487 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC BY V. GOLDIE NEW YORK FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY PUBLISHERS Copyright, 1913, by FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY All rights reserved including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian. January, JQI3 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 2135911 ' The Declension of Henry D'Albiac THEIR first meeting took place in circumstances that smacked of the Homeric, and needs the nerv- ous English of a Fielding for adequate presenta- tion. Walking home along Parliament Street from a dinner-party in Whitehall Place, his head pleasantly awhirl with memories of his beloved's graciousness of demeanour during the evening, he found himself, before he was aware of anything amiss, caught in the rush of a considerable crowd that struggled and seethed about the end of Down- ing Street. His absent-minded attempts to extri- cate himself led only to a more intricate involution, so that, against all his inclinations, he found him- self borne to the very heart of the disturbance; now aided by an eddying of the mob, again by a violent hand-thrust from one of the many police- men who were stirring up the gathering, in a vain attempt to disperse it. His temper considerably ruffled by this mischance and these physical in- dignities, Henry D'Albiac looked about him for a means of escape, with an attempt at the same time 2 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC to realise the cause of the trouble. Although, so far as the darkness permitted him to see, the crowd was composed of all classes and varieties of human beings, yet the unusual number of women and the sound of feminine voices raised in battle-cry soon told him that he was involuntarily assisting at a Suffrage Demonstration; and the discovery did lit- tle to improve his ill-humour. The thought of these howling and unsexed creatures, thus suddenly su- perimposed on the hyperdelicate image of his heart's mistress, filled him with a positive nausea, and redoubled his anxiety to free himself from such vulgar and violent surroundings. A vigorous ef- fort to fight his way out was, however, but slowly rewarded; and, but for hurriedly apologetic expla- nations to an indignant constable, seemed likely at one moment to lead to his arrest as a participant in this odious and insensate street-fight. Still he was making recognisable progress, when there came a new diversion; the crowd was violently riven by a body of police, who drove a lane before them, down which another of their number fol- lowed thrusting before him an arrested rioter. The foolish woman was perhaps of about half the weight of the mighty guardian of the peace, and as he had secured her with a " lock " which had been taught him as adapted for the apprehen- sion of homicides and armed burglars, she was only enjoying herself indifferently. The inclination to THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 3 disgusted scorn received a sudden irrational check in D'Albiac's mind as she was led towards him. Obviously she had struggled, for her hat was lost and her brown hair tumbled about her face. Just as she reached him, she made what was plainly only a conscientiously hopeless effort to release herself by throwing herself violently forward; her com- plexion was as white as death, and her eyes closed as she did so, and the feeble attempt was hardly even realised by her gigantic custodian, who con- tinued to push her forward fatally through the crowd, which surged about her path with hand- clappings and cries of admiration and encourage- ment. D'Albiac could not have explained after- wards the reason of his action; nor, indeed, was it due to any direct volition on his part; the glimpse of a white, tortured face, a national love of the other sex, the warmth of his own temperament, the irritation of his previous state of mind, no doubt all contributed to the motive power. However that may have been, he suddenly found himself in violent motion, conscious only of overwhelming rage and vigour. Like many of his own class of his compatriots, he had been instructed in various ingenious methods of offence and defence, and had thoroughly trained a naturally athletic body ; and in less than a moment of time he had, all uncon- sciously, fallen like a thunderbolt on the policeman and his charge, and, by the exhibition of one of 4 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC these pleasant devices, had freed the woman from the man's grip and interposed a dozen members of the crowd between the hunted and the hunter. Fortune aided them at the moment by a sudden wash back of the whole gathering from the mouth of Downing Street, which was rapidly cleared by a strong force of police to allow of the passing out of a closed motor car, amidst a storm of hisses and booing. The disappointed policeman drifted on this wave yet further away from his quarry, and, with that impartiality that has ever been the proud- est boast of our island law, arrested a poorly- dressed and astonished bystander to compensate for his loss. The demonstrators falling into a wolf- like pursuit of the fleeting car and drawing the police in their wake, D'Albiac found himself, in a few moments, standing by the entrance of the Pub- lic Prosecutor's offices looking down on the rescued rioter, who sat gasping and rocking backwards and forwards on the lowest step for some little time be- fore she seemed to realise her position. Despite a returning sense of disgust at the scene and shame at his own share in it, D'Albiac did not feel that he could leave the poor, silly creature in this state ; and he shuffled nervously and impatiently from one foot to another, as he watched her draw- ing a succession of deep breaths, mechanically pok- ing and patting her soft, wildly disordered hair, and every now and again raising and straightening THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 5 her left arm. Her clothing, which seemed to have been designed for athletic purposes, and consisted of a knitted jersey and shortish dark skirt, had not obviously suffered in the conflict; and by the time she had partially tidied her hair she bore no marks of the late encounter beyond the whiteness of her cheeks, and even into them a faint touch of pink was creeping by degrees. He had made up his mind indeed to leave her with a word of formality when she turned her face upwards to him, and he stopped, looking back at her with a newly awak- ened interest. The woman was pretty ; no, that was hardly a right, or, at any rate, an exhaustive de- scription; curiously interesting. The wide-browed, alert face might almost, but for the bright softness of the mouth, have belonged to an unusually good- looking school boy; the eyes, set well apart beneath fine and quaintly squared eyebrows, burnt with dancing blue fire ; the cheek bones were rather high, the face below them narrowing into a cleft and rounded chin. Her long, slender neck, which the low collar of her jersey left exposed, and her small, bare hands were delicately white, and her slight figure seemed active and graceful. As she sat look- ing whimsically up at him in silence, there was something in the lively, quick face that removed all his previous anxiety to consider his strange ad- venture terminated. For the moment, his natural attraction towards a good-looking woman entirely 6 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC routed the memory of the odious circumstances in which he had encountered her; and it was with something more than his usual courtesy that he of- fered her his hand to assist her to rise. She ac- cepted it with entire friendliness, and, once on her feet, stood for a short while supporting herself against the stone balustrade, holding one hand to her forehead, and opening and shutting her eyes experimentally from time to time. Presently she gave a deep sigh, and followed it with a quick, radiant smile. " What's happened ? " she asked in a soft, clear voice, her head a little on one side for the question. "Did he get out?" " Did he " repeated D'Albiac, enquiringly ; and then with a memory of the closed motor car, " Oh, yes, I suppose he did. Someone did a Limousine and the crowd " " That's the man," said she, with a regretful shake of the head. " I s'pose they didn't catch him?" " So far as I could see the car left the crowd far behind," said D'Albiac with grave disapproval, which, however, the woman did not appear to no- tice. She was again bending and straightening her arm and, as she did so, made a little grimace of pain. " Oh, well," she said in an off-hand manner, " then there's nothing more to be done to-night. THE DECLENSION OF H^NRY D'ALBIAC 7 Did you see what happened to me? Why did the policeman let me go, do you know?" D'Albiac assumed an air of exaggerated uncon- cern. " I couldn't see you treated so," he said, with an upward jerk of his chin. " Whatever one may think " "Oh, it was you? You rescued me?" He bowed slightly. " That was very kind of you ; you might have got into trouble," she said, warmly. " And you're not one of us, are you ? " He shook his head, with a touch of contempt, that he could not altogether conceal; and he was aware from a flashing dimple in his companion's cheek that she observed it. " No, clearly not," she said, softly, with a smile. " Well, thanks very much. Of course I'd rather you hadn't; but you couldn't be expected to know that; and that doesn't make it any less kind and brave of you." There was that in the ring of her voice as she spoke, something so unusually sincere and kind, that the Frenchman was conscious of an unwilling attraction to the personality of this female rough. " Rather I hadn't ? But you were being taken to prison," he protested. " Well, that was exactly where I wanted to be taken," she replied. " My case is like that of the injudiciously rescued suicide. I'd got all the un- 8 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC pleasantness over, and then I was resuscitated, so to speak. They take such a long time sometimes making up their minds to run you in, particularly if they think you want to be. Then I'm not very strong, you see, and I can't make myself such a nuisance as some of our women. I'd had three tries at one policeman, and he would only shake me by the throat, and say, ' Now, then, Mrs. Evans, now then ! ' in a soothing, motherly manner ; and then turn his attention to somebody else. So at last I slipped through the line and got half-way up the street before the man you saw me with caught me. I think he was a new hand; he didn't know me" " Do most of them ? " asked D'Albiac, aghast. " Well, a good many of tht ' A ' Division do," answered Mrs. Evans, casually, still examining her injured arm. " Ff f f f ! How he hurt my arm ! I should think he must have twisted it round and round in its socket. So you see, though I am sorry to seem ungrateful, I've had all the part I hate, all the righting part, for nothing." She smiled at him gaily, the lamp light from the high standard near at hand throwing golden gleams among her soft, chestnut hair; and then put out a slim hand. " Good-bye. Thanks, again, so much," she said. He took it, and dropped it with a curious re- luctance to let her go. " You're sure you're not THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 9 seriously hurt?" he enquired, discontentedly, for the termination of the incident seemed rather flat. " You are ; you're lame," he added, with a certain triumph as she took a few steps forward. " Oh, that's nothing," answered the woman, calmly. " I got hacked on the shin by one of our own side in the melee. I don't mind that; it's my arm hurts most. Luckily it's the left, so that it won't stop me working." " But you've no hat," he protested, as she moved away from him. " I had one, or rather a woollen cap. It's lost spolia opima. It'll be put in the Scotland Yard Museum, no doubt, with a blood-curdling inscrip- tion. Never mind, I've got another at home." " But how'll you get home ? " " On a 'bus," she replied, cheerfully. " I pick up one at the corner of Bridge Street." Her stupidity irritated him, and he clicked his tongue. " But on your head? " he persisted. " On my head ? " said Mrs. Evans, with her eye- brows up. " How do you mean * go home on my head ' ? Is it some new catch-word ? " D'Albiac gave a patient smile of disgust. " No, no. A hat; you can't go home without a hat." " Why not? " she asked, wonderingly. " Oh, I don't know. It isn't usual," he said, rather pityingly. " Can't another be procured bought?" io THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC "At this time of night? And in Parliament Street?" she asked, laughing. "Besides, I don't want another. It was only an old one; I expected to lose it. I always do; and make others for the purpose in my spare moments. Good-night. I must be off, or I shall miss the 'bus." " May I see you to the corner ? " asked D'Albiac, with a sudden inexplicable inspiration. A moment before he would have ridiculed the notion of his smart, distinguished figure, in its waisted coat, gleaming boots, and crush hat being seen in con- junction with this tousled little middle-class person, in so public a spot; even though a swift glance up and down the quadruple line of lamps showed a quiet, gleaming and deserted street. Parliament Square still showed a few scattered figures, and an occasional vehicle appeared and vanished from the direction of the bridge or Victoria Street. " Oh, certainly, if you're going that way," Mrs. Evans agreed, in a friendly manner; and side by side the tall, clean-shaven, young man-about-town, and the slight, bare-headed rioter moved off to- wards the square. Mrs. Evans' damaged leg made their pace slow, and the Frenchman had a ridic- ulous and rare sense of constrained embarrassment as he adapted his walk to the hobble of his com- panion, and beat his brains for a subject of con- versation. Already he regretted his offer of com- panionship, and the few hundred yards to the square THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC n seemed unconscionably prolonged. If he should meet anyone he knew! If some of the guests from Whitehall Place were to drive by! Still it was absurd to walk with the woman in total silence after asking, heaven knows why, for the privilege. " I see," he resumed, with rather a fatuous laugh, " I should apologise for my interference." She raised an animated face towards him quickly, with an expression of protest, and he felt a sudden revival of his drooping interest. " Oh, don't think I meant that. I didn't intend to be ungracious," she said, dropping for a moment her previous air of mischievous amusement. " My dear lady, I'm only joking. And perhaps on reflection you'll be glad after all. I'm afraid you wouldn't like prison." " I know I should hate it. Still, it's worth it." He shook his head indulgently. This was a childish creature, although she was not actually a young girl. A sense of the wisdom of immeas- urable age, combined with a renewed conviction of the unfitness of women to appreciate or endure the real facts of life came over him. He could almost have patted her head, as he reasoned with her. " Theoretically it is, perhaps. Prison is a difficult thing to realise until one has been there. The hideous monotony, the bad, scanty food, the hard bed, the squalid, cheerless surroundings " 12 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC She agreed to his statements with a series of lit- tle nods, and he felt she was impressed. " Where were you ? Pentonville ? " she asked sympathetically. "I? I?" he cried, outraged. "You don't think I've been in prison? " " You seemed to know so much about it," she said, with raised eyebrows, " and to feel it so." D'Albiac was seriously annoyed, particularly at the suspicion of a dimple in the cheek of his com- panion. He could not endure to be mocked; the mere suspicion of it infuriated him. " Of course I was only speaking from hearsay," he said, coldly, mastering an inclination to give this person a lesson in manners. " Oh ! I see. But as you said, you know, one can't realise it until you've done it yourself, like me." "You've you've been there already?" he en- quired, edging a little away from her, as a landau- lette flashed past them. It looked like Lady Cock- ington's, he reflected uncomfortably; true, it was unlikely that she should notice him walking with this unpreened jailbird, but the possibility of the thing turned him cold. " Twice," said Mrs. Evans, in a matter-of-fact manner, as though speaking of " Elektra " or the Horse Show. " Fourteen days first time, and then THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 13 a month ; but I got ill, so they turned me out after three weeks." An impulse of pity moved him to draw nearer to her and assume a more friendly tone. Clearly the poor thing was intellectually unsound. "And you're trying to go back there again?" he asked, gently. " Tell me, what in the world do you hope to get by it ? " She looked up at him with a surprised air. " Oh, I thought you knew. Votes," she said, smiling innocently and brightly. The man could not help a flash of laughter at her impenetrable density, although he was aware it sounded a trifle supercilious. But it was not to be helped; and besides a little practical derision might do her good. " You take me a little over literally," he sug- gested, indulgently. "Of course I realised your object. What I should have said was that it seemed to me scarcely the way to attain it." " Oh, but then you're not English, you see," ex- plained Mrs. Evans, and D'Albiac started at the words. Proud as he was of his origin, he yet had a distinct sense of affront. In his intensely English clothes, with his Eton-acquired English speech, adorned with all the latest flowers of fash- ionable colloquialism, his close-shaven face and im- perturbable demeanour, maintained at a great ex- penditure of will-force, Henry D'Albiac could not 14 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC avoid great annoyance at his detection as a mere visitor to the country; but his companion, evidently unaware of the effect she had produced, proceeded with her remarks. "Of course, I don't know how it may be in your country, but in ours one always has to make a row to get anything done. All English people realise that. The men had to do it before they freed themselves; only of course, being more hys- terical than women, they generally rushed pretty readily into real violence; whereas we don't want to go any further than the other side choose to drive us, step by step. Shall we cross here?" They turned across the road together, D'Albiac looking at her face in a puzzled manner, suspecting her seriousness. It appeared, however, to be calm and guileless. " Hysterical ? Men ? " he repeated, sternly. " Well, that's not a scientifically accurate ex- pression; I know that," she said, and he was re- volted at the woman's coarseness. " Hysterical in the familiar use of the word, you know. Excitable ; liable to lose self-control." They were standing now at the corner of Bridge Street, and she was gazing backwards up White- hall, waiting for the sight of her omnibus. Silence fell between them, D'Albiac feeling that conversa- tion was not possible with a person whose state- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 15 ments consisted of entire inversions of matters of fact. Something of his want of sympathy seemed to communicate itself to Mrs. Evans, for she turned her face quickly towards him. " Don't wait for me, please. I'm feeling none the worse now, except for my arm and the kick. You've probably some way to get home." " No, I live quite close here ; in Cowley Street," he said, politely. " I'd rather see you on your 'bus, if I may." " It's quite unnecessary, I assure you," she pro- tested. " But of course if you prefer it " "Have you far to go, yourself?" he enquired, thinking it wiser to avoid all but the most common- place remarks. " Only Chelsea. My landlady will be rather sur- prised to see me back again, I expect. I told her I might be away any time from a fortnight to six weeks, with luck. However, there'll be plenty more opportunities, I'm afraid. But it would have suited me pretty well now, because I've very little work in prospect." " Would it be rude of me to ask " he began, and paused. What did it matter to him what she was, he reflected? Quite obviously she was not of the only avocation which would have made a mem- ber of her class in society a possible associate at any time for himself. Prone as he was to detect signs of an amorous tendency in the females of his 16 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC acquaintance, he was not able to tell himself that there were any, real or potential, in the quaint, cool face before him. And this being so, why pro- long the acquaintanceship longer than politeness demanded? Mrs. Evans, however, finished his sentence for him. "What I am? Not a bit. Why? I'm a painter, a designer. I make decorative drawings for shops and manufacturers ; all that sort of thing ; piece work. Sometimes certain times of year I get a good deal to do. Then I paint portraits, too, occasionally; and water colour and pastel heads. But I can't rely on that; so I have to re- serve them as far as possible for times of bad trade. And lately those have been the times I've chosen for prison; because, of course, when I've lots of work on hand, I can't afford to go. I've got to live somehow.'* " I see," he said, sarcastically. " You have come to regard Holloway as a holiday resort." " That's it," she said, with a gay laugh. " Here's my 'bus. Good-night." Before he could reply, she had laid her hand on the rail of a motor omnibus that lumbered storm- ily by, and was twenty yards away before he quite realised how she had thus been translated. Star- ing blankly, he saw the slight, bare-headed figure, clear against the darkness, in its white jersey, run lightly up the stairway and turn for a moment to THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 17 wave a hand to him as she reached the roof. Then the great vehicle turned into Broad Sanctuary and in a few seconds was out of sight. D'Albiac gave a short, rather scornful laugh aloud, as his last commentary on this absurd ad- venture and absurder person, and glad to be re- lieved from the consequences of his foolish act, strolled slowly onward towards the intricate congeries of streets in which his tiny bachelor house was situated. In retrospect, he was more than ever amazed at his indiscretion. He had risked imprisonment, social disgrace, for the sake of this ridiculous woman who was being very rightly punished for breaking the law, and was no doubt receiving far more consideration than a woman of a poorer class would have obtained in like circumstances; for the police invariably be- haved well in these cases, as he had often been told. No doubt he would not even have been allowed the alternative of being fined; for he had literally as- saulted the constable, a thing which no magistrate could be expected to condone. And then the re- ports in the newspapers! The odious joy of these radical rags with their conscientiously inverted snobbery! "Young French Aristocrat in Trouble. Popular Society Man Sent to Prison for Assault. . Suffragette Beauty in Distress." He could see the headlines in all their blood-chilling vulgarity; he dimly fancied snatches of the tasteless jocularity i8 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC of the subsequent letter press : " Our impression- able visitor with characteristically Gallic chiv- alry " and all the other sneering suggestions of an underlying reason for his folly; suggestions that would inevitably cause Patrice to sicken with a dis- gust from which she would never afterwards be able to dissociate him, even if Mrs. Beaufoy (wildly impossible hope!) would ever have con- sented to give her daughter to a proven hooligan in marriage. And yet, he reflected, as he paused be- fore his gleaming green front-door, and drew out his latch-key, the impulse was generous, entirely impersonal; the result of a mere glimpse of a weak woman in the power of superior physical force. The dubious examination of his conscience con- tinued, as he shut the door behind him, and stood in his tiny, brightly-lit entrance hall. He was sure, at least he was almost sure, that he had no idea, before he took action, that the woman was anything beyond the proverbial female agitator in appearance; and yet he had a vague feeling that it was the rapid glimpse of a white, delicate face, with closed eyes and piteously parted lips that had given him the actual stimulus. The woman was good- looking no doubt; there was no harm in granting that; not beautiful like his betrothed; not a girl, either. Still an original and stimulating face. And there was enough of that. It was most un- likely, most undesirable that they should ever meet THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 19 again; their stations were widely separated; their ideas no less widely. He turned up the lights in a small smoking room that led into the hall, and rang the bell for his servant. When the man entered with the glasses, he found his master seated in a low chair, gazing with vacant eyes at a picture over the fireplace, and apparently unconscious of the tray which he set at his elbow, with the cigar box and spirit lamp, on a carved-wood Indian stand. Having gathered up the overcoat and hat and waited deferentially for a few moments, he ventured finally on a gentle cough of reminder. D'Albiac started and looked at him blankly. "Eh? Oh, yes. I think that's all. No let- ters ? Nobody telephoned ? " " No, sir." D'Albiac nodded his dismissal, and as soon as the door was shut, rose hurriedly from his chair. " Fool! " he ejaculated, angrily; and at the word the door re-opened, and the servant's head re- appeared. "Did you speak, sir?" it enquired, softly. " No, no, no, nothing. That's all, Brooks, that's all," repeated his master, snapping an impatient finger and thumb. His mood annoyed him; the memory of this street brawl, and of the few min- utes' subsequent conversation with this vulgarian, clung obstinately to him, despite his best efforts; 20 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC excluding from his mind the delicately beautiful visions that he sought to induce. What wonder? The whole squalid business was so unusual, so out of the common run of his well-ordered life that the impression was naturally a deep one. Brought up at his father's chateau in Anjou among a host of family dependents and servants, educated at first by a series of native and foreign tutors, despatched at fourteen for the perfection of his English speech and manner (the old Baron suffered from Anglomania in an acute form) to Eton for four years, member of a family of the old Nobility, the descendant of one who had lost his life on the scaffold during the infamous closing years of the eighteenth century, Henry D'Albiac had, during the twenty-five years of his career, moved almost continually in the highest and most aristocratic circles, whether on his paternal estates, in the family hotel in Paris or, during the winter months, among the distinguished cosmopolitan crowd that circulated about the villa at Cap Martin. It was in that neighbourhood that he had first met the Beaufoys two years ago; it was on the shores of that tediously blue sea that he had entered into the delightful slavery of Patrice's beauty and al- most shuddering refinement of mind. Within the last year, only, his father had died, and finding himself alone in the world and freed from military discipline, the young Frenchman had emigrated to THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 21 England in pursuit of his beloved. At the Beau- foys' house, in Mount Street, he had been intro- duced into an exclusive stratum of English society ; the representatives of all the family antiquity, ter- ritorial power, cultured leisure, wealth and titular nobility of a land where these things may be ad- mired in tropical abundance and size of growth. Patrice had smiled on his suit; only a desire to avoid the vulgarity of hurry in the matter, and the necessity of allowing a decent interval of mourning for his father's death intervened be- tween him and the completion of his happiness. Meanwhile, handsome, rich, young and sociable, he found life in this great, ugly, luxurious town ex- tremely agreeable, and the number and urgency of his social engagements made it a matter of con- gratulation to him that he had no other occupations in the world to divert his mind from their proper discharge. Later perhaps, he reflected, as he scrutinized his face in the glass over the chim- ney-piece, he would go into politics, either in his own or his adopted country, as Patrice chose. There was much to be done, Heaven knows, in either land to stem this raging flood of gross avarice, atheism, licence and class-hatred that threatened to overthrow all that was beautiful, hal- lowed and desirable in society. The countenance that looked back at him gave, he allowed himself to think, promise of gifts that would carry him far. 22 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC It was indeed an interesting, emotional and en- thusiastic face, though its greediness of life had been modified by the discipline of society to a fair imitation of the correct apathy of demeanour; and the originality of its lines certainly justified his be- lief that, when it became desirable, he was capable of serious work. Meanwhile he was young, and life was a highly amusing thing, for all the absurd strictures which the pessimists heaped upon it. There was love and sport, open to all, or practically all; what more did they ask? And, among the lesser joys, social intercourse, wine, music, and the other arts. He hummed an operatic phrase dear to his betrothed, " Vissi d'arte, vissi d'amore," and cast an eye of perhaps rather perfunctory admira- tion at the reproduction of Watts' " Hope " and " Love and Life," which, as two of her favourite pictures, decorated the walls of the cosy little room. Truly, a street-fight, the rescue of a released con- vict, and the subsequent absurd association with such a person were odd enough incidents to dis- turb his equilibrium and require a certain lapse of time to complete their effacement, and to allow his mind to return into its normal and desired chan- nels. He lit a cigar and mixed a little weak whiskey and soda water, a beverage for which he was la- boriously overcoming a strong natural repugnance, and sat again in the deep chair, to think over the earlier events of the evening and look forward with THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 23 rapturous anticipation to his next meeting with Patrice. To-night they had only encountered at a friend's house, and had not even sat together at table. But how beautiful she had been in the soft diffused light, half -hidden from him at times by the great bunches of pink roses that decked the table; her head drooping with that weary grace and intolerance of the commonplaces of life that became her so well; her red lips curled into that adorably scornful expression that so bewitched him ! Her rare words to her loquacious neighbour that fellow Forbes ! reached him from time to time, in all the long-drawn, honeyed sweetness of her soft, tired voice. Under the memory of the gracious vision, his mind rapidly resumed its pos- ture of habitual adoration; and though now and again another face, wide-eyed, alert and boyish, in- truded between his mind's eye and the adored features, and another voice, soft too, but rapid, un- necessarily friendly and oddly alive, clashed with the weary music of the voice he loved, yet the in- terruptions became fewer and more widely sep- arated as he sat idly on into the night; until at last he could smile contemptuously at the vagaries of the masculine mind that could allow even mo- mentarily the possibility of competition between two beings so physically and spiritually remote from each other; and it was an unblurred, undese- crated image of his beautiful lover that he took with him to his pillow. II A WEEK or two later, on a fine Friday towards the latter end of June, Henry D'Albiac rang at the door of one of the big red-brick houses in Mount Street, the London abode of his future mother-in- law, the long-widowed Mrs. Beaufoy. The Beau- foys, during Patrice's childhood, had principally lived on their family estate in Wiltshire and, dur- ing part of the winter, at the villa near Cimiez; nor was it until it became advisable to consider the matrimonial future of her younger child that Mrs. Beaufoy had thought it necessary to add a London house to her other troublesome luxuries. Evidence of the good taste of the daughter was shown, D'Albiac reflected as he waited for admission, in the choice of this home in preference to one of the available buildings of dingy, aristocratic ugliness that she might have had, if she wished, in some yet more fashionable spot; the house was agreeable in colour and style; there was a good deal of orna- mental ironwork of a rather debased design, and before the leaded window panes on each floor well- filled flower-boxes flamed and fluttered in the sun- light and breeze of the summer day. D'Albiac, who was always late for everything, obedient to a fashionable law which, as he hardly 24 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 25 realised, was falling into desuetude, was true on this occasion to his record; and after laying aside his hat, gloves, and cane, was shown into the dining- room, where a small party were seated at table. His arrival was greeted with a piercing cry from a sandy-haired, ruddy, moustached man, who was seated next to Patrice Beaufoy. " Hooray ! Top-hole ! Here's old Jools ! " The uproariousness of the salutation caused Miss Beaufoy to shut her long, dark eyes quickly, with an agonised intake of the breath, while her mother, who had the nerves that were fashionable in the previous generation, contented herself with a fatly- smiling reproof. " Roddy ! Really ! Henry, how late you are ! Come and sit here by me." D'Albiac took the chair towards which she waved her plump little hand, between herself and her daughter, and after a murmured apology to his hostess and the one word " Patrice ! " uttered in a thrilling undertone to his betrothed, began looking round the table and bowing or nodding (the differ- ence being, in the British manner, not very marked) to the few guests, all of whom were personally known to him. From the opposite side, on Mrs. Beaufoy's right hand, Mr. Colman gave him a death's-head smile. This was a tall, fleshless person, with large feet, an ill-filled, cadaverous skin, and a clipped black 26 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC moustache. He was connected by various collat- eral bonds with the Peerage, and was entirely harmless and unmalicious; and these were, nat- urally enough, sufficient qualifications to explain his continual presence at all the fashionable houses in London. He had, however, practically no con- versation, although he was extremely talkative, and, perhaps to atone for this disability, affected the manner of a spoilt school-girl, which accorded only moderately well with his elderly and undecorative appearance. He appeared to have no personal tastes beyond sitting about in old ladies' drawing- rooms; generally in the tortive attitude of the Man of Sorrows in the frontispiece to Diirer's " Great Passion " ; and when routed from these hills of Beulah would take refuge in the reading-room of the St. James' Club, where he might be seen study- ing the democratically alternated photographs of burlesque actresses and fashionable society beauties, with or without their attendance of charmingly unaffected children, in the pages of the illustrated weekly papers. It was rumoured that Mr. Col- man had in his youth passed through a brief and unrecognised career as a diplomatist; but no man had ever seen him, since those days, engaged in any occupation. His elderly patronesses referred to him habitually as a good, kind creature, in tones denoting a certain tolerance. Turning his face from D'Albiac, he addressed a remark in his loud, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 27 toneless voice to his neighbour, Mrs. Fedden, a de- lightfully innocent-looking person, of colonial ante- cedents, with a retiring husband and apparently generous means, who had entered the circles in which she now moved since the day when she em- braced the Roman Catholic religion; a conver- sion which had caused many of the more distin- guished Catholic families, and among them that of Mrs. Beaufoy, to awake to her existence and the charms of her personality. With her continual bright smile, even white teeth and brilliant colour- ing, she was decoratively most engaging, and she had no opinions which could possibly offend any- body. At the bottom of the table, fat young Ivan Beau- foy, the son of the house, ate stolidly and drank persistently. He held a commission in the Royal Horse Guards, but beyond that distinction, admit- tedly a great one, there was nothing much to be said about him, except that he was miraculously long in shedding his cubbishness, which growled and peeped rebelliously from behind the disguise of his curled moustache, stayed figure and expensive clothes. Roderick Chalmers was a more interesting per- sonality, and might indeed be described as the lion of the gathering. Roddy, as even complete and conventional strangers found themselves calling him after the briefest acquaintance, was regarded 28 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC in his own circle as a brilliant eccentric; he had written a real play, which had been produced at a real theatre by no less a person than Travers Carr himself, generally admitted to be the chief est orna- ment of our own and consequently all other con- temporary stages; and as all the dramatis persona had been impressed among the author's own friends and arrayed in the most diaphanous disguises, and as also the dialogue was informed with a kind of imbecile high spirits, the piece had had quite a lit- tle run, and Roddy had acquired a reputation as a wit that no amount of subsequent absurdity of behaviour was able to affect. Carr, who aspired to join the circle in which Roddy principally moved, had mounted the comedy with great pomp, and had taken care to bring out its chief attraction, by " making up " the members of his company in such manner that only the very dullest movers in society could fail to recognise their prototypes; his own countenance being so elaborately built and painted in imitation of the features of a distinguished political peer that the possibility of any facial play was wholly removed, and even speech became a matter demanding the greatest circumspection. The manager's laudable ambition to rise in the social scale was, however, frustrated by the inconvenient fact that Roddy had at least a dozen different strata of acquaintanceship, which he knew better than to spoil by commixture. Everybody knew THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 29 Roddy, and Roddy knew and enjoyed everybody. There was quite a competition in the " Season " for his company; but he was the most untrustworthy guest in the world, for although he accepted every invitation with manifestly good intentions and ex- pressions of unfeigned delight, he found, naturally enough, that it was not easy to dine at half-a- dozen houses on the same evening; and generally solved the difficulty, when it arose and he had no particular preference for any one invitation, by eluding all his engagements under cover of a cloud of mendacious telegrams, and seeking out amuse- ment for himself in some of the less conventional quarters that he affected ; for he knew the most ap- palling people ; strange objects in baggy tweed suits and flannel shirts; mop-headed women without any pretentions to smartness; long-haired, pallid for- eigners; hosts of unknown actors and artists; and, on one occasion, had been actually met in Bond Street arm-in-arm with a most notorious anarch, slouch hat, tangled beard and all, whom, he subse- quently persisted, he had picked up at the Bomb Club in Hackney Wick. Actually he would have introduced this lunatic to the horrified narrator of the incident had the latter not, with admirable pres- ence of mind, dived incontinently into Douglas's, and submitted a smarting skin to a wholly un- necessary shave. Not that Roddy Chalmers be- lieved in anarchy; indeed it would be difficult to 30 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC suppose he believed in anything; his demeanour in all circumstances being one of ecstatic amusement, which manifested itself in agonies of laughter, often for causes that would hardly have affected the gravity of a village idiot. But " all those sort of people/' he protested, " were such frightful fun." Their absurd enthusiasms afforded him food for endless mirth, besides furnishing him with topics of conversation for subsequent dinner tables. On the whole, except with certain highly sensitive per- sons, of whom Patrice Beaufoy was one, he was re- garded with affection by all his acquaintances, in spite of his habitual irreverence and the social com- plications caused by that hopeless sketchiness of mind, which was revealed in his wild, absent- minded eyes, that seldom rested on those to whom he spoke. Patrice herself completed the present party; a truly lovely creature; no such dark, downcast eyes, gorgeous red hair, pouting lips and clear pallor were ever seen outside a portrait by Rossetti. It was not necessary for her to speak indeed she seldom did for all to realise the exquisite re- finement of the soul that had so wonderful a dwell- ing. Patrice lived in a world of beauty that she had made for herself ; a realm that no mere Philis- tine dare criticise; peopled with the figures of Burne-Jones' art moving through Fragonard land- scapes to the sound of Debussy's music. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 31 Although Henry D'Albiac had been her friend for a year and more, her betrothed for some months, he realised that he had not yet plumbed the violet-clouded depths of that passionately shrinking nature. It was so easy to fall for a mo- ment into the ugly, the commonplace, the violent in conversation ; to refer to some of the unpleasant, contentious subjects that were daily thrust before one's eyes and hoarsely shouted in one's ears; and at the mere suggestion of the brutal and painful Patrice's eyes would close, and her slow, rare words falter and die. "Must we talk of that?" was one of her favourite and most pathetic en- quiries. Her gentle heart and delicate mind re- coiled instinctively from the knowledge of such things ; there were other, harder, coarser natures to do the work of the world; there were people who seemed actually to enjoy the battlefield and the hos- pital and the police court; or who exulted in haul- ing up from their dismal depths the unavoidable carrion of crime, poverty and ignorance, and ex- pecting more sensitive persons to enjoy the spec- tacle. With Patrice, Henry was always in fairy- land; whether side by side with her in her opera box he partook, with his beloved, of the charm- ingly restrained sorrows of Rodolfo and Mimi; or walked at sunset with her beneath the trim hedges of her own rose garden, silent and happy, content at times to touch her warm, white hand with his 32 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC own; or, seated at her feet in the dimly illumi- nated and consequently rather perilous drawing- room in Mount Street, on such extremely rare evenings as there were no other guests, recited to her in the rosy light, with elaborate explanations, the sonnets of Heredia, which, in consequence of the recommendation of a cultured friend, he was conscientiously studying; rewarded by an occa- sional nod of comprehension, or a partly articulated word of joy at some austerely sonorous line. This was indeed the ideal companion, he often reflected, for a man to have, a refuge from all the toil and fighting of the world to which men, even young men of the wealthier classes, are necessarily at times exposed; an enchanted country to which one could fly at a moment's notice " Paradise always on tap," that idiot Roddy had once said with his usual coarseness, and yet with some conception of the idea, too. There was a pause after D'Albiac's entrance, dur- ing which fat, pachydermatous Mrs. Beaufoy gave some secret injunctions to the butler, and Patrice took the occasion to murmur to her lover, raising on him for one moment her beautiful dark eyes: " I read the little book you sent me." " Did you find it all I told you ? " he answered in his warm, deep voice, that contrasted so oddly with the usual loud quackings of his English men friends. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 33 She paused with an air of pretty deliberation, characteristic of her. " I think so. And yet perhaps I don't quite appreciate it yet. Is that silly of me? Perhaps there is more behind what sometimes seems to me at first so so slight, I was going to say ? Is that an impertinence ? " " Tell me all you really think," he pressed her, enraptured at the sweet deference of the words that lingered lovingly on the pouting lips, as if unwilling to leave so lovely a habitation. " No, I daren't," she said almost inaudibly, with a little shake of her gleaming head. " I must read it again many times. And then You musn't think I don't like it now," she broke off with a little air of penitence and a glimpse of the velvet eyes. " Much of it struck me as quite beautiful. What does it say? "' Le gentil rossignolet Nouvelet ' " How charming her English accent was in the familiar French words! thought her lover enthusi- astically (an opinion by the way, which would hardly have gratified Miss Beaufoy herself), as he took up the verse: "' Avecques sa bien-aimee Pour '" 34 "Pour vingt minutes d'arret! Par ma foie grasl " broke in Roddy, with a shriek of laughter. " Mrs Beaufoy, do stop 'em. It isn't fair to let 'em make love in unknown tongues in public. Now I shan't get another syllable out of Miss 1 Beaufoy all lunch time, and young Ivan here's much too busy eating to say anything." Patrice dropped her eyes with a patient shrug of her plump shoulders ; while her brother, who was of a stolid and rather captious disposition, jerked out in a growl: " Haven't eaten any more than you." " I know'' agreed Roddy, with a piercing scream, " but I've had far too much lunch ; I always do when I'm asked here on a Friday. Mrs. Beaufoy, I think seriously of coming over to Rome is that the right way to put it ? You know it's such a sound idea to have one day a week when your cook has to invent all sorts of jolly tempting things to eat, and cutlets are barred. I've eaten cutlets every day this last fortnight for lunch, I swear I have." Mrs. Beaufoy, conscious of being no ascetic, was a little affronted at this vulgar method of consider- ing fast days, but Chalmers gave her no time to protest or explain. " So you shouldn't be late on a Friday, Jools," he added earnestly. " We've finished everything up." THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 35 " Except the sweeties," said Mr. Colman, help- ing himself to chocolates from a silver bonbonniere, and offering it to his neighbour. " I love sweeties, don't you, Mrs. Fedden? Oh, please say you do! It will be quite horrid of you to make me the only baby of the party." Mrs. Fedden gave him the required assurance with an indescribable brightness, as with his head on one side he pressed the dainties upon her with a maidenly pout. D'Albiac helped himself to a freshly made ome- lette with a feeling of annoyance. It was impos- sible to get a word with Patrice among so small a party, particularly when it included that fool Chal- mers. " Shall I see something of you alone this after- noon?" he murmured, in an undertone. " I'm afraid not. We're engaged for something, I forget what. Mama*" she continued, turning to her mother with her pretty air of petulance, " what were we to do to-day?" " Don't you remember, darling ? We promised to go to a meeting at Lady Midhurst's in Queen Anne's Gate." " Dear Lady Midhurst ! " cried Colman in a rap- ture. " I was at her house only yesterday, and found Father Morgan there. Isn't he charming? Do say you love him! So cheerful and uplifting. 36 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC You can hear ' Sursum cor da ' in every note of his dear old voice, can't you ? " " Well, and why not? " asked Roddy hilariously. " Old Morgan's no bad judge, and no wonder he's cheerful. Lady Midhurst's an uncommon pretty woman." " My dear Roddy ! " said Mrs. Beauf oy, with a serious elongation of her upper lip. " Jolly good egg being a priest ; I've always thought that," persisted Roddy, in convulsions of mirth. " Lots of confidence and sympathy, and that. Of course, I'm only ragging," he concluded with a poor pretence at gravity, as his wandering eye caught for an instant the expression of dis- gust with which Patrice was regarding him. " Oh, Roddy ! Oh, fie ! You bad fellow ! " said Mr. Colman, shaking a knotty finger at him, in mock indignation. " Isn't he a dreadful person, dear Mrs. Beauf oy?" " Hopeless," replied the hostess, in her slow, unc- tuous tones. " You shan't lunch here again, if you're not good, Roddy. Yes, I'm sorry we can't take you with us very well, Henry," she explained. " But you wouldn't like it ; there won't be any men there, and hardly any girls, I expect; chiefly a lot of us old women." " Just the place for old Colman," said Roddy audibly to Ivan, who grunted discouragingly. "Lady Midhurst is organising a branch society THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 37 to resist this Woman's Suffrage absurdity, and I promised to help her." D'Albiac looked in surprise at his sweetheart. "Are you interested in that subject? " he asked, with lifted eyebrows. She shut her eyes, and shook her head slowly with a pout. " Oh, no. But maman wants me to go with her, and sign my name to something. What does it matter? The whole subject is ugly and stupid. It's not worth while refusing." " I wish you would take an interest in it, darling ; can't you make her, Henry? At first it was only stupid and ugly, as Patrice says, but it's becom- ing dangerous. Some quite good people have joined the other side good names, I mean. I can't think what they're thinking of. And it's our duty to stop it before it gets too far." D'Albiac shifted uneasily in his chair. It was plain that Mrs. Beaufoy took a serious view of the matter; and though he had no sympathy one way or the other, he had a guilty memory of a half- forgotten incident, and a glimpse of a white face standing out in the pale lamplight against a black background of struggling forms. " Yes, I see," he admitted, slowly. " I suppose there's no doubt it would be a bad thing " He broke off as the footman offered him some Sole Normande; while Mrs. Beaufoy surveyed him 38 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC with a displeased steadiness in her half-closed, twinkling eyes. " You don't mean to tell us you're a Suffra- gist?" she asked. He brushed the question aside with a wave of the hand and a smile of genuine; amusement. " I hope not," she said, drily. " I shouldn't like to think you had anything to say for these dread- ful, shrieking creatures who are responsible for it all. How any woman, unless she's tipsy, can be- have like that, I don't know." Mr. Colman sighed sympathetically over a glass of Madeira. " Such dreadful clothes they wear, too ! " he pro- tested in confirmation of the ridiculousness of the cause. " Boat hats and great boots ! " At the mere suggestion of these monstrosities of garb Mrs. Fedden gave a little squeak of amused horror and added her own indictment. " And they're all so hideous themselves ! " "Oh! Are they though?" interrupted Roddy, in tumultuous merriment. " I know better, Mrs. Fedden. Some of 'em are jolly good-looking women." " What nonsense ! " said his hostess, calmly, dust- ing some powdered ginger over a slice of melon. " What nonsense, Roddy ! You don't know any- thing about it ! " " I bet I do,'" cried Roddy, unabashed by this THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 39 contradiction. " Why, I met a lot of 'em last winter at Violet Verney's house Robert's sister, you know." " Poor Robert Verney ! " said Mrs. Beaufoy, pity- ingly. " Yes, that's a cheese souffle, Henry ; won't you have some trifle first? Poor Robert Verney! I really think that unfortunate sister of his must be going out of her mind. And you're not going to tell us that you think she has any looks, Roddy? " " Oh ! I don't say she has," said Roddy, buoy- antly. " Though she's a thundering nice woman, if she is a bit cracked. But lots of 'em are nice- looking, I give you my word." Patrice laughed without smiling; Mrs. Fedden uttered a sparkling ejaculation of incredulity; and Mr. Colman writhed in almost horrible enjoyment of this absurd fellow's joke. " They are, Miss Beaufoy, really," Roddy con- tinued, turning to what he felt was the most sym- pathetic quarter. " I tell you I know some of 'em well; and others I've seen lots of times; and quite a lot of the well-known ones would be thought pretty women anywhere." He cited a notoriously fascinating leader in the movement, and added other instances. " And then there's Mrs. Warlingham, who cut off the lights at the big meeting at Middlesbrough. And Flora Evans, who jolly nearly died in prison and she's quite a friend of mine. And that little 40 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC girl what's her name who looks like the fairy off a Christmas tree the one who got knocked out with the fire-hose at Worcester? And Mrs. Stafford she dresses awfully well, too. And Hilda Sellars " Mrs. Beaufoy raised plump white hands of pro- test at his volubility. " Oh ! My dear Roddy, have it your own way. But whether they're pretty or ugly, I'd have them all whipped through the streets." " Oh, I say! " cried Roddy, prodigiously amused, and winking delightedly at D'Albiac, whose eye he caught resting on him with an air of newly-awak- ened interest. " I would," insisted Mrs. Beaufoy, quite flushed with her zeal for this act of public service. " At the cart's tail." " Does that make it hurt more ? " enquired Roddy, with interest. " D'you know? I never knew a cart had one." " There's nothing to laugh at," said the elderly lady, evidently really annoyed at his frivolity. " Disgraceful creatures, dragging the decency of their own sex in the mud. If they're friends of yours, I can't help it; I'm sorry to say that's what I think of them." " Oh, I don't mind a bit," Roddy admitted, with unmoved equanimity, staring vaguely about the room. " Of course, it's all rot, this suffrage busi- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 41 ness. But that makes 'em so much more jolly funny, don't you think? They really believe it's quite a serious matter, and they talk till all's blue about it. Well, I tell you, it tickles me so, that I've rather kept up some of 'em on purpose, so that if ever I'm feeling a bit down on my luck " "You!" objected Colman, shrilly. "Roddy down on his luck! Oh, no! Oh, can you see it, Miss Beaufoy? Oh, capital!" Patrice's upper lip lifted for a conventional, unamused smile; clearly she thought such a state of mind on Chalmers' part would afford rather a pleasant relief to his associates. " I do sometimes, Colman. You don't know the reactions we thinking fellows suffer from. Try thinking some day, and you'll find out. Well, when I'm like that, I can always depend on some of these Suffragettes to buck me up. They keep me in fits ; and they're most of 'em awf'ly good tempered about it, I must say." " I'm glad to think you can find it an amusing subject. Some people I know can extract enter- tainment from anything, however wicked or sad," pronounced Mrs. Beaufoy, severely. " Oh, well, there ! Now I'm flattened out. That was really a nasty one, Mrs. Beaufoy," re- plied the impenitent scoffer, calmly. " I won't say another word, until you tell me I may." The ruffled lady, conscious that she had a little 42 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC exceeded the privileges of age and friendship, shook her head humorously at him, to mitigate the sever- ity of her rebuke, while the culprit, instantaneously oblivious of his Trappist vow, flung himself into a noisily jocose rallying of the taciturn Guardsman, who received his taunts without the least appear- ance of attention or interest. D'Albiac and his lover, thus released from general notice, found oc- casion to engage in a conversation on their own ac- count; trivial on the surface, as all their conversa- tions were, and dealing only with their plans; the houses they would visit in the autumn; the parties they purposed to attend in the near future. But to D'Albiac, at least, each casual word was charged with deeper and sweeter meanings. Beneath each cool, commonplace phrase the words " I love you " seemed to sound in thrilling counterpoint ; and when on rare occasions the proudly demure beauty raised her great dark eyes an instant to his own, the message became a caress. How wonderful it was to sit beside this languorous, exquisite girl, who scarcely replied at times to his questions, and yet to feel, by the magic instinct of love, that every nerve in that beautiful body, every thought in that complex and delicate mind, thrilled an answering chord to the sweep of his own emotion! His eyes on her apparently unconscious face, he forgot the presence of his fat, amiable hostess, the infantile quackings of Mr. Colman, who was pressing un- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 43 asked advice on Mrs. Fedden as to the arrange- ments of her new Surrey cottage (" Pouters and f antails ! Yes, yes, you shall ! I insist on f antails ! You're not to tease me, or I shall cry!"), the blatancy of Roddy Chalmers, the imperturbable ill- humour of Ivan, a future brother whom he had never yet been able to appreciate, although he ad- mired his magnificent English phlegm. The pan- elled dining-room, the decorated lunch-table, the softly moving servants vanished from his eyes, and he was alone in the enchanted rose-garden with his beloved, and she held her arms out to him with a passionate gesture of abandonment, and heaven and earth flamed and dissolved in the rapture of her kiss. He awoke with a start to the realities of life as she rose from her place, holding her hand out to him regretfully. " I'm afraid I shan't see you upstairs," she said, with a pout. " If I have to go to this tiresome meeting with maman, I must lie down for an hour first, or I shall be a complete ruin. Maman, dar- ling, you ought to have a rest, too." The proposal, for metabolic reasons, sounded agreeably in the mother's ear. " Well, darling, perhaps I will, a little later on," she replied. " Mrs Fedden, shall we go upstairs ? " " Oh, I think I ought to be running away at once, if you'll let me," cried Mrs. Fedden, tact- 44 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC fully. " My car will be here by this time, and I have such a heap of things to do." " Well, then, perhaps you'll look after the gentle- men, Ivan," said his mother, regarding him with distaste. " Good-bye, Mr. Colman ; so nice of you to come. Don't think it's very rude of me. Good- bye, Roddy. Henry, we shall see you to-morrow, no doubt." " Give my love to the Antis, Miss Beaufoy," said Roddy, who was holding the door open for the women to pass out. " I know quarts of Antis ; I think they're simply killing." He shut the door behind them with a final ex- plosion of joy, and returned to the table, adding ruminatively : "And there are some jolly nice-looking women among 'em, too." " Claret, Henry? Colman, what are you drink- ing? Roddy?" said Ivan, putting the wine about. " Nothing for me, thank you," said Colman, with a serpentine movement of the body. " I must be off, too, before long. D'Albiac, you've made us all late; and I've several calls to make this after- noon." " Fancy that ! What a change for you, old chap ! " said Roddy, derisively. " Jools, what are you up to? Anything? Ivan the Horrible, what's your plans ? " Young Beaufoy hesitated a moment, and then, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 45 without raising his eyes or removing his cigar, grunted : " Going down to the club." " Oh, of course when a man says that! " answered Roddy elliptically. " I hope I know when to be discreet. Jools, do you desert me? Come for a turn in the Park with me and amuse me with your views on sport. You French chaps are top- hole on that subject. You persist in thinking it matters. Well, so did we once ; but we know better now, and so we generally get licked by everybody. Come and talk to me about ze fox 'unting." D'Albiac agreed good-temperedly ; not that he had any particular liking for the man's society in general, considering his demeanour to be un- Englishly frivolous and deplorably wanting in that cold reserve which he himself had gone through so much to acquire. But a chance word at the lunch-table had set his curiosity alight and revived an odd interest which he had considered dead ; and, when a short time later he found himself walking up Mount Street alone with this companion, he in- troduced the matter as off-handedly as possible, hav- ing led up to the question of extending the suffrage to women by what he flattered himself were five admirably natural conversational developments. " By the way, talking of the Suffragettes," he said carelessly, " I heard you mention a name I knew in that connexion Evans. I came across 46 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC one of these women a little while ago; one of what I believe they call the fighting line; a Mrs. Evans; and I wondered if yours was the same person." "What was yours like? Pretty?" enquired Roddy. " Well, yes, I s'pose some people would say so," said D'Albiac carelessly. " Thin woman; ordinary height, but not much of her ; brown hair and rather noticeably blue eyes." " H'm ! You French fellows notice that sort of thing a jolly sight too much," said Roddy, himself an innocent and purposeless philanderer of the most shameless kind, whose path was in a constant bloom of pink cheeks and bright eyes in consequence of the erroneous impression of particular admiration that he made among the women of all classes with whom he mixed. " That's her, right enough. Where did you come across her ? " D'Albiac laughed constrainedly. " Why, in a row, of all places a street fight. Indeed, I helped her to get away when she was in a rather awkward fix " Roddy uttered a cry of delight that caused quite a stir among the pedestrians of Park Lane. " You do take the bun, Jools," he protested, smacking him on the back with so much unneces- sary force that his tall hat toppled over his eyes. " So you've been playing Perseus, you giddy old THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 47 French ox, have you? What does the lovely Miss Beaufoy say? " " What nonsense ! " laughed D'Albiac nervously, with a slight increase of colour, and a guilty hope that this chattering fellow would not retail the ad- venture to Patrice, an action that he had not the face to prohibit. " You've got a bad mind, Roddy. I always told you so. But it struck me as odd that you should actually know her." " Oh, everybody knows Flora," said Roddy, casually and silently buying an orange from an aged vendor, who was seated by the Park railings, and instantly passing it on without explanation to an amazed street child who stood admiring her wares. "I don't," said D'Albiac. " You, Jools ? You don't know anybody, except silly old rotters like Colman. You know nothing of the world you live in. Have you ever even heard the name of Jack Roff? Not you. And yet I say unto you, that man's only got to lift his hand, and London would be sacked in twelve hours." " Well, why doesn't he ? " enquired D'Albiac. " Because he don't want it sacked ; he's a jolly sight too comfortable as he is. However, there's a Power; and you were never even aware he ex- isted. Of course you wouldn't know Flora. But I tell you what," he added, signalling to a passing motor-cab, " you shall know her, and that before another sun has set. Nip in ! " '48 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " Why ? What's up now ? " protested his friend. " Get in, and I'll tell you. Don't be frightened ; I'll pay the fare. This is my treat. Put us down on Chelsea Embankment by the Church, driver." " No, no ! Look here ! I don't want to be taken to see Mrs. Evans," cried D'Albiac, remembering that she had said she lived in Chelsea. " Don't be a fool, Roddy." "What's the good of asking impossibilities?" asked Roddy, bursting into a paroxysm of glee, under the influence of which he stamped his foot delightedly on the cab floor, and grew quite purple of complexion. " Don't funk it, Jools. Soo, soo ! Good boy! Rats! Shall a Frenchman be shy? Perish the thought! Fancy one of your country- men refusing to be taken to see a woman una phamme! Think again. Don't you feel the influ- ence beginning to work ? " " But she'll think I'm quite cracked " began D'Albiac feebly. "Not she! Why? I know her quite well. Why shouldn't I call, and bring a friend with me? Par- ticularly when you saved her from the mad bull, you know. Besides, if she did think you were cracked, she'd like you all the better. You'd match the rest of her circle of acquaintance. You never saw such a lot of rum 'uns as the people she knows." The flustered Frenchman sank back philo- sophically. After all, in his inner heart, although THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 49 he would not admit it, he was well aware that he had only begun these enquiries about Mrs. Evans in the unacknowledged hope that they would lead to a renewal of his acquaintance with a personality that had left a distinct impression on him, and one of a puzzlingly pleasant kind. Frequently since that odd adventure of his, he had voluntarily re- created the picture, with a conscientious comment of " Stupid little creature ! " or " Rowdy little brute ! " as a dismissal of the protagonist at length from his mind. He told himself that he took no interest in the woman, only in the unusual circumstances. Yet the word " little " might have sounded a bugle call of warning to a more frankly analytic mind; for she was not noticeably small of stature. " Oh, well, I don't mind," he said carelessly, with a feeling that it would look suspicious to make too strong a protest. " Don't make me hang about there long, in case she's in. I've got a lot of things to do." "I don't think," said Roddy, vulgarly. "Ah! You won't want to go away once you get there, Jools. I know you when you get near a pretty woman. She's a jolly good sort, too, and thunder- ing clever. She can paint portraits, no end. Why don't you have your peculiar features limned, as a present for Miss Patrice?" " How on earth do you come to be a friend of go THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC hers?" asked D'Albiac, putting aside this absurdity without comment. " Why, I met her and a whole crowd more of these Suffrage girls at Violet Verney's, as I was telling your future ma at lunch. (What a rise I got out of her, didn't I?) Well, I arrived in the middle of what they call a drawing-room meeting for the Cause." He paused to emit a scream as of a train leaving a tunnel, and, thus relieved, con- tinued. " Servants tried to keep me out, but as soon as I heard what was up I insisted on getting in, and Violet, who's rather a pal of mine you know we used to roll down hills in each other's arms ; not lately, Jools, don't look so prudish; when we were kids Violet said I might stop if I swore to be quiet. So I was." " I can imagine," commented D'Albiac. " I was ; I was as taciturn as a turnip. And by-and-by Violet was so impressed by my behaviour that she introduced me to a lot of 'em; and jolly girls they were, some of 'em. And then I got into conversation with Flora and saw her home. She rather took to me, Jools; I don't know whether it was my beauty or the belief that she'd make me into one of their lambs. At any rate she asked me to come and see her, and for some time I used to look in on her pretty often ; but I haven't been near her for some months now." "Why not?" THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 51 " I don't know. Oh, because I've too many friends, I s'pose. I shall have to make a list of 'em all some day; edit it and expurgate it; and then I can divide my time systematically among the people I want to keep up. As it is I'm constantly remembering that I haven't seen one of my best pals for four years or so, y'know. That sometimes cools 'em off a little." D'Albiac stared out of the cab some moments in silence, while his friend was lighting a cigarette. "Husband a friend of yours, too?" he asked presently. " Ah, I see you coming ! " said Roddy, frowning heavily. " She hasn't got one. The lamented Evans passed peacefully away during the early part of the South African War, I believe; having in- judiciously tried to field a shell from Long Tom. So there goes your last chance, Jools." " What do you mean by that ? " asked D'Albiac, irritably. " Don't tell me ! I know your race," answered the other, wagging his head, with his eyes goggling vaguely. " It wasn't for nothing that I worked my way, with the help of a pocket dictionary, which left out most of the best words, through * Nana,' when I was young and enquiring. But it's no good, old chap! Your charms won't have any more ef- fect on Flora than on the lions in Trafalgar Square." 52 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC "Really, Roddy," began D'Albiac hotly; for since his engagement he was morbidly sensitive on these subjects. His protest was, however, drowned in the roars of his friend, to whom his indignant face afforded an infinite gratification. " What a refreshing old bird you are to pull the tail of, Jools!" he cried when he had recovered breath. " Hullo ! here's the church. We get out here." Ill HAVING dismissed their cab, the two friends turned up the narrow street that runs beside the parish church, Roddy clasping D'Albiac's arm af- fectionately as they went. " We now," he explained in a high, cicerone tone, to the wonder of the passers-by, " approach the slum areas in which your artists think it neces- sary to hang out; so mind your pockets, Jools, if you're lucky enough to have anything in 'em. As for me, I'm like our vacuous friend Viator, with whom old Homer makes such noise, I can afford to sing; and that's about the only thing I can afford until next September. Up here." They entered a small paved footway, between rows of two-storied houses of mean appearance running east and west. Before one of these, on the northern side, a white-plastered, narrow slip of a dwelling, Roddy presently paused. " This is fair Rosamond's bower," he said, " and that's her window the open one. Wonder if she's in?" As a means of determining the point, he gave a piercing cry of " Flora ! " which brought all the in- habitants of the court to their windows, and among them Mrs. Evans, who thrust her brown head out S3 54 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC of the room he had indicated, and laughed as she saw who her visitor was. " I might have guessed it was you," she said, nodding gaily; and then looking at D'Albiac for a moment with raised eyebrows, she repeated the smile and the nod. " Come up ! " she said. " The door's open, and I've nobody with me." Up a rather rickety wooden stairway Roddy led his friend into the room where Flora Evans was at work; an apartment of larger size than had ap- peared possible from the exterior, running across the whole depth of the little house, and furnished, on the side away from the street, with slanting windows running up to the roof, " to catch," ex- plained the owner, " any chance ray of light which might have lost its way and wandered by mistake into London." Through these windows a toler- ably open view was obtained of timber yards, back gardens, ornamented with washing lines and rumi- native cats, and a large building which appeared to be some form of school or institute. Flora, herself, had been employed, at a high stand- ing desk, in making a large decorative design in charcoal; and further evidence of her customary activities was afforded by a few studies of heads in oil-colours that hung against the walls. The studio was apparently used also as a living-room. Th.ere was a little Chinese lacquered bureau against one THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 55 wall ; a square table covered with a blue serge cloth, and bearing a slender glass vase containing three dark red roses; a white glazed stove, with a pipe leading out through the upper part of the back wall ; a " saddle-bag " chair and one or two dark ones of bent-wood; and a hanging corner cupboard, on the top of which was ranged an exiguous row of shabby books. Everything was most inartistically tidy and fresh, and the June breeze playing freely through the room from the open windows on both sides, rustled the rose-leaves in the slim vase, and brought a faint sweetness to the senses from the velvet glory of the regal flowers. The artist herself was a slim, girlish figure in her plain brown holland dress, with a soft, low, white collar round her long throat, and a leather belt about her slender waist ; and her laughing face as she took Roddy's hand set D'Albiac smiling too, with a curious sense of cheerfulness that warred a little with his usually self-conscious correctness of demeanour. " So here you are again, you false friend," said Flora, shaking Roddy's hand heartily. " I thought you'd died long ago." " Ah, you've been peaking and pining ; I can see that," he answered, with a mournful shake of the head, followed by a prolonged laugh of so stun- ning a description that Flora clapped her hands to her ears, with pursed lips and tightly shut eyes. " A 56 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC slight cold in my head nothing serious don't turn pale " " For a year ? " she asked, sympathetically. " Oh, I say, steady ! " cried Roddy in protest. " Come on ! Forgive me. Look what a pretty present I've brought you, to make my peace." He drew D'Albiac forward by the arm as he spoke, rather to the annoyance of the Frenchman, who felt an unwonted shyness in thus being turned into a subject of laughter. Flora's expression re- assured him however; there was nothing of rail- lery and everything of friendliness in her frank, lively face as she held out her hand. " But we've met before," she said, turning her dancing blue eyes on his. " And in a most martial manner. How nice of you to come and see me! I've often thought, since that time, that it was rather rude of me to leave you in such a sudden way, after your kindness. But you struck me, do you know? as just as little sorry afterwards that you'd done it, so I believed you'd probably be glad to see the last of me. And now I'm proved wrong, so I'll apologise." D'Albiac began to murmur a few conventional phrases on the pleasure of renewing the acquaint- ance, which somehow struck himself as a little frigid in face of this effusiveness; so that he was not sorry when Roddy burst in with a fresh flood of nonsense. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 57 " Pore old Jools ! He's been searching London for you ever since. ' Tell me, shepherds, tell me, have you seen my Flora ' I'm a little out of voice to-day, so we'll omit the rest and take up the col- lection. And it's only this afternoon that his per- sistence has been rewarded by hearing a chance re- mark of mine about you." " Don't be idiotic," said Flora, with prosaic good temper. " You haven't even told me your friend's name yet." "What? Old Jools's? His name and style in his own land is the Markee Hongree D'Albiac ; but for political reasons he veils these splendours over here under the disguise of Mr. D'Albiac; known to myself as Jools, for no particular reason, except that it seems to suit him. And here he comes to ask you to paint his portrait in the natural colours, as a present for his young lidy there, that's done it! Now I've given the whole show away, and de- stroyed all his interest ! " Clapping his hand over his mouth, Chalmers made a great parade of annoyance at this slip of the tongue, while Flora addressed Henry. " Don't encourage him by laughing, Mr. D'Albiac, please," she said. " But I don't yet see how you found out I was a friend of his. You didn't even know my name." " Yes, you mentioned it that night, by chance. So of course when Chalmers spoke of a Mrs. Evans 58 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC who was an active suffragist, it occurred to me at once that it was probably the same lady." He hesi- tated a moment, feeling he ought to give some sort of explanation of his visit. It was hardly enough to say "You stuck in my memory as having a pretty face which, in spite of my matrimonial engage- ments, I felt I should be glad to see again." And yet that was the only reason he could find, in a can- did examination of his mind, for his having per- mitted Chalmers to bring him down on this fool's errand. It was necessary to say something, how- ever, so he took refuge in a rather obvious in- sincerity. "I was anxious to know that your were none the worse for your your misadventure," he continued, smiling formally. "And then," he added, wilily, " I wanted to be allowed to talk to you about your cause; because it's often struck me since our meeting that there must be a great deal to be said for these methods which I must say I've always very much disliked if people of your type take part in them." Roddy who had behaved pretty well during this speech, except for a rather vulgar splutter of laugh- ter behind his hand at the announcement of the second reason for D'Albiac's visit, broke in here. " You've come to the right shop if you want a great deal to be said,' old chap. Flora's the Chelsea champion at that." " Satan rebuking sin," said Mrs. Evans contemp- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 59 tuously. "I'm sure I shall be very pleased to try and explain our point of view, Mr. D'Albiac. You'd probably be an easy convert, if you don't mind me saying so. It's the dull, trivial, apathetic people that are our deadliest enemies. Perhaps you'll come and see me some time without this ab- surd person, who's a bar to all serious conversation. I don't mean that as an insult, Roddy; rather the contrary, indeed. I'm inclined to be a solemn creature myself, and I'm sure your company does me worlds of good in moderation." "Well, you needn't have added that. It was a prettier speech as it stood first, you know," Roddy commented dispassionately. " Come on ! What shall we do? Let's all go to Battersea Park, and I'll stand you both a ninepenny ad lib. tea." " I ought to finish my work " began Flora, doubtfully, but with a glance at the sunlit street. " Work? " cried Roddy in disgust. " Work, on an afternoon like this? Why, it's flying in the face of Providence, which you ought to know is one of the most dangerous forms of aviation. And here's our first meeting for long, weary years! Work be blowed ! Look ~here, I'll come in again to-morrow and help you to finish it. Say yes, there's a good girl." " I s'pose you won't give me any peace unless I do," sighed Flora, covering her drawing and push- 60 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ing the desk into a corner. " All right. Give me a minute to put my hat and shoes on." Relying on the usually liberal interpretation put by ladies on the word "minute," where hats are concerned, Roddy Chalmers had begun to inspect the contents of the corner cupboard, when Flora re- turned unexpectedly and discovered him. " Now, leave things alone," she said sternly. " I won't have you putting your ringers in the jampots. Mr. D'Albiac you ought to have kept your eye on him." D'Albiac gravely stammered an apology, which caused the painter's blue eyes to rest on him for a moment with an air of amusement that he was quick to notice and resent. He confessed to him- self that he felt " out of it " ; he wished he had not been such a fool as to come; he did not understand women of this kind. Roddy and she treated each other as two schoolboys, except that their manners and language were without offence. The young women to whom D'Albiac was accustomed had al- ways received him with a certain reserve; if un- married, with an indefinable air of fluttered pleasure that ministered agreeably to his self-esteem; mar- ried or unmarried, with a certain attitude of re- spect and deference to his sex, which raised him in his own opinion and made conversation assume the form of instruction, in which he was the master. There were women of easier morality and low THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 61 class, of course, who treated him with a canaille disrespect and insolence ; but that was only tolerated for its piquancy and as a temporary diversion, much as one allows a puppy to bite one in sport, until one has had enough of it, when it may be kicked into a corner, until the inclination for a contemptuous indulgence of its impudence returns. And in these ladies there was always present an air of greatly daring, a ring of defiance in the tones of their voices and in their often tasteless choice of words. Mrs. Evans' demeanour was more that of a free-and-easy young man, when thrown into con- tact with one of his own age and sex. She made no attempt to court D'Albiac or draw him out, but threw her remarks to him with perfect friendliness, for him to respond to or not as he thought fit. Un- doubtedly there was a sort of pleasure in her soci- ety, which was not entirely due to her physical qualities, although these struck D'Albiac as consid- erably more attractive than he had at first sup- posed; but it galled him, too, to be dethroned from the position he was accustomed to occupy, and treated with no more interest by a woman than if the difference in sex had never been invented. It made him stiff and formal ; it added to his usual horror of becoming matter for derision or adverse public comment; and at the same time it inspired him with a desire to make himself more important in the eyes of this carelessly companionable young person, to show her that, although perhaps he had not the utter want of restraint and conventional politeness of Roddy Chalmers, yet that he was not, for all that, a dull dog; and in all other respects greatly the better man of the two. Absurd as this desire to shine in the eyes of a woman of Mrs. Evans' class and character ap- peared to his conscious intelligence, particularly in view of the fact that it seemed neces- sary for such effulgence to assume manners which he knew well would be both vul- gar and ridiculous in the eyes of the girl he loved, yet the feeling was not to be routed, though the proverbial English morgue, which he had been at such pains to acquire during the last few years, stood in the way of his efforts to ap- pear sympathetically lively and unconventional. Roddy's outrageous noisiness did not appear at all to offend Flora Evans, although she herself be- haved reasonably enough in the streets. D'Albiac, however, could have wished that she wore gloves or at least carried a parasol; there was something that offended his eyes in the sight of her walking with bare, hanging hands, occasionally putting one up to her unpinned hat of soft brown felt, to alter its position on her head or hold it against a gust of wind. He knew it was rather trivial to be so particular in these matters; but, after all, quite good people live in Chelsea now-a-days, he thought ; some THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 63 of the inhabitants of the great red-brick palaces were personally known to him; and it was not an agreeable reflection that at any moment he might find himself face to face with some obviously aston- ished friend, capable of putting a very questionable construction on the fact of his companionship with a woman who might well be a sempstress or shop girl; who was, in sober fact, little better. The thought strengthened to a pitch that induced him, by a happy thought, to stop behind the other two to light a cigar, and in catching them up again to secure that Roddy should be between him and the woman, until at least they were across the river, where they would be in safety. If an awkward encounter was to take place, Mrs. Evans should at least pass as Roddy's friend and not his own. She herself did not appear to notice the effect of his sly manoeuvre, but continued the tripartite conversation with undiminished good fellowship. They turned into the Park through the small wooden gate immediately beyond the bridge, and at Roddy's special request went first to call upon a particular friend of his; a raven who, with his lady wife, kept house in a small circular aviary among a plantation of trees. Like many of Chal- mers' intimates, however, the portentous fowl had not had the enjoyment of his society for a con- siderable time, and the apologies that Roddy felt it necessary to offer the bird on this point, and of 64 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC his omission to bring with him a meat-offering apologies which it received with frank incredulity, expressed in the tilt of its head and the twinkle of its brilliant eyes, as it hearkened to the improbable excuses offered had the effect of drawing so con- siderable a crowd of delighted listeners, largely young women and children, about the party, that D'Albiac drew some distance away among the trees, to wait until the visit was over. The pushing and heavy breathing of the little crowd, the clickings of tongues, squeaks of laughter and admiring expres- sions of surprise and amusement, the constant treading of small feet on his varnished boots, and the sight of round eyes looking up merrily into his own, to see if he shared their owner's delight in this stupidly ostentatious exhibition of nonsense, an- noyed D'Albiac very much; the more as he per- ceived that their woman companion, leaning her elbow on the rail that enclosed the cage, frankly enjoyed such tomfoolery, and even encouraged Roddy by suggestive remarks when his wit halted. He had a momentary thought of leaving them there and returning to the less savage parts of London, to associate with people of civilized habits. It would be rude, no doubt, but what did it matter what this common little person thought about him? He was here entirely against his will, and was not at all likely to repeat the experience. As for Roddy, D'Albiac was quite aware that such a defection THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 65 would not even momentarily surprise him. It was precisely the sort of thing he himself did, in all circles of society; he would only take it for granted that D'Albiac had suddenly become bored and be- thought himself of something more amusing to do ; which would have been, in his opinion, an ade- quate excuse for an even graver breach of good manners. Before he had made up his mind to this course, however, he found the opportunity was lost, for here came his two companions ; Roddy with his tall hat on the back of his head, gasping with mean- ingless laughter, and rolling a wild, unseeing eye; and Mrs. Evans, her merry face dimpled and sparkling, talking volubly; behind them their little crowd of admirers stared after their retreating footsteps. Neither of them appeared conscious of, or at least called any verbal attention to D'Albiac's withdrawal from their company; and, in his rather irritable frame of mind, the Frenchman took this as an added grievance. He had purposed, as he saw them coming, to drop a carefully veiled sar- casm at their expense, to defend himself from their expected charge of stiffness and shyness; a few happy words had even instantaneously occurred to him, and he was sensibly disappointed that he was given no reasonable opportunity for their display. He felt he could have made them realise that it is not by any means always the people who affect to disregard all society's rules of behaviour who thereby 66 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC escape the charge of being ridiculous and limited in mind, at the expense of those who prefer to con- form within reason. However, as they were both immovably good-humoured and lively, he could hardly make a personal exhibition of acerbity, though the result of his self-restraint was mani- fest in an obvious sulkiness of demeanour, as he un- willingly followed them on to the wide expanse of grass, bisected by a railed path, that occupies the middle portion of the park. And here no young mind and healthy body could resist the witchery of the hour and the season. After a rainy Spring, the two great enclosures of grass were brilliantly green in the sunlight, soft as deep moss beneath the feet; a carpet of richest pile for the few lucky children within view to roll upon luxuriously; the most sweet-smelling and luxurious of couches for the contemplative out-of- work labourer, on which to forget his trouble over a pipe of tobacco; the safest training ground for the young mother who, in the middle distance, was instructing her staggering two-year-old in the dif- ficult art of walking; almost a nuptial couch to certain debonair lovers, scattered here and there upon the gaudy plain, in postures, as Roddy said, no less indicative of the sincerity of their emo- tions than of their complete freedom from that self- consciousness which is customarily one of the be- setting sins of the English. Three hundred yards THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 67 away or so, a line of still freshly bright trees, wav- ing their tops rhythmically in the light June breeze, made a changing and stimulating backing to the more dazzling colour of the turf; while above all rose a summer sky that few melancholies could have resisted, pale turquoise, built about, wherever the eye could see its lower borders, with vast cumulose cloud continents of dazzling whiteness and a solidity that suggested a breathless repose in the upper air, contradicted as the eye rose towards the zenith by patches of cirrocumulus that lost little by little their regularity of form and were combed out at last into curls and thistledown strands of creamy cirrus, delicate as the stray tendrils of Flora's soft brown hair that fluttered from beneath her round, boyish hat; pale in places almost to the point of indistinction from the surrounding blue pallor of the dome's apex, and lending an inimit- able air of swift movement and resistlessly youth- ful life to the smiling face of the June day. Roddy was like a young horse who leaves the high road on a windy morning for the springy turf of the Downs; he leapt like a child with the joy of life; Flora's delicately drawn lips of fragile pink parted in a breathless smile of physical pleas- ure, as she stood for a moment, swaying like a young birch tree in the wind that tugged and teased at her thin, pale-brown skirt, and tumbled her spun- silk hair about her rosy face; Henry D'Albiac for- 68 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC got for the moment the irksomeness of his company and had a strong bodily desire for action and move- ment to express his sense of pleasure. The oppor- tunity was given by Chalmers, who cried out at once a challenge for a race to the low pavilion that lay two hundred yards or more before them; a haunt of children, the robber's cave of a thousand games. The words were hardly out of his lips be- fore Flora was away, running like a boy ; elbows to her sides, fists clenched, body erect, and with a fine, light swing, as unlike the graceless waddle of the untrained, petticoated woman of a previous generation as can be imagined. The instantaneous manner in which her rapid mind and responsive body had answered Chalmers' defiance had taken the challenger so much by surprise that she had gained a lead of twenty yards before he started in pursuit, hopeless as it proved, for the breath wasted on laughter and shouted accusations of dishonesty, added to the comparative unsuitability of his rai- ment for bodily sports, soon left him totally out- paced by the light figure that scudded silently be- fore him across the grass : and when finally his tall- hat blew from his head as he ran, he took it for a good excuse to give up the unequal task. For a few steps D'Albiac had joined in the pursuit, at first with an eager, unaffected boyishness of emula- tion, the next moment with a consciousness of the absurdity, in the eyes of the bystanders, of the spec- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 69 tacle of his fashionable figure, glossy-booted, tight- waisted and tall-hatted, engaged in this folly. At the thought, he began to run with a delicate circum- spection, laughing to give himself a countenance, and almost immediately afterwards fell back into a walking pace, with a frown at certain urchins who had joined with him in the chase, crying encourage- ments to him as they closely accompanied his foot- steps. Their disappointment at his lack of persist- ence manifested itself in tentative words of deri- sion, which caused Henry to lift his cane in a threat- ening manner at them ; at which they retreated back- wards, with contumelious speech and opprobrious gestures, which intensified as the distance between them increased; while D'Albiac rejoined Roddy who, still highly entertained by his defeat, was brushing his damaged hat on his coat sleeve. " I never saw such a girl as that," he said ad- miringly. " She takes one's breath away, she's so quick. Look, she's finished already." From the still distant pavilion, indeed, Flora's slim figure could be seen, waving in triumph to celebrate the victory of her sex; a signal to which Roddy replied by injurious remarks, shouted be- tween his hands as he approached her. D'Albiac felt that the moment for escape from this company had come, and he began an explanation of suddenly remembered affairs, appealing to his watch to sup- port his statements. His friend was not deceived. 70 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " I know what's the matter with you, Jools," he said, taking his arm lovingly. " You don't think we're behaving like little gentlemen. Never mind, don't be cross. I won't rag any more, really. And you promised to have tea with us. A nice cup o' tea, old dear; you can't say no to that, I'm sure." Still protesting the truth of his obviously men- dacious excuses, Henry suffered himself to be led forward, with little belief in the durability of Roddy's promise. To his surprise, however, it was reasonably well kept. It was true that Chalmers hardly spoke a word of sense during the remainder of the afternoon, but that was due rather to a con- stitutional disability than to any deliberate inten- tion on his part. And otherwise, whether from weariness or not, his behaviour was distinctly chas- tened. His laughter was considerably modified in volume and improved in tone, and he did not arouse any large amount of popular excitement, more than perhaps half a dozen times, before the three parted. In these circumstances, D'Albiac had an opportunity of studying Mrs. Evans by a more sympathetic light. Seated with his companions at a small cir- cular table on the terrace of a refreshment house, he found himself yielding more and more to the attraction of her curious friendliness and outspok- enness ; two characteristics that theoretically repelled him as particularly unladylike and even un feminine. At one moment she would be seated with shoulders THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 71 and head drooping, her hands lying in her lap, look- ing upward into the faces of her companions, and turning her blue eyes quickly from one to another, as she listened with a curious vigorousness that marked all her actions, and was apparent even in her silences; the next she would have burst her way into the conversation in a perfect flood of volubility, though always in the same soft, clear- cut voice, with large abundant gestures, and light- ning flickerings of a pair of particularly pretty hands, that seemed themselves to distil speech from the rosy tips of the pointed fingers. She did not laugh inordinately; most of Roddy's absurdities were taken with a friendly contempt ; but she smiled frequently and swiftly; the dimples in the narrow cheeks, the crackle of blue fire in the eyes and the flash of small teeth between curved lips were here and gone in a breath, and when the laughter came, it rang out clear and sudden as a small silver bell. D'Albiac could not keep his eyes off her face; he felt it and wondered vaguely at this sudden obses- sion; she was pretty, but not remarkably so; she was still young enough thirty, perhaps but a mature woman and no girl ; one who had obviously suffered and experienced life; she had good man- ners of a kind, perhaps, but not of his kind, and distinctly odd and irreverent; nor was she a lady; an excessive accuracy of pronunciation and an ab- sence of fashionable phrases and words denoted 72 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC one of the well educated lower-middle class; one would have said perhaps a secretary or governess or journalist. Nor was she apparently much im- pressed with D'Albiac ; so it was not flattered vanity that accounted for his undoubted interest in her. She gave him as much of her attention as she gave that clown, Roddy; certainly no more; and there were moments when she contemplatively screwed her mouth a little on one side, with a pouting under- lip, considering his face meanwhile with eyes of dancing attention ; or tilted her head over a rounded shoulder to glance at him obliquely with an elfish slyness; and at such times he was hotly convinced internally that she was privately laughing at him, good-humouredly, certainly, but with genuine amusement. On one or two of these occasions he remembered that she had delivered herself of some rebellious opinion, uttered some word that struck him as too hardy, or broached or responded to some subject that he considered taboo between gentlemen and ladies. Of course he was aware that in his own country married women were allowed and took considerable latitude in the matter of conversation; but, since he had come to man's estate, he had associated so much with the English that he had grown to expect a particular demeanour from the women he met; certain reticencies and assumed ig- norances, even from the oldest and most matronly, even from the presumably not entirely uninstructed THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 73 mothers of large families ; and these rules of speech, though not by any means flagrantly broken during the afternoon were, he could see, held of little ac- count by Flora Evans, who, to make matters worse, had an appearance so maidenly and lived in such lonely circumstances that Henry found constant difficulty in reminding himself that she had mar- ried, lost her husband, suffered and known per- haps borne children, though there were none actu- ally in evidence. He tried his best to appear thor- oughly Bohemian in his replies to one who was so widely different in aspect and manner from what he had been taught to consider Bohemian, but it was plain that his pained surprise manifested itself occasionally, and at such times he caught that de- tested suspicion of a good-humoured smile in the bright eyes, and that suggestion of slyness in the mere carriage of the head and body which gave him a hearty longing to indulge in reprisals. He had a fleeting thought of uttering some outrageously frank sentiment and phrase, the talk of the smok- ing-room, for the pleasure to his revengeful feel- ings of seeing her flush or withdraw into herself at the brutality. But in the face of her manifestly crystalline purity of mind and the absence of the slightest suggestion of a wish on her part either to shock or excite, he was unable so far to forget his decency. After all the woman on no occasion said or suggested more than the most clean-minded 74 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC mature man would communicate without hesitation to another; and clearly she did not consider herself or her company as possessed of any sex, except on the rare occasions when a start, or constrained reply, or slight frown from D'Albiac reminded her of the fact that the difference existed. As for Roddy, a most wholesome imbecile, for all his, or perhaps because of his, constant attentions to women, he was evidently quite at home in this unconventional society; but D'Albiac caught him- self wondering what his sweetly-ignorant betrothed would say, what even the significantly reticent Mrs. Beaufoy would say, if either of them could have been present at the tea-party and heard the easy tones of good fellowship employed and marked the entire absence of those little arts of pleasing and concealment or suggestion (delicately stimulating) which obtain in all good society. For all his restless feeling of strangeness, how- ever, and fear of scrupulously concealed mockery, D'Albiac found himself growing more and more at ease, and ever greedier of Flora's attention and good opinion, as the afternoon wore away; and he was able to cry out on her, in a perfectly truthful protest of regret, when she at last announced that she must return to her home and her work. Roddy, however, immediately seconded the pro- posal ; he was a person devoid of stability, and had long begun to weary of his company, having lat- terly fallen into occasional fits of absent-minded silence, induced by the memory of a pretty friend of his in a flower shop in Sackville Street, whom he thought it would be pleasant to drop in upon for some minutes' chat on his way home. While there, he reflected, he might buy some flowers for poor little Lady Vandervelde. It would be too late to call on the pretty invalid to-night, but he could leave them for her and look in on her to-morrow; for he owed her a call, and she was a most charm- ing woman, too. In his anxiety to carry out this double scheme of amusement, he insisted on remov- ing his friends from the park by the nearest gate and packing them into a cab, dropping Flora at the corner of her alley, and diverting her at parting by the exhibition of his skill in a sailor's hornpipe, which was intended to impress upon her, by an il- lustration of his future activities, the statement that he was shortly going to Southampton to pick up a friend's yacht, in which he was to make a cruise to the Western Highlands. The hauling on imaginary sheets, scaling of ratlines, and constant readjustment of treacherous garments that threat- ened an embarrassing descent, were presented with a breeziness and spirit that called forth audible commendation from certain loafing amateurs and the driver of the cab, wherein D'Albiac sat, as- suming an expression of indulgent delight that was not entirely convincing. Flora, however, enjoyed 76 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC these corybantic exercises whole-heartedly, and when Roddy had ceased, from exhaustion, and tumbled weakly into the cab, still braying with laughter at his own humour, she stood at the en- trance to the court to see them off, and the last vision that D'Albiac had, as he looked back to lift his hat again, -was of a laughing face and the flut- ter of a small hand. The smile and the flutter pursued him through the remainder of the evening, and even, to his great annoyance, insinuated themselves into the sacred realm of his dreams. Ridiculously he felt, in the next few days, that such an invasion of his in- most thoughts was almost an infidelity to Patrice. This stupid sense of guilt refused to be laughed away, although he found himself insisting to his conscience, with the most laughable gravity, on the very obvious fact that Flora was nothing whatever to him, and that the interest he had felt in her had been awakened purely by the novelty of her character and manner; indeed by what, in retro- spect, he might well regard as her defects. " Damn her ! " he said to himself, over and over again. " I won't ever go near her again! " And to fortify his resolution he haunted his betrothed's home, in and out of season, in order to occupy his idle fancies and insure them against any further extravagance. After a time, however, as the memory of the after- noon at Battersea had begun to blur with the efflux THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 77 of time, this very discipline presented itself to a busy conscience in the light of a slight on his lover. What possible danger to one so lovely and beloved could lie in a meeting or a conversation with any other woman in the world, more especially with a person of the stamp of Mrs. Evans? Was it not almost a duty on his part to make cold and polite visits from time to time on this chance acquaintance, merely for the purpose of the un- favourable comparison with true beauty and femininity, and a triumphant exposition of the cold- ness of his heart towards any but its own mistress? Your true lover exults in these devout exercises, and Henry D'Albiac was convinced, in all the mapped portions of his mind, that it was such feel- ings alone that induced him, after a decent interval, sufficient to display his entire indifference to her company, to contemplate coolly a formal visit of tedious social convention on the Chelsea artist. He was certain that such a proceeding would be exactly the course of conduct that Patrice would approve ; although he had never actually mentioned to her his acquaintance with the woman in ques- tion. Something told him that the discussion of a personality so remote and unsympathetic would not be welcome to the almost excessive delicacy of his lover's character; nor, he said stoutly, with a defiant stare into the slightly mocking eye of his conscience, could there be the slightest necessity 78 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC for keeping her informed of every chance acquaint- ance that crossed his path. She was the last per- son to invite such jejune and pointless confidences. IV JULY had come with a burst of fierce still heat that caused the rich and fashionable world to con- sider seriously the possibilty of throwing over such social engagements as yet remained to be fulfilled and joining a sauve qui peut in flying, fearfully panting motors and trains to the cool depths of the country; where the terraced Italian pleasaunces, spacious, timbered parks and sweet-smelling Eng- lish rose-gardens, guarded by blushing, aged walls or trim-clipped hedges, offered a pleasant vision to those who were beginning to feel a little sated with London and its sacredly exacting social duties; a picture of lazy days in the shade of age-old trees, or by tinkling fountains; luxurious drifting on the bosom of glassy lakes and deliberate, lapping streams; breathless flights in swift cars along smooth highroads, through deep lanes and over wide moors and rolling downs; and the agreeable clink of silver and china as the tea-table is set on the balustraded terrace or velvet lawn, while the westering sun sets the diamond-faceted windows in a flame, or adds a warm gilding to the sober grey of stone walls and battlements, and the sound of distant cries and laughter from the tennis-ground comes as musically to the ear as the silken rustle 79 8o THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC of dresses passing rhythmically up and down the close-shaved grass, where the chatelaine and her guests loiter in a cool evening stroll after the languor of the day. And then the wonderful nights, when the air is fresh almost to chill, after the stuffy airlessness of the London streets and squares ; and, in place of the almost unbroken rattle and roar of traffic, comes the utter, holy stillness of the country-side, varied only by the whisper of a stealthy breeze among the full-leafed trees, the timid tapping of weak fingers of creeping plants at the open window, or perhaps the cry of some wakeful bird from a neighbouring wood or the voluptuous snoring of owls among the ivy of the mantled walls. Above all, a sky of dark, polished steel, sown with friendly, golden sentinels ; drowned in the silver tears of the melancholy moon; or al- ternately veiled and bared by the ghostly pomp of passing cloud-wrack. The Beaufoys had gone; they were in Wilt- shire, at Beaufoy, their wonderful old family seat, with its four hoary, crenellated towers, its dappled greensward park, stubborn oaks, soaring elms and daintily tripping deer. Roddy Chalmers was worrying a nearly exhausted yachting party with his ceaseless tricks and noise, in the neighbourhood of Arran. Mr. Colman was writhing in a draw- ing-room in Lincolnshire, with the immediate pros- pect of transferring his serpentry to Beaufoy; for THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 81 Colman's invitations, though numerous, were usually for brief periods. In fact there was hardly a soul in London; the deserted city being inhabited only by that portion of its population which is obliged to work ; or which the absence of deer parks and Italian gardens, or the means to provide even the humblest substitutes for them, confines per- manently to the town. In this howling wilderness howling indeed, by night and day the unfor- tunate Henry D' Albiac found himself at what is known as " a loose end " about the middle of the month. At the beginning of September he was due at Beaufoy; meanwhile it was always possible for him to amuse himself elsewhere of course at his own expense; or no doubt he might, had he so chosen, have obtained an intermediate invitation to a country house. The fact remains that he was still a prisoner in the sweltering streets, and had found an occupation for himself, during the period of waiting for his visit to Patrice, in carrying out a scheme for providing a little surprise for her, which, he told himself, she would be sure to appreciate highly; to secure which end he was unselfishly will- ing to undergo any amount of tedium and con- straint. Beneath the dry light of the northern windows, therefore, D' Albiac was sitting, for the third or fourth time, in this dutiful bondage, one brilliant morning, while Flora Evans, in a long holland 82 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC blouse, transferred his handsome features to the canvas that stood on the easel before him. Henry appeared to be bearing up bravely against his en- forced captivity, for he had been talking and laugh- ing gaily enough to the artist, who, in the more si- lent mood induced by painting, had answered prin- cipally in monosyllables or brief phrases, as she stepped backwards and forwards from her easel, tilting her head from side to side to contemplate her own work; sometimes only applying a single touch at a time for several minutes; at other times painting in vigorous silence, without moving from her place, for a longer period. In one of the inter- vals provided by her retreating from the canvas to judge the effect of a minute or two of brush-work, Henry seized the opportunity to enquire about the hopefulness of its prospects. " Going to be a success ? " Flora, whose inclined head and rough hair, to- gether with the long paint brush held by the mid- dle in her mouth, made her appearance irresistibly suggestive of a little dog carrying a stick, looked up at him thoughtfully, and took the brush from be- tween her lips. " I don't think it's bad, so far. It won't be quite as good as Velasquez, but on the other hand it will be better than ." She added the name of a celebrated portrait painter, whose works occupy so much space on the line at the Royal Academy and THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 83 command such princely prices that it may be con- cluded she was speaking only in jest. D'Albiac laughed in a non-committal manner; for, after all, he knew that artists are apt to see their own work a little out of perspective. " I'm afraid the subject isn't very inspiring," he suggested, with obvious insincerity ; for he was per- fectly aware that his appearance was rather un- usually pleasing. " It would have been better if I had asked you to paint Miss Beaufoy's portrait for me, instead of mine for her. But of course she's been done over and over again by " He had nearly added " real artists," before, with a snap of the teeth that almost hurt him, he succeeded in securing the escaping words. Flora did not ap- pear to notice his embarrassment. " Oh, I don't know," she said thoughtfully, bend- ing forward to peer into the picture at close quar- ters. " You've got quite a good face for a por- trait. Of course plastering your hair down tight all over your head like that, and wearing a hard, high collar doesn't give you much chance of look- ing very nice, does it? Still, you're interesting to paint. Do you know Karel du Jardin's portrait of a young man with curls, in the National Gal- lery?" D'Albiac shook his head, feeling slightly huffed at her criticism of his undeniably smart appearance. " Go and look at it. Oh, if I could paint like 84 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC that! But I was going to say, you're astonish- ingly like that boy. If you let your moustache and hair grow, and were allowed to wear nice things, you really might almost be him; except that he looks more dissipated; not so innocent as you." "Do I look innocent?" enquired Henry with rather a vexed laugh. It was a word that he did not much like in connexion with himself and the disillusioned worldliness that he had acquired from his experiences. " Yes, I think on the whole you do," she said, regarding him contemplatively. " No doubt you've done lots of stupid, ugly things ; and perhaps a cer- tain number of cruel ones. Men nearly always do. But fundamentally, by inclination, you look to me harmless and kind. If you cared to try, you could probably be some use in the world." " Dear me ! The conversation's becoming very improving," he laughed. " Isn't it ? " she agreed, painting away busily. " You'd much rather believe you were a danger- ous, wicked person, I know. Well, perhaps you'll succeed in becoming one in time, if you stick to it and try hard. It's quite a common form of suc- cess. Keep your head quite still a moment no, just as it was before, please. And tell me some- thing that doesn't want answering for a minute or two." "What shall I tell you?" he asked, half-con- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 85 sciously admiring the play of colour in the artist's fair skin as she worked with a suddenly renewed energy. Despite her obvious entire absence of shy- ness in all circumstances, Flora blushed frequently with a flowery brightness, the gay colour sweeping transitorily and unexpectedly over her cheeks and even bordering on the porcelain whiteness of her long, slender neck. Generally it was interest, sur- prise or enthusiasm that ran up this attractive sig- nal flag, and it was a fascinating addition to the sparkle of her eyes on these occasions and the swift, soft, tumbling freshets of her speech. She paused for a moment in her occupation, and looked up at him, cool again as a pale pink rose. " Tell me about your betrothed," she said. " Who is she ? I only know her name. She's pretty, of course?" Henry paused for a moment to let the vision of his lover rise before his eyes and gloriously eclipse the physical presence of the untidy little artist. Tall, lithe, flaming-haired, pale and full-lipped, she stood before his mind's eye in the wonderful dresses that her matchless taste and riches per- mitted her always to affect, and smiled lovingly upon him, with that languorous, extramundane grace that enslaved and enraptured him. " Yes," he said simply. " You would love to paint her. She has the most wonderful hair, like polished copper. Perhaps you saw her portrait in 86 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC the Academy the year before last? Barber said her hands were the most beautiful he had ever painted. She's tall and she dresses artistically, you know; not just following the fashions. She designs all her own clothes. The Beaufoys live down in Wiltshire ; the father died years ago. Mrs. Beaufoy was a great beauty, too, I believe. They're rather a rather a distinguished family." He paused, feeling that he was likely to become vicariously boastful. " Oh? " said Flora interrogatively, without look- ing up. "What for?" " Well, it was a Beaufoy who was beside the Conqueror when he landed, you know." "What conqueror was that?" asked the artist, with a calm seriousness that caused Henry to stare at her for a moment in silence, before replying, with a natural indulgence of tone: "William the First the Duke of Normandy." There were times when her ignorance surprised him; apparently well educated on the whole, she was yet often unfamiliar with the simplest and most generally known matters. " Oh, yes ! Ten sixty-six," she replied, busy with her work. " The story goes," continued Henry, warming to his subject, " that when William stumbled on land- ing, he helped him to his feet." " That was very polite of him for those days," THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 87 said Flora approvingly. " Was that the last thing the family did?" D'Albiac smiled privately at her obtuseness. " Hardly ! I only told you that to give you an idea of the long way their history goes back. They've been great landowners ever since. Hugh de Beaufoy received large grants of land from Ru- fus." " I see. They're rich," said Flora, apathetically. Although he could not have said that the tone in which she spoke was actually disparaging, yet she did not appear sufficiently impressed to please him altogether. " I think perhaps you don't consider it alto- gether a distinction to have been one of the great landed families throughout all the history of Eng- land," he suggested, with a touch of scorn in his voice. " Oh, well," answered Flora off-handedly, push- ing the end of her small, pink thumb against the canvas and rubbing it upwards, " it shows a certain amount of adhesiveness, of course. By itself it doesn't mean much, does it? But no doubt the Beaufoys have done more than stick to their prop- erty; public services of some kind." Henry would have been glad to thrash out the point of the respectability of ancient lineage per se, but he had for some time been aware that the ar- tist belonged to that half -educated modern class 88 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC whose members are devoid of reverence for much that is truly honourable, and obstinate against con- version; being rooted in the assertive proposition that they are as good as their betters. He had no wish to start a perfectly useless quarrel with Flora, for whom, in spite of their naturally different points of view, he had begun to feel a genuine friend- ship; so he strove to think of some more common- place distinction in the Beaufoy family that would be more likely to appeal to her mind. " Oh, no doubt," he said, after a barren exam- ination of his memory. " I believe there have been lots of soldiers and politicians in the direct line. The son of the house to-day Ivan is in the Blues," he added, with a touch of legitimate pride at referring to the famous regiment. " Always ? " enquired Mrs. Evans, with quick sympathy. "Always?" repeated Henry fretfully. "Al- ways? Yes, of course. That's to say, he's served now for four or five years, I believe. He's a lieu- tenant." " Of course. Stupid ! " she murmured apologet- ically. " And he's a great friend of yours, I sup- pose?" " Yes oh, yes ! " Henry said unconvincingly ; for in sober truth, he could scarcely endure the tedium of his future brother's society; and he smiled a little as he continued. " He's quite a good THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 89 fellow; liked by his brother officers, and all that. Not particularly clever, I think." " Dear me ! " said Flora, with a concerned ex- pression of face. " That'll be a great disadvantage to him in the Horse Guards, won't it? " " Oh, no, I don't think it matters very much," Henry replied comfortably. " It's not a working regiment, you know. If a fellow's smart and pop- ular, that's the main thing. And Ivan's a thorough good sportsman." " What does he do? Play cricket? " " I don't think so. He shoots, of course ; I don't know if he's a good shot or not; as I don't happen to have been at a shoot with him yet. But he runs a couple of big motors; and he's awfully fond of racing." " Gambling? " asked Flora, with her head on one side. D'Albiac laughed. " You said that quite like his mother," he replied good-humouredly. " It's funny how most women hate betting." " Well, it generally has to be paid out of the housekeeping money, I suppose," Flora argued. " Are you fond of it ? " " Not immoderately," he replied, with a sugges- tion in his tones of the possibility of lurid tales of wild pluck at the game, if he chose to boast. " I play when I'm at Monte Carlo, of course and then there's bridge; and Ascot and Goodwood. 90 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC But you needn't be afraid of hearing of my ruin." " As far as that goes," said Flora, squeezing the last residue of the paint out of the tube on to her palette, " the sooner an unmarried gambler's ruined the better. Then he can't play these baby games any longer, and has to work or starve." She spoke without the slightest heat; but Henry remembered, with a covert smile, that this was too often delicate ground in talking to a woman. Sport of that kind did not always appeal to them strongly; and it seemed expedient to vary the sub- ject. " I go down to Beaufoy next week," he began, after a considerable pause, during which Flora had contemplated his face with an almost embarrassing gravity and intensity. " Your nose bends to the left," she replied ir- relevantly, in the matter-of-fact tones of one giv- ing interesting information. Henry's hand flew to the criticised member to straighten it, and he was conscious of blushing hotly; for his appearance was dear to him. The artist meanwhile, having settled the point to her satisfaction, turned her eyes back to her canvas, and compared the painting with the original thoughtfully. "I beg your pardon; what were you saying?" she added politely, after a time, realising the si- lence that had fallen. " No, but I say, Mrs. Evans it doesn't really? " THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 91 protested Henry, anxiously and vainly looking about for a mirror, and convinced that this defect must have arisen since he shaved that morning; for he had noticed nothing wrong then, although he had, as usual, scrutinised himself with loving care. " What ? Oh, your nose ! " she said, looking at him with a vague eye, and then suddenly smiling, with a touch of impishness. " Yes. Never mind ; hardly anybody's nose is quite straight. You don't see it till you come to paint them. Where did you say you were going?" " To Beaufoy," he said sulkily. Why couldn't she leave his nose alone ? he thought resentfully ; he could never feel the same confidence again after this ; the idea that people were regarding the sinister diversion of the feature would haunt him, when- ever he caught the eye of an acquaintance fixed on his face with that interested expression that he had often noticed. No doubt it was often his absurd deformity that caused the interest. Flora mean- while seemed unconscious of her offence, and was painting again calmly. "Beaufoy is the name of their place, is it? Is it very beautiful? " " Yes ; the park's lovely and the house, or rather castle, is most interesting at least to me," he said with intention. " Though I suppose not to people who are not interested in old families." 92 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC "Everything's interesting, don't you think?" asked Flora, amiably. " And history and antiqui- ties are thrilling; though they're very often chiefly a record of atrocious wickedness. I should love to see the house; I've a passion for old buildings. Are there any pictures ? " " Unfortunately, no. The grandfather I think it was sold and gave away nearly everything in the house; though he had no power to do so. It was practically stealing. Previously, I believe, they had one of the finest private collections in Eng- land." " Oh, well ; they're probably in public galleries by this time," said Flora consolingly, " and that's the proper place for them, isn't it? Why aren't you down there now? I should have thought this weather would have been ideal for staying at a place like that." "Miss Beaufoy's away; and I don't care to be there without her," he explained. " She's up north with the Wirksworths; had to go, as she was spe- cially asked to meet Princess Betsey." "Who's she? A Pole?" enquired Flora. " Pole ? No, no. Princess Elizabeth of Mun- ster, you know. Why a Pole, for goodness' sake?" " I don't know ; it sounded . She's some sort of relation to our royal family, isn't she? Is she young or old ? " THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 93 " Quite young. Oh, but you must have read about her seen pictures of her in the papers, over and over again. She's a dear ! " Flora shook her head disapprovingly. " You seem to me to be on intimate terms with too many dears," she said, looking at him with solemn eyes. " I ? I don't know her at all. I mean she's very pretty and smart. She's taken a great fancy to Patrice to Miss Beauf oy ; but personally I've never met her." " Oh, I see," said Flora, with a slightly puzzled inflection. " I thought you called her some pet name Topsy or something." " Betsy ? Everybody calls her that," laughed D'Albiac. " She's quite a pet of the public and the newspapers." " Fancy ! " Flora ejaculated, with a toneless dul- ness. " And when do you go to the country? " " At the end of the month, or the beginning of the next; for the partridges. They have splendid shooting down there ; young Ivan has been particu- larly careful about the pheasants, though he's had a lot of difficulties with the poachers. It's a bad part of the country for poaching. Unfortunately I shan't be able to be there for the pheasant shoot- ing, as I rashly booked myself to go to Norfolk in October, where the sport's nothing like as good, I believe." 94 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC He paused, with that uncertain suspicion that he was not receiving proper attention, of which one is often conscious, although there is no visible or audible cause for the belief; and hoped that some question as to his fondness for the sport would give him an opportunity of hinting at his prowess; for, like most young men, he had an innocent and natural vanity in his virile accomplishments, and would have liked to be able to suggest to this unad- miring feminine friend that he had acquired a wide- spread reputation for holding a gun straight. Mrs. Evans was, however, describing circles with her thumb round one of the painted eyes, and seemed unconscious that he had ceased speaking. " However, there'll be some pretty good guns there," he continued in a rather louder tone. " Wymondham himself, that's my host, is one of the three or four best shots in England ; and there'll be George Ross and a West Country fellow Trecothick I don't know him, but he's said to be pretty good. But perhaps you're not much in- terested in shooting," he concluded rather lamely, chilled by her unmoved demeanour. She shook her head without looking at him. " Not a bit," she said frankly. D'Albiac was as sensitive as most sporting devotees to a certain odiously supercilious tone on the part of the opponents of honest British amuse- ments ; and studiously level as Flora's voice was, he THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 95 detected the enemy in it, and flung back a chal- lenging phrase. " Why not ? I thought you said everything was interesting? " She looked at him thoughtfully, pushing; back her hair from her face with the handle of a brush. "Did I? Well, I meant it. What I should say about shooting is, that I'm not agreeably inter- ested in it. Of course, I should be very much in- terested in doing away with it, if I saw any present chance of that." Henry reddened; his landowner's feelings were stirred to their depths. " I suppose," he said, laughing bitterly, " that it's the wicked game laws, and the ' pore ' man that upsets you. Perhaps you don't know that if it hadn't been for the preserving of game there wouldn't by this time have been a single bird " " Yes, I know all about that," said Flora, uncon- cernedly. " That's one of the things I principally object to in preserving. As for poachers, I'm afraid a charge of shot out of their guns isn't any nicer than one out of yours. Still, there is this to be said for them, that it's generally want of food that drives them to shoot. But to do it just for fun is well, to me, you know, it's revolting." " I see," he said humorously, but with a flushed face. " It's the poor dear dicky-birds that you're worried about." 96 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " That's it," said Mrs. Evans, in her soft, pleas- ant voice; painting again now, with frequent small pauses to criticise her own work. " If you want to show how cleverly you can shoot, there are arti- ficial things aren't there? which can be made to give much harder shots any degree of hard- ness up to impossibility. To want to hurt live creatures is just a stupid conventional survival of the savage's delight in cruelty, which most shoot- ers you, for instance haven't even got now- adays to excuse your proceedings." D'Albiac had the German national characteris- tic, referred to by Schopenhauer, nearly as strongly developed as the one attributed to the French by the same philosopher. It was almost as unbearable an insult to him to be called a fool as a coward; and he looked about angrily for some crushingly logical retort to this humanitarian clap- trap. " Game's an article of food " he began, hotly. " But it's not with the idea of providing food that you go shooting, is it? Or hunting foxes?" Flora asked, with an infuriatingly innocent impu- dence in her raised eyebrows. " We weren't talking about foxes," he objected. " And if you're so concerned about hurting a bird or two, I should have thought you'd have- cried daily over your mutton chop. If it's revolting to THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 97 shoot a partridge, it's revolting to pole-axe an ox or to hang up a calf by the heels " He paused with an effort, feeling that his tone, in face of her immovable good temper, was becom- ing a little rough ; though the words " revolting " and " stupid " stuck in his gullet, increasing in in- digestibility as the soft, half interrogative tone in which they had been uttered faded from the mem- ory. " Isn't it ? " agreed the artist heartily. " Abso- lutely revolting, as you say. Although it's rather more excusable, because people, in the face of over- whelming evidence to the contrary, still genuinely believe that it's necessary for human beings to eat meat. But don't talk about my mutton chop, please. I haven't eaten such a thing since I was allowed to feed as I liked, instead of as I was told." D'Albiac shifted uncomfortably in his chair; he had no wish to get into an argument with a food- faddist ; for he had suffered already in society from certain hypochondriacal bores, who dismally prated of their systems of diet and their own digestive disabilities; blighting happy parties and annihilat- ing conversation with strange and too often impu- dent figures of speech, in which such esoteric words as " proteids," " albuminoids," " metabolism " and " pultaceous " constantly recurred. He waved his hand conclusively. " Oh, if you live on grass, I've no more to say," 9 8 he said lightly, " except that it wouldn't suit me." " How long a trial did you give it ? Very often there's a sort of false feeling of weakness at first you know," suggested Flora persistently. " I haven't tried ; and pardon me saying so, but I don't want to talk of these things," he said stiffly, to stop the discussion once and for all. " The world is full of horrible things. It does no good to think of them." "Oh, yes; but it does," Flora maintained with amiable obstinacy, pausing in her work and look- ing at him over a rounded shoulder, with an air of insinuation that she had, which was like that of some pet animal making tentative advances on a stern master. " One must think of everything con- stantly." " Curable or incurable ? " he retorted, with a curl of the lip. " I don't believe anything's incurable," answered Flora, squaring her shoulders drolly, with a lift of her chin. " And the things that appear to be are the very ones to be kept in the light it's their only chance of being cured. But here's a perfectly preventable thing that it's everyone's duty to think about; and of course if they if you decide, after consideration, that it's to go* on, it must go on. But it's outrageous to let such things be, out of cowardice in facing them or mere want of thought. Have you ever been to a slaughter-house ? " THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 99 " Certainly not," he said snappily, and added with cunning, "have you?" " Well, it hasn't been necessary for me, you see," she answered. " But I'm quite sure, from what I've been told of them, that if you realised what goes on there if you had to take part in it your- self as the price of eating meat, you'ld become a vegetarian this moment." " There are many disgusting trades that I couldn't engage in," said Henry. " There shouldn't be, then. We haven't any right whatever to make poverty a weapon with which to force people to do things we wouldn't do ourselves. Mr. D'Albiac, I don't think you can pic- ture the class that's been made necessary to slaugh- ter animals for your food. Try to think of your- self armed daily with a pole-axe, clumsily destroy- ing these terrified creatures, that are dragged bel- lowing and screaming up to you on a windlass; and some woman you are fond of Miss Beaufoy crouching on the ground, with her clothes soaked in blood, cutting up the carcasses, almost before the life's out of them " D'Albiac put up his hands to his ears with a genuine feeling of nausea. " If you're going to say these loathsome things," he cried furiously, " I shall go. I won't sit here and listen to such such disgusting " He broke off, stammering and crimson, while ioo THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC the artist contemplated his face with sympathetic gravity. She made no apology, however, for hav- ing mentioned such beastliness. " It is disgusting. That's just what I want you to feel," she agreed after a pause. " So disgusting that, as with vivisection, even if the continuance or health of our race really depended on such such hellish things which isn't so it would be our duty to make up our minds to suffering or a decent extermination. A civilised person ought to prefer death and sickness to systematic cruelty." D'Albiac made one despairing effort after com- fort in face of the picture she had put in his mind. " There ! You admit yourself that death isn't so great a matter," he cried. " These wretched animals must die some time or other." " Yes. It's not so much death," said Flora, re- turning to her picture. " Though, even then, the death in the slaughter-house is a horrible one. It's life; the unnecessary birth of these millions of un- happy creatures; to live artificial lives; forbidden for the most part to breed or to roam at large; driven and beaten and penned and shipped to other countries by the most ignorant and brutal part of the population, just for this one purpose of furnish- ing dead bodies for our dinner-tables. Life, even free, natural life, isn't such a happy thing that one wouldn't think a good many times before designedly THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 101 bringing large, unnecessary races into the world. But such a life as this ! " The aposiopesis was eloquent; and seemed so in- dicative of a firm conviction that the question had only one side, that Henry felt a renewal of his ir- ritability, which had for a minute yielded to the feeling of repulsion induced by the mental picture of his beautiful, delicate lover in loathly wise. It found vent in what he felt to be rather a schoolboy taunt. " Oh ! You always think your opinions must be right!" " Why, of course I do," answered Flora, smil- ing. " Don't you ? Everyone ought to think so. Otherwise, why have opinions? But I quite sym- pathise with other people having different ones, if they've taken the trouble to make them for them- selves. What I can't bear is the laziness of taking one's views of life entire from other people or books or religious systems or newspapers, without ever making any effort to think things out for one- self." "Do you mean that I do that?" he asked, with sarcastic courtesy. " I suspect you do, largely," she said with brazen effrontery. " At least in this case I'm sure I hope so ; and believe so, too, for you've got a soft-hearted face. You're quite capable of thinking for your- self, I know; don't think I mean that you're not 102 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC But this taking things for granted is so general; people go on for generations with some abomina- tion, and then one day it suddenly strikes them, ' Hullo ! this is cruel and unnecessary. Don't let's do it any more ' ; and there's an end to that." The ruffled feelings of Henry were still apparent in his high colour and knitted brows, as Flora stopped speaking and looked innocently on him, her lips pursed and twisted a little aside in her drolly meditative fashion. " Now we'd better take non-contentious busi- ness," she said, laughing. " I can't paint you with that terrific frown. Miss Beaufoy would be quite alarmed." He smiled perfunctorily. " I suppose you flatter yourself you've made me angry," he said carelessly, with a curling lip. " Just a little," replied the painter, teasingly. " But so you were at your first sitting, about the Suffrage, you know. And yet, the time but one after, you reopened the subject yourself, and prac- tically agreed with everything I'd said. Oh, you're a most open-minded person really; you only want a little stimulation to make you throw over all your most cherished fetishes." " Politics are quite a different matter ; and I never pretended that I'd considered the feminist question much." " There you are, you see," Flora put in. " And THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 103 yet you had the strongest views on it, and called us the most unkind and cutting things." "And I'm not altogether convinced yet " he persisted, and broke down, for there was something physically exhausting in arguing with this unan- noyable person; the strain put on a rather hot tem- per which was not accustomed to discipline or dis- respectful treatment left him afterwards quite in a condition of nervous reaction. Mrs. Evans only looked at him with sly incredulity. " Don't let's begin again on that," she pleaded humbly. " Go home and think about it once more, privately. You're one of those people who rightly object to sermons, but are thrown by hints into spiritual wrestlings, as ministers say, from which you emerge transformed. It's only necessary to make you feel uncomfortable; to put the roseleaf under your blankets ; or to prick you with the hypo- dermic syringe; and, like Kodak, you do the rest." " I wish you wouldn't laugh at me," he cried, in pathetic appeal. " I do hate to be lumped together with the bourgeois and stupid in that way." " Stupid ? But the people I mean are the salt of the earth," she replied. " Those whose con- science is always after them like the Furies; the convertible the reasonable the inconsistent. I intended it as the highest compliment, I assure you. And you must forgive me, you know, Mr. D'Albiac," she went on, giving him her bright eyes 104 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC with a transparent good-fellowship which com- pleted his surrender. " I didn't mean to begin the subject; but you would challenge my opinion, wouldn't you? Of course, I know it's odious to be preached at viva voce; and I do try to compress my sermons, but I was born long-winded. Scotch people are, though you've probably been brought up to believe that they say nothing, except an occa- sional guttural ' Hoots ! ' or ' Eh, sirs ! ' " You're not Scotch ? " he said, with a surprise which set Flora laughing. "I am that; I'm from Dumfries," she replied, gaily, with a new, strange intonation, which she immediately discarded again. " But I married a Welshman and live in England, so that I may be said to be a most exhaustive representative of Great Britain. Don't look so scared! I promise not to dance over swords, or appear in a kilt be- fore you. Now I've shocked you again. What a prudish race the French are ! " Henry laughingly protested against the indict- ment, but Flora was off on a career of teasing that nothing could arrest; and although he had, at his first meetings with her, rather resented being, as she said, " ragged," he had already come to take it generally in good part; and to attempt reprisals, which were not, as yet, usually successful. Flora's conversation partook in almost equal quantities of vigorous and, too often, polemical discussion of THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 105 ponderously grave subjects, and mere light-hearted nonsense. In small talk, the usual pleasant flow of gossip on social and topical trivialities, which had been till now almost his entire conversational prov- ender, she had self-admittedly no skill ; and in pe- riods of its exhibition would fall into meditative silences, during which the blue lights in her eyes were economically turned off, to flash up again in a moment at a sympathetic touch. Even art, a subject which he had felt sure would be safe ground with her, had not been so far productive of any great interchange of ideas. Flora objected to criticism, in its ordinary sense of pointing out one's personal objections to an art- work; and they had found no great common enthusiasm to discuss, which, according to her, was the only enjoyable or profitable form of art discussion. " What earthly purpose," she asked, " could be served by my decrying pictures you liked, or you sneering at my favourite books? We should only be depriving each other of a pleasure, without sub- stituting another for it. If, in our self-conceit, we think the other one has a taste for bad art, we ought to attempt a wily insinuation of what we think good art instead. If we learn to like the good, we shall give up the bad of our own accord. But until we really like Titian, it's much better we should genuinely like Boucher than that we should like nothing at all; and Titian won't become dear 106 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC to us merely from having dinned into our ears that Boucher is cheap that's to say, if he is, of course. 7 don't say so." So, in, many matters that interested D'Albiac, Flora was unsoundable, although in his desire to display to her the exquisite taste and attainments of Patrice he had made one or two efforts to turn the conversation on to the famous works of art in which his betrothed took such perennial delight. In these, as in other subjects, he was often sur- prised at the artist's want of knowledge of things that he had thought familiar to, or within the bow- ing acquaintanceship of, all educated persons; al- though she appeared to compensate for the want of these agreeably slight intimacies with an almost tiresomely close friendship with a small circle. It might possibly be well, for instance, to have a pic- ture-dealer's knowledge of Diirer's etchings and wood-cuts, though it hardly appeared socially neces- sary, or even desirable ; but for any cultivated per- son to say, unabashedly and without any form of excuse, explanation, or promise for the future, that she was wholly ignorant of " Madama Butterfly," and almost entirely so of Bain and Lafcadio Hearn, quite took away D'Albiac's breath. As he walked back eastward along the Thames Embankment this hot July morning, he found him- self, for the hundredth time, petulantly asking what it was in this very ordinary-looking woman's THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 107 company that so undoubtedly appealed to him? They disagreed constantly; she had the unfailing knack, as she had said, of making him feel uncom- fortable (to-day, for instance, she had quite spoilt his lunch), and turning his thoughts in the most unpleasant directions; of sacrilegiously undermin- ing ornate and venerable edifices of belief, and lay- ing beneath them hideously delicate and explosive engines, which a touch or careless movement might, he felt, at any moment discharge. She talked far too earnestly, when she was serious, and often on subjects that are better ignored in our so- cial relations; downright babyishly, when she was frivolous, with hardly more shame or reticence than that zany Roddy Chalmers. In addition to this, she was in fact considerably, and in manner and experience often immeasurably, his elder; produc- ing a disagreeable and humiliating impression, which no reassuring examination of her smooth, mutable complexion, and bright lips and eyes quite removed. And yet it was vain to try to persuade himself that it was purely out of a desire to obtain a moderately faithful portrait of himself, at a " rock-bottom " price, that he returned three or four times a week to the bare studio in the mean Chelsea Street. He could not conceal from him- self the disconcerting fact that he looked forward to these occasions with a quite disproportionate eagerness; and that his longing to terminate them io8 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC by leaving London to join his sweetheart at Beau- foy was by no means so strong as he would have wished to see it, even with every allowance for a temperament, such as his own, which was always more concerned with the immediate than with the more remote future. YOUTH is proverbially ductile, and the French en- thusiasm famously inflammable, more especially perhaps where the torch is applied by a feminine hand. A modern writer, who knows his country- men, doubtless, has said that, had but the palest imitator of Saint Jeanne arisen in the last genera- tion, the Prussians would have been swept back on Berlin, Moltke and United Germany notwithstand- ing. However that may be, the race is one ever ready for an ideal or a cause ; and D'Albiac, besides being conspicuously young, concealed, or partly concealed, an incurably recalcitrant French heart under the formally folded cloak of his Britannic indifference. During the loneliness of July in Lon- don, moreover, he had more opportunities for con- templation than perhaps ever before in his life ; for he was by nature passionately gregarious and sel- dom allowed himself to be thrown even momen- tarily on his own society for his amusement. The chance words that arose in his morning conversa- tion with the Chelsea painter served, therefore, as texts for hour-long pulpitry in his solitary walks, arm-chair loungings at a deserted club, and restless attendances on sleep throughout the airless, swelter- ing nights in Cowley Street. Nor was enthusiasm 109 no THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC his sole national characteristic; he had as well, al- though till now but seldom brought into use, the Frenchman's love of logical thinking, of pursuing a subject to its conclusion, and scorning loss of scent or broken-wind as personal disgraces ; and al- though he believed that some of the quarry re- leased by Flora Evans was of a worthless and malodorous species, he was not able to prevent a mind enamoured of the chase from raising a view halloo. Vermin, we know, gives us as good a run for our money as an antlered stag; and, where the scent is blind, it is always possible that we may find we have run down a hart where we looked but for a fox. Flora and her opinions, at all events, occupied a disproportionate portion of his waking mind dur- ing these weeks, and if he did not admit that she had succeeded in disturbing any very important ar- ticles of his belief, he was yet suspiciously tolerant of views to which he still believed himself in strong personal opposition. His valet was filled with un- expressed amazement at his orders to exclude the usual gun-case from the luggage that he was to take down by train to Beaufoy at the beginning of September; even displaying a certain unprecedented obtuseness in understanding his master's plain words on the subject, which provoked a fling of impatience from Henry, who was aware of a lurk- ing sense of shame in issuing these strange direc- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC in tions. Guns were not necessary for courtship, he argued; and he was going down to Wiltshire to steep himself in the delights of Patrice's company, not to trudge interminably over muddy fields, blaz- ing away at a number of miserable birds for which he had no use; an entertainment for boys and lout- ish country squires, whose dull brains are incapable of imaginative pleasures ; hardly worthy of a grown and intelligent man; least of all during the theo- retically unrepeatable time of courtship. It would be a tribute to his lover to arrive, on such a sacro- sanct date as the first day of September, at a house so famous for its shooting, unarmed with those weapons of which he was a proven master. The sacrifice would surely touch her, for she knew him to be, almost above all else, a devotee of English sport. Images of wounded birds, regarded by him- self with a new-born, maudlin regret for the use- lessness of their sufferings, he pushed roughly back from the entrances of his mind, much as a sturdy, Olympian constable resists the foolishly ineffectual efforts of misguided, dishevelled women the sim- ile was rejected at this point as inept; dishonour- ing, too, to the sex to which Patrice gave glory. There was rather a large house party at Beaufoy when Henry arrived, of whom it is not necessary to mention more than a few. The Honourable Mr. Colman was " taking " the place for a week on his way to Wales, where another hostess awaited 112 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC his coming without any unwholesome excitement; pretty Mrs. Fedden irradiated the gathering with the display of her glistening teeth in endless smiles that were more probatory of amiability than of mirth ; while a big, middle-aged man who shot with enviable accuracy, but for the rest wore rather a slinking air, as of one whose boxes and pockets it would perhaps be as well to inspect before he left the house, was known to be Mrs. Fedden's hus- band, although he appeared to hold no verbal in- tercourse with her, or indeed anybody else, except in relation to his barest necessities. There was also present Viscount Honiton, who, as Major Col- lett, had for many years failed to enjoy that wide popularity to which it was now generally agreed his generosity and inexhaustible flow of strongly individual speech justly entitled him. His unex- pected accession to the honours of the head of the house, through the successive deaths of several re- mote cousins, had of course brought him promi- nently into public notice ; and, once there, his sound, old-fashioned common sense and nobly authori- tative bearing were sufficient to ensure his position remaining a permanent one. It was acknowledged in political circles that the debates in the House of Lords, upon military matters more particularly, were quite a different thing since Honiton took his seat. His lady wife was as imposing in her own way as the Viscount in his; a golden-haired, ma- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 113 ture woman of Titanic build, massive in the lower jaw and powerful of voice. She was considered by some of her acquaintances to be a trifle over- powering, and certainly had some little faults of temper and manner that made the pleasure of her company an uncertain quantity. Roddy Chalmers was used to refer to her in his light-hearted way as " old Collett's youthful indiscretion " ; and accord- ing to the same authority she was the only child of " a St. Kitts' beachcomber." It is a fact that the occupations of Lieutenant Collett had formerly taken him to the West Indies, which doubtless was the only foundation for this unflattering rumour ; mean- while she naturally accompanied the Viscount to the houses to which he was invited; and although Mrs. Beaufoy did not greatly affect her society, she was just the thing to send in to dinner with Mr. Fedden, who accepted her slightly dictatorial man- ner in inoffensive silence, content to cast backward glances at her as he ate, like a nervous dog din- ing under the eyes of other hungry specimens of the canine race. Besides the guests mentioned there was the usual assortment of titled and untitled men in tweed clothes, who tramped out of the house in the morning, and tramped into it again at night, muddy, exhausted, but content; to dine heavily and drop spasmodically asleep or talk painstakingly and haltingly to the ladies afterwards, until they could decently escape to cigars, whiskey, and the 114 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC pleasant review of the day's doings, unhampered longer by female society. Beaufoy was a digni- fied house; there were none of the noisy young men and flighty ladies, married and unmarried, that are not unknown in many parties. The tweed-suited persons, rightly reckoned as " the best people," were mostly accompanied by wives; the only ob- viously unattached guests, besides Henry, himself, being a soft-voiced elderly poetess from the United States, who passed her day in seeking, with un- deservedly scant success, for an audience for her ethical discourses ; and a young British musician of growing fame, whose technique was believed to be a distinct advance on that of Wagner and Strauss ; and indeed there were notable differences to be ob- served. Developing the modern tendency to avoid closes to its logical conclusion, he availed himself of melodic material which, as he explained, never came to an end at all, a quality regarded by the uncultured among his auditors as its principal dis- advantage; while envious persons were to be found who contended that this property was due to the fact that it never began. There were no longer such things as motives and phrases; pure, formless melody distilled for as long as one had the requisite time to sit and attend to it; or until the composer had filled the necessary number of sheets of music paper. The difficulties with which this young man, still under the age of twenty-five, had had to con- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 115 tend in driving his theories and examples into the thick heads of a deplorably poco-curante public, had fostered the warlike side of his nature to a pitch which made him scornful company for all but those who accepted his beliefs whole, and were tolerably assiduous in rehearsing their creed. He was a great pet of Mrs. Beaufoy's, but treated her with something of the carelessness of genius, spending a good deal of his time in his bedroom and most of the rest in the smoking room, where his only companion was Mr. Coleman, who had a passion for the acquaintance of celebrities, actual or poten- tial. The sight of the serpentine collateral of the nobility, who was entirely tone-deaf, rapt in de- light at the complicated technical and poetical ex- positions of the young maestro, was a pleasing ex- ample of the power of the Arts, even over the most unlikely subjects. Among this assembly of people, Patrice moved, Henry thought, soon after his arrival, as might some resuscitated hamadryad through the crowd at a remnant sale, or a Praxiteles Apollo set sud- denly alive on the Stock Exchange. She had only returned to her home the day before her lover ar- rived there, and the curl of her sweet, full lips dis- played plainly to the discerning eyes of love that she had little in sympathy with the guests whom her mother had collected. Apart from Henry him- self, whom she greeted with a languorous loving- ii6 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ness that sent a thrill of rapture to his heart and instantly displaced from his mind any vulgar in- truders that might have recently sought to find a foothold in it, there was no one to whom she found it desirable to address more than the briefest and most unavoidable words, except the daughter of one of the shooters, a certain Rosemary Hill- Fegan, a tall, dark, Irish girl, pathetically slender, with eyes like wet irises, who spent a good part of each day folded in Patrice's arms in the embra- sures of windows and other cushioned recesses. Miss Hill-Fegan regarded Henry with bitter ha- tred as her rival in Patrice's affections, but her awe for the lovely bride generally forbade any mani- festation of this feeling in her presence. Mean- while Patrice devoted a considerable part of her time to her girl adorer, and there was a tolerably brisk interchange of presents between the two nymphs trifling pieces of jewelry, ribbon-tied copies of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, of which poem more than one new edition had, oddly enough, appeared recently; songs for Patrice to sing to the somnolent guests after dinner in the great Saloon, with a scornful knowledge that to most of them the genius of Bemberg, Faure, Mas- senet, and Reynaldo Hahn was less than nothing, while to Guy Harris, the composer, the mention of their names was the signal for a display of mani- fest jealousy, which had already resulted in bad THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 117 blood between them. Nor was Miss Beaufoy at any pains to conceal her distaste for the company in general; Henry could hardly avoid smiling as he noted the proud aloofness with which she circulated among the admiring groundlings, all of whom, he knew, were slaves to her beauty and content with her contemptuous toleration of their worship. For, although she was so meagre of the reward of speech and smiles, the presence of Patrice Beaufoy in a house, even her own, meant, like Tariff Reform, work for all. She had an adorably childish way of forgetting things that she wanted, and a petu- lant air of remembering their absence that sent a dozen men running errands for her; pianos had to be opened; music found, arranged and turned; windows thrown wide, when the sweet, fresh air of evening set the older and thinner of the guests shivering; Patrice's dogs to be caught, in the teeth, literally, of strong opposition, and brought to their lady, who generally found that the craving for their company had by that time passed, or that the wrong animal had been apprehended. A true queen by nature, she accepted such service as a right, and often scarcely deigned to glance at her courtiers, as she formally thanked them. Mr. Harris was the only rebel of the party; neither hand nor foot did he move on her behalf, his pride having been mortally wounded, on the first evening that he sat next to her at dinner, by discovering that she had ii8 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC brought in a partly-knitted silk tie, at which she worked delicately in the intervals of the meal, to avoid the necessity of conversation with himself or Mr. Colman, who was on her other side. -In ad- dition to this droll unconventionality, which he hypersensitively persisted in regarding as a slight, the musician considered that Patrice's singing, of which he professed himself no admirer, resulted in a monopoly of the use of the piano; so that he was precluded from surprising the assembly, as he had hoped, with performances of his own works ; a natural artistic ambition which was doubtless suf- ficient to account for his failure fully to appreciate Patrice's voice which, although almost entirely un- trained, owing to the difficulties which its owner had encountered in finding an efficient and at the same time polite instructor, was generally acknow- ledged to be rather out of the common. Mr. Harris had other rivals as well for the possession of the desired instrument, in the persons of two or three of the male guests, hearty, sporting men with virile, powerful voices, who condescended at times to regale the company with " The Meynell Hunt," or "The Old Stable- Jacket," performed fortissimo in unison to the accompaniment of a few simple but sufficient chords ; an entertainment which was much enjoyed by those guests whose tastes in music were simple and normal. Apart from the irritable genius, however, Patrice had a compliant THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 119 court, for the only other person who ever failed to obey her behests, her brother Ivan, was fortu- nately not of the party ; fortunately, because both his sister and mother, it cannot be denied, cordially disliked the young soldier, whose male brusquerie and constant assertion of that predominance to which he was entitled as a member of the nobler sex were not entirely comprehensible to ladies who had passed a good deal of their time in countries where the views of life are often oddly divergent from that plain sense that distinguishes our land. As for Mrs. Beaufoy, herself, she never ceased in her ministrations to her beloved daughter, although in private she would sometimes prefer to friends half-laughing complaints of the young princess's exactions; complaints which, however, resulted in no diminution of her own labours in the girl's be- half. If when travelling, for instance, there were only two available rooms in an hotel for their re- ception, it was Patrice who obtained, at her mother's own request, the larger, sunnier or other- wise more desirable of the two; if, in London, Patrice required the motor car on the same after- noon as Mrs. Beaufoy, for a divergent purpose, she got it without question, and the elder lady took a "taxi"; if the daughter discovered a draught where she sat in a room, and mentioned it with a pouting shiver to her maman, maman gave up her 'own place to her, and sat in the draught herself, 120 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC protesting that she did not feel it. It was charm- ing to see this grey-headed, amply-built, not over- strong lady's anxious care for her young and peren- nially blooming child ; charming, too, to observe the babyish self-abandonment with which Patrice de- pended helplessly and with a naughty wilfulness on her mother for the gratification of all her needs and fancies, and for protection against the mascu- line discipline she would else have had to endure from frere. After the hot ugliness of a deserted London, re- lieved only by the unromantic volubility of Flora Evans, it was like a dream for Henry to find him- self once more awaiting his lover in the panelled, prielled room, radiant with flowers and thoughtful with books, which Patrice used as a boudoir, an apartment for which she had daily and hourly use, being at the pouting age of indulged maidenhood. He had paid his respects to his hostess in the draw- ing-room among the negligible members of the gathering; but his eyes had sought the door in vain, at every new opening, for the form of his be- loved; angry and impatient each time that some lumping, exhausted man, returned from the fields, rolled heavily into the room. It was not until he had patiently declined, for the third or fourth time, the offer of more tea, that Mrs. Beaufoy enlight- ened him as to the romantic arrangements of her daughter; who, unable to face meeting her be- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 121 trothed, for the first time after absence, among the profane crowd, had given orders that he should await her alone in her own bower. Thither, after a long and stimulating interval, she descended to him, royally seductive in a wonderful silver dress of her own design, with rounded arms bare to the elbow, and her gorgeous hair braided into a mag- nificent crown about her proud head ; to come with- out a smile or word, in a slow, languid movement of infinite grace to her adorer's arms, and with closed eyes, hold up her full, scarlet lips " in sover- eign surrender," as she quoted to herself even in that great moment, for his kiss. Patrice Beaufoy had a natural and healthy taste for kissing, which she had, since her engagement, been able to in- dulge with English freedom; but to her lover, whose countrymen have, no doubt with self-con- scious prudence, postponed the full enjoyment of this ancient and agreeable ceremony, among the richer classes at least, until after marriage, the inti- macy was not entirely an unmixed delight, for rea- sons which must always remain to our race a little incomprehensible. Foreigners of Latin stock are apt to attach an undue importance to quite simple matters where sex is concerned; including thereby an artificial but somewhat overwhelming exaltation. However D'Albiac's commendable ambition to be in all things a thorough English sportsman made him particularly careful to avoid any appearance 122 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC of this childish over-estimate of an everyday af- fair, and he contrived to steer a more or less suc- cessful course between the shoals of chilliness on the one hand and the breakers of exotic explosive- ness on the other. Up till the present time the two young people had not had the constant private opportunities for spir- itual intercourse which they now enjoyed. At Nice, in London and elsewhere they had, except for brief and memorable moments, met generally in the society of others; and the communion of souls which they were aware existed so intimately be- tween them had been obliged to live under the eyes of the world and, for the most part, in silence or only through the medium of hints and chance phrases. But in September at Beaufoy they were, at first, seldom out of each other's company or un- able to pour out their hearts in fullest privacy; un- less during those hours of which Miss Hill-Fegan had obtained the grant, by dint of prayers and angry tears. As Henry was not shooting, he was, of course, left all day as the only male being of any importance in the house, if we except Patrice's dogs and the Hope of English music, mysteriously closeted in his bedroom. The Frenchman was cap- able of enjoying this position among a number of well-dressed women, but was aware that such a character is generally contemned in the land of his recent adoption; and besides he had come to Wilt- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 123 shire expressly to live wholly and alone in the per- sonality of his mistress. He was surprised at first, absurdly enough, to find that conversation with her after some of these long periods of' privacy became difficult; allowing nothing, it would seem, for maidenly prudency, inexpressible emotions and the natural surprises incident to a complete unveil- ing to each other of their whole natures. Some- times it even seemed to him as if Patrice, nay, as if both of them, were not unpleasantly interrupted in their long confidences by the deep voice of the distant outdoor bell which gave warning of im- pending meals, or by the entrance of a third party generally Patrice's maid with a message from Mrs. Beaufoy or a love-letter, gorged with reproaches, from Rosemary Hill-Fegan. Whether Miss Beau- foy was herself conscious of such an atmosphere was not at first certain; or whether, if she were, it affected her happiness; but Henry worried him- self a good deal on the score; wondering angrily why it was that he failed sometimes to interest his mistress; still more angrily why, at hateful mo- ments, the divinity herself uttered sentiments that chilled him, or failed to respond to a proposition of his own with that whole-hearted understanding that he was certain really existed between them; which, at least, he held to be essential between man and wife. Lovely as she was, there were yet times when, gazing on her downcast eyes and warm pal- 124 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC lor, he could not avoid feeling that the conversa- tion was absurdly difficult to keep at a level of sus- tained excellence; and a base thought of the rapidity with which the long sittings to the Chelsea painter had passed, and an even baser inner desire, in- stantly suppressed, for a good, argumentative, quar- relsome talk with his little middle-class friend, in- truded themselves momentarily into his mind, with- out waiting for any formal invitation. Yet this virginal reserve, this girlish innocence as opposed to the self-assertion of mature womanhood, this slight touch of lovely gaucherie he knew to be among his lover's chief est charms; she who was always so queenly although truly, not particularly voluble with others was silent, blushing, almost humble with himself, a proud subject to his masculine power and the love with which he had awakened her from her childish dreams. At this point the traitor doubts in his mind were generally solved for that occasion by a return to those wordless endearments which were the surest ground between the pair, and which Patrice was ever ready to grant and ac- cept. It was about a week after his arrival that she, herself, first inspired him with a qualmish suspicion that she had shared his feelings of constraint and dubiety. " Mon ami," she said, after an awkward silence, during which Henry was aware that he had shuffled THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 125 his feet and cleared his throat, more than once, in a rather bourgeois manner. " You're not shooting this year ? " " Not this year," he agreed. " I like you to shoot," she persisted, raising her soft eyes to his. "Why? Are you tired of my company?" he asked, with a thrill in his deep voice, which struck his own ear as not entirely spontaneous. Patrice, who was beside him on the window seat, whence they had been commending a decorative sunset in a handsome manner, shut her eyes, and tilted her head backwards towards his shoulder as her only reply. " You know," he said, with his face against hers, " that I gave it up only to be with you with you, always." "Yes," she sighed, happily. "I know. Still, I want you to be like other men, Henry. It's odious to think that some of these dull persons, who are inferior to you in sport, as well as in everything else, should be laughing at you for being left with the women every day. My love must be a man among men." "What does it matter what others think?" he cried scornfully. " You are my world ; the rest doesn't exist for me, or only as a vague background of shadows for your figure." An agreeable interlude succeeded these words, 126 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC which Henry recognised as being in his best man- ner, and somewhat striking in conception. He was hurt to see, however, that Patrice stuck to the ques- tion with a touch of obstinacy. " I feel that, too," she admitted, " but I want to be proud of you, mon ami. I don't want to be a Delilah." She broke off to sing in an undertone: " Re ponds a ma tendresse .... Ah! Verse moi I'ivresse .... I think that is the most beautiful song ever written, Henry." " Dalilah, Dalilah, je t'aime," Henry responded, with appropriate " business," but perversely wish- ing, internally, that it was not necessary in song to speak of " ivrasse " and " tendrasse." " What were we talking about ? " asked the girl, after a pause for the mental worship of Saint-Saens and of the librettist who has reproduced the bar- baric atmosphere of those far-off days in so ac- curate, yet tender a manner. " Oh, yes. There's no reason in any case, dear one, that you should not enjoy yourself in the ordinary manner some- times. My Rosemary is terribly jealous of you; I ought to give more time to her ; it's not for long, Henriot." " Oh, Rosemary ! " he said, in a huff. "You mustn't be cruel," said Patrice gently. " She's devoted to me, and she feels she's lost me. And besides, the other day when Maman insisted on THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 127 driving me over to Mallock Park you didn't go out with the shooters then." " I didn't bring my guns," he explained. " But there are plenty in the house," pouted Patrice, whom a chance word overheard when pass- ing a group of the shooters had inflamed. She had no intention that her lover and herself should become food for the tasteless jokes and innuendos of the smoking room. " Frere has a half-a-dozen spare at least in the gunroom. I know, because one of them was lent the other day to that odious Mr. Harris, when he deigned to go out, and nearly blew Lord Honiton's head off. And Mrs. Fedden's husband brought a perfect battery of weapons with him. Why don't you borrow one? " " Darling," he said, with an injured air, " I thought you would be pleased at my sacrific- ing-" " I am. I have been. I accept the sacrifice, mon ami" she murmured, in her dove's voice. " And now you have proved your unselfishness and your wish to be always with me, I release you ; and order you to leave me occasionally and take your proper part in the ordinary life of a country gentle- man." " If you order, I do it, of course," he said, with bad grace. " But it's cruel to banish me from you. And I hate using other men's guns. It spoils one's shooting altogether." 128 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC "They all know that; and if you distinguish yourself with a strange gun, I shall be all the prouder of you," said Patrice fondly. Somehow all this magniloquence and discussion about such a trivial matter irritated Henry, whose nerves were, as lovers' often are, not in the calm- est condition. " It's such a small thing to be proud of. I hope to do things that will be worthier of you than that," he protested. "Of course you will you do, now. Still I wish to see you excel in everything. And it's right that men should pride themselves on their skill in sports." " Some sports, perhaps," grumbled Henry, who, criminally aware of awkward relief at the pros- pect of more diversified days in the future and a change from these almost too honeyed and pro- tracted interviews, attempted to disguise his sen- sations to himself by assuming a resentful air towards Patrice for suggesting the change, and mentally accusing her of being the only malcontent. " Some sports, perhaps. But shooting ! Any idiot with a pair of tolerable eyes can learn to hold a gun straight enough in time. It's only a ques- tion of practice and opportunity. Probably any one of your footmen could become a better shot than I am, if he was allowed to try." Miss Beaufoy scrutinised him with a chilly dis- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 129 pleasure; for she was not very tolerant of con- tradiction. " You know that isn't so. Mr. Colman " " Oh, Colman. Colman's rather an exceptional person, fortunately. Besides he's old and blind. Why, he wears a sort of eyeglass hanging off the brim of his hat, when he shoots, to try to focus his poor old eyes. Naturally he never hits any- thing, except by mistake. I'm talking of reason- ably young and whole people." The tone of irritation was so apparent in his voice that Patrice had a sensation that was almost fear. She was no Maid of Orleans by nature. " You used to say that shooting and hunting were the only things you cared about," she ventured to remark. " They're well enough for boys. And I like them now ; I said I did ; particularly hunting, which takes some courage, if you care to ride hard. Be- sides, that's exercise. Shooting is only an excuse for taking a slow walk ; and, although I don't want to be sentimental, it is cruel, you know, Patrice." He could not quite have said why he suddenly took up this humanitarian point of view publicly; for though he had argued the point in his own mind continually of late, he would have been ashamed some hours before to have used such words. The present outburst was partly due to ir- ritability no doubt, but also, and oddly, to a child- 130 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ish desire to present some of his lately-acquired ideas for his lover's admiration. Apparently, as far as this one was concerned, however, the experi- ment was not successful. Patrice laughed pity- ingly. " Dear me ! " she said provocatively. " I'd no idea you were so tender-hearted, Henry. You're not going to turn into a faddist and wear Jaeger boots with toes in them and live entirely on nuts and temperance champagne, I hope ? " D'Albiac wore a face of stone; no one should laugh at him with impunity, he said to himself viciously, not even his adored Patrice, who wore a tiresome smile at present that he imagined quite spoiled the beauty of her face. " It is cruel," he persisted, with a flashing recol- lection of Flora's phrases and the round, soft hurry of her speech. " And pain and cruelty aren't funny, darling, even when they're unavoidable." Miss Beaufoy's face flamed at the words; she was seriously and quite naturally angry. " I see ! You accuse me of being cruel ? " she said, drawing away from him, and lifting her fine head proudly. " We're all cruel, consciously or unconsciously," replied D'Albiac implacably. " You must own that winging birds and cutting pigs' throats " Patrice put her hand to her own plump throat with a little gasp of disgust. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 131 "Must we hear all this? " she asked pathetically, with the old look of a beseeching child. " But it's cowardice just to shirk the subject," cried Henry, angrily. He felt he was going too far, and his heart sank and his inexplicable fury was chillily extinguished in a second as he saw his lover rise to her feet. " I'm afraid I can't discuss these things," she said, with signs of coming tears in her voice. " I didn't think you could be so rough to me, Henry. You know that I can't bear dreadful subjects. You're very unkind." " Patrice ! " he gasped with a guilty attempt to seize her hands, as she left him. " No, please ! " she said, faintly. " I think I will go and lie down a little. There's only an hour before lunch. I don't feel very well." "Forgive me," he said contritely. " I'm a brute. I can't think how I came to " Patrice gave a wan smile. " We must try to forget it," she said, with Christian gentleness. " Never again, I beg. I can't quarrel; it shatters me; but there are things that aren't to be discussed ; I hoped you knew that. No, I'm not angry; and I'm not ill only a little a little tired." She had reached the door as she spoke and disap- peared, still with the same air of sweet forgive- ness, leaving D'Albiac upright and motionless in 132 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC the window seat, in a curious mixture of emotions. He was appalled at his brutality to this gentle be- ing, and at the obvious wounds that he had in- flicted on one whom he loved better than all the world. At the same time he was harassed by an unendurable sensation of angry surprise, as he realised that, in his intercourse with Patrice, many subjects, perhaps the greater part of life, were taboo. This was all very sweet and charming and romantic, he thought, but how avoid the real, dur- ing the long years of connubial relations? An at- tempt to laugh it off with the belief that she must of course change with age and knowledge and gradual experience of facts, was not altogether suc- cessful. How deeply rooted in this petted and pro- tected child was this shuddering inability to turn her eyes away from the rosy dream-life on to a necessarily hard and coarse world? And why had he always accepted her limited outlook, until the last few minutes, as the only proper and desirable one for a cultivated human creature, at any rate of the female sex, to hold? It was not possible that he, himself, had suddenly cast off adolescence and become a man; still less, yes, still less, that half-a- dozen meetings with a comparatively uninspiring person of a considerably lower rank than himself could change his whole point of view; although, possibly, the mere encounter with classes and things from which he had hitherto been shielded THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 133 might have opened his eyes to some extent on the unpleasant side of life. At least, there was cer- tainly no personal influence in the matter ; certainly none. Certainly none. For the present, his strongest sensation was naturally repentance, and it was thus garbed in humility that he appeared at the luncheon-table an hour later. Patrice had punished him by arriving early, a thing unprecedented, and entrenching her- self between Lord Honiton and Colman ; Henry, who was the last arrival, having to take a place on the opposite side of the table, and some distance from her, between Lady Honiton, whom he detested, and the American poetess, Miss Lyman, whom he re- garded with the dread common to all the guests. The ill-fortune was sufficient to turn his penitence into renewed captiousness, and he was not long in falling foul of Lady Honiton, who was always ready and anxious for a quarrel with anybody and upon any subject. The morning papers had con- tained certain facetious articles on the prison ex- periences of some arrested suffragists, and com- pulsory feeding had been made the subject of a number of excellent jests, which, for one reason and another, the Frenchman was unable to enjoy as much as his neighbour, whose amusement, it must be admitted, was of rather a revengeful and not altogether mirthful kind. D'Albiac contented him- self at first with a comparatively reticent statement 134 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC of his dislike of the treatment, without arguing the question of its justification; and Lady Honiton scenting a quarrel, plunged forthwith into provoca- tive remarkis. The creatures were lunatics and must be treated as such; if any were still mentally sound, it was a well-deserved punishment and warning to potential offenders against order. " Don't you agree ? " she bellowed, during a pause in the conversation, with the desired result of at- tracting the attention of most of the table to Henry, whose temper was marked in its rise by the colour of his cheeks. He shook his head with a shrug, but refused to be provoked. " Oh, my dear man," her Ladyship remonstrated, in the same stupendous tones. " Then I suppose you're one of these crazy people yourself ? " D'Albiac, flushed, but with calm eyebrows and eyes, silently helped himself to a dish that was of- fered him. " I really believe he is, do you know ? " crowed Mr. Colman, with a writhe of ecstasy. " Just a teeny-weeny wee bittie of a Suffragette. Yes, yes, D'Albiac, you shall own to it. Capital, indeed ! " " In that case you're hopeless, of course," Lady Honiton laughed, in a snorting manner. " I sup- pose you've got some friends among these women who've perverted your mind, Mr. D'Albiac; is that it?" " Certainly not," answered Henry, with a cold THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 135 ambiguity, which he perceived afterwards went per- ilously near to untruth; but Patrice's eyes were on him, and he spoke before he thought. " If you haven't, you're not going to be let off, is he ? " cried Colman, dabbing at him with a hand in which the tips of the thumb and second finger were joined. " You shall be defeated ; you can't be allowed to hold such horrid views, you very wicked person ! " Henry was relieved that a man had taken up the attack momentarily, and turned on the sprightly Colman, who imagined his, jokes entirely accept- able, in quite a savage manner. "It isn't a question of views," he said hotly. " Any man anybody fit to be called a man, that is would be disgusted to hear such brutalities treated as if they were funny. If it happened in my country the government would fall next day, and probably the prison would be burnt down into the bargain." Lady Honiton looked with raised eyebrows and a smile of open suspicion first upon Patrice, who dropped her lids and coloured faintly, next on her hostess, who intervened in her fat, slow voice. " My dear Henry, if you're so hot about it, we shall begin to believe Lady Honiton's first sup- position must be right." " Oh, yes ! Oh, quite ! Delicious ! " cried Col- man, in rapturous gratitude at this support from 136 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC headquarters. " Miss Beauf oy, I warn you ! He's a naughty man ! You remember what Roddy told us the pretty suffragettes " This, however, was more than Lady Honiton could bear. " Rubbish ! Pretty suffragettes ! Why, French- men are always on a woman's side, however atrociously she behaves. Don't you remember that bomb-throwing creature some years ago ? " " And I would say, D'Albiac," put in her hus- band, in his most sonorous debating voice, " that it is a little unbecoming to accept the hospitality of a country a country that has always opened its doors wide to men of all countries and to repay that hospitality by comparisons of a depreciative character." " Was it depreciative ? " said Henry, smiling in- dustriously and gradually thereby recovering his temper, which he was ashamed to have lost over one whom he irreverently thought of as a rude old woman. " I only remarked that in my country we should throw out the government over these events ; but that the English believed them to be justified in their action. I went no further; I made no com- ment." " Pardon me," Lord Honiton insisted, with up- lifted hand. "Your innuendo was plain; that we are a race of brutes without respect for women. You will allow me to insist that in true chivalry THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 137 we are unsurpassed; we may not make so much parade of our feelings to women; but where they are concerned where true womanly women are concerned, not these unsexed, howling hooligans we are the politest race in the world; in the world! Let me tell you, D'Albiac, that I have seen old men, older men than myself, give up seats in trains to mere schoolgirls, mere children ; content to pay that tribute to the sex. Do you suppose that sort of thing will continue if this senseless agitation lasts? If these disgusting scenes continue?" " Indeed that is so," Miss Lyman cried with ear- nest pathos. " If we descend into the poelitical arena, Mr. D'Albiac, if we leave our doemestic du- ties for the stress and dust of public life, we throw away our best weapon ; we lose our charm, our pur- suasive power " " My dear lady, I have no wish to argue the feminist question on one side or the other," Henry protested, laughing. " Prison treatment of pris- oners was all I had in my mind. At the same time, when you speak of charm and persuasion, you know, I think you must be thinking principally of rich women, are you not ? The sweet persuasive- ness and charm of middle-aged or old factory hands, or laundresses, or charwomen aren't gener- ally very effective weapons, I'm afraid." " But that's our chivalry," Mr. Harris suddenly cried bitterly. " Chivalry to the rich and the pretty 138 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC standing up in trains and opening doors and taking hats off to people in good clothes, or with faces that strike our fancy. And that's about all there is of it." " It is not," cried Lord Honiton, to whom the mere voice of Mr. Harris was always an unfailing irritant. " It is only the outward symbol of a spirit that permeates the whole community." "Not a bit of it!" the musician replied acri- moniously. " You may have seen men older than yourself give up their seats to schoolgirls ; I should think it extremely likely. And I can say for my part that I've seen men younger than myself sit tight while a woman older than you, Lord Honiton, stood close beside them, holding a heavy bundle, and clinging to a strap, after a hard day's work." Lady Honiton denied the possibilty of such a thing; some man of her own class would of course have given the poor old wretch his place ; and aided by her husband the indignant lady fell upon the com- poser who, quite able to take care of himself, con- tinued the fray with much enjoyment, revealing himself as a leveller of the worst type. His opin- ions became ultimately so extreme that his noble opponent was compelled to close the discussion at last by remarking with grave finality that, if those were really Mr. Harris' views, it was useless to attempt any further endeavour to make him see things in a patriotic, loyal and English manner; THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 139 subsequently refusing to be drawn into any further conversation with one whom he now knew to be plotting the destruction of his own motherland. Henry was thus saved from further baiting, al- though he saw with alarm that his betrothed wore a look of pained disgust at this strange exhibtion of heterodoxy and ill-temper, short as it was, on his part. Every endeavour to catch her eye was vain; after lunch her headache persisted, and as Honiton and Colman went out to join the shooters, Henry was left for a time alone in the billiard room with Harris, a man whom he detested, largely on the ground of his rapid familiarity and insufferable air of superiority, but to whom he thought it polite to offer a laughing word of thanks for his assist- ance in the discussion. " My dear D'Albiac," Harris said, shrugging, " I'm not particularly interested in women, although I admit that, out of the three composers that mat- ter at all in England at present, a woman's one. But the only reason I joined in was to have a smack at that old donkey Honiton, who thinks he's only to speak to have us all on our knees. I didn't mean more than half the things I said. As for the vote, I don't know or want to know anything about it. Politics is a damned dirty trade that it's better to keep out of." Patrice reappeared at tea, and was induced after- wards to grant a private audience to her lover, who, i 4 o THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC with protestations and finally kisses, succeeded in making his peace. But he was conscious during the remainder of his stay at Beaufoy that she wore an unusually alert air when he joined in the general conversation of the house-party; and that, in their rarer and shorter private meetings, she had an ap- pearance of nervous restlessness when the conversa- tion showed signs of taking certain directions. Henry obeyed her wishes by going out frequently with the shooters, though he himself still refused to carry a gun, and was pleased to find that the com- pany of his sweetheart became proportionately more desirable to him. Yet when the day for his leav- ing her approached he had a sad suspicion, which he could not entirely reject, that their hearts had been closer together before the visit began. He blamed his own unaccountable indiscretion for a re- sult so unforeseen and deplorable, but so it was, and he could only tell himself that after a tempo- rary separation they could meet again with all the absurd little disagreements of the past few weeks forgotten by Patrice, and only remembered by him- self as a warning to exercise greater circumspec- tion in his future relations with her sensitive and delicate character. VI HENRY'S reputed destination on leaving Beaufoy at the end of September was the Earl of Wymond- ham's house, whither he had been invited for a fort- night for the pheasant shooting. His late curious distaste for the sport had, it is true, entered his head once or twice while at Beaufoy, in its applica- tion to his forthcoming visit, but he had not made any alteration in his plans, and had indeed left Patrice with the understanding that his next letter to her would be dated from Norfolk. During his return by motor car to London the disinclination for the prospective fortnight grew steadily stronger. Apart from the shooting, Wymondham's was a dreadfully dull house. Lady Wymondham was still young and notoriously handsome; but this was, as it happened, a disadvantage; for it had the effect of causing her to exclude all other good-looking women from the house; and as she had already suited herself in the choice of a confidential male friend, the other men of the party were necessarily thrown principally on each other for amusement. If one shot, all was well; for the coverts were among the best in England; otherwise a fourteen days' visit was likely to be a penitential affair. Divided between the disinclination to offend and 141 142 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC the indisposition to be bored, Henry got as far as causing his boxes and gun cases to be secured at the back of his car before his house in Cowley Street, and had even, wrapped in his fur-lined coat, watched the driver set the engine going, before he made up his mind, relinquished the steering wheel, and returned within doors. His butler was informed, to his almost expressed indignation, that his master would stay in London for the fortnight, an arrangement which entirely threw out that un- fortunate gentleman's own private plans; while Henry, in a curiously defiant frame of mind, sent a lengthy telegram of an ingeniously misleading nature to Lady Wymondham, robed himself in a smoking suit and settled down in his library, over a cigar, to a serious study of Shakespeare, an author to whom his attention had recently been drawn by Mrs. Evans ; and of whose works he discovered that his previous knowledge was largely inherited and hearsay. It was a disgusting day, he thought; cold, blow- ing and wet; and he hated the country in bad weather. London would be rather fun when it was empty; a novelty at least. He would wear a bowler hat, and go to some of these Exhibitions, and take part in the people's amusements; descend water-chutes and switchbacks in the company of shrieking shopgirls and facetious clerks; perhaps join in al fresco dancing, or cry " Ooooo ! " at daz- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 143 zling fireworks. If he was going into politics, he should know something of the proletariat. In the day-time, there were short motor runs to be made; walks, too, in these mysteriously stimulating en- virons of the great town ridiculously scorned by the unwise on the ground of their overpower- ingly impressive desolation and vast ugliness. And while he was in London he might by Jove, yes ! he had almost forgotten that ! he might get that portrait finished for Patrice. It would come well as a peace-offering, after their late lover's quarrels ; and the painter was sure to be available. Poor little woman! Probably holidays were not very frequent with her; and he remembered to have heard her say that her usual time for her yearly few weeks of leisure took place quite early in the year; in May or- June. Besides there was an originality in remaining in London at a time when most of his set were away, and before long some of his friends would begin to reappear; lots of people returned now-a-days before October was out. He contrived in this manner to make quite a dissipation of his loneliness; dined in solitary state at the Ritz (he had half a mind to ask that poor little painter woman to join him, but refrained on remembering that she had some sort of dietetic fads, not to be indulged in these places without surprise and trouble) and, as the rain still con- tinued, went to a music hall, where he yawned pro- 144 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC digiously over trembling performing dogs, frankly blackguard and ebrious " comedians " and stri- dent " serios," until bedtime released him from their exhibitions. This first experience almost made him repent of his betrayal of his word to Wymondham, but the next morning breaking fine and dry, although still cold and windy, he rose in renewed good spirits and set out on foot, by way of Grosvenor Road and Chelsea Embankment, towards the studio, for the purpose of discovering whether his limner was at liberty to continue the sittings. Half way along the embankment he unexpect- edly overtook the woman, herself, who was hold- ing forth with the old fluency and luxury of ges- ture to an intrusive and unacceptable man-friend. Flora was at first hardly recognisable in her cold- weather array of soft, rough frieze ulster, into the deep pockets of which she thrust her woolly-gloved hands, whenever they were not required for the pur- pose of exposition. The garment reached to her heels, and with the felt " gamin " hat, from under the bent brim of which she peeped out slyly, gave her, at a distance, a perplexingly epicene appear- ance. As for her companion, his aspect and his very presence were highly displeasing to Henry, who was willing to associate with Flora herself, as an ex- ceptional member, he believed, of her class, but had no desire whatever to be brought into contact with her relations or friends. This fellow was not a THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 145 gentleman, plainly, in even the widest application of the term. He smoked a briarwood pipe and wore a rough beard of nondescript hue, while his hair under his battered hat was certainly an inch and a half too long. In spite of the cold of the day he had no overcoat and his dark blue flannel shirt opened in a low collar of its own material over his hairy throat. Flora introduced him, with perfect aplomb and heartiness, as Mr. Sutton, and the ap- parition took one rough hand out of the pocket of his worn tweed trousers to grip Henry's with quite unnecessary vigour. " Glad to meet you," he remarked with an abrupt and gruff unconcern, and restored his hand instantly to the protecting pocket. Henry, in the unexpectedness of meeting Flora in this unwelcome company, had more than half a mind to pass on and leave the pair to themselves ; but the cold wind, exercise, and the surprise of meeting had made Flora's pale face as bright as a pink rose, and her eyes and lips were gay with conversation and good-fellowship. Somehow he found that he could not decide to part from her so abruptly; and, to his surprise, discovered himself, after a few moments' halt, falling into their pace and walking with them towards Chelsea Church. "Well, and when did you get back?" asked Flora. " I needn't ask if you enjoyed yourself," she added slyly. 146 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " Only the day before yesterday. I meant only to pass the day in town, but I've altered my plans; and I was just on my way to see you, to ask if you could go on with the picture." " Are you going to stay in London, then ? I thought you had another invitation? " " Yes. I made an excuse ; I didn't feel up to it." " Everywhere else seemed flat, naturally, after Beaufoy ? " Flora suggested, peeping up at him from under the brim of her hat. He laughed awkwardly, not from any shyness in talking of his engagement, for of this he was quite free, but from a guilty knowledge that the past few weeks had not been altogether the success that her words implied. " And besides that," he said, eluding the sug- gestion, " there's nothing to do but shoot, where I was going." " But that's always the case in these country houses, isn't it ? " asked Sutton. " You, yourself, don't shoot, I suppose?" " I haven't been doing so lately," Henry answered rather coldly; for he resented the manner of this person, who, to all outward seeming, was no better than a tramp. The desire to commend himself to Flora, however, made him take ad- vantage of the man's question to explain his posi- tion further. " I didn't shoot down at Beaufoy, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 147 Mrs. Evans ; and I don't feel now as if I could ever take to it again." "Beaufoy? Beaufoy?" repeated the intrusive stranger. " That's where the mantelpieces are, isn't it? I went over it once, I think, when the family was away. In Wiltshire? A great, solid house, built in half-a-dozen different styles?" " It is in Wiltshire," answered Henry briefly, and, turning again to Flora, he continued: " After all our quarrels about sport in your studio, I found I couldn't help thinking about the subject, and as a result," he added laughing, " you'll be pleased to hear that I believe you've robbed me permanently of a great pleasure." The personal influence of the painter in his al- teration of view, which he had so strenuously denied in his private communings, he found himself im- pudently insisting on to the woman's face. But then the face was a lively and pretty one in the chill October wind, and he had always been to some ex- tent the slave of the moment. " But that's splendid ! " cried Flora, pulling a woolly hand, like a small bear's paw, out of her pocket, to pat Henry approvingly on the arm, and, by so doing, drive the colour to his face in a sud- den and boyish manner. " Mr. D'Albiac is the most reasonable man in the world, Fred. He puts obstinate persons like ourselves to utter shame. One only has to suggest an idea in its most rudi- 148 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC mentary form to him and he takes all the labour of excogitation on himself; and abides by the re- sult in a really heroic manner. First the suffrage, now this " "Where's the heroism?" asked Sutton, good- humouredly, with a twinkle of his deep-set eyes. " Being converted is the keenest pleasure in life, especially if it leads to a renunciation." " Converting's greater ! " Flora insisted. " Utterly untrue," replied Sutton calmly. " Con- verting is often a grievous disillusion; and in any case it's the end of a pleasure, whereas being con- verted is only the beginning of one. Mr. D'Albiac, I declare I envy you the privilege of having only just seen the objection to sport." " But it makes the country impossibly dull," sighed Henry, still a little flustered, for some reason, at the touch of the small hand on his arm. " Country houses are generally heavy enough, with- out the loss of one's chief amusement." " Everywhere's dull, if you're idle," said Sutton. " The country is endlessly exciting, if you've work to do. I know; for I worked on a farm for eight years; and so far as amusing myself went, those were the best years of my life. If it wasn't for the desire to help the machine along with a shove or two of one's own, I should have chosen to live and die there." "You had literary work, I suppose ? " asked THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 149 Henry politely, surveying the figure before him, and privately thinking that it would be a likelier sup- position that he was employed to frighten the birds from the seed. " No. I worked in the fields ; though it's true I sometimes wrote in the evenings for my own amuse- ment. But, as a rule, I was far too tired for that. It was a fine life for a beast; and I know now how the beasts enjoy themselves, so long as we leave 'em alone. But I can imagine what it must be like to be shut up in a country house with nothing to do. Idling's just possible for a time in towns, if you've lots of money; but in the country, unless you're an exceptional lover of nature, it's death by inches; and, even if you were that, you'd probably turn your taste into work at last by becoming a poet." " Then, as far as I'm concerned, the country's lost its attractions, except for a few days at a time," D'Albiac agreed. "For I'm afraid my friends would be a little amused to see me starting off for the fields with a spade." " Well, if you did no more than amuse your friends," Flora said reflectively " you 'Id have done better than most people. But I think you're un- doubtedly a town-dweller, Mr. D'Albiac; and be- sides you're going into politics, didn't you say? " "In our country or your own ? " Sutton enquired, with an obviously increased interest. 150 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC Henry gave his usual brief frown at the discov- ery of his foreign birth. " I don't know," he answered. " Probably, how- ever, I shall live largely in this country in the fu- ture." " Will he be any use to us, Flora ? " asked Sut- ton, ruminatively. " Why are you going in? For an ideal or for an occupation ? " " My good sir," Henry remonstrated, highly re- senting the speculative eyes of the man, who seemed, he thought, already to regard him as a fu- ture tool for his own, no doubt anarchic, work. "I'm not yet in a position to discuss such a ques- tion. You may be quite sure at any rate that when, or if, the time comes I shall take my own line. I'm not in the habit of accepting my marching orders from anyone." " Flora, this is your responsibility," persisted Sut- ton, tastelessly. " Keep hold. Mr. D'Albiac's an enthusiast and young and plastic. He's got brains, I think, he's got money, I suspect, and he's got a personality, I can see. Don't let him go." Flora laughed at Henry to dissipate the gathering glance of thunder at this fellow's insolence; and he found himself smiling almost affectionately back at her. " Never mind, Fred," she said soothingly. " He's like a terrier with a rabbit when he scents a potential statesman. You shall be just what you THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 151 like in politics don't be alarmed : a Conservative, and talk about appeals to the base passions of the proletariat, and appropriate the Union Jack and the Navy and the King and the Empire and patriotism as your own private property; or a Radical and declare yourself to be the only party that ever has done, will do, can do, or wants to do anything for social reform; or a Labour member, and go into Parliament to turn it upside down, and afterwards troop obediently, on all occasions, into the Radical lobby ; or a Socialist, and what do they do, Fred?" she asked mischievously. " Quarrel with all the other socialists on earth, and lose chance after chance of getting anything done," said Sutton regretfully. " And here we are at the church. I must be off. It's past twelve. Are you coming my way, Mr. D'Albiac? " Henry gave quite a start at the mere notion of walking alone through the streets with this di- shevelled creature. " What are you going to do, Mrs. Evans ? " he asked. " I was going back to get on with some work I've got in hand; but if you like to have a sitting now, I can give you one. The light's pretty good to-day, and that's rare at this time of year." " Then I'll come with you, if I may," Henry agreed. " Good-bye," said Sutton, taking both hands from 152 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC his pockets for the first time and giving one to each of his companions. " Remember what I said, Flora. He who has been converted once .1 need say no more. Hope to meet you again, sir." He nodded with a twinkle of his eyes at D'Albiac, put his hands once more in his pockets, and turned back again along the embankment, while Henry and Flora pursued their way up the side-street. " What do you think of Fred Sutton ? " asked Flora, with a tilt of her head backwards and up- wards to look in his face. " Well, really I can hardly judge, can I ? " asked Henry, stiffly, unwilling to give his true opin- ion. " He struck me as a little mad, if I may say so." " Oh, we're all that," agreed Flora. " But I wish you could have had a longer talk with him; he's a most stimulating person." To allow anyone the power of stimulation was regarded by Flora, it seemed, as the highest compliment she could pay. " And then he's so kind and nice. I'm very fond of Fred." " I didn't mean anything uncomplimentary," Henry urged, anxiously. " Only that he struck me as unconventional eccentric. I hope I wasn't rude. 'He's no relation of yours, is he? " " Fred ? Oh, no. Just a friend. You wouldn't think to look at that old rag-bag that he was the THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 153 son of a rich man, would you? Well, he is; and his father sent him to a public school I forget which Rugby, I believe. He the father owned a lot of public-house property, and Fred was the only child. He'd have been worth a good many thousands a year, in the ordinary course. However, he preferred to be poor, you see." They had reached Mrs. Evans' house, and the painter ran upstairs before her patron, and, throw- ing her hat and ulster on a chair, hastily indued the toga of her craft, and busied herself among her brushes and pigments. " Will you pose yourself and look pleasant please, Mr. D'Albiac?" she said, abstractedly, hunt- ing among her tubes. " The light's very good just now and we mustn't lose it." "What did Mr. Sutton do with his money?" resumed Henry, seating himself obediently. " Give it away? " " No, because he never actually got it. Old Mr. Sutton wanted to send him to Cambridge when he was twenty, but by that time Fred had got ideas of his own; and he told his father, with engaging frankness, what he intended to do in life, and with the public-houses if they came to him. You can imagine the fury of the old publican! So Fred got nothing, and the money went to a cousin." " How did he manage to live?" 154 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC - " Why, for a time he worked on the farm of a man he knew, as he was telling you." "As his partner?" " No, as a farm labourer ; he hoped, you see, to be able to find time to write as well. But he found, of course, that he was becoming a vegetable rap- idly; so he came up to London, with a few pounds, and got reporting work. Of course, he's rather a striking personality, and obviously well educated; and as he was willing to work cheap, he didn't find any particular difficulty in getting a job. Oh! he's done most things; and now he's on the staff of Fraternity, and contrives to be Secretary to half-a-dozen societies as well, mostly without pay; and he lectures and organises. I feel the laziest creature in the world when I meet Fred. It really makes my head ache to think of all the things he gets through in a day ; and yet he finds time to keep up his friends as well. For instance, he's been with me a couple of hours this morning; but then he wasn't in bed last night. Now he'll go home and sleep for an hour or two, and then be at work again. And they say that overwork kills a man! Look at Fred! He's all of fifty, and I've never known him have any worse disease than chilblains." " Societies ? " said Henry, reflectively, when the softly tumbling stream of words ceased for a mo- ment. " What sort of societies? Is he an anarch- ist?" THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 155 Since the moment of their meeting he had de- cided that Sutton looked exactly as he had always supposed an anarch might look, although he was naturally not personally acquainted with any of the brotherhood. "Heaven forbid!" ejaculated Flora, piously. " Anarchy's a distant dream. He's a Social- ist." " Well, but is there any particular difference ? " Henry asked, with genuine innocence; for he could not be supposed to know all the minor distinctions of these social pariahs. " Only this difference," Flora assured him, with the smallest of smiles as she regarded his disap- proving face, " that they hold diametrically oppo- site opinions. Socialists one end of the line, An- archists the other; and all the other political par- ties and creeds between the two, with the old- fashioned Liberal nearest to the Anarchist." "But you're not ?" he began, and stopped; for he was really prepared by this time to find she was; the queer woman was capable of any- thing. Flora laughed with great enjoyment. " Socialist ? I am, though. Poor Mr. D'Albiac ! I see you looking round nervously for the guil- lotine. That's what your papers tell you to be- lieve, isn't it? That we're all the same Anarch- ists, Socialists, Communists, Syndicalists red 156 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC caps, c.a ira, tumbrils; all pickpockets and free lov- ers generally, the Red Peril; words of grisly sound, undoubtedly." D'Albiac had long ago realised the unwisdom of provoking Flora Evans to tease him; and knew the only way to avoid the tormentor was to be honest and good-tempered. Although he hated being de- rided, he forced himself to join in her amusement, and, with a lately-born frankness in such matters, confessed his comparative ignorance of social science. " Why, of course, you don't know anything about it at your age," Flora said, maternally. " After all, most people get through their entire lives in abso- lute unconsciousness of how their neighbours live, and of all the political forces that are at work. Never mind, you shall have a free course of lec- tures. I'll get Fred to come up here sometimes when you're sitting, if he can spare time, and tell you all about it. I'm a poor exegete; technical words and figures and dates slide off my memory like butter off a hot plate, although I believe I'm sound enough in principle. But Fred's the best prophet I've ever met." This was a lugubrious prospect for Henry, who discovered, on hearing the proposition, the truth that he had successfully hidden from himself dur- ing the last few days; that it was more for the pleasure of confidential talk with the artist than THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 157 with the idea of completing the portrait that he had hastened back to the Chelsea studio. Flora, however, was pitiless. " It'll be so good for you," she murmured, sweetly, with the wicked pouting twist of her mouth that indicated a goblin maliciousness within. " You can't expect me to become a Socialist," protested Henry, feebly, with a cold fear that this dreadful young woman was capable of perverting him even to these monstrous heresies, unless he de- stroyed her plot in embryo. " For he had great possessions ? " enquired Flora. " That's a quotation from a book that's a good deal read in this country. You wouldn't know it. I admit the difficulty, which is one I've never had to face, luckily. Still, Mr. D'Albiac, I put great con- fidence in your reason. And in any case, you may as well hear our arguments, so that you can con- fute them all the more effectually, later on, in the House of Commons or is it to be Lords ? Per- haps that would be more distinguished plus snob, as your French society papers say, with more truth than they're aware of." It was vain for the unfortunate D'Albiac to ppo- test and to point out that it was quite uncertain that he would ever enter politics, and that, even if he did so, it might well be in his own country, where a knowledge of English Socialism would be comparatively valueless. Flora only smiled ma- 158 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC liciously and insisted on the delights of opening one's mind on all subjects, especially when so able a teacher as Sutton was available gratis. " The principal bar to progress," she maintained, " is that people won't listen ; refuse to know about things; and live in an imaginary world of their own invention. Neither selfishness nor stupidity stops the world half as much as that. I had an elderly woman friend who assured me, with evi- dent truth, that although she approved of all the progressive movements and revolutions of our past history, she realised that we had now reached a point when the civilised world was about as well run as it could ever hope to be; and any further tinkering at it could only have a bad and reaction- ary effect. I assure you, she looked at me without a smile, and said practically those very words. She lived in Tedworth Square, believed the poor were a pampered, unthrifty, and importunate race, and that rate-payers were the only people to be pitied. She thought the Poor Law was a triumph of practicality and the Public Health Acts monu- ments of sagacity. She couldn't see why women wanted a vote, when men were so kind and polite to them, and did everything for their good much bet- ter than they could do themselves; and she called herself a Liberal I forget why ; because she didn't like titles, or admired Gladstone, or was a Wes- leyan, or something of that kind. I compelled her THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 159 to save her soul from purification, by coming with me to Somers Town, North Kensington, Lambeth and Westminster to see some of the housing of the people there; and I showed her a little of the con- ditions of women workers. It literally restored her to life; she looks at least ten years younger, and hasn't had a single one of her customary at- tacks of nerves since; much too busy to bother about it if she had. Just fancy, she'd had no oc- cupation, before, but combing her Pom and driving out in a victoria ! And she's a Fabian and a mem- ber of my branch of the Union. Mr. D'Albiac, this is a matter of your personal honour; you wouldn't like me to think you were frightened of being converted?" Thereafter, Henry never knew when he should find Flora alone. Happily, Sutton was unable to abet her in her plans for a day or two, but on two occasions Henry found himself confronted, on ar- riving at the studio, by some of Mrs. Evans' women friends, the painter evidently considering that by this time she knew him well enough to stand on no ceremony with him. Of these friends, one was a sister artist, another, a robust and smiling elderly person of nondescript appearance, who dropped her aspirates, and addressed Flora con- stantly as " mai dear." The artist he could en- dure; she was youngish and comparatively inoffen- sive; but the older woman, besides being obviously 160 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC of very low class, attacked him in a most aggres- sive manner, although with perfect geniality, on the question of a minimum rate of wage for all work- ers, and drove him to such a point of desperation that he was within an ace of rising and fleeing from the unequal field. His utter ignorance of facts and figures hampered him in these discussions ; a trifling disability, he had always thought, where one has a mind to grasp large generalities. All these fantastic people, besides, had an even greater advantage over him, which was doubtless the re- sult of the habit of strife; that they kept their tempers unmoved, while he found his tongue stut- tering, his face inflamed and his ideas vanishing like vapour merely from the detestation of being pressed and driven into corners. Argument of so close and vigorous a kind, a outrance, was new to him, and struck him as extremely discourteous; although there was no actual fault to be found with the mode of expression or the tone of voice employed. And then one day Sutton reappeared, after the sitting had begun, and lying back in an arm-chair with crossed legs and waving hands drowned the wretched D'Albiac in a flood of in- comprehensibly incontrovertible speech. The un- happy young Frenchman was one of those persons who refuse to admit that they are unacquainted with any subject under discussion; who interrupt with a cross " I know " any attempt to explain, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 161 preferring to pick up the meaning by degrees out of the tangle of unknown words and phrases in which they writhe. This first discussion, or rather monologue, of Button's lived in his mind subse- quently as a sort of nightmare of confusion, from which emerged scraps of speech that stuck but half -understood in his brain. He wallowed des- perately among a welter of foreign ideas Rent (which appeared to mean almost anything, except what he had always heretofore believed it to mean) ; Laisser Faire ; Final and Marginal Utility ; the Law of Indifference ; Socialism Marxian, Fabian and Utopian; taxation of land values; social minimum; the endowment of motherhood; exchange value; Truck and Factory Acts. The names of unheard- of or only vaguely remembered people were hurled at him, with an assumption that he was quite familiar with their social beliefs; an assumption that he fostered with nods and impatient " I knows," as Fourier, Marx, Spencer, Ferri, Stuart Mill, Bebel, Webb, Owen, Engels, Ricardo, Jevons and half a hundred others were discharged at his head, like shots from a Maxim gun. After two of these encounters he had almost decided to visit Flora no more; and yet he found, oddly enough, that there was a curious interest in ex- ploring these stony and thorny by-paths; he con- ceived moreover, in the stillness of night, admir- able answers which he might have used to the utter 162 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC confusion, he believed, of this dogmatic reformer. Perhaps partly with this forlorn hope, he returned to the studio, where the picture was by this time approaching completion ; and had a ridiculous sense of momentary disappointment to find Mrs. Evans alone, and all his carefully dried gun-powder of no value to him. The feeling was gone, however, almost as soon as he was conscious of it; he had not for some time now had the artist to himself; and to-day, fresh and fair in her holland over-all, with the pale October sunlight gilding her brown hair, she seemed to be in a reposeful, unargumenta- tive frame of mind, encouraging him to tell her of his life in France and his stately home there, and abstaining from the utterance of a single teasing word. Much as she refreshed and amused him in her talkative moods, Henry was yet aware of a new and agreeable feeling towards her as he regarded her this morning, and idly admired the pretty hand that held the long brush, the gleams in the soft hair, and the little smiles and dimples that gaily lit up her alert face as she answered him or helped on his confidences with suggestions and supposi- tions. He did not care to analyse this feeling too closely, shyly aware that, although it was no more than friendship, it was friendship of rather an un- usually tender and affectionate kind. There was no question of forgetfulness of his Patrice, or any THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 163 diminution of his hunger for her company and for the day when she would become his own for ever; still, Flora Evans had undoubtedly become a part of his life that he would be loath to surrender; and he found himself falling into silence as he contem- plated the probability of Patrice understanding and appreciating his friend when he introduced them, as in time he must, to each other. He awoke from a not altogether comfortable dream to find the painter's dancing blue eyes fixed on him curiously. " You musn't look quite so sentimental, please, Mr. D'Albiac," she said, " or I shall be obliged to repaint the whole picture. The expression I've caught is more in your virile and defiant manner. No wonder, poor man, after the people I've let loose on you. Good gracious, who's this?" The exclamation was provoked by a thundering galopado on the rickety staircase, and the words were hardly out of her lips before the door burst violently open and Roddy Chalmers, in a bowler hat and a polychromatic overcoat, was precipitated headlong into the room. Conscious of another presence besides that which he had expected, he pulled up short with a panting and babbling apology. "I say! I'm frightfully sorry; I thought" and then, realising the personality of the sitter, he emitted a shriek of delight that stunned the ears of 164 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC his auditors. " Jools ! Old Jools ! Having his picture took! Oh, you scoundrel! I knew you would; I'd have bet on it! Bad luck to you! Look at his old face, do ! Aaaah ! " And pronouncing the last word in a minatory manner, as if scolding a disobedient retriever, he threw himself into the armchair and rolled about with laughter; while D'Albiac, hatefully conscious of flaming cheeks, made a desperate effort to look entirely at his ease and to simulate a surprised ig- norance of his friend's meaning. Flora meanwhile contented herself with smiling in a careless man- ner; for she was impervious to innuendo and ir- rision on such subjects. " Don't break my chair, you rough creature," she said, with perfect calmness. " It isn't strong enough to bear much of that." " Jools, you'll be the death of me some fine day ; and then what'll mother say?" said Roddy, wiping his eyes when he had had his laugh out. " Don't be such an ass," Henry protested, smil- ing with rather ill grace. " I haven't an idea what you find so extraordinarily funny, I must say." " Not a notion ; not one," agreed his friend, at the top of his quacking voice. " Oh, you sweet innocent ! Never mind, I won't tell. Not a word. The grave'll be a fool to me for silence. Don't look surprised, Jools, or you'll start me off again, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 165 and next time I shall break something in my in- nards, I know." " Heaven forbid that I should bring on any more of that noise," Henry said, with a glad knowledge that his face was cool again and that he was carry- ing it off rather well; although mentally he was filled with irrational fury at being found in his present situation. Roddy was such a tattler; quite innocently, but none the less dangerously for that; and he wished to be the first himself to tell Patrice of the portrait and its author. It was hateful to think of the possibility of some absurd story being previously put about by this incorrigible buffoon; and yet it was quite impossible to let him believe that there could be any reason for keeping silence. " Yes, be quiet, Roddy, please," Flora asked, sup- plicatingly, " and tell me what you think of the picture." Chalmers scrutinised it carefully; first between two fingers, then through a sort of telescope made by closing his fist, at the same time screwing up the unoccupied eye. He put his nose so close to the canvas that Flora was obliged to tap him on the end of it with a paint-brush, to prevent him ad- hering to it, as a fly to a fly-paper; and lastly, re- treating backwards with indrawn breaths and broken words of delight, with his hand shielding his eyes, in the endeavour to discover the best dis- tance for its full enjoyment, he walked unawares 166 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC into a hassock and fell heavily into the arms of D'Albiac, who pushed him inhospitably off into the armchair again. "Wonderful! Lifelike!" he exclaimed, rap- turously, rolling a wild eye over every object in the room except its human occupants. " It puts me in mind of those birds pecking fruit, that dear old Praxiteles painted; which so deceived the King of Spain, you remember, that he tried to shake hands with 'em. Flora, you'll have to keep it dark, or the Chantrey people will buy it and hang it up among all those crusts in the Tate. No, seriously," he added, settling his face into gravity, with one of his sudden attempts to recover polite- ness, " it's ripping; how many sittings did it take? " " Oh, quite a number," said Flora, painting again now. " We've had such a lot of interruptions ; and then I've talked far too much, so it's only got on slowly." " You lucky dog," said Chalmers, shaking his head with grave disapproval. " You've been enjoying your holidays more than I have, mosire le markee. I was sick on that beastly yacht every day but one, and then she was aground. And here are you cut- ting all your engagements oh! I know! But you do take the bun, old chap; I always said you French fellows did. There! I'll never mention it any more as long as I live. Don't frown on me ; I mean well ; and after all, I brought you here first, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 167 didn't I? As for you, Mrs. Flora Evans, you ought to be ashamed of yourself." The painter was wholly unaffected by this re- buke. " It's to be a present for Miss Beaufoy," she said. " I do hope it's a success ; I've never had such an important commission before." " Of course, I'm only ragging," Roddy thought it necessary to remark in his usual phrase of apology. " And it really is frightfully like. I should have known at once who it was meant for, without being told anything. Well, Flora, I'm jolly glad to see you. Have you been away? I've only got three hours in London; then I'm off for Beaufoy, Jools, for a fortnight. It's all right ; I've given my word, you know, and no man ever knew me to break it. Any message for the lovely Miss Patrice?" D'Albiac shook his head, and could not quite conceal his vexation at the tasteless joke which Roddy did not seem to know when to drop. Quite apart from its offensiveness to himself, it was surely very embarrassing and rude to Mrs. Evans, and he was surprised at the entire impersonality with which she received these coarse sallies. No un- usual flood of colour or air of consciousness or an- noyance betrayed her distate for such raillery, if she felt any. Absorbed in what he knew was quite unnecessary perturbation and anger, he hardly heard 168 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC the conversation that ensued, though he was dimly aware that at times it concerned himself ; but his two talkative companions were quite unaware of his almost complete silence, and when Roddy re- membered with a hideous bellow of laughter, that he had missed an engagement by half an hour, and tempestuously took his departure, he was quite un- conscious that he had not made himself as agreeable and entertaining to Henry as his amiable intention was to be on every occasion to all his fellowmen. " Good-bye, old chap. I'll give your love to all of 'em down there," he cried, buoyantly, and then in a thrilling whisper, which would have been just the thing for Alberich in " Gotterdammerung," and at the same time pressing his hand confidentially: " Your secret is as safe with me as in the Charing Cross Bank. Good-bye, Flora; I'll come and see you as soon as I'm back again. Do not forget me ; do not forget me ! " The last words sung in a piercing falsetto, reached them from the foot of the stairs, which he had taken in three bounds; and fragments of the song followed his retreat up the passage until at last he turned the corner into the street. " What a lunatic ! " laughed Flora, indulgently. " Well, Mr. D'Albiac, I can't do any more to it to- day. But the next sitting ought to be the last." VII FOR two or three days Henry abstained from visit- ing Mrs. Evans. The feeling that the picture was to be finished at their next meeting made him anx- ious temporarily to hoard the day, much as a school-boy will sometimes cling for a while to an unexpected " tip," loath to part with it until the full savour of having it to spend at his pleasure has been pressed out and degustated. There were moments when Henry was forced to perceive that this aspect of his feelings towards the painter made them appear more serious than they ought to be, and, of course, by consequence were. But for all that he was unwilling to get the sitting over; the last of those many talkative, sometimes annoying, but always retrospectively good mornings that he had passed in the cold light of the North window. He recalled with a sentimentally friendly regret the slight figure in brown holland with the bright, tumbled hair; who interspersed her outbursts of volubility with long silent intervals during which she worked away almost unresponsively ; the con- stant occupation of her eyes preventing her from becoming conscious of the gaze of her sitter, who watched her ebbing and flowing colour, the drolly contemplative twist of her delicately pink lips, the 169 i;o THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC droop of her long white neck, and the movements of her graceful hands, with what was doubtless a purely aesthetic pleasure. Even those friends of hers now seemed to him to be desirable company. At least they were always both interesting and in- terested; the weather and other people's private af- fairs were hardly ever mentioned; nor was there that constant apathetic enquiry as to whether one had seen the last new book which is apt to become a little worn with use. Henry felt, too, that his out- look on life was enlarged by his dialectic encount- ers with all these faddists, who, it must be ad- mitted, were inconveniently well informed. Up to the present he had proceeded in life on the general principle that " les gens de qualite savent tout sans avoir famais rien appris": but in his argu- ments with persons who appeared unaware of the existence of gens de qualite and were clad in a panoply of Board of Trade Returns, Parliamentary Blue-books, County and other Council Reports, and Public Health Statistics, he found his broad philo- sophical views of life often awkwardly upset by facts and figures which he was unable to criticise and dared not dispute. The feeling of humility thus induced had driven him during the past week or two to a course of reading, the last that he should ever have anticipated voluntarily undergo- ing; and he grew suspicious that some of his most beloved beliefs, which were strictly of an utilitarian THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 171 and individualistic character, were beginning 1 to show signs of dilapidation. Theoretically they ap- peared unassailable; actually one found that they had an unaccountable way of failing one at critical moments; and the lust of his ratiocinative French mind to find a reason for this suspension of the laws of logic made him anticipate almost with de- sire that company which at first he had found in- supportable. However, at the present moment, his mind dwelt chiefly on the termination of his peri- odical meetings with the artist herself. Truly, he might in future consider himself to be enrolled on her visiting list; but what did that mean? Twenty minutes, half-an-hour's talk, in the presence of other people perhaps, once a month or so. How should that satisfy him after these long, confidential colloquies, which had made him feel that he knew Flora Evans as well, he had almost said better, than anybody else now living in the world? And he could hardly ask her to paint another portrait of him. After four or five days' absence he found his solitude unbearably tedious and wrote a post-card to 'the artist to make an appointment for the next morning. He had not started for the studio, how- ever, when a telegram was brought to him, thus regally conceived: " Come and see me at once Patrice." His car was at the door to take him to Chelsea; 172 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC it was but half-past ten; in,jtwo hours he might be at his lover's home. A hasty order as to an ex- cusatory telegram to Flora, and he was whirling away westward towards Hounslow and Windsor, bound for Wiltshire. The suddenness of his summons raised no fear or anxiety on his lover's account in his breast; for he was not one of those swains who scent disaster in every unexpected absence or incomprehensible message of their mistress. Besides, Patrice Beau- foy was, as he well knew, delightfully babyish and princessly in these matters; distances and pre- vious engagements did not enter into her calcula- tions any more than did the idea of expense; not that any of these objections could of course be sup- posed to exist in the case of a devoted fiance with an income of six thousand a year and a high-power car at his disposal. Still, she was equally capable of ordering the attendance from London of an ap- plicant for a maid's situation, without any partic- ular hope of employing her or conception that there might be a difficulty over the train-fare. Henry found himself smiling over the sweetly imperious ways and ignorance of sordid detail that character- ised his proud beauty ; but the next moment the smile faded a little at the memory that he had been culpably remiss in his correspondence. The pair of lovers were not much addicted to communicating by letter. Henry felt he lacked the necessary THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 173 poetic frenzy to reflect the depth of his passion with any degree of accuracy; and Patrice, besides a natural disinclination for the incident labour, had certain orthographical misgivings which, although her high position made her careless of exhibiting these trifling disabilities to the ordinary herd, gave her a shy unwillingness to run unnecessary risks of exposing herself to a possible smile on the part of her lover. Still, they had been in the habit of writing about once a week to each other, and it oc- curred to D'Albiac with a remorseful shame that, save for a rather disingenuous letter written and answered within a few days of his return to Lon- don, he had made no attempt lately to keep in in- timate relations with his betrothed. It was possi- bly this that caused her to order him so suddenly and imperatively to her side. Or could it be that that infernal madman ? But the vistas opened up by this supposition were of so uncom- fortable a nature that he hastened to dismiss it as utterly improbable; particularly in view of the coarsely-expressed and wholly supererogatory as- surances of discretion that had been so repeatedly given. The morning was dull, rain threatened, and D'Albiac felt a chill both spiritual and physical as he urged his vast and panting steed through Staines, Ascot and Wokingham, at a pace which made even his driver, whose own licence presented quite an 174 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC interesting display of magisterial autographs, glance occasionally at his employer's face, as, blind to warning notices and the mystic salutations of the Automobile Association's myrmidons, he held on his breathless course. The watery, motionless clouds hung low and melancholy in swathe after swathe of solemn veiling over the greater part of the sky. Away to the south there was still a patch of pale, spiritless blue, already threatened by the surgent form of a gigantic and massive nimbus that slowly raised its grey head and shoulders from the hard sky-line. Henry, always acutely susceptible to the influence of weather and surroundings, found his spirits so lugubriously affected by this characteristically British morning that he devel- oped at last quite a childishly nervous anticipation of his forthcoming meeting with Patrice. It was vain to reason with himself; to say that probably the summons was the mere caprice of a loving child ; and that, in any case, he had done nothing shame- ful or inexplicable to a heart that beat so wholly with his own at least, not lately. The black mood persisted, notwithstanding, growing darker still as heavy drops began to patter on the car from the comfortless sky, and by the time he had reached the lodge gates of Beaufoy he had so worked upon his nervous system that he caressed a wild mo- mentary idea of turning the motor back in the di- rection whence it came, and of sending some at THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 175 present unimaginable telegram of excuse; or of hastening down forthwith to his friends in Nor- folk, there to beg hospitality for sufficient time to write a letter of anxious regrets to his lover. The stately, age-worn front of the big house, which he had so often admired, struck him to-day, as he flew towards it up the long lime avenue, as merely depressing and of Pentonvillian aspect, looming grey and solid through the drive of the rain. No one was visible about the place as he drew up at the door, although he heard the distant sound of a piano. Even his former acquaintance, the butler, seemed to Henry's excited fancy to wear an aspect several shades more funereal than usual, in admitting him; and at the best of times his was not a jocund presence. Indeed D'Albiac had for- merly registered a vow that he would find some plan to prevent this valuable servant marring the future wedding festivities by his attendance ; as a croque-mort, thought Henry, he would be highly impressive: and it Would be better to keep him in reserve for any possible occasion when his services in that capacity might be required, rather than waste him upon scenes of thoughtless gaiety. " Miss Beaufoy told me to show you into her room, as soon as you arrived, sir," he said gravely. Of course, Morrison was always grave, as Henry well knew; yet the solemnity of his manner seemed on this occasion undesirably portentous ; and Henry 176 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC followed his muffled footsteps to Patrice's boudoir with much the feeling 'of a guilty-minded school- boy who approaches, by special request, the study of his pedagogue. Left alone in the luxurious little room, he vainly endeavoured to steady himself and banish his cause- less perturbation by the perusal of one or two illus- trated magazines that lay about the tables and sofa : and the resultant impression of a dentist's waiting- room grew so strong that a distinct sense of un- easiness made itself felt in his peculiarly sound teeth. He chafed and fumed inwardly at this soli- tary interval; it did seem to him that his lover might realise his anxiety at receiving such an abrupt order, and might in pity lose as little time as possi- ble in assuring him that there was nothing seri- ously wrong. By degrees his irritability began even to get the better of his pusillanimity, and he was on the point of ringing the bell to enquire whether his arrival had been announced, when the door opened and Patrice, in an exquisitely draped dress of dark violet silk a royal mourning robe, one would have said with her sunset hair au- daciously bound in a broad violet ribbon, swept with her usual slow grace into the room. Henry sprang to his feet and hastened towards her, with a desperately unsuccessful attempt to appear quite natural in his attempt to take her in his arms, and to manifest startled surprise when she lifted her THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 177 hand with a gesture of proud refusal. Patrice was paler than usual, and she hardly raised her eyes as Henry seized and kissed the extended hand; al- though her proud, full lips drooped into a deeper pathos. " Patrice ! Darling ! Why what have you is anything wrong? " he stammered. " No bad news? Your mother ?" It naturally did not occur to him to enquire after the health of Ivan, who was Patrice's only other close relation. She shook her head a little, and sat down in si- lence in the deep embrasure, resting one rounded arm on the window-ledge and presently lifting her eyes to stare sightlessly out at the rain-veiled land- scape. To Henry's anxious scrutiny it seemed as if the lower eyelids were strangely pink, and there was certainly faint shadows beneath them. " You're not ill yourself, my beloved? " he asked, seizing her hand frantically, and his heart sinking more and more as she gently disengaged it and re- peated the slight shake of her head. Plainly he must await her pleasure in speaking; and he sat down beside her in the window-seat, gazing anx- iously on her pale, spiritless face and downcast eye- lids. " Tell me," he said presently, in a pleading under- tone. The rain pattered in great soft tears on the stone 178 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC window-ledge, and the flames of a small fire flapped their yellow sails in the grate; otherwise, except for the beating of his own heart, Henry swam in a cold grey silence; for the little china clock on the mantelpiece, a prey to the general sense of depres- sion, registered half -past five with the unblushing and obstinate mendacity of despair. Perhaps it realised the overuse to which its brethren had been put in scenes of this kind as described by modern writers, and scorned to pander to the prevailing taste for its rapid and insistent tick to fill out the pauses in the dramatic action; or perhaps it feared to enhance the gloom by a reminiscent suggestion of death and transfiguration. At least it was si- lent. Presently Patrice withdrew her eyes from the window, and passing them transiently over Henry's anxious face, dropped them on the gener- ously abundant advertisement pages of the Strand magazine, which she picked up from the seat beside her. The picture which she contem- plated represented a medical belt of surprising prop- erties, and the lurid flashes of forked lightning, which it apparently generated, seemed to her lover to bear almost a prophetic significance. " Henry," she said in a level voice, after an- other pause, " I've had some news that surprised me rather." "News? Of what?" asked D'Albiac, conscious that his heart was making itself vulgarly obtrusive. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 179 " Of you," said Patrice, studying intently the unusually plain-spoken panegyric of a member of the Peerage (modestly represented by a single ini- tial) of the almost miraculous curative powers which the belt had manifested in his own extremely grave and unappetising case. " Me? " cried Henry, throwing up his head, with lifted eyebrows. The girl frowned a little at his tone, before re- lapsing into her former expression of pretty and babyish discontent. "Yes. Roddy Chalmers " D'Albiac gave an uncontrollable movement of rage; and his thoughts were for a second couched in language that would have completed his disgrace in Patrice's eyes, had he given them expression. That miserable, leaky gasbag! That wretched zany with his idiotic, vulgar jokes, and perversions of the truth! It was as he had feared; the sacred cretin had poisoned his lover's mind with his base- minded aspersions. " is down here," Patrice was continuing, in the same level tones. " You know that, of course. He told us that he'd seen you in London a day or two ago." She broke off again, her lips moving noiselessly as if seeking for words to continue ; but, apparently finding none, she turned to a fresh page of her magazine, whereon was presented, with truly pain- i8o THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ful realism, the depiction of a moustached and comely man, clasping his hand, with a gesture and expression of extremest agony, to the base of his spine, while a modish feminine sympathiser re- garded this sudden and violent disorder with clasped hands and dilated eyes of concern. In the background, a motor-car of unusual design awaited them, and beneath the picture the legend " Every picture tells a story " was exhibited in heavy leaded type. It appeared to Henry that it was about to become incumbent on himself to emulate the ex- ample thus suggested to him; but his ignorance as to the extent of Roddy's revelations made him cau- tious and laconic in his first reply. " Yes. We ran up against each other," he ad- mitted with a rosy carelessness. A feeling of amazed shame at his own aversion from telling his lover the whole truth instantly filled his mind; and yet he knew that he had not the necessary courage to undertake what theoretically was a perfectly simple and comprehensible task. There had been no harm in his past behaviour, there could be no danger in describing it; but he was uncomfortably aware that he had been acting lately as if some harm existed, and that by this stupidity he had cre- ated an atmosphere of suspicion for which there was no real cause, but which was none the less diffi- cult to dissipate. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 181 " I thought you were going to Norfolk," Patrice continued, in the same low tones. " I told you, darling," said Henry, " in my let- ter" " You told me that you were not going down for a day or two; and I naturally thought that you meant that, after that, you were going. Since then you haven't written to me again." Poor Henry searched his brain hastily for some explanation of his epistolary silence, trying to per- suade himself that it had not been due to the fact that he had wished Patrice to remain unaware that he still lingered in London, and failing in the at- tempt. " I can't write letters to you, you know that," he cried passionately. " I'm a good correspondent with my ordinary friends and relations " (this was wholly imaginary, although for the moment he be- lieved it to be a fact) " but I can't put down on paper what I feel for you, Patrice. You know we've both felt the same about that. Love's a thing that" Miss Beaufoy seemed unmoved and unconvinced by this outburst, despite its ring of strong emotion, and took her privilege of interruption. " Why didn't you go to Norfolk? " He moved uneasily in his place at the revival of this question and answered rather irritably: 182 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " Wymondham's such a bore. I felt at the last moment I couldn't." :< You might have sent me a line to say you weren't going," said Patrice. " Maman wrote to Lady Wymondham the other day enclosing a mes- sage to you in the letter. They'll think it very ex- traordinary that we shouldn't know where you were." " I'm awfully sorry," Henry stammered feebly, all his social tact and contrivance deserting him. " I meant to let you know ; I'm afraid I forgot. But you've had experience of how dull their house- parties are." " You knew that when you accepted, didn't you ? " asked the girl, curiously contemplating an indifferently reproduced photograph of a turbaned mystic, dusky of complexion, although otherwise Britannically metropolitan of countenance, point- ing his forefinger directly out of the picture at the spectator, and subscribed with the question : " Do you know this man?" No, indeed, thought Patrice; she was beginning to realise that she did not, and never had. " Of course," Henry replied, laughing, with a valiant attempt to carry the matter off with a little more lightness. " But I had a sort of wave of realisation of those dreadful evenings at Wymond- hams ; and, besides, I heard that the shooting wasn't as good as usual this year down there." THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 183 Miss Beaufoy looked up quickly, and he had a conviction that in his anxiety to make his peace he had said too much. " So that's why you didn't go ? " she asked, with suspicious calmness; and Henry in view of his pre- vious remarks was obliged to assent. " Why did you give other people quite a dif- ferent reason?" Patrice enquired. Her eyes had again fallen to the contemplation of the occultly- gifted Oriental, so that she was not actually a spec- tator of the falling chaps and burning complexion of her lover. "Why did I ?" he repeated miserably. Patrice broke in with the first touch of anger that she had shown ; and her pallor became warmer, although she still did not look up. " Roddy Chalmers told us all at dinner last night that he'd been told, by someone who knew you, that you'd become converted to some ridiculous anti- sport ideas, and that you wouldn't go anywhere now where you were expected to shoot. You know what he's like. He shouted it out before all the table, and turned you into a perfect laughing- stock. I hate that man ; I can't think why Maman invites him. But I believe what he said; you showed signs of it when you were down here; that, and other stupid fads that you'd never had until then. But naturally I'd no suspicion then of the cause of them. I couldn't have had, Henry; 1 84 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC it wouldn't have occurred to me as possible." Her voice suddenly dropped and had a sound of tears in it which terrified and distressed D'Albiac beyond measure. " Cause ? " he repeated vacantly, without a notion of what he could say to exculpate himself and comfort his betrothed. The tears vanished as suddenly from Patrice's voice as they had appeared. " You haven't spoken the truth to me," she said, looking at him proudly. " You've purposely kept me in the dark as to where you were. I'm not go- ing to talk round and round the subject any longer; though I wanted to give you a chance of being frank about it, if you liked to be. But I know now that I can't trust you; you've only been trying to get out of it without telling me anything, because you didn't know how much I'd heard." She flung the accusation at him with a tone of scorn that awakened Henry's easily stirred anger in a flash. The tone of bitter reproach, he felt, was not justified by anything that he had done; nor would he consent to be lectured as if he was a child who had been found out in some deceitful mischief. "Heard? About what?" he asked coldly. " I'm surely at liberty to stay away from " "Henry! How can you?" cried Patrice pas- sionately, with tears starting into her big, dark THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 185 eyes. " When I tell you that Roddy Chalmers has told me all about that woman!" "What did he dare to say about me?" burst out Henry in a fury, with a face of crimson and blazing eyes. " And how can you listen to a man you know to be a scandalmonger a stupid farceur; practically an idiot " " Do you deny it?" Patrice replied, as angry as himself, although shrinking a little before the vio- lence of his expression. " Do you deny that you have been every day, nearly, associating with some dreadful creature? And that it was only to be with her that you've been hiding in London all these weeks ? " The knowledge that they were confronting each other face to face like a pair of furious children suddenly restored Henry's self-control, and he paused a moment before replying in more conven- tional tones: " Hiding's a word that you'll be sorry you've said, I'm sure, when you think over it later. And I can't allow any friends of mine any people I think fit to associate with to be spoken of as ' dreadful creatures ' no, Patrice, not even by you. The reason I didn't go to Wymondham's house was the one I've given you ; and there was no other. But you've heard a wickedly perverse ac- count of something that I've been doing for you for you, Patrice in London, while I was left 1 86 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC there by myself; and you'll surely be just enough to let me give you my own version of it." " I gave you every chance," Patrice replied, dropping her eyes on her magazine and carefully scrutinising an unsolicited promise, apparently made by an insane millionaire, to award solid eighteen-carat "gold-filled Alberts" (whatever these may be) to all members of the public who would take the small trouble of writing to ask for them. " I gave you every chance ; and you only tried to pretend you didn't know what I meant." Henry felt his anger surging up in a fresh tumult at the words, but being unable conscientiously to deny the implication, he sat silently swallowing his wrath, with actual physical actions of the throat, for some moments before he was able to pro- ceed. " If you 'Id let me speak . I do think I'm en- titled to explain; and I am surprised, Patrice, that you should accept as true the statement of a fellow like Chalmers, without hearing what I have to say on the subject. I thought you had more trust in me and sympathy with me than that." His voice fell in a pathetically appealing full close; but Patrice, with a firmness that struck him as being a little obstinate, continued to study her advertisements in silence. " When I was in town this summer," began Henry, with a cautious deliberation, and a pause THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 187 between every two or three words, " I happened to meet this this lady you've referred to " " Where?" asked Miss Beaufoy, lifting her eye- brows but not her eyelids, and speaking in a cold tone. D'Albiac could hardly say " In a row," and the nature of the disturbance, so far from being any excuse for it in his lover's eyes, would, he was well aware, only make it more distasteful to her. He raised his hand in a deprecatory gesture of en- treaty. " Shall I just tell you the whole story first without questions, darling? Otherwise we shall get so mixed. I just ran across her somewhere, I don't exactly " his voice fell into an inarticulate mur- mur, and then sprang to a higher tone and greater strength to continue : " And it appeared she was a portrait painter quite a well-known one, I be- lieve; Chalmers knows all about her. It occurred to me we got talking about pictures, and so on < I thought . Of course, I mean to say, one usually has to pay such enormous prices for por- traits that unless one is very pleased with one's ap- pearance," he laughed at the words, with a hope- ful glance at Patrice's immovable face; and it was strange, he thought, that he had never noticed be- fore what a sulky, almost heavy, expression those full red lips could take in displeasure. " Unless one is pretty vain, you know, it's hardly to be thought 188 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC of, except by millionaires. It struck me that it would be a surprise for you that you 'Id like, as you're so fond of Art, to have a good portrait done of myself as a present to you; and here was a chance of getting one on the spot; and at such a price that it didn't much matter if it railed. So I gave this this Mrs. Evans her name is a sitting or two, before I came to stay here ; and when I de- cided not to go to Wymondham's, having nothing to do in London, it was obviously a good time to get the thing over and done with, before you came back to town; so that the present would be ready for you by Christmas. That's literally all that has happened just a few sittings. But that imbecile Chalmers happened to come to her studio when I was there, and naturally thought he had a splendid joke to spread about me. Not that I cared at the time ; for I didn't think I can't help saying this, my darling I didn't think that you " He was getting along quite well in his own con- ceit, and happily conscious of the just triumph of innocence, when his lover looked up at him with a glance that suddenly cut the stream of his speech and exercised a depressing effect on his renascent courage. Patrice's eyes were undoubtedly swollen and vague ; which was natural enough, for she had wept through the great part of a sleepless night, during the long hours of which Roddy Chalmers' phrase " and a jolly nice-looking woman, too " THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 189 had recurred a thousand times like some persistent leit-motif in the discordant symphony of her medita- tions; but there was a dangerous smoulder in her glance, too, as she replied : " I wonder you can have the face to scold me, Henry," she said, " when you know that you're not telling me the truth." " If you accuse me " he began, hotly. " You know you're not," she persisted. " You can't have forgotten how you met her. Oh, it's no use pretending to be surprised! I had a talk with Roddy Chalmers after dinner last night. He'd, put me to shame before the whole table, after let- ting out about meeting you, by laughing in that hideous, idiotic way that he has, and saying that he was awfully sorry, because he'd promised not to say anything about it." D'Albiac literally bounded on the window-seat with fury at this lying suggestion. " I swear I never he never ! Patrice, how can you believe ? " "So I made him tell me everything; I said he knew that I was the last person to be jealous and suspicious; and he gave me the whole story. Of course he saw nothing wrong in it a man wouldn't and he said you found this this per- son fighting in the street, and you fought too, and helped her to escape ; and you and he and she have been out together; and you, yourself, have been 190 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC alone for hours with her, without even Roddy Chal- mers knowing about it, over and over again lately. I couldn't think what was the matter with you when you were down here last; full of all sorts of crazes that you 'Id only have laughed at in your right mind. This your friend, Roddy says, is a sort of anarch- ist and has all these horrible ideas ; and you 'Id been infected with them after only a day or two of her company. What can I think ? Anyone in their senses must see it at once; at any rate I do; and I know now why you were so touchy and unkind when you stayed here, and why you haven't written to me for weeks. You're in love with this creature." " In love with her ? " Henry repeated, staring on her blankly. " Patrice, you're not thinking what you're saying; you're laughing at me or you're " The girl's restraint on her grief and rage sud- denly gave way, and she burst into a flood of bitter tears, through which she spoke with hardly dimin- ished vigour, staunching them from time to time with a lace handkerchief that diffused an agreeable odour of night-scented stock. " You are ! You can't deny it ! Why do you give up all your engagements and hide -in London, when it's quite empty? Why are you always go- ing to see her ? " " To have my portrait painted," cried Henry, al- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 191 most himself in tears. " And besides I'm not in love with everybody I call on. You don't think that?" " You know you wouldn't dream of calling on her if you weren't a dreadful, low woman!" Patrice retorted passionately. " She's nothing of the kind," replied Henry loudly, as angry now as his lover. " She's just as much a lady as as anybody is." " She isn't. How can you sit there and say such things? Her husband was a common engi- neer or something; and she lives in a horrid slum." " She's as well-behaved as anyone I've ever met in our set, and and a hundred times cleverer," Henry panted, careless of results in his sudden rather inexplicably violent attack of wrath. " And she's a friend of mine, and a very nice woman." " You see," sobbed Patrice. " You can't bear a word against her. A friend! As if you would make friends with a low-class working woman who fights in the streets and and lives on on hor- rible nuts and things. Goodness knows what she is to you!" The innuendo struck D'Albiac into sudden and amazed silence. Till this moment he had regarded his betrothed as innocently unconscious even of the existence of squalor and wickedness in the world. " Patrice ! " he said in a low, breathless voice, 192 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC lowering his intonation a seventh on the second syllable. "Patrice!" And at the same moment came a step in the passage and the door opened, as Patrice hurriedly turned, holding her handkerchief to her mouth, towards the window. The melancholy figure of Morrison was displayed in the entrance, announcing in sepulchral tones that Mrs. Beaufoy had bidden him say that lunch awaited Miss Beaufoy and her lover. D'Albiac confronted the intruder with proud heroism, despite his consciousness of a single tear, that ran in a ticklish manner down the side of his aristocratic nose, and of certain inarticulate gasps from Patrice, whose emotions forbade her attempting a reply. " Miss Beaufoy will be coming directly, Mor- rison," he said, with a dignity not entirely in con- sonance with his overwrought appearance. On the features of the imperturbable functionary, however, appeared no sign of any recognition of the storm that was in progress; he regarded D'Albiac's tear- coursed nose and the heaving back of his young mis- tress with an eye that was dignified, but wholly unspeculative. " Very good, Sir," was all his reply, in the same hollow, charnel-house voice. What were the emotions of the members of this unfriendly race of employers to him? None the less would he feed to repletion thrice daily, and THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 193 draw his handsome monthly honorarium; for the rest, they were no more realities to him than he to them. After the door had shut behind him a heavy si- lence fell. Perhaps both of the young people were a little ashamed of their heated recriminations; yet there remained in each a firm conviction that it was wholly the fault of the other that such inde- corum had been shown; nor did either feel justi- fied in stooping to make overtures of peace. Pa- trice had been childish, unreasonably jealous, ready to believe any calumny of one whom she professed to trust and love more than all the world. Henry had been loose, perfidious, deceitful, altogether vile; and viler because still so handsome and strong and dear, and because his voice in anger was so thrill- ingly dominant and masculine. How could Henry be the first to renew a conversation that had been broken off by a wicked and injurious charge against a stainless lady who was numbered amongst his friends? Or how could a maiden press home this accusation that she knew to be true, although she hardly understood its nature, but which was quite unsuitable for open discussion among civilised per- sons? The position threatened to become an im- passe; particularly as they both felt the danger of their smouldering anger bursting forth again into regrettable flame at the first renewal of argument. It was Patrice who decided, after some minutes, to 194 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC end the matter finally and calmly in a few words; confident of the result, and humbly proud of her own forgiving spirit. She, who was so queenly, so inaccessible to ordinary mortals, would show how she could pardon the man to whom she had given her heart ; but the indulgence must necessarily be accepted with proper humility and gratitude. " Henry," she said, returning to the toneless monotony of her first carefully rehearsed remarks. " It's no good going on like this. It must be her or me." The words seemed to fall on her own ear with a gratefully familiar sound. Some play or book that she had loved had surely given them birth; and she was proud to observe that they had a stupefying effect on Henry. "Her or you?" he repeated, with wide-opened eyes. " What do you mean by that? " The indelicacy of asking for an explanation caused her to drop her eyes and blush a little. She had hoped and believed that he would instantly make his choice, with suitable abasement of spirit, and that the subject need never be mentiond again. Surely he was unusually dull to-day? " Don't let's talk about it more than we can help," she protested, with a look of faint disgust. " I know that men and in France particularly . There was Monsieur de Dehan, at Nice. When he married " A blush and a faltering voice THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 195 hinted only too plainly at the nature of the story concealed by this maidenly aposiopesis. " But but by what right," Henry burst in, stammering and red, " do you compare me to Dehan? Do you still suggest that there's any- thing anything wrong between me and Mrs. Evans, when I tell you " "Henry, Henry!" cried Patrice plaintively, un- consciously plagiarising Gretchen. " How can you force me to talk of such dreadful things? I don't want to know or hear anything. If you love me, you can't hesitate, surely. Her or me." " But what about her ? " the distracted French- man almost screamed, in his irritation at the repeti- tion of this mystical phrase. " You must give her up," murmured his lover, with her breast heaving almost as obviously and rapidly as that of a gut routiniert Brunhilde, when awakened by the amorous Volsung. " Give her up ? But I've never taken her down. I don't know what you mean. How give her up? " His obstinate and over-acted obtuseness hurt Miss Beaufoy's pride and love unbearably. She looked up with eyes of grief and anger, and her voice was tremulous. "If you really love me you wouldn't ask that," she cried. " You'ld promise, without another word, that you'ld never see her or think of her again." 196 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " But that would be to admit there was some- thing wrong," Henry argued with a face and voice of fire. " I've pledged my word that this lady's only a casual friend of mine. Why should I give her up, as you call it? Why should I behave as if I'd been found out in some disgraceful act? Why should I insult her reputation by agreeing " " Because I ask you," broke in the girl, stung once more to rage, " and because you once said that anything I asked, reasonable or unreason*- able " " So long as it only affected me," Henry inter- rupted her. " There's the honour of a lady at stake here " "A lady!" Patrice interjected scornfully. " A lady," he repeated firmly. " And more than that, there's all your trust in me concerned. If I'm to pretend penitence, for no reason, and promise to cut perfectly respectable people, merely because you choose to believe any infamous, stupid scandal about them and me " " You dare to talk like that ? " cried Patrice, the tears again springing from her eyes. " You don't love me. I always knew you didn't. You want to get rid of me." "That you know isn't true," D'Albiac thun- dered. " It's because I love you, Patrice, that I'm ashamed to see you so childish and ridiculous and jealous " THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 197 The furious words died on his lips as his lover tore from her left hand the diamond half-hoop ring that he had put on her finger one happy day, cen- turies, it seemed, ago, and averting her face held it out to him with a royal gesture. " Here's the ring you gave me," she said, in passionate undertone. " Take it away. I don't want ever to see you again." " But " he gasped, with a sudden sense of the futility and strangeness of this unforeseen tragedy. " Don't speak," she continued in the same hur- ried manner. " Go away. I can't bear any more. Here's a book you gave me. Take it too. Here's another. The the other things I'll send to you and your your letters." She was moving hurriedly about the room as she spoke, picking up the objects she mentioned and thrusting them into the unwilling hands of D'Al- biac; and her words were punctuated with little gasps and sobs, while tears poured in unrestrained streams over her pretty cheeks. "You don't mean what you say?" he asked, gaping in a foolish manner on her, and yet unable to utter a word of dissuasion. " Go away," she repeated. " Go to that vile woman." A moment before, he had had thoughts of suing humbly for a reconciliation on any terms; but at 198 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC the repetition of this charge he burst into new re- bellion and defiance. " Very well," he said bitterly. " You've ruined my life, Patrice. You're cruel and unreasonable. But I won't I can't humble myself like that, or behave as if there was any truth in these abomin- able accusations. If you wish us to part, we must part. It's not my doing." Patrice was past further utterance, ' and with her handkerchief pressed to her eyes, brushed past him, tore open the door, and fled to her bedroom; leav- ing her lover grinding his teeth in the middle of the boudoir, with a large-paper copy of an illustrated and be-ribboned Omar, a diamond ring and a col- lection of Ronsard's poems, bound in a tooth-on- edge fabric of dull purple, encumbering his hands. Suddenly and furiously conscious of these impedi- ments, he thrust them all three violently into the cheerfully blazing fire, spurned a hassock from his path with an oath, and plunged out of the room, with rumpled hair and blazing eyes. On the wings of rage he fled from the house, still further in- furiated to find that in his absence his driver had stabled the car and was now feasting with the servants of the house. In trembling tones, and with mental vows of vengeance against this unfaithful steward, he gave orders to a footman, unwillingly drawn from his midday meal, that the motor was to follow him to the village; and set off on foot THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 199 through a heavy drizzle along the long avenue towards the lodge. Throughout the walk and the subsequent ill-served meal of partially cooked cold beef and flat beer at the Beaufoy Arms he nursed his injured pride and sense of injustice with an almost loving care; and, convinced of his broken heart, was unable to conceal from himself that for the present his two dominant emotions were rage and an odd sense of having triumphed in a righteous cause. The first of these was vented to some extent on his unhappy chauffeur during the homeward journey; and Henry arrived in London in a thoughtful and almost contented condition which he did not then seek to analyse, glad only to find that he supported his intense grief and the destruction of his future life with so much heroism and fortitude. VIII THE rejected lover's broken heart confined him for a little while, almost continually, to his house in Cowley Street in the same not unpleasant conscious- ness of having behaved with justice and dignity in a trying situation. As the realisation of the full extent of his loss seemed, like many overwhelming emotions, to be a little slow in its development, con- fining itself, at present, largely to a regretful con- templation in retrospect of Miss Beaufoy's physical beauty, he determined, before very long, to antici- pate its arrival by permitting himself to seek those consolations proper to such occasions. He was aware that the correct course for one in his dismal case was to plunge into dissipation, the wilder the better; and the correctness of his life during the last few months, while engaged in his chaste rap- tures with Patrice, had the effect of making this lurid prospect so little repugnant to him that he found himself obliged to check his fancies with the reminder that the step he proposed to take must be regarded only as an anodyne and not as a stimu- lant. It is true that his earliest idea of soothing his torments, on his return to London, had been the absurd one of seeking out Flora Evans and confiding his sorrows to her; but the painter and 200 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 201 dissoluteness were such widely dissociated concep- tions that he quickly realised his foolishness. Be- sides, she had been the unconscious and innocent cause of the whole tragedy; if he sought consola- tion with her it might truly seem to worldlings that Patrice had been partly justified in her ridiculous jealousy. By-and-by (if his wild escapades did not first destroy him or cast him into the depths) he might hope to hold Flora Evans' hand again in calm and affectionate friendship. Meanwhile, it behoved him to put the thought of her aside and robe himself in scarlet for the dance of death. To this end, he sent the artist a cheque for the unfin- ished picture, explaining in suitably cryptic terms that events had made its completion unnecessary; but that he hoped, in brighter days, to renew his friendship with her; and then precipitated himself into the whirlpool. The Maelstrom chosen was the Continental Restaurant, which struck him at the time as per- haps rather a mildly commercial gateway to the Inferno. But his limited knowledge of the lower regions of London set itself in the way of a truly worthy beginning. In Paris he could have shown to better advantage; meanwhile, he looked upon this dull and commonplace restaurant, with its rows of dejected damsels sitting in solitary expec- tation at the small round tables, as but a step towards the excesses of Elagabalus, Tiberius and 202 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC Commodus. Without any enthusiasm, he selected for his first partner in the mad dance a slim, dark young woman in a blue silk evening dress, past its first freshness, who had a suggestion in her ap- pearance of Patrice, as she might appear after ris- ing from a bed of sickness or at the completion of a long journey on the Sleeping Cars. Miss Kitty Wilson was not so tall or plump as Miss Beaufoy, nor did she, of course, approach her in beauty ; and, instead of the scornful pride of the lovely young patrician, she displayed an apologetic and anxious manner in her relations with Henry that had the effect of saddening him more than a little. Her conversation was largely of indigestion (to which, it seemed, she was a martyr), and, in rare moments of expansion, of a certain mythical Cambridge un- dergraduate, whom she accused of being the first cause of her becoming " gay." The highly regret- ful manner in which she referred to this " gaiety " did not strike Henry as suitable to the orgies of wickedness in which it was his aim to wallow; but she was such a kind-hearted and rigidly respectable girl, apart from her Cytherean avocations, in which she plainly took no more than a conscientious and economic interest, that he had not the heart to re- linquish her in favour of a more Messalinan com- panion; the more that she speedily developed a deeply respectful devotion to him, chiefly the re- sult of a gratitude for his oddly polite treatment THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 203 of herself. Moreover, he had a suspicion that he might be equally unlucky in his next venture; and was unable in any case to summon the necessary energy for any protracted quest of the infamous. Under the influence of Miss Wilson's gentle de- pression of demeanour and regrets for the innocent and irrevocable past, Henry, no lover by nature of depravity, speedily discovered the objections to his rakish scheme ; and as soon as he was no longer intent on his own ruin, the society of this indiffer- ently educated and dyspeptic lady filled him with infinite gloom and distaste. Drunkenness was not, of course, to be thought of ; it was so extremely in- elegant and unpleasant; there was gambling, to be sure, but he seemed to lack the true gambler's spirit, and conscientiously lost a good deal of money with neither regret, pleasure, nor excitement. It was plain that he was not marked out to be a Don Juan; and he became regretfully cognisant of the existence of a churchwarden's soul beneath the dis- guise of a dangerously dashing physical presence. Obviously, however, even the mild and provincial dissipation through which he had passed had had the desired effect; for he looked back on the days of his engagement without a regret or a heart- throb. The magic web thrown over him by his beautiful mistress had been rent, by her own act and the struggles of his pride, into a thousand fragments; and the flames of his subsequent tepid 204 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ardours had consumed the shreds, so that nothing but a few sentimental ashes remained. Patrice meanwhile had confidently awaited the return of her penitent lover, and, amazed at his silence, had, at last, written a short letter to him, offering him full pardon, if he would but give her the promise that she had sought from him at their interview. Henry was, of course, unconscious of the bitter tears, agonies of humbled pride, in death- grips with passionate longing for her lost lover, and many sleepless nights that this little, pathetically haughty and misspelt note had cost the spoilt prin- cess. He was therefore able to regard it with some reason as merely a renewal of her former un- just accusations, and to reply to it with a cool, judicial intimation that he was willing and anxious for a reconciliation, but could never consent to sue for pardon for imaginary sins to one who had no trust in him, and made an act of falsity the con- dition of their union. Miss Beaufoy had received this chilly correction with a burst of passionate and almost incredulous resentment that made things very unpleasant for her family and dependents for some days; and had written back, in her haste, a few fiery lines to Henry which, in his uncompro- mising frame of mind, were sufficient to make the rupture absolutely and permanently irremediable. It was after reading this note and indignantly burning the pieces, so that the wicked suggestions THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 205 against the character of a kind and pure-minded lady might not fall into other hands, that he realised the completion of his cure, and the consequent re- lease from the necessity of pursuing his late miry and unpleasant paths in life. He was, he told him- self, a soured, disappointed man; embittered by experience and the discovery of woman's perversity ; a twentieth century Childe Harold; and it was odd how agreeable the knowledge of this new cyni- cism was to him, and with what anticipatory enjoy- ment he excused his desertion of Miss Wilson, who received his present of money and patent mendaci- ties with a philosophical melancholy that showed she was no longer sensitive to the whips and scorns of time. " I am sorry, dear," was all she said, in a low- spirited manner. " You'll come and see me again, if you ever do come back to England, won't you? " The endearing appellation was merely introduced professionally, out of habit; and, to Henry's ears, the respectful tone, in which it was always em- ployed towards him, made it only a synonym for " sir." He assured her earnestly that it should be his first pleasure and duty, on return from this un- specified exile, to acquaint himself with her circum- stances ; and, perceiving the Stoic incredulity in her sad eyes, shook her warmly by the hand, and es- caped from her presence, before she had time duti- fully to offer him the customary indeclinable kiss. 206 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC A deep depression of mind, as of the philanthro- pist leaving the incurable ward or the abode of hopeless poverty, accompanied him in his flight, in place of the sense of shuddering yet delicious shame or defiant wantonness suitable to one parting from dainty vice; but the relief of escaping from this yawning and bourgeois association was so great that he was soon able to throw off his memories with a little shake of his broad shoulders, and antici- pate, with his usual optimistic delight in living, the pleasures that the future held for him. Among these there were some that had been necessarily closed to him since his engagement innocent flir- tations and sentimental friendships with maidens and young married women, his favorite com- panions of all the human race. Without outrag- ing his opinion of his own fidelity, he could now contemplate the regaining of his freedom with positive satisfaction. He had loved, and been cast away; the fault was not his; and it was moreover plain, from the behaviour of his betrothed in the matter, that they had never been really destined thoroughly to understand and freely to trust in each other. Memories of the limited nature of their intercourse, of the probably unjustifiable con- struction that he had put, in the fondness of his heart, on Patrice's constant reticence and mystic aloofness from his enthusiasms, supported this be- lief. How much better to have found this out in THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 207 time, instead of embracing the destiny of a young man married to one whom he could not hope to make happy! How bitter to have lost the licit pleasures of gay and popular youth for a mutual bondage shortly to become abhorred of both ! " Young married women," suggested Mrs. Evans, naturally enough ; and as he sauntered along the Fulham Road from Stamford Bridge, near which Kitty Wilson had her flat, it occurred to him that he was within a few minutes' walk of the studio. The idea of the slender, alert presence of the painter and of the tumbling, glittering brook of her speech set him smiling, and acted on his mind and body as a positive tonic after the lym- phatic sentimentality and anxiously polite sadness of his late " gay " companion. Marriage nay, the whole sex obsession seemed to him at this moment morbid, unwholesome and cloying. Here was almost an ideal friend ; one with whom he felt he would be glad daily to pass hours in open-hearted comradeship. She happened to be a woman, it is true; but had she been a man (if one could imagine such a very flower-like little person as a coarse, un- decorative man!) it would have been of course ex- actly the same. For here, at least, there could be no question of love, still less of marriage; the mere idea was ridiculous; and the realisation of the absurdity added greatly to Henry's apprecia- tion of the disinterestedness of their queer friend- 208 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ship. Yes, he would go and see Flora; he was just in the mood for her mischievous impertinences and millennial enthusiasms. Mrs. Evans was at work as usual on a design; but she put it aside at once and shook hands with flattering warmth; contemplating his face at the same time with an expression of obvious com- miseration, quite unlike her habitual boyish anima- tion or occasional impishness. " Mr. D'Albiac ! I am glad ! I was rather afraid I'd seen the last of you," she said, blushing brightly and transitorily at the surprise of the visit. "Why?" asked Henry, smiling, with genuine pleasure, down at her vivid face. " I told you I'd look you up again before long, didn't I? " " You didn't say before long. Oh ! By-the-by, thank you very much for the cheque. I owe you some of the money back again, though, because it was meant to include a frame; and besides the picture wasn't really finished." " Well, finish it now," Henry suggested. " I want to have a good, long talk with you, if you're not too busy; and if you're painting you won't get sick of me so soon. Besides I've changed my mind. I should like to have the picture after all." " Would you ? " she asked, with her head on one side, studying his eyes intently. " That's nice. I'll get it out, then." Within a few moments Flora was painting and THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 209 Henry talking and laughing, as if the past few weeks, with their dismal catastrophe and consequent excesses, had never intervened. " Is it all right again, then?" Flora asked, pres- ently, and Henry, in spite of the suddenness of this question, coming on top of several minutes of in- different conversation, was well aware of her mean- ing. "All right? Oh, yes, thanks. It's all right} now." " I'm so glad. Of course, I knew at once what must have happened. So you've made it up, like sensible children ? " " No," said Henry, briefly, assuming a masculine sternness of demeanour. Flora looked up in quick surprise at the word; and, after her eyes had rested for a minute at least on his haughty face, turned them back again, with the faintest flutter at the corners of her mouth, towards her canvas. " Oh? " she said, with unobtrusive interrogation. If he was inclined to be confidential, the monosyl- lable seemed to say, well and good; and if not, let him suggest a new subject of conversation. In Henry, however, an overmastering desire for sym- pathy and confession had sprung up. " No," he repeated, gravely. " My engagement is broken off. I wonder you didn't see it in The Morning Post." 210 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " I take in the News, pending the publication of anything better," she explained, apologetically. " It only appeared yesterday," said Henry, briefly, with a Roman calm; and a heavy silence succeeded, during which Flora seemed to ru- minate. " Much cut up about it ?" she suggested suddenly, with enquiring eyebrows and parted lips. It seemed incumbent on Henry, at this point, to press his finger nails into his palms and reply to the question, at first, in low broken accents, with eyes averted from his interrogator. Thus therefore he answered, not without a slight sensa- tion of artificiality; but it was necessary to convey to her something of the unbearable agonies that he might have endured, had he not taken the drowsy drugs of dissipation in time. " At first yes," he muttered, searching the floor with a haggard gaze. " But I faced it. And now now," he continued, in a brighter, braver tone, lifting his eyes to the watchful face before him, " I feel that it was for the best, perhaps. We didn't understand eath other; we never had. Bet- ter to know in time. So we agreed to part. There was an ugly wrench of course; but the pain's over now; nothing left but a dull aching." A sigh finished the speech; and he had a warm sense of enjoyment of his own manly English words; an enjoyment which seemed to find a re- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 211 sponse in Flora's bright eyes and the faint ripple that played so constantly over the calm, .cool sur- face of her attentive face. She allowed a decent interval for reflective regret and the mastery of emotional weakness ; much as the priest pauses, gen- erally rather inadequately, after the words " all sick persons" in the Litany; and then added a phrase of consolation. " I think you were both unusually brave and wise. And, if you won't think me rude, I believe that a descendant of the Conqueror wouldn't have been quite the sort of wife that'ld have suited you best, perhaps." Henry started and frowned. " You mean I'm a snob ? " he enquired, in an offended tone. " Everybody's some sort of snob, I s'pose," Flora said, soothingly. " And I shouldn't dream of us- ing such a horrid word about you in particular. But the Conqueror side of your character shall we say? has been sufficiently developed. I think there are other influences that'ld be likely to be more useful to you. Avito vires honore a little, I think, don't you? And I hope I'm not tutoyant you, Mr. D'Albiac; because I've forgotten most of my Latin. But you know you're capable of doing something on your own account, and it takes so little encouragement to make one content to be an idler." 212 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " I mean to do something, you know that," Henry protested. " We've talked that over often, before." " But one may go on meaning, until it's too late. Something's always wanted generally it's hunger to give one the push off. Well, now you've got it. Here's something to be forgotten; you're depressed and disillusioned and discon- tented. Get some good, hard work, and you'll be cured in no time." The principal feeling in Henry's mind at the precise moment being one of placid and entire con- tentment with his situation, he was inclined to seek out some specious reason for delay. But he re- membered he had spoken of a dull aching at his heart; and he was naturally averse from recanting the statement and substituting a confession of com- plete recovery. " No doubt you've just been hanging about dis- consolately all these weeks, bothering yourself day and night about your disappointment," Flora con- tinued, and Henry, unable even to refer to the es- sentially masculine medicine he had exhibited, nodded silently. " Haven't you often wished you'd some occupation that forced your mind off the sub- ject? One can't pine while one's ri vetting, for in- stance, or writing a book, or doing an operation, or digging in a coal mine." " Oh," he replied, lightly. " One need never THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 213 be at a loss for something to do, as long as one's pretty well off." " But that's such a futile prospect to look for- ward to," Flora insisted. " Constantly planning how to spend your money, just so as to avoid bore- dom. Besides it always catches you in the end; you know it does. And a young man, and a clever man, to be content with that! Haven't you any ambition ? " " Not a scrap," said Henry, with cool shameless- ness. " Not a scrap, I'm afraid." The painter, however, appeared to be entirely unimpressed by this confession. " What nonsense ! " she cried, laughing with an impudent enjoyment that brought the colour to the cheeks of the cynic. " You, of all people ! Why, you know you'd simply revel in success or fame. And please don't try to look like Gallio; at least not for my benefit; because British phlegm, and Parisian blague, and aristocratic or artistic or intel- lectual snobbery Oh ! all sorts of egoism and aloofness and apathy are perfectly odious to me. It's just because I know they're quite unnatural to you, Mr. D'Albiac, that I like you. Be yourself that's all that's wanted. Why, think of all the advantages you've got over most people, to launch you education, proper physical development, good manners, self-confidence, no worry about means. It'd be nothing less than a disgrace, if you 214 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC settled down into a dull country squire or a stupid, noxious man-about-town. Do something! Oh, if I'd had your sex advantages and your brains and your opportunities! I might have been some use in the world then; I've got the wish to be, at least. And surely you're not going to shirk ? " There was a ring in her voice and an inspiration in her flung hands, cheeks aflame and crepitant eyes that strangely stirred her auditor. " Not if you'll be my friend ! " he cried, with quite boyish ardour and responsiveness. " Why, of course I am," Flora said, with a sud- den, swift drop into tranquil good-humour. " Not that I'm much good to you, I'm afraid, except to stir you up with a long pole when you're inclined to be lazy. However, that's a very necessary duty, too." Enthusiasm was so strange to D'Albiac, after his long association with the politely unmoved people of the well-bred world, that its very novelty inspired and delighted him; and gave him a brief and welcome holiday from his bravely sustained struggle with his naturally excitable and fiery dis- position. A few sermonising words from this young woman seemed to have sent through him a thrill which none of his recent experiments in lib- ertinism had succeeded in inducing. In the interest of this already disastrous and undoubtedly peculiar friendship, it almost seemed to him, for the time, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 215 that he had been wasting his life in seeking the ordinary pursuits of a gentleman, and that perhaps these eccentrics had after all discovered a better secret of happiness. At least it was one that was at the disposition of everyone, to a greater or less degree; whereas he was well aware of the con- stant and ungrateful struggle that many of his own set had to support, in order to keep their place in society. With the usual hot-headedness of his chameleonic nature, he was convinced that he had no friend so valuable to him as this fantastic young woman ; and an idea that had long stirred at the back of his mind now boldly broke its way out of its prison. " Roddy Chalmers and well, most of your friends Mr. Sutton, for instance call you Flora. Would you mind may I too ? " " Of course, if you like," Flora answered, tran- quilly unaware, it seemed, of his schoolboy abrupt- ness and the stammer that overtook him before he finished his speech. Mercifully, too, she forbore to look round at him, as she gave him the permis- sion; for he was furiously aware that his face had become crimson and damp with quite unaccount- able embarrassment and a delight which seemed out of all proportion to the favour granted. " I think it's so difficult to talk when one is on terms of when one has to call " he began in lame explanation. 216 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " Oh, I quite agree. I never feel I know any- body, really, until I get to the Christian-name stage with them. As a rule, it doesn't take long with the people I meet I forget what your name is? Not Jules?" " No, no, that's only Roddy's nonsense. Henry," he said, with a smiling gasp that he knew to be fatuous. " Henry," she repeated. " Well, Henry, if you and I are going to be friends, you've got to ' dig out,' as Roddy himself would say. I haven't been used to the leisured classes, and I'm afraid we shouldn't agree long if it's your only ambition to belong to them." " I put myself in your hands," said Henry, with humorous submission. " But I wish I'd half your energy, Flora." " Oh, me ! " said Flora, ungrammatically, with a little shrug. " I haven't ever had the chance to idle, since the day that Father sent me to the High School. It's no merit of mine; it's necessity." And brushing aside any further personal refer- ence to herself, she plunged into one of her vigorous discussions of social questions, in which Henry fol- lowed her with something more than his custom- ary interest, and scarcely a touch of that peevish recalcitrance that he so often manifested in argu- ment with her. It seemed to him to-day that the personal duties which she strove to heap upon him THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 217 appeared far more reasonably possible than they had, during his engagement To the future hus- band of Patrice, with his aristocratic obligations and inevitable association, for the most part, with the rich and noble members of the population alone, such schemes for his future as Flora persistently advanced were patently unworthy and impossible. But, for the time being, he seemed to have severed his ties with his own class and the people among whom by right of birth he should move. Here, in an empty town, his only companion a working artist of the lower middle class, he was no longer so acutely and constantly sensible of his title, his position in society and his wealth. He could al- most believe, almost enjoy believing, that Flora was his social equal, that they were two unknown members of the indistinguishable herd; with noth- ing to entitle them to admiration beyond the pos- sible results of their own exertions a mean and begrudged substitute for the generous homage uni- versally yielded to costly clothes and ornaments, whether paid for or otherwise, vast and swift motor cars, spacious houses and estates and, per- haps most admired and least troublesome of all, the right to use sonorous and insolent prefixes to one's name in the place of such cacophonous styles as Mister, Missis or Miss. D'Albiac had already known Flora's fanaticisms to be infectious; and in her company he found himself docilely agreeing 218 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC with her that it was really a matter of urgent im- portance so to recast our social system as to make the existence of degraded and hopeless poverty, no doubt permitted on earth for excellent reasons, as often explained by the pious, a national disgrace and an impossibility, even at the expense of shear- ing the well-to-do of much of the beauty and colour of their life. He swallowed, with only the faint- est of gulps and wry faces, such propositions as that women were merely a servile class so long as political freedom was denied them, and that to be told that you were lucky to be looked after and have things done for you " much better than you could do them yourself " was an insult to the in- telligence of mature human beings and a feebly un- convincing excuse for tyranny; that monarchy was a ridiculous and costly survival of the world's in- fancy, and that in the face of the unscrupulously sentimental and snobbish use made by political parties of the sacrosanct and occult personality of the monarch, and of the pestilent example of serv- ility and jobbery set throughout society by the in- fluence of Courts, it was utterly untrue to main- tain that the system was, at least, entirely harmless, and valuable as a prophylactic against Presiden- tial fever; that an established Church, with its enormous archiepiscopal stipends, its "palaces," its gifts of livings, its sweating of many of the working clergy, and its attachment to the moneyed THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 219 classes, was about as unchristian an institution as could have been devised, and one that would have aroused the most righteously indignant invective from the communistic, self-denying founder of the religion it professed to administer; besides being an unjust imposition in a country where the ma- jority of the population were either directly opposed to or entirely uninterested in the establishment; that the monopoly of land, the inheritance of wealth, and the exploitation of labour by a com- paratively small class of men with the special, by no means valuable and generally quite unintellec- tual faculty of acquiring and accumulating capital, were diseases that would have to be treated with the knife before the body politic could hope for health; that the modern system of education, with its hypocritical concealment or denial of the com- monest and most honourable truths of nature, is productive of absolutely .incalculable harm and wickedness; that patriotism, in its general signifi- cation of the glorification and aggrandisement of one's own particular geographical or linguistic area at the expense of the rest of the world, was an outworn ideal, once perhaps useful, but now ripe to be cast, with all its Mumbo-jumbo symbolism and flag-worship, on the scrap heap; that the apathetic toleration of theological creeds and dis- credited social conventions by those who neither cared for nor believed in them, on the ground that 220 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC they " were good for women and the poor," or that if they were destroyed something worse might take their place, was either cowardly or intentionally immoral; for that truth and frankness were the two fundamental safeguards of society; that most of our penal system was revengeful, barbarous, and not only entirely useless, but most effective in pro- ducing and maintaining a rebel class; that a car- nivorous diet was only worthy of wild beasts, and that it took a dire revenge on its adherents in the form of preventable disease in short, that a world which generally supposed itself far advanced in progress was still wilfully fostering ignorance, with all its consequences of cruelty and misery. All these fantasies were advanced without any sem- blance of anger or malevolence, Flora's flashes of excitement being reserved for moments of hope and encouragement, while her criticism of men and things was delivered always in reasoning, half-in- terrogative tones, with droll little cocks of the head, and upward glances at her companion under lifted eyebrows. On the tide of these heresies Henry floated in interested contentment, with hardly a pro- test against such outrageous nonsense ; until internal qualms caused him at last to draw his watch from his pocket, and make an astonished mental calcu- lation of the length of their conversation. " I say, Flora," he said, conscious as he spoke that, since he had been permitted to use the name, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 221 he had been playing with it in almost every sentence he addressed to her, as a child with a new toy. " I don't like to interrupt you when you're painting, but what time do you generally lunch ? " " Oh, I'm sorry ! " Flora cried, apologetically. "Why didn't you protest before? I eat at all sorts of time; whenever I feel the spirit moves me, so to speak. I haven't any regular meal-hours. I do hope you're not starving, are you? What's the time?" " Twenty past two. I am rather hungry," he admitted. " Won't you come and lunch with me somewhere, Flora? Then we could come back and finish the sitting." " I can't spare this afternoon ; there's some work I must finish for Williams and Lloyd. I'd no idea it was so late. But I shan't want you any more now; I can finish it off without you. Will you leave the frame to me, or would you like to look in at Chenil's and choose one ? " " You'ld do that better than I could," Henry re- plied. " But I s'pose you don't live entirely on air and Causes, do you? Won't you come and have something to eat with me? I want to hear more about your socialist society, and perhaps I mayn't catch you alone again for some little while." " All right, certainly," Flora said, hastily cast- ing aside her long linen painting-robe, and emerg- ing from it a slender, maidenly figure in dark blue 222 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC serge. " I'll just wash, and then I'm ready. You go on in front." Outdoors, it was one of the warm, damp days that often come in the early part of November; and Flora, when she ran downstairs to join Henry on the pavement, had not altered her indoor garb except to the extent of covering her soft, bright hair with one of the untrimmed felt hats which she generally affected. Henry was, as usual, ele- gantly appointed, and, even in his present Bohemian frame of mind, could have wished that his friend had decorated herself with a little more care. There was hardly anybody he knew likely to be lunching at any of the smart places; but there were, of course, Americans and other foreigners ; and the personnel of his favourite restaurants naturally knew him well. However, Flora looked boyishly pretty and fresh, and would pass at a pinch for a country cousin, he reflected. " Where's the nearest place that we can get a taxi ? " he asked. " What do you want one for ? " she replied, in the Scottish manner. " I thought we'd drive down to the Carlton," he explained. " They can produce quite a good vegetarian meal there. I know that, because I dined there once in the same party as the Duchess of Dartmoor; she goes in for grass, you know." " Where is it ? " enquired the painter. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 223 " The Carlton? " he said, staring. " At the bot- tom of the Haymarket ; on Pall Mall." " Oh, that big hotel. I know ! " said Flora. " Good gracious ! I'm not going all that way. There's a shop round the corner in the King's Road, where I nearly always eat. Let's go there." "What sort of a shop?" Henry said, with a sulky hesitation, for he was something of an ama- teur of food and wine, and unusually nice as to service and table appointments, as well as the com- pany among which he sat. " What sort of a place, Flora? Pretty decent?" " Quite," said Flora, carelessly. " You're not particularly greedy, I s'pose ? " " I don't think so," he replied, reluctantly. " So long as things are properly served " " Oh, you'll find this all right," she assured him. " It's one of Baer's ordinary bun-shops, you know." Henry felt a distinct shudder run through him. If, as he had said, he was not greedy, at least, like most idle people, he was a good deal interested in his meals, and the giving and partaking of lunches and dinners, the discovery of new and amusing restaurants, and the slow degustation of dishes and wine, followed by leisurely smoking and coffee drinking, formed no inconsiderable part of his or- dinary diversion in life. He felt that he had en- couiitered in Flora a person who regarded drink- 224 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ing and eating as merely preventatives of thirst and hunger, and was unaware that dining wisely may be a fine art and an amusement; and he shuddered again in anticipation of the entertainment that she was preparing for him. Like all Londoners, he was acquainted with the exterior of Baer's many shops, out of the conduct of which the enterprising German was making a large and well-deserved for- tune. If only as the first discoverer of the fact that it is possible to provide mankind, for two- pence, with a cup of reasonably good tea, freshly made with boiling water, Herr Baer had earned a statue better than most of the actual recipients of that honour, now dismally displayed in the streets of London; not that, among such a sorry herd of mediocre monarchs, second-rate sol- diers and forgotten politicians, that is saying much. D'Albiac had glanced casually in more than once through the open doors of these establishments, and had been dimly aware of close-set tables at which silent hordes of pallid men and women, mostly young and the reverse of smart, ate hastily, gener- ally with a newspaper and a breakfast cup beside them peculiar adjuncts to one's lunch; while quaintly capped and aproned maidens, with warm haste, fled continually between the serried ranks of guests, laden with trays of high piled plates and dishes. These were the adequate but unappetising resorts of the proletariat, he had thought; but it THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 225 had hardly occurred to him as conceivable that he would ever pass through their portals. And yet, as a lamb to the slaughter, he was being led away unprotesting, in words at least, by this unconcerned young woman, who did not even seem to realise that there could be any objection in the mind of any reasonable person to such a house of call. Baer's was nearly deserted by the time they ar- rived, although plain evidence of the numbers that had been recently fed was provided in the heated and occasionally irritable faces of the waitresses, and in the debris and soiled utensils under which the small tables, good, sturdy marble though they were, fairly groaned. Flora led the way down the room to a corner where, she explained, the waitress was a friend of hers; and Henry, bashfully following in secret rebellion, sat down gingerly beside her at a table, which, to his disgust, was not even cleared for their reception; but remained covered with little plates, bearing the remains of rolls, cakes, broken egg shells, and even, horrible to re- late, cold bones and congealed gravy. His com- panion, however, seemed unaware of his disgust, which obviously she did not share, passing him a bill of fare, over which some careless guest had previously, it seemed, spilt coffee, without any comment. It was unmanly to be finical, he felt; and yet he could not deny that his temper was im- paired by his surroundings, and by the renewed 226 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC conviction that Flora was a common, sloppy little thing, to tolerate such unrefined circumstances. "Can't we get these things taken away?" he asked, rather irritably. " Ethel'll be here in a minute," Flora replied, calmly; and fell into a rapid perusal of a crumpled evening paper left by some previous visitor on the chair beside her, while Henry, fretting at every un- necessary moment spent in this inacceptable spot, glanced savagely at a beast of a man, three tables off, who, having clearly enjoyed his repast, was living it over again in memory, sucking his teeth with an audible sound of relish, and blandly un- conscious of the distaste with which he was be- ing regarded. A friendly young person, who greeted Flora with a radiant smile as " quite a stranger " and remained in private and personal conversation with her for several very long minutes, having taken their orders, Mrs. Evans lunched vaguely off a Welsh rabbit, abundant conversation and a cup of coffee; while D'Albiac, chary of risking anything but the simplest fare, consumed some poached eggs and toast rather sulkily. The undisturbed good- humour of his companion and her gay laughter finally melted him, however, particularly after the departure of the cud-chewing luncher and the gen- eral clearing and swabbing with damp cloths of the surrounding tables. The food, too, was quite good, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 227 so far as it went, and by the time he pulled out his cigarette case he felt more at peace with the world. " You mustn't smoke up here," Flora informed him. " Besides I must get back as soon as I've had a little fresh air. Come for a stroll by the river with your cigarette, will you ? " He agreed, heartily and, as they left the shop, glanced with curiosity at the clock on the wall. Twelve minutes, including at least three wasted in conversation with Ethel, about " Ma " and her own health and her young brother on the Tube Railway ! And this was called a meal! However, he had in- vited Flora to lunch, and so insisted in taking her bill from her when they reached the cash desk, rather sorry he had made so much fuss about it when he saw that the amount to be discharged was five pence. Flora, however, thanked him politely; and as she seemed quite unaware of any humour in the situation, he refrained from calling her atten- tion to it, and followed her out into Kings Road, and thence by a narrow passage on to the embank- ment. IX DOWN by the Thames the afternoon was warm and misty; and a white woolly vapour rolled heavily off the surface of the water, and was carried by an imperceptible stirring of the air south-west, in whorls and wreaths, over the dimly-descried squalor of Wandsworth. The tide was flowing swiftly, swirling and foaming tumultuously about the piers of Battersea Bridge, as Flora and Henry set foot on it. Flora had dropped the subjects of sociology and politics since lunch, and after fall- ing into a brief mood of silence, during which she seemed unconscious of her companion's presence and gazed out dreamily, over the smoothly gliding river, at the lazy mist-ghosts that fled from before their footsteps, she began to talk of pictures. The Barbizon School was, it seemed, one of her pas- sions; and Henry was unreasonably abashed that he was so ill-informed about this manifestation of the art of his own country, in various other de- partments of which he had from time to time en- deavoured to rouse her interest; conscious that under her polite air of attention and enquiry she was emotionally unmoved. Post-naturalist fiction did not seem to stir her; the names of Rene Bazin and Bourget moved her to no comment; even Ana- 228 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 229 tole France only aroused a moderate interest; the present-day painters she had had, she admitted, little opportunity of studying; and indeed Henry knew nothing of them himself. The genius of Rodin she seemed to acknowledge with unexpressed private reservations ; and the revolutionary modern French musicians, with the names of whom he confidently approached her, received merely an unresponsively courteous welcome. It was unfortunate that her obviously real enthusiasm should be reserved for the work of men with whose names, of course, he was extremely familiar, but of whose actual achievements he had only a vague impression in his memory. By dint of a delicately reticent adroit- ness he flattered himself that he partially concealed this ignorance, encouraging her with nods of ac- quiescence and occasional discreet questions to open her heart to him on the subject. Flora might not be entirely deceived by this, perhaps, but at least she continued the conversation ; and it was so pleas- ant to lean side by side, elbow touching elbow on the parapet of the bridge, gazing down on the grey- yellow water that slid away and boiled beneath their feet, and giving an occasional side-glance at her swiftly changing colour and busy lips, as she discoursed rapturously of Daubigny. Rousseau, Diaz and Corot; turning her face quickly to him from time to time to ask if he remembered some picture of which she was speaking. Henry felt 230 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC that he could pass hours in perfect contentment in this opaline, vague atmosphere, undisturbed except by the rare passage of a cart over the bridge, with the soft, clear voice mingling with the gurgling and plashing of the stream, charged with an affectionate friendship that was better than all the wild rap- tures and wilder agonies of the love from which he had lately emerged. Lazily he stroked and patted the idea of a life passed amid such peaceful and pleasant companions, and half regretted, although without any bitterness, the fate that had forced his steps into higher paths. It would be good, he thought, to be one of these irresponsible artists, harassed by no idea of any greater destiny, living a hand-to-mouth Henri Murger existence (in his present mood, a thoroughly Bowdlerised Vie de Boheme) among the studios of Chelsea ; and under the spell of these dreams it seemed to him that to- bacco had never tasted so good as it did in this brief loitering on Battersea Bridge on this quiet November afternoon. Flora, however, before long broke up his luxuri- ously idle mood by an enquiry about her constant tyrant, time, and revealed a guilty surprise on hear- ing the hour. " Your society's too agreeable, Henry," she said, regretfully, " or else I enjoy the sound of my own voice too much; for it doesn't seem to me that I've let you speak. I must hurry back. Shall I THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 231 leave you here? I know you hate walking fast, don't you?" He pleaded to be allowed to escort her to her door, and they turned to leave the bridge. Chel- sea Embankment was almost deserted, except for a little party of poorly dressed children who were playing by the river parapet, just above the bridge. " Look at those wicked urchins ! " Flora cried, laughing, as they approached this noisy group. " I can't think how Chelsea children aren't drowned in scores every day. I never pass here without see- ing some of these monkeys climbing on the wall, and balancing themselves on one leg over the river." " There's a boy now practising his rope-walk- ing," Henry added. " Oh, they hardly ever come to any harm. It's only losing confidence that makes one fall, you know. Look at the risks drunkards and sleep-walkers take, without being any the worse for it." " I s'pose that's so," Flora agreed, as they turned off the bridge, her eyes, as she spoke, still resting on the youthful acrobat. " And yet you'd think that now and then, with the best nerve in world, one's foot would slip on the wet My goodness! He's in!" Henry had not been regarding the children of whom they spoke during the past few seconds, his eyes having wandered again to Flora's face, a habit which they seemed to have acquired. All he was 232 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC conscious of, therefore, was her sudden cry, be- fore she had bounded away from his side, clat- tered down the stone steps, and was scudding along the embankment, as he remembered to have seen her run that summer day in Battersea Park. The surprise to Henry's less alert mind was so great that before he even realised the meaning of her words, she was perhaps twenty yards further down the river bank, had flung herself bodily on to the top of the wall that guarded the edge, rolled over and over across it before his astonished eyes, like a shot rabbit, and disappeared in a bundle, with a prodigious splash, beneath the surface of the water. The next instant with a loud, hoarse, wordless cry that seemed to tear his heart up by the roots, Henry had rushed in pursuit of her, ploughed his was through a screaming party of terrified children, and reached the edge of the river in time to see Flora's almost unrecognisable head, black-haired, hatless and of a seal-like smoothness, emerge from the surface directly in the path of another and smaller figure that drifted down swiftly towards her, tumbling over in the stream, disappearing and reappearing, and on one occasion displaying mo- mentarily an agonised face, from the open mouth of which proceeded an inarticulate and gurgling scream that was instantly drowned again by the smoothly gliding, yellow waters. Before the sound of it was lost the little, submerged body had come THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 233 in contact with the upright form of Flora, who was steadying herself against the flow of the tide, and she had clapped her arms tightly about it, lifting the head above the water and holding it pressed against her own face. At the same instant she looked up at the bank and perceived D'Albiac clambering on to the low wall. " Don't come," she cried in a clear, high voice. "All right! I've got him!" By this time Henry was kneeling on the coping, and the words barely stopped him before he plunged into the stream. In his agonising excitement he could find no breath or voice for speech, but the horror expressed in his face and outstretched hands was obvious to Flora, even in her difficult position. " All right ! " she cried again. " Drifting on to steps." Her mouth went under water for a mo- ment, but she emerged the next, still clinging to her burden, and added, " Treading water. Don't come ! " There was a confidence in the tone of her cries which convinced Henry that she was not in imme- diate extremity, and, leaping off the wall, he rushed to the flight of iron steps leading down to the water, towards which the two shining heads closely pressed against each other, were rapidly floating. With- out loosing the hold of her arms, Flora was edg- ing herself, by movements of her feet, close under the embankment, so that by the time Henry had 234 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC reached the river level, she was carried gently on to the stairway, instantly to be seized by Henry be- neath the arms and lifted, with her rescued child, into a position of safety. " Take the boy," she said, breathlessly. " I'm all right now; I'm on the steps." Henry picked up the streaming urchin, who in- stantaneously broke into renewed screams and sobs ; and, holding him against his immaculately coated bosom, carried him swiftly up to the embankment, where he put him down on his feet among his lit- tle friends, who were gathered at the top of the steps, with pallid and tear-stained faces. " You little idiot ! " Henry cried furiously to the sobbing urchin. " Why on earth must you play the fool on the wall like that? You might have drowned the lady. Your father ought to give you a good thrashing." Gurgling gasps and streaming tears were the un- fortunate child's only reply; and a little girl, who was apparently in charge of the party, herself about eleven years of age, took up the indict- ment. " Yer naughty boy, Orris ! What'll yer muvver sy? Where's yer cap? Yer've bin an lost it. You'll catch it when yer get ome, yer naughty boy!" To relieve her excessive agitation she seized the delinquent by his collar, and, still weeping herself, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 235 began to cuff him heartily. In the meantime Flora, pathetically small and bedraggled in appear- ance, with her thin blue dress clinging and stream- ing about her slender body, and her drenched, smooth hair dripping round her face, had squelched her way up the steps and now joined the party. " Oh, don't hit him ! " she cried. " Poor mite ! He couldn't help it! Never mind, Horace," she continued, rescuing him from the hands of the avenger, who still blubbered and abused him sotto voce. " Don't cry, dear. Mother won't scold you. My friend will go home with you and tell her not to; won't you, Henry? Or would you rather come with me and have your clothes dried, and then mother needn't know ? " " Want to go 'ome to Muvver," sobbed Horace in a desperate crescendo. " That's a brave man," Flora said, bending over him consolingly. " He can't be frightened of her, or he wouldn't say that," she said, aside to Henry. "Take the poor tiny home, will you? Where do you live, Horace dear?" Horace could only shake a dejected head, but his friends joined in, in a sort of chorus. "Ashley buildings, Miss!" " Oh, the model dwellings ! I know," said Flora. " Milman street, Henry. The children will show you the way. You don't mind? " Poor Henry, gasping and half in tears, was still 236 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC staring at the little drowned rat that represented his friend. He had no idea that he could have been so utterly and helplessly terrified at the sight of hu- man life in danger; and he made a shameful effort to say something in reply, to pull himself together and be helpful; conscious that his own part in the late proceedings had had little chance of being heroic. " Flora ! " he stammered, in a faint, breathless voice; and then after a pause of a few seconds, " But you you're " " Oh, I'm all right ! " she answered, in a matter- of-fact way, as if she had just designedly arrived by water to meet him. " It's only a step to my place and dry clothes, and then I'm none the worse. But I don't want this poor baby smacked. Go with him, will you ? " " Of course," said Henry, moving off slowly with the party of children, whose fears had been changed by this time into a round-eyed curiosity and ad- miration of their splendidly attired and distin- guished escort. " 'E's lost 'is cap, Miss," the leader of the party repeated suggestively. " So've I," said Flora, laughing. " We're in the same boat there, Horace. Never mind, he shall have another. Give him a shilling, for me, to buy one, Henry. And hurry him home now, or he'll catch a cold. What luck that it's a warm day! THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 237 Good-bye, Henry. Look in to-morrow, if you've nothing better to do." So saying she extricated herself from a little gaping group of adult spectators, that had silently gathered about her in the past few minutes, and set off for her rooms at a fast walk, while Henry, who, like most Frenchmen, was by nature fond of chil- dren and was at present too shaken to think of ap- pearances, took Horace's damp little hand and led him back to his home, where the splendour of this unexpected apparition, and the unnecessarily large sums of money, bestowed as consolatory presents on the penitent scapegrace, made Horace's mother, so far from beating him, regard him as a hero and benefactor; and provided that hard-working young woman not only with an unaccustomed supper of sausages for her entire family, but material for much boastfully redundant conversation with her neighbours. "'Ah! Are you this little feller's mother?' 'e says; and he smiles that beautiful and raises 'is 'at. So I says ' Yus,' I says. So 'e says ' I'm afraid 'e's got 'isself into trouble,' 'e says. So I says 'Oh?' I says. So 'e says ' Yus,' 'e says, ' but I 'opes,' 'e says, ' as yer won't be 'ard on 'im,' 'e says." It would be supererogatory to set out the moth- er's account, in confused oratio obliqua, of the ac- cident, or record the imaginary speeches that she 238 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC put into her own mouth, as being her ready replies to this fascinating and magnificent stranger; but they were enough to make her the envy of Milman Street for many days, while Horace, among his own set, succeeded in time in imparting the notion, and himself believing, that it would be more ac- curate to state that it was he that saved the lidy, rather than that the lidy had rendered him any par- ticular service by injudiciously following him into the water. His duty in respect of the rescued child dis- charged, D'Albiac put himself into a cab and in a few minutes was in his little library in Cowley Street, alone with his newly-found, exquisite secret. The few crowded seconds of horror through which he had passed, while he believed his friend to be in danger, had stripped the veils from a fact that, it seemed, should have been patently recognisable in any garb, many weeks ago, to any but a wilful ob- scurantist. At least he had greeted it now, and took it to his heart in the first moment of en- thusiasm without a thought of the doleful conse- quences that such an acquaintanceship might in- volve. He loved Flora; he had loved her, he be- lieved, since the first glimpse of that pale, tortured face among the turmoil of the street riot; but cer- tainly, even if that were not the case, since that bright summer day when he had been so absurdly stiff and reticent with her and Chalmers in Bat- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 239 tersea Park. How was it that, knowing his con- stant hunger for her society, he had yet been able to deceive himself so grossly as to his feelings to- wards her, and keep up this vain pretence of a friendship, calm, unemotional and void of passion? In that interminable instant of time, before she cried out her reassurance to him from the hurry- ing yellow water, he had recognised, without the least surprise, that this vivid, flower-like face, slen- der body and kind, soft voice were everything in the world to him, and that if they were to be swept into the horror of the shade he would at least and instantly follow them thither. Dull and deaf must he have been to refuse to hear until this moment what his wise heart had, for so many weeks, been crying loudly and persistently within him. He could laugh now, with a happy thrill of newly- learnt wisdom, as he reflected upon the sophistries he had been contented to accept as excuses for con- duct utterly insane and incomprehensible, but for the admission of his love for Flora; his growing dissatisfaction with Patrice and his unsympathetic relations with her; his craving for a wider, acuter vision in the girl, whose beauty had at first been all-sufficient ; his sudden and absurd desire for a portrait of himself; his boredom among his usual associates and surroundings, and glad anticipation of the quiet hours in the studio; his tolerance of Flora's odd friends; his concealment from his be- 240 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC trothed of his acquaintance with the artist ; his quar- rels and arguments with his friends on subjects that he had, all his life, accepted as immutable and unimprovable; his strangely rapid conversion to humanitarian, social and political heresies that were anathema to most of his own class and repudiated unconsidered, until now, by himself. In the dis- covery of the cause of these rapid alterations in his point of view, he found himself anxiously consid- ering whether his unacknowledged passion had merely blinded his judgment, so that he was pre- pared to accept any monstrosity of untruth as un- assailable fact, so long as it was enunciated by the lips that were dear to him and in the tones he adored. Yet he could not think it was so; for he was unable to separate Flora from her opinions. He knew he did not love her, as for instance he had loved Patrice, for her physical attributes only, or even mainly; in such respects no doubt his be- trothed had been far the more richly endowed. On one side was a notable and acknowledged beauty; on the other a pretty, but by no means re- markable, young woman. It was her ideas that he loved; it was the rebel, the fighter in her that stirred his very soul; it was the passionate pity within the frail, womanly body that made her blue eyes the only eyes in the world for him; the kind, cheerful tolerance that gave the greatest charm to the humorously tender lines of the pure mouth; THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 241 the strain of the actively heroic that lit up the whole gay, dimpled face, and added that to ordinary patiently courageous womanhood which is, through millenniums of suppression, the one last supreme virtue generally lacking ; that, when present in some exceptional member of the sex, makes her the matchless boast of humanity, comparable only to those few great men in whom a generous admixture of feminine tenderness has softened the rough tyranny of man. " The female male in which shall culminate the race " Henry repeated to himself, thoughtfully; and if "God in the garden hid his face " it could only be to conceal his blushes for having failed for so long to see the beautiful possi- bility of such a creature. The heroic! It was that, above all, that struck home to the enthusiastic heart of the Frenchman, member of a race whose national ideal is the lovely, girlish magnanimity and courage of Jeanne of Domremy. And what won- der that he should have accepted her leadership, much as rough La Hire accepted the leadership of the Maid herself, in sober trust that a nature so sweet, so self-denying, so aspiring could at least draw one on to no mean and selfish end; that such frank, gentle reasonableness was likely to be a true guide ; one that it would be foolish and masterful to reject? These ideas and ideals of hers, some al- ready half accepted by him, others still clamour- ing confidently for acceptance what was their 242 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC ancestry? And why were they to be so easily vic- torious over his own prejudices? One and all they sprang from Compassion, the basis of the great Buddhistic and primitive Christian beliefs, the in- spiration of all that was, to Henry's mind, best in modern rationalistic philosophy. Admit that many of them might ultimately prove impossible of at- tainment, Utopian, Millennial; none the less they were in themselves fine and noble conceptions, worthy of something better than the scornfully smiling rejection without examination, which was their usual fate, at least in the circles of society in which he moved; deserving, it seemed to him, of life-long study and struggle, in the hope that it might one day prove that the impossible became possible; the unpractical and sentimental the high- est form of wisdom and racial efficiency. And al- ready he had been forced to admit that many of the difficulties and cloudy barriers with which they were surrounded were artificial; the work of con- scious selfishness at times, but more often of mere inertia, the desperate resistance to movement and change that is the master-passion of the average human being. Henry was abashedly aware of the presence of this intellectual sloth and cowardice in his own nature. How likely was it, he reflected humbly, that he would ever have recognised the mighty possibilities of the future and the absolute obligation on all men and women to contribute their THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 243 individual push at the great wheel, however puny their strength, had Flora's personality not come haphazard across his path? So, with the requickened memory of the beloved woman herself, his speculative mood passed, and he fell into the ordinary day-dreams of a lover. Flora! Flora! He repeated the name to himself a hundred times aloud in his comfortable solitude, with a rapture that was no doubt fatuous enough. It seemed to him the loveliest name borne by woman; worthy, as no other name could be, of that exquisitely tinted face, that was itself so like some fair garden rose, and of the whole slender delicacy of the lithe body. Thus only, indeed, must the goddess of flowers and the gay Springtime have been conceived by the poets. There was the requisite dash of the brave and adventurous in its sound, too. Flora Macdonald his recollection of the exploits of this famous lady was not alto- gether clear ; but at least he was confident that they were of a gallant and self-sacrificing character. Love to D'Albiac was a serious matter; none of the tepid, well-disciplined emotions that, as a rule, are the forerunners of marriage. Nor, in his mind, had it any necessary association with the domestic union. Truly, in the case of Patrice, it had led him to make the approved proposition; for the love that she inspired there was no other possible end. In a previous attack of the same madness, in his 244 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC own country, the object being of inferior class, his passion had conducted to an irregular communion, broken off, after a couple of years, at the cost of some tears and various economic arrangements. For the present at least neither of these ends oc- curred to his mind as desirable; indeed they hardly presented themselves at all. , Had they done so, the second would have been rejected at once, as un- worthy of association, even mentally, with Flora; while the first, although it would have struck his re- lations and friends as impossibly absurd and repre- hensible, might, in the excitement of the moment, have received perfectly serious and careful consid- eration. But so far the conception of the beloved object in his mind was so entirely spiritual and re- moved from the usual emotions of sex, that he had no other thought or desire than to be allowed to be enrolled as a humble friend and disciple, amply re- warded by a gay smile of comradeship, or by one of her stirring phrases of encouragement and en- thusiasm. His earliest feeling towards her, one of distrust and disaffection for her opinions, warring with invincible attraction to her personality, had thus by this time almost entirely boxed the compass. Flora had become to him the symbol of human ideals and, as such, her personality was at times al- most forgotten; and his most constant present un- easiness was due to the feeling that he was still so far removed from her in comprehension and dar- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 245 ing; so slow-witted, unworthy, narrow and cow- ardly. What must she think of a young man who was such a slave to the opinion of his class, so selfishly averse from putting himself to any per- sonal inconvenience in a noble cause? How swift and brave she was, this weak slip of a woman, who exposed herself voluntarily to the brutality of angry, fighting crowds; gladly underwent the cruelties and privations of prison; flung herself without the hesitation of a moment into a swirling river, for the sake of a ragged child; lost friends, money, reputation, and invited coarse insult, tyranny and stupid contempt for the thing that she believed to be right! The memory of that small, drowned figure, black-haired, shivering and dismally drip- ping and squelching, as it bent with lovely mother- liness over the unfortunate ragamuffin that it had snatched from death, was dearer and more beauti- ful to his mental vision than the fairest image of his flaming-haired, statuesque Patrice, in all the artistry of her wonderful raiment. How she would have clasped her pretty, helpless hands, and called ineffectually on her maman, while the child drowned; useless as he himself, who was capable of letting the disaster end while he hung in inde- cision ! " Don't cry, dear ! " The little phrase persistently haunted his mind, with its soft, sooth- ing gentleness, and that faintly discernible North- ern intonation which added a kindly charm to the 246 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC endearment. So about and about the common- place and undistinguished figure of the painter Henry wandered ceaselessly, viewing it from every point, and finding ever, in his enthusiasm, new and admirable qualities and fresh reasons for his de- termination to be worthy of her friendship and to keep it for his own, even at the cost of losing every- thing else that he had, until now, held dear. Sleep did not cure or weaken his obsession; nor, as the days passed, did time affect it, further than to strengthen his confident belief that his life was inseverably bound to Flora's. It was now his main object to remodel his mind on hers ; and he frankly accepted the position of pupil, which he would have before proudly rejected in relation to any, even the greatest, of instructors; glad only to be able to be of service in small matters to his mistress. The obedience of his attitude amused her at first, but, before long, roused her to a friendly remon- strance. " I don't know what's come over you, Henry," she said, laughing at his servile acceptance of some proposition that she herself realised to be highly de- batable. " I think the society of us cranks has knocked all the spirit out of you. When I first knew you, you were a most contradictory and war- like person. You mustn't get into the other ex- treme, and believe everything we tell you, without thinking." THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 247 " But you're always right," he replied, in per- fect good faith. " Oh, no, we're not," Flora said, shaking her head vigorously. " Don't you see we're always disagreeing among ourselves ? In fact, there's only one point in which I feel confident that we're right, and that is that we stir each other up to argue things out and quarrel about them, instead of living entirely on phrases acquired from our grandparents. And you've got to help, you know. Come on, let's quarrel about something ! " He protested that he would have no chance in such an encounter; that, moreover, he agreed with everything she said; but his friend would not let him off in that way. " You don't, you wicked humbug ! " she said re- provingly. " Just think of the things you've swal- lowed whole, when I've offered them to you tenta- tively! Some of them I've hardly believed myself. And yet they don't seem to make any difference to you." " How do you mean ? " he asked with an uneasy prescience of her reply. " Well, you're still quite contented to be idle and luxurious. It's no good denying it. Spiritually you're fat; probably one day you'll be so corporeally, unless you reform and take exercise. You don't want to remain a bull of Bashan, do you?" 248 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " You know that I intend I see the necessity ' I'm only looking about I quite agree with you," he stammered, knowing the accusation to be deserved. " You agree, principally, to keep me quiet, I be- lieve," Flora replied, with the ruminative twist of her mouth, as she turned her clear-seeing eyes upon him. They were, at the time, in his gorgeous little drawing-room, where he had persuaded her for the first time to be his guest at tea. " And I'm afraid you don't look very hard, do you? You haven't even asked me if I can suggest anything fpr you to do; because you probably know I could, you lazy person." It was true. Henry had an unacknowledged dread of some extremely inacceptable job being thrust upon him, if he left the choice to Flora, who seemed to have little sympathy with the niceness acquired from his upbringing. He was very com- fortable as he was ; and lacked the necessary energy to turn theory, of his own initiative, into action. " But do you know of any positions ? " he be- gan. " Oh, heaps. You see the question of means doesn't arise; and there's always plenty of useful unpaid work going begging." " But suitable to me ? " he urged, nervously. " Everything's suitable in some degree to every- body," Flora declared. " That's to say if one's THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 249 normal. I don't mean that professional football would be exactly the thing for you, if you'd been born without any legs. But, of course, there are places in which your particular powers would be more useful than in others. Oh, I'll find you some- thing, if you'll let me. Don't you be afraid of that." " Thank you," he said humbly. " You know I want to be some good in the world, Flora. I hate you to think of me as fat." Indeed he writhed in spirit at the picture pre- sented of graceless pinguitude wallowing among the fleshpots in the midst of a strenuous world. Flora laughed delightedly at his ruefulness; and her laughter was so pretty and infectious that he joined in at last, with a sudden insane impulse to take her in his arms and punish her mockery with kisses. It was the first time that such a desire had manifested itself so plainly and strongly; and, but that he felt that such a rough and unheralded ac- tion would probably put an end there and then to their friendship, he had yielded to his longing; the force of which sent a dark flush to his face. " Poor fellow ! What a shame to laugh at you," said Flora presently, with mock contrition, observ- ing his change of colour and attributing it, prob- ably, to wounded vanity or anger. " But you are rather a hedonist, aren't you? Think of you, at your age, in this truly charming house! Sofas 250 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC and armchairs," she looked about the room for material for the indictment, " beautiful teacups and silver ; two men servants, at least, for I've seen them already; several maids, I s'pose; probably an ex- pensive cook; a grand piano; your great, snorting motor car; lovely clothes," she dimpled as she re- garded him. " Lots of fine books and pictures ; velvet curtains all for one young man, who prob- ably only spends quite an insignificant part of his day here, and hasn't done one stroke of useful work in his life. Oh, it's so bad for you! You can't think how fattening it all is ! " "What d'you want me to do?" he asked, rest- ively; for he was well aware of his Sybaritic proclivities, and had until lately, indeed, made a merit of them, and proclaimed them, candidly, in society. " I ? It's not for me to exact anything, even if I could. But I wonder at you being contented to be a drone. You're capable of better things than that." " But if one happens to have money " he pro- tested " It's no good hoarding it." " But surely there are better objects to spend it on than gratifying one's senses. I'm not thinking now about the effect on others for the actual sum's insignificant but on the person who spends it. Every man's a potential reformer; and the rich have the greatest chances and the greatest tempta- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 2-51 tions of all, of course. It does seem odd, to one who hasn't been put in the position, that they should almost always give way to the temptation, and swamp their souls in eating and drinking and lying soft." " But then you admire renunciation. That's quite a bygone creed," Henry argued, morally. " I admit it," she sighed, " but it's got to come back again, if the world's to go forward instead of backward. And now I'm off; I've got appoint- ment in Oxford Street in five-and-twenty minutes." " I never saw such a person to run about," he grumbled. " You haven't been here more than half an hour. When shall I see you again? May I call to-morrow ? " " Not to-morrow. I've got a meeting in the afternoon, and it'll take me all I know to get through my work before it. Friday, I promised to spend part of the day with Adelaide Perry. Sat- urday afternoon, Fred Sutton's coming round and Emily Westbrook. Would you like to come too ? " " I will if I can. But I want to talk to you by yourself," he said rather sheepishly, without look- ing at her. " I really do mean to work, Flora, and I want to discuss it with you, so that you can help me to find some. There's something going on at the Opera next week German music, I believe. Would you like to come some evening with me, and have some supper afterwards? " 252 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC "Yes. That'll be nice. Let's see Meister- singer's on Tuesday; I could manage that." " I'll take a couple of stalls," said Henry grate- fully. " Not stalls, I beg. I can't stand the lower part of the house. There's a sort of sympathetic bore- dom all over it that's quite destructive of one's full enjoyment. And then it's expensive." " But you're coming with me." " Oh, that's very kind ; but I'd rather pay for myself, unless you're very anxious to be generous. Two amphitheatre stalls, Henry, near the front, if you can get them. I won't ask you yet to come up to the slips, though that's where I take most of my opera. Good-bye; and send me a post card about meeting you, in case I don't see you on Saturday." She shook his hand, and was gone and out of the house, before a lethargic footman had time to at- tend to the bell that his employer rang. Henry himself, peeping out between the curtains, watched the retreating figure until it turned the corner of the street, and then returning to the middle of the room paced restlessly up and down for a time, with his hands clasped tightly behind him and his eyes on the ground. Presently he knelt swiftly down on the carpet by the armchair in which his guest had sat, and, with tears in his foolish eyes, kissed the arms on which her hands had rested and the has- sock on which she had placed her foot. The foot- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 253 man, entering inopportunely to remove the tea- tray, would have surprised him engaged in these amorous exercises, had his master not craftily feigned, by sweeping his hand over the carpet, to be looking for something beneath the chair; subse- quently speaking to the man of a gold pencil dropped, which the housemaids were to seek. It is embarrassing to be compelled to depict one's hero in such grovelling and sentimental postures; but he was young, and, what is more, the member of a race whose views as to what is befitting conduct for a man when emotionally stirred are perennially diverting to us. For the first time since their acquaintance had begun, the idea of marriage with Flora openly marched into his mind and entrenched itself inex- pugnably. It seemed to the enamoured gentleman manifest that his previous cardiacal experiences had been the foolish delusions of one too anxious to love, before having realised the true nature of the passion. In both of the only entanglements that could be considered at all serious, it was the physical aspect of the matter that had alone ap- pealed to him. Yes; he acknowledged now that it had been none the less so in the case of the proud Miss Beaufoy than in that of Jeanne Allard. Patrice and he had never been truly joined by any spiritual bond, much as he had striven to believe so; a fact that had become instantly patent to both 254 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC when the first opportunity for full intellectual in- tercourse had arisen. It was but the least endur- ing portion of her that he had adored; certain trivialities of form and colour that would be ex- changed at no distant date, no doubt, for the un- lovely pachydermy of Mrs. Beaufoy. Flora, on the other hand, had drawn him from the first by her mental qualities, chiefly if not altogether. It was the love of her wise and friendly comradeship that had separated him so swiftly from his be- trothed and bade him follow her into a hundred paths in life utterly remote from the high roads to which he was accustomed; nor was it until this afternoon that the bodily attraction, necessary to complete the love of the sexes, had frankly dis- closed itself. Yet it was no faint longing bred of frequent propinquity. The violence of it had been almost overpowering; had as nearly as possible precipitated him into action that would have de- stroyed their relations. This then was true love; intellect and senses inextricably interwoven, so that it passed the wit of man to say which was warp and which woof. The surprise of this remark- able discovery was as great to Henry as if it was not being made around him by ten thousand other minds at the identical moment; as it was in the beginning, or very near it, is now, and probably shall be for a considerable time to come. But marry her marry her ? The proposition THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 255 seemed simple enough; and yet his mind was torn a dozen ways by doubt and convention. She would not marry him, he tried to say, to account for this indecision. But his pride and intelligence rebelled at this statement. It was plain she liked him at least as well, probably better than any of her other male friends, except perhaps Sutton; and the Socialist's age and appearance must surely, even with Flora, put him out of the question. With the least con- ventional woman, youth and strength and good looks must necessarily start with a considerable ad- vantage. Then she was lonely; a reason for many marriages. Moreover she was badly off; though he did not believe that the prospect of a large in- come would offer any very strong inducement to an acceptance. Still it probably counted for some- thing. And however levelling and democratic her creed, she must indeed be an unique specimen of her class if, in the depths of her heart, she was quite unmoved by the position of her wooer; or, at least, touched by the sacrifice he was making in asking her hand. For to marry Flora, there was no de- nying, would almost undoubtedly mean cutting him- self adrift from his own class; throwing over all the large circle of pleasant friends that he had ac- cumulated since his boyhood, and casting himself into an entirely new stratum of life, with no inti- mate but his wife. It was not that Flora was not as well-behaved as any, better educated than most, 256 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC and cleverer than all of them. But even if she con- sented to disguise her opinions, which was little likely, even if she changed them when changing her station, which was hardly credible, the question as to where he had found his bride would still be asked, and a misalliance would be immediately de- tected. Misalliances may with patience be lived down, where the contemned partner is particularly imitative and compliant; but compliance was not Flora's leading virtue, he thought, with a lover's smile at the remembrance of an impudently tilted head and a softly defiant voice. Again it would be possible to take her back with him as his wife to his own land, where in the present extremely agree- able and no doubt indestructible relations between the two countries, a charming English Mees, mar- ried or unmarried, aristocratic or canaille, would be likely to be received with something like en- thusiasm. But would she go ? Would she give up all her interests in her own country to expatriate herself permanently? And, if not, what other course was open, except for him to leave his proper circle and enter one which, he could not deny, did not at the moment seem at all an adequate sub- stitute for that to which he was accustomed. It was good to be revolutionary, brotherly and all the rest of it for part of the day, in theory, with the prospect of returning home at will; but it was a different thing to burn one's bridges behind one. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 257 Henry paused in his walk, as the full realisation of the step that he would have to take dawned upon him, and stood as the benighted traveller stands, haggardly gazing over the dark precipice at the brink of which he has hardly contrived to stop in time. A life of Suttons, Miss Perrys, and Mrs. Westbrooks; of Baer's tea-shops; of interminable bothering and hard work over political and social matters; of vain attempts to win a footing for a perversely revolutionary wife among the people whose society he really enjoyed and who pitied him, no doubt, as one who has taken an unfortunate false step ; invited sometimes to dinners, en gargon; probably precipitated, as some form of rich radical member, into the House of Commons, to be reviled as a renegade, and associate with abhorred plutoc- racy; treated as a pariah, to whom his rank and wealth were worthless as unable to purchase that consideration and awe which is their chiefest and most precious use. By this time poor Henry's brain was spinning with the whippings to which he subjected it from every point. Such a picture of his life was suffi- ciently uninviting; and yet the gay- faced, sweet- voiced will-of -the- wisp still floated temptingly be- fore him over the treacherously green marsh, and his feet seemed to have lost the power of standing still to allow him even the briefest space for seri- ous consideration of his peril. He sighed fatal- 258 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC istically; for the present, he felt, he was incapable of any scheme or resolution, and resigned himself as recklessly to the stream, as his friend had done to save a child's life. One thing alone was certain among all these divers embarrassments; Flora was too dear to him to be cast aside, whatever the ulti- mate consequences might be. Let it be for the future to decide the end of the story; for the pres- ent all he hoped or desired was the speedy advent of their next meeting. X ONCE wholly resigned to the influence of the Chelsea artist the dcgringolade of the Baron D'Albiac was necessarily rapid and complete. Still torn by conflicting doubts as to the possibility of marrying the object of his infatuation, he was at least determined to make himself " worthy of her," as he fondly phrased it, by embracing every article of her creed; political, social, artistic, theo- logical et tout le bataclan, to quote Monsier Lechat. The natural result of such behaviour, although at first he failed to recognise the fact, was to separate him from his friends hardly less suddenly and en- tirely than the marriage, over which he exercised his mind daily, could have done. He was not con- stantly, or even very frequently, in her company; for her many occupations and friends monopolised the greater part of her time, and he was jealous of sharing her with others. But, in the intervals be- tween their meetings, he could not often so far vary his mood as to enjoy the occupations proper to his condition; and it became notorious that Mr. D'Albiac, although well-known to be in London, was refusing invitations, with a persistence which deliciously suggested some hidden scandal. Many ingenious and pleasant stories were related in ex- 259 260 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC planation of this state of things; but the only two sources from which some inkling of the real truth might have been drawn were temporarily stopped; the Beaufoys for obvious reasons, and Roddy Chalmers, because he was competing in a motor race round Europe, which he was unlikely to win, having through an oversight, as he afterwards ex- plained, started the wrong way round. The cerebral dialectics over the marriage question were only indulged in solitary hours ; while he was actually in the presence of his Flora, he swum in a bliss that he hardly endeavoured to disguise from her. Covent Garden Theatre being then open for a season of music-drama, Mrs. Evans' artistic side was displayed uppermost for a few weeks; and she introduced Henry, from various uncomfortable and crowded positions in the great house, to certain extremely serious entertainments. Probably he had attended at performances of most of them be- fore ; but they were not of the kind dear to Patrice ; and, for any recollection he had of them, they might have all been entire novelties. With such an eminently practical nature as Flora's, he was as- tonished to observe with what unnecessary concern and enthusiasm she partook of these intricate and generously lengthy dramas. The private affairs and misadventures of all these prolix and monoc- ular greybeards, the highly ramified love tragedies of these hearthrug-clad and nightgowned gentle- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 261 men and ladies, most of whom did not appear to have lost any weight through their troubles, de- pressed or exalted Flora, as if those concerned had been members of her own family. After one particularly trying evening in the hot gallery, dur- ing the latter part of which Henry had almost screamed aloud, at times, in a sort of agitated bore- dom, at the repeated delirious throes of a sick man on a couch, attended by one of the inevitable grey- beards, who confined his ministrations to pulling the disordered bedclothes up to the patient's chin between each incomprehensible attack, Flora's cheeks were wet with tears, and she was not able to utter more than a few broken words on the way home. Oddly enough, too, Henry found that he himself began to be strangely interested, after a few performances, in this welter of extraordinary sounds, vast and complicated scenery, passionate and uncomprehended invective and grief, and oc- casional nerve-shattering outbursts of orchestral riot. His homeward-bound questions to Flora on the meaning of what he had seen became less duti- ful, more frequent and more spontaneous. From the abdominal gruntings and bello wings of the greybeards, from the crashes and polyphonic con- fusion of the band, from the extraordinary inter- vals and screams of the soprani, a music slowly distilled, a weird, unforgettable, unrememberable music, that worried him and yet drove him back, 262 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC even without Flora's companionship, to hear more and ever more of it. When there was no more available opera, he took to following the same music in concert halls; and here occasionally Flora joined him, insisting on these occasions, with her usual perversity, that they should be seated close under the roof ; and at these dizzy altitudes he made his first acquaintance with the A major symphony, and sat open-mouthed, striving to attach a mean- ing to the tricksy caprioles of Eulenspiegel, or the insoluble riddles of Zarathustra. Even more heroic was his dietary reform. At- tendance at unloved entertainments had, after all, been a regular feature of his social life; but sub- jection of the natural appetites was a daily and life- long discipline for which he had had as yet no practice or inclination. It astounded him to dis- cover how much interest he, by no means a gourmand, must have taken in his meals, when he observed the hardship and sense of loss that at- tended his abjuration of feasting. Flora seemed provokingly unconscious of the sacrifice he was making for her, whether because she was by nature something of an ascetic or had become so by long habit, he could not say. It mortified him at times to be aware of the rebellion of his stomach at the insipidity of its entertainment, and of the warm de- sire for a comfortable meal, long-drawn and dain- tily served, at some moment when his friend was THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 263 saying carelessly, " Well, I s'pose we'd better get something to eat somewhere now, because I've got an appointment in ten minutes, and I expect it'll keep me for two or three hours." It reminded the delicately nourished Frenchman of nothing so much as the inconsiderate behaviour related of a famous private detective, on the occasion when he invoked the assistance pf a medical friend in a case of crime, on the distinct understanding that after its denouement he would entertain him at lunch; and, after a most athletic morning, during which his dupe had violently arrested several dangerous criminals on his friend's behalf, coolly informed the unhappy Esculapian that there was just time to get a biscuit before going to hear Sarasate (in whom it is inconceivable that the worthy doctor took any sort of interest) play at St. James' Hall. However it seemed an unworthy thing for a man and a soldier to be crying out for his comforts and luxuries in the face of this feminine austerity; and he made it so much of a pose to appear equally unconscious of these grovelling desires that the thing became an artistic pleasure, and ultimately passed into a habit that he had scarcely a wish to break. But this consummation was not reached before he had fought down many regrets for the loss of the amateur's appreciation of fragrant red wine, subtly spiced dishes and the rare aroma that tobacco reserves for the replete. 264 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC As a citizen he went from bad to worse. Fred Sutton, a man of a diabolically insinuating interest, had had Henry tossed to him by Flora, as a biscuit is tossed to a dog; and, for fear of offending her, D'Albiac submitted, with as good a grace as he could assume, to the arguments and theories of her friend; permitting himself to be introduced into societies and clubs of like heretical opinions, and joining at times in their discussions, with the dis- tressing result that he came away on each occasion more and more ashamed of his own comfortable circumstances, which he had come to regard as un- merited. The consequences of this wicked in- gratitude for the manifold bounties that had been showered upon him may be conceived; little by little Henry developed into that justly abhorred and boycotted personality, " a traitor to his class " ; one who encourages the base jealousy and incom- prehensible acquisitiveness of the proletariat against those more cultured and refined sections of the community, among which such vices are prac- tically unknown. Even his outer man began to deteriorate; sometimes, horrible to relate, he hardly was unmistakably a gentleman. He was known to have put his comfortable bachelor house into the hands of agents for disposal, to have been deserted by his butler in consequence of his revised method of life, and by his footman and valet because he took no steps to fill the vacancy caused by the first THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 265 defection, thus rendering the household one in which they could not, with proper self-respect, re- main. Shutters appeared at the windows in Cowley Street; an imaginatively eulogistic notice-board hung before it; and where the late owner now resided, or in what way he was spending his con- siderable wealth, remained mysteries to the society world. His appearances in any civilised part of the town grew rare to the vanishing point; nor would his late friends have thought of looking for him in the dingy office near Holborn Viaduct, where, about Christmas-time, he began to pass part of each day, concerned in activities that were little better than criminal. The marring of a gentleman makes unpleasant matter for relation; but it is necessary to mention one or two trumpery details, if only to show into what absurdities his perverted tendencies inevitably led him. The name of a certain Henry Dalbiac came into public notice, in a manner shortly to be described; and it appeared subsequently that this Dalbiac of January was identical with the D'Albiac of November. Henry had, on some oc- casion, referred with natural annoyance, in Flora's hearing, to the insulting carelessness of an English friend, who constantly addressed letters to him, spelling his name in the less noble manner ; and had elicited the unsympathetic reply, to be expected from a woman of her class, that " all that sort of 266 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC thing struck her as rather trivial; her landlady made up her weekly book under the name of Mrs. Heavens or Mrs. Evans quite indifferently, accord- ing to the fancy of the moment; and as long as it was obvious who was meant, it wasn't worth bothering about." It is hardly credible, but none the less true, that this careless and plebeian remark was sufficient to cause Henry deliberately to vul- garise his own patronymic; and it serves to display the influence that the painter had acquired over his character in hardly a less degree than the fact that he ceased to conform to 1 his observances as a Roman Catholic without, it seemed, embracing any alternative form of public worship. Like many men of his class, he had always regarded religion more from its political than its spiritual standpoint; and it was this view of it to which Flora took ex- ception. " If you must believe something of that kind," she remarked, " I don't want to interfere with your belief. Everyone's got to decide that for himself. But it's outrageously wicked to play on people's superstitions for social reasons." There was a play running at that time in London, an adaptation from the French, which emphasised the cruelty of endangering the comfort of people in their theological beliefs by revealing one's own infidelity. A priest, who was one of the principal characters, decided it to be his duty to present a THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 267 periodical miracle to the people, rather than see their unhappiness at being told that it was a sham. Henry pleaded this authority, but received only an obstinate reply. " Truth's the only possible thing to cling to ; any- thing that depends on lies and humbug is noxious and doomed to disaster," she maintained, with her dimpled chin in the air. " I call your play a dis- gustingly immoral one." And, as usual, the com- pliant lover was quickly of the like opinion. Christmas-time found him ensconced in an ob- scure lodging not far from the studio; and it was here that he hung up his portrait, when it arrived from the framemakers; and here that he received Flora's Christmas present, a red-leather copy of " Beauchamp's Career," accompanied by a note, containing the hope that the Commander would be- come Henry's favourite " hero " in fiction, as he was that of yours very sincerely F. Evans. The value that the Frenchman attached to this small volume was out of all proportion to the three shill- ings and sixpence that it had cost the purchaser; and, although the luxurious and effulgent beauty of the author's style seemed at first likely to thin his perplexed reader's glossy hair, it was not long be- fore his enjoyment of the story aroused an unap- peasable hunger for more from the same great pen ; and he had shortly added a trinity of womanhood to his theogony Loveliness, Wit, and Courage 268 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC in the persons of Clara, Diana, and Carinthia. So far, foolish as he had been, Henry had not actually committed himself beyond recovery. Sup- posing his infatuation for Flora to have passed off, he might yet have returned to the sphere he had previously adorned, and " no questions asked," as the advertisements for lost dogs express it. But, about the middle of January, a blow fell on the circle of his acquaintance, at first incredible, but subsequently to be confirmed, which destroyed the last hope of his rehabilitation. Another of these odious disturbances over the franchise, which had recurred lately with disgraceful frequency, took place ; and among the casualties was Henry Dalbiac, 25, no occupation, taken prisoner. A very clear case of obstructing the police in the execution of their duty and of attempted rescue having been made out against him, the magistrate, who took a sound, commonsense view of the enfranchisement question, and had more than once sternly silenced the prisoner's impudent attempts to defend himself from certain of the accusations, sentenced the fallen aristocrat to fourteen days in the second division; adding a well-merited eulogium of his own leniency, and foreshadowing the most far-reaching and awe- inspiring improvements of the present law, if these manifestations did not immediately cease. These remarks having been greeted with " applause in court," distinctly audible to the Press Agency re- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 269 porter who was present, the convicted fanatic was removed for a fortnight's meditation over his mis- deeds. Roddy Chalmers, returning from his Continental trip at about this time, was one of the first people to greet the malefactor on his release; and his ac- count of the lamentable transformation of the for- merly smart and popular young man-about-town caused quite a nine days' wonder at the dinner and lunch tables that he frequented. Patrice received the news with a shuddering silence, which she de- clined to break by the expression of any opinion. It cannot be said whether she congratulated herself on her escape from a man of these atrocious pro- clivities, or whether, which is more likely, she at- tributed his ruin to that vile woman who was no more than a name and a vague idea of infamy to her. No word could be drawn from her on the sub- ject, although her maman made several attempts to discuss it; and finally, at the mere mention of Hen- ry's name, she would instantly seek the privacy of her own room. Mrs. Beaufoy was however avid of any news on the subject ; and, in the absence of her daughter on a visit, succeeded at last in capturing the elusive Chalmers for a dinner party, at which several of Henry's old friends, including Mr. Col- man and Lord Honiton, were present. " Now, let's hear somthing about this unhappy Henry D'Albiac," she said, as soon as a suitable 270 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC silence fell on the table. " I'm sure you can tell us all about it. You've got such extraordinary friends, Roddy; and, besides, you've actually met that dreadful person that he's entangled himself with." " Oh, yes ! Please ! " cried out another lady, from lower down the table. " Poor Monsieur D'Albiac! I thought he was so nice when I met him." " I always thought I always said and in this you'll bear me out I'm sure, Mrs. Beaufoy," Lord Honiton began, weightily, " that there was some- thing wrong about the young man. In the position towards your family that he then held, I was scarcely able " " Oh, but he was quite charming and sensible." his hostess interrupted him, " until he met this creature. Poor Henry! I was very fond of him. Have you actually seen him since he disgraced himself, Roddy?" " What, old Jools ! " answered Chalmers buoy- antly. " Rather ! I called on him in the two-pair back only last week." " The two-pair back ! Capital ! " cried Mr. Col- man, shrilly. " Do tell us where it is, and why he lives there." " Why, it's in a side street off Chelsea Embank- ment. Bedroom, sitting-room, and use of bath twice a week. Probably young, musical society, THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 271 too," Roddy added, in contortions of laughter, " and hot dinner with the family, at one, on Sun- days." " With the family? With the persons who keep the lodging house ? " asked Honiton, frowning heavily at the suggestion. " Oh, of course, I won't swear to that," Roddy said, with a spasm of gravity. " But that's what I should think; and fourteen shillings a week rent." " Roddy ! " protested Mrs. Beauf oy. " It's a fact," he maintained, as earnestly as if he was speaking from knowledge and not imagina- tion. " And there was old Jools sitting in a rum little room, furnished with kitchen chairs and a portrait of himself and a lot of Meredith's novels. I give you my word he tried to palm one of 'em off on me, but I told him I hadn't read anything for months except ' Where's Master ? by Csesar ' hadn't any time for it. Oh, he's lovely, Mrs. Beauf oy ! You really ought to call on him." The jocosity of his memories was so extreme that he almost choked himself to death in an en- deavour to combine excessive laughter with con- tinuing his meal. " Is he so very odd ? You don't mean he's mad?" " Not a bit ; at least not really mad. I mean to say, he doesn't think he's a teapot or anything yet. In fact, to my taste, he's a jolly sight more 272 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC amusing than he ever was before, and that's saying something too, because he was always rather witty. But you'd hardly know him now, if you met him." " Why not? Is he altered in appearance? " " You remember what lovely clothes Jools al- ways wore, don't you? I used quite to blush for my own when I was out with him. Well, he turned up the other evening rushed in suddenly while I was waiting for him, pretending he'd been working so hard that he couldn't get away before in an old shooting coat a Norfolk jacket with the belt hanging down behind; about half an inch of moustache, and his hair all sticking up on end, as if he hadn't brushed it for a fortnight. Sort of Great- What-is-it, or Woolly Wonder of the Wild West, don't y' know? Frightful hurry he was in; said he could only give me half-an-hour, unless I liked to come and dine with him at Miles', because he'd promised Fred Sutton that's an- other patient to go to a meeting of the Jolly Dynamiters, or something." " Miles' ? Miles' ? " said Mrs. Beauf oy, re- flectively. "Yes. It's a place where you sit on perches and eat nuts. Jools won't eat meat now, because he's afraid the cow will say he's no gentleman. So, of course, I went with him to Miles' I'd often been before with other people and he kept me in fits all through dinner ; if you can call it dinner. And we THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 273 were waited on by a jolly good-looking girl, too," he concluded, with a reminiscent sentimentality. " But is he really an anarchist and all those dreadful things, as people say?" asked someone. " Oh, rather ! I got quite nervous, at times, at the awful things he said he was going to do to us all, presently; and I told our little waitress not to give him too sharp a knife to cut up his roast Prochick with, in case I got the wrong side of him, by mistake." " I believe you're making fun of us," cried Colman, with a pretty pout of dissatisfaction. " You're a dreadful tease. Mrs. Beaufoy, don't let's believe him, shall we ? " " Do you seriously say, Chalmers," Lord Honiton said, with a grave lowering of his voice, " that in a few months this wretched young man has abso- lutely discarded all the principles that safeguard his Empire, his class, and the faith of his fathers, and has deliberately made himself a social out- law?" " I don't think I quite said that," Roddy shrieked, upsetting his champagne by throwing his head rashly forward among his glasses. " I say ! I'm fright- fully sorry. Shall I stand up for the rest of the meal? No, I'm sure I didn't say that; I couldn't, even if I wanted to. But he's got every sort of fad that was ever invented, if that's what you mean; and seems to enjoy 'em." 274 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " But why? I ask, why? " asked the peer, spread- ing his hands abroad. " How can a man's whole sane, healthy point of view " " But Jools hasn't got any point of view, my dear sir. He does whatever Flora Evans tells him, like a good little boy," Roddy said, rather exhausted by his mirth, and easing his collar with one finger. " That's the person who's got hold of him," Mrs. Beaufoy explained, behind her fan, in a delicate sotto voce, to her nearest neighbours. Some of the men appeared to prick up their ears a little at this; and a young married woman fulfilled the wish of the majority of the guests by asking: " And have you ever seen her ? Is she so very fascinating? Beautiful?" " Flora ? Oh, no. I know her quite well ; I like her very much." Mrs. Beaufoy's pinched glance was expressive, but Roddy insisted. " I do, really. She's a real good sort ; and of course," he added in a discreet manner, in view of the presence at the table of one virgin, aged forty- three, " she's quite respectable and all that sort of thing." "But if she's not good-loking "began the same lady amazedly. " I didn't say she wasn't. She's pretty and amus- ing and that. Only she's not Cleopatra, y'know; you wouldn't pick her out among a crowd. How- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 275 ever, poor old Jools thinks she's splendid; he can't keep her out of his conversation. ' Flora says this ' and ' Flora says that '. It's quite pretty to hear him." " You don't suppose he'll marry this woman your friend, I should say," Mrs. Beaufoy asked, with a half-hearted attempt to refer to her politely. " I beg your pardon ; I forgot for the moment that " " Please don't apologise," Roddy cried, staring wildly about the room with a grin of delight. " She is a woman all right. At least she wears skirts, so I s'pose she is. Yes, I expect to hear they're en- gaged before very long. She's a widow; older than Jools ; no children. It'll be a pretty good match for her." " Good Heavens ! " ejaculated his shocked hostess; and quite a groan of incredulity proceeded from one or two of the guests. Colman shook his head from side to side, smiling feebly, as if the situation was beyond his comment. Only Lord Honiton had the heart to pursue the subject. " And is she a lady ? Is she a member of the same class as D'Albiac? " " Lor' no ! " Roddy answered, cheerfully. " She's a lower-middle-class Scotch girl, and married an en- gine driver or something of that sort. But she talks all right, and knows how to behave. Sort of girl you see in a cash desk, or behind a typewriter." Lord Honiton raised his hands slightly and 276 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC dropped them on his knees again. There seemed to be no more to be said on so unnatural a union. " I say, I s'pose it really was D'Albiac that they sent to I mean to say, whose name we saw one of the young men guests asked rather indis- creetly, considering how painful the pursuit of this side of the subject must be to the lady who was so nearly connected by family ties to the malefactor. " To quod ? That was Jools. He told me all about it ; the food was pretty beastly ; but he wasn't fed, like a hen, with a foot-pump, because it didn't occur to him, I s'pose. Otherwise he's just the chap to insist on it, and say he preferred dining that way." " He was not ashamed of it, of course ? He brazened it out, did he ? " enquired Lord Honiton, with a sneering disgust at such effrontery. " Oh ! He was quite uppish about it ; and really, y'know, it was rather interesting. He told me " " My dear Roddy, I don't think we should care for poor Henry's prison reminiscences. I'm afraid he's done for himself. Probably this young woman, if he marries her, will run through all his money in a year or so, and that'll be the end of him." " She'd better hurry up and marry him then, or there won't be much to run through, as far as I can make out," Chalmers objected. " According to what he told me, he seems to be slinging it about anyhow." THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 277 The presence of the spinster prevented Mrs. Beaufoy enquiring outright whether this prodigality was due to the harpy into whose power Henry had fallen; but the words "On her?" were so plainly written in her raised eyebrows and indignant mouth, that her guest answered them as though she had spoken them. " Oh, no ! On all sorts of crazy things. I didn't understand more than half of 'em. Societies to make us all perfect in ten minutes, and repopulate the world entirely with people who agree with all Jools' new fads. All that sort of thing. It doesn't seem to matter much to him what he spends his money on, so long as he gets rid of the responsibil- ity of having any. I suggested helping him a bit; that's just the sort of job I'm really good at ; but he only called me a fool for my pains." He finished his narration with a surprisingly shrill scream, and plunged forthwith, without any logical transition, into a discussion of the performance of a well-known Society lady; who, in the holy cause of charity, had been recently regaling crowded audi- ences of convivial racing men, festive clerks and undergraduates and their lady associates at a Lon- don music hall, with a generous display of her corporeal charms and of the slightly rudimentary dancing that she had " picked up " from a charming professional in half-a-dozen lessons ; never knowing before, as she explained, that she had any natural 278 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC aptitude for that sort of thing. Even in Roddy's harmlessly absurd mouth this subject became a trifle risque, but most of her guests were so enter- tained that Mrs. Beaufoy had not the heart to inter- rupt the discussion; the more so as it killed all further conversation on the subject of Henry D'Albiac, of whom she wished to hear no more. The news of the dissipation of his fortune was all that was needed to confirm the opinion, already de- livered by her upon him, that he had " done for him- self." And this opinion became, before long, the general verdict of Society. Meanwhile, unconscious and careless of this re- luctant condemnation of his behaviour, Henry con- tinued his new life of self-education, arduous, un- paid work, hasty meals and undistinguished com- panionship with an enjoyment that was already by no means wholly due to his desire to please Flora Evans. It had not seemed possible to him that he could have willingly taken up such a career for its own sake; foregoing all those graceful pursuits that had previously filled his life so pleasantly. He be- gan to find the world out to be a terribly interesting and complex place; filled with the blackness of un- dreamt-of horror, pain and sorrow; but shot across and across with the bright lights of self-sacrifice and courage. From this newly discovered continent his previous idle oasis seemed to recede until it be- came of a smallness almost invisible and negligible. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 279 That ceaseless, objectless dance, as he thought of it in his perverted frame of mind, had nothing to do with the great, sweating, groaning, gallantly strug- gling world, that was ever gaining another inch of foothold, tearing away yet another of the myriad bonds that prevented it putting forth its full strength, and straightening itself, little by little, from a bowed and bound giant to a vic- torious Titan, erect, free and rejoicing. The dance was but the foolish play of epheme- ral gnats about the contorted and damp body from which they draw their life; a wave of whose mighty hand would, before long, drive the useless, irritating crowd away for ever. It has been said before that, when Henry was diverted on to any path, he would pursue it to its end, of his own accord, with all his strength and swiftness; and, al- though Flora was directly responsible for the sub- versive and strenuous activities into which he had thrown himself, he was amused at times to find that the very interest of his work made his visits to the painter fewer than they had been before. Still, however, he had a good deal of her society, and each successive hour passed with her strength- ened the resolution, over which his mind had at first been so wearily exercised, to take her as his wife. It was plain that her opinion of him was im- measurably improved since his downfall. The ele- ment of mischief was almost entirely absent now 280 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC from her attitude towards him ; although there were times when it momentarily revived, when some moribund characteristic of his former self lifted its feeble head. The frank and unsentimental friend- liness with which she treated him was still unaltered ; but he could not doubt that more lay behind it, did he choose to draw the veil from it. In the early months of the year his tongue faltered a hundred times on the very threshold of a declaration ; and as many times crept abashed away before the smiling and apparently unconscious good-fellowship with which the tentative overtures were received. Some special incident, some particularly favourable or ro- mantic environment or opportunity was necessary to give him the heart to take the plunge. He who had been so thoroughly at ease in what he had previously considered affairs of the heart, even when they were of such a nature that he ran the risk, in declaring himself, of an indignant or grieved rebuff, was now as tongue-tied as a schoolboy making his first ad- vances, over the garden wall, to the girl with the plaits, who lives next door. A late frost, at the beginning of March, suddenly threw London into an unwonted carnival of skating. For the best part of a week the sky above was of a soft, clear, apricot colour, the ground beneath one's feet ringing, cracking, and glistening, and the orna- mental waters in the Parks crowded with holiday- makers. On the Saturday afternoon, Flora called THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 281 at Henry's rooms and carried him off with her to the Kensington Gardens, with an invitation to sub- sequent tea in the studio. The Round Pond was packed with people ; and, after a vain attempt to find space to skate, Flora gave up the effort, and amused herself in watching the endless files of merrymakers travelling, in every attitude of confidence and anxiety, down the long slides. Standing beside her, as absorbed in the spectacle as herself, Henry could hardly believe that he was among dull, melancholy Londoners. These poor folk, for whom so slight and rare amusement is provided, were changed in the briefest space to a gay, laughing, shrieking, genial crowd that would have befitted any Conti- nental town. Over and above the unusual excite- ment of having something definite to do, be- sides hanging about the streets, witnessing cine- matographic exhibitions or drinking in public- houses, there was abroad the special exhilaration that is induced by three things alone: swimming, skating, and mountaineering. The air was so full of laughter and merriment that the Gardens, for a quar- ter of a mile about the water, hummed like a busy hive. Rosy shop girls and servants, smart clerks and drapers' assistants, screaming children, piped and capped workmen, mature and bulky uncles and fa- thers, anaemic dressmakers, tall youths from Univer- sities or public schools, even fat elderly mothers of the working class, passed before the eye in an endless, 282 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC rapid procession; holding each other up; knocking each other down; calling out encouragements, jeers and triumphant taunts; finishing at the end of the slide, as often as not, through the fall of a single person, in one enormous, struggling heap, from which the component parts emerged breathless, bruised, but with unruffled tempers. And among and around all hordes of demon boys flickered and squirmed, full of mischief and excitement; a general and yet indulgently tolerated nuisance to the whole community. It was as pleasant a sight as Henry had ever seen ; and he took from it a new and pathetic knowledge of what this sad, northern people might become under only slightly different conditions. Flora be- side him was full of the spirit of the ice; her eyes danced and crackled; and her laughter at each new harmless disaster was sweetest music in her lover's ears. " I can't stand still any longer," she cried, at last. " Come on, Henry. Let's find places in the line." " Slide ? " he asked, with a momentary astonish- ment, and yet with a warm desire, too, in his voice. " Slide," said Flora firmly, and was gone from his side and waiting at the top of the course for her opportunity before Henry had time to say another word on the subject. The next moment, as he hurriedly followed her, he saw her take a short, swift run and fly smoothly THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 283 down the slide, with the same address that she seemed to bring to all bodily exercises ; feet together, arms hanging easily, and body erect. Pressure from behind and encouraging cries sent Henry, an instant afterwards, gliding in the wake of the slim, white- jerseyed figure; and the exhilaration of the thing made him instantly forget that there was any other duty in the world than to travel, in this breath- less rush, down the narrow, slippery path, turn at the end and run seriously back with all speed to await one's next turn. For a good half -hour they continued the sport; sometimes, travelling too fast for those who preceded them, they rushed unavoid- ably into their backs, and carried total strangers in their embrace to the goal; sometimes the like fate befell themselves from more athletic persons behind them. A dozen times at least they were knocked down; and on these occasions Flora showed ex- traordinary speed and address in rolling out of the way of the oncoming procession, and picking her- self up, smiling philosophically, as a school-boy does on such occasions. Henry, weightier and less adroit, was not always so fortunate, and on more than one occasion the Baron D'Albiac of Chateau D'Albiac found himself the base of a hot and violently agitated heap of the lieges, male and female; and, strange to say, ac- cepted the misadventure as amusing. The mad- ness in the air, the utter disappearance of 284 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC conventionality and class distinctions, filled Henry with a desire to settle his fate at once. He wished to be a man of the people; to call a woman of the people his wife ; to be one of the great, patient crowd, fundamentally so brave and cheerful and lovable, even in the conditions that Na- ture and a mistaken social system have jointly forced upon them. This slender, boyish creature, with her laughing, open face, her easy clothes, soft, untidy hair and swift grace, was to his newly born spirit the one woman in the world capable of making him an ideal companion. He must not lose her ; he must not let her out of his sight again until he had made sure of her. A retrospective terror as to what might have happened in the past through his foolish hesi- tation came over him and filled him with contempt for his want of resolution. Dusk began to fall, and Flora regretfully pro- posed that they should return to her rooms. " I haven't enjoyed myself so much for years," she sighed, beating the snow out of her skating cap. " We must come up again to-morrow, unless it thaws to-night. Can you ? " He agreed, with a rapturous anticipation of what was to happen between then and now. To-day they were friends ; to-morrow they might be must be, should be betrothed lovers. The fateful question nearly escaped from him in the noisy, unromantic streets on the way home; and when Flora, as was THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 285 a habit with her, took him momentarily by the arm to impress some point on him, he almost fondled the little, warm hand, in prophetic proprietorship. At the corner of the Fulham Road, as they were waiting to cross, a woman, who was slowly passing them, stopped suddenly, looked into D'Albiac's face, and said quickly, " Henry ! " The young man, recognising in a flash that it was his associate in his brief career of consolatory dissi- pation, Miss Kitty Wilson, turned his face quickly away from her, and made an unsuccessful attempt to cross the road, under the very nose of a van- horse. The next moment Flora touched his arm. " Henry," she said, casually, " there's somebody speaking to you." Miss Wilson, suddenly realising that the French- man was not alone, had moved discreetly away, and Henry made an effort to pass the matter off. " Some mistake. Come on," he said, reddening. There was a look of watchfulness and resolution in Flora's eyes. " No, please," she said. " She called you by your name. Do go and speak to her. There's no hurry ; you can follow me on ; I'll walk slowly." Henry gave a fling of annoyance ; the more so that he saw that Miss Wilson was looking back at them. But he knew Flora too well to resist. " Oh, yes ! Of course," he said awkwardly. " I 286 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC didn't see. All right ; I'll follow you in a minute." Flora nodded and crossed the road, while he moved impatiently after the retreating figure of his dyspeptic friend. It struck him that she looked shabby and worn, and her face, as she smiled at him, was pale; and the sight immediately quenched his rising fire of anger at this awkward rencounter. XI THE interview between Dalbiac and his former friend proved unexpectedly long, for Flora had been a sufficient time in her studio to boil the water for tea, before his foot was heard upon the stair and he entered, with a drawn and serious face; a contrast to the cheerful countenance with which he had left the Kensington Gardens. He sat down in silence in the saddle-bag chair which Flora reserved for the use of her guests, being herself one of those lively personalities for whom lounging has no charm, and received his tea-cup from her hands with quite a per- functory smile. Clearly something had happened that had temporarily diverted his mind from its pleasant recollections and anticipations ; for he scarcely glanced at his friend's attentive face as he thanked her. " Nothing wrong, I hope? " she asked, softly. Henry gave a little start, and seemed to shake him- self together. " Nothing at all, thanks," he replied, with a more natural smile. " I was only wool-gathering." " Bread and butter? Who was your friend? " " Oh, just a woman I used to know," Henry said, blushingly, with a slight frown at her stupidity in asking. 288 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " So I supposed," Flora answered whimsically. " A woman you usedn't to know would hardly have greeted you in the street by your Christian name. Who is she? Not one of your old set, is she? " This inquisitiveness surprised him, for she was usually the reverse of curious ; and it struck him with a sudden rapture, mixed with slight discomfort, that she was jealous. There was madness in the thought ; the delirium of confident love. " I can't tell you," he said, in a low voice, hoping that she would now have the good taste to drop the subject. " Why not ? Don't you know her name ? " " Of course I do. I mean that that she's not the sort of woman I can discuss with you, Flora; that's all. Please don't ask any more about it." Flora was by this time perched in an uncomfort- able and temporary manner on a high stool, without a back, that she used sometimes in connection with her standing desk; and, with her feet on the rungs and her small toes turned ungracefully inwards, was drinking her tea in little sips, watching Henry, with serious eyes, over the edge of her cup. " I can't imagine any sort of woman that it'd be impossible to discuss with me," she replied, with obstinate good-humour. " However, of course, I've no right whatever to pry into your affairs. I apol- ogise for being indiscreet. I know that I'm inclined to be too confidential for lots of my friends." THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 289 The slightly humble pout that accompanied the apology was cleverly managed, and had the intended effect of throwing Henry into immediate explana- tion. "I like to tell you everything; you know that," he cried. " But there are subjects that one can't " " You mean one's ashamed. But that's silly. One can't undo what one's done by hiding it." " It isn't only that," he protested. " With a lady with a woman it's not possible " " Oh ! What stuff and nonsense ! " Flora laughed. " At my age, and with my experience ! Well, Henry, if you're so excessively modest, I can break the ice for you by beginning the subject my- self. Your friend was some old lover of yours that you wanted to avoid meeting; because you'd got tired of her long ago, probably; and she's in trouble of some sort, and that's worrying you." D'Albiac sighed. "Partly true. The poor thing's been ill, and has lost any small savings she had, and doesn't know where to turn. But she was never my lover, Flora." "What then? A relation? She called you ' Henry'." The Frenchman reddened; wishing devoutly that Flora was either less dense or less inquisitive. " Don't you understand ? " he mumbled. " Men 290 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC are coarse and horrible, I know. She was just an episode of " " Well, but that's what I mean by lover," Flora replied, unabashed. " Presumably you felt some sort of emotion for her once. She's one of these un- happy women that your beautiful male system of organising society has driven into a loathsome trade. Poor, poor girl! What are you going to do for her?" " I gave her some money," he replied, rather sulkily. "How much?" " A couple of pounds. I hadn't any more on me. Besides " " Did you tell her where she could find you, in case she wanted you ? " Flora persisted, relent- lessly. He remembered, with a sense of guilt, that he had managed to convey the idea to Miss Wilson that he was only passing through London. " No," he answered. Women did not understand these relations; how should they? And it was therefore useless to enter into an argument on the subject. Flora blushed and frowned a little, and her dimpled chin went up. " Men are extraordinary creatures in some ways. I don't hope ever to understand their views on these things. Here's a girl who's practically been your THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 291 wife; one of a class that your sex has deliberately created for your amusement, and maintain by every ingenuity. She falls ill and is at her wits' end how to live; and, as you didn't succeed in avoiding her entirely, as you'd hoped, you give her two pounds and escape; not caring tuppence what happens to her, so long as she doesn't bother you in any way. And you're rather an exceptionally good-hearted man! Where does she live? " "Why?" he asked, ashamed and angry at the rebuke. " I'm going to see her," Flora answered, pushing her hair back from her face defiantly; and Henry gave quite a bound at the words. "You can't," he gasped. "You can't, Flora!" "Can't I? I'm going, all the same. If you, a friend of mine, won't behave decently, I must do it for you. How do you know what crime or what what beastliness she may drift into? A woman who's been your lover ! " Unreasonable as, in his inmost heart, he took this point of view to be, Henry was as much struck with admiration of Flora's angry reproof as he was now- adays by all her actions. How pretty and brave was her indignation for her sex ! How fine her de- fence of it, even if the point of view was impractica- ble! And, moreover, he had not felt easy in his own mind about Kitty; the tale of her misfortunes was a dismal one enough, and was amply borne out 292 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC by her shabby clothes, haggard cheeks, and the de- spairing smoulder of her fine, sad eyes. Without another moment of reflection he sprang from his chair and came towards the artist, on her high stool, with his face crimson and his eyes blazing. " Flora, you're the best woman in the world ! " he cried, stretching out his hands to her. "Of course, you're quite right. You're always right. I've been a brute to do anything to support such a vile state of things, I know; we're all brutes, we men all of us. But it's all over and done with, as far as I'm concerned ; I swear it is. And I am really ashamed of the way I've treated this girl Kitty Wilson. Tell me what to do about her, and I'll do it, what- ever it is. Tell me what to do about anything, Flora, and I'll do it at once. Why, you know I don't live for anything but to please you, and do what you think is what is right. I love you bet- ter than everything in the world; you know that. Won't you forgive me for what's over? I haven't been any worse than most men, I think ; and I mean to be whatever you like to make of me. Flora, you will you will take me, won't you? " He stood, trembling from head to foot, with his hands still stretched out imploringly towards her, jerking out his spasmodic phrases almost in sobs, and staring with passionate hope into the bright blue eyes, beneath high arched brows, that gazed back at him with an obvious surprise at this sudden declara- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 293 tion, that was repeated in the parted lips and rosily bright cheeks. " Marry you, do you mean ? " she asked presently, in a puzzled tone. " Yes," he gasped, the tears springing suddenly from his beseeching eyes ; and the next moment had sunk down on the ground before the stool, and dropped his handsome head in humble adoration over the small, swinging feet. His lips had hardly touched her warm, brown- stockinged instep, however, before Flora slid hastily from her perch and retreated to the window, where for a moment she stood gazing at him, as he re- mained on his knees by the stool, his eyes downcast to conceal his childish weakness. Presently, as she did not seem inclined to break the silence, he rose from his abject position and, swallowing his unshed tears, confronted her with better courage, the first shattering plunge being taken. After all, her swift retreat from his homage, her very silence might be held to be exactly what was to be expected ; even encouraging. A few mo- ments of masterful insistence and passionate appeal, and the field was won. Before he could open his lips, however, to sue for his answer, Flora spoke herself. " I am sorry," she said, softly and heartfully. " I never dreamt of such a thing, Henry. Please believe that. How should I? And yet, I don't know. I 294 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC suppose it was stupid of me; I ought to have guessed." She returned to her high stool, slowly climbed upon it, and sat for a moment, gazing out of the window at the twilight southern sky, fading from pale lemon to cobweb grey, though her eyes plainly saw no outward objects. Henry made a desperate effort to burst in on her meditations with a flood of impassioned pleading that should sweep all before him, but there was something so sad and concerned in Flora's face, now pale and calm again, that he searched his mind in vain for means of expression. " I've always looked on you as quite a boy," she said, slowly. " And thought of you one day find- ing some nice girl of your own age to replace Miss Beaufoy. But me!" " You ! " Henry suddenly cried, passionately. " Only you in the world, Flora. I'm not a boy, I'm a man. And I'm not speaking on a sudden impulse. I've known for weeks months, now, that you're the only woman I can ever care for. Oh, Flora! I do love you so ! " The unfortunate swain realised that this conclu- sion was slightly impotent ; but the words seemed to be beyond his control ; and all his carefully precon- ceived eloquence was to seek. " I believe you do," she said, turning her eyes on to his flushed, agitated face, with a compassionate THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 295 look. " I'm sure you do ; though I don't quite see why. However, there's no ' why ' in these things. Poor Henry!" For the first time since his determination to ask her to marry him had taken full possession of him, his heart gave an agonising drop that took away his breath, and he felt himself begin to shiver again, this time with a curious sense of chill fear, instead of with the unbearable excitement that had shaken him a few minutes before. " But you you will marry me? " he managed to say, panting. " Oh, no," replied Flora, shaking her head a lit- tle, and still contemplating his face with the same re- gretful look. " Oh, no. I couldn't really." " You won't ? " he cried, wide-eyed and pale. " That's all you'll say to me? Just that you won't? You don't like me a bit ? " " Yes, I do. I like you very much. And I'm proud of you, too; you've been a great credit to me," she replied, with a suggestion of her sly smile. "Then why? Why not?" stammered Henry, confusedly. Flora dimpled a little more pronouncedly. " A man may not marry his grandmother," she reminded him. " How can you be so absurd ? " Henry said, with unexpected crossness. 296 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " Grandfather's wife. Wife's grandmother," added Flora reflectively. " I didn't think you'd laugh at me. You might at least be sorry for me," poor Henry remonstrated desolately, with moist eyes. " I'm not laughing at you ; and I'm dreadfully sorry, particularly as I'm afraid it's largely my own stupid fault. But I haven't thought of such a thing for so long it seems so absurd in connexion with myself, nowadays. Sit down and let's talk about it." The discouraged lover dropped miserably down on an upright wooden chair; there seemed to be no smallest hope left in his heart, although, he tried to believe, she had said nothing that made his case ut- terly desperate; and he detested his stupidity in be- ing unable to find an immediate plea to make her withdraw her refusal. " You see, Henry," said Flora, " I really am much too old for you, to begin with " " What nonsense ! " he protested angrily. " You don't look a day older than me." " I'm thirty-one," she informed him. " And you're twenty-five. But that doesn't represent the real difference in age. With your life and my life, I'm at least twenty years older than you." " But when I say that I swear I'll never marry anyone else " he began, in tones of despairing appeal. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 297 " I know. Oh! If that was the only objection, I might . Lots of unsuitable marriages, as they're called, turn out all right, like Mahomet's; although there's a risk, of course; and it's always rather a tragedy to see a young man tied to a mid- dle-aged woman, to knock all the fun out of things for him." " You talk as if you were about seventy," he broke in, indignantly. " Well, I know I'm not quite decrepit yet," she admitted, laughing. " But, as I said, that's not the real objection. I don't love you. I like you very much as a friend ; as much as almost any of my men friends. But I'm not in love with you." A flash of suspicious rage illuminated the despair- ing depths of his mind. " I s'pose it's Fred Sutton that you're in love with," he said bitterly. " No doubt you like him better than me." " I think I do," Flora agreed. " It isn't unkind to say that, is it? You see I've known Fred for years, and, really, I'm fonder of him than of any- body else I can think of, except his wife, who's per- haps my best friend." "Wife?" Henry cried, amazedly, with a slight renascence of hope. If Sutton was out of the run- ning, there might be a chance for himself yet. " Wife? I'd no idea he was married." " Oh, yes. He's married all right, and has two 298 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC boys, almost grown up. In the ordinary course, as a friend of mine, you'd have seen Helena Sutton pretty constantly; only, for the past few months, she's been over in Canada and the States, lecturing." " Then who is it that you like better than me? " he asked, dismally. " I've told you Fred, and some of my women friends. But I'm not in love with anybody, if that's what you mean, and I never shall be." " You shall," he cried, with manly courage. " You shall love me, Flora." She shook her head, smiling ; and the undisturbed calm of her triangular face was more dispiriting than any protests could have been. " In time," he urged. " If I don't worry you about it, if I " " I hate to have to disappoint you, Henry," Flora said, with a ring of unfeigned sorrow in her voice. " But it'd only be cowardly and selfish to let you deceive yourself. No time nothing that you can do, could possibly make any difference." " Am I so utterly uninteresting and unpleasant to you?" he asked, with a sparkle of ill-temper and wounded pride. " You don't understand. How should you ? " she asked, mournfully. " You're young, and you think that's the only thing in the world. And you've not been lucky in love, so far. First Miss Beaufoy; then me." THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 299 " Only you," he protested. " I never was really in love with Patrice, and as soon as I met you I knew it'" " Do you mean that it was because of me ? " Flora asked, with startled eyes and distressed lips. " Of course it was," he answered, with a mirth- less laugh. " She gave me up, theoretically; but it was all my doing. I loved you, Flora." " Heavens ! What a tangle ! " she cried, in humorous despair. " Henry, I'm quite over- whelmed ; I am indeed. I wish I genuinely wish I could think it possible for me to give you what you want. If I could think it would make you per- manently happy, I almost believe I " At this first sign of surrender, Henry sprang radiantly to his feet and seized her hands impul- sively. " It would. You know it would. I don't ask any more than that," he urged her. Flora did not try to withdraw her hands, but her expression was unalterably calm. " I didn't mean to encourage you," she remon- strated. " Please don't think it's any pleasure to me to play with you. I want you to be quite unde- ceived, at once. It isn't possible. It isn't really." She was so obviously entirely sincere and immov- able that he dropped the unresponsive hands and re- treated to his chair. " How can you know positively? Why can't I 300 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC even be allowed to hope ? " he asked rebelliously, devoutly wishing that his voice would not break and quaver in so contemptible a manner. " Because it'd only be prolonging your unhappi- ness, you silly fellow," she said, smiling. " Think, Henry. I've known you now for months, and we've seen rather an unusual lot of each other, what with the sittings and so on. It's never occurred to me, in all that time, to think of you with the least ap- proach to sentiment. You're good-looking and pleasant and rather clever; you've got a good heart and some ideals. But I've known all that a long time. There can't remain anything important to discover in you. What you are to me now I hope you always will be; but it's absolutely inconceivable that you should ever be any more." " I see," he ejaculated, brokenly, on the verge of another attack of tears. " You mustn't take it too much to heart, please," she urged him anxiously. " I'm not in the least worth bothering about. The world's full of much nicer and younger and cleverer and better-looking people than me. Only you happen to have been thrown up against me. It isn't only you that I couldn't love ; the whole idea is unthinkable for me. There's practically no chance that I shall ever fall in love again, or wish, for any other reason, to marry." Henry did not answer. Her tone was so reason- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 301 able that he knew argument was vain; so sympa- thetic that he could not even have the meagre con- solation of being offended or affronted. Flora climbed off her high perch and ensconced herself in the deep armchair, crossing one knee over the other and lying back lazily. " Console yourself with a cigarette, if you've got one," she recommended him, " and I'll tell you why I'm so positive, as you say. It's not that I think love and marriage are undesirable things; I've as high an opinion of them as you have. In fact, it's because I have so high an opinion of them that I know they're not to be repeated, for me." " Other people some of the best of people have repeated them," he argued. " Oh, it's only a matter of temperament, I know. P'raps I'm rather self-contained by nature like the cheap flats. My own society and my own thoughts content me a good deal ; I'm never unhappy for want of sympathy or companionship, although I like both. There isn't the inducement of loneli- ness, you see, that drives most people into second marriages. If ever there was a touch of it, I out- wore it years ago." There was a new pathos in her voice; the tran- quil sadness of memory, the painless regret for past days. She continued speaking in phrases, now long, now short, with little pauses between; moments of abstraction ; glances about the room, at the windows, 302 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC at Henry's face. For his part, he sat attentive, but irresponsive; the agony of his refusal, the excite- ment of his declaration were over, and he had the almost pleasant melancholy of one meditatively seated, on some serene Summer evening, by the quiet grave of some long dead friend. " I don't know how they can bear it the second marriage people, I mean. It must be a dreadful hunger for sympathy and love than can induce them to go through it all again, when they've been happy the first time . . . and it's notorious that those are the very people who do it. ... I don't know if you know about my married life ? " Henry shook his head. " It wasn't ... it was only a short one. I met my poor Bill when I was at South Kensington, as a student, when I was nineteen; he was a few years older. We weren't very well off ; but we had two years together that were better than most peo- ple have. I think we were extraordinarily well suited ... it was really odd we should have met. I don't remember that we ever had any seri- ous difference of opinion in those years, except one ; and that was the one that . . . that spoilt everything." " You mean you parted ? You quarrelled ? " " No. Bill and I never had a real quarrel ; Bill, p'raps, was hardly capable of quarrelling," she said, looking up with raised brows, and appearing to re- THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 303 gard the statement almost with the surprise of dis- covery, " which was odd, too ; for he had very definite opinions. But we disagreed about that hor- rible war in South Africa. To Bill, it was a neces- sity; a disgusting operation that had to be per- formed, for the sake of civilisation. He thought that every healthy man in the country was morally bound to lend a hand to finish it off as soon as pos- sible ... I don't mean that he caught that ghastly war- fever 'Remember Majuba! ' and so on which disgraced the country then. He hated it, but he felt he had to go. ... Well, I begged and prayed him not to my little girl had been born only a short while, and I was still laid up. This war was only vile to me; hateful bullying; a hypocritical fraud on our poor credulous people, engineered by a crowd of money-grubbers; almost without excuse . . . and miserably mismanaged and muddled from the start. Bill went, soon after the new year nineteen hundred and one. He'd only been out there a week or two when he was killed. The Yeomanry got into a skirmish at a place called Boshof, and my poor man was shot through the lungs." D'Albiac looked up quickly, with the feeling that he ought to say something, and yet conscious that it was rather ridiculous to offer condolences for a tragedy that was nearly ten years old. His doubt was set at rest by Flora, however, who continued 304 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC with hardly a pause, in the same even, soft voice. " So there I was left alone, with my baby as my only companion. Of course, I knew that it was silly to make this little creature too much to me . . . one ought to keep one's head, I s'pose, and not put all one's eggs in one basket, even over one's children. But it's practically impossible to avoid doing it in a case like mine. As soon as I could get about ... I lived for a time on the money that poor Bill had insured his life for; it wasn't much, but it was all I had ... as soon as I was strong enough, I went to work again. I'd al- ways stuck to it, until I was laid up over my child, for Bill didn't make very much, and besides, nat- urally, I liked to help. Now it was all I had to keep myself and Betty on. Well, those were lonely days, particularly at first; because I missed my man so horribly, and I had hardly any friends, then, in Lon- don, and was too busy to make more, what with my work, and nursing Betty, and keeping our two rooms in order. . . . But by-and-by I got to love my queer, speechless life, almost as much as I'd loved my married days. It was fine to sit in the evenings, after my work was done, with the baby on my knees and my tea by me on the table, and tell her what I was going to make of her; what a fine, clever woman she was going to be High School, Col- lege, if I could manage it, and a profession or art to make her free to please herself about love and THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 305 marriage. . . . And when she began to speak there was no end to the fun we had. . . . She was so quick and clever; just like her father in every way . . I half felt it coming; I was haunted sometimes by a sense of disaster, because I knew I was attaching myself too much to this little, frail bit of a creature. And yet, you know, one has a ridiculous feeling that there must be some kind of justice in the world; that after some cruel blow has fallen, one has taken one's share of the world's tragedies, and probably will be let off any more of the worst punishments for the future. ... I couldn't really believe that I was to be the victim again so soon; it seemed to me that I was a harm- less sort of creature, and doing my best, and that someone, something ought to treat me moderately gently. What odd superstitions cling to one! . . . She was barely six when she died of a quite ordinary child's illness scarlet fever and, for some minutes after I'd been told it was all over, it seemed so inconceivable that I wouldn't believe it told the doctor he must have made a mistake." Flora stopped speaking and glanced at Henry's face. The simple gentleman was weeping unaf- fectedly. Something in Flora's calm, outworn grief was more horrible to him than any expressed misery could have been. The consideration of the long agonies, from which such tranquillity must have emerged, tore his soft heart. 306 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " I don't tell you this to depress you, you kind person," Flora said affectionately. " It's only to make you understand me better than you've done so far. That was four years ago; I've no more tears for it now. I see the world more clearly than I did ... " ' Je sais que vous avez bien autre chose a faire Que de nous plaindre tous, Et qu'un enfant qui meurt, desespoir de sa mere, Ne vous fait rien, a vous. Je sais que le fruit tombe . . .' " How does it go? . " ' Que la creation est une grande roue Qui ne peut se mouvoir sans ecraser quelqu'un; Les mois, les jours, les flots des mers, les yeux qui pleurent, Passent sous le ciel bleu; II faut que 1'herbe pousse et que les enfants meurent; Je le sais, 6 mon Dieu ! ' " I say it horribly ... I forgot you were French." "I think you say it beautifully," Henry replied, drying his eyes. " But then you're in love with me," Flora repre- sented, smiling, " so you're a prejudiced witness. Don't be sad, poor man; I'm not unhappy about it myself any longer. As soon as the worst time was over, I looked about for some new ideal. Up till then I'd had my art such as it was and my family. Now I was reduced to public interests; or that was the way I thought of it in those days. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 307 Henry, I'm sure that the social mind is the true solution of all our unhappiness. Men have been shutting themselves up in their caves; magnifying their private joys and sorrows, and shutting their eyes to everyone else's for untold centuries. When one sees a whole world in struggle and grief, one hasn't time or inclination to pet up one's own mis- fortunes. I know I've done practically nothing for the world; but I've tried that's the main thing; and you can't think of the consolation it's been to me. . . . But you do see now, don't you, that the idea of deliberately beginning life all over again is out of the question for me? " " If you fell in love " Henry suggested de- spairingly. " Yes. Then one takes any risks, or plunges into any horrors. But I'm not in love. And I'm not go- ing to try to make myself fall in love, with you or anyone else. As I said just now, I might be willing to sacrifice myself, if I felt any conviction that I should be making your life happy; although I do think I've earned a little peace for myself. But I don't believe I'm indispensable to you; although I know you think so at present. You'll get over it in no time ; why, at your age, and with your tempera- ment good gracious ! " He shook his head miserably. " Yes, you shall. Don't be weak and foolish, and make us both unhappy, Henry. If you're fond of 3 o8 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC me, you ought to try to be brave, for my sake as well as your own." D'Albiac realised that all hope was gone ; and a re- bellious mood seized him as he thought of the curi- ous course his life had taken since his chance meet- ing with the arrested rioter at the corner of Down- ing Street, eight months ago. For a moment he recaptured his old habit of thought, the nature of that dead Baron D'Albiac, fashionable in mind as in clothes; intolerant of the colourless herd, that was chiefly serviceable as a foil to and worshipper of his own distinguished set; ceaselessly and agree- ably occupied with the amusements and social duties of the well-born and wealthy; impeccable in his views on all subjects. And he found himself con- templating with wonder the strange beast into which he had been metamorphosed, wholly, he knew, through the influence of the young woman who had just refused the honours and worldly advantages that he had humbly offered her. " I've given up a lot of things for you, Flora," he grumbled, in this sudden flash of amazed self-rec- ognition. " All my old friends and amusements ; Patrice ..." Here, however, he broke off, feeling that regrets for his lost betrothed might appear too obviously hypocritical, in view of his previous remarks on the subject. Flora looked at him with an eye that be- gan to sparkle again with mischief. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 309 " Social splendour, laziness, feasting ; all kinds of fun and luxury; and you've got nothing in ex- change but hard work and crazy ideals. It's true, Henry; but you must forgive me, for I'd no idea, you see, that you were only changing all your beliefs because you'd fallen in love with me. I flattered myself with the conceited belief that I'd convinced you by my godlike reason. You know you pre- tended to be so impressed and earnest about it all, that I can't really be blamed for not suspecting you. Besides, where's the harm? You've still got your money, or most of it, I s'pose. You've given up one house; but you can take another, equally fine; and fill it even fuller than before with idle servants ; and give dinners and lunches just as you did in the brave days of old. And a little hair oil and a change of clothes would turn you back into just the same politely condescending person who saw me to my 'bus that first night, and told me what a silly woman I was. After all, it'll be an amusing episode to look back on." Under her first few teasing sentences, Henry had maintained an obstinately sulky silence ; but, before long, he began to writhe with impatience, and at this point broke in angrily. " Flora, you are a little brute ! " he cried, crim- soning. The artist laughed with unrepentant pleasure at the success of her attack. 310 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC " Now that's the proper way to look at it," she agreed. " I'm delighted to see your spirit isn't crushed. Oh! You'll get over it in no time." " You know," he persisted, angrily, " that I was convinced. It wasn't hypocrisy. And it'd be quite impossible for me, now, to go back to my old life; I should be bored to death in a week, and I shouldn't be able to stand the people I met." " Then you prefer to be as you are ? " Flora asked innocently. " Of course I do," he said shortly. " Why, what harm have I done then ? I don't see that you've any grievance against me; on the contrary, you ought to be grateful." " I am," he replied humbly. " But I can't help being in love with you, can I, Flora ? And being in love makes one selfish and exacting." The note of mockery dropped out of her voice and face in a flash, as she came over and laid her small hand on his shoulder. " Forgive me, and be friends," she said simply. " The other isn't possible ; but don't think I'm not very proud and touched to think that you should feel about me like that." He looked up and tried to answer ; but, at the sight of the kind blue eyes and the tender, parted lips, he fell only into a fit of trembling and longing that for a minute left him dumb. THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC 311 " There's nothing to forgive," he said at last halt- ingly, " but everything to be grateful for. I was stupid vain, I suppose. I looked forward so much I felt so hopeful Flora, won't you let me kiss you before I go? Just once ... it isn't much to ask. I shan't bother you again." The delicate face at which he gazed up passion- ately grew a shade less serious. " Oh, you rash person ! " she said, shaking her head. "If you're really in love with me, that would only make you a hundred times unhappier. No, oh no, Henry ! Try not to think of me in that way at all." He had expected no other answer and rose un- steadily to his feet. " Good-bye, then," he said holding out his hand. " You won't ever see me again." Without taking the outstretched hand, she stood looking back at him with a grave regret. Then she gave a little shrug. " If you feel that you can't meet me without un- happiness, we must say good-bye, I s'pose," she agreed. " But you won't give me up just for the sake of some conventional emotion, out of books, will you? I don't see why in the world, now that you're quite sure I can't ever be your wife, you shouldn't be content to keep me as a friend. There must be lots of other men's wives that you could easily fall in love with, if they weren't out of the 312 THE DECLENSION OF HENRY D'ALBIAC question. That wouldn't prevent you being good comrades with them, would it? " Henry shifted uneasily from foot to foot; he knew that the parting he had suggested was utterly opposed to his every wish, and that in his heart, putting aside the correct behaviour in such cases, he would rather keep Flora, even as the most distant of acquaintances, than lose her altogether. Appar- ently his tell-tale face revealed his indecision, for the artist gave a little relieved laugh. " Think it over reasonably to-night," she sug- gested, " and I'm quite sure you'll turn up here to- morrow morning, to take me sliding again." He looked up and, in the presence of that laugh- ing face, could not himself forbear to smile, al- though still somewhat ruefully. " I I s'pose I shall," he admitted. " Of course you will," Flora said gaily, holding out her hand. " Friends ? " Henry took her hand and pressed it heartily. " Friends," he replied. THE END A 000 127824