted by good sense. 
 "Oh yes!" she said carelessly, "Freda will be all on your 
 side." 
 
 Jacob noticed the difference in her tone, but made no com- 
 ment on it. By way of making everything quite clear, he 
 said: 
 
 "You do understand, don't you, that I don't care a hang 
 about going back ; in fact, for many reasons I should prefer 
 to stay down here. I do want to do what's best for you, 
 dear. You believe that, don't you ?" 
 
 "Well, I want to go back, so that's settled," she replied 
 bravely. 
 
 Jacob smiled. "Of course, we needn't settle it to-night," 
 he said. He was still doubtful as to what she really wanted 
 to do. 
 
 IX 
 
 Indeed, it seemed to Jacob that the project ultimately took 
 shape of itself, that it was forced upon them almost without 
 their knowledge. Certainly they never weighed the reasons 
 for and against the plan, or calculated any balance of 
 benefit. The thing gradually settled first into a probability, 
 and then into a certainty. They discussed the means, the 
 questions of where and how they were going to live, long 
 before they had decided that the end was inevitable. But 
 when Meredith asked Jacob one day if he had made up his 
 mind to return to town, he replied that he had as a matter 
 of course, and never stopped to wonder just when and how 
 he had come to regard the arrangement as settled. 
 
 By the end of February they were taking steps to find 
 rooms in Bloomsbury, a task in which Freda had promised 
 to collaborate. Betty wanted to be independent of land- 
 ladies and attendance. "Two furnished rooms and a land- 
 ing or something, with a gas-stove that I could cook on," 
 were the requirements that she had indicated to Freda, with
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 253 
 
 the stipulation that the rent must not be more than eighteen 
 shillings a week. 
 
 Jacob was divided between his joy in a Cornish spring 
 and the increasing longing he felt for some undefined excite- 
 ment that he anticipated in the return to London. He had 
 been away from it now for seven months, and although he 
 could find no rational explanation for his desire, he was con- 
 scious that London was calling to him in some way. Never- 
 theless, he was unaware of the strength of his longing until 
 the possibility of fulfilling it was nearly snatched away from 
 him by the last "crisis" that was ever seriously to raise his 
 doubts of Betty's happiness. 
 
 That crisis was brought about by Freda's report of a pos- 
 sible "upper-part" for them in a house in Great Ormond 
 Street. Jacob saw the finger of fate in that choice. He had 
 had rooms in Great Ormond Street before his first marriage, 
 and the very name gave him a sense of security. 
 
 "I don't see why that shouldn't do," he said eagerly, when 
 Betty had read the letter that contained Freda's report. 
 
 "We can't afford twenty-two shillings a week," Betty 
 replied, with no echo of enthusiasm in her voice. 
 
 "I don't believe we shall get anything at all decent for 
 less," urged Jacob ; "and it's only four shillings more than 
 we thought." 
 
 "Do you like Great Ormond Street?" asked Betty, leav- 
 ing him in no doubt as to her own feelings towards it. 
 
 "Yes, I do," he said. "It's quiet, for one thing. You 
 know I lived there for years when I was in an office." 
 
 "Yes, I think you told me," Betty said. 
 
 "Don't you like it?" he asked. 
 
 "Not much," she said. 
 
 Jacob looked perplexed. "It's all very well," he explained, 
 after a short hesitation, "but you say the rent's too much, 
 and you don't like the street; but if you want to live in 
 Woburn Place, or somewhere like that, we should have to 
 pay more than double that price." 
 
 "I know I'm very silly," Betty said quietly, and went 
 quickly out of the room.
 
 254. THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob stared at the closed door in blank surprise. His 
 first wife had constantly found fault with him, and had 
 bred in him the habit of examining his own past conduct 
 and speech in order to discover the secret offence com- 
 monly some trivial thing which had provoked the outburst. 
 He reverted to that habit now, wondering what he had done 
 or said to offend Betty. He could not bear to feel that 
 there should be any misunderstanding between them ; he was 
 willing to give up anything rather than risk that, but he was 
 quite unable to realise how he had upset her. Surely she 
 did not think that he would insist on their going to Great 
 Ormond Street if for some reason, of which he was at 
 present ignorant, she had any objection against going there. 
 
 He anxiously weighed the problem for a few minutes, and 
 then got up and followed Betty into the kitchen. 
 
 She was standing at the table, peeling potatoes. She 
 looked up at him for an instant when he came in, but gave 
 him no encouragement to speak. 
 
 "Betty, we won't go to Great Ormond Street if you don't 
 want to," he said, in a note of expostulation that was both 
 plaintive and apologetic. 
 
 "I don't mind," said Betty, very intent on her potatoes. 
 
 "But / do," he said. "I mind very much. I would a 
 thousand times sooner stay here than go to any place you 
 didn't like." 
 
 Betty dropped the last potato into the saucepan and gave 
 it a little shake. "We can't stay on here indefinitely," she 
 said. 
 
 "We can," he returned. "Not in this house, perhaps 
 they want too much for it in the summer but there's that 
 little cottage at Tregarrian we could take that." 
 
 He was perfectly conscious that he was not making a 
 serious suggestion ; he was merely leading up to the original 
 proposal by what he deemed a harmless introduction. He 
 was prepared for her instant dismissal of the Tregarrian 
 cottage, and was startled when she said: 
 
 "Do you think you would like that?" 
 
 She was still staring into the saucepan, giving the water
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 255 
 
 in it a gentle swirl, and apparently absorbed in watching the 
 effect of that operation. And suddenly the alternative of 
 staying on indefinitely in Cornwall was presented to Jacob as 
 a serious possibility. Two months before he would have 
 welcomed the idea; but now, as the prospect of leaving 
 Cornwall faded, London seemed not only a desirable, but 
 even the one endurable place for them to live in. He visual- 
 ised its streets and squares and parks, shining with the 
 movement of human life ; he saw them all lit with the ro- 
 mance and mystery that had beautified them when he had 
 first adventured into that unknown magical city. The very 
 name of it seemed calling to him. To leave London for 
 ever London, the centre of the world was to acknowledge 
 defeat. 
 
 "Do you think you would like that?" Betty had said. 
 
 "I shall like whatever you like," he replied magnificently. 
 
 "You weren't so anxious to go back a month ago," she 
 said. 
 
 "I haven't said I'm anxious now," he returned. 
 
 "But you are," she persisted. 
 
 "I'm not," he said carelessly. 
 
 She had been scrutinising his face as she spoke, but she 
 returned again now to rocking her potatoes. 
 
 "I don't mind Great Ormond Street," she said in a low 
 voice. 
 
 "What have you got against it?" he asked, trying to be 
 very reasonable. 
 
 "Nothing," she said. 
 
 "But you must have had something; you distinctly said 
 you didn't like it." 
 
 "Did I? I didn't mean those rooms particularly." 
 
 "Betty, don't you want to go back at all?" 
 
 "I don't know." 
 
 "I wish you'd leave your old potatoes alone and talk to 
 me," he said. "You must see that I'm ready to do anything 
 you want to do, if you'll only tell me what you do want." 
 
 "They've got to be boiled," returned Betty, ignoring his 
 plea for a plain statement of her wishes.
 
 256 THE 'INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob moved aside for her to come to the range, but when 
 she had put down the saucepan, he held out his arms to her. 
 "Do tell me what you want to do, darling," he pleaded. 
 
 "I want to do what's best for you," she said ; but she did 
 not meet his proffered embrace. 
 
 "You can only do that by doing what will make you most 
 happy," was his reply. 
 
 "You mfght not think so in six months' time if we stayed 
 down here," Betty said. 
 
 "Oh, is that it ?" he said, smiling, and went on : "But you 
 want to stay here, then. You only go back to town to please 
 me. Is it because you like this place, or is it because you're 
 afraid to meet people?" 
 
 "I should like to go back if it weren't for that," she ad- 
 mitted at last. 
 
 "Are you still worrying?" he asked. 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 "Meaning 'yes,' " Jacob said. 
 
 "Not worrying," was her evasion. 
 
 Jacob sat down on the edge of the kitchen table. The 
 objection to leaving Cornwall was presented now in another 
 aspect; the whole question needed reconsideration. 
 
 "You know, dear, it's no use quibbling about this," he 
 said, after a short pause. "If you really want to stay here, 
 I'll stay with joy. But if you want in your heart to go back 
 to town, and simply funk it because you're afraid of meeting 
 someone you know, well, I think we ought to go back. 
 You'll have to get over that sooner or later, won't you ?" 
 
 "I do try not to be silly, but I can't help it sometimes," 
 was Betty's rather pathetic admission. 
 
 "If you admit that it's silly . . ." he began. 
 
 "There's no doubt that you want to go, anyway," she 
 interrupted him. 
 
 "Must we put it on those grounds ?" he asked ; and Betty, 
 while she wondered how he could be so blind, made no effort 
 to enlighten him. 
 
 "We'll take the Great Ormond Street rooms," she said 
 definitely.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 257 
 
 "Not if you don't want to," he persisted as a final justifi- 
 cation. 
 
 "I shall be all right when I'm there," she assured him. 
 And he honestly believed that it would be better for her to 
 give way on that point. 
 
 But to Betty the thought of London was curiously per- 
 turbing. It was filled for her with all the associations of 
 another life that she had left behind her when she came to 
 Cornwall. Her dread was not only of meeting some chance 
 acquaintance in the street, but also of herself. She felt that 
 she would have to fight her trouble all over again in those 
 familiar surroundings. Here, she had never been other than 
 she was now; there, she would be continually confronted 
 with the difference, not fully justified to herself as yet, in 
 her mode of thought and of life. The London she saw in 
 imagination sat in judgment upon her. 
 
 "If you're miserable there, we'll come back at once," 
 Jacob said. 
 
 "Very well," she agreed, and then added suddenly: 
 "Goodness, what a fool I am!" 
 
 Jacob looked startled. "Do you mean . . ." he began. 
 
 "I wish you wouldn't interrupt me when I'm cooking," 
 Betty said sharply. "I've forgotten to put any salt in the 
 potatoes, that's all. And how much work have you done 
 this morning, I'd like to know?" 
 
 "Oh, I'm getting on," said Jacob, smiling. 
 
 Jacob went down alone to Livelow in the evening of his 
 last day in Cornwall. He had wanted Betty to come with 
 him, but she was still so busy helping Millie to clean up the 
 house that at last she had besought him to go without her. 
 
 "I can't see why you should take all this trouble about 
 the house," he said petulantly. "I don't suppose it was so 
 marvellously clean when I came into it." 
 
 "I must leave it decent," Betty had replied, with a slight
 
 258 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 frown and a set of the lips, signifying, as he had now come 
 to know, that her determination was unshakable. 
 
 He had left her putting clean newspapers on all the larder 
 shelves. 
 
 So he went alone, harbouring a faint anxiety lest she 
 should be dreading the next day's journey, and be trying 
 to smother her depression in housework. But when he came 
 to Livelow he lost all thought of doubt or fear. 
 
 The tide was high, and although the sea never left the 
 face of the cliff at that point, deep water was needed to 
 carry those great rollers unbroken to the shore, to bear 
 them up as they were borne now, so great and so far apart 
 that the receding hollow of the stupendous trough seemed 
 as if it must finally fail and expose the hidden floor of rock. 
 
 Jacob caught a glimpse of it all as he made his way down 
 the valley, and hurried eagerly, loth to lose one moment's 
 contemplation of that glorious invading. And when he came 
 to the vantage of that rock which gave him such full and 
 near sight of the splendid turmoil, while lifting him just 
 beyond range of those fierce jets of exploding spray, he held 
 his breath for an instant, as if he would concentrate every 
 ability of his body on the reception of this vast, wonderful 
 impression. . . . 
 
 For a time he was stunned by the enormous force and 
 depth of that processional, inrushing assault upon the rock 
 face. He sat rigidly attentive, murmuring now and again a 
 feeble expletive of astonishment when some still greater 
 wave rolled towering to overleap the retreating swell of 
 its predecessors, and break with enormous thunder that 
 shook the stubborn basalt of the awful cliff. 
 
 But presently his thought began to emerge in an effort- 
 less, unconscious process thought that seemed to have a 
 greater intensity and reality than life itself. 
 
 He saw himself as he had sat on that same rock four 
 years before, going back then, as now, to take up with an 
 eager heart the burden of living. And he condescended 
 with an effect of rapture to the contemplation of the change 
 in his circumstance that those four years had wrought.
 
 THE COLLABORATORS 259 
 
 Little enough it might seem to one who judged him un- 
 emotionally; but to himself the change was immense be- 
 yond computation. His potentiality had been changed. Al- 
 ways he had had the desire to express himself by writing 
 the material had been there in his mind, even on occasion 
 the words of its translation into language, but he had been 
 too weak to persevere. The task was so long, the result so 
 unsure. Sometimes he had almost pleased himself, but far 
 more often he had judged his expression a failure, so inade- 
 quate was the rendering, so fine had seemed the conception 
 in the warmly coloured light of his imagination. 
 
 Now new possibilities were open before him. He had 
 done little, but he had reached out a hand to grasp some 
 accomplishment, however slight. For more than a month 
 his imagination had been excited by the thought of entering 
 the literary life of London. It had presented itself to him 
 romantically as an intriguing, delightful thing. Meredith's 
 stories had given him material, and Jacob had pictured 
 himself as being received into that circle which, because it 
 was altogether strange to him, was ideally conceived. He 
 looked forward with trembling excitement to the romance 
 that must change to realism as he entered it. And the 
 thought of it had stirred in him a great desire for London, 
 and stirred him now to create in his mind a glorious future. 
 
 For it was no longer an impossible thing that he dreamed. 
 Alone, urged by a desire that stimulated his mind and left 
 him physically inert, he was incapable of achievement. But 
 the coming of Betty had changed all that. She believed 
 in him ; she gave him courage and strength and clearness. 
 She was the immediate object of all his ambitions. It was 
 for her now that he wrote every word of his novel ; and in 
 interesting her, in making his daily effort to please her and 
 win her admiration, he was creating little by little the thing 
 that would, he hoped, presently be the means of his old 
 ambition. 
 
 Yet his love for her was not wholly selfish. She had be- 
 come necessary to him ; he could not picture a future for 
 himself in which she had no part, and his thought of that
 
 260 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 future was full of his own glorious attainment. But he 
 would have given up his ambitions without hesitation, if 
 the choice of renunciation had lain between them and her. 
 Although he might wish splendidly to succeed, he had no 
 wish to succeed alone. . . . 
 
 The sun was setting, and the roaring assault of the sea 
 was changing its note as the tide receded the big rollers 
 were breaking before they reached the cliff, and the im- 
 mense impact had given place to a seething tumult of heav- 
 ing foam. 
 
 XI 
 
 Jacob rose, suddenly conscious that he was chilled and 
 stiff, and turned his back on the unending conflict of the 
 waters. And then he saw Betty coming down the valley to 
 join him, the last glow of sunset on her face. 
 
 As she came nearer he could see that she was anxiously 
 looking for him, and he began to climb down from his eyrie 
 and to shout her name against the shouting of the immense 
 sea. 
 
 "I was afraid," she said, as she came up to him. "I 
 didn't think you would be so long. I thought you might 
 have fallen over the cliff." 
 
 "The sea has been so magnificent," he explained; but in 
 his heart he thought that her care for him was a still more 
 wonderful thing.
 
 BOOK V 
 ACHIEVEMENT
 
 XIII 
 
 VARIOUS ENCOUNTERS 
 
 THE three rooms in Great Ormond Street were en suite, 
 and the farthest of them could only be entered from 
 the bedroom. This ultimate apartment was evidently a 
 comparatively recent addition to an old house ; it was two 
 steps down from the level of the rest of the floor, and 
 the door into it was so squeezed into the corner that there 
 had been no space for the architrave against the right-hand 
 wall of the bedroom and the opposite wall in the smaller 
 room, which was instantly called the "kitchen" by Betty. 
 And it did, indeed, contain a small gas-stove, and a sink 
 with a cold-water tap under the window. 
 
 Jacob thought it would do very well. He had been inter- 
 ested in the passage hall and staircase from the moment of 
 his entrance the former panelled in some wood that could 
 not be distinguished under its covering of dull brown paint, 
 and the latter a specimen worthy of being included in the 
 Council's Survey of London not even contemplated at that 
 date a staircase with solid square newels that ran up from 
 floor to floor, with short, thickset little balusters, and broad, 
 heavy handrails and strings. 
 
 "This house must have been built in the reign of James 
 II. at latest," Jacob announced with enthusiasm; and when 
 he looked out of one of the two tall windows in their sitting- 
 room, and found that he could see the doorway of the 
 Working Men's Club on the opposite side of the street, he 
 had another moment of jubilation. 
 
 "I lived here all those years," he explained to Betty, "and 
 never knew that place had any particular associations. I
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 was on the other side then, lower down; you can't see the 
 house from here. That club, you know, was started by the 
 Christian Socialists Charles Kingsley and Maurice, and all 
 that lot. I was frightfully ignorant about everything in 
 those days," he added reflectively. 
 
 Betty did not appear to be greatly interested in their asso- 
 ciations with James II. and Charles Kingsley. She was 
 looking at the furniture, examining the inevitable lace cur- 
 tains, the antimacassars, the imitation saddle-bag suite, the 
 meaningless ornaments that crowded the mantelpiece, the 
 marble top of the sideboard, and even the twisty-legged 
 little chess-table that hid the warped and split deficiencies 
 of its inlaid squares under crimson woolly mats. 
 
 "She seems clean," she remarked at last, in the middle of 
 a brief exposition of the Christian-Socialist movement. 
 
 Jacob stopped abruptly, flushed a little, and then laughed. 
 
 "You're like a cat in a strange house," he said. "What 
 does it matter?" 
 
 Betty gave a little shiver. "I couldn't live in dirty 
 rooms," she said. 
 
 "Oh no, of course not," returned Jacob mechanically, and 
 went on more briskly: "I think it's rather jolly, though, 
 here, don't you ? I like it." 
 
 "Yes oh yes so do I," Betty said, with determination. 
 "Freda would have been sure to see that everything was 
 clean. She's coming round after dinner." 
 
 "I know," assented Jacob. The first glow of his excite- 
 ment had been quenched, but he was ready to forsake the 
 view of the street to help Betty to unpack, and to enter into 
 a consideration of how the rooms might be improved. 
 
 "I suppose she won't mind taking away some of those 
 ornaments and pictures," he said hesitatingly, in response 
 to a suggestion of Betty's. 
 
 "Can't help it if she does," replied Betty shortly. 
 
 "We shan't be dependent on her for anything," he re- 
 flected, and added : "I suppose men are dreadful cowards 
 in things like that." 
 
 "You're so helpless," was Betty's comment.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 265 
 
 The "she" to whom they referred as a matter of course 
 known more definitely as Mrs. Coulson was a dark woman 
 of fifty or so, who wore spectacles, and was chiefly remark- 
 able for a dark brown mole, the size of a florin, on her left 
 cheek. 
 
 Betty had faced her in the first instance with a slight 
 tremor of misgiving that she had not confessed to Jacob. 
 But Mrs. Coulson, after a brief professional scrutiny, had 
 evidenced a complete lack of any curiosity, even of interest. 
 She had shown them the rooms, and answered Betty's ques- 
 tions with mechanical rapidity, and the only irrelevant re- 
 mark that she had offered was made at the last moment, 
 when she had paused, looked at Betty, and said with some- 
 thing of defiance: "I've got a small dressmaking business 
 downstairs, if you want anything done." 
 
 "Rather a queer stick," had been Jacob's summary of 
 Mrs. Coulson; but he found her slightly intimidating, and 
 was anxious to postpone the delicate refusal of her orna- 
 ments and pictures until next morning. 
 
 Betty, now that she was satisfied and in some mysteri- 
 ous way she had satisfied herself that her respectability 
 was accepted without the least shadow of suspicion, suf- 
 fered no such qualms with regard to the removal of the 
 offending objects of decoration. 
 
 "We may as well get it done at once," she said, and pro- 
 ceeded, despite the feeble protests of Jacob, to pile a very 
 liberal collection of ornaments and pictures on the sitting- 
 room table. 
 
 "She won't like those bally birds being taken down, I 
 know they take up so much room," was Jacob's final ob- 
 jection, when Betty, by way of crowning her work, removed 
 five humming-birds, moulting under a large glass bell, from 
 the mantelpiece. 
 
 "It's the worst of the lot," replied Betty. 
 
 "Oh, I know it is," agreed Jacob but he looked very 
 uneasy when she rang the bell. 
 
 There was an interval before Mrs. Coulson appeared and 
 she brought with her a small can of milk. She paused at
 
 266 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 the door, looked at the table, and then set the can down 
 on the marble slab of the denuded sideboard. 
 
 "Oh, Mrs. Coulson, I wonder if you would mind . . ." 
 Betty began, but the landlady, still apparently somewhat 
 pressed for time, cut her short. 
 
 "I'll send my niece up with a tray," she said decisively, 
 and then, as if she felt that some comment was needed, she 
 added : "Some likes 'em, and some don't ; I must find a 
 place for 'em somewhere, I suppose." She did not wait to 
 hear Jacob's polite and somewhat effusive expression of 
 gratitude. 
 
 When she had gone, he repeated his opinion that she was 
 a queer stick. 
 
 "I think she seems a nice woman," Betty said. 
 
 "And you are going to like it here, aren't you?" he said, 
 with a sudden fervour. 
 
 "It certainly looks a little better now those awful things 
 have gone," she replied. 
 
 "But it isn't so bad, is it?" he persisted. "You will be 
 happy here." 
 
 "If you are," she said. 
 
 "I can be happy anywhere with you," he affirmed earn- 
 estly, and added : "We'll go back to Cornwall, if you 
 like." 
 
 Betty smiled and went over to him. "You're quite, quite 
 certain, aren't you, that you're not getting tired of me?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Oh, my dear!" was Jacob's contented response and a 
 minute later he laughed happily at the thought of what his 
 life would have been without her. 
 
 II 
 
 He thought Freda's manner towards himself a little 
 formal, even chilling, when she came to see them that eve- 
 ning. 
 
 He remembered her as a very young woman who had 
 momentarily attracted him, and might have attracted him
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 267 
 
 still more definitely, had he not been living under Mr. Bar- 
 ker's influence, and striving towards some remote ideal of 
 selflessness that, in those surroundings, had appeared the 
 perfect way of life. 
 
 He wanted now to discuss that experience with her. She 
 had had strength to flout Barker's teaching, if she had for a 
 time felt the strange influence of his personality she with 
 her defiant love-affair that had gradually given place to 
 another quite as desperate, and, from Barker's point of 
 view, quite as reprehensible. And Jacob, looking back and 
 finding an atmosphere of romance and beauty in that sojourn 
 in Camden Town, was eager to revive his associations with 
 the place. He had made up his mind about the central 
 figure of that episode in his life, and he anticipated pleasure 
 in stating his opinions and in comparing them with those 
 of one who had certainly seen more clearly than himself 
 at the time. He and she had something in common, he 
 thought, and there had been one morning in Camden Town 
 when they had begun to understand one another. If it had 
 not been for the intrusion of Philip Laurence, that under- 
 standing might have increased. 
 
 But Freda seemed to take ^o interest in that fascinating 
 epic of Cecil Barker. It was some time before Jacob could 
 decently introduce it, and when he found an opening at 
 last, she eluded him with all the ease of a woman who can 
 instantly divert the flow of her conversation into any channel 
 she pleases. Jacob, directly confronted 'with a question 
 he did not wish to discuss, would have been clumsy and 
 embarrassed. Freda slid away from his inquiry as to 
 whether she remembered "all that business in Acacia Ave- 
 nue" with an ease that left him uncertain if her evasion 
 were intentional. Not until he had deliberately broached 
 the subject for the third time did he realise that she was 
 equally deliberately avoiding it. 
 
 He was disappointed in her. He had not anticipated any 
 unusual pleasure from her visit, but he had felt that she 
 was an ally, that she would take up her old relationship 
 with him, and help him to strengthen Betty in her young
 
 268 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 attitude towards the convention of marriage. Instead of 
 that she had, he considered, treated him with a faint suspi- 
 cion, and certainly with aloofness. It seemed that Betty 
 was her older friend, not himself, and he had the feeling 
 that he was intruding upon their confidences. Indeed, be- 
 fore the evening was over, they adjourned to the bedroom 
 on some excuse connected with Betty's wardrobe, which 
 undoubtedly needed replenishing, and stayed there talking 
 he could hear their voices, although he could not dis- 
 tinguish their actual words for nearly three-quarters of 
 an hour. 
 
 He grew restless and impatient after a time, and he was 
 on the point of calling to Betty when they returned to the 
 sitting-room. 
 
 "You don't mean to say that you've been talking chiffons 
 for a whole hour?" he asked, with a suggestion of petu- 
 lance. 
 
 "Have we really been as long as that?" returned Betty, 
 with a glance at the marble gilt-faced clock she had per- 
 mitted to remain on the mantelpiece a clock that had de- 
 cided for itself many years before that the ideal time for 
 everything was twenty minutes past three. 
 
 "Pretty nearly," persisted Jacob but he received no an- 
 swer to his question. Betty, also, was gifted with a capacity 
 for elusiveness on occasion. 
 
 But when Freda had gone he received a report of that 
 long conversation in the bedroom. 
 
 "I'm afraid Mrs. Parmenter's dying," Betty said. "Freda 
 says she's getting feebler every day; and she wants to see 
 me." 
 
 "Does she?" ejaculated Jacob. He was surprised; he 
 had pictured a certain vindictiveness towards Betty in Mrs. 
 Parmenter's mind. "You'll go, I suppose?" he added. 
 
 "Of course," Betty said. "I feel in a way that I'm 
 partly responsible for her." 
 
 "Not for her illness," Jacob put in. 
 
 "A little," Betty acknowledged. "It was a shock to her 
 when I ran away like that. I was a coward. I was afraid
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 269 
 
 if I told her I was going, that she would wire to father." 
 
 "Probably would have," commented Jacob. 
 
 Betty passed that by. "Anyway, she wants to see me," 
 she said. 
 
 "Do you suppose she'll try to persuade you to leave me 
 and turn to the path of righteousness?" Jacob asked bitterly. 
 
 "It wouldn't make any difference if she did." 
 
 "I hope not ; but it might upset you again." Jacob paused 
 a moment, and then said: "Betty, I'd sooner you didn't 
 go." 
 
 "I must," she said, with that determined air that had 
 never yet failed to overcome him. 
 
 "But why?" he asked plaintively. 
 
 "I've told you, I feel responsible for her." 
 
 "I suppose I couldn't come too?" 
 
 "I don't think she wants to see you." 
 
 "Probably not; but why don't you think so?" 
 
 "She asked Freda not to say anything before you. That 
 was why we went into the other room." 
 
 Jacob hesitated, wondering how that arrangement had 
 been planned under his eyes and in his hearing without his 
 knowledge. His feeling that he had in a sense been in- 
 truding, had been a true one, he reflected. He took a turn 
 up the room, paused by the chess-table, and attempted to 
 flatten down one of the warped squares of its inlay. 
 
 "I don't like it," he said after a pause. 
 
 "I think you're being rather silly," remarked Betty. 
 
 "Perhaps I am," he returned; "but I don't want you to 
 go there and have all your conscientious scruples revived 
 again. It will only make you miserable indirectly me, of 
 course and it can't do Mrs. Parmenter any good." He 
 stopped himself on the point of calling her "old Parmenter," 
 in his usual manner, influenced less by respect for her re- 
 ported condition than by his wish to conciliate Betty. 
 
 "Darling, I must go," Betty said quietly. "I came to 
 you when you wanted me," she added. 
 
 "Was that an act of utter self-sacrifice too?" he asked, 
 resentfully.
 
 270 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 She met his glance and smiled. All the means to convince 
 him was in her mind, but she could not sift her thought into 
 logical phrase. "Would you like me to refuse," she said, 
 "when she's so ill, just because you're afraid that it will be 
 a bother?" 
 
 "Does it come to that?" He defended himself vaguely, 
 conscious that his case would not bear analysis. 
 
 "You're not afraid that I shall go off and leave you?" 
 asked Betty. 
 
 "I don't want you to be worried now, directly you've 
 come back to London." He realised that he was routed, but 
 he wanted to justify the resistance he had made. 
 
 "It would worry me much more if I didn't go," Betty 
 replied. 
 
 Jacob went to her and kissed her. "I'm jealous of every- 
 one," he said. "I don't want you to sacrifice yourself for 
 anyone but me. I was jealous of Freda to-night. Do you 
 like her much?" 
 
 "Yes, very much; don't you?" 
 
 "I don't know," Jacob confessed. "She has altered so. 
 She looks ten years older than she did three years ago 
 and she is. Why do you suppose she snubbed me about 
 Barker and Camden Town ?" 
 
 "I didn't know she did. I didn't notice it." 
 
 "Refused to talk about it, anyway." 
 
 "She isn't very anxious to remember that part of her 
 life, I think," Betty said. "She has never told me much 
 about it." 
 
 "I wonder why," commented Jacob. 
 
 "Probably because it has unpleasant memories," Betty 
 suggested. "You never like talking about your first wife." 
 
 Jacob winced. "I certainly don't," he said with emphasis. 
 
 "Well, why shouldn't Freda want to forget things too?" 
 
 "I'm rather an ass," Jacob admitted. . . . 
 
 Before they went to bed Betty suddenly put her arms 
 round him and said : "We couldn't ever quarrel, could 
 we?"
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 271 
 
 "It seems absolutely unthinkable, doesn't it?" he re- 
 sponded. 
 "Don't say it seems say it is," she corrected him. 
 
 111 
 
 Jacob awaited Betty's return next day with considerable 
 uneasiness. She had gone out at eleven o'clock the morn- 
 ing, it seemed, was Mrs. Parmenter's best time and had set 
 him down to work at the decently steady table in the sitting- 
 room. But, although he had already lost two days that 
 week Thursday, in wandering about while Betty packed, 
 and yesterday in the journey he felt no inclination what- 
 ever to concentrate his attention on the reviews that ought 
 to be finished by Sunday night. 
 
 By way of preparation he wrote to the manager of the 
 Daily Post, and also to its editor, notifying them of his re- 
 turn to town, and sending to the latter the usual tentative 
 indication of books he would like to review, chosen from 
 the list of "Books Received" during the week. When the 
 letters were written, Jacob went out and posted them. And 
 as, when he had first gone to Cornwall, he had felt a strong 
 sense of pleasure, even of exaltation, in his thought of 
 Trevarrian's loneliness and isolation, so now he revelled 
 in the recovered facilities of town life, in the thought of 
 its shops and its services, its means of communication, and 
 the vitality of its streets. He went up into Queen Square 
 and studied the houses on its south side for a time, deciding 
 that there was a good deal to be said for the beauty of Eng- 
 lish Renaissance architecture of that period. 
 
 As he walked back he began mentally to phrase an essay 
 on the awful influences of the House of Hanover on English 
 Art. Only the fact that he had allowed his reader's ticket 
 to lapse, deterred him from visiting the British Museum 
 in order to look up a few references to Horace Walpole 
 and the indecencies of the Gothic revival. 
 
 When he was back again in their new rooms, he spent 
 twenty-five minutes in searching for that lapsed ticket ; and
 
 272 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 when he had found it at last in the inside pocket of an old 
 jacket, he discovered that the time was nearly twelve o'clock, 
 and that Betty might be home at any moment. 
 
 He sat down resolutely then to his review, without ever 
 pausing to address the recovered ticket to the Director of 
 the Museum; but after he had written the title, publisher, 
 and price of the book at the head of a sheet of foolscap, he 
 was utterly floored to find an opening sentence. 
 
 His thoughts were diverted by the anticipation of Betty's 
 return, and the more he reflected on the object of her visit 
 to Montague Place, the uneasier he became. She was still so 
 pliable so apt, he imagined, to revert to her earlier modes 
 of thought. And if the old associations of the boarding- 
 house were added to the influence and possible preaching 
 of Mrs. Parmenter, Betty might have a tremendous reac- 
 tion; she might suddenly decide that she could not go on 
 living with him, or, at the best, suffer another period of 
 doubt and depression. 
 
 He pushed his notes and writing-paper from him with a 
 spurt of anger. It came to him that he had been a fool to 
 leave Cornwall. He knew that it was solely his own desires 
 that had prevailed in making that decision to come to Great 
 Ormond Street. He had been lusting for a change of scene, 
 for the excitements of London, and, above all, he had been 
 conscious of a feeling of expectation, of awaiting some 
 success that would come to him when he came back to the 
 centre of things. 
 
 But all these desires and hopes of his were inextricably 
 involved with his love for Betty. He might lose something 
 of his joy in life if it were necessary for them to live 
 year in, year out, at Trevarrian ; but he would lose infinitely 
 more if she left him now if he were once more alone, fac- 
 ing his wretched instabilities and inefficiencies. He real- 
 ised it all so clearly and so truly. She was so much more 
 than a mere support to him. 
 
 In his boyhood his Aunt Hester had given him the same 
 kind of love, encouragement, and help. Without her he 
 would still have been a helpless, physical cripple, because
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 273 
 
 he had never had the strength of purpose to persist in the 
 simple and yet tiringly monotonous exercises that had 
 brought about his cure. And now Betty had come to him 
 to help him in overcoming his spiritual malady. The anal- 
 ogy was absolute ; indeed, it was not an analogy so far as his 
 own weakness was concerned, but a repetition of the same 
 process. He wanted love and the inspiration of being loved. 
 He wanted someone to believe in him, and constantly to 
 revive his feeble faith in his own abilities. He would not 
 be driven, and yet he needed and longed for the definite 
 guiding power of some control. 
 
 And Betty had come, miraculously, to fulfil his every need. 
 To lose her now would be to lose hope. He could not face 
 the future alone. The very thought of it induced that old 
 sense of inertia, of doubt in himself, of the futility of any 
 effort he could force himself to make. But only the thought 
 of his work, of long-sustained toil ... he was ready to 
 make big effort at once to hold Betty to him. He was 
 willing to suffer, to face her father and all her relations, 
 to be stubborn and resourceful, to take any pains or meet 
 any contempt, rather than permit her to leave him. 
 
 Nevertheless, when she came home, his first speech to her 
 exhibited no sign of the strength of his resolves. 
 
 IV 
 
 "Well?" he said. "Has she persuaded you that you're 
 very wicked ?" 
 
 Betty frowned. "You aren't fair to her," she said. "You 
 don't understand her in the least." 
 
 "Well, what did she say?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "Heaps of things. I must get the lunch now," said Betty. 
 "It must be nearly one. I stayed talking to Freda." 
 
 "But it's all right?" he asked anxiously. "Tell me that, 
 anyway. Surely lunch can wait. I'm in no hurry." 
 
 "You don't mean to say that you have been worrying 
 about it seriously, I mean ?" she said. 
 
 "Worrying? Of course I have," replied Jacob. "I've
 
 274. THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 been working myself up into a state of desperation. I 
 couldn't write a line," he added, consciously relieved to find 
 some plausible excuse for his failure to work. 
 
 Her face softened to a look of tenderness. "You weren't 
 afraid that I shouldn't come back ?" she said, smiling. 
 
 "Oh, no ! I knew you would come back. You wouldn't 
 go off without telling me," Jacob said. "But I was afraid 
 it might upset you. I had quite made up my mind to go 
 back to Cornwall with you on Monday." 
 
 "Am I so precious?" she asked, and only rescued herself 
 from his assurances by insisting that she must get the lunch, 
 and that afterwards she would tell him all about her inter- 
 view with Mrs. Parmenter. 
 
 But when she came to her story, Jacob did not find it sat- 
 isfactory. He missed some essential, and guessed that she 
 was withholding it to save him anxiety. 
 
 "Do you mean to say that was all ?" he asked suspiciously, 
 when she had given him a very brief account of Mrs. Par- 
 menter's regrets that Betty had left Montague Place, and 
 had emphasised the fact that the old lady had not brought 
 any accusation on moral grounds. 
 
 "Practically," Betty thought. 
 
 Jacob shook his head. "You are trying to save me some- 
 thing," he said. "And I won't be saved. Betty, you must 
 not keep these things from me. If she has been persuading 
 you to leave me, you must tell me all about it." 
 
 "She didn't; I told you she didn't." 
 
 "Well, then, what was it?" 
 
 "The poor old dear is really very ill, Jimmy," Betty said. 
 "She has fancies." 
 
 "About me?" 
 
 "Partly." 
 
 "Well, why not tell me?" he urged. "Surely you can 
 trust me to make allowances. And, darling, you must see 
 that if you don't tell me now, I shall certainly imagine the 
 most horrible things." 
 
 Betty took his hand and held it across the corner of the
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 275 
 
 table. "She has taken an extraordinary dislike to you," she 
 said. 
 
 "In what way?" 
 
 "I don't know quite. Obviously she couldn't abuse you 
 to me. But she kept asking me if I was quite sure that I 
 hadn't made a mistake." 
 
 "What did you say?" 
 
 "I said I was absolutely sure." 
 
 "You are, dear, aren't you absolutely sure?" put in 
 Jacob. But when she had satisfied him on that score, he 
 returned to his cross-examination. 
 
 "But why not tell me all this at once?" he asked. 
 
 "I thought it would make you so angry." Betty paused ; 
 she was still holding his hand, and she pressed it before she 
 continued : "You see, dear, I think she must have written to 
 father and Aunt Mary, and said things about you. I think 
 that's one reason why they have been so horrid to us." 
 
 Jacob looked vicious. 
 
 "There, I knew I had better not tell you!" Betty ex- 
 claimed. 
 
 He controlled himself sufficiently to smile. "I'm not 
 really angry with the old fool," he said bitterly. "Mischief- 
 maker ! Oh, the harm these people do in the name of Chris- 
 tianity !" 
 
 "Yes, I know," Betty admitted. "But you must make 
 allowances for Mrs. Parmenter in this case, dear. She was 
 terribly upset. . . ." 
 
 "And she had to vent her spite at losing a valuable part- 
 ner." 
 
 "I'm very, very sorry for her," Betty said quietly. 
 
 Jacob sighed. "Yes, that's you," he said. "And I love 
 you for it, you angel. You make excuses for everybody." 
 
 "No, I don't," she returned. "I'm bitter about Violet 
 and Hilda. Hilda, at least, might have understood." 
 
 "I suppose the Parmenter woman poisoned their minds 
 too," said Jacob. "I'm inclined to forgive them." He had 
 a picture in his mind of Betty's sisters, and felt a little ten- 
 derness for them. He was sure that they must be sweet
 
 276 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 and lovable. "Did she describe me as a little Jew seducer, 
 do you think?" he went on, anticipating a fervent denial. 
 
 "She had had such an awful experience herself, you see," 
 Betty explained. 
 
 Jacob's face grew hot. "Oh, but I say!" he burst out, 
 "you don't really think that she might have said that?" 
 
 "I don't know what she said. It must have been some- 
 thing pretty horrible." Betty looked at him anxiously. 
 "She isn't quite right in her head, I'm sure she isn't," she 
 added. 
 
 "Oh, Lord !" commented Jacob. "It makes me feel pretty 
 beastly!" He got up from the table and shook himself, as 
 if he would shake off the foulness of that aspersion. "Do I 
 look like a Jew?" he asked, frowning. 
 
 "Not a bit, not the least bit in the world," she assured 
 him. 
 
 He went over to the fly-blown mirror above the mantel- 
 piece and studied himself anxiously. "I can't see it, any- 
 way," he said. "Not that I really care," he went on. "The 
 Jews are a jolly clever race. It's a pity in many ways that 
 I haven't got more Jewish qualities. But, as a matter of 
 fact, I'm only a quarter Jew, one grandparent in four, you 
 know my paternal grandmother. Stahl is a Christian name 
 enough; and, unfortunately for me perhaps, I take after 
 my mother, who was pure Celt Irish. I hardly remember 
 her, of course ; but Aunt Hester has told me how she never 
 could concentrate on anything; she was always expecting a 
 miracle to put things right for her and for me, too." 
 
 Betty got up and put her arms round his neck. "Oh! 
 what does it matter, old silly?" she asked. "You're you, 
 that's quite enough." 
 
 He surrendered himself to the delight of her love for a 
 few minutes, but presently he returned to the essential 
 topic by saying: 
 
 "Yes, dear, this is quite convincing to us ; but somehow I 
 don't like the idea that your father and all your other people 
 should run away with the notion that I am a horrible little 
 Jew seducer. Wasn't that what you said?"
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 277 
 
 "No, I didn't say it," replied Betty. "You said it. But I 
 believe she must have said something of the sort from 
 father's letter, you remember." 
 
 "Well, do you like it ?" he asked. "Do you like them to 
 have that impression?" 
 
 "I don't care in a way," she said. 
 
 "It hurts my vanity," Jacob announced, after a short de- 
 liberation. "I'm rather a snob, I think." 
 
 "I don't see how we can help it," urged Betty. 
 
 "Would you let me go and see them your people?" 
 
 "At Beechcombe?" She was plainly startled, a little 
 alarmed by the suggestion. 
 
 "Yes. Why not?" 
 
 "Would you really go down there and face them ?" 
 
 "Like a bird," he said, full of confidence at that minute. 
 
 But she knew him better than that. "You'd hate it when 
 the time came," she said. 
 
 "I might," he admitted honestly. "But I'd sooner do that 
 than let them go on thinking all sorts of beastly things. It 
 reflects on you," he added. 
 
 "They can think anything they like about me," Betty said, 
 with an assumption of recklessness. 
 
 "Of course, what they do think is that you have been 
 quixotic and sacrificed yourself as usual." 
 
 She did not deny that ; she was trying to find some way 
 out of the trouble without letting Jacob go down to Beech- 
 combe. She doubted if he would produce a good effect 
 there. He would so probably lose his temper with her 
 father and denounce religious intolerance. Moreover, she 
 wished to save Jacob the nervous strain of such an inter- 
 view. 
 
 "I'll tell you what we'll do," she announced. "I'll try 
 to get Aunt Mary to come and see us here. I believe she 
 would; I believe I could make her come." 
 
 "Not a bad idea," Jacob agreed, more than a little re- 
 lieved to be spared the ordeal of an unsupported attack upon 
 Beechcombe. He would have gone ; but he knew that when 
 the time came he would have suffered agonies of trepidation.
 
 278 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Nevertheless, he made one more boast. "All the same, I 
 should like to meet your father," he said. It was true, but 
 he would have liked to be suddenly confronted with his 
 adversary, to be spared all the tremors and fears of antici- 
 pation. 
 
 "Well, perhaps you will later," Betty said hopefully. 
 "But I will write to Aunt Mary now at once, and then I'm 
 going to take you out for a 'bus ride, or a walk or some- 
 thing. It's a lovely day." 
 
 "We'll walk all the way down to Oxford Street," Jacob 
 agreed joyfully, "and look into every shop as we go along." 
 
 "Very well," replied Betty, with all the enthusiasm she 
 could muster. She would have preferred a neighbourhood 
 less frequented by people who might recognise her. She 
 wondered what she would do if they suddenly walked into 
 the terrible Mrs. Gale. But, inspired by the thought of 
 winning over Aunt Mary, Betty was full of hope that 
 afternoon. She was undoubtedly getting over her silliness, 
 she thought. Freda had laughed at her that morning. "It 
 isn't as though you were hurting anyone else," Freda had 
 said. "You didn't take him away from his wife. They 
 weren't living together all those years ago when I first met 
 him in Camden Town." 
 
 They each received a letter on Monday morning. The 
 first was to Betty a cause of mild jubilation. Aunt Mary 
 had written from Beechcombe a short note to say that she 
 would come up by the mid-day train, do a little shopping, 
 and have tea with them in Great Ormond Street about 
 five. 
 
 "She is a dear!" Betty said, with unusual emotion. 
 
 "She must be," agreed Jacob. 
 
 His own letter, however, gave them subject for consider- 
 able doubt and anxiety. The editor of the Daily Post had 
 written, asking Jacob if he could conveniently call at the 
 offices of the paper at four o'clock that day. No intima- 
 tion was given of the reason for this request, and the
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 279 
 
 formal manner of the letter presented no clue to the writer's 
 intention. 
 
 "What should we do if he doesn't want you any more?" 
 Betty said. 
 
 "Lord only knows!" returned Jacob. "It's all we've got 
 to live on. I've got about ninety pounds in the bank, I 
 think." 
 
 Betty reacted immediately when she saw how seriously 
 Jacob regarded the possibility of losing his work on the 
 Daily Post. 
 
 "But of course it isn't that," she said cheerfully. "The 
 editor has always liked your reviews, hasn't 'he ?" 
 
 "Apparently," replied Jacob gloomily. "But you never 
 know. I got the job by the merest fluke. I might lose it 
 again any day." 
 
 "If you did, you'd get another just as good, or better," 
 she encouraged him. 
 
 But he would not permit himself to be consoled too 
 easily. 
 
 "It's my own fault if I do lose it," he said. "I've slacked 
 too much. And you know, dear, I've wasted a lot of time 
 on that bally book." 
 
 "I wonder you dare to sit there and say that time was 
 wasted," Betty said indignantly. "Your book is far more 
 important than your old reviewing." 
 
 "But less profitable," remarked Jacob. 
 
 "Boo!" replied Betty. 
 
 "But, you darling, you're so prejudiced in my favour," 
 he urged. 
 
 "We shall see," she said ; and he allowed her to persuade 
 him that his book was going to make their fortunes. She 
 was so splendidly convinced that she infected him with the 
 glamour of her own confidence. 
 
 That morning he worked with enthusiasm to finish his 
 reviews, not from any dread of editorial reproof, but be- 
 cause he wanted them done in order that he might go on 
 with his novel. 
 
 But when he was in the downstairs waiting-room of the
 
 280 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Daily Post offices, the ideal of his book waned and took a 
 less magnificent shape. He thought of all the writers who 
 must have been in this place before him, and those who 
 came to it now, every day men who were so much better 
 read than himself, who had had more experience of life, and 
 who were gifted with such remarkable powers of literary 
 expression. He grew hot at the thought of his own temerity 
 in daring to match his work with theirs. 
 
 The influence of that urgent, authoritative place intimi- 
 dated him. He had come to no criticism of it as yet. The 
 Daily Post appeared to him as the organ of sincerity and 
 truth, as presenting a high standard of achievement. He 
 was proud to know that he was one of its reviewers, and 
 that he had an appointment with its editor, even though that 
 appointment might have a sinister significance. He won- 
 dered if the commissionaire who had taken his name, or 
 the boy who had conducted him to the waiting-room, knew 
 that he was a contributor, and not some supplicant for an 
 impossible favour. He would have liked to advertise the 
 fact of his small importance with a becoming modesty, to 
 say that he played a tiny part in the running of this great 
 machine. Nevertheless, the place itself intimidated him. 
 It was so great and so independent, so perfectly able to 
 conduct its own affairs without any help of his. And about 
 it all was that air of authority. He was there to receive 
 a judgment, perhaps to be condemned in that he had failed 
 to reach that high standard of achievement that the paper 
 demanded. 
 
 Only on one previous occasion had he been in those offices 
 or seen the editor, Mr. Gresswell. Then Jacob had been, 
 indeed, a timid supplicant, and he had obtained his inter- 
 view almost by accident. He had taken a step in the fifteen 
 months that had intervened, he thought. He was no longer 
 without any credentials ; he had acquitted himself decently. 
 He might have done better, but he had not been altogether a 
 failure. And then his thoughts suddenly leaped back to the 
 "awful week" that had preceded Betty's coming to Corn- 
 wall. He saw himself in the depths of despair and feeble-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 281 
 
 ness, a creature utterly unrelated to this newspaper office 
 a stark, primitive thing, repulsive, yet without any sort of 
 fear such as now held him of the judgment of authority. 
 But that miserable, desperate man in the house in Trevar- 
 rian had been himself ; that mood of recklessness was as in- 
 tegral as his present mood of nervousness. Why did he 
 react so strangely to his surroundings? Was there some 
 deep, essential characteristic of the man, Jacob Stahl, or 
 was he merely the creature of his circumstances? It had 
 occurred to him before, and it seemed to him now that he 
 had no individuality whatever. If he had, why could he 
 not confront Mr. Gresswell with the wild man who had 
 seen visions down at Mawgan Forth? He smiled at the 
 thought that he might produce the effect of literary eccen- 
 tricity. Better that, perhaps, than to seem a nonentity. 
 Genius was always eccentric, and he was timidly orthodox. 
 Very plainly he was no genius. No one but Betty had 
 ever supposed he was. 
 
 He looked at his watch, and found that it was half-past 
 four, and he had promised to be back in Great Ormond 
 Street by five o'clock to receive Mrs. Lynneker. The thought 
 of that important interview he certainly wanted to be pres- 
 ent diverted him from his introspection, and he spent 
 another five minutes in growing impatience before the boy 
 came to announce that the editor would see Mr. Stahl. 
 He was a new boy, and as yet somewhat overwhelmed by 
 the gravity of his functions. 
 
 Jacob instantly forgot his recent impatience, and followed 
 the boy upstairs with the docility and dumb misery of a 
 first offender. 
 
 Mr. Gresswell was standing by a table at one end of his 
 impressively furnished room. He had a book in his hand, 
 taken up, apparently, from a collection of fifty or more ar- 
 ranged on the table before him. 
 
 As Jacob entered, Gresswell looked up with a kindly 
 smile, but he did not put down his book nor offer to shake 
 hands.
 
 282 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Are you settled in London permanently now ?" he asked, 
 without any form of greeting. 
 
 "I hope so," replied Jacob. He felt he could not give a 
 more definite answer. At any moment he might have to 
 take Betty back to Cornwall. 
 
 "I am going to make some more practical arrangement 
 with regard to the reviewing," the editor said, passing over 
 the uncertainty of Jacob's reply. "At present it is most 
 unsatisfactory." 
 
 "Yes?" said Jacob, to fill the pause that followed. The 
 opening had been equivocal, but he had an intuition that he 
 was in some way to be promoted. "I hope my stuff . . ." 
 he began. 
 
 "Certainly, certainly," Gresswell said, as if he were an- 
 swering a specific question. "It isn't that at all. It's 
 rather . . ." he put up his disengaged hand and touched 
 his glasses "it is chiefly a question of proportion. One re- 
 viewer sends me in a column about some comparatively 
 unimportant book that happens to interest him, and other 
 books get no attention." 
 
 "I see," agreed Jacob, and then, feeling that his own share 
 in the conversation was not, so far, remarkable for any dis- 
 play of intelligence, he went on : "It it depends, of course, 
 to a certain extent on who is to judge the relative values." 
 He meant to explain himself further, but Gresswell gave 
 him no further opportunity. 
 
 "What I am proposing," he said, "is that we should have 
 an informal meeting here every Monday, at, say half-past 
 three, yourself and one or two other of our reviewers, when 
 we could go through the books together, and decide which 
 should be done, and, to a certain extent, on the length of 
 the notices. I have seen two or three of our more regular 
 contributors, and they are quite willing." He paused and 
 smiled his friendly smile again. "What do you feel about 
 it?" he asked. "Would you be able to come?" 
 
 "Oh yes, I should like to," Jacob said. It was certainly 
 very difficult to produce any effect of intelligence in a one- 
 sided conversation like this ; but as he was feverishly seek-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 883 
 
 ing for subtle comment on the scheme, an astonished-looking 
 young man in spectacles came in with a sheet of very limp 
 paper in his hand. He stared at Jacob and the editor, said 
 "Oh !" in a thin, high voice, and then stood still with every 
 appearance of bitter distress just inside the door. 
 
 Gresswell put down the book he was still holding and 
 stretched out his hand, and the young man instantly came 
 forward and proffered the damp sheet he carried. 
 
 "Mr. Grattan thought it ought to be recast, sir," he said 
 in a rapid, half-expostulatory whine. 
 
 Gresswell took no notice of him whatever. He was hold- 
 ing up the wide sheet before him and reading it at an amaz- 
 ing speed. Jacob could see that the sheet was a single page 
 of the Daily Post, printed apparently in very pale ink. He 
 was excited and pleased, conscious of his new importance 
 as a member of that Monday conclave, and also of a feeling 
 that this sight of a daily paper in the process of making 
 was a valuable and interesting experience. 
 
 "Cut it out," remarked Gresswell shortly, returning the 
 sheet to the anxious young man in spectacles, who said, 
 "Yes, sir," and waited, evidently expecting further instruc- 
 tions. 
 
 The editor crossed the room to his desk, took up a long 
 slip of paper and ran his eye rapidly down it. 
 
 "Hasn't the review of Hamilton's book been set up yet?" 
 he asked, with a touch of impatience. 
 
 "It hasn't come in yet," squeaked the young man. 
 
 Jacob grew suddenly hot. "Er did you mean those 
 essays?" he put in nervously. 
 
 "Yes. Did you have them?" asked Gresswell. 
 
 "I've got the review here," returned Jacob, taking a fools- 
 cap envelope out of his pocket. "I I thought, as I was 
 coming down, I could bring my reviews instead of posting 
 them. I hope . . ." 
 
 "Do you know how much it will make?" Gresswell said. 
 
 Jacob, by good luck, guessed the meaning of the question. 
 "About a column, I think,'' he said. He knew by now that 
 three sheets of foolscap in his own handwriting was almost
 
 284 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 exactly equivalent to a column of printed matter in the 
 paper. "I gave it rather a long notice; I thought . . ." 
 
 Gresswell nodded curtly. He had taken the envelope 
 from Jacob, and now, having glanced through the contents, 
 he separated the review he wanted and gave it to the young 
 man in spectacles. "I'll read the proof," he remarked. 
 'There won't be time to send it to Mr. Stahl." 
 
 "I'm afraid I kept it rather long," apologised Jacob, when 
 he and the editor were once more alone together. "I was 
 rather upset last week coming up to town and so on." 
 
 Mr. Gresswell did not seem to hear him. "Then you'll 
 come to the office next Monday at half-past three," he said. 
 "And about this week, is there anything here you would 
 care to take?" 
 
 It was past five when the elated Jacob got away at last. 
 He hailed a hansom as soon as he emerged into Fleet Street. 
 He had an armful of books he had insisted that he could 
 take them with him as he was going straight back to his 
 rooms but neither that encumbrance nor the thought of 
 Aunt Mary privately influencing Betty in Great Ormond 
 Street, was the true cause of his extravagance. He felt 
 that his good luck demanded recognition. He was a per- 
 son of importance now a member of a weekly meeting of 
 reviewers, with a voice in deciding the fate of all authors, 
 great and small, so far as their recognition by the Daily Post 
 was concerned. 
 
 "I have had luck," he reflected. "If it hadn't been for 
 Betty, I should never have done that review in time to take 
 it down with me, and then there might have been the devil 
 to pay! As it happened . . . And, after all, I had only 
 had the book for a fortnight!" 
 
 VI 
 
 He found Aunt Mary sitting in the better of the two arm- 
 chairs when he arrived. She had a full cup of tea in her 
 hand, and in the saucer was balanced an untouched slice of
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 285 
 
 bread and butter that had become partly soaked with spilt 
 tea. 
 
 She looked up at Jacob as he came in ; indeed, she stared 
 at him with a steadiness that would have been rude, had it 
 not been for some pathetic appeal in her expression. Her 
 mouth drooped curiously at the corners; it was the mouth 
 of a small child on the verge of tears. 
 
 "This is Aunt Mary, dear," Betty said ; and Jacob, with a 
 sudden feeling of compassion for the little, pathetic old 
 woman in the armchair, came quickly forward and offered 
 her his hand. 
 
 "I'm so glad you were able to come," he said. Whether 
 because of his recent triumph, or because he realised in some 
 way that this fragile little creature was already beaten, a sub- 
 ject for tenderness rather than opposition, he felt strangely 
 compassionate towards her. He felt as if he were a splen- 
 didly successful son, eager for the love of a mother who 
 had misjudged him, and had come to ask his forgiveness. 
 
 Mrs. Lynneker fumbled with her teacup, and gave him her 
 delicate hand. She held him tightly for a moment, gazing 
 up into his face as if she would read his most secret thought. 
 
 "Betty and I have been having a long talk," she said, as 
 she released him, and then she bent over her cup and began 
 to eat her soaked bread and butter. 
 
 "Oh, Aunt Mary, let me take that away and give you 
 some more," Betty said, bending forward. 
 
 "It's very nice, dear, thank you," returned Mrs. Lynneker, 
 essaying to lift the sopped bread, pieces of which fell into 
 her cup. 
 
 "Shall I take it?" asked Jacob, and he gently took the 
 cup from her and passed it to Betty. 
 
 "I must make some more tea," Betty said, getting up. 
 
 "Not for me, dear, please," put in Mrs. Lynneker. 
 
 "I think 7 should like some," Jacob said, smiling. "I 
 have been in a stuffy newspaper office for the last hour and 
 a half, and I came straight back in a hansom. The editor 
 kept me so long. Editors are such autocrats." 
 
 Betty, with the teapot in her hand, stood hesitating for a
 
 286 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 moment at the door into the bedroom, and then, as if re- 
 assured, she went out quickly and closed the door behind 
 her. 
 
 Mrs. Lynneker looked up at Jacob, then, with the same 
 tremulous air of appeal, "Do you think you're doing right, 
 my dear?" she said. 
 
 "Oh, I do really I do!" replied Jacob gently. 
 
 "I can't see how . . ." Mrs. Lynneker began, and seemed 
 to change her mind, for she went on : "You've nice, kind 
 eyes, and you look sincere. I'm sure you're sincere." 
 
 "It's almost something more than sincerity in this case," 
 Jacob said in a low voice, blushing faintly at her praise of 
 him. "I mean that Betty is everything to me. I have been 
 such a failure, and she's helping to make me a success." 
 
 "She's a dear, sweet thing!" murmured Mrs. Lyn- 
 neker. 
 
 "Indeed she is," Jacob agreed, with a touch of embarrass- 
 ment. Not even to Aunt Mary could he speak of his love 
 for Betty. 
 
 "And terribly obstinate when once she has made up her 
 mind about a thing," added Mrs. Lynneker. 
 
 Jacob laughed softly. "Perhaps," he admitted. 
 
 "But nothing can alter the fact that you two are living in 
 sin," Mrs. Lynneker concluded, with a sudden effort of de- 
 termination. 
 
 Jacob sighed. He knew that argument would be worse 
 than useless with this convinced little lady. 
 
 "I wonder if there are not worse things than a sin of 
 this kind?" he said tentatively. 
 
 "Worse things ?" repeated Mrs. Lynneker, with a sugges- 
 tion of aggressiveness that carried no conviction. 
 
 "What would happen to us if we were separated?" asked 
 Jacob. 
 
 "I hope you would try and lead a godly life. I'm sure 
 Betty would," said Mrs. Lynneker. 
 
 "Betty might; I shouldn't," replied Jacob, with a fearful 
 earnestness. "It would be the end of me morally, and . . . 
 and every way, I suppose there is some inherent. weakness
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 287 
 
 in me. I have often been afraid there is. But Betty has, in 
 effect, you know, converted me spiritually. She has been a 
 wonderful influence. I dare say one ought to be strong and 
 splendid and give her up, but I can't. It isn't a question of 
 what one ought to be, but of what one is. I couldn't do 
 without her now. I simply could not go on living. It's hard 
 to explain, but do you know what I mean?" 
 
 Mrs. Lynneker looked up at him with that pathetic droop 
 of her mouth more marked than ever. 
 
 "Yes, I know," she said. "But you don't look weak. I 
 shouldn't like to think you were such a poor creature." 
 
 Jacob smiled, and she smiled with him a smile full of 
 humour. "You're not a bit the sort of man I thought you 
 were," she said. 
 
 "From Mrs. Parmenter's description?" asked Jacob. 
 
 Mrs. Lynneker shook her head. "Never mind where I 
 got my ideas from," she said. "And I didn't say whetheu 
 you were better or worse than I expected." 
 
 "I don't think I could have been worse, could I?" Jacob 
 said. "If I can judge at all from the letters that Betty's 
 family wrote, they seemed to have supposed that I was a 
 professional criminal of the most despicable type." 
 
 "Serve you right !" said Mrs. Lynneker ; and before Jacob 
 could question that judgment, Betty returned with the fresh 
 tea. 
 
 "Well, dear, you left us alone a long time, but I don't 
 know that we've come to any better understanding," re- 
 marked her aunt. 
 
 "I had to boil the kettle," Betty said, and added : "At all 
 events, you don't seem to have quarrelled very desper- 
 ately." 
 
 "Oh, we have!" returned Mrs. Lynneker. "He's every 
 bit as obstinate as you are. You are two very wicked, self- 
 opinionated young people, and I don't know what's to be- 
 come of you." 
 
 "I steadfastly deny that we are the least wicked," said 
 Jacob. "We aren't hurting anybody . . ." 
 
 "Except yourselves," interrupted Aunt Mary.
 
 288 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "But do you know that, so far from hurting ourselves, I 
 am sure that I am a very much better man in every way 
 than I was six months ago?" Jacob said. 
 
 Mrs. Lynneker's tea was destined to neglect that after- 
 noon. She put down the fresh cup that Betty had given 
 to her, clasped her hands together, and half-timidly, yet 
 with a strong emotional fervour, began to bear witness for 
 the truth of her gospel. 
 
 This message was evidently the one she had come to 
 deliver. Until now she had been confused in its delivery, 
 less by the interruptions of the two people she had to re- 
 prove, than by the many excuses her own mind had framed 
 for them. But her opportunity had come at last. Jacob's 
 boast of moral betterment had provided the text for her 
 mission. She had to make it clear to him, and incidentally 
 to Betty, who must have known it all before, that ignorant, 
 feeble humanity was unable to judge its own condition ; that 
 this very feeling of righteousness might be, and very prob- 
 ably was, a snare of the Evil One; that the one and only 
 safe guide to conduct was to be found in the Book that 
 God had given us, and that if we despised and rejected 
 that inspired Word, we could only expect misery in this 
 world and eternal punishment in the world to come. 
 
 The little lady delivered her message with a fine sincerity. 
 Hers was, indeed, the faith of a little child ; and her beauti- 
 ful honesty and the earnestness of her words deeply af- 
 fected Jacob, although not in the least in the manner in- 
 tended by the preacher. He was moved to an admiration 
 of her courage and her sweet simplicity, and he was emo- 
 tionally glad that she should have the consolation of the 
 religion that so perfectly filled her needs. He tried to find 
 some attitude for himself, some expression that should 
 maintain his own resolution with regard to Betty, while it 
 could in no way give a cause for grief to the bright-eyed 
 little woman who seemed to desire so intensely his soul's 
 welfare. 
 
 But when she had finished, she gave him no opportunity 
 for any profession of feeling. No doubt she thought that
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 289 
 
 she had sown the good seed, and that it might, in God's 
 own time, bring forth the fruit of the Spirit. And with 
 her clear duty performed, she dropped the mission of Evan- 
 gelist as abruptly as she had taken it up. 
 
 "My dear, I must go," she said, getting quite briskly to 
 her feet and drawing her mantle together. "If I could get 
 a hansom . . .?" she suggested, looking at Jacob. 
 
 "It isn't easy here," he told her. "Sometimes there's one 
 in Queen Square; but if you could walk as far as Cosmo 
 Place. It's only a few yards, you know. . . " 
 
 She nodded. "Betty will show me," she said. 
 
 At the sitting-room door Jacob pointed to the pile of 
 books he had set down on the chair on the landing. He 
 had wished to enter the room unencumbered. 
 
 "My week's work," he said. It was the first opportunity 
 he had had of telling Betty that all was well as far as his 
 job on the Daily Post was concerned. 
 
 She smiled at him, conveying her understanding and 
 pleasure. 
 
 Mrs. Lynneker took his hand. "I'm sure you mean well," 
 she said ; "and I can see you're both very happy." 
 
 Jacob felt that it was a benediction. 
 
 , vii 
 
 He met Betty at the front door as she returned. 
 
 "Are you running because you are so eager to get back to 
 me, or because you want the street to know why you went 
 out without a hat?" he asked. 
 
 "Both," she said. "Come along. Isn't she a dear?" 
 
 "I love her," replied Jacob with enthusiasm. 
 
 "And when she gets home, she'll write us a long letter, 
 repeating all that she said this afternoon," Betty said. 
 
 "Will she? Why that?" asked Jacob, when they had 
 reached their own rooms on the second floor. 
 
 "Because, as she goes back in the train, she'll think that 
 she wasn't emphatic enough." 
 
 "Does she do it all conscientiously, to justify her own
 
 290 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 belief, knowing that she hasn't a chance of altering our 
 opinion, do you suppose?" 
 
 Betty shook her head. "She hopes," she said. "She 
 believes so absolutely in sudden conversion. And she thinks 
 that one day something she has said will suddenly take 
 'root,' as she would say, and that we shall 'see the light,' 
 you know." 
 
 "And until that day comes she isn't really so dreadfully 
 vexed with us, I take it?" 
 
 "Not now. She likes you." 
 
 "I somehow fancied she did," replied Jacob. "She is 
 perfectly human really, isn't she?" 
 
 "In spite of her religion?" asked Betty. 
 
 "Well, isn't that what you felt about it?" 
 
 "I believe I did," Betty acknowledged. "She was so 
 ready to overlook our wickedness on her own account. She 
 didn't once actually find fault with us, did she?" 
 
 "Only on religious grounds." 
 
 Betty pondered that for a moment. "She is such a dear!" 
 she concluded, and then went on : "Well, and how did you 
 get on ?" 
 
 "Oh, splendidly!" returned Jacob, and gave her a full 
 account of his interview with Gresswell. 
 
 "Does it mean more money?" asked Betty. 
 
 "N-no, probably not," he admitted ; "but it will be rather 
 jolly meeting the other men there, and well, it's an honour 
 in a way, isn't it ?" 
 
 She smiled at him. "Wait till your book's finished," she 
 said. "Everyone will be running after you then." 
 
 He laughed at her. "Think of the number of novels that 
 are published every year," he said. "Something over a 
 thousand, I believe. I shall be just one of that lot, and a 
 quite undistinguished one at that." 
 
 Nevertheless, he was pleased with her and with himself 
 glad that she should have such faith in him, and in some 
 way glad, too, that he knew his own abilities too well to 
 be flattered into any conceit of them. 
 
 "All the same, I do seem to be getting on a little," he
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 291 
 
 said. "You've brought me luck, you dear. And you know," 
 he added, falling into a tone of analytical retrospection, "I'm 
 like that. I can only do my best work when I'm winning. 
 When I used to play chess, I could never fight a losing game. 
 I lost heart. It didn't seem worth while, not worth the big 
 effort. I preferred to give up that game and start another. 
 He paused a moment, and concluded: "I'm a very poor 
 creature, really." 
 
 "It seems to me that you've been fighting a losing game 
 all your life," replied Betty. 
 
 "Yes, and I should have lost it if I hadn't met you." . 
 
 "I don't believe it," Betty said, and closed that discussion 
 by adding : "Anyhow, you're winning now, and I must think 
 about getting the dinner." 
 
 "I'm blowed if you shall!" protested Jacob. "This is an 
 occasion, and we're going to celebrate it by having dinner at 
 a restaurant the Holborn, for example." 
 
 "It would be rather a treat to eat a dinner I hadn't cooked 
 myself," Betty admitted. 
 
 Jacob had never thought of that. 
 
 VIII 
 
 He was mildly extravagant in his ordering of their dinner, 
 but Betty's influence was all towards restraint. 
 
 "You're too cautious, dear," he said, when the waiter had 
 gone. 
 
 "It frightens me sometimes when I think how little money 
 we've got," was her reply. 
 
 "You don't believe in my ability to make more?" he 
 suggested. 
 
 "I do," she protested "you know I do." 
 
 "Well, then?" 
 
 "That's no reason why we should spend it before it 
 comes." 
 
 "No, I know you're quite right," he admitted, "and we 
 won't. But this evening is an occasion, isn't it, with my
 
 292 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 luck at the office and Aunt Mary's forgiveness ? She may 
 pray for us, but she has forgiven us." 
 
 "And you feel so pleased with yourself," put in Betty, 
 smiling. 
 
 He acknowledged that he did. "I had an idea for my 
 next book this afternoon," he went on. "Shall I tell it to 
 you?" 
 
 She nodded eagerly. 
 
 "It's slightly fantastic," he explained "an allegory of 
 sorts, I suppose and yet the fundamental idea of it comes 
 out of my own experience. The theory is of a man who 
 reacts so tremendously to his circumstances that he is a 
 different person altogether in different conditions. It's an 
 enlargement of the Jekyll and Hyde business in one way, but 
 treated realistically, you know. There would not be any 
 romantic potions or spells." 
 
 He paused and looked at Betty for approval, and she 
 made an effort to cover her perplexity and give him the 
 encouragement that she knew he expected. 
 
 Jacob laughed. "You don't follow it," he said. 
 
 "I do," protested Betty, "only . . ." 
 
 "Yes, only ... of course, I haven't explained myself in 
 the least. . . . Really, the book is a kind of satire. It conies 
 out of to-day's experience. Imagine, for instance, that my 
 man were to live in Beechcombe Rectory. After six months 
 he would be mentally qualified for a curacy, frightfully 
 earnest Churchman, and that sort of thing. If that were the 
 beginning, it would be very convincing, with just a touch 
 here and there to show how susceptible he is to other influ- 
 ences an adventure in the beech-woods, perhaps. Then he 
 might come up to town and get into an agnostic set, become a 
 furious agnostic himself, and so on. The idea is that he 
 goes on increasingly reacting to his circumstances until he 
 can be, for all intents and purposes, a dozen different people 
 in one day." 
 
 "And what would happen to him in the end?" asked 
 Betty.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 293 
 
 Jacob meditated for a moment. "Well," he said, "you 
 see that in his experiences he has always found the people 
 he has lived with and talked to, consistent. Whatever their 
 point of view, they've stuck to it through thick and thin. 
 When facts have proved them in the wrong, they have tried 
 to explain the facts away. But one day he meets the Rector, 
 who was his first influence at the beginning of the book, 
 and, of course, my man naturally begins to talk as if he were 
 just going into the Church. But then he finds that the 
 Rector has chucked his religion, and given up his parish, 
 doesn't believe in anything much ; and that gives my man 
 a shock, because he finds that the Rector has no longer any 
 influence, he does not produce any reaction, and then my 
 man discovers for the first time that he has a personality 
 of his own that has been unconsciously growing out of all his 
 reactions." 
 
 "What sort of personality?" Betty asked. There could 
 be no doubt that she was interested now. 
 
 "Well, he'd be a sort of god, you know," replied Jacob; 
 "not condemning anyone, because he had been everything 
 himself, all-wise and all-loving, with no sort of wish to 
 convert anybody from anything no creed, no dogma. It 
 won't work, I admit, but I think the allegory is all right; 
 and you have your choice of morals, because it is implied 
 that you can never convert anyone unless you are absolutely 
 convinced yourself. The first person who wasn't stuck up 
 with his own opinion failed to produce an effect upon my 
 man, you see." 
 
 "I think it's a wonderful idea," Betty said. 
 
 Jacob's face glowed with enthusiasm. "Do you really?" 
 he insisted. "Of course, you understand that I mean to 
 work it all out with the most convincing realism. There 
 won't be any preaching or explanation in it just a very 
 serious account of the man's life. I think it will have to be 
 written by another fellow, who takes it all very much in 
 earnest, and sees it all from the outside, so that you get 
 various aspects of the man as seen by another person. The 
 imaginary writer of the book might be always hopeful, right
 
 294 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 up to the end, of converting the man to some particular 
 doxy or other. I want it to be realistic without being too 
 definite, you know. I should like to leave a little doubt as to 
 whether the man who is supposed to write the book hasn't 
 got hold of the wrong end of the stick now and again." 
 
 They discussed the idea eagerly, until the waiter's im- 
 patience to be rid of them could no longer be ignored ; but 
 when they were back in Great Ormond Street they found 
 that the subject had lost its freshness. 
 
 "Of course, you'll finish 'John Tristram' first?" Betty 
 said, after a pause. 
 
 "Oh yes, rather!" agreed Jacob, yawning. "I shall put 
 this new book at the back of my mind for the present. But 
 you do think it's a good idea, don't you?" 
 
 "I think it's wonderful," Betty said. 
 
 "It's odd how things like that come and elaborate them- 
 selves in one's mind," said Jacob. "I didn't deliberately 
 invent that story." He was wondering whether this curious 
 phenomenon was not an evidence of genius, and Betty put 
 the thought into words for him. But when the thing was 
 stated, he immediately shrank from so large a claim. 
 
 "Something else is wanted, though," he said. "I mean, 
 the ability to express the idea in written words." 
 
 "You've got that all right," returned Betty, with confi- 
 dence. 
 
 "We can pretend I have, just between ourselves," he 
 said, smiling. "There can't be any harm in that. But, 
 you dear, loyal darling, please never tell anyone else, will 
 you?" 
 
 It seemed to them both that night that fame and wealth 
 were very near.
 
 XIV 
 "JOHN TRISTRAM" 
 
 THE first important step towards the winning of those 
 gifts of celebrity and fortune was to be taken by the 
 publication of "John Tristram," but Jacob made little prog- 
 ress with his novel that summer. One reason for his failure 
 was sound enough, as under the new arrangement with the 
 Daily Post he was receiving many more books than before, 
 maintaining now a steady average of six or seven every 
 week. Betty frowned, and often wickedly counselled him 
 to be less conscientious in his reviewing. But that was an 
 impossibility for him; he was at once too nervous and too 
 vain to scamp that work. He might, with some return to his 
 old inertia, neglect it, put a book aside unread, and leave 
 it unnoticed until it was out of date; but what he did was 
 done to the best of his ability. But, indeed, that summer 
 he did not shirk the smallest detail. He was too impressed 
 by the sense of responsibility, renewed each week by those 
 visits to the offices of his paper ; and the memory of the 
 lesson he had learnt at Trevarrian, the thought of the extra 
 handicap that was laid upon him when he allowed his work 
 to accumulate, also served to brace him and maintain his 
 level efficiency. 
 
 There was, however, another influence that was retarding 
 the progress of his novel ; he was confronted by a tedious 
 perplexity. By the end of May he had written one hundred 
 and twenty thousand words of Tristram's story, but the 
 dimly visualised end of it all seemed as far away as ever. 
 And as he saw the problem, only two alternatives were open 
 to him: either he must change his method, and, forsaking 
 his detailed narration, pass over a period of years in half a 
 
 295
 
 296 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 dozen chapters, or he must rewrite the whole story in a 
 more condensed form. The first remedy was so plainly a 
 makeshift that, whenever he considered it, he ended by 
 resolutely putting it away from him as a temptation to weak- 
 ness of the familiar kind that had so often undone him in 
 the past. The second was so appalling that only in mo- 
 ments of the most exalted determination could he contem- 
 plate the task without a feeling of sick inability. Fortu- 
 nately, Betty would not hear of that drastic scheme of re- 
 writing the whole novel, and dismissed it without hesitation 
 when he put it before her as the only way out of his diffi- 
 culty. 
 
 "It's all very well," Jacob urged, braced for the moment 
 to the contemplation of splendid endeavour ; "but what else 
 can I do ? The bally thing will be half a million words long, 
 if I go on as I'm doing now. It would take me two years 
 to finish, and then no publisher would look at it." 
 
 Betty wrinkled her forehead. "Couldn't you end it up 
 somehow shorter than that?" she asked. 
 
 "I shall spoil it if I do," Jacob said. "The last part of 
 the book would be so absolutely faute de mieux; it would 
 look like patchwork." 
 
 "I do so want you to finish it," sighed Betty, as if the 
 expression of her wish must in some way induce him to 
 find a solution. 
 
 "I want to get it finished too," he said gloomily. 
 
 "Well, I'm not going to let you rewrite it, in any case," 
 was Betty's firm decision; and Jacob was relieved by the 
 feeling that he was no longer under any obligation to his 
 conscience. 
 
 "I believe it's the right thing to do," he said, by way of 
 finally demonstrating his willingness to undertake the im- 
 possible task. 
 
 Once, in a moment of despair, he suggested that "John 
 Tristram" should be put on one side for a time, and that he 
 should begin the story of the man who reacted so readily 
 to his circumstances. It was a solution that naturally ap- 
 pealed to him, the way out he had always adopted. In this,
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 297 
 
 as in other things, he longed to put the past away from him 
 and begin afresh. 
 
 "And waste all that you have written?" asked Betty in 
 horror. 
 
 "N-no," replied Jacob, fully conscious now of the dis- 
 honesty of his suggestion. "It wouldn't be wasted in any 
 case. It it has been training for me taught me something 
 about writing." 
 
 Betty stared at him in astonishment ; she found it difficult 
 to grasp the fact that he could be in earnest. "Do you mean 
 to say that you wouldn't publish ' John Tristram' at all ?" she 
 insisted. 
 
 "Well, not just yet," he prevaricated, quite evidently 
 afraid of her just indignation. 
 
 Betty shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "Don't take it like that, dear," he pleaded. "You know 
 what my difficulty is." A possible excuse occurred to him. 
 "I I might go on working at 'Tristram' in the intervals 
 between other books, you know," he said, with a touch of 
 eagerness. "Save it up until I'm known as a writer, and 
 then publish it as a sort of magnum opus. It would stand 
 a much better chance like that." 
 
 Betty's face expressed utter despair. She opened her 
 mouth and shut it again without speaking. And then she 
 stumbled on a plan which finally saved the situation. "If 
 you are going to make a life-work of it, you might as well 
 publish it in parts as you go along," she said. 
 
 Her intention was ironical, but Jacob was suddenly fired 
 by an idea. 
 
 "Of course, you didn't mean that," he said ; "but there's 
 something in it, all the same. I mean, why shouldn't I take 
 'Tristram' up to a climax of some sort, and let that end this 
 part of the book ? I might write an epilogue, or something, 
 to explain that I meant to go on with him later." 
 
 "I would sooner you did that than nothing," replied 
 Betty, who had not as yet grasped the possibilities of the 
 situation. 
 
 "It's only a logical development of the sequel idea,"
 
 298 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob said, searching his mind for a precedent. "And, after 
 all, it is a part of my whole theory that it's absurd to end 
 the life-story of a man at his marriage, or at any other 
 point short of his death for that matter." He hesitated a 
 moment, and then added: "A man of Tristram's sort, of 
 course. It would be another thing if he crystallised, about 
 middle-age." 
 
 And once this possibility of his escape from perplexity had 
 been presented to him, Jacob became enthusiastic to make 
 use of it. He talked it all over with Betty at considerable 
 length, and soon discovered that the impending climax in 
 Tristram's career was, indeed, a natural and logical halting- 
 place in his history. 
 
 When she had had time to alter her conception of the 
 book as a whole, Betty began to lose her attitude of conces- 
 sion, and shared something of his excitement. 
 
 Meredith had gone back to Cornwall at the beginning of 
 July, but Jacob wrote to him and asked his advice about the 
 extension of Tristram's story into more than one volume, 
 and also as to choice of publisher. 
 
 Meredith's reply was not encouraging with regard to the 
 first point Betty soon overrode his opinion in that respect 
 but he advised his own publisher as likely, at least, to 
 consider the scheme. 
 
 And in face of all difficulties, the truncated story of John 
 Tristram was completed by the beginning of September. 
 
 ii 
 
 / 
 While the manuscript was at the typist's, Jacob wrote a 
 
 careful letter to Bailey and Williams, Meredith's publishers. 
 He knew that this preliminary was unnecessary, but he 
 wanted to prepare his way for his book's reception. He 
 felt that this method of approach was slightly more dignified 
 and literary than that of dumping his goods on the counter 
 like a commercial traveller. 
 
 Now that the book was finished and even at that mo- 
 ment being read, no doubt, by a diligent typist who might be
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 299 
 
 intelligent enough to appreciate it he was conscious of a 
 strong desire to explain its relation to himself and to the 
 average novel. It was not, he wished to say and did say 
 repeatedly to Betty so much a novel as an experiment in 
 fiction, and it was only after long argument on the evils of 
 self-deprecation that Betty persuaded him to omit this ex- 
 planation from his letter to Bailey and Williams. 
 
 Their prompt answer, with the stereotyped expression of 
 the pleasure they anticipated from the reading of his book, 
 raised his spirits for a time. It seemed to him that that 
 perfectly orthodox letter conveyed some particular regard 
 for his work, whether because he was & friend of Meredith's, 
 or because, as he hoped, Bailey and Williams had learned in 
 some way of his connection with the reviewing staff of the 
 Daily Post. He pictured a keen and inquiring firm of pub- 
 lishers, who made it their business to seek out literary talent. 
 Betty, even more innocent still, did not disguise her cer- 
 tainty that that letter was prompted by knowledge of Jacob's 
 ability. 
 
 A reaction came when he received the neat and legible 
 typescript, together with a bill for g 95. 3d. The latter 
 scared him only for a moment, but the remarkably altered 
 version of his work took all the confidence out of him. The 
 original manuscript, with its dirty, dog's-eared front pages, 
 was a history not only of John Tristram's, but also of a 
 fragment of Jacob's own life. Differences in the handwrit- 
 ing, alterations in the text, certain smudges and blots, an 
 occasional spot of grease all these were indications of his 
 own moods and of the conditions in which he had written. 
 Those marks recalled to him the visions that he had so often 
 failed to express. This disgustingly frank typescript had 
 no character ; it exposed every weakness of his phraseology 
 with hideous unconcern; it was like some mechanical re- 
 production of a pencil drawing, displaying the outline, and 
 missing every shade of feeling. 
 
 He gave up hope as he laboured over the task of correct- 
 ing it. (He had been wrong about the idealised typist; she 
 was not intelligent. Some of her mistakes made him blush
 
 300 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 with shame. What could she have thought of him, to im- 
 agine that he could write such dreadful banalities as some 
 of those she had read into his work? "He sat, his face 
 towards the village . . ." he read, and groaned as he altered 
 it to "He set his face towards the village. . . .") But he 
 hid his despair from Betty. He knew now that the book was 
 amateurish the worst word he could find inconsecutive ; 
 badly, clumsily written ; but it would be a waste of energy 
 to argue with Betty about it ; a piece of unnecessary cruelty 
 if he could succeed in disillusioning her. The book must 
 go to Bailey and Williams, and he consoled himself with 
 the thought that he would, in all probability, never meet any 
 member of that well-known firm. They might smile at his 
 temerity in submitting such a hopeless effort at novel-writ- 
 ing, but he would not actually see any evidence of their 
 contempt or pity. 
 
 His mood changed again when the manuscript had been 
 sent off and he had received an acknowledgment of its re- 
 ceipt by a postcard, which also informed him that Bailey 
 and Williams would not hold themselves responsible for 
 loss of the manuscript by fire or other disaster. He looked 
 back on the story now with faint approval, and was willing 
 once more to draw confidence from Betty. He could not 
 believe her more daring prophecies, but he began to hope 
 for acceptance. 
 
 They decided that they would expect no answer for at 
 least a week. Jacob, with an air of knowledge, explained 
 that a fortnight was the minimum. But both of them were 
 secretly excited by every postman's knock long before the 
 stipulated seven days had gone by. No open reference was 
 made to their perfervent anticipations, and when the knock 
 came at the front door of their own house, Jacob would 
 stroll out of the room and go downstairs with an exagger- 
 ated assumption of indifference, and, returning, would ap- 
 pear to overlook Betty's quick' glance at his face as he en- 
 tered the room. There was no need for her to ask any 
 question ; that one glance was sufficient for her. 
 
 "Only a circular for the chap downstairs," was a dis-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 301 
 
 tressing report to bring; but they could not achieve any 
 sort of contentment until they knew for certain that their 
 fate was not yet pronounced; impossible for them to sit 
 at ease while that all-important missive might be lying on the 
 mat inside their front door. 
 
 Nevertheless, they wearied of expectation before the letter 
 came. Some tired sense in them failed at last to respond to 
 the stimulus of a double-knock. At the end of a fortnight, 
 Jacob was refusing to go downstairs for any post arriving 
 between breakfast and nine o'clock at night. 
 
 "It's bound to come by one or other of those," he ex- 
 plained, and instanced his own knowledge of business 
 methods. "We only posted our letters once a day when I 
 was at Price and Mallinson's," he argued. "I dictated them 
 in the morning, and they were brought to me to sign at 
 five o'clock. If it was urgent, we wired or telephoned. And 
 this letter certainly wouldn't seem urgent to Bally Williams" 
 their usual degradation of the firm's style "whichever 
 way they answered." 
 
 Betty thought the delay might be a good sign. Jacob, 
 with a rather deliberate pessimism, thought it might be a 
 bad one. 
 
 "Why don't you begin that other book?" Betty asked 
 one day, nearly a fortnight after John Tristram had gone 
 out on his first adventure. "You've plenty of time now." 
 
 "I don't know," Jacob said. "It hardly seems worth 
 while till I've learnt the fate of the first." 
 
 "Why not?" she returned; and he hesitated to declare 
 that if the first were refused, he would never write another. 
 
 "What difference does that make?" she persisted. "If 
 this publisher refuses it, another won't." 
 
 "You think they will refuse it, then?" he put in. 
 
 "Don't be so silly!" Betty said. "I don't think so for a 
 minute, but I can't see why you shouldn't begin the next." 
 
 Jacob knew that there was no reason, unless he confessed 
 that he was prepared for final discouragement by one re- 
 fusal. 
 
 She returned to the subject at breakfast the next morning,
 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 and encouraged him to discuss the detail of his projected 
 fantasy, and Jacob discovered then that in the interval that 
 had elapsed since their dinner at the Holborn the story had 
 been maturing in the secret places of his mind. All sorts of 
 new and, as it seemed to him, entertaining aspects of the 
 idea bubbled up spontaneously even a title. 
 
 "I might call it 'The Creature of Circumstance,' " he 
 suggested. 
 
 Betty approved the suggestion. 
 
 And after breakfast he sat down with the ostensible pur- 
 pose of making a few notes. He would, he said, plan his 
 book carefully, weigh its construction and proportions in 
 advance. But when he came out eagerly into the little 
 kitchen at half-past twelve, he had made no notes. The 
 opening chapter, he explained, had been so vividly in his 
 mind that he had begun it at once, and wanted now to read 
 the first considerable instalment to Betty without a moment's 
 delay. 
 
 "I've done just over fifteen hundred words," he an- 
 nounced with enthusiasm; "and really, do you know, I 
 think it's rather good." 
 
 Their enthusiasm for the new book was maintained at 
 high pitch for the next twelve days, and their anticipation 
 of Bailey and Williams's reply waned in proportion, so that 
 when at last, nearly a month after the manuscript had been 
 sent out, the fateful letter appeared on the breakfast-table 
 one morning, Jacob opened it without realising that this 
 was the message he had so tremblingly desired three weeks 
 before. 
 
 "By Jove! this is it; it's from old bally Bill!" he ex- 
 claimed, as he caught sight of the notepaper heading. 
 
 "Well, what do they say?" asked Betty excitedly, her 
 eyes on his face. "Read it aloud, dear." She stretched out 
 her hand as if to take the letter from him. 
 
 "It's no go," Jacob said, and read : 
 
 '"DEAR MR. STAHL'" (the less formal mode of address was no 
 doubt due to Meredith's introduction),
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 303 
 
 "'I am sorry to say that we find we are unable to undertake 
 the publication of your book. It has been sent to two readers, and 
 in each case the opinion is not sufficiently favourable to justify our 
 taking up the book. So far as I can gather, the book would have 
 had a very fair chance of success a few years ago, but nowadays the 
 competition is so strong that your book's chance is greatly reduced. 
 I am returning the manuscript to you, and, with very many thanks 
 for letting me consider it, 
 
 " 'Yours very truly, 
 
 " 'per pro BAILEY AND WILLIAMS, 
 
 " 'STANLEY WILLIAMS.' " 
 
 "Hardly what you'd call a literary letter," remarked 
 Jacob. "Four 'books' in eight lines, and something integral 
 seems to have been omitted from that last sentence." 
 
 Betty took the letter from him and read it to herself. 
 "What do they mean by saying 'the book would have 
 had a very fair chance of success a few years ago'?" she 
 asked. 
 
 "Old-fashioned, I suppose," Jacob returned, conscious 
 that he was being very brave and careless. "Oh, well, it's 
 no go, dear. I never had much confidence in 'John Tris- 
 tram/ to tell you the truth. Let's forget it, and go on with 
 'The Creature of Circumstance.' I do think that that's com- 
 ing out rather well. I believe in that, I do, really." 
 
 "What was the name of that new publisher you men- 
 tioned the other day?" asked Betty. "Norman something. 
 You said he was publishing rather good stuff." 
 
 "Norman Goodrich," Jacob said. "Why?" 
 
 "Well, the first thing you do after breakfast," said 
 Betty, "is to sit down and ask him if he will read 'John 
 Tristram.' " 
 
 Jacob flushed slightly. "Is it any good ?" he asked. 
 
 ''If you don't write to him, I shall," replied Betty. "And 
 if he won't have it, it shall go to Methuen's and . . . and 
 Macmillan's, and every publisher in London, if necessary. 
 I'm perfectly certain that 'John Tristram' is going to be a 
 big success. Good gracious ! haven't you often told me that 
 all the best novels have been refused by publishers at least 
 once? I think you ought to be rather glad that yours has
 
 304 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 been refused too. If it had been trash, they would have 
 accepted it directly." 
 
 "You darling!" Jacob said. 
 
 "Well, will you write to Norman What's-his-name ?" 
 
 "Rather. Anything on earth to avoid these dreadful 
 scenes," said Jacob, laughing. 
 
 "You are so hopeless," Betty emphatically advised 
 him. "You give in at the first little thing that goes wrong." 
 
 "I will write to Norman Goodrich," Jacob as- 
 serted, still smiling. 
 
 "And I suppose if you'd been alone, you would never 
 have looked at 'John Tristram' again?" 
 
 "Probably not." 
 
 Betty glanced at him with a pretence of scorn and 
 shrugged her shoulders. 
 
 "It wouldn't be worth while if I hadn't got you," he ex- 
 plained. 
 
 in 
 
 His first letter to Norman Goodrich was censured out of 
 existence. A self-conscious honesty had influenced him to 
 quite unnecessary explanations concerning the book's re- 
 fusal by Bailey and Williams, and the peculiarity of the 
 experiment in fiction he was attempting. 
 
 Betty had insisted that she must read the letter before it 
 was sent. She read it in ominous silence, and then pulled a 
 chair up to the sitting-room table and sat down. 
 
 "I thought you had been in business," was her first com- 
 ment. 
 
 Jacob looked uncomfortable and ruffled his hair. "I'm 
 not going to do anything under false pretences," he said. 
 
 "You're not going to send this letter," replied Betty 
 firmly. 
 
 Jacob took it from her, read it through again, and then, 
 with a spurt of temper, tore it up. "I don't know that I 
 shall write at all," he said crossly. 
 
 Betty smiled. "You know you've been silly," she re- 
 marked.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 305 
 
 "Is it silly to be honest ?" he retorted. 
 
 "It isn't a question of honesty," Betty said. "It's simply 
 a matter of business." 
 
 "Well, I loathe business," returned Jacob. "I always 
 did. I hate the methods of business ; they're not honest. 
 It's all an attempt to take advantage of someone else's igno- 
 rance." 
 
 "Didn't you say that Norman Goodrich had published 
 some very good books ?" asked Betty. "Very well, then ; 
 can't you trust them to give an opinion on yours without 
 prejudicing them against it to start with?" 
 
 Jacob moved uneasily and ruffled his hair still further. 
 
 "It doesn't matter what Bailey and Williams think of the 
 book, or what you think of it," Betty continued ; "we want to 
 know what Mr. Goodrich thinks of it. You wouldn't preju- 
 dice him in its favour, so why prejudice him against it?" 
 
 "Well, what sort of letter would you write?" Jacob's 
 tone was distinctly ungracious still. 
 
 "I should say that you'd often reviewed the books he had 
 published, and that you have liked them, and think 'John 
 Tristram' will appeal to him." 
 
 "Isn't that trying to prejudice him in its favour?" 
 
 "I'll write it for you if you find it too much for your 
 conscience," replied Betty. "But it seems to me that that's 
 the exact truth. Isn't it true? If you're sure he won't like 
 the book, we'd better not send it." 
 
 "I suppose you're right," remarked Jacob, after a thought- 
 ful pause. 
 
 She put out her hand to him, and he took it and kissed it. 
 
 "That first letter was rather silly, now, wasn't it?" she 
 persisted. 
 
 "Do you wish I were a business man?" he asked. 
 
 "No. Thank goodness, you're not!" she said. "But 
 you are rather a troublesome baby sometimes." 
 
 The prompt reply that he received to his amended appli- 
 cation was signed "C. Norman," and contained a statement 
 to the effect that the firm would be pleased to read Mr. 
 Stahl's book, even if it were not in typescript. Betty and
 
 306 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob seemed to have some little justification this time in 
 assuming a peculiar interest, and more particularly as the 
 reply was received on the evening of the same day. 
 
 "Pretty quick work," Jacob thought, and added: "The 
 bally manuscript hasn't come back yet." 
 
 "You are really a very wonderful person," he said. 
 
 "What's the use of wasting time over a thing when it has 
 got to be done ?" she replied, conscious, perhaps, of a slight 
 satisfaction with her own efficiency. And when the manu- 
 script returned, next morning, she took upon herself the 
 business of repacking and redirecting it, and of sending it 
 off by registered post. 
 
 When she returned, Jacob told her how in his earlier 
 days he had seldom had the courage to send out again a 
 short story that had been once refused. "I preferred to sit 
 down and write another," he concluded. 
 
 "It's a good thing you've got me to look after you," was 
 Betty's comment. 
 
 Jacob endorsed that statement with fervour. . . . 
 
 They were prepared by experience for a further delay 
 of at least three weeks, and Jacob's interest being still ab- 
 sorbed by the development of his new book, he suffered 
 no such restlessness and incapacity to work as had upset 
 him on the first occasion. The new book was, in his own 
 words, "going splendidly." He was astonished at the ease 
 with which the development of the story came to him, and 
 grudged the time he must necessarily devote to filling the 
 literary columns of the Daily Post. "John Tristram" had 
 slipped into the background of his attention; he had come 
 to regard that work as a second string, or as a means for 
 providing a little pleasant excitement. 
 
 The manuscript had been despatched to Norman Good- 
 rich on a Tuesday, and Jacob was somewhat depressed the 
 following Monday by his contemplation of the unusually 
 large parcel of books that was set aside for him during 
 the afternoon conclave at the Daily Post offices. The de- 
 velopment of his new novel was so absorbingly interesting. 
 Even in the editor's room he had found his thoughts stray-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 307 
 
 ing. The story of "John Tristram" had never held him 
 like this. And yet Betty was undoubtedly less interested 
 in "The Creature," as they usually called it, than in the 
 first book. 
 
 He was debating this curious perversion of literary taste 
 as he descended the stairs, and then, looking down into the 
 entrance-lobby, he was amazed to see Betty herself waiting 
 there for him. 
 
 "What on earth . . ." he began, half in dismay, as he 
 hurried across to join her. 
 
 "They've accepted it," she said in an eager whisper, and 
 took his arm, to the great interest of the commissionaire, 
 who immediately jumped to the conclusion that Jacob had 
 been "nicely caught this time." 
 
 "It came ten minutes after you'd gone," she went on 
 breathlessly, as they went out, "and I simply couldn't wait. 
 Of course, I opened it. I knew what it was." 
 
 "What do they say?" asked Jacob. 
 
 She produced a rather crumpled letter from the pocket 
 of her jacket, and Jacob backed up against a shop-front and 
 read the wonderful tidings, facing the urgent traffic of Fleet 
 Street. 
 
 The letter was quite short. 
 
 "DEAR SIR, 
 
 "If you could make it convenient to call here on Thursday morn- 
 ing, I should be glad to see you with reference to your novel 
 'John Tristram.' If that time is not possible, will you kindly suggest 
 another ? 
 
 "Yours faithfully, 
 "For and on behalf of Norman Goodrich, Ltd., 
 
 "C NORMAN." 
 
 Jacob folded up the letter and put it in his pocket. 
 "Aren't you excited?" asked Betty, with a shade of dis- 
 appointment in her face and voice. 
 
 "Let's go and have tea somewhere. I wonder where 
 we could be quiet?" Jacob said, looking vaguely up and 
 down Fleet Street. 
 
 He felt immensely elated, and yet tranquil. He could not
 
 308 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 bring himself to any ordinary expression of pleasure. This 
 was the attainment, he thought, of a life's ambition, and he 
 wanted to contemplate the marvel of it in silence, holding 
 Betty's hand. Smaller achievement might be emphasised 
 by outward demonstrations of rapture; this was too great 
 a thing for any conventional glorying it was sufficient 
 without that. 
 
 But as they searched for the promise of quiet in a Fleet 
 Street tea-shop, he began to criticise his own elation. After 
 all, more than a thousand novels were published every 
 year, the overwhelming majority of them beneath contempt. 
 His was only one more added to the many disastrous es- 
 says in fiction. 
 
 He looked down at Betty. He meant to belittle his 
 achievement, but the sight of her elation checked him. If 
 he were only one among a thousand, he might, at least, 
 honestly enjoy his triumph with her. She had no doubts 
 or misgivings. Why should he for ever depreciate his own 
 abilities and prospects? 
 
 "It's it's immense," he said. 
 
 "I always knew it was going to be a success," she re- 
 turned. "Do say you're excited." 
 
 "I am, dear of course I am tremendously," he said, 
 and checked his inclination to point out the difference be- 
 tween acceptance and success. Why could he not let him- 
 self go? he wondered. It was as if there were some 
 indefinable thing that he was afraid of, some altitude of 
 self-confidence or certainty from which he instinctively 
 shrank. 
 
 But when they had discovered a conveniently remote 
 corner in the blankly unattractive basement of a tea-shop 
 opposite the Law Courts, he found a compromise between 
 his own hesitations and his desire to please Betty. 
 
 "This makes me keener than ever on the next book," he 
 said. "I do honestly believe in that." 
 
 "I believe in this one," replied Betty. 
 
 "I wish I had your confidence," said Jacob thought- 
 fully. "I don't mean in this book particularly in myself."
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 309 
 
 "I shouldn't like you to be too confident," said Betty 
 surprisingly. "It wouldn't be you," she added, by way of 
 explanation. 
 
 The need to explain himself could be denied no longer. 
 "Let me tell you how I feel about it," he said. He was 
 warm with exultation, both in the knowledge that his novel 
 had, almost certainly, been accepted, and in the fact that 
 he was so sure of a sympathetic listener. His success was 
 Betty's also. Their interests were so indissoluble. 
 
 "Go on, darling," she said. 
 
 "You see, this is my form of giving vent to excitement," 
 he began. "I'm stimulated to a sort of self-realisation. And 
 it is so glorious to be able to say it all to you, and know 
 you'll understand." 
 
 "Even now you're apologising," she said, smiling. 
 
 "I always do, I always shall," affirmed Jacob. "I can't 
 ever be quite sure enough about anything not to hesitate 
 about it. Sometimes I think it's a good thing to be like 
 that for me, anyhow; it wouldn't do for a Cabinet Min- 
 ister, or a General, or a parson, I admit. But about writ- 
 ing, dear; I do have moments of quite extraordinary con- 
 fidence before the book, or whatever it is, is finished. About 
 this next book, for instance, I think sometimes that it's go- 
 ing to be great I do really. But I can't delude myself 
 about a thing when it's done, and I should be afraid to 
 say so to anyone but you, because it looks so like false 
 modesty; pretending to run down your own stuff has the 
 air of fishing for compliments. But I do know about 
 'John Tristram,' for instance, that although it has got 
 some good work in it of a sort, that it isn't in any sense 
 a great book. Yes, I dare say you think so, but it isn't, 
 dear, really it isn't. And I don't want to think it is, even 
 when I am alone with you. I don't mind making up fairy 
 tales about it, talking of tenth editions and things like 
 that; but I should hate to think that 'John Tristram' was 
 the best thing I could do; and in some way I should hate 
 even to be satisfied with my own writing." He paused a
 
 310 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 moment, and added : "Not that there is the least chance of 
 it." 
 
 "Aren't you satisfied with The Creature'?" asked Betty. 
 
 "I'm excited about it now," replied Jacob. "I dare say 
 I shall hate it when it's finished." 
 
 "I wonder if you'll ever get tired of me?" said Betty, 
 with apparent irrelevance. 
 
 "Hardly the same thing, is it?" asked Jacob, laughing. 
 
 "I'm not sure," Betty said. 
 
 "But, darling, it's only the things I do myself that I feel 
 like that about," he expostulated. 
 
 "Well, but isn't it because you get tired of them?" 
 
 "Surely not," Jacob remonstrated; but in his own mind 
 he was not absolutely sure that fatigue had not something 
 to do with the disgust he felt for his own writing after 
 it was done. 
 
 "It's so absolutely different," he explained. "I'll admit 
 that I do get tired of people too; but you . . . you're my 
 complement, you're so inevitable . . . you're wife and sister 
 and mother and intimate friend all in one. Do you know 
 what I mean?" 
 
 She nodded, conscious that he had been too explanatory. 
 He was finding words for their relationship now; a year 
 ago he had been inarticulate, but more convincing. She 
 did not doubt him, she knew that his need for her was 
 overwhelming, but she recognised a difference in his feel- 
 ing for her. He was more tender and less passionate than 
 he had been before she went to Cornwall. His present 
 attitude was that she had once wished to find him in, and 
 now she missed the very quality she used to deprecate. 
 
 "Of course, I know, dear," she said fondly. "Am I really 
 all that to you ?" 
 
 "Much, much more than that," he responded. "I 
 shouldn't have cared a hang about this book being taken, 
 if it weren't for you. As a matter of fact, I should never 
 have finished it, of course."
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 311 
 
 IV 
 
 They were just preparing to go, when Jacob recognised 
 an acquaintance a few tables away from them. 
 
 "Hallo!" he said softly. "Do you see that chap in the 
 top-hat, Betty? Down the room on the right-hand side?" 
 
 "Yes. Do you know him?" she asked. 
 
 "Rather," remarked Jacob, with a subdued emphasis. "I 
 used to be envious of him once. We were in the same 
 office, writing advertisements, you know; and he was the 
 success and I was the failure." 
 
 "What's his name?" Betty said. 
 
 "Farmer." 
 
 "Are you going to speak to him?" 
 
 "I think so; why not?" 
 
 Betty evidently had some reserve in her mind. "I'll go 
 on," she said. 
 
 "Oh, why?" asked Jacob. "I shall only just say some- 
 thing as we go by." 
 
 "Did he ... did he know . . . Lola ?" Betty said, with a 
 look of half-wistful perplexity. 
 
 "Oh, Lord, no!" replied Jacob with emphasis. "It was 
 long after we separated, and in any case he wouldn't have 
 known her. He wasn't the sort of man one asked to din- 
 ner, I mean." 
 
 "I don't think I want to know him either," Betty said. 
 
 "How funny of you," commented Jacob; "but it doesn't 
 matter." 
 
 He was a little vexed. Here was the very contretemps 
 he had pictured : the opportunity to make his little boast 
 of success before one who had known him as an unsuc- 
 cessful writer of advertisements. 
 
 "There's no reason why you shouldn't speak to him," 
 Betty said, noticing Jacob's petulance. 
 
 "Why are you so afraid of being introduced ?" he asked. 
 
 "I'm not I don't see what good it is, that's all. We 
 shall probably never see him again,", replied Betty. She 
 could not have defined her reason for wishing to avoid
 
 312 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 this association with Jacob's past, but she was quite de- 
 termined that she would avoid Mr. Farmer. She could 
 not face a formal introduction to him as Jacob's wife. She 
 felt, despite all Jacob's assurances that Farmer had never 
 known Lola, that in some subtle way he must guess that 
 her own relations with Jacob were irregular. And this 
 strange Mr. Farmer was not an attractive person. He was 
 rather stout, seedily overdressed, and he had a coarse, com- 
 mon face. He was not the sort of man, she thought, that 
 Jacob ought ever to have been familiar with. 
 
 "You stop and speak to him, dear; I'll go on," she 
 said. She rose and picked up the little white ticket from 
 the dirty, marble-topped table. "I'll wait for you outside," 
 she added. 
 
 "I can't understand why . . ." began Jacob, but she only 
 smiled at him and went out. Mr. Farmer stared at her 
 as she passed him. 
 
 Jacob had mislaid a glove, and by the time he found it, 
 pressed into the crumb-stored fold between the back and 
 the seat of the American-cloth covered settee on which 
 they had been sitting, Betty was half-way up the stairs. 
 He followed her with a self-sacrificing determination to 
 cut Farmer dead. He did not know why he should, but he 
 believed that for some strange reason Betty desired this 
 abnegation. 
 
 But Mr. Farmer was not an easy person to cut. 
 
 "Hello!" he said, as Jacob, with a studiously distracted 
 air, prepared to pass. "Hello, Stoll!" he repeated, and 
 leaned over the table and drew Jacob's attention by prod- 
 ding him with an umbrella. 
 
 "Hallo, Farmer! I didn't see you," lied Jacob. 
 
 "Not grown any thinner either," remarked Farmer. 
 "Where you been all this time? And who's the lady?" 
 
 Jacob blushed. "That was my wife who just went out," 
 he said. 
 
 Mr. Farmer twisted his short neck in an effort to look 
 up the stairs. "Gone in for the holy state, have you?" he 
 said. "So've I, worse luck."
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 313 
 
 Jacob could find no answer to this, short of an elaborate 
 explanation of his own happiness ; so he changed the con- 
 versation by saying: "What are you doing now?" 
 
 "Gone back to the old shop, for the time being," replied 
 Farmer. "But I've got a big thing on. However, can't 
 tell you about that just yet. You'll hear of it before long. 
 What you doing? Anything particular?" 
 
 This was the opportunity Jacob had pictured, but he 
 felt that just as it was impossible to explain his happiness 
 in Betty to Farmer, so would it be not less futile to boast 
 of any literary success. He realised it instantly as he 
 looked at the rather stout, rather shabbily smart man be- 
 fore him. Farmer would want to know whether this sort 
 of writing "paid." He could not appreciate the glory of 
 having a novel accepted, and in any case he would cer- 
 tainly write down half of any possible statement as brag. 
 
 "Oh, I'm doing all right," Jacob said, and added quickly, 
 "Well, I must be getting on, I'm afraid. My wife will be 
 waiting for me." 
 
 Farmer grinned. "Like that already, is it?" he said. 
 "Well, so long, see you again some time. You look out 
 for that big thing of mine in the papers just after Christ- 
 mas." 
 
 "Well, did you speak to him?" asked Betty, when Jacob 
 joined her in the Strand. 
 
 "He prodded me with an umbrella," Jacob said. 
 
 "Did you tell him about your book?" 
 
 "No. He asked who you were, and I said you were my 
 wife, and he then remarked that he was married too, worse 
 luck. After that I had nothing more to say to him of any 
 kind. Betty, you were quite right. We haven't anything 
 to say to people like Farmer; I can't begin to make my- 
 self understood by them. Not in the simplest ways. But 
 how did you know ?" 
 
 "I didn't know," Betty said. "I only felt that I didn't 
 want to be introduced to him." 
 
 "It wasn't because you are still afraid of meeting people 
 . . . anyone?"
 
 314. THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "No." She said it quite readily and definitely, but she 
 did not deceive him. Her denial had the same quality as 
 those earlier reservations in Cornwall. Jacob made no 
 reply, but each of them knew with illuminating distinctness 
 what was in the other's mind. He was on the verge of 
 another protestation, a warning that she must conquer this 
 shrinking of hers ; she was prepared to reply that she must 
 be left to fight the thing out for herself, that she would 
 "get over it ... in time." 
 
 They held the suspense for a few moments, each fram- 
 ing an attitude, as clearly conscious of the old argument 
 as if the dispute was fiercely in progress; and then Jacob 
 determinedly relinquished it. It was true, he thought, that 
 she must win her way to confidence by her own effort; he 
 must not harry her. 
 
 The possibility of a graceful escape from the impending 
 argument was provided by the sight of a grim and solid 
 block of offices a few yards farther down the Strand. 
 
 "That's Price and Mallinson's my old place," said Ja- 
 cob, with an assumption of brisk interest. "Farmer is there 
 still, you know." 
 
 "Aren't you glad to be out of it?" asked Betty, with 
 evident relief. 
 
 "My goodness, yes," Jacob said with enthusiasm. 
 
 The recovery was finally achieved by Betty taking his 
 arm and asking brightly: "Who's had a novel accepted?" 
 
 "We have," returned Jacob, on the same note of spright- 
 liness. 
 
 He felt as if they had had a quarrel and had beautifully 
 made it up again. 
 
 "I don't quite know where we are going," remarked Ja- 
 cob presently. "Couldn't we do something to celebrate 
 the occasion?" 
 
 ' "Oh, let's go and tell Freda," suggested Betty. "She'll 
 be so interested." 
 
 "Do you think she will?" asked Jacob doubtfully.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 315 
 
 He had not seen Freda more than half a dozen times 
 during the past six months. She seemed to be greatly pre- 
 occupied with her management of the boarding-house, and 
 seldom found time to come to Great Ormond Street in the 
 evening. She had the whole affair on her hands now, for 
 Mrs. Parmenter had gone to bed one day at the end of 
 April, and had remained in bed ever since. She had defi- 
 nitely announced her nearly approaching end on several 
 occasions, had made her last provisions for the settlement 
 of her affairs, and bidden farewell to Freda and the hastily- 
 summoned Betty. And after each solemn leave-taking she 
 had waked the next morning, distinctly cheered and in- 
 vigorated by the previous evening's excitement. 
 
 Jacob had said that she would probably go on for years 
 in the same condition. He showed no generosity of spirit 
 in his attitude towards Mrs. Parmenter. He could not 
 forgive her libel of him. He was bitter enough to astonish 
 Betty, who had at first tried to reason with his evident 
 animus. 
 
 "Poor old thing, she's so old!" had been her attempted 
 palliation of Mrs. Parmenter's fault. 
 
 "Old enough to be a little more charitable," Jacob had 
 snapped, and had added : "And all this dying business once 
 a fortnight annoys me." 
 
 "She really thinks she's dying, dear," Betty had answered, 
 and Jacob had looked scornful disbelief. 
 
 Nor was Freda in his good books. He believed that she 
 doubted and suspected him; and he deprecated although 
 he had never openly expressed his displeasure Betty's 
 almost daily visit to Montague Place to help with the house- 
 work. He would have tried to dissuade her from that 
 occupation if he had not seen that some such distraction 
 was necessary for her. Their own little suite of rooms 
 was soon disposed of. They had agreed that Jacob's at- 
 tention must not be distracted during the morning by her 
 presence in the sitting-room ; and if she did not go to help 
 at Montague Place, what was there for her to do? as she
 
 316 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 put it. Her temperament so obviously demanded an em- 
 ployment of some kind. 
 
 In his mind Jacob gloriously planned an extension of 
 their own resources, that should allow them to live in a 
 flat large enough to provide Betty with permanent interest 
 at home. He deluded himself with the belief that he con- 
 sidered it below Betty's dignity to help in the boarding- 
 house; but in his most honest moods he could not disguise 
 the fact that he was jealous of Betty's intimacy with Freda 
 Cairns, as she now frankly called herself. 
 
 And for these reasons the suggestion that they should 
 celebrate the occasion of "John Tristram's" acceptance by 
 carrying the news to Montague Place was not one that 
 aroused his enthusiasm. 
 
 "I don't suppose Freda will be the least interested," he 
 said. 
 
 "You're so funny about Freda," returned Betty. "She's 
 awfully fond of you." 
 
 "I doubt it," Jacob said. "I doubt it quite immensely." 
 
 "I know she is," was Betty's decided answer. 
 
 "You think everybody likes me." 
 
 "I don't! I know Mrs. Parmenter doesn't." 
 
 "You can tell Freda about it to-morrow morning. I've 
 never been to that beastly place since I left last August." 
 
 "I don't know why you should call it a 'beastly' place. 
 You met me there, anyhow." 
 
 "And took you away from it." 
 
 "I wish you'd come," persisted Betty. "I want you to." 
 
 They had reached Charing Cross Post Office by this 
 time, and she led him round the corner and stopped to 
 plead her cause in the lee of the railings of Morley's Hotel. 
 
 "We can take a bus up to the corner of Russell Street, 
 if you don't want to walk any farther," she said by way 
 of inducement. 
 
 Jacob smiled. "That doesn't tempt me," he said. "But 
 if you want me to come, I suppose I shall. But I can't for 
 the life of me see why you want me to." 
 
 "I want to tell Freda," Betty said, as though that were
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 317 
 
 surely conclusive; and then, seeing that Jacob was about 
 to repeat his former suggestion that to-morrow was time 
 enough for that, she went on. "I do wish you would be 
 nicer to her. Of course she thinks that you don't like her. 
 Why don't you?" 
 
 "I would if she'd let me," replied Jacob. 
 
 "Well, come and tell her about the book now," pleaded 
 Betty. 
 
 "I suppose I may just as well be gracious about it and 
 say 'yes' at once," remarked Jacob. "When once you've 
 made up your mind to a thing . . ." 
 
 "It isn't that," Betty said vaguely, as they crossed the 
 road to take the yellow Camden Town bus.
 
 XV 
 MRS. PARMENTER 
 
 FREDA was at the window as they passed and opened 
 the door to them. 
 
 "I thought you were never coming," she said; and then 
 to Jacob: "It was nice of you to come, too." 
 
 He was puzzled. "Did you expect us . . ." he began, 
 but Betty understood. 
 
 "Is she ... ?" was her brief indication of essentials, 
 and she looked quickly up the stairs. 
 
 "Yes; but really this time," Freda said. "Come into the 
 drawing-room, there's no one there." 
 
 "She's been unconscious since four o'clock," she went 
 on hurriedly when they were in the drawing-room. "And 
 I sent round for you, and you were out. Jane said she'd 
 left a message. Didn't you get it?" 
 
 "We haven't been back," explained Betty. "But . . ." 
 
 "I'm afraid so," Freda said. "The doctor's up there 
 now." 
 
 They spoke quickly, in subdued voices; there was an air 
 of hushed eagerness about them as if they were utterly 
 absorbed by this business of Mrs. Parmenter's illness. 
 
 "Is she in the room overhead?" asked Jacob in his ordi- 
 nary voice; and they both turned and looked at him, ap- 
 parently startled by his noisy intrusion into the sibilance of 
 their speech. 
 
 "Oh no," Freda said. "She's in her own room." 
 
 "I thought, as you were whispering . . ." began Jacob, 
 but they turned away from him and continued their own 
 conversation. 
 
 "Has he been here long?" Betty asked. 
 
 318
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 319 
 
 "About twenty minutes," Freda said. 
 
 Jacob walked over to the window and left them to the 
 discussion of Mrs. Parmenter's symptoms. He was negli- 
 gible just now. They knew that he was lacking in interest 
 and sympathy, and this affair was so engrossing that they 
 threw aside any pretence of considering his feelings. He 
 was merely a subsidiary male, quite useless and super- 
 fluous at this moment. Freda had said it was nice of 
 him to come, but having come, his duty was to remain 
 silently in the background. 
 
 And what was it all about? he wondered. If this old 
 woman were really dying at last, why should her death 
 be regarded as a solemn and important occasion ? She had 
 done nothing in the world. She had failed to hold her 
 husband's affection. He could picture that menage: the 
 inactive Parmenter and his critical, acid, middle-aged wife. 
 No doubt she had nagged him. Jacob remembered how 
 she had taken himself to task about the question of making 
 love to Betty. She had been nervous then. He was a 
 stranger and not subject to her authority, but he had had 
 a glimpse of her possibilities. Her methods with a dilatory 
 husband would have been more pronounced. And after 
 she had made his life unbearable, practically thrown him 
 into the arms of another woman, she had made an immense 
 grievance of his desertion. All the conventions of her 
 world exhibited her as the injured, outraged person. That 
 she made her husband's life unbearable was a venial fault, 
 that he should desert her was a heinous sin. Without ques- 
 tion she had prided herself on having always been "faithful" 
 to him. 
 
 Jacob's thoughts took another turn, and his analysis 
 wandered into uncertain depths. It was not Mrs. Par- 
 menter's fault, he reflected; she could not be other than 
 she was. There were thousands, hundreds of thousands, 
 of women like her. She had had no child, but if she had, 
 her tragedy might well have been repeated. She could 
 not beget love ; probably no one had ever felt love for her ; 
 her child, son or daughter, might have left her also they
 
 320 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 would not have suffered the social condemnation heaped 
 upon their father, but their mother would have found cause 
 for another -grievance. She cherished those grievances; 
 they gave her a faint importance. Jacob did not know 
 whether she had ever fervently desired love; he had seen 
 no signs of such a desire, but certainly she craved for con- 
 sideration. She had enjoyed a little dignity as the spectacu- 
 lar head of that boarding-house ; she had immensely enjoyed 
 the dignity of those deathbed romances. 
 
 All her life she had done nothing, added nothing to hu- 
 man happiness. So far as Jacob could see, she had lived 
 in vain, conforming to the little rules of conduct that con- 
 stituted, for her, the whole law of life ; she had never loved, 
 never borne children, never sacrificed herself, never faced 
 existence. Yet, now that this useless and insignificant unit 
 was dying, she had become enormously significant and im- 
 portant. The house was full of whispering and anxiety. 
 Presently the blinds would be down, and passers-by would 
 look up at the windows and feel a sudden chill. . . . 
 
 It was not Mrs. Parmenter that was of importance ; it 
 was death invading the respectability of civilisation. 
 
 Jacob turned round and saw that Betty had taken off her 
 hat and coat. Freda was just leaving the room. 
 
 "Are you going to stay?" he asked. 
 
 "I must help Freda," Betty said. "There's no reason 
 why you should stay if you don't want to." She held up 
 her hand. "Listen," she said, "the doctor's just corning 
 down." 
 
 "Well, and what if he is ?" replied Jacob, fretfully. "You 
 won't help him by listening to his steps on the stairs." 
 
 Betty pushed his quibble on one side. "Sh ! I want to 
 hear," she said. 
 
 Jacob felt stifled, frustrated. "My dear Betty, don't be 
 so silly," he said. "Freda will be back directly to tell you 
 precisely what the doctor has said. You won't know a 
 moment sooner by listening now." 
 
 She turned her head and looked at him as if he had called 
 to her from another room. "Why are you so peevish?"
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 821 
 
 she asked. "I only wanted to hear whether it was the 
 doctor or not. I wish you'd go if you want to. There's 
 no reason why you should stay." 
 
 "Is there any reason why you should?" he said. 
 
 "We may have to sit up with her," replied Betty. 
 
 "Do you mean that you may be here all night?" 
 
 She was giving him her attention now. "Darling, I'm so 
 sorry," she said. "It is hard lines on you, I know. But I 
 couldn't leave it all to Freda, could I ? She's no one except 
 Jane to do anything." 
 
 Jacob suffered a sudden reaction. The quotation, "A 
 ministering angel, thou," rose to his consciousness. "It's 
 just like you, of course," he said, and added quickly: "Yes, 
 I suppose you must stay, dear; but I don't think I will, 
 unless I can help in any way." 
 
 "You can get dinner out," Betty suggested. 
 
 He nodded, and found himself listening attentively to 
 the rumble of a man's voice in the hall. Neither he nor 
 Betty spoke again until they heard the front door gently 
 closed, and the sound of the doctor's feet going quickly 
 down the steps outside. Jacob instinctively moved towards 
 the window, and was rewarded by the sight of a top-hat 
 and the back of a grey overcoat with a black velvet collar. 
 
 As he turned back to the room, Freda came in. 
 
 "It was Dr. Paramore," she said, as though that were 
 a fact of importance. "He says that she mayn't recover 
 consciousness." 
 
 "Will it be long?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "He can't say," Freda replied. "It might be two or three 
 days, he thinks not longer." 
 
 They stood in a group near the middle of the room. Ja- 
 cob had been caught by the ominous mystery of it all now, 
 and it was he who broke the silence that had suddenly come 
 upon them. "What is it, exactly?" he asked. 
 
 "Old age chiefly, I think," Freda said. "Dr. Paramore 
 thought that she had probably ruptured some little blood- 
 vessel in the brain a kind of apoplexy, you know. It 
 isn't uncommon, he says." She paused a moment, and then
 
 322 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 added : "There won't be any difficulty about the certificate." 
 
 "I shall stay and sit up with her, of course," said Betty 
 quickly, as though she wished to cover up that last prac- 
 tical aspect of the affair disclosed by Freda. 
 
 "Of course you won't," Freda returned. 
 
 For a minute or so they argued that point. Jacob saw 
 that both of them knew perfectly well that Betty would 
 stay, but the argument was a necessary formula. 
 
 "What about you?" said Freda, turning to him. 
 
 "Oh, I shall be all right," Jacob said. "Is there anything 
 I could do for you?" 
 
 "I don't think so, thanks very much," Freda told him. 
 
 They both came with him to the door, and he whispered 
 a good-bye to Betty in the hall. 
 
 ii 
 
 Even when he came into the lamplit street, that air of 
 expectancy and subdual remained with him for a moment, 
 so that he frowned at the clamour of a whistling errand- 
 boy who rattled past him on a leisurely carrier-tricycle. 
 
 And then he recovered himself and went on into Bedford 
 Square with a grateful sense of freedom. The clatter 
 of a horse's hoofs and the jingle of a passing hansom com- 
 pleted his feeling of liberation. He wanted to shout. There 
 was no reason why he should be gloomy, silent and de- 
 pressed. Betty would soon be back with him, and he had 
 had his novel accepted. They had never told Freda. It 
 would have been impossible to tell her. He wondered 
 why. 
 
 The whole affair had been strange in its orthodoxy. All 
 that creeping silence had been usual, the accepted attitude, 
 and he had been intrigued into it. But in this case, at least, 
 it had been quite meaningless. The old woman upstairs had 
 been unconscious. They would not have disturbed her 
 if they had played the piano. Yet that would have seemed, 
 and still seemed to him, an impossible outrage. 
 
 He pictured the boarders at dinner. Perhaps Betty would
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 323 
 
 be at the head of the table. She would not tell the board- 
 ers that Mrs. Parmenter was dying ; if possible, they would 
 not be told until she had been taken out of the house. Death 
 was not only ominous, it was also slightly indecent, a thing 
 to be avoided by any respectable boarding-house. But the 
 boarders would be told that she was very ill, so that the 
 possibility of outrage by noise might be lessened. 
 
 Not one of them all was devoted to Mrs. Parmenter, but 
 she had reached her hour of supreme importance and 
 was unaware of it now that it had come. Had she been 
 endowed with some gift of prevision that had warned her 
 to anticipate the opportunity she could never use ? At least 
 she had had, and no doubt enjoyed, the simulacrum, al- 
 though the reality was denied to her. Curiously enough, 
 Freda and Betty had seemed to know that those earlier 
 ceremonies had been a sham. The last time she had been 
 sent for, Betty had been a little annoyed. They had no 
 doubt now. They recognised the shadow when it came. 
 And it was to that they deferred; that was the figure to 
 which they paid their terrified tribute. The withered old 
 woman on the bed was only honoured for the company 
 she was keeping. 
 
 A hot, sour smell penetrated Jacob's abstraction, and 
 he came back into the world of life, to find that he was at 
 the intersection of Oxford Street and Tottenham Court 
 Road. The big factory over the way had been manufac- 
 turing vinegar that afternoon. He turned westwards with 
 a touch of impatience, and struggled through the group 
 of people who were waiting for the buses. He was pleas- 
 antly absorbed by his meditations. It seemed to him that 
 this slight experience had given him a new insight into 
 the problem of life. His mind was deliciously clear and 
 active, his thoughts a fascinating entertainment. He found 
 an Italian restaurant a little way past Wardour Street, and 
 went in and ordered dinner. 
 
 For a time he was distracted by his surroundings and 
 the detail of his meal, but when he had finished, the cur-
 
 324 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 rent of his thought began to flow again, powerful with new 
 suggestions. 
 
 Why, he wondered, should Mrs. Parmenter be watched 
 through the night? The more primitive animal sought 
 loneliness when the last call came. There was a reason 
 for that: the necessity to find refuge. The wild had no 
 pity for the injured and the dying. The old wolf was 
 the prey of the pack. But civilisation attended and 
 watched. Was it to console and cheer the departing visi- 
 tor? Mrs. Parmenter was not expected to recover con- 
 sciousness; still there was a hope, probably. And if she 
 did become aware of life again at the last, it must be 
 presented to her in human form. She must be held back, 
 if possible", for another hour, even for another five min- 
 utes. Although she was old, and there was no possible 
 chance of her recovery, they must keep her alive as long 
 as they could ; snatch for her a day, an hour, a minute more 
 of earth; fight desperately lest the eternity she anticipated 
 should be prolonged by one unnecessary fraction of time. 
 
 (Could one prolong eternity? According to the Christian 
 theory, eternity had certainly one end the beginning ! ) 
 
 Why did not the spirit, slowly disentangling itself from 
 the flesh, come to despise the garment it was beginning to 
 wear so lightly? Even now, in the flush of health, Jacob 
 felt that he could look down upon and despise his body, 
 with its contemptible necessities for food and toilet, its 
 everlasting demand upon the attention. Its outlines might 
 be beautiful, subject for the theme of the highest art; but 
 the detail of its functions, its perpetual decay and the 
 means of its renewal, was disgusting, something one did 
 not dare to contemplate. He found an image in the re- 
 membrance of that vinegar factory. . . . 
 
 Yet it seemed that the departing spirit clung fondly to 
 that chemical laboratory which had been the temporary 
 vehicle of its expression ; or if it did not and he had heard 
 that "the pangs of death" was a romantic phrase justified 
 only by rare exceptions it was certainly assumed to do so 
 by the living. And the misconception did not end there, for
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 825 
 
 after death this disgusting, useless body was honoured, cased 
 in lead and walnut, loaded with flowers, carried in a glass 
 case, and put away with propitiatory ceremonies. 
 
 "Lord, what rot it all is!" thought Jacob. He was ex- 
 alted and happy, miraculously rediscovering for himself 
 all the old, neglected truths that shine so brightly when 
 they are our own treasure-trove. 
 
 And the creative spirit stayed with him until he was 
 nearly home in Great Ormond Street. It failed rapidly 
 at last he had begun to digest his dinner, no doubt but 
 left him with an afterglow of resolution to make a prac- 
 tical use of his momentary illumination. He had had new 
 experience that day, and had profited by it. He must use 
 this new knowledge of his in a future novel. There was 
 no room for it in "The Creature of Circumstance," but in 
 the second part of "John Tristram" he might find, or make, 
 an opportunity. 
 
 The rooms in Great Ormond Street seemed horribly 
 empty and desolate. After he had lit the lamp he went 
 into the bedroom, and reflected that he and Betty had never 
 before been separated for more than an hour or two since 
 she came to him in Cornwall. 
 
 He wanted to. tell her what he had been thinking, and 
 also to anticipate his interview with Norman Goodrich. 
 He remembered that he must write and confirm that ap- 
 pointment. He hesitated for a moment, wondering if 
 to-morrow would not do as well. There was plenty of time 
 too much time. Why had they not said Wednesday in- 
 stead of Thursday? Finally he sat down and wrote the 
 letter, because he thought Betty would commend his promp- 
 titude. She kept him up to these things. She was like a 
 strong, invigorating current of life to him. Without her 
 he was incomplete. 
 
 He pictured her in that upstairs room, watching through 
 the long night, watching the disintegrating figure of old 
 age that fought to remain a few moments longer out of 
 Paradise.
 
 326 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 in 
 
 The struggle lasted until the small hours of Thursday 
 morning. 
 
 Jacob conceived some kind of picture from the reports 
 of a tired Betty, whom he saw at intervals either when 
 he called to make inquiry at Montague Place, or when she 
 returned to Great Ormond Street for a few hours' rest from 
 the expectant atmosphere of the boarding-house. 
 
 Nothing could be done for the patient except force a lit- 
 tle nourishment into her. Death was creeping up from 
 her feet as an invading paralysis that slowly ousted the 
 forces of life with unrelenting pertinacity. She lay per- 
 fectly still, her mouth slightly open, and gave no sign that 
 she still lived other than by the amazingly rapid and faintly 
 stertorous breathing that went on almost regularly, as fast 
 as the tick of a clock, except that now and again a little 
 pause, a second's cessation would snatch the attention of 
 the watcher back to the figure on the bed. 
 
 But a fate he would have avoided brought Jacob an actual 
 sight of the patient on Wednesday evening. 
 
 He had gone to Montague Place after tea to make in- 
 quiries. He had not seen Betty since ten o'clock, when she 
 had returned from their rooms to release Freda, who had 
 been keeping the night vigil. 
 
 Jane opened the door to him. 
 
 "She's just the same," she said confidentially her man- 
 ners were not those of the trained servant "and when you 
 came you was to come in, please, because you're wanted." 
 
 Jacob's heart sank. What could they want him for? he 
 wondered. 
 
 Betty came to him in the drawing-room. "Do you think 
 you could go up and sit with her for an hour, dear?" she 
 said, as soon as she had kissed him. She was evidently 
 in a great hurry. 
 
 "Oh, Lord!" ejaculated the horrified Jacob. 
 
 "Would you mind very much ?" Betty asked. "I thought 
 . . . you see, Freda's asleep. She didn't go to lie down
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 827 
 
 until three o'clock. And Jane has got her hands full, and 
 there's no one to cook the dinner. We had a woman in yes- 
 terday, but she couldn't come to-day." She looked at him 
 doubtfully. "Of course, if you'd much sooner not," she 
 said. "I must go back now, in any case. She's all alone." 
 
 "Must she be watched?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "Yes, dear, of course she must," Betty told him. 
 
 He knew that he could not dispute that confident state- 
 ment by any general argument, nor was his next suggestion 
 any more acceptable. "Why not let the boarders get din- 
 ner out to-night? Just for once, surely, it wouldn't mat- 
 ter ... under the circumstances." 
 
 Betty shook her head gravely. "Oh, we couldn't!" she 
 said conclusively. 
 
 Jacob was stirred by a feeble irritation. Women were 
 so stubbornly conservative. They would endure anything 
 rather than break a meaningless rule of everyday con- 
 duct. Here were Betty and Freda, both of them intelli- 
 gent women, yet they would slave to maintain at almost 
 any sacrifice to themselves, either such an empty form as 
 this watch by the dying, or such a trivial expediency as the 
 common routine of a boarding-house. He could not see, 
 then, anything fine or splendid in their self-sacrifice; he 
 was merely annoyed because he judged it a concession to 
 a foolish rule-of-thumb, implying an inability to adapt 
 themselves to unusual conditions. And he hated the thought 
 of sitting in that dreadful room upstairs. 
 
 "I can't see why . . ." he began fretfully. 
 
 "It doesn't matter, dear; we'll manage somehow," Betty 
 said. She showed no kind of annoyance, but he thought 
 he saw the signs of disappointment in her face, as if she 
 had counted on him, and he had failed her. "I must go 
 back now, anyway," she added. "I don't suppose I shall 
 be home until to-morrow morning." 
 
 Jacob was ready with a dozen excellent reasons to prove 
 that all this business was no concern of theirs, that this 
 watching was a futile superstition, that the boarders might
 
 328 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 quite well shift for themselves on this one unprecedented 
 occasion ; but he looked at Betty, hesitated, and said : 
 
 "I'm sure I don't know why I should mind so much." 
 
 "It's quite natural that you should," Betty said. 
 
 He was , conscious of his utter selfishness. The mood 
 of irritation that had instantly and automatically opposed 
 the suggestion that he should sit with Mrs. Parmenter, had 
 in some inexplicable way been allayed by Betty's acces- 
 sion to his refusal. He had been released from any pres- 
 sure to perform that revolting duty, and was ashamed of his 
 victory. 
 
 "I'll go, dear," he announced impulsively. 
 
 She put her hands on his shoulders and kissed him. "I 
 don't want you to go if it will upset you," she said. 
 
 "It won't. Why should it?" he returned. "It's idiotic 
 to be so squeamish. Come along. Take me up now." 
 
 He had crossed some mental obstacle. He was prepared 
 and determined now, already regarding this horrible duty 
 as an experience to be endured and then added to his knowl- 
 edge of life. 
 
 It was Betty who hesitated. 
 
 "Are you quite sure . . ." she began. 
 
 "Darling, if it was only for your sake," he interrupted 
 her. "But I should feel so mean if I couldn't do some- 
 thing, after all you've been doing." 
 
 "She's a sort of relation of mine, you see," Betty said. 
 
 But when he was on the stairs he had a brief reaction. 
 He was cold and trembling, as if he were about to witness 
 some obscene thing that should be hidden from all knowl- 
 edge of humanity. 
 
 He stopped Betty on the landing. "I shan't have to do 
 anything," he whispered. "I I couldn't touch her." 
 
 She shook her head with decision. "She can't even move," 
 she said. "If there's any change, ring the bell. I'll come."
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 329 
 
 IV 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter lay on her back. Her toupee was gone, 
 and Jacob saw that she was nearly bald; a few wisps of 
 dead white hair was all that stragglingly covered the faintly 
 pink dome of her skull. And she was changed in other 
 ways also. The invading paralysis was releasing the ten- 
 sion of long habit, and the lines about her mouth were 
 relaxed and smoothed, the grey-black brows had fallen 
 farther forward over the hollow that cased the closed but 
 slightly distended eyelids. 
 
 Jacob would not have recognised her if he had been 
 asked to identify her in a hospital ward ; but the very 
 strangeness of her appearance relaxed his apprehension. 
 Nevertheless, he was profoundly shocked; and one detail 
 curiously held his attention, and for some reason appeared 
 to him more particularly obscene. She lay with her arms 
 out of bed, her withered hands resting limply on the coun- 
 terpane; and she was wearing a fine linen nightdress, with 
 lace at the neck and wrists and down the crumpled bosom. 
 It was the intimate garment appropriate to tenderness and 
 youth, and it clung, still with some suggestion of invitation 
 and feminine allurement, to this terrible, inhuman figure of 
 age and decay. 
 
 He had sat down near the window when Betty had left 
 him, and had gently closed the door behind her. He was 
 no longer intimidated, save by the burden of his respon- 
 sibility. This paralysed stranger on the bed, who remotely 
 resembled the old woman he had known, was too helpless 
 and too quiet to be any cause for fear. He could not 
 have borne to witness agony, but once he had become used 
 to the unnatural sound of that short, rapid breathing, he was 
 comparatively at ease. Betty had sat in this chair, alone, 
 through the endless night, he remembered, with no one 
 within easy call. 
 
 But his sense of responsibility was painfully quickened. 
 He could find no consolation now in his perfectly rea-
 
 330 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 sonable attitude of Monday evening. This palpitating thing 
 that he watched was a living creature whose pain must 
 necessarily evoke his sympathy and care. She might be 
 finally doomed, but while she could still suffer in the body, 
 it was his duty and his wish to tender any alleviation of 
 the pain of her departure. 
 
 Here was one answer, he reflected, to his earlier, de- 
 tached analysis of this business of guarding the dying. And 
 as he sat in that dingy, old-fashioned room, which had a 
 character different from any other room in the house, as 
 if this one room alone had retained the odour and asso- 
 ciations of 1860, whilst the others had developed with the 
 century, he found a second answer that appeared to him 
 still more convincing. 
 
 It was not only for the patient's good that there was 
 a necessity for this watch, it was even more for one's 
 own. The evidence of carelessness in such a case as this 
 was the mark of selfishness, of the failure of sympathy. 
 One gained by giving the more unconsciously, the better. 
 That failure of sympathy had been his own fault; he was 
 inclined to be too detached, to weigh motives too intel- 
 lectually. He brought too much judgment and too little 
 feeling to his relations with humanity. How quickly he 
 had resented Betty's proposition downstairs, and how ready 
 he had been with apparently sound arguments to prove 
 that the tiny act of sacrifice demanded from him, was super- 
 fluous and unreasonable! He lacked charity and under- 
 standing. He did not surrender himself in order to enter 
 into life. Betty and Freda did the thing unconsciously. 
 Theirs was the real intuition, the direct apprehension and 
 sympathy without any inductive or other conscious mental 
 process. 
 
 He looked out at the dead silhouette of the British Mu- 
 seum, outlined against the dull glow of the sky, and 
 strangely pierced here and there by the yellow oblong of 
 a lighted window. He felt that it was in some sense a sym- 
 bol, as if all his view of life could bring him no more 
 than the dim suggestion of a lit interior against the dark-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 331 
 
 ness. He had been too preoccupied with the survey of 
 that great blank outline; the essential thing was the reali- 
 sation of that shining interior. . . . 
 
 Perhaps he had always misjudged Mrs. Parmenter. How 
 did he know, how could he possibly know, what she had 
 taken from life and what she had given? 
 
 He was still absorbed in his metaphor when that short, 
 quick breathing, to the sound of which he was already so 
 accustomed that it no longer distracted his attention, was 
 suddenly interrupted. It was as if the engines of a liner 
 had been unexpectedly stopped. Jacob felt his heart leap 
 as he instantly turned to the bed. But it was only a mo- 
 mentary catch in the machinery that still worked the func- 
 tions of that limp, unknowing body. A pause of two sec- 
 onds, perhaps, accompanied by a hard rasping in the dry 
 throat, and then the furious race began again, if anything 
 more desperately than before. 
 
 Jacob listened, and wondered if he ought to call Betty. 
 He moved his chair a little nearer, and brought himself 
 to watch the still figure on the bed. Once he thought her 
 eyelids twitched, but he could not be sure. The flaring 
 gas-burner was leaping now and again within the globe of 
 its opal glass shade, and threw queer shadows on the bed. 
 He got up, tip-toed over to the bracket, and turned the 
 gas a little lower. It still flickered as if in a draught, al- 
 though he could feel no movement of air in the room. He 
 remembered the superstition of the "winding-sheet" in the 
 candle. 
 
 Perhaps Mrs. Parmenter was actually dying at that mo- 
 ment. He stood by the bed and looked more closely at 
 her. Her loose lips were puffed outwards by each sharp 
 exhalation, fell back, and were blown out again ; but there 
 was no other movement, except a hardly perceptible dis- 
 tention and contraction of the thin, wrinkled throat. 
 
 He stood staring, fascinated. That lax mobility of the 
 lips was horribly inhuman; it suggested the feeble, inert 
 motion of inanimate matter. The spirit, the will, was no 
 longer in control; the flesh was alive, but its life was sep-
 
 332 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 arate from that of the organism as a whole. What force 
 still animated the beating heart and the panting lungs, 
 Jacob wondered? Was that, too, become mechanical, or 
 had the higher organs of the body a separate existence 
 subsidiary to the conscious life of the individual an ex- 
 istence that might be continued for a time after the spirit 
 had gone? 
 
 If the mind of Mrs. Parmenter did not re-awake to 
 what we call consciousness before that game old heart 
 and lungs tired of the lonely struggle and fluttered wearily 
 to a standstill, who could say when the spirit had fled, or 
 when the individual he had known had actually died? 
 Would it be possible to galvanise the mind back to action 
 and control by some tremendous shock, or was it beyond 
 the reach of any physical stimulus? He knew that the 
 old theory of the recovery of consciousness, the sudden 
 clearness and enlightenment that immediately preceded 
 death, was only a fable in cases such as this. The uncon- 
 trolled machinery of the body maintained its functions 
 for a time, and then ran down, rattled out into silence. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter's spirit might be moving through dreams 
 of Paradise while her deserted body, fighting for its own 
 existence, sought to keep open a dwelling-place for the 
 occupant who could never return. . . . 
 
 It seemed incredible to him, then, that anyone could ever 
 die. This thing that he watched was not Mrs. Parmenter. 
 She was away somewhere, and the body she had occupied 
 was already strangely altered. It was losing the impres- 
 sion that she had stamped upon it in her seventy years 
 of life, reverting to some original mould that might pos- 
 sibly figure the representative type of humanity if the 
 process of relaxation could be prolonged. 
 
 He was startled by a sound behind him, and turned to 
 find Betty gently closing the door. 
 
 "Nothing happened?" she whispered, coming over to the 
 bed. 
 
 "She stopped breathing once for about half a minute/'
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 333 
 
 Jacob confided to her in the same undertone. "I nearly 
 rang for you." 
 
 "That often happens," Betty said. "But surely not half 
 a minute?" 
 
 "It seemed a long time," replied Jacob. 
 
 "It's a quarter to eight," Betty went on, still whisper- 
 ing. "They're having dinner. You'd better go down and 
 join them. I told Jane to lay a place for you." 
 
 Jacob shook his head. "I couldn't," he affirmed. "I'll 
 go out if you don't want me any longer." 
 
 She looked at him with a slight perplexity, but made no 
 attempt to dissuade him. 
 
 "It hasn't upset you, has it ?" she asked anxiously, when 
 they were in the hall downstairs. 
 
 "It made me think, that was all," Jacob said. He hesi- 
 tated a moment, and then added: "Betty, why do we still 
 speak of that body upstairs as 'she'? She's gone, you know 
 Mrs. Parmenter, I mean." 
 
 Betty's face expressed a question of Jacob's sanity. 
 
 "Oh, I'm all right," he assured her with a smile. "I'll 
 explain to-morrow." 
 
 "You're sure it hasn't upset you?" persisted Betty. 
 
 "Not in the way you mean," he said. 
 
 Betty arrived in Great Ormond Street at eight o'clock 
 the next morning. She looked pale and tired. Jacob was 
 shaving when she came in, and she joined him in the bed- 
 room and sat down on the bed with a sigh of relief. 
 
 "It's all over," she announced. 
 
 Jacob stood before her with one side of his face cov- 
 ered with lather. 
 
 "What time?" he asked. 
 
 "Four o'clock this morning." 
 
 "She didn't recover consciousness, of course?" 
 
 Betty shook her head, and added as an afterthought: 
 "Why 'of course'?"
 
 334 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I knew she couldn't," Jacob said, with profound con- 
 viction. "Didn't she make any sign?" 
 
 "She she gurgled a little," Betty told him, "and just 
 stopped breathing. That was all. We weren't sure at 
 first." 
 
 "You were both there, then?" 
 
 "Freda fetched me just before the end. She thought it 
 was nearly over." 
 
 "The machinery was running down," explained Jacob; 
 "it had only been going on by a sort of inertia." 
 
 Betty looked puzzled, but she was too tired to ask any 
 questions. 
 
 "I'll tell you sometime," Jacob said. "You're too done 
 up for metaphysics just now." 
 
 "Yes; I think I'll have a cup of tea with you and then 
 go to bed," replied Betty. "The undertaker is sending a 
 woman in to do all that's necessary, so I needn't go back 
 to-day. The funeral's to be on Saturday morning. Dr. 
 Paramore said we oughtn't to put it off too long." 
 
 Jacob meditated, rubbing the dried lather on his unshaved 
 cheek. That shell in the lace-trimmed night-dress had been 
 fighting many enemies, he thought. How soon the body 
 was invaded when the spirit had gone out of it. 
 
 "I wonder where she is now?" he said. 
 
 Betty smiled weakly. "Hadn't you better finish shav- 
 ing?" she asked. "I'll get the breakfast." 
 
 "I'll do that," Jacob said eagerly. "It's practically all 
 ready. I put the kettle and the egg-saucepan on before I 
 started to shave." 
 
 "You finish dressing," replied Betty, getting up. 
 
 "Really, I'd sooner you'd let me . . ." began Jacob; 
 but Betty had already gone into the other room to lay the 
 cloth. 
 
 "I'll go to bed for a bit now, dear," she said, when they 
 had had breakfast. "I must come down with you this 
 afternoon." 
 
 "Down where?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "You surely haven't forgotten that you're going to see
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 335 
 
 Norman Goodrich this afternoon!" exclaimed Betty. 
 "Didn't you write?" 
 
 "I had absolutely forgotten," Jacob said. "But I did 
 write on Monday evening." He paused reflectively, and 
 then put his hand into his jacket-pocket. "If you don't 
 believe me, here's the letter," he added. "I forgot to post 
 it." 
 
 "I don't know what you'd do without me," Betty said 
 fondly. "You'd better go out at once and telephone." 
 
 "No good till ten o'clock," replied Jacob triumphantly. 
 "They wouldn't be there. We're collaborators, you see," 
 he explained. "It takes the two of us to get things quite 
 right." 
 
 He reflected on that statement as he sat very quietly in 
 the sitting-room later in the morning, trying to write a 
 review while Betty slept. Betty had been right about many 
 things with regard to Mrs. Parmenter's illness ; he acknowl- 
 edged that without qualification. But he had supplemented 
 her intuitions, and perhaps he had, in a way, "got more 
 out of that experience," as he phrased it, than Betty had. 
 
 "It has been rather tremendous, altogether," he thought. 
 "Who would have imagined that Mrs. Parmenter, of all 
 people, could have made me forget one of the most im- 
 portant engagements in my life? But it's experience that 
 matters, not the writing about it." 
 
 He had a sense of achievement. He felt that he had 
 acquired new and extraordinarily valuable knowledge. 
 
 "Experience, and what one gets out of it," he concluded. 
 
 It occurred to him, inappropriately, that "Dr. Paramore" 
 would be a splendid name for a character in a novel.
 
 XVI 
 THE NEOPHYTE 
 
 THE offices of Norman Goodrich were in Clement's Inn. 
 The jamb of the outer door displayed the style of the 
 firm in the same unobtrusive lettering that advertised the 
 occupants of other chambers in the block, but added some 
 little touch of importance by the information : "Ground and 
 1st." All the other floors were shared by at least two 
 names, and the catalogue of the third-floor tenants made 
 quite a respectable paragraph. 
 
 Jacob had left Betty at the entrance to the Inn. She was 
 to meet him near the tea-shop in which they had celebrated 
 the coming of Norman Goodrich's letter. That gloomy, 
 rambling basement held no aesthetic or gastronomic attrac- 
 tions, but it was hallowed by their emotions. They had 
 decided to use it on great occasions, and enrich it with the 
 associations of Jacob's success. 
 
 "We don't know that they're going to take it yet," he 
 had reminded Betty, when she had proposed the rendezvous. 
 
 "Of course they're going to take it," she had said con- 
 temptuously. "The only point is how much they're going 
 to give you for it. And do try not to be too apologetic." 
 
 "They may be going to offer to publish it at my expense," 
 Jacob had suggested. 
 
 "If they do, you'll bring the manuscript back with you," 
 she had replied. 
 
 "All right. If you see me coming back with a parcel, 
 you'll know," he had said. 
 
 "Don't you dare !" Betty had warned him. 
 
 And although he had enjoyed the spirit and encourage- 
 
 336
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 337 
 
 ment of that altercation, now that he was at the door of 
 the publishers' offices and already taking part, imaginatively, 
 in the coming interview, he wished that he had not been 
 handicapped by Betty's injunctions. If he had had no re- 
 sponsibility to consider, he could have approached this meet- 
 ing with a careless, happy mind; instead of that he was 
 burdened by the necessity for making terms. 
 
 He found a door on his left marked, "Office. Inquiries." 
 He knocked, and then opened the door boldly and walked 
 in. He was not a timid supplicant, as he had so often been 
 in the past, but an almost accepted novelist. If he were 
 going to carry this thing through in the proper spirit, he 
 must remember the glory that haloed his visit. 
 
 A long counter shut him off from the littered spaces of 
 the office into which he had come. A boy in an alpaca 
 jacket looked up casually from his occupation of tying a 
 parcel, and took no further notice of the visitor. But after 
 Jacob had knocked not too imperiously on the counter, a 
 young man with a pen between his teeth and a pencil be- 
 hind his ear emerged from a stall in the corner, came across 
 the room, and emitted an interrogatory grunt. 
 
 "I've an appointment with Mr. Goodrich for three 
 o'clock," Jacob said defensively. "My name's Stahl." 
 
 The young man nodded without removing his gag, and 
 returned to his box to gather up a pile of papers before 
 making a leisurely exit from the office. He had not dis- 
 covered any sign of being honoured by addressing a po- 
 tential author. 
 
 The boy in alpaca was attacking another parcel with 
 great circumspection. 
 
 Jacob felt that it was all painfully like his earlier ex- 
 periences of looking for a job, and the associations de- 
 pressed him. One point, however, he must stick to at any 
 cost, he reflected : he dared not face Betty with any ac- 
 knowledgment that he had ' consented to bear part of the 
 cost of publication. He reminded himself stoically of her 
 remark that there were other publishers besides "bally 
 Bill" and Norman Goodrich.
 
 338 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 The young man was a long time away. No doubt the 
 papers he had been carrying were typewritten letters that 
 were being read and signed upstairs, while Jacob was kept 
 waiting. He began to work himself up to a very credit- 
 able impatience. He reminded himself that he was not 
 cadging for a job. "John Tristram" might be a rotten 
 book, but that was no sort of reason for keeping him hang- 
 ing about this beastly office ! 
 
 He was quite determined to be immensely aloof and 
 stern by the time the young man came down to say, "Will 
 you come up?" 
 
 Even then his manner hardly expressed awe. 
 
 Jacob submissively followed him upstairs. 
 
 ii 
 
 The firm of Norman Goodrich was revealed as a tall, 
 fair man of about Jacob's own age, and a younger partner 
 who introduced himself as Goodrich, and immediately took 
 over the preliminary formalities of opening a conversation. 
 
 He dismissed the weather with a brief reference, and 
 then plunged into a discussion of Jacob's connection with 
 the Daily Post, which had been mentioned as casually as pos- 
 sible that had been Betty's suggestion in his first letter. 
 
 "You've reviewed some of our books," said young Mr. 
 Goodrich, with apparent eagerness ; and when Jacob men- 
 tioned two of them, Mr. Goodrich remembered the re- 
 views in question, and also that one of them had been 
 quoted in certain of the firm's advertisements. 
 
 "Yes, I saw that you had quoted me," Jacob said, and 
 followed the topic up by a brief reflection on the methods 
 of quotation adopted by inferentially less scrupulous pub- 
 lishers, who did not hesitate so to hack a sentence from a 
 review that the original intention was entirely misrepre- 
 sented. 
 
 As a conversation the affair was going splendidly, but 
 there had been no kind of reference yet to "John Tristram." 
 Mr. Goodrich might have been passing the time in a rail-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 339 
 
 way carriage for all the relation his remarks bore to the ob- 
 ject of Jacob's visit. 
 
 And it was Jacob who, with a sympathetic thought of 
 Betty waiting for him in the Strand, tactfully closed the 
 preliminaries by lapsing into a monosyllabic commentary. 
 Mr. Goodrich suddenly dried up; and then his partner, 
 who had taken no hand in the criticism of advertising meth- 
 ods, looked up from a sheet of foolscap that he had been 
 examining, and said : 
 
 "We like your book, Mr. Stahl." 
 
 "Good!" murmured Jacob, instantly abashed. It was 
 only by summoning a vivid thought of Betty that he saved 
 himself from launching out into an apology for his novel's 
 manifest imperfections. By way of covering his confusion 
 he went on quickly: "I don't know if the idea of running 
 the story on into another book appeals to you at all ? As a 
 matter of fact, I didn't know what else to do, unless I re- 
 wrote the whole thing and cut out the best parts. I don't 
 know if you agree with me, but I think the most interesting 
 chapters in the book are those that are really least essen- 
 tial." 
 
 Mr. Norman passed that by. "We don't object to the 
 idea of a sequel," he said, "if you will give us the option 
 of publishing it." 
 
 "Oh yes, I should be delighted," mumbled Jacob, se- 
 cretly swelling with pride at the thought that he was not 
 only accepted but sought after. "Though, as a matter of 
 fact," he went on, "the continuation of 'John Tristram' 
 won't be my next novel. I have written nearly half of the 
 next book. It's slightly fantastic, but really I think it's 
 much better stuff than this one. I am rather keen on the 
 book I'm doing now," he explained. 
 
 Mr. Norman smiled. "We should like to see that book 
 too," he said. 
 
 Jacob felt like a small shopkeeper going into the whole- 
 sale. He had a vision of enormous productiveness that 
 presented him in an entirely new role. "And as to 'John 
 Tristram,'" he said, "I couldn't definitely pledge myself
 
 340 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 to finish him off in one other volume. I think it quite 
 likely that it will take me at least two more." 
 
 "We shouldn't mind a trilogy," Mr. Norman said, with a 
 faintly whimsical glance at Jacob; "but I think it might be 
 well to stop at three." 
 
 "Perhaps it would," Jacob agreed. 
 
 "There were just one or two suggestions . . ." Mr. Nor- 
 man went on, looking down at his sheet of foolscap. 
 
 "Yes?" replied Jacob, bracing himself to receive criti- 
 cism. 
 
 "We thought the epilogue a little too apologetic." 
 
 "I'll omit it, if you like," Jacob said, without hesitation. 
 
 Mr. Norman looked up with that rather enigmatical smile 
 of his. Jacob had a sudden doubt whether he was not being 
 altogether too ingenuous and plastic, and determined to be 
 very firm when the question of terms was mooted. 
 
 "We should like to keep the epilogue," Mr. Norman said 
 gravely. "But we thought one or two expressions could 
 be cut. They might be too tempting for reviewers." 
 
 "Oh yes, I understand. I hadn't thought of that, I'll 
 admit," agreed Jacob. 
 
 "I've marked the passages," said Mr. Norman, particu- 
 larising his own part in the performance for the first time. 
 
 "You've read it yourself?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "We all read it," replied Mr. Norman, leaving an impres- 
 sion of unguessed extensions in the firm. 
 
 The next sentence, however, added a necessary third to 
 explain the suggestion of multitude. "Our reader queried 
 one or two discrepancies," he said; and proceeded to enu- 
 merate them. They were not important, but Jacob was 
 gravely distressed. 
 
 "Oh, good Lord, yes, that was an awful bloomer !" he ad- 
 mitted, getting very hot when it was pointed out to him 
 that his hero had given up half a return ticket on coming 
 back from a journey that had begun as a bus-ride. "I don't 
 know how on earth I came to make a mistake like that," he 
 said. "It's just the sort of thing I hate in a novel. I'm 
 particularly keen on accuracy in details of that sort." He
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 341 
 
 wanted to have the manuscript back at once and alter it. 
 He had horrible doubts as to whether he had not made 
 other mistakes of the same kind. 
 
 "That's the only serious discrepancy," Mr. Norman gently 
 advised him. "The other notes are of typist's errors, and 
 I think you changed the name of one of your minor char- 
 acters half-way through." 
 
 "I thought I'd altered that," expostulated Jacob. 
 
 "The old name has slipped in once or twice," said Mr. 
 Norman. "We thought you might like to take the manu- 
 script back with you and look it through again." 
 
 "Yes, certainly, I will," Jacob said. "Or perhaps you'd 
 post it to me," he added, remembering that he must not 
 let Betty see him coming with that parcel in his hand. "It's 
 rather a lump to carry," he explained, "and I'm going on 
 somewhere." 
 
 Mr. Norman nodded. 
 
 "By the way, when did you think of publishing the book?" 
 asked Jacob, a little anxiously. 
 
 "We might get it out by the middle of January," replied 
 Mr. Goodrich, suddenly taking a hand, but looking at his 
 partner for confirmation. 
 
 Jacob had had a wild hope that it might be sooner, but 
 he did not allow his disappointment to appear. 
 
 "It takes time, of course," he said. 
 
 "Christmas coming in between," explained Mr. Goodrich 
 elliptically. 
 
 An awkward pause followed, and Jacob realised that at 
 last the important topic was to be broached. 
 
 "About terms," began Mr. Norman bravely; and his 
 partner nobly seconded the effort by adding: 
 
 "I'm afraid, as it's a first book, we should hardly be 
 justified in making an advance." 
 
 "Oh no, of course not," agreed Jacob at once. 
 
 "But we could give you a royalty, beginning at, say, five 
 per cent., and rising after the sale of the first five hundred 
 copies," Mr. Norman appended.
 
 342 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob made an effort. "Is that on the price you sell the 
 book at?" he asked. 
 
 "Oh no ; on the full published price of six shillings," Mr. 
 Goodrich told him. 
 
 "Thirteen copies counting as twelve," supplemented his 
 partner softly. 
 
 Jacob realised that, if he was going to justify his busi- 
 ness training, the time for action had arrived, and must 
 be seized before the opportunity slipped from him. "What 
 would Farmer have done?" Jacob asked himself. Jacob 
 could picture Farmer quite convincingly. He would have 
 put his hands in his pockets, stuck out his fat little legs, 
 screwed up the side of his mouth, shaken his head with great 
 earnestness, and said : "Not good enough. Now, look here, 
 I want . . ." And he would probably have got it. 
 
 Jacob sighed and stood up. "I suppose I couldn't expect 
 more than that on a first novel," he said. "I haven't the 
 least idea what sort of terms an author gets." 
 
 "The royalty would rise to fifteen per cent, after the sale 
 of the first thousand copies," remarked young Mr. Good- 
 rich hopefully. 
 
 "I'm sure it's perfectly all right," Jacob said. "We shall 
 have some sort of an agreement, I suppose?" 
 
 "Oh yes, we shall have an agreement," replied Mr. Nor- 
 man. He might have spoken in the same tone if Jacob had 
 asked if the book was to be printed in English. He was 
 quite grave, but he conveyed an impression of being faintly 
 amused. 
 
 in 
 
 Jacob found himself confronted with the necessity for 
 giving Betty an illustrated, verbatim report when they were 
 alone in their corner of the honoured basement. "What did 
 they say to you? What were they like?" were her two 
 questions. 
 
 Jacob would have preferred to produce a general im- 
 pression of the interview by less precise methods, but he 
 did his best.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 343 
 
 "I suppose it's all right," was Betty's summary. 
 
 "I don't see that we could have expected more," said 
 Jacob. 
 
 "I wish they could have published it before January," 
 said Betty. 
 
 They hesitated for a time over a calculation of how much 
 they might make if "John Tristram" sold one, five, or, with 
 an ambitious leap, twenty thousand copies. Jacob con- 
 scientiously pointed out the absurdity of the last estimate, 
 but Betty could see nothing outrageous in it, and clam- 
 oured for figures. 
 
 "About eight hundred pounds, I think," was Jacob's cal- 
 culation ; and then he proceeded to arrive at a more precise 
 estimate with the aid of a pencil, a little worried by the 
 intricacies of "thirteen as twelve," a trade convention of 
 discount that he already knew by repute. 
 
 They had frankly surrendered themselves to exultation 
 before they had finished tea. 
 
 "In a way, you know," Jacob said, with a thought for 
 the future, "we shan't touch this level again. It seems 
 ridiculous now, but the time will come when we shan't even 
 get excited when we see a novel of mine in print." 
 
 "Aren't you dying to get the proofs?" interrupted Betty. 
 
 "Rather. I can't imagine quite what it will look like. It 
 doesn't seem possible that it will look just like an ordinary 
 novel. But it will, of course, and we shall get used to it, 
 and, as I said, we shall probably never get quite as much 
 excitement and . . . and sense of achievement out of any 
 other success as we are getting now." 
 
 He wanted, indeed, to hold the thought of his achieve- 
 ment very clearly and very persistently to realise his pres- 
 ent success in relation to all his past life. He became auto- 
 biographical, and gave Betty a sketch of his less literary 
 past, and of his constant and, as it seemed, futile, desire 
 to write a novel. "Not a great or even a successful novel," 
 he said, "but just a novel of reasonable attainment that 
 would be received with a certain amount of attention." 
 
 Betty thought he would do better than that, but he pre-
 
 344 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 f erred to enjoy the satisfaction of what he regarded as the 
 substantial fact rather than to indulge in gloriously im- 
 possible dreams. 
 
 "I feel as if I should like to talk to all the people I used 
 to know," he announced ; "or, rather, I should like them all 
 to see a decently favourable notice of the book when it 
 appears." 
 
 "I expect no end of people will be wanting to know you 
 again," said Betty, with a fine shade of doubt clouding her 
 happiness. 
 
 Jacob pushed the suggestion aside. '"One or two, pos- 
 sibly," he thought ; and so came to face the probability that 
 one person would almost certainly write to him. 
 
 "My brother, for example," he said. 
 
 "I never can remember that you have a brother," Betty 
 said. "Tell me about him. Did you quarrel? Why have 
 you never written to him ?" 
 
 "I don't know," returned Jacob. "We've never actually 
 quarrelled, but we've never been friends. He's so con- 
 foundedly clever. He's just exactly everything I'm not 
 tremendously well read, and sound, and accurate, and pains- 
 taking." 
 
 "Why didn't you get on together?" Betty asked. 
 
 "Well, he's older than I am," Jacob explained ; "and he's 
 always been a success. My father left most of his money to 
 me, because he knew I was handicapped ; and Eric made his 
 own way he's in the Home Civil and got on, and I lost 
 the money I had, and failed at everything." 
 
 Betty took his hand under the table. "You haven't failed 
 now," she said. 
 
 "No, darling; but I should have, without you," he said. 
 "But, as a matter of fact, my success won't count for much 
 with Eric. He'll criticise me, very justly, but very hardly, 
 because he'll judge me by a standard that's obviously too 
 high for me." 
 
 "What would he say about us ?" Betty asked. 
 
 "Lord knows!" returned Jacob. "He isn't a bit pious; 
 he doesn't believe in your religion, and that sort of thing,
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 345 
 
 but he'll probably think it was inexpedient or something. 
 And then, of course, he's always been very respectable, even 
 though he wouldn't admit it." 
 
 "He's married, isn't he ?" asked Betty ; and then : "What's 
 his wife like?" 
 
 "She's nice, rather. They had a baby that died they 
 may have another by this time and I got to know her 
 rather well then. I could make her understand about you, 
 I think." 
 
 "I wonder," was all Betty's comment. 
 
 "I don't know why we should spoil our entertainment by 
 talking about Eric and his wife," Jacob went on, conscious 
 of the note of depression that had come into Betty's voice. 
 "I'm certainly not going to write to them unless they write 
 to me." 
 
 "They will," asserted Betty. 
 
 Jacob shrugged his shoulders. 
 
 "I can't quite understand now," she persisted, "why you 
 dropped them so completely." 
 
 Jacob thought for a moment before he said : "Just me, I 
 suppose. I always put off writing to them. It was another 
 case of those boots at Trevarrian." 
 
 IV 
 
 "I suppose we'd better be going," remarked Betty pres- 
 ently. 
 
 "Where to ? We can't go home to-night," expostulated 
 Jacob. 
 
 Betty hesitated. "What else can we do?" she asked. 
 
 "Let's go to the Palace," suggested Jacob. "You've never 
 been there. Surely we can go a little buster to-night?" 
 
 "I was thinking of Mrs. Parmenter," Betty said. 
 
 Jacob had forgotten that lady completely during the past 
 three hours, but at the mention of her name, he was plunged 
 back into the experiences of the three days that had inter- 
 vened between his receipt of Norman Goodrich's letter and 
 his present state of ecstatic success. The experience had
 
 346 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 been assimilated, and had apparently had no effect upon him. 
 He remembered his musings in that ghastly room at Monta- 
 gue Place, as the well-intentioned might remember the fer- 
 vour of some old vow. 
 
 "Does that matter?" he asked. 
 
 Betty knitted her forehead. "It seems rather heartless," 
 she said. 
 
 "It isn't as though we should be doing her any sort of 
 good by going home," argued Jacob. "And we can hardly 
 pretend that we're particularly cast down and bereaved by 
 our loss." 
 
 "I know," Betty admitted. "It isn't that." 
 
 "Can you tell me what it is?" 
 
 "It's just the way one feels about it." 
 
 "But you don't feel like that about it, really." He was 
 ready to warm up to an attack upon the general convention, 
 when he remembered that only yesterday he had had to 
 admit the fault of his logic from similar premisses. He 
 broke off abruptly. 
 
 "I wonder if there is anything in it," he said in another 
 tone. 
 
 Betty looked quickly up at him. "I expect it's only a 
 superstition," she said. "I don't mind. Let's go." 
 
 "We won't if you'd sooner not," he said earnestly. "I 
 don't know that I'm frightfully keen." 
 
 They hung on that for a moment, and then Jacob said : "I 
 was quite wrong yesterday about watching her, you know. 
 I may be wrong about this too. Only, do you honestly feel 
 that we ought not to go that there is anything 'heartless' 
 in our going? If we were Catholics, and ought to be de- 
 voting the time to praying for her soul, it would be rather 
 different, although that can be managed, I believe, at quite 
 small expense. . . ." 
 
 She did not allow him to frame the alternative. "I don't," 
 she said. "It's only superstition. Come on." 
 
 Jacob pondered her decision as they walked up towards 
 Charing Cross, and presently came out with his explanation
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 347 
 
 of the difference between her attitudes of to-day and yester- 
 day. 
 
 "I think you're generally right when it's a question of 
 practical conduct," he said, having framed his statement 
 carefully in his mind, "even though you seem to be guided 
 by old superstitions; but when you come to what is really 
 a theoretical point, like this going to a music-hall to-night, 
 or" he looked at her whimsically "the question of our 
 being married, then, I think, you're just as likely to be wrong 
 as right. Your intuition does not help you." 
 
 Betty smiled. "I dare say not," she said. 
 
 Jacob found the re-reading and correction of his manu- 
 script a tedious and distasteful labour. His sentences were 
 becoming wearisomely familiar, and the remembrance that 
 within a few weeks he would see them perpetuated in type, 
 rilled him with terrified apprehension. And yet he could not 
 bring himself to make any drastic alterations to his story. It 
 was all stale to him, and although he might criticise it still 
 in a kind of hopeless despair, he had not a word to add to 
 it, not a single inspiration for an alternative treatment of 
 the episodes he chiefly condemned. Moreover, his inertia 
 compelled him to regard these typewritten pages as in some 
 way a finished and unalterable product. He felt that if he 
 once began any attempt at rewriting, he would have no 
 choice but to begin the whole story again in another man- 
 ner, preferably that in which he was treating his next book. 
 His first essay in fiction already appeared to him as some- 
 thing he had wonderfully outgrown. He consoled himself 
 with the thought that his next book would be infinitely 
 better. 
 
 Betty seemed to fail him in this crisis. She would not 
 lend a sympathetic ear to his perfectly sincere condemnation 
 of "John Tristram." Jacob believed that if he could speak 
 out all his thoughts concerning what he regarded as the 
 amateurishness and general incompetence displayed in his
 
 348 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 first novel, he might work off his chagrin and perhaps suffer 
 a reaction. But Betty manifested signs of impatience when- 
 ever he began to unload the masses of adverse criticism he 
 accumulated during his reading of the manuscript. "You 
 can't judge it now," she said. "You're tired of it." 
 
 "I've half a mind not to publish it," Jacob once desper- 
 ately ventured, when she refused to hear his strictures of 
 the maligned book. He was not quite in earnest. He 
 wanted chiefly to convince her that he was perfectly sincere 
 in his attitude of depreciation, and to prepare her in some 
 sort for the book's reception ; but she took him at his word. 
 
 "I don't know what you think is going to become of 
 us," she said, "if you never publish any of the books you 
 write." 
 
 He reassured her on that occasion, but he remembered the 
 essential complaint implied when an apparently unrelated 
 topic came up for discussion the next day. 
 
 Betty produced her suggestion with an evident hesita- 
 tion, some three or four days after Mrs. Parmenter's 
 funeral. 
 
 "I suppose you wouldn't like to do this?" she began, 
 apropos of nothing in particular. 
 
 "I dare say I should," Jacob said, smiling. "What is it ?" 
 
 Betty frowned, and looked up at him doubtfully. "I 
 don't think Freda will be able to keep on the boarding-house 
 alone," she ventured. 
 
 Jacob instantly guessed her project, but he preferred to 
 shirk the unpleasant issue as long as possible. 
 
 "Why doesn't she go back to the stage ?" he asked. "I've 
 always thought that keeping a boarding-house was quite out 
 of her line. It's a rotten job for anyone." 
 
 "She can't get any engagements," Betty said. "She tried 
 tremendously hard before she came to Montague Place, and, 
 as she says, if it was difficult then, it will be ever so much 
 harder now." 
 
 "Hasn't she got any people?" prevaricated Jacob. 
 "What's her father doing? He used to be pretty pros- 
 perous."
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 849 
 
 "She wouldn't go to him," replied Betty firmly. She 
 knew quite certainly that Jacob had anticipated her sugges- 
 tion, and was bitterly averse to it, but she meant at least to 
 present its more salient advantages. 
 
 "Besides, she doesn't want to leave Montague Place," she 
 went on with determination. "And I do think you might 
 discuss my suggestion. We haven't settled anything." 
 
 "I haven't heard what it is yet," remonstrated Jacob. 
 
 She overlooked that feeble dissimulation. "We should 
 save a lot of money," she said. "You could have a room all 
 to yourself, and it would give me something to do." 
 
 Jacob chose to select the first of her inducements as the 
 most easily controvertible. "We aren't so terribly hard up 
 as all that," he said pettishly ; and then remembered her com- 
 plaint of the day before. "You haven't any real faith in 
 me, you see," he protested. "Really, I don't think I've done 
 so badly. We are getting nearly two-fifty a year out of 
 the Daily Post, and I suppose I'm bound to make some- 
 thing out of 'John Tristram,' and 'The Creature' will be 
 finished in another month or two. But I suppose you think 
 'Tristram' will be an awful frost? You don't think I shall 
 ever make enough money to keep us." 
 
 "It's only just now," Betty tried to assure him. "I know 
 you will make heaps of money. But until your books become 
 known . . ." 
 
 "You think 'Tristram' will be a failure then?" he put in. 
 
 "I don't ; but you won't get anything out of it for months 
 and months. You said so yourself." 
 
 "But we've plenty to go on with till we do get something 
 out of it. I've still got over fifty pounds in the bank." 
 
 "Why do you object to the idea of our going to Montague 
 Place?" asked Betty, with a determined reversion to essen- 
 tials. 
 
 "I loathe the place," Jacob said with decision, "and I 
 loathe the idea of your cooking and housekeeping for a lot 
 of rotten German boarders." 
 
 "If 7 don't mind it . . ." began Betty. 
 
 "You used to hate it," he retorted.
 
 350 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "Not till you came." 
 
 "I should still be there." 
 
 "It would be quite different now." 
 
 "I don't see why it should," he said. 
 
 "I want an occupation," she returned. "You won't con- 
 sider that." 
 
 "Are you so tired of being with me ?" 
 
 "You can't understand," was Betty's hopeless comment. 
 
 "I do, I do," Jacob asserted. "I know it's often very 
 deadly for you in rooms like this, but this sort of thing isn't 
 going on. I'm doing my best to make money. I'm a help- 
 less sort of ass, I know, in many ways, but I believe, if I 
 have a fair chance, that I shall be able to make a decent 
 living by writing. You've always encouraged me to believe 
 so, anyway. Why have you suddenly changed your mind ?" 
 
 "I haven't," Betty said. 
 
 "Well, then, can't you endure this for a few months 
 longer?" he asked. 
 
 They were nearer a quarrel at that moment than they had 
 ever been, and Jacob, in the middle of his argument, was 
 suddenly dismayed to realise the bitterness of his tone. He 
 stopped abruptly, but he could not immediately recover his 
 equanimity. His mind still ran on like a machine, presenting 
 all the injustices of Betty's proposals, her lack of faith in 
 him, her willingness to take him back to a place he hated, 
 her failure to understand that distraction from little worries 
 was absolutely necessary to him if he was to put his best 
 work into the novel he was writing. 
 
 He stood by the mantelpiece, making a great effort to 
 control his irritation, and to check that mechanical unrolling 
 of his case against Betty and her proposal. 
 
 Betty, in the armchair, had taken up her work she was 
 knitting a pair of socks for him and looked down, reso- 
 lutely silent, at her clicking needles. 
 
 "Betty darling, I'm sorry," Jacob said, after a pause. 
 "I'm quite reasonable now. I won't be peevish again." 
 
 Betty finished a row and withdrew a needle, then she 
 looked up at him and said:
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 351 
 
 "Would you like to go back to Cornwall ?" 
 
 He could not adjust himself at once to her new attitude. 
 "Is that an alternative ?" he asked. 
 
 Betty looked down at the oblong padded cushion that 
 decorated the arm of her chair, and began to stab it with 
 her free knitting-needle. 
 
 "I don't think I should mind so much out of London," 
 she said. 
 
 "Do you mean that you're . . . worrying . . . about us 
 again?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "Not exactly," Betty said, gently forcing her needle into 
 the padding with a little click and then withdrawing it 
 again. "But I do want an occupation. When I'm by myself 
 I can't help thinking about things. I'm not worrying ex- 
 actly, not in the same way ; but I get depressed with nothing 
 to do, and then everything seems wrong." 
 
 "I suppose it wouldn't be possible for you to help to run 
 the boarding-house from here ?" Jacob suggested. 
 
 "I hate to feel that you're here alone, with no one to look 
 after you," replied Betty; and then she looked up with a 
 smile and added : "Besides, I thought you hated the idea of 
 my working there." 
 
 "So I do," replied Jacob, with decision. "I hate it, but 
 I want to do what's best for you." 
 
 "I don't believe you'd find it so disagreeable at Montague 
 Place," Betty said, "if we had a sitting-room to ourselves." 
 
 Jacob reflected for a moment before he said quietly : "No, 
 I won't go back there, dear. I've got a more capable imag- 
 ination than you in many ways. I can picture the facts 
 coldly, and, I think, accurately ; you always colour them one 
 way or the other to suit your mood." 
 
 Betty had returned to her knitting. "Well?" she en- 
 couraged him. 
 
 "At Montague Place I should have to mix with the board- 
 ers at meal-times, certainly, and almost certainly you would 
 want me to go down in the evenings and at other times as 
 well. You might begin by saying you wouldn't, but we 
 should soon slip into that. And, apart altogether from its
 
 352 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 being a beastly, ambiguous position to put me into, I can't 
 afford to spend myself in little worries and irritations of 
 that sort. This writing business is a funny game, dear. 
 I've only realised it myself in the last few months. I dare 
 say many men and more women can just take it up, work 
 for so many hours a day, and live any sort of life for the 
 rest of the time. I can't. I suppose it's an admission of 
 weakness, but my mind seems to tire so quickly. I take a 
 lot out of myself when I'm trying to write even reviews 
 and if I don't get a certain amount of ease and comfort and 
 happiness in between times, what little capacity I have, goes. 
 I've no ideas, you see ; I haven't the blessed ability of great 
 men, the power to shut off my mind into compartments, to 
 put down one idea, forget it temporarily, and take up an- 
 other. If I'd had that sort of mind, we shouldn't have been 
 here now. You've got to understand, darling, that you've 
 taken over a rather poor sort of fool, who's got to be hu- 
 moured in odd ways if he's ever going to make a decent liv- 
 ing out of writing novels. Do you regret it?" 
 
 Betty put down her knitting and held out her arms to him. 
 "I'm sorry, darling; I won't be silly any more," she said. 
 "I do understand, really; and I know you're going to do 
 wonderful things." 
 
 He went and knelt by her chair. "Not wonderful," he 
 said. 
 
 "You are," she insisted. 
 
 "Do you realise that we were very near quarrelling?" he 
 asked her a few minutes later. 
 
 But Betty denied that they had even been within sight of 
 a real quarrel. 
 
 They agreed that they might go down to Cornwall after 
 "John Tristram" was published. As Jacob explained, the 
 weekly meeting at the Daily Post offices had become a pure 
 formality. Mr. Gresswell gave instructions, and the re- 
 viewers agreed. And so far as he himself was concerned, 
 the instructions might equally well be given on a slip of 
 paper.
 
 XVII 
 
 REINSTATEMENT 
 
 THEIR second Christmas Day together was not quite as 
 neglected as the first had been. Mrs. Lynneker wrote 
 to Betty and sent her a cheque for five pounds "to get any- 
 thing you may want, dear" and save for a short note on 
 the peculiar spiritual opportunities provided at that season, 
 she made no reference to her niece's moral obliquities. Also 
 Hilda wrote from her Rectory fastness a somewhat effusive 
 letter, explaining her long silence by the fact that she was 
 expecting "an event early in January," and reminding Betty 
 that she had never written or even sent her address, which 
 had been obtained at last from Aunt Mary. 
 
 Jacob was inclined to be optimistic on the strength of 
 these acknowledgments. He never lost an opportunity of 
 reassuring Betty as to the rectitude of their position, and 
 found a text on the occasion more especially in Hilda's let- 
 ter. He claimed that Mrs. Lynneker had already been won. 
 
 Betty smiled incredulously. "I would sooner Hilda left 
 it alone than go half-way like this," she said. 
 
 "Why? What more could you expect?" asked Jacob. 
 
 "You don't think it's the sort of letter she would have 
 written if if well, if we had been married, do you?" 
 replied Betty. "There's no hint of my going to see her, for 
 instance." 
 
 "I think that's comprehensible enough," Jacob said. "I've 
 never pretended that the sort of people she mixes with 
 haven't a perfectly logical prejudice against people like us. 
 She couldn't very well ask you down there, and she knows 
 you wouldn't come if she did ; but evidently she herself has 
 
 353
 
 354 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 got nothing against you now. She wants to be nice to you." 
 
 Betty looked down at the letter. "It's Christmas-time," 
 she said quietly, "and poor old Hilda is very likely wonder- 
 ing just now whether she'll ever see another. I can under- 
 stand that she wanted to make her peace with me." 
 
 Jacob thought Betty was a little bitter. "Shan't you write 
 to her ?" he asked. 
 
 "Of course I shall write!" she said, with a flash of as- 
 tonishment at his lack of comprehension. 
 
 Jacob gave up that problem as beyond his powers. "Are 
 you still unhappy about it sometimes?" he said. 
 
 "Well, naturally," she returned, without embarrassment. 
 
 "I mean, do you worry?" he insisted. 
 
 "In a way I do." 
 
 Jacob reflected for a moment, and then said: "Yes, but 
 it's an extraordinarily different way." 
 
 "I suppose it is," she admitted. "I've got used to the 
 idea, perhaps ; and Freda and I often talk about it." 
 
 "She's a good sort," Jacob said; and then the topic that 
 had once been of such overwhelming importance was di- 
 verted to a discussion of Freda and her boarding-house. 
 She was coming to dinner with them the next evening. 
 Christmas Day was on a Sunday that year. 
 
 Mrs. Parmenter had made a will on one of her death- 
 beds, and had left all her possessions, including the furni- 
 ture of Montague Place and her balance at the bank, to 
 Freda, for whom the old lady had evidenced a decided affec- 
 tion during her illness. No mention had been made of 
 Betty's investment of capital, and when Jacob had first 
 heard of this testament some three weeks after Mrs. Par- 
 menter's death, he had been inclined to resent that omission. 
 But Betty had overruled him. Freda knew nothing what- 
 ever about it, she had explained, and implied that she was 
 never to know. Jacob had thought the silence even more 
 generous than the gift. 
 
 ' The whole affair had been quite informal. The will had 
 never been proved. 
 
 And now Freda had had an offer of two hundred and
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 355 
 
 fifty pounds for the furniture and goodwill of the house in 
 Montague Place, the goodwill including some six or seven 
 actual boarders, apparently satisfied with their present con- 
 dition. The capitalist was the Mrs. Letchworth, the pro- 
 prietress of the "little place in St. John's Wood," who had 
 once sought a partnership with Mrs. Parmenter, and had 
 been refused as lacking in gentility. 
 
 Jacob was in favour of accepting the offer. Nothing more 
 had been said of Betty's proposal to join forces with Freda, 
 but he felt that it would be a relief when the scheme was no 
 longer practicable. And as a companion Freda would be 
 more available than ever, for Mrs. Letchworth was not too 
 generously supplied with available capital, and fifty pounds 
 of the purchase money was to be paid in kind. Freda was to 
 have board and lodging Jacob's old bedroom for twelve 
 months in lieu of cash. She was quite confident that, with 
 a year's leisure and a capital of two hundred pounds, she 
 would be able to find work. 
 
 "I have been lucky, haven't I?" she said, when they dis- 
 cussed the offer after dinner on Christmas night. 
 
 "You deserved it," Betty said. 
 
 Jacob echoed the compliment half-heartedly. He was 
 thinking that Freda's luck was all of Betty's bringing, and 
 that some of it represented a solid gift of money. 
 
 He could not keep that thought to himself when Freda 
 had gone. 
 
 "She would have done the same for me," was Betty's 
 answer. "In fact she did, practically. When we first talked 
 over the idea of my working with her in Montague Place, 
 she insisted that I should go half-shares with her, although 
 I was bringing nothing into the business. Besides, poor 
 Freda hasn't been half as lucky as I have," she concluded, 
 and so successfully turned the conversation. 
 
 Jacob reflected that women's method of doing business 
 was hardly one that would be approved by the lawyers. And 
 Mrs. Letchworth had not made any inquiries as to Freda's 
 title to the furniture. It was certainly a risky method in a 
 civilisation so dominated by the legal profession; but how
 
 356 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 admirable and economically the system worked, founded, 
 as it was, on a basis of confidence and generosity ! 
 
 ii 
 
 "John Tristram" was published on the nineteenth of 
 January. 
 
 Jacob had expended a guinea on a subscription to a press- 
 cutting agency, but he modestly explained to Betty that it 
 would be no good expecting reviews for at least ten days 
 after publication. "It's only novels by well-known writers 
 that get noticed at once," he told her. He counted the 
 Daily Post, however, as a possible exception. 
 
 The advance copy of "John Tristram" had been among 
 the books in the office on the previous Monday afternoon. 
 There had been few books to sen<4 out that day publishers 
 were presumably still waiting for the final dissipation of 
 holiday conditions and when only fiction, represented by 
 five novels, remained to be dealt with, Mr. Gresswell swept 
 them together with a casual glance, and, turning to Jacob, 
 said: "I don't know whether you would care to look 
 through these and see if any of them are worth a notice." 
 
 Jacob blushed. "Oh yes," he stammered at last; "four 
 of them I might. I don't think I'm quite the proper person 
 to do the other." 
 
 Mr. Gresswell looked slightly puzzled and annoyed. 
 "Why not?" he asked, and looked down at the title of the 
 books on the table. 
 
 Jacob felt that he was making the occasion altogether too 
 important. The one other reviewer who had come to the 
 office that day was looking at him quizzically. "I wrote it," 
 Jacob blurted out. "A first effort." 
 
 Mr. Gresswell had spotted "John Tristram" at last. "Oh, 
 I see yes," he said, apparently quite as much embarrassed 
 at the moment as the author. Then he smiled in his kindly 
 way and added : "The other four, at least. . . ." 
 
 Jacob had seen his first effort laid on the editorial table.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 357 
 
 "I hope to goodness he isn't going to do it himself," he said, 
 when he reported the episode to Betty. 
 
 "Oh, why not?" she asked. "I expect he is. He's sure 
 to be kind to you." 
 
 Jacob's face expressed doubt. "It makes me hot all over 
 to think of his reading it," he said. "And as to being kind, 
 he won't if he doesn't think the book deserves it. I don't 
 suppose there's another daily in London as free from fa- 
 vouritism or log-rolling as the D. P. Gresswell's awfully 
 down on that sort of thing." 
 
 "I'm perfectly certain he'll like it," Betty said confidently, 
 and went on to ask questions as to "Tristram's" appearance 
 in book- form. They had not then received their presenta- 
 tion copies, and the paged proofs, although they had lent a 
 new dignity and an air of orthodoxy to the story, had not 
 fulfilled the expectation of the completed book. 
 
 "Amazingly like an ordinary novel," Jacob said. "As a 
 matter of fact, I haven't had it in my hand yet." 
 
 They were both of them enormously excited. 
 
 in 
 
 Thursday and Saturday were the days on which the Daily 
 Post devoted its second page to literature ; and Jacob, pro- 
 testing that his novel would most certainly not be reviewed 
 on the day of publication, nevertheless opened his paper on 
 Thursday morning with evident trepidation. 
 
 "No, it isn't in ; I didn't expect it would be," he said, in 
 answer to the question of Betty's eager face. "There's a 
 column and a half of my stuff, though, which isn't so bad 
 for a Thursday. They're working off all the old stuff I did 
 before Christmas." 
 
 But on Saturday morning Betty went down to the front- 
 door in her dressing-gown, when she heard the casual 
 thump of the newsboy at half-past seven. 
 
 Jacob sat up in bed and listened for the sound of her re- 
 turn. She was, he thought, an outrageously long time in the 
 hall. But when he heard her begin to run up the stairs, he
 
 358 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 knew that she had good news. He jumped out of bed and 
 met her on the landing. 
 
 "It's in!" she said breathlessly. "A long notice. More 
 than half a column." 
 
 Jacob took the paper she offered him, and began to read 
 the review on the landing. Betty led him into the bedroom 
 still reading. 
 
 "Oh, read it aloud !" she implored. "I hardly glanced at 
 it downstairs." 
 
 Jacob ran his eye quickly over the essentials of the criti- 
 cism that would be contained, as he knew, in the concluding 
 sentences. 
 
 "It isn't bad," he announced. 
 
 "Well, read it to me," she insisted. 
 
 "Oh, not bad !" she said, when he had finished. "I think 
 it's splendid !" 
 
 "He takes me tremendously seriously," remarked Jacob, 
 with an uneasy smile. "All this criticism about the relative 
 values I've given to the characters, for instance, and the 
 mistake of making all the others too subsidiary to Tristram. 
 It's perfectly sound, no doubt, but it's taking too high a 
 standard." 
 
 "Well, that's a compliment, isn't it?" asked Betty. 
 
 "It's a compliment all right," returned Jacob; "but it 
 isn't the sort of thing that's going to make people want to 
 read the book. It sounds too classical and artistic, and all 
 that sort of thing. If he could have said something about 
 the interest and humanity of it. . . ." 
 
 "You're never satisfied," Betty complained. "I should 
 have thought you would have been tremendously pleased. 
 It's a pretty good beginning, surely more than half a 
 column of serious criticism in the Daily Post two days 
 after publication. Oh, I know it's going to be a huge 
 success." 
 
 "I wonder," remarked Jacob, and suddenly realised that 
 he was shivering with cold and excitement. "It's a bit 
 chilly this morning, isn't it?" he said. 
 
 Even Betty had been too much engrossed to scold him for
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 359 
 
 standing about in his pyjamas on a January morning. "Get 
 back into bed, for goodness' sake !" she adjured him. 
 
 "Not much," replied Jacob. "I'll put on my dressing- 
 gown, and do the sitting-room grate and light the fire." 
 
 She found him there a quarter of an hour later, his house- 
 work completed, and re-reading Mr. Gresswell's review. 
 
 "He calls it 'a first novel of exceptional promise/ " he 
 said, as she came in. "That will make a good quote for the 
 publishers' advertisements, but it's the only bally one." 
 
 During breakfast, he hopefully pointed out to Betty that, 
 although the seriously critical tone of the editor's review 
 might not intrigue the interest of the novel-reading public, 
 it would be seen by other reviewers, and obtain for "John 
 Tristram" more attention than he might otherwise have 
 received. Betty saw that that was a good point, and he 
 amplified it with much tautology. 
 
 She found a delightful method of teasing him that morn- 
 ing. "Who's a brilliant novelist?" she asked, and forced 
 him, in spite of his perfectly genuine reluctance, to name 
 himself. "I don't suppose I shall get any work out of you 
 to-day," she said, when she had wrung the shamefaced 
 admission from him, notwithstanding the many elaborate 
 arguments that he had adduced to prove to her that this 
 first book was a most commonplace performance. 
 
 "You're quite wrong there, dear," he said triumphantly. 
 "I'm simply full of ideas and energy now. It's when I'm 
 up against it that I can't work." 
 
 And he justified his statement by an enthusiastic attack on 
 his new book, as soon as the breakfast- table had been 
 cleared. 
 
 She found him apparently absorbed when she came into 
 their sitting-room at eleven o'clock. 
 
 "I'm going to take the review round to Freda," she an- 
 nounced ; "and I'm going to send a copy to Hilda and Aunt 
 Mary. Do you want one sent to your brother?" 
 
 Jacob considered the question for a moment, and decided 
 against it. "He's sure to see it," he said. "I'd sooner the 
 first advance came from him."
 
 360 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 When Betty had gone, he sat happily idle for some min- 
 utes, contemplating the amazing fact that he was, in a sense, 
 a success. 
 
 "I'm bound to get attention with this next book," he 
 thought 
 
 IV 
 
 His anticipations as to the influence of Mr. Gresswell's 
 notice were justified by the event. The press did not boom 
 "John Tristram," but they gave it reasonable attention. 
 There were some notable exceptions. The Times and the 
 Daily Telegraph overlooked him altogether, but the ma- 
 jority of the London dailies treated him with a slightly 
 doubting respect, implying that he had done rather well as 
 far as they could judge, but that they would prefer to wait 
 for further samples before definitely committing themselves. 
 
 The Morning Post critic displayed a greater confidence in 
 his own opinion than any other writer, and the arrival of 
 the press-cutting, a fortnight after the book's publication, 
 was one of the "events" that marked this period. 
 
 Jacob read the notice aloud to Betty, and afterwards re- 
 read the more glowing passages, such as "Mr. Stahl has 
 written a very remarkable book. If, as it seems, it is his 
 first, 'Jhri Tristram' should place its writer at once in the 
 forefront of modern novelists"; and the conclusion, in 
 which the reviewer congratulated him "on one of the most 
 convincing studies of character we have read for a very 
 long time." 
 
 "No hesitation about that," Jacob commented, flushed 
 with quiet pride. 
 
 "He hasn't said a word too much," Betty assured him ; 
 and then they read the notice all through again, in order to 
 get the feeling of the general tone of it. 
 
 "He's really enthusiastic, isn't he?" Jacob asked glee- 
 fully. 
 
 Betty jumped out of her chair and kissed him. "Now, 
 who's a brilliant novelist?" she asked, and would not be put 
 off by any of his attempted evasions.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 361 
 
 And it was the Morning Post review that produced the 
 expected communication from Jacob's brother, Eric. 
 
 Jacob found the letter in the passage when he returned 
 from the Daily Post office on Monday evening. Betty had 
 gone to tea with Freda, and he guessed that she had not yet 
 returned. She would certainly have taken the letter upstairs 
 if she had come in. For one moment his jealousy of Freda 
 flared up again. He was hurt that Betty should not have 
 been at home to welcome him. 
 
 He found a carefully banked-up fire in their sitting-room, 
 stirred it into a blaze, and sat down to read his letter. It 
 was not long. 
 
 "MY DEAR JAMES, 
 
 "I saw an excellent review of your novel, 'John Tristram,' in the 
 Morning Post on Thursday, and congratulate you on what seems 
 to be an undoubted achievement. I have not read the book yet, but 
 I shall certainly do so next week. Why have you never come to see 
 us? It must be more than two years now since we last heard from 
 you, and I am addressing this to the care of your publishers, as I 
 have not the least notion where you are living. We, as you see, 
 are still in the same house, and would be delighted if you would 
 come to supper any Sunday. 
 
 "Your affectionate brother, 
 
 "Ewe" 
 
 "P.S. Doris begs me to add that she hopes we shall see you next 
 Sunday, if you are in town." 
 
 "Not only still in the same house," reflected Jacob, "but 
 also in precisely the same mood." In two years his brother 
 had not changed in the least degree, if his letter was any 
 criterion. It might have been written two or ten years 
 before, and in those two years Jacob had had experiences 
 that had revolutionised his whole attitude towards life. "I 
 am not the same man," he thought, "that I was in those 
 days." Yet he was conscious at that moment of all the old 
 hesitations and doubts. He would never be able to boast, 
 nor even to defend his own opinions, in his brother's house 
 at Putney. That old form of address no one but Eric had 
 ever called him "James" seemed to have some hypnotic 
 suggestion. The sight of his brother and the sense of the
 
 362 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 familiar atmosphere of his surroundings would be still more 
 potent. Jacob could picture every detail of his visit, and, 
 just as on an earlier occasion, he would have to tell what 
 must appear in those surroundings as a disreputable story. 
 He had almost decided that nothing should induce him to go 
 to Putney when he heard the front-door slam, and then 
 Betty's footstep on the stairs. 
 
 She came in, a little flushed, as if she had been hurrying. 
 
 "Oh, you are in first, after all!" she said. "Any news?" 
 
 Jacob had quite forgotten his resentment. "The long- 
 expected letter from Eric," he said, and gave it to her to 
 read. 
 
 "What a wonderful handwriting!" was her first exclama- 
 tion. "It's so extraordinarily neat, and small, and clear." 
 
 Jacob wondered vaguely whether the same adjectives 
 were in any way descriptive of Eric's soul, but he said noth- 
 ing till Betty had finished. 
 
 "Are you going?" she asked, looking at him with an ex- 
 pression he could not interpret. He thought it a little cold 
 defensive, perhaps. 
 
 "Oh no! What's the good?" he said. "As a matter of 
 fact I've been, in imagination. I know so absolutely every- 
 thing they would say." 
 
 "I think you'd better go," replied Betty. 
 
 "What good would it do ?" he said ; but he was suddenly 
 aware that he wanted to go. That visit would be an adven- 
 ture, an excitement. It would give him an opportunity to 
 make one more effort to express himself to his brother. 
 Jacob felt that in some inexplicable way he might make 
 himself understood, if he were only bold enough. 
 
 "Well, he is your brother," Betty said. "And evidently 
 his wife would like to see you." 
 
 "I don't really care one way or the other," remarked 
 Jacob carelessly. 
 
 "You would tell them about us, of course?" Betty con- 
 tinued. 
 
 "Obviously. I'm not the least ashamed of our relations," 
 Jacob returned valiantly.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 
 
 "But you wouldn't take me with you ?" 
 
 "Rather! I would, if you'd like to come. It would be 
 no end of a lark." 
 
 "And suppose they snubbed me?" 
 
 "Make a few pertinent remarks and walk out," Jacob 
 suggested. 
 
 Betty smiled. "I wouldn't go for anything in the world," 
 she announced. 
 
 Jacob was puzzled. "Would you sooner / didn't go, 
 either ?" he asked. 
 
 "I want you to go, but I don't think you'd better say 
 anything about me," was her answer. 
 
 "I couldn't go and not mention you," he said firmly. 
 
 "What good can it do ?" she said. "Why not go and talk 
 about your book and leave me out of it?" 
 
 He frowned and took up his old question: "Are you 
 worrying again?" 
 
 "Not a bit," she said gaily. "I was talking to Freda 
 about that this afternoon. That was what made me late. 
 I only want to be consistent about it. You see, dear, there 
 are evidently two sorts of people from our point of view 
 the ones who won't care about our not being married, and 
 the ones who will. I don't know which sort your brother 
 belongs to, but I can guess ; and it isn't any good trying to 
 persuade that sort that we are just as virtuous as they are, 
 because you couldn't ever make them believe it. So what 
 we've got to do is to know only the other sort." 
 
 "There are plenty of the other sort about," replied Jacob, 
 "and we're pretty sure to meet them when I'm a bit better 
 known ; but does all this mean that you'd sooner I didn't go 
 to Putney?" 
 
 "No; I want you to go," Betty said. "But I do think 
 that you'd better leave me out of it." 
 
 "I couldn't do that," Jacob repeated. 
 
 They decided finally that he was to accept Eric's invita- 
 tion for the next Sunday, not mentioning Betty in his letter, 
 but leaving himself free to make any announcement he 
 thought fit when the time came.
 
 364 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Reflecting on the conversation later, Jacob was struck by 
 the change that had come over Betty in the last fifteen 
 months. She held her head higher now than he held his 
 own. Was that change mainly due to Freda's influence, he 
 wondered ? 
 
 As he walked up from Putney Station to his brother's 
 house on Sunday evening, Jacob was fully prepared to adopt 
 a confident, high-handed attitude throughout the coming 
 interview. He had a clear way of escape. If he returned 
 to Betty that night with the admission that he had not men- 
 tioned her name, she could not blame him. She had stead- 
 fastly advised silence, and defended her advice on the 
 grounds that Mr. and Mrs. Eric Stahl fell into the category 
 of the "other sort." Jacob believed that also, but he did not 
 believe that he would be well advised to leave Putney with 
 the one important fact of his relations with Betty unre- 
 ported. His silence might be diplomatic, but it would con- 
 stitute an admission that he was ashamed, with the further 
 implication that many of his old arguments were fallacious. 
 Nevertheless, he had left himself a way of escape for two 
 reasons. The first was that he wanted to surprise Betty. 
 He had left her without declaring his intention. He liked 
 to think that she was at that moment anticipating his failure 
 to confess their relations, and he pictured with a .keen 
 pleasure his return with the quiet boast that he had always 
 meant to be perfectly honest and brave about it all. He 
 would justify himself, and give her fresh cause for confi- 
 dence. His second reason was equally characteristic. He 
 felt relieved by the knowledge that he was not pledged. 
 That knowledge gave him strength. He hated to be in any 
 sense driven. Now he was free to do as he chose. 
 
 And in the train he argued himself into a pose of smiling 
 superiority to any strictures or cold disapproval that he 
 might, and as he thought probably would, meet. He was 
 self-sufficient. He was in no way dependent upon his 
 brother's good-will. He had, with Betty's assistance, made
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 365 
 
 some sort of a place for himself in the world. He was a 
 regular and esteemed contributor to one of the most literary 
 dailies in London. He had written a book that placed him, 
 according to the Morning Post's reviewer, "in the forefront 
 of modern novelists." Finally, in this connection, he had 
 nearly finished a second book that in his own opinion was 
 far better than the first. He must, he reflected, keep the 
 thought of his own glory constantly in his mind. He must 
 walk into his brother's house with the consciousness and the 
 air of the brilliant young novelist who was one day going to 
 do great things. . . . 
 
 As he walked up from the station he was fully persuaded 
 that he was a person of considerable consequence. 
 
 It was the sight of that familiar place that gave him the 
 first feeling of uneasiness. Eric's house stood slightly apart 
 from its neighbours, its grounds were larger, and both house 
 and garden were neater and in some way more definite than 
 those near them. Here were the marks of efficiency and 
 permanence. Jacob halted with his hand on the latch of the 
 garden-gate and wondered if George Eliot could have de- 
 fended her position in those surroundings? 
 
 And then he had to wait alone for five minutes in the 
 drawing-room. Mr. and Mrs. Stahl were out, the maid said, 
 but would certainly be back in a few minutes. They had 
 gone to Hampstead a long journey from Putney in 1899. 
 
 Jacob fidgeted, and his courage sank continually lower as 
 he sat in his brother's drawing-room. There, too, he found 
 the characteristic marks. The furniture was neither Vic- 
 torian nor influenced by the craze for the antique. Beauti- 
 fully kept mahogany and walnut, silver and brass, pro- 
 claimed a note of stability without pretentiousness, and the 
 many books which had overflowed from the library were so 
 undeniably well chosen. The best literature was repre- 
 sented, and yet the choice was not from the more obvious 
 classics. Stendhal, Sainte-Beuve, Flaubert, and Bourget 
 were there in the originals, together with French transla- 
 tions from Pushkin, Gorky, and Turgenev. Germany sup- 
 plied no lighter literature except Heine's verse, but there
 
 366 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 was a German translation of a Swedish writer named Au- 
 gust Strindberg, almost unknown in England at that 
 time. . . . 
 
 Jacob ranged moodily along the shelves, growing con- 
 tinually more conscious of his ignorance and the futility of 
 his attempt at fiction. This was the standard by which he 
 would be judged. Eric and his wife had read these books, 
 and knew them well enough to compare and criticise the 
 writers of them. The whole atmosphere of the place was 
 impregnable. Scholarship and efficiency made up the domi- 
 nant note of the house. And even in the most conventional 
 details the owners of it maintained their standard. No 
 doubt that Hampstead visit had been a duty call, the kind of 
 visit that Jacob, in Eric's position, would have shirked and 
 neglected. 
 
 He was roused from his reflections by the sound of the 
 garden-gate. They were coming, and Jacob knew that he 
 was a hopeless failure, and not at all respectable. 
 
 VI 
 
 Doris came in at once. "Oh, you are here!" she said. 
 "I'm sorry we were out. We have been over to Professor 
 Henderson's at Hampstead, and it is such a journey." She 
 appeared to be slightly embarrassed. 
 
 "I've only been here a few minutes," Jacob said. "I've 
 been looking at the books." He was ready to plunge head- 
 long into that subject when his brother entered. 
 
 Eric Stahl was slightly shorter than Jacob, and had a 
 scholarly stoop of the shoulders that made him look shorter 
 still. He had dark eyes, a neat, dark moustache, and some- 
 what blunt features, that contrasted markedly with Jacob's 
 blue-eyed, clean-shaven, rather ascetic face, and yet some 
 effect of general proportion or trick of expression empha- 
 sised a recognisable likeness between them. No one could 
 doubt that they were brothers. 
 
 "I'm sorry we're late," Eric said, as he shook hands with
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 367 
 
 his brother. "We've been over to Henderson's at Hamp- 
 stead. It's a tremendous undertaking." 
 
 "I've only been here a minute or two," Jacob said; and 
 then Doris got up with a smile and murmured that she must 
 go and take off her things. 
 
 Jacob wondered how many more times it would be neces- 
 sary to begin a conversation. Presently Doris would return, 
 and after that they would go in to supper. Each interrup- 
 tion necessitated a fresh opening. At that moment he could 
 imagine nothing more grotesquely impossible than that he 
 should disclose the sacred story of his life with Betty to 
 these two efficient, intimidating strangers. 
 
 A constraint that evidently affected Eric no less than 
 Jacob induced a reference to the weather as soon as the two 
 brothers were left alone, and it was Jacob who made the 
 first effort to open a safe topic. He was afraid of being led 
 into any relation of his own story until he had the attention 
 of both hearers. If the thing was to be done, he must make 
 an occasion for it. To dribble out fragments and then re- 
 peat them would hopelessly compromise his chance of pro- 
 ducing any air of conviction, and when the dreaded silence 
 came, he seized the moment for an attack. 
 
 "I've been looking you up in Whitaker," he said. "You 
 seem to be doing very well." 
 
 Eric was standing on the hearthrug, his well-cut frock- 
 coat unbuttoned, and he now pushed back the tails of it, put 
 his hands in his trouser-pockets, and looked down modestly 
 at his patent-leather boots. 
 
 "I have been rather lucky," he admitted. 
 
 "What's the next thing?" asked Jacob. "A permanent 
 secretaryship, and twelve hundred pounds a year?" 
 
 "Not for a few years yet," replied Eric, with a depreca- 
 tory smile. 
 
 "But I suppose you're getting nearly that now?" per- 
 sisted Jacob. 
 
 "Nine hundred," Eric said. "I had a big rise last year." 
 
 Jacob remembered that Doris had money of her own. 
 These two relations of his were well established, and yet, for
 
 368 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 the first time in his life, he had a strange sense of deferring 
 to them. So long as he could keep on this subject he was 
 safe. He did not envy them money, nor a position, however 
 influential, in the Civil Service. Only their scholarship 
 intimidated him. 
 
 "I never have quite understood what was the work of you 
 permanent officials," he said, and pressed his inquiries until 
 Doris returned. He had found an attitude. He was the 
 artist, decently ignorant of the minutiae of administrative 
 government. 
 
 And not until supper was completely started was any 
 mention made of Jacob's book. 
 
 Doris began. "We've both read 'John Tristram/ " she 
 said. "We like it immensely." 
 
 "Only a beginning/"' mumbled Jacob. 
 
 "Yes, we felt that, in a way," Doris said. "But it's quite 
 a splendid beginning." 
 
 "I don't want you to take it too seriously," replied Jacob, 
 modestly preoccupied with his cold chicken. 
 
 "We thought you had been rather influenced by Thack- 
 eray," put in Eric. 
 
 "More particularly 'Vanity Fair' and 'The Newcomes,' " 
 added Doris. 
 
 And Eric smartened up the criticism by concluding : "But 
 you're undoubtedly developing a characteristic style of your 
 own. One could see it getting stronger as the book went 
 on." 
 
 Jacob had a quiver of terrible doubt. 
 
 "I'm afraid the next book . . ." he began, lost his se- 
 quence by a parenthesis to the effect that the second book 
 was nearly finished and would possibly be published in the 
 autumn, and then recovered his point clumsily by adding: 
 "But what I was going to say is that I'm afraid the style of ' 
 it is entirely different to anything in 'Tristram.' I it's a 
 style that really suits me better slightly whimsical, fan- 
 tastic, you know." 
 
 "Isn't it supposed to be rather a mistake to change your 
 style?" asked Eric.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 869 
 
 "I dare say it is," apologised Jacob. 
 
 Eric smiled rather grimly. "You've always erred, I think, 
 on the side of versatility," he said. 
 
 Jacob realised that everything was going badly. They had 
 got him down already. At the opening he had held a tenable 
 position, but now he was exposed to a criticism that was 
 penetrating his literary defences and touching his private 
 life. If he admitted versatility, his anticipated confession 
 was damned. Only a bold counter-attack could save him. 
 
 He looked up and met his brother's eyes. "I don't like 
 your description," he said. "Versatility has somehow come 
 to mean weakness. You've kept one line so well yourself, 
 you know, Eric, that you've no sympathy for the empirical 
 method, which is, after all, the scientific method, isn't it?" 
 
 He kept his head up, but he felt as if he had boxed his 
 brother's ears. 
 
 Eric showed no sign of being offended. 
 
 "How far can you carry empiricism in practical life?" he 
 returned. "One must start from certain premisses." 
 
 Jacob's mind was whirling with arguments, none of them 
 sufficiently conclusive. "I must stand up to him," he said to 
 himself, "even if I get rude." 
 
 "In the Civil Service, no doubt," he said. "I'll admit 
 that at once. But you know perfectly well that all your 
 premisses are open to question. You merely accept them 
 from motives of expediency." 
 
 Eric laughed, and looked across at his wife. 
 
 "We were discussing that point a few days ago," she ex- 
 plained, "and almost decided that a certain d priorism was 
 absolutely essential." 
 
 "In practical life, and science and art, as well as in re- 
 ligion," added Eric. 
 
 "Setting up a dummy for someone else to knock down ?" 
 suggested Jacob. 
 
 "Is it quite that?" asked Doris. "Eric, will you ring?" 
 
 The entrance of the maid interrupted the argument, but 
 Jacob was satisfied with the part he had played in it. He 
 had not been crushed, although he had been dependent on
 
 370 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 his own wit, while his opponents had all the advantages of 
 academic resource. The change of courses had saved him 
 for the time being; in another minute he would have been 
 bewildered and beaten by the citation of authorities and of 
 the precedents of history. He congratulated himself that 
 he had recovered some of his lost ground, and determined to 
 remain with the initiative. Doris was handicapped by apple- 
 tart and trifle. 
 
 Jacob accepted trifle as more easily negotiable for himself, 
 and took up his own line with determination. 
 
 "You know, I can't argue with you," he said. "You're 
 both of you too well read. You have me at once when it 
 comes to authorities. But I am working towards some sort 
 of a philosophy of my own. I don't want you to run away 
 with the idea that I change my mind every ten minutes." 
 
 Doris politely deprecated such an idea, but Eric came 
 in with a definite question : 
 
 "What are you living on now?" he asked. 
 
 "Reviewing for the Daily Post chiefly," replied Jacob. 
 "I'm on the staff for all intents and purposes. I go through 
 the books with the editor once a week, and get a pile to 
 select from." 
 
 He thought they were mildly impressed, and modestly 
 gave them some account of his work to keep the conversa- 
 tion on safe ground until they went back to the drawing- 
 room. Nevertheless, his heart was failing him. These little 
 boasts were all very well, but they were quite insufficient as 
 a prelude to the principal movement that must soon be indi- 
 cated. 
 
 \ "Will you come into the other room? You can smoke 
 there," Eric said, as Doris got up from the table. 
 
 VII 
 
 No opportunity was presented to him. The conversation 
 had slid to impersonal topics. Eric had been reading a new 
 French philosopher named Bergson, who ought to be trans- 
 lated ; he had written a very remarkable essay on the imme-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 371 
 
 diate data of consciousness some ten years before, Eric said, 
 and had followed it up more recently with a work entitled, 
 "Matiere et Memoire." Jacob was advised to read him. 
 
 They were not going to make any further inquiries about 
 his manner of life. Jacob was accepted. He had been diffi- 
 cult in his younger days, but he had done something to 
 justify his claim to recognition, and could now be received 
 within the learned circle of their acquaintance. They even 
 talked to him as if he were their intellectual equal. 
 
 The disclosure of his irregularities became more difficult 
 every minute, and it was half-past nine. He must leave by 
 ten o'clock at the latest. His attention had wandered from 
 the amazing analyses of M. Bergson. What was Doris 
 saying ? 
 
 "I'm sorry I didn't hear," Jacob apologised. 
 
 "I said you must meet some of our literary friends here," 
 Doris repeated. "We know quite a lot of people who might 
 be useful to you." 
 
 "Thanks yes, I should like to very much," Jacob said. 
 For a moment he did not realise his opportunity, and then 
 he braced himself for the big effort. "Only I ought to tell 
 you," he went on, "that some people might perhaps object 
 to meeting me. There is such a lot of prejudice among 
 among some people." How much better it would have been 
 if he had said all this earlier. Coming now, it had the air of 
 a shamefaced reservation. And do what he would, he could 
 not help blushing. 
 
 He kept his eyes on Doris ; he could not look at Eric. 
 
 "Oh! Why?" she asked. '"Why should anyone object?" 
 
 He hesitated until the silence became unendurable. 
 Neither of them gave him any further encouragement. 
 Without question, he was condemned again already thrust 
 back into the ghetto of the social pariahs. He had bungled 
 hopelessly, and now he might as well give up any hope of 
 placating these two respectable, capable people. He real- 
 ised for the first time that he had had some wild, foolish 
 dream of returning to Betty with the news that she was to
 
 372 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 be received at Putney. How incredibly foolish he could be 
 in the affairs of life! 
 
 "You two people always paralyse me," he burst out des- 
 perately, at last. 
 
 "I don't know why we should," Eric said slowly. He had 
 not smoked since supper, but now he took a cigarette from 
 the box on the table. 
 
 "I don't think you have ever been quite fair to us," said 
 Doris. She leaned a little forward and shaded her eyes 
 from the fire. "Two years ago last November," she con- 
 tinued, "before baby died, I thought we were beginning to 
 understand each other." Her voice was quite steady, but 
 her tone was gentle, even tender. 
 
 "You judge us much more harshly than we have ever 
 judged you," Eric put in. 
 
 "I'm sorry," murmured Jacob. "I dare say it has all 
 been my fault." Were they human, after all, he wondered ? 
 The suggestion seemed too improbable. He must wait until 
 his story was told before he decided that problem. But 
 the telling of it was become unexpectedly simple. It was 
 no more an admission of improbity, but a test of their 
 quality. 
 
 "You see, I have always been a poorish sort of fool," he 
 said. "I never did anything decently, and my marriage 
 made things fifty times worse." 
 
 Doris murmured something that he did not catch, but he 
 went on: "And anything I have done now has been due 
 to someone else's influence more than my own determina- 
 tion. She has given me everything I wanted help and 
 encouragement, and and . . . love. I was such a deso- 
 late sort of creature before." 
 
 "Who is she?" asked Eric quietly. 
 
 "Her father is the rector of a parish in Buckingham- 
 shire," replied Jacob, stiffening a little. "Some of her 
 people have forgiven her and come to see us, but not her 
 father. And, of course, she has been very miserable in 
 some ways. She is getting over it now; but we lived in 
 Cornwall for six months, and never met a soul."
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 373 
 
 "Wouldn't your wife divorce you ?" suggested Eric. 
 
 Jacob shook his head. "She won't on religious 
 grounds," he added, with a faint sneer. 
 
 "What is her name?" asked Doris. 
 
 "Betty," replied Jacob. "Her father's name is Gale." 
 
 Eric lighted a fresh cigarette. "I admit that it does make 
 it difficult to meet some people," he said. "A friend of 
 Doris's has just gone through the divorce court. She left 
 her husband for much the same sort of reason that you 
 left your wife," 
 
 "But you don't condemn her utterly ?" asked Jacob, turn- 
 ing to Doris. 
 
 She looked up at him and smiled. "I don't think you 
 understand us in the least," she said. "We are not as preju- 
 diced as you think we are, but we have to know so many 
 people who are well, particular about that sort of thing." 
 
 "Oh, of course," agreed Jacob. 
 
 "I'm glad you told us," remarked Eric, and then came 
 another silence. Jacob was still unsure whether they were 
 human or not. They had done the right thing, but they had 
 left themselves unburdened by any responsibility to uphold 
 the rectitude of Jacob's and Betty's attitude. 
 
 Jacob sighed. "I'm afraid I must be going," he said. 
 "It's a long way to Great Ormond Street." 
 
 Doris looked at her husband. 
 
 "You don't think it would be possible to get a divorce?" 
 he asked. 
 
 Jacob stood up. "No," he said definitely. "And I don't 
 know that Betty and I are very keen on it either." 
 
 "That's all right, no doubt, as a matter of principle," 
 replied Eric. "Doris and I are quite prepared to agree with 
 you, but you must see how difficult the social question is." 
 
 "I do," admitted Jacob. "I'm only sorry now that we 
 shan't be able to meet." 
 
 "But there's no reason why we shouldn't," Doris said 
 eagerly. "It's only that we can't ask you to meet certain 
 other people."
 
 374 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob flushed. "We don't want to meet people much, you 
 know," he said gently. 
 
 "Will you come and have dinner with us quietly one 
 night?" suggested Eric. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Jacob's reaction was complete by the time he reached 
 home. 
 
 "I'm the rottenest judge of people that ever lived!" he 
 told Betty. "Eric is perfectly human; I'm not sure that 
 he's not more human than I am, in a way. I can see now, 
 and I never guessed it till to-night, that he has always 
 wanted to help me, only I wouldn't let him. I got on his 
 nerves. I should have got on anybody's nerves two years 
 ago. I was confoundedly pigheaded and unpractical. And 
 as for Doris, she's a dear, Betty. I know you'll like Doris. 
 Only you mustn't let them terrify you. They are so paralys- 
 ingly clever; they read all the books before anyone else has 
 heard of them. And they understand what they read. 
 When I thought of my reviewing to-night I felt that I 
 wanted to crawl underground. The cheek of my pretending 
 to review books !" 
 
 "And they really don't mind?" asked Betty. 
 
 "Not one scrap themselves, but they know so many peo- 
 ple who would. I suppose they have to." 
 
 "You think they want us to go?" 
 
 "I'm absolutely certain they do," Jacob said. He paused 
 a moment, and concluded: "It sounds incredible, but I 
 believe they're rather fond of me in their own way."
 
 XVIII 
 RECOGNITION 
 
 BETTY was received and approved by Eric and his wife 
 the same week. Doris found an occasion to whisper to 
 Jacob that Betty was "perfectly sweet," a phrase that sur- 
 prised him by its femininity, but pleased him far more than 
 any expression of deliberate approval, such as Eric's "I 
 should think she is the kind of woman who would certainly 
 help you." But if Eric was still inclined to formality, he 
 was helpful in another way. Doris's statement that she and 
 her husband knew people who might be useful to Jacob, 
 was soon verified. Eric had met no less a person than 
 A. B. Ellis at a Fabian meeting, and had had the temerity 
 to recommend his brother's novel. 
 
 Jacob was torn between apprehension and pride when he 
 heard that announcement. Ellis was a comparatively new 
 writer, but his power had been recognised from the publica- 
 tion of his first book. 
 
 "That was awfully good of you," Jacob said. "I'm afraid 
 he won't like it, though. I admire his work tremendously 
 the clearness and vividness of it, you know. I think, 
 in a way, my next book has been rather influenced by Ellis's 
 style. I wish it had been that. Do you think he'll read 
 Tristram'?" 
 
 "Most probably," Eric said. "I have seen him several 
 times lately, and he has been good enough to ask my advice 
 on one or two occasions. And, by the way, he has had the 
 same matrimonial difficulties as yourselves." He included 
 Betty in his rather formal smile. "I'm not quite sure 
 whether his wife has divorced him or not." 
 
 Jacob could talk of nothing but the chance of meeting 
 
 375
 
 376 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 A. B. Ellis during the next two days, and did not forget to 
 point out that little matrimonial irregularities were of small 
 account in the literary world, if once you became famous. 
 
 Betty smiled and agreed. She had already come to the 
 same conclusion by another road. The truth was that they 
 had found a formula, which even Beechcombe might come 
 to accept in due time. Two months before Jacob Stahl 
 could not be explained. The questions, "Who is he?" 
 "What is he?" could only be answered by devious and un- 
 satisfactory explanations. Now he was the author of "a 
 very promising first novel," a young writer who was going 
 to be well known. He was an explicable person, and Beech- 
 combe could only refuse to accept the explanation on the 
 grounds of ignorance or of disapproval of Jacob's work. 
 Nevertheless, Betty had no intention of approaching her 
 father as yet. She felt that the first advances must come 
 from him. They could wait. 
 
 But she sent a copy of "Tristram" to Hilda a week after 
 her little girl was born, and had an answer a few days later 
 in which Hilda held out hopes that she might possibly be 
 able to come to town with her husband in April to stay with 
 his married sister, and concluded: "We should so like to 
 come and see you both, and bring baby!" 
 
 "They are all coming round," was Jacob's comment. 
 "Fancy our receiving the Established Church on terms of 
 amity !" 
 
 "With reservations," remarked Betty. "They might 
 come here, but they wouldn't ask us to his sister's." 
 
 "No, obviously," replied Jacob. "But I don't think that 
 that matters." 
 
 "Only to this extent," Betty said, "that it's not much 
 use trying to keep in with them. Of course, I shall try and 
 see Hilda now and then." 
 
 "But you'll let them come?" urged Jacob. 
 
 "Oh yes! Why not?" Betty said. 
 
 And early in May the visitation was actually made, and 
 Mr. Phelps was revealed to Jacob as a decently representa- 
 tive young Rector, and a proud, if reasonably modest,
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 377 
 
 father. He was evidently concerned to do the right things 
 in those unaccustomed surroundings, sedulously avoided 
 any approach to controversial topics, and, when he and 
 Jacob were left alone while Betty and Hilda adjourned to 
 the bedroom to perform some ceremony required by the 
 four-months-old infant, became intensely earnest in his de- 
 sire for Jacob's opinion on the novelists of the day. They 
 appeared to have ended for Mr. Phelps with Anthony 
 Trollope and Charles Kingsley, though he entered a caustic 
 comment on the "blasphemies" of Robert Elsmere. Through 
 it all he had the air of a man whose curiosity and interest 
 were piqued by his surroundings. He might have worn 
 the same manner if he had been making his first visit to 
 the green-room of a theatre. 
 
 Hilda was much more at her ease. She was a young 
 mother, and any comment she might have had to make 
 would necessarily have been influenced by that fact. Jacob 
 thought her pretty, and was much engaged in watching her 
 charming antics with her little daughter. Phelps he summed 
 up as being "all right," and added: "But I've no use for 
 him, of course. I might as well have been talking to a 
 South Sea Islander over the telephone." He had brought 
 an early reference to his acquaintance with Ellis they had 
 met twice then into the conversation, and had been shocked 
 to find that Ellis's name was quite unknown to the Phelps. 
 
 Jacob was a little impatient of Betty's evident pleasure 
 in the re-establishment of the old relations with her sister. 
 
 "I didn't know you cared so much for her," he said. 
 
 "It's nice to feel that we understand one another again," 
 Betty explained. It appeared that she and Hilda had "had 
 it all out" while Jacob had been discussing literature with 
 Phelps, and it had been tentatively suggested that Betty and 
 Jacob might go to stay for a few days in the Worcestershire 
 parsonage, if they would consent to the fiction for paro- 
 chial purposes of an antecedent wedding. 
 
 "We'll go, if you like," Jacob said. "I expect it'll be 
 pretty dull." 
 
 But Betty shook her head. "Not on those terms, she
 
 378 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 said; and Jacob, misunderstanding her, protested that she 
 was too sensitive. 
 
 She did not enlighten him on that occasion. 
 
 ii 
 
 Jacob finished his second novel at the end of April, and 
 submitted it in the ordinary course to the publishers of 
 "John Tristram." Eric had advised him that he should in- 
 sist upon some advance against royalties on this occasion, 
 and Jacob touched lightly upon that suggestion when he 
 sent in his manuscript. 
 
 The interview that followed was not entirely satisfactory. 
 
 "The Creature of Circumstance" was more than ap- 
 proved. Mr. Norman especially gave it high praise, but, 
 speaking on behalf of the firm, he was inclined to advise the 
 postponement of publication until after Mr. Stahl had fin- 
 ished the second part of "John Tristram." This advice, 
 Mr. Norman explained, was a matter of policy. The first 
 book, despite its good notices, had not been a financial suc- 
 cess. He appealed to his partner, who referred to a type- 
 written statement, and reported the net sales to date as 
 five hundred and twenty-seven copies, and then passed over 
 the account to Jacob, who stared at it steadily while the 
 gentle voice of Mr. Norman continued the exposition. 
 
 In the circumstances, he urged, it was hardly wise to 
 put out a second book in an entirely new manner, for al- 
 though "Tristram" had not been eagerly sought for by the 
 general public, it was still selling, nearly four months after 
 publication. And if the second part followed within a rea- 
 sonable time, the sales might be re-stimulated. Most books 
 sold for six weeks seven or eight hundred copies, perhaps 
 and then the sale ceased absolutely. "Tristram" was obvi- 
 ously in another class. It did not appeal to a wide public, 
 but it interested certain people, who recommended it to their 
 friends, and so the sales went on, steadily, if slowly. But 
 if this second book were published in the autumn, Mr. 
 Stahl's small but potentially faithful readers might be alien-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 379 
 
 ated. They would expect more "Tristrams" ; they might be 
 disgusted to find a fantasy in its place. Nevertheless, the 
 firm understood that this might seem rather hard on Mr. 
 Stahl, and they were prepared to accept "The Creature of 
 Circumstance," and to pay twenty-five pounds advance 
 royalties on it, if the author would consent to leave the 
 date of its publication to the firm's discretion. 
 
 Jacob listened to the whole proposition without making a 
 single interruption. If he had been alone, he might have 
 consented without demur. The policy the 4 ; had been out- 
 lined was perfectly reasonable, and was prompted, without 
 question, by a genuine regard for his own success as a 
 novelist. But Betty was waiting for him at their old 
 rendezvous this had been adjudged as another "occasion" 
 and he knew that he dared not face her with the an- 
 nouncement that his new book had been "put back." They 
 had counted such an enormous brood of chickens as emerg- 
 ing from that next sitting. 
 
 "I'm sorry," Jacob said, with a look of slightly harassed 
 determination. "I'm afraid I couldn't do that." 
 
 He knew that he was perfectly safe, that he would have 
 no difficulty in placing the book under discussion with an- 
 other publisher; but he was thinking less of that than of 
 Betty's disapproval, and at the same time he was very 
 anxious not to hurt the feelings of Messrs. Norman and 
 Goodrich. He remembered that they had befriended him 
 when he was a rejected author. 
 
 Mr. Norman looked at his partner, who fidgeted with 
 some papers on the table in front of him. 
 
 "We were rather afraid . . ." began Mr. Norman, and 
 then waited for Jacob's explanation. 
 
 "I'm a perfect ass at business," Jacob said. He felt that 
 he must be frank. He could not play Farmer's game, even 
 '?ow that he held a winning hand. "I see your point, and I 
 think it's a good one; but I can't wait. I can't afford to 
 wait, you know. You see, I'm thirty-six. I began to write 
 rather late, and I want now to pile on everything I can. I'm 
 too old to adopt a policy like yours. I couldn't get the
 
 380 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 second part of 'Tristram' finished before about March next 
 year, and by that time people will have forgotten all about 
 me. I must keep them going with this next book. Besides, 
 I don't want to label myself as a writer of a certain class of 
 fiction. It's no good. I shan't stick to one sort, ever. Im 
 like that. I'm too . . ." He hesitated for a word, and, 
 remembering Eric's description, tried "versatile," and then, 
 afraid of the boastful sound of it, he added : "I'm too easily 
 influenced, I suppose. I'm sure it would be a mistake to rub 
 in the impression that all my books will be 'Tristrams,' 
 when they most certainly won't." 
 
 "But when you are a little better known . . ." suggested 
 Mr. Goodrich. 
 
 "Yes, it might be better in the end ; but I can't afford to 
 wait," remonstrated Jacob. He was quite convinced now 
 that his own argument was sound. 
 
 "When did you want us to publish the new book ?" asked 
 Mr. Norman. 
 
 "Fairly early in the autumn," Jacob said. 
 
 And the firm gave way with a readiness that was cer- 
 tainly complimentary. Jacob had said nothing of taking his 
 book to another publisher's, but his definite refusal of Mr. 
 Norman's suggestion had implied a fine independence, and 
 it was encouragingly evident that the firm of Norman Good- 
 rich believed that the novels of Jacob Stahl would eventually 
 pay the cost of publication. 
 
 There was one other point that Jacob had intended to 
 make during the interview namely, a demand for a bolder 
 advertising campaign than had been possible for "John 
 Tristram." He had meant to make several expert sugges- 
 tions, based on his experience as a writer of advertisements, 
 but Norman and Goodrich had treated him so generously, 
 and had already made so many concessions, that it seemed 
 to him that any further demand would smack of overbear- 
 ance. He could not endure the thought that he, should seem 
 to be taking any unfair advantage. 
 
 "They had given way about everything," he explained to 
 Betty in their hallowed basement. "They're going to pub-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 381 
 
 lish the 'Creature' early in September; they're giving me 
 an advance of twenty-five pounds on publication, and higher 
 royalties. I couldn't, after that, turn round and insist upon 
 expensive advertisement. 'John Tristram 1 has only sold 
 five hundred and twenty-seven copies, you see, and they 
 must have lost money on it" 
 
 Betty agreed, and speculated on the probability that 
 Jacob would make Norman Goodrich's fortunes as well as 
 his own. 
 
 He had consented to give them the refusal of any sequel 
 or sequels that he might write to his first book. 
 
 in 
 
 Jacob began the second part of "John Tristram" before 
 he and Betty left London, and when they went to Cornwall, 
 early in June, he had the whole scheme of the book quite 
 clearly in his mind. He had found it surprisingly easy to 
 return to his earlier manner, although he recognised that he 
 was correcting the more obvious faults of his first effort. 
 Some of his reviewers had helped him in that particular. 
 
 They took a furnished cottage some six or seven miles 
 from Trevarrian that year. Their income was increasing. 
 They could expect a certain forty pounds from Norman 
 Goodrich, Limited, in the autumn, and "Tristram" had been 
 published in America, and some further additions might be 
 expected from that source. Also, Jacob had had a slightly 
 fantastic sketch accepted by one of the reviews, and he had 
 ideas for one or two short stories that he was confidently 
 counting upon as a further source of income. He thought 
 he knew now precisely where his earlier attempts at short- 
 story writing had failed. 
 
 They were both full of hope that summer, and found 
 great joy in sitting by the sea and planning their future. 
 It seemed that the road to success lay clear and accessible 
 before them. 
 
 And when "The Creature of Circumstance" was published 
 in September, they were almost afraid that success had come
 
 382 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 too soon. They were back in London then, and, on the 
 strength of their expectations, had taken a tiny flat near 
 Gospel Oak, and bought furniture on the hire system. 
 
 The reviews of the new book were certainly wonderful. 
 Mr. Gresswell had written that Mr. Stahl was opening up a 
 "new field of fiction," and had achieved something that 
 might "justly be called original." And their unknown 
 friend on the Morning Post had given Jacob a whole col- 
 umn, and described the book as "a wonderful effort of vision 
 and imagination." Some of the other notices were nearly 
 as good, although the Times still maintained a majestic 
 silence. 
 
 Betty laid the burden of the book's failure on the already 
 well-weighted shoulders of a gentleman in South Africa, an 
 individual whose works became so absorbingly interesting 
 on the Qth of October, that no one had a thought for the 
 reading of novels. But if President Kruger's ultimatum 
 and its consequences were the sole cause for the failure of 
 "The Creature of Circumstance," it is difficult to account 
 for the fact that "John Tristram" continued to sell in drib- 
 lets of seven and thirteen copies through November and 
 the first half of December. And in the light afforded by 
 a later experiment, and in the relative clearness of mind 
 that followed the taking of Pretoria, Jacob was able to de- 
 cide that the matter of his second book, not less than the 
 unfortunate moment of its publication, must be held ac- 
 countable for its failure. It never sold five hundred copies 
 in all, and no American publisher would look at it. 
 
 But whoever was to blame Kruger, Chamberlain, a 
 group of South African millionaires, the novel-reading pub- 
 lic, or Jacob himself the depressing fact that had to be 
 faced through that depressing winter was the partial failure 
 of their sources of income. Jacob's reviewing exhibited a 
 lamentable falling-off. There was much less space given to 
 literary matters in the Daily Post, and the publishing season 
 was considerably influenced by the dominant topic. And it 
 seemed possible that Norman Goodrich might not be over-
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 383 
 
 anxious to take up their option on the second part of 
 "John Tristram" at the beginning of the next year. 
 
 Betty had a very anxious and difficult task to accomplish 
 in the allaying of Jacob's gloom, and the stimulation of his 
 energies to complete the novel he had in hand. She achieved 
 her purpose by a persistent threat to go out and earn a living 
 as a cook. She did not intend it as a threat. She was per- 
 fectly willing, even eager, to find some work that might 
 occupy her. She had lost Freda now. That young woman 
 had soon tired of inactivity as a hanger-on at Mrs. Letch- 
 worth's boarding-house, had entered herself as a proba- 
 tioner at St. George's Hospital in January, and had now 
 volunteered and been accepted for Red Cross work at the 
 front. 
 
 Betty found time hanging heavily on her hands. None of 
 their new acquaintances greatly interested her, and although 
 she had joined one of the more practical societies that were 
 honestly trying to cater for the real needs of the soldiers in 
 South Africa, that work did not satisfy her. She wanted to 
 make money and help with the household. 
 
 And it was through her endeavours that the threat came 
 into being. She had actually succeeded in getting an offer 
 of eighteen shillings a week for a place as cook in an ex- 
 perimental amateur tea-shop, before she mooted the propo- 
 sition to Jacob. 
 
 He opposed the scheme with great vigour, and finally, 
 more by pleading than argument, induced her to abandon 
 the project. But the threat stimulated him. He realised 
 that he was doing less than his best to make an income, and 
 laboriously set himself to write stories and sketches that 
 had some sort of relation to the horrible subject of war. 
 He succeeded so far, that he and Betty never quite touched 
 the fatal depths of insolvency. 
 
 They were lucky enough to let their little flat furnished 
 in April, 1900, and Norman Goodrich, Limited, magnifi- 
 cently came up to the scratch by advancing fifty pounds on 
 the second part of "John Tristram," and publishing it in 
 the middle of May.
 
 384 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Jacob and Betty returned to the Cornish cottage in the 
 spring with a feeling that the worst was over, and so took 
 no part in the awful celebrations that disgraced London 
 during the summer. 
 
 IV 
 
 During that year Jacob wrote his fourth novel, "The 
 Deserted House," the book that brought him a measure of 
 recognition and independence. The second part of "John 
 Tristram" had been a qualified success. It sold one thou- 
 sand six hundred copies in England, and so far stimulated 
 the sales of its predecessor in that kind, that Messrs. Nor- 
 man Goodrich debated the advisability of a second impres- 
 sion. But "The Deserted House" sold over six thousand 
 copies in three months, and more than twice that number 
 in America. 
 
 "In a sense, you know, we've got there," remarked Jacob, 
 as he looked with a curiously detached interest at the cheque 
 for three hundred and seven pounds that had arrived from 
 his American publishers. 
 
 "I always knew you would," said Betty. She was far 
 more excited than he was. 
 
 She leaned over his shoulder, her arm round his neck, 
 and they stared together at the miraculous slip of paper. 
 
 "It isn't only this, you see, the actual cash," Jacob went 
 on, "it's the significance of it. I shall be able to make my 
 own terms for the next book, I shall get a market for my 
 short stories in America, and I shall be able to give up re- 
 viewing." 
 
 "We'll have a holiday to-day," Betty announced. 
 
 "I'm afraid not to-day, dear," Jacob said. "I must get 
 off those two books I'm doing. Gresswell particularly 
 asked for them. To-morrow . . ." 
 
 "Oh, bother !" remarked Betty. 
 
 Jacob looked up at her and smiled. "You ought to be 
 proud of having trained me so well," he said. "There was a
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 385 
 
 time when I always wanted to slack, and you made me 
 work." 
 
 "You seem to have got the habit of working now," she 
 said. 
 
 "I don't know," replied Jacob. "I think I shall take it 
 a little easier in future ; but, you see, I'm playing a winning 
 game now. I've never chucked a game when I had it in 
 hand, but this is the first time in the practical affairs of life 
 that I could ever boast of being certainly on the winning 
 side." 
 
 Betty thought for a moment before she answered him. 
 
 "Then my work's done," she said. "You don't want me 
 any more." 
 
 He laughed gaily, and drew her down on to his knee. 
 "I'm supposed to have an imagination," he said, "but I 
 cannot imagine life without you. My only picture of it is 
 misery in a Newquay boarding-house. That was my one 
 idea when I thought you weren't coming to Trevarrian, and 
 I've never had another." 
 
 They discussed that topic for a few minutes, and then 
 Jacob said : "I don't know if you're aware of it, my be- 
 loved, but you are certainly getting fatter." 
 
 She jumped up at once, and her hands went to her waist. 
 "Oh, Jimmy, don't!" she implored him. "I've been 
 afraid . . ." 
 
 Jacob waved the cheque at her. "We're rich," he said. 
 "You shall go to Carlsbad."
 
 XIX 
 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 ONE morning in the November of 1902, Jacob received a 
 letter that had been forwarded by his publishers. 
 
 "It isn't an advertisement from a press-cutting agency," 
 he remarked, studying the envelope, "so it's probably an 
 appreciation from another unknown admirer." 
 
 "Open it," replied Betty, a little impatiently. They had 
 never been besieged by such appreciations as this. Jacob's 
 work lacked that sentimentality which evokes a personal 
 response from young women warmed to a hopeful interest 
 in the imagined author, and he and Betty were still exhil- 
 arated by any such individual attention from the outside 
 public. 
 
 "Don't be in a hurry," Jacob said. "Let's savour the 
 bouquet before we taste the wine." He examined the post- 
 marks deliberately, and then added in a less satisfied tone: 
 "Norman and Goodrich are rotters! They must have had 
 this in their office for five days." 
 
 Betty had given him up and sat down to her breakfast. 
 
 "I suppose you will open it sometime," she remarked. 
 
 Jacob smiled. "Don't you realise how much sweeter it is 
 to anticipate a pleasure than to taste it ?" he asked, as he at 
 last opened the envelope. 
 
 "Read it to me," pleaded Betty, as he still maintained 
 silence ; and then she got up quickly and went over to him. 
 "What is it, darling?" she asked. "Not bad news?" 
 
 "Good Lord! After all these years," murmured Jacob. 
 He gave her the letter, and walked over to the fireplace. 
 
 "Is it from . . . Lola?" asked Betty. 
 
 He nodded. "Practically," he said. "Read it." 
 
 386
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 387 
 
 "DEAR SIR" (she read), 
 
 "Your wife has asked me to write to you. She would like to 
 see you, but feels that she would prefer not to write on her own 
 account. I may tell you, however, that she has long since forgiven 
 you for your desertion of her, although she has no wish ever to 
 renew the old relations. Her true reason for wanting to see you 
 at the present time is that she has recently been reading your novels, 
 two of which, I am told, are intimately autobiographical, and she 
 would like to soften the impression of her own character that you 
 have apparently formed. Since she has been with me here she has 
 been the most devoted and unselfish of workers in the greatest of all 
 causes, but her health has been somewhat uncertain for the past 
 two months. I trust that you will be able to come and see her here 
 one afternoon in the course of the next few days. It is most cer- 
 tainly your duty to do so. ... 
 
 "Yours faithfully, 
 
 "HELENA MURGATROYD." 
 
 "Shall you go?" asked Betty, when she had finished. 
 
 "I don't know. What do you think ?" returned Jacob. 
 
 "Do you want to go?" asked Betty. She was watching 
 him keenly, as if she doubted whether after all these years 
 he had not still some tenderness for his wife, some feeling 
 that he would never admit. 
 
 Jacob hesitated. "I don't want to see her," he said, after 
 a judicial pause. "I would infinitely rather not; but it 
 seems rather mean, in a way, not to go. And the letter was 
 written nearly a week ago, and I've never answered." 
 
 "You can easily explain that," Betty said. "You can 
 send Mrs. What's-her-name the envelope." 
 
 "You don't want me to go," affirmed Jacob. 
 
 "I don't mind in the least," Betty said. 
 
 "I'll write and explain," he volunteered. 
 
 "You'd better go," she said. 
 
 For a minute or two they fenced, and then Betty suddenly 
 threw off her reserve. 
 
 "You must care for her in a way," she said. "I don't like 
 to think of your sitting there and talking to her." 
 
 "It would be absolutely like talking to a stranger," as- 
 serted Jacob. 
 
 "Oh, it couldn't be !" Betty protested. "She's your wife,
 
 388 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 and I don't trust her. She might ask you to go back to 
 her." 
 
 Jacob was too astonished to find an apt reply. "She might 
 ask," he said, and tried to express by his tone the utter fu- 
 tility of such a request. 
 
 He felt so safe, so confident, and he wanted to pay that 
 call. He saw it in the light of a new experience, an adven- 
 ture. While he had unconvincingly stated his determination 
 to write, making some excuse to Mrs. Murgatroyd, he had 
 been picturing a rather delicately tense scene with Lola. 
 As he saw it, their meeting had the fine, remote air of an 
 epilogue. 
 
 "We may as well have breakfast, I suppose," remarked 
 Betty. 
 
 "Yes, I think we'd better," agreed Jacob. He had a 
 curious feeling of guilt an unwarranted sense of having 
 done something shameful. 
 
 They ate their breakfast in silence. Jacob had decided 
 that he would not go to see Lola, but he was resentful now. 
 He thought Betty had been absurdly prejudiced. He cer- 
 tainly would do nothing to hurt her ; it was unthinkable that 
 he could see Lola if Betty had any feeling about it, but he 
 had expected her to be more sensible. Her curious retro- 
 spective jealousy had shown that she failed to understand 
 his love for her. 
 
 When he had finished breakfast, he buried himself in 
 his newspaper. 
 
 Betty came up to his chair and gently took the paper from 
 him. "I'm sorry, darling," she said. "I hated something 
 in the tone of that letter. It seemed to suggest an air of 
 proprietorship. Of course you must go. You'd better go 
 this afternoon." 
 
 Jacob protested honestly then, that he had no wish to obey 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd's orders. 
 
 "Yes, you must," Betty said. "But don't stay long," she 
 added.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 389 
 
 ii 
 
 Jacob inquired for Mrs. Murgatroyd. He was not sure 
 whether his wife had used her own name during the last nine 
 years. The neat parlourmaid showed him into a tiny room 
 off the hall, and returned almost immediately. "Will you 
 come this way?" she said. 
 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd was sitting at an immense writing-table, 
 that thrust one end into the deep bay window overlooking 
 the well-kept strip of garden behind the house. She was a 
 stout, solid woman, with grey hair, and black, threatening 
 eyebrows. She did not get up when Jacob came into the 
 room, nor offer to shake hands with him. She stared at 
 him with an embarrassing directness, and pointed to a chair 
 on her left hand. 
 
 "You are Jacob Stahl?" she said. 
 
 "Yes," he said quietly, still standing. He was affronted 
 by her manner, and had no intention of allowing himself to 
 be snubbed. 
 
 "You are too late," remarked Mrs. Murgatroyd sharply. 
 
 He did not understand her. His mind was still full of 
 the anticipated interview. Now that it was so near he had 
 begun to dread it. Lola would put on an intolerant air of 
 righteousness, he thought, and he would have to submit. 
 
 "I'm sorry that I've been so long in coming," he said 
 stiffly. "It was not my fault." He put his hand in his 
 pocket and drew out Mrs. Murgatroyd's letter. "I only 
 received it this morning," he explained, as he laid the en- 
 velope on the big writing-table. 
 
 She glanced at the letter without interest. 
 
 "I dare say it's just as well," she said. "Poor Lola made 
 a point of seeing you, although I strongly advised her 
 against it. No good would have been done." 
 
 Jacob was puzzled. "Has she gone away . . ." he began. 
 
 "Didn't you see that the blinds were down in the front 
 of the house ?" asked Mrs. Murgatroyd. 
 
 "No, I didn't notice. Why . . .?" he said. 
 
 "She died yesterday morning," replied Mrs. Murgatroyd
 
 390 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 coldly. "She developed pneumonia the day after I wrote 
 to you. She was only ill three days." 
 
 She continued some explanation, but Jacob did not hear 
 what she said. He fumbled for the chair she had indicated 
 when he came in, and sat down. His mind was still full of 
 that impossible interview, and he wanted to make some im- 
 mense atonement for the bitterness of his thoughts. . . . 
 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd raised her voice and dragged back his 
 wandering attention. 
 
 "You need not be too hard on yourself," she said. 
 
 Jacob was astonished by the aptness of her remark. "You 
 see, I never imagined . . ." he stammered. 
 
 "We never do," replied Mrs. Murgatroyd. "Perhaps it's 
 better that we shouldn't. I should think both of you were 
 far too apt to let your imaginations run away with you. I 
 can answer for poor Lola, at least ; and from the look of you, 
 I can only suppose that you spend the best part of your life 
 in dreaming." 
 
 "I dare say I do," assented Jacob. He had a defence 
 ready in his mind; he was prepared to maintain that the 
 dreamers not less than the doers had their function in so- 
 ciety, but he recognised that such an argument was out of 
 place. Moreover, he had lost his feeling of resentment 
 against Mrs. Murgatroyd. Her manner might be abomi- 
 nably brusque, but he admired people who had the courage 
 to speak their opinions without equivocation. 
 
 "Now that I have seen you," she was saying, "I know 
 that I was justified in keeping you and Lola apart, when 
 Cecil wanted to bring you together seven or eight years ago. 
 I must write to him. Have you seen him lately?" 
 
 "Mr. Barker? No," replied Jacob. "I haven't seen him 
 since I left Camden Town." 
 
 "He grew tired of you, I presume?" 
 
 "He did a great deal for me," Jacob said, with a sudden 
 fervour of loyalty. "I have always had an immense respect 
 for him." 
 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd's stern, handsome face expressed no 
 shade of approval or disapproval, but she slightly shrugged
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 891 
 
 her massive shoulders as if to dismiss the topic of Cecil 
 Barker, and said abruptly : 
 
 "Would you care to see her?" 
 
 Jacob winced. "I don't know. Is it any use?" he said. 
 
 "Are you afraid?" asked Mrs. Murgatroyd. 
 
 "No! Why should I be?" he prevaricated "Only I 
 don't . . ." 
 
 "I should like you to see her," returned Mrs. Murgatroyd. 
 She rose from her chair with a firm, resolute movement that 
 was in itself an unchallengeable order. "It will help you to 
 understand," she said. 
 
 Jacob understood that he had no alternative. 
 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd preceded him up the stairs. 
 
 in 
 
 The jaw had been unbound, and the dead, white lips had 
 fallen slightly apart ; the expression of the cold clay face was 
 one of slightly self-satisfied approval. 
 
 Jacob was repelled, but he could not realise that he was 
 looking at the body of a human being whom he had onc'e 
 held passionately in his arms. 
 
 She had aged and altered in those nine years. This was 
 the mask of a woman he had never known the exquisitely 
 perfect effigy in wax of some strange nun who had a curious 
 facial resemblance to Lola. 
 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd was watching him curiously, but neither 
 of them spoke. 
 
 He stood there for a few seconds only, and then turned 
 away his eyes and moved to the door. 
 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd covered up the dead face on the bed and 
 followed him. 
 
 At the hall-door she laid a strong, white hand on his arm. 
 
 "I believe you are living with some other woman now," 
 she said. 
 
 Jacob turned upon her almost savagely. "I am," he 
 replied. 
 
 "Are you going to marry her ?" asked Mrs. Murgatroyd,
 
 392 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 with the same stern immobility she had shown throughout. 
 
 "Certainly I am," returned Jacob. 
 
 "I should take time to think it over," was the unexpected 
 advice he received. 
 
 "Do you mean that you don't believe in marriage?" he 
 asked. 
 
 "Not for you," replied Mrs. Murgatroyd coldly. "You 
 are like Lola, far too impressionable. Good-bye." 
 
 IV 
 
 He pondered that statement as he walked down Brixton 
 Hill, and found an explanation as he waited in the dreary 
 shed on the station platform. A porter advised him that the 
 main-line train for Victoria would come in first, and when 
 the local ran in on the other side, he had not time to cross. 
 He had plenty of time for reflection. When he reached Vic- 
 toria, he had more than an hour's ride in the yellow horse- 
 bus that would take him as far as the Lower Heath. The 
 indulgence of taking a hansom for so long a distance seemed 
 too great an extravagance. London was such an immense 
 place in those days. 
 
 He decided that Mrs. Murgatroyd had made a mistake. 
 He was not impressionable in the sense she had intended. 
 He reacted powerfully to certain stimuli, and gained the 
 material of literature from the experience; but he was not 
 emotional as Lola had been. She had found her comple- 
 ment in a woman, in the strong, intellectual personality of 
 Mrs. Murgatroyd. His own complement was of quite an- 
 other type. Lola had needed command, he had needed 
 sympathy and understanding, and, perhaps, some re- 
 straint. . . . 
 
 He wondered what Betty would say when she heard his 
 news. And as his thoughts turned towards her and the little 
 flat in Hampstead, the picture of the waxen effigy in the 
 Brixton house began to lose its significance. For a little 
 time he had been strangely impressed ; he had lost his sense 
 of his relations with life ; he had been alone again with the
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 393 
 
 problem of his own individuality. Now he remembered that 
 he and Betty were free to marry if they would, and took 
 himself to task inasmuch as he seemed for a moment to have 
 forgotten her. 
 
 He had little doubt that she would be infinitely relieved. 
 The irregularity of their relations was still a source of small 
 inconveniences. There were so many people who might 
 object, and Betty was a little too conscientious in her desire 
 to avoid false pretences. He had overruled her objections 
 on more than one occasion, but he knew that she was never 
 happy in the acquaintance of anyone who was unaware that 
 she had not gone through the orthodox ceremony of mar- 
 riage. "It might so easily get round to them," she argued, 
 "and then I should feel horrid about it." He had had to 
 admit sometimes that her position was a little awkward. 
 
 And then there was another point of even greater impor- 
 tance. If they were legally married, they might have chil- 
 dren. They had discussed that question once or twice, and 
 had agreed that, however contemptible the moral objection, 
 the legal and social handicaps imposed by the conventions 
 of their times were too great to hazard parenthood. The 
 child might be horribly penalised. He and Betty might die 
 and leave it almost unprovided for. They had never 
 doubted the impossibility of that risk. 
 
 His spirits rose as he contemplated the new ease that 
 marriage would bring to them. He had not changed his 
 opinions since he had first argued with Betty in the Monta- 
 gue Place boarding-house more than five years ago ; but the 
 game was not worth the candle. Their courage served no 
 end. They had not made, had never tried to make, a con- 
 vert. They suffered the inconveniences and trials of the 
 pioneer for no purpose. They were breaking no new ground 
 for those that might come after them. . . . 
 
 He ran joyfully up the stairs to the flat, and only pulled 
 himself together as he was opening the front door. He 
 remembered then that, whatever benefits might follow, he 
 had to announce a death.
 
 394 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 Betty took it very quietly. 
 
 "Poor soul!" she said. "I suppose she was well looked 
 after." 
 
 Jacob had no doubts on that score. They talked for a few 
 minutes about Lola's past history, and Jacob attempted to 
 describe the personality of Mrs. Murgatroyd. 
 
 "I suppose this will make a considerable difference to us," 
 he remarked presently. He brought it out with a casual air, 
 as if he touched upon a subject of mutual agreement. He 
 was surprised that Betty had not initiated the topic, and 
 wondered if she had some feminine delicacy in making the 
 first suggestion. 
 
 "Will it ?" she asked innocently. "I don't see why." 
 
 He raised his eyebrows and stared at her quizzically. 
 "Well!" he remarked. "And this from a daughter of 
 Beechcombe !" 
 
 She flushed a little. "Oh, that!" she said. "Have you 
 changed your mind about it all, then?" 
 
 "Not in the least," he asserted. "I believe everything I 
 believed five years ago, but it isn't worth the fag now. I 
 want you to be at your ease with everyone." 
 
 "You want us to go through a ceremony of marriage?" 
 she insisted. 
 
 "Yes ; why not ?" he replied, with a slight uneasiness. 
 
 She laughed. "Oh, I've got beyond that," she said. 
 
 "Do you mean that you would sooner not?" 
 
 "Of course I do," she said, without hesitation. "My 
 conscience has quite ceased to trouble me now, dear. Look 
 at me, a convinced convert." 
 
 "I know you are, and I'm tremendously glad, darling," he 
 returned ; "but I think it will save no end of trouble. . . ." 
 
 "Oh, it's only a convenience, then?" she put in. 
 
 He pursed his mouth. "Well, yes, I suppose so," he 
 agreed. 
 
 "And you want me to deny my principles a second time 
 for the sake of convenience ?" she asked.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 395 
 
 He was puzzled and rather hurt. "I don't understand 
 jou," he said. 
 
 "You never have, and you never will, about that," she 
 replied. "But I should have thought you would have real- 
 ised that, after facing the inconveniences all these years, I 
 should prefer to go on facing them now sooner than pretend 
 to a virtue that I don't possess if it is a virtue? Don't 
 look so distressed, dear. I'm not angry. But don't you 
 understand that I have taken it all rather more seriously, ap- 
 parently, than you have. I tried to believe you were right 
 five years ago, and it took me a long time, but I have quite 
 come over now." 
 
 Jacob looked at the fire and made no answer. 
 
 "And I'm not sure" that it would be a good thing for you 
 to marry me," she went on. 
 
 He looked up quickly. "Why ever not?" he asked. 
 
 "You might feel too sure of me then," she said gently ; and 
 when he began to interrupt her, she leaned forward and 
 took his hand. "Don't think I doubt you, darling," she said. 
 "It's only that you might feel tied if we were married." 
 
 "Not more than I do now," he interpolated. 
 
 "Oh yes, much more," she said. "There's nothing in the 
 world now to prevent us from separating if we wanted to. 
 We are both free to go our own ways, just as Freda and that 
 man Laurence did. If we were married, we should feel 
 bound to one another. Just think of some of the married 
 people we know. I wonder how long they would go on if 
 they weren't afraid of what people would say. And so they 
 hang on and are miserable, and hate each other, and set an 
 awful example to their children. But we've made our dec- 
 laration of independence. The people we know best and like 
 best know all about us, and none of them could blame us 
 if we chose to go our own ways. Could they? That's 
 part of the bargain." 
 
 She paused, but he did not reply. He was still holding 
 her hand and gazing into the fire. 
 
 "Well," she urged him. "Isn't it true? What are you 
 thinking about?"
 
 396 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 "I was thinking of that farmhouse in Trevarrian," he 
 said, "and of you. Particularly of one evening when I said 
 to you that some day we should laugh at all our miseries 
 your miseries they were chiefly. But, good Lord ! I never 
 thought that the time would come when I should be urging 
 you to marry me and you wouldn't have me at any price." 
 
 "I think I take things more seriously than you do," she 
 said. 
 
 "Yes ; you are stronger and more consistent all through," 
 Jacob said thoughtfully. "You're thorough, and I suppose 
 I'm not. When you're convinced, you stick to it. I ought 
 to be almighty proud of myself for having converted you." 
 
 "You did it very thoroughly," she said. 
 
 He smiled and kissed her, and then he got up and began 
 to pace the room. 
 
 "This is the invisible event that we made mouths at for so 
 long," he said. "Do you remember the quotation? I think 
 it's Hamlet. And, good Heavens ! how truly great we were 
 with our immense arguments ! Oh, Betty, think of all that 
 time in Montague Place." 
 
 "I was very silly then," she admitted quietly. 
 
 "You weren't," Jacob replied. "You were consistent, that's 
 all. You were right then, and you are right now. You've 
 always been true to yourself. The belief or unbelief in 
 the convention of marriage is of no importance whatever. 
 The thing is that you've always tried to do what you be- 
 lieved to be right. Yes, even when you denied your con- 
 scie.nce and came to Trevarrian." 
 
 He stopped his walk up and down the room, and knelt by 
 her chair. "You're very, very wonderful, my beloved 
 Betty," he said. "You needn't be afraid that I should ever 
 chafe at the thought that I was tied to you. I want to be 
 bound by any bond that could hold me a tiny bit closer. I'm 
 only an unimportant part of you." 
 
 For a few moments they held each other tightly without 
 speaking, and then Jacob released himself. 
 
 "But we are going to be married within a week, all the 
 same," he said.
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 397 
 
 "I would sooner not," Betty replied firmly. 
 
 "I'm sorry, dear," he returned ; "but there's a reason." 
 
 "What reason?" she asked, with a hint of obstinacy in 
 her voice. 
 
 "I want to see a little Betty and a little Jimmy," he said ; 
 "and we can't ever do that until . . ." 
 
 "I don't mind," she interrupted him "even as things are 
 now, I mean." 
 
 "I do," Jacob said. "It wouldn't be fair to them. We've 
 agreed about that. It isn't worth the risk. They might 
 blame us afterwards. No, darling, you sacrificed your con- 
 science once for me, and now you've got to sacrifice it again 
 for them." 
 
 She did not answer him at once. She was leaning for- 
 ward, her chin in her hands, staring at an engraving of a 
 Madonna and Child on the opposite wall. 
 
 "What a silly world it is!" she said at last.
 
 XX 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF LIFE 
 
 THE matron of the Nursing Home advised Jacob to re- 
 turn in two or three hours. He looked at his watch, 
 and found that the time was a quarter past six. 
 
 "It might go on all night, I suppose ?" he said, hoping for 
 a firm denial of such a pessimistic estimate. 
 
 "You can never be quite sure," the matron replied cheer- 
 fully. "But I don't expect a very long confinement in this 
 case; personally, I should think the child will be born early 
 to-morrow morning." 
 
 Jacob attempted no contradiction of expert opinion, but 
 in his own mind he was quite convinced that it would be 
 earlier. 
 
 "And I may come back about half-past eight ?" he asked. 
 "I shan't be in your way?" 
 
 The matron smiled. "We don't take any notice of hus- 
 bands at these times," she said. "You can use this room as 
 if it was your own." 
 
 Jacob expressed his gratitude. He was very glad that he 
 and Betty had decided upon a Nursing Home. Everyone 
 about the place was so efficient, and the matron was quite 
 charming. . . . 
 
 So far everything had gone splendidly. Betty had packed 
 all her things ten days before, and when the first symptoms 
 had declared themselves, he had gone out and found a four- 
 wheeler, and Betty had been put to bed in the Home before 
 the labour pains began. 
 
 He had sat with her for more than an hour, holding her 
 hand, and wondering if she were concealing her agony from 
 him, or if those recurring spasms were not really so awful as 
 
 398
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 399 
 
 he had imagined. She had declared that if the pains were 
 not much worse than those she was suffering, she could 
 bear them almost with a smile. But they had both antici- 
 pated a steady increase of torture as the time approached, 
 although neither of them had spoken their forebodings. 
 
 "You'll go out and get yourself some dinner," she had said 
 as he was leaving her, and he had been touched by her 
 thought of him at such a moment. 
 
 ii 
 
 There was a smell of frost in the air, and he breathed it 
 with a feeling of exhilaration when the door of the Nursing 
 Home closed behind him. He felt released. For a moment 
 he was glad to be alone. He wondered where he could get 
 dinner. Maida Vale seemed a very remote place ; and then 
 he remembered a restaurant in Chapel Street. 
 
 But as he turned with a sudden determination towards the 
 Edgware Road, all the spirit went out of him. Something 
 called to him and dragged him back. How could he go and 
 eat when Betty was lying there in pain ? He was afraid to 
 go so far away. 
 
 He turned and looked back into the feebly lighted depths 
 of the broad avenue. 
 
 He had two hours to get through. He must not return 
 until half-past eight. The matron had been very kind, but 
 obviously he was a nuisance, and he could do no good there. 
 Betty had every possible attention. She would not be alone 
 for a single moment. And he had solemnly promised her 
 that he would go and have some dinner. He need not go so 
 far as Chapel Street; there was a dairy at the corner of 
 Clifton Road that would probably be open until eight o'clock. 
 
 The dairy was nearly empty, and he sat down near the 
 door. The waitress brought him a printed menu-card, but 
 the name of food made him feel sick. He ordered coffee, 
 bread-and-butter, and an egg. 
 
 He was immensely concerned with his own carelessness. 
 He ought to have left instructions at the Nursing Home as
 
 400 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 to where he might be found if he were urgently needed. He 
 went over to the counter and asked the manageress if there 
 was a telephone he might use; but she told him that their 
 telephone was out of repair, and began a long story of her 
 grievances against the National Telephone Company. He 
 heard every detail with a miraculous comprehension. He 
 felt that he was attending to the history of some extraordi- 
 nary tragedy. He pictured the manageress suffering the 
 most excruciating agony until a new telephone instrument 
 should be born to her. 
 
 The torture of it was unendurable. "Oh, it's bound to 
 come soon," he said with great earnestness. "It must. 
 They couldn't leave you waiting like that for long. No one 
 could." 
 
 He did not hear her reply. He went back to the table on 
 which his meal had been laid, and tried to eat. He could not 
 see that the plump manageress was grossly offended that 
 she thought he had been making a portentous joke of her 
 grievance. 
 
 He could not eat his egg or his bread-and-butter, although 
 he tried to keep his promise to Betty. He felt so sick that 
 he was afraid to stay in the dairy. He drank his coffee, paid 
 the bill, and went out. 
 
 It was a quarter past seven, and he decided that he would 
 go back at once to the Nursing Home, and walk up and 
 down outside the house until half-past eight. He ran most 
 of the way. 
 
 He wanted to think, but his mind refused to consider any 
 subject but Betty's agony. He wanted fervently to share it 
 with her. He had read in some feminist book that women 
 had all the pain and men the pleasure in this business of 
 bringing children into the world. He admitted that the 
 statement was a true one, but the penalty paid, the loss in- 
 curred, was man's. He would gladly have given ten years 
 of life if he could have shared the pain with Betty. How 
 he would have welcomed physical pain as a relief from this 
 torture of waiting, this utter inability to spare Betty a single 
 pang of her throes!
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 401 
 
 And this was only the beginning. For six, nine, perhaps 
 twelve hours he might have to wait in that contradictorily 
 cheerful sitting-room, listening, suffering, like some tor- 
 tured victim of war forced to witness the outrage and mur- 
 der of his wife. 
 
 in 
 
 At five minutes to eight he rang impatiently at the bell of 
 the Nursing Home. 
 
 The cheerful matron was in the hall. 
 
 "If you listen," she said, "you'll hear something." 
 
 He caught his breath, and heard a thin, but fierce and 
 prolonged scream the indignant, resentful cry of the new- 
 born infant. 
 
 "By Jove ! it has got a voice," Jacob said hysterically. He 
 was quite unashamed of the tears that were running down 
 his cheeks. . . . 
 
 The doctor came into the waiting-room a few minutes 
 later. He was a quiet, rather shy man, with none of the 
 mannerisms of the general practitioner. 
 
 He said that Betty had been splendid, and that the child 
 was a fine boy weighing eight and a half pounds. "I gave 
 her a whiff of chloroform at the end," he added. "You can 
 see her for a minute not longer if you'll wait for a quar- 
 ter of an hour." 
 
 Jacob felt that he loved this controlled, efficient specialist, 
 who had so wonderfully wrought a miracle, and was now 
 quietly hurrying away to spend all his gifts of knowledge, 
 foresight, and endurance in yet another exercise of his 
 superhuman abilities. 
 
 Jacob wished that it was within his power to confer some 
 stupendous honour upon so worthy and lofty-minded a 
 recipient. ... 
 
 IV 
 
 Betty was lying on her back with no pillow under her 
 head. She was very pale after the chloroform, but quite
 
 402 THE INVISIBLE EVENT 
 
 conscious. She smiled feebly as Jacob bent down and 
 kissed her. 
 
 "Is it a nice baby?" she whispered. 
 
 He straightened himself and looked round the room. The 
 nurse had gone away for a moment, but he guessed that the 
 child must be lying in the little lace-trimmed cot that stood 
 upon two chairs near the foot of the bed. 
 
 He went and peered in, and saw nothing, and then he 
 nervously lifted the tiny blanket that covered some small 
 object crouched in the middle of the cot a little, wizened, 
 naked thing it was, with purple blotches on its body, and a 
 thick red down on its head. And as he lifted the blanket it 
 wriggled and began again to cry fiercely. 
 
 Jacob dropped the blanket as if he had been stung, and 
 returned to the bed. Betty was lying with closed eyes. 
 
 "It's a lovely baby," he said gently, "with a lot of hair. 
 The doctor told me it weighed eight and a half pounds." 
 
 She opened her eyes and smiled again. 
 
 "Is it really?" she asked. 
 
 "Rather," whispered Jacob. "I say, are you all right?" 
 
 She nodded contentedly. 
 
 "I must go," Jacob said, bending over her again. "I 
 hear the nurse coming back." 
 
 She murmured something that he could not catch, and 
 then she repeated it in a firmer voice. 
 
 "Did you get your dinner?" she asked. 
 
 For some time after he left her he could think of nothing 
 but her amazing care for him ; and then he remembered that 
 poor little naked creature under the blanket in its lace- 
 trimmed cot. 
 
 That was their son the magical child that had come, none 
 knew whence, to take his place in the world; a new being 
 sprung wonderfully to life to claim his heritage of the flesh 
 and proclaim his individuality. He and Betty had been 
 joined by a third personality, of which they knew nothing,
 
 ACHIEVEMENT 403 
 
 neither its origin nor its character, and for which they were 
 become utterly and solely responsible. 
 
 After he had returned to the lonely little flat, Jacob con- 
 tinued to ponder that inscrutable happening. He felt more 
 in touch with the world than he had ever felt before, and 
 yet he had a sense that he was on the verge of some tran- 
 scendental discovery. 
 
 "This," thought Jacob Stahl, "is the beginning of my 
 life."
 
 ENVOY 
 
 THE RENEWAL OF EFFORT 
 
 I HAVE followed the story of Jacob Stahl's life up to his 
 forty-first year, and left him to face new beginnings on 
 the night of Friday, the twenty-second of January, 1904. 
 Beyond that point his history need not be told in detail. 
 The character of his struggle has changed. I leave him no 
 longer fighting the resistances offered by the economic and 
 ethical forces of society. Ten years later his position in 
 the world is established as firmly as is possible in a com- 
 munity such as ours a community founded on a basis so 
 radically unstable, that the whole fabric totters whenever 
 that most fallible principle of credit or confidence is brought, 
 however momentarily, into disrepute. And with the prac- 
 tical extinction of Jacob's need for opposition in this lesser 
 social sense, he emerges into another conflict of so different a 
 type that it cannot be satisfactorily treated in the pages of 
 a novel. I have written explicitly of his attitude towards 
 religion, but I have said little or nothing of his relations 
 with God. Yet it should be plain to those who have found 
 any sympathy with Jacob Stahl, that he could never rest 
 content with any such attainment as was provided by the 
 comfort of his wife's love, by the fine unselfish joy he finds 
 in the care of his three children, or, least of all, by such 
 satisfactions as come to him from his modest achievements 
 in the world of letters. 
 
 He is ever at the beginning of life, reaching out towards 
 those eternal values that are ever beyond his grasp. He is 
 handicapped in many ways, and must continually regret his 
 own ignorances and intellectual limitations, but he has not 
 been threatened by that decay of mind which slowly petrifies 
 
 404
 
 ENVOY . 405 
 
 and finally kills those who fall into the habit of fixed opin- 
 ions. 
 
 Indeed, he is far less critical than he once was, and some- 
 times deplores with a touch of whimsicality the consequent 
 weakening of his abilities as a novelist. "It is an admirable 
 thing, no doubt," he says, "to find good in everybody, and 
 I admit that the good is always there if you will look for it. 
 But you might as well try to paint sunsets in monochrome 
 as write a novel with no villains in it." But he finds a solu- 
 tion to that problem in the fact that "goodness," like other 
 qualities, is only relative, and so discovers the means for the 
 necessary contrasts he desires, and smiles when his critics 
 deplore what they call his "loss of virility." 
 
 And that earnest search of his for some aspect of per- 
 manent truth keeps his spirit young. Only the form of his 
 struggle has changed. He may be content with his worldly 
 circumstance, rich in his unchanging love for Betty and her 
 children, but he can never be satisfied with himself nor with 
 his own achievement. He has great ambitions to write a 
 long essay on the intrinsic struggle of the spirit as revealed 
 to him by the introspections of his own life; but while he has 
 a volume of admirably phrased notes on various aspects of 
 his own development, he admits that he still lacks sight of 
 some definite, guiding motive that shall one day, he hopes, 
 give form and purpose to the whole. He would still describe 
 himself, in Emerson's words, as "a candidate for truth." 
 
 Virtue lies only in the continual renewal of effort; the 
 boast of success is an admission of failure. 
 
 THE END
 
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