GILBERT CANNAN
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 GILBERT CANNAN
 
 BY GILBERT CANNAN 
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 MUMMERY 
 
 THE STUCCO HOUSE 
 
 MENDEL 
 
 THREE SONS AND A MOTHER 
 
 SATIRE 
 
 NEW YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 AUTHOR OF "MUMMERY." 'THE STUCCO HOUSE, 
 "THREE SONS AND A MOTHER." ETC. 
 
 NEW XBJr YORK 
 GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY
 
 COPYRIGHT. 1919, 
 BY GEORGE H. DORAN COMPANY 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I. THE CAFE CLARIBEL .... 9 
 
 II. LAW 20 
 
 III. CHATEAU MARGAUX 32 
 
 IV. HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES ... 48 
 V. RAKE'S PROGRESS 60 
 
 VI. LONDON 73 
 
 VII. RUTH HOBDAY .90 
 
 VIII. WESTMINSTER 102 
 
 IX. ROMANTICISM 114 
 
 X. SOPHINA 128 
 
 XI. LESLIE 142 
 
 XII. THE SPIRIT OF LONDON . . . .155 
 
 XIII. PAYING THE PRICE 164 
 
 XIV. BREAKFAST IN BED 184 
 
 XV. BRIGHTON 199 
 
 XVI. THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR .... 223 
 
 XVII. HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS . . .241 
 
 XVIII. RUTH AND TRENHAM .... 264 
 
 XIX. PLOTS AND PLANS 285 
 
 XX. TREVOR AND LESLIE 300 
 
 XXI. RUTH RETURNS 310 
 
 XXII. THE PARTY ....... 319 
 
 2134820
 
 PINK ROSES
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 THE CAFE CLARIBEL 
 
 IN the first place Trevor Mathew went there to avoid his 
 lodgings, which had become detestable to him since Harry 
 Hardman and James Peto, his two Cambridge friends, 
 had been swept into the war. He had been so proud of 
 them, his rooms in Town, and they three had had such 
 jolly times there that when Hardman went off to the 
 Dardanelles and Peto to Flanders, he had promised to 
 keep them until they returned. It was just his luck to 
 have the medical officer discover a systolic murmur in 
 his heart. He had always been out of everything. Per- 
 haps his heart had always played him tricks. Well: 
 Harry was buried at Suvla Bay and Peto was smashed 
 so that he could only lie stiff, with one eye glaring at the 
 ceiling, one eye that never slept, though its eyelid closed 
 over it occasionally as a matter of decency, and Trevor 
 kept the big living-room in the dingy street in Paddington 
 because he could not bear to move his friends' belongings. 
 Neither could he invite others to take their places, for 
 he felt that they might after all come back when the war 
 had proved to be only an evil dream. Sometimes he 
 felt so sure that Hardman would come back that he could 
 not bear it, and rushed out to avoid hearing his knock. 
 Hardman wasn't the man to be killed : no one could kill
 
 io PINK ROSES 
 
 him, so full was he of life and purpose. . . . Trevor 
 had seen Peto with his one eye staring, but even that he 
 felt might easily prove to be only a nightmare. It could 
 not be true that these things had happened to his friends 
 while he went on as before, putting in his three years as 
 an articled clerk in a London solicitor's office before he 
 went home to join his father's firm in the North. The 
 Law had become fantastic, irrelevant and derelict. Per- 
 sonal affairs were of no moment. The clients who fussed 
 about their affairs filled him with disgust. They should 
 have been suspended because Hardman lay buried and 
 Peto was shut up in a darkened room in a place that 
 looked like a house, but was really a hospital or the mu- 
 seum of a hospital. Trevor was not certain what anything 
 was. Outwardly he was going on with his career as 
 though nothing had happened because his heart mur- 
 mured, but he had stopped as surely as his friends. 
 Nothing went on except the war, and that went on and 
 on. Nothing that happened in it had any significance. 
 The war went on. He ate, drank, slept; visited, went to 
 the Law Courts, to consultations in Chambers, to Somer- 
 set House, Bankruptcy Buildings, and read the news- 
 papers. He read half-a-dozen newspapers in a day, the 
 same news, the same imbecile paragraphs over and over 
 again, but nothing had any meaning. Men died for lib- 
 erty, but liberty disappeared because life as it had been 
 planned and dreamed had died. He had no personal life 
 left, no one had any personal life, nobody wanted it. 
 . . . People continued their occupations mechanically 
 because they must, but there was no sense in them. The 
 war went on, and there was no sense in that either. It 
 had become a matter of words, names and figures so 
 enormous as to be entirely unintelligible. Trevor felt
 
 THE CAFfi CLARIBEL n 
 
 that it was no good his trying to find any meaning in it, 
 because he had been left out of it, left behind, and, as his 
 father said, his duty was to prepare for his final exam- 
 ination, and for the sake of the firm Mathew, Gilchrist 
 & Mathew to pass with as much distinction as possible. 
 It was one thing to accept this duty, another to carry it 
 out with a murmuring heart. It had become altogether 
 too serious when the rest of life had been swept away, 
 and London had changed from a pleasant metropolis to 
 the nerve-centre of the war, an arsenal, a recruiting- 
 dump, an international head-quarters, suddenly Belgian, 
 Serbian, Russian, Roumanian, Italian, anything and 
 everything, like a house-party with a host so modest that 
 he had withdrawn. And the popular figures of London 
 public life were diminished. They were overshadowed 
 by strange people from the four corners of the earth who 
 gave orders to the British public as though they were 
 Hindus or Hottentots, and the British public liked it and 
 obeyed. . . . Certainly young Trevor Mathew had lost 
 his bearings, and could only follow the Law as his father 
 and his father's father had done before him, but the Law 
 did not interest him, and it was only to keep himself 
 afloat that he followed it. Yet he longed to drown as 
 his friends had done, but that he was not allowed to do 
 because his heart murmured. It was ridiculous. At 
 Cambridge he had rowed, played tennis, cricket, soccer, 
 and had never thought of his heart except that he had 
 always been bothered to know why he could never play 
 games as well as he ought to do, and why he could 
 never get the last ounce out of himself. 
 
 He was beginning to think that he was losing his sense 
 of humour when he discovered the Cafe Claribel. First 
 of all he discovered Hyde Park on a summer evening.
 
 12 PINK ROSES 
 
 He had begun to loathe his lodgings so much that he 
 walked miles out of his way in the evening on return- 
 ing from the office in London Wall. It gave him a 
 certain pleasant mortification to walk through the khaki- 
 filled streets in his antediluvian costume of tail coat and 
 silk hat. He was even pleased when old ladies asked 
 him: "Why aren't you in the Army?" and he an- 
 swered by beginning to unbutton his waistcoat and 
 pointing to the region of his heart. Also it was easier 
 to think his strange thoughts in the street than in that 
 dreadful room that was still full of Peto's theories and 
 Hardman's laughter. He had thoughts like : " I am 
 already older than my father because the friends of his 
 youth lived through it with him." 
 
 Thoughts like that are hardly bearable, and young 
 Trevor when they came liked to be able to dart into a 
 crowd of people, and he found that the band in the Park 
 tempered the pain of them a little. It was not a very 
 good band, and the music it played was poor and exces- 
 sively ornate, but it sorted well with the impossibly flour- 
 ishing flowers that had so obviously not grown where 
 they were, and the shrubs brought in full bloom from 
 Kew, and the glimpse of the Serpentine, which never 
 looks like real water but like real water in a stage scene 
 when paint would be more effective. . . . Every now 
 and then the tittering of a group of girls would make 
 him feel how out of date he was, how out of place even. 
 He noticed, too, that the manners of such parades had 
 altered. The girls flaunted and strutted. The men in 
 khaki were wooed, accosted, carried off in triumph. 
 
 The scene pleased his eye. Human figures moving 
 under the shadow of green trees in the evening light had 
 the gracefulness of a dream. They were of no time.
 
 THE CAFE CLARIBEL 13 
 
 Whatever might be outside the enchantment of the light 
 could not intrude. This was no longer London in the 
 twentieth century, but a dream-place bewitched into the 
 stillness of a picture. Even the music was more a 
 memory than a satisfaction to the senses. . . . He was 
 so profoundly eased by this sudden experience that he 
 could not tear himself away, although he knew that he 
 was in fact hungry. Fact, however, had nothing at all 
 to do with the experience. 
 
 He sat down in a hard green garden-chair, but with- 
 out any consciousness of movement. It was as though 
 the chair had placed itself under him and had lured him 
 into a seated posture. For a few seconds he had an 
 absurd pleasure in thinking that he was dressed correctly 
 for the Park, and no one else was that. The world was 
 no longer correct. Its habits had been broken, but he 
 remained. That was extremely uncomfortable, except 
 that in perfectly correct attire he could watch the chang- 
 ing scene and the stiff, numbed people moving under a 
 spell. It was like looking through a Corot or a Watteau 
 into the conception that made its charm. It was like 
 it was like . . . He was very drowsy. His eyes 
 could take in no more. It was like like pink 
 roses . . . 
 
 His eyes could see nothing but pink roses now. The 
 figures of the promenade moved behind a screen of pink 
 roses. This puzzled him, and he made an effort to solve 
 the mystery. 
 
 Fifteen yards away from him a girl was sitting. She 
 was dressed in a black and white gown, and she had a 
 charming little hat in which were three pink roses. In 
 her bosom she had a nosegay of fresh roses. A little frill 
 of lace fell from the front of her hat and from under
 
 I 4 PINK ROSES 
 
 this her eyes were fixed upon him. He met them with 
 a rather frightened stare. Her left eyelid drooped and 
 she gave an inviting jerk of the head. 
 
 Never in his life had Trevor spoken to an unknown 
 lady. The girl with the pink roses swung her foot, and 
 his eyes turned from her face to that, and quite uncon- 
 trollably his breath began to tickle his throat. He 
 coughed, laughed, coughed again. With a sidelong smile 
 at him the girl rose and walked slowly away, and again 
 without any consciousness of movement Trevor rose and 
 followed her, taking his pace from her. Their chairs had 
 been fifteen yards apart. He kept exactly fifteen yards 
 behind her as she walked along under the trees. As 
 she reached the arch at Hyde Park Corner, she stopped. 
 He stopped too, fifteen yards behind her, and stood gaz- 
 ing up at the anti-aircraft station, saying to himself: 
 
 " That is where the searchlight is." 
 
 When she moved on, he moved also, although he had 
 not seen her. He was aware of pink roses, nothing but 
 pink roses, and so, fifteen yards apart, they proce.ded 
 along Piccadilly, across Piccadilly Circus, and into the 
 Cafe Claribel. 
 
 The glare of the lights reflected from the mirrored 
 walls hurt his eyes. The air was stale and smelt of 
 food. For a moment or two he lost sight of the pink 
 roses, but found them again with a pang of pleasure, and 
 sat at a table fifteen yards away from them. 
 
 It was the first time in his life that he had done any- 
 thing unaccountable. 
 
 The Cafe also had its enchantment. It was quite 
 unlike the restaurants he used to frequent in the old days 
 when the first week of the month used to be devoted to 
 an elegance which the three combined allowances could
 
 THE CAFE CLARIBEL 15 
 
 not maintain. There was no flunkeyism about it, and it 
 lacked the wonderful invisible machinery which pro- 
 vided the delicious sense of being borne by boundless 
 wealth above life. Here the machinery of the establish- 
 ment was only too visible. The swing doors led into the 
 kitchens, from which continually came the clatter of 
 utensils and the not unpleasing odour of skilful cooking. 
 Next to the swing doors was a bar caged in with glass. 
 The waiters were waiters. Trevor was used to dis- 
 tinguished ministrants who were unlike the guests only 
 in the way they carried their arms. Here they wore 
 short alpaca jackets and wide aprons folded tightly 
 round their hips, and they hurried so that they broke 
 the air of efficiency which all good restaurants possess. 
 Frock-coated maitres d'hotel wandered despairingly 
 striving to make good the deficiency, but in vain. But 
 for their flat Italian heads they would have looked like 
 Sunday-school superintendents gloomily keeping up the 
 appearance of enjoying a summer feast in the country. 
 
 T t e long hall was crowded. Every table was filled, 
 and there were men and women waiting for places to be 
 vacated. Trevor had a table to himself. The waiter 
 laid a menu before him and went away without waiting 
 for his order. A negro in a loud check suit came up 
 and asked if he might sit at his table. Trevor said : 
 
 "Certainly not." 
 
 The negro grinned shyly and went away. The 
 orchestra in a little gallery above the bar began to play 
 " La Boheme," and Trevor, recovering some of his 
 sense of reality, looked towards his lady of the pink 
 roses. She was eating a steak and she had a small bottle 
 of red wine on her table. She was older than he had 
 thought, but he was not disappointed. She was very
 
 i6 PINK ROSES 
 
 good-looking, very neat, and she had charming move- 
 ments with her shoulders, a delightful alertness in her 
 glance as she took in and was amused by her surround- 
 ings. Every now and then she glanced towards him, 
 but he always looked away. He did not want to know 
 more of her than that first impression of pink roses. 
 That did not fade. She still carried with her something 
 of the enchantment of the scene in the Park. 
 
 He ate, and the food was good. He ordered a small 
 bottle of Sauterne, and it was capital. Food and drink 
 reconciled him to his surroundings and to the descent 
 from the Hardman-Peto standard of dining out. After 
 coffee and liqueur he began to feel that he, Trevor 
 Mathew, was being adventurous, that he was asserting 
 himself, stepping out of the routine ordained for young 
 gentlemen with rich fathers who pass through the 
 metropolis on their way to the practice of an honourable 
 profession. Hardman had passed out of it into the 
 grave, Peto into that darkened room, and now he, too, 
 had taken a plunge into the unknown and the un-English. 
 The table next to him was occupied by a Belgian family 
 party. On his left was an Italian whom he guessed to 
 be attached to the Embassy, with a lady whose clothes 
 were so conspicuously worn that she was obviously at- 
 tached to the dress-making trade a mannequin? Two 
 officers in brilliant uniforms sat behind him talking in 
 some strange tongue. Roumanian? Serbian? Slovak? 
 It was a delightful game this guessing at the histories 
 of unknown persons. . . . The lady with the pink 
 roses smiled at him. He realized to his horror that he 
 had only just enough money to pay his bill, and not 
 enough to give the fussy, incompetent waiter a proper 
 tip.
 
 THE CAFE CLARIBEL 17 
 
 How friendly her smile was! How charming to be 
 in sympathy with another human being fifteen yards 
 away! He did not wish to be any nearer, nor did he 
 desire the adventure to proceed any further. On the 
 other hand, he would not have it come to an end. As it 
 was it had in it an exquisite quality of happiness, of fulfil- 
 ment, of poignancy just a hint. He did not require 
 more. 
 
 All his life he had lived on hints and had held aloof 
 fastidiously, doing what was expected of him, but never 
 consciously seeking beneath the surface, or asking from 
 any person or any experience more than what was imme- 
 diately offered. He was charming, and was intensely 
 susceptible to charm. His life with his friends had held 
 more than enough of that for him, and when they were 
 taken from him he had been dazed and almost paralysed, 
 and had let himself be absorbed in routine for the dura- 
 tion of the war. A future without his friends seemed 
 intolerable, and he had only been able to face it with 
 set teeth. 
 
 He stared rather stupidly at the lady with the pink 
 roses, and shook his head with a dreamy smile of which 
 he was entirely unconscious. He wanted to tell her that 
 all he wanted was the impression of pink roses, but she 
 was delighted with his smile. Her face was suddenly 
 suffused with happiness, and she gave a shrug and pulled 
 herself together as though to hug some new treasure to 
 herself. 
 
 Still smiling dreamily he paid the bill, took his hat and 
 stick and walked quickly out into Piccadilly Circus, 
 where the wheeling shafts of light flung across the dark 
 blue sky gave him a sense of the mechanized city in which 
 day by day the motive power was intensified and de-
 
 i8 PINK ROSES 
 
 humanized so that the people every day became more 
 ant-like and less significant. ... It was with a cold 
 shock of almost terror that he realized that his thoughts 
 had begun to take shape, that the long-stored impres- 
 sions of his period of mourning for his murdered youth 
 were becoming articulate in him, and that he was not at 
 all the Trevor Mathew he had expected to be, but some- 
 thing very much bigger, something rather wickedly 
 detached and impersonal. 
 
 He walked home watching the shafts of light across 
 the sky, the crowded motor-buses, the few darting cars 
 driven by men and women in uniform, the ambulances 
 gliding quietly, brilliantly lit, and only the ambulances 
 dared be up to the pre-war standard of displayed effi- 
 ciency. They, like so much in pre-war days, proclaimed 
 that they were the best that money could buy. But 
 Trevor realized with a start that he had forgotten what 
 London was like before the war. A confused memory he 
 had of talk and noise, and glitter and spending, but never 
 anything so precisely real as the pink roses under the 
 trees. There was never anything so dewy and fresh as 
 that impression. He felt as though he had buried his 
 face in them, in the sweet-smelling roses that could heal 
 his hurt, and he knew for the first time how acutely he 
 had suffered in these years in which the best of his gen- 
 eration had been obliterated for Hardman and his like 
 were the best, a new type, bringing a new note of honesty 
 into the affairs of men, utterly at variance with the pre- 
 ceding generation yet warmly tolerant of it, watching it 
 eagerly to see that the great traditions did not slip from 
 its careless hands. People like Hardman knew what was 
 going to happen, and they ached to stop it, but they were 
 too young to be heeded, and so when it came they went
 
 THE CAFE" CLARIBEL 19 
 
 out to stop it. ... As he let himself into his room 
 Trevor distinctly heard Hardman's voice saying: 
 " Either this has got to stop or I must." 
 Well, they had stopped Hardman, but the war went on. 
 Trevor filled his pipe and lay back in his chair and said 
 aloud : 
 
 " I never thought I should be happy again." 
 It seemed to him that he was wronging his friends to 
 be made happy by such a little thing as the scent and 
 sweetness of a nosegay of fresh roses fifteen yards away. 
 To make amends he tried to read a newspaper, but that 
 habit also was broken. It only made him laugh. The 
 unhappy men who wrote it were trying to advertise the 
 war, to boost it as they boosted patent food or plays. 
 They were trying to boom a thing that was eating the 
 heart out of everybody's life. . . . Trevor laughed. 
 Oh! he was going to see things very clearly, but it was 
 going to be damned uncomfortable. With that idea in 
 his mind he found that he was indeed making amends 
 to his two friends. He was no longer haunted by them. 
 They were no longer ghosts. Indeed he was more 
 familiar with them than when they were with him. All 
 reservations were swept away and they were united in 
 purpose. They were all three turning away from the 
 world as their fathers had made it and were building it 
 anew in accordance with their own desire, and what he 
 had always thought was now proved true there was 
 more in Hardman's laughter than in Peto's theories. 

 
 II 
 
 LAW 
 
 TREVOR had never been very popular in the office. He 
 had never redeemed the mistakes he had made at first 
 when his shyness had made him not a little of a nuisance. 
 The clerks liked him, but the partners had not been able 
 to break through his reserve and had given up all attempt 
 to make his acquaintance. So he had accepted the office 
 Hobday, Treves & Treves as a place to which he must 
 go more or less regularly for three years. . . . His un- 
 easiness had been aggravated by his rejection by the mili- 
 tary authorities. Mr. Hobday would have no man of 
 military age and fitness in his office, and one or two of 
 the clerks compared with whom Trevor looked an athlete 
 had been forced to go. They had been accepted, and they 
 obviously regarded murmuring hearts as the privilege of 
 the rich. . . . Again, after the death of Hardman 
 Trevor had refused to talk about the war, and he was 
 suspected of being intellectual. Also, as he had an ample 
 allowance the rise in prices did not affect him at all, and 
 he remained untouched, always perfectly dressed, and 
 careful to eat in the atmosphere to which he was accus- 
 tomed, and as no one ever broke through his reserve no 
 one ever borrowed money from him. It was not that 
 he did not notice shabbiness. He did, especially in boots, 
 but he put it down to slovenliness. He was an only 
 son. He had always had plenty of money and would 
 one day be very rich, because besides his father's wealth 
 
 20
 
 LAW 21 
 
 there was that of his uncle and three aunts to come to 
 him. He had never really believed that honest men were 
 poor, and he had always accepted that the poverty- 
 stricken deserved their plight. 
 
 His unpopularity in the office had made him listless, 
 and for many months before the adventure of the pink 
 roses he had played hardly a more animate part than the 
 Law Reports in the bookshelves. His articled period 
 became merely a question of time. He was sulking. As 
 the life he had planned had been destroyed he would 
 make no effort to reconstruct any other. His money and 
 his inherited position would carry him through, and he 
 would dress well, eat well, and cultivate his taste in cigars 
 and wine. So far as he could see a partner in an old 
 firm of solicitors need know precious little Law. All that 
 was necessary was a good managing-clerk. He himself 
 would give his clients the benefit of his taste in food. 
 
 After the adventure of the pink roses he began to 
 realize dimly that he was bored. There was no one to 
 talk to, for every one was preoccupied with thoughts 
 which they dared not utter. The young men had all 
 gone, and the young women were beginning to seek dis- 
 traction in hospital and in charitable endeavours. 
 
 For a time he would not admit that any crisis had come 
 upon him. Then he pretended that the scene in the Park 
 had given him the distraction he needed and he fre- 
 quented the promenade, and listened irritably to the band, 
 but that was not what he wanted, and on several occa- 
 sions he walked down Piccadilly, but jibbed at the last 
 moment and would not enter the Cafe Claribel. It was, 
 he told himself, second-rate: not the kind of place to 
 which he would ever have gone with his friends, and it 
 was an agony to him to think that he might in the small-
 
 22 PINK ROSES 
 
 est detail play them false. He was the last remnant of 
 their world, and, as such, he took himself very seriously. 
 He corresponded regularly with their relatives, and Hard- 
 man had left a little volume of poems which he had 
 undertaken to see through the press. . . . These were 
 duties which he had to fulfil. After all, when a genera- 
 tion is gutted the survivors owe something to those who 
 are gone. ... So seriously did Trevor Mathew take 
 this debt that he conceived himself to owe that he was 
 often inflicted with a kind of nausea, for the longer the 
 war went on, the higher the debt was piled and the less 
 was he capable of serenely facing his liabilities, and he 
 began to hate both the very old and the very young, while 
 the sight of a woman often made him feel queasy. Peo- 
 ple who felt violently about the war, either for or against, 
 filled him with disgust. It was too big a thing to admit 
 of any kind of self-indulgence in mind or emotion. 
 
 There was no doubt about it that his queasiness was 
 relieved and he began to lose his envy of those of his 
 friends who had been able to roll up their minds and put 
 them away for the period which they would have to spend 
 in uniform or in the service of the Government, and he 
 told himself that it was because of the charm he had dis- 
 covered in the Park. He went that way home every night, 
 and almost every night, reluctant to go to his rooms, he 
 wandered down Piccadilly and almost went into the Cafe 
 Claribel, only saving himself by buying a paper or a box 
 of matches, or swerving aside into the tobacconist's or 
 the hairdresser's next door, for it had always been one of 
 his rules in life when in doubt to have his hair shampooed. 
 
 One night he got as far as the outer hall of the Cafe, 
 where there were Belgians and ladies of the town sitting 
 at little marble-topped tables. He stood and stared at
 
 LAW 23 
 
 them and backed out. He did not like Belgians, or that 
 was the excuse he found for himself as he turned and 
 almost ran into Piccadilly Circus. He was ashamed to 
 buy either a newspaper or a box of matches, and was 
 just on the point of nerving himself to defy the fascina- 
 tion that lured him on when he found his way blocked 
 by an old man holding two little dogs. 
 
 "Buy a little dawg, sir?" said the old man, and 
 before Trevor knew what he was doing he had bought a 
 fox-terrier pup for fifteen shillings. The pup was not 
 more than three months old. It had a black patch over 
 one eye and another on its tail. Otherwise it was white, 
 and fortunately it was a male. 
 
 The purchase left Trevor with only half-a-crown in his 
 pocket. He did not want the dog, but also he did not 
 want to go into the Cafe Claribel. He stood for some 
 moments cursing himself for an idiot. The lady of the 
 pink roses came out of the Cafe and stood near him. She 
 looked at the dog and then up into Trevor's eyes and said : 
 
 "Oh! what a darling!" 
 
 Taken unawares, he hastened to explain nervously. 
 
 " I've just bought him. I don't really want him. 
 Would you like him?" 
 
 " I love dogs," said the lady, " but they're not allowed 
 in the flats where I live." 
 
 He wanted to break off the conversation there, but her 
 smile was so friendly and her tone was so intimate that 
 he could not resist her, and he knew in his heart that it 
 was she whom he had been so desperately avoiding. He 
 had even bought the pup as a means of escape from her. 
 
 " I'm sorry," he said. 
 
 " You'd better keep him," she replied. " You look so 
 lonely. A dog's company."
 
 24 PINK ROSES 
 
 " Have you dined ? " he asked. 
 
 " No. I felt too lonely. I thought I'd have supper 
 later on." 
 
 He grinned and said : " I . . . I've spent all my 
 money on the dog, and I've left my cheque-book at home." 
 
 She thought for a moment. 
 
 " I could give you something to eat at my place. It's 
 just out of Leicester Square. Not much, only sardines 
 and salad, but I've got a bottle of creme de menthe." 
 
 Trevor could not resist the friendliness of her invita- 
 tion, and he walked away with her while she talked to 
 the pup, whom she christened Rover. 
 
 She lived in a block of flats in Gerrard Street, four 
 very tiny rooms lamentably over-furnished, and without 
 taste of any kind, good or bad. Every article in them 
 was designed to look expensive, and was of sufficiently 
 good quality to give neither offence nor pleasure. 
 
 " I haven't lived here very long," said the lady of the 
 pink roses. " I'm that changeable." 
 
 She told her maid, a coloured woman, to prepare sup- 
 per, and she bade Trevor make himself comfortable, gave 
 him a cigarette and an orange bitters, and went into her 
 bedroom to tidy herself. The maid brought in a saucer 
 of milk for the pup, who hurled himself at it and swal- 
 lowed it in three gulps and then, much distended, lay on 
 the white angora hearth-rug and went to sleep. Trevor 
 also wanted to sleep. He felt that he must do that or 
 run away, for he was more than a little frightened at be- 
 ing in such a place with only half-a-crown in his pocket. 
 
 The lady returned shortly. She had changed into the 
 costume she had worn in the Park and in her bosom she 
 had pinned a bouquet of artificial pink roses. That hurt 
 Trevor as the impression of pink roses, dewy and full of
 
 LAW 25 
 
 scent, had been the overwhelming idea in his mind for 
 so many days, and the perfume which the lady used was 
 no proper substitute. 
 
 " That's nice," she said. " It is nice to see you sitting 
 there making yourself comfortable. It's only a tiny 
 place, but it makes it homely to see you sitting there." 
 She beamed at him and watched his every movement as 
 though nothing else in the world existed for her. 
 
 " Are you hungry ? " she asked. 
 
 " I am rather." 
 
 She was delighted at that and ordered the maid to 
 hurry. 
 
 Supper was soon ready, a most elegant little meal laid 
 in a room only half the size of the drawing-room. . . . 
 The table was close to the window, through which in a 
 house opposite could be seen lurid posters of cinema 
 films, and Trevor, smiling to himself, thought that he 
 had walked into one of them, he and the pup and the lady 
 of the pink roses. She was so delighted to have him 
 there that he wanted to please her and to do so he asked 
 her her name. Nothing could have charmed her more. 
 
 " Dorothy Clay," she said. " That's my real name. 
 But I call myself Cora Dinmont. . . . What's yours ?" 
 
 He told her. He liked her too much to lie to her. 
 
 " What a nice name ! " she said with her eyes shining, 
 and she crooned it over to herself. 
 
 " Trevor Mathew. Do you live in London ? " 
 
 " Yes. I live alone now." 
 
 She introduced him to a drink that was new to him, 
 creme de menthe and soda. Its taste was as delicious 
 as its colour, while its novelty was altogether appropriate. 
 
 " Tell me more," she said. 
 
 More and more oppressed by its dullness he told her
 
 26 PINK ROSES 
 
 about the office and the Law Courts and the coach with 
 whom he committed to memory the few principles discov- 
 erable in English Law. He described the four partners 
 and the remaining 1 clerks, and was rather astonished 
 at the amount of detail he was able to put into their 
 portraiture. 
 
 "You're a college boy, aren't you?" she said. "I 
 like college boys and soldiers before the war. There's 
 no knowing with soldiers now-a-days." She bit her lip 
 and stopped. This boy was different, and she did not 
 want to be with him what she was. ... If only she 
 had never taken money and had never made the dis- 
 covery how easy it was to make money even in the 
 little country town where she had been a girl. 
 
 There was a certain innocence in Trevor which she 
 wanted to live up to. 
 
 " I like him and he likes me," she thought. " Why 
 should it make any difference? He's lonely too." 
 
 The maid brought some admirable coffee, and Cora 
 produced a bottle of fine old brandy. Trevor stretched 
 out his legs and became more loquacious. He began to 
 brag a little: 
 
 " I wanted to stay up at Cambridge," he said. " I 
 could easily have got a Fellowship. I did History my 
 first two years and got a First. I wanted to go on with 
 it, but my governor insisted on my taking Law. I got 
 a First in that too, but there isn't much Law in prac- 
 tising. I mean it isn't often you get a legal point ..." 
 
 He knew he was being a bore, but ordinarily it was 
 the hardest thing in all the world for him to talk about 
 himself, and having begun he could not stop. Cora 
 drank in his words as though he were propounding a 
 new gospel. Her lips were parted, her eyes shone, her
 
 LAW 27 
 
 bosom rose and fell. She kept his glass filled with 
 brandy, but hardly touched a drop herself. 
 
 " I don't know why I'm telling you all this," he 
 said. 
 
 " Oh ! do go on," she said. " My father was in the 
 Law, a solicitor's clerk. They had a lot to do with 
 public-houses." 
 
 " Do you often dine at the Cafe Claribel? " he asked. 
 
 " I go there a good deal." Again she bit her lip. 
 " It's not a bad place. I like the band and the mirrors, 
 and there are some nice people go there and it's out of 
 the usual run." 
 
 " You must dine with me there one night." 
 
 "Oh! I'd love to," and she thought, "He does 
 like me." But Trevor was only being polite. He had 
 allowed her to entertain him, and could not leave her 
 hospitality unreturned. 
 
 " I've often wanted to go there again," he added. 
 " But I didn't like to go in alone. I'd never been there 
 before that night." 
 
 She was so overjoyed at his speaking of it, that she 
 could not sit still, and got up and walked about the room 
 although there was hardly room for her to take five 
 steps in any direction. 
 
 " I don't know what made me go to the Park that 
 night, but I had to go. We had a little park at home, 
 and there was a band on Sunday afternoons. ... I 
 remember I had a blue crepe de chine dress and white 
 stockings, and there was a boy I was very fond of. He 
 was dark like you. I think he went to college after- 
 wards. Perhaps that's what made me so fond of college 
 boys. I often used to ask after him Sydney Collier. 
 You didn't know him, I suppose?"
 
 28 PINK ROSES 
 
 "No. No." 
 
 " Perhaps it was Oxford College. I think he became 
 a clergyman. I never spoke to him. I suppose every 
 one has fancies like that." 
 
 " I suppose so," replied Trevor. " I never had them 
 myself. At least, not after I was fifteen. ... I stopped 
 in the Park that night because I heard the band, and 
 then I liked the people moving about under the trees." 
 
 " Yes. I saw you. I saw you a long time before you 
 saw me. I walked past you two or three times. I 
 thought at first you might be Sydney Collier, although, 
 of course, he's a clergyman." 
 
 Both enjoyed the aimlessness of their conversation, 
 and neither wanted it to stop. 
 
 " I'm glad I bought the pup," said Trevor with a 
 smile. " I should never have spoken to you if it hadn't 
 been for him. I can't do it, you know. I can't talk to 
 people unless I'm used to them." 
 
 " You're talking to me all right," she answered, re- 
 turning to the table, and sitting with her elbows on it, 
 her chin in her jewelled hands. 
 
 " Ah ! but I'm used to the idea of you. I've been 
 thinking a good deal about you." 
 
 She smiled happily and half closed her eyes. He liked 
 that. He was quite sure now that she was very beau- 
 tiful and wanted to tell her so, but his scruples would 
 not let him. No more than she did he wish to allow her 
 position to interfere with the pleasure of this chance 
 evening. Also he was afraid that she would laugh at 
 him. Many people must have praised her beauty. 
 
 " I've thought about you, too," she said dreamily and 
 a little voluptuously, so that his innocence was offended. 
 " I've often looked out for you. You're so quiet after
 
 LAW 29 
 
 all the other noisy brutes. London's got that noisy since 
 the war. I've had a lot of friends killed have you? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 And suddenly in Trevor there came tumbling in a 
 series of swift, painful realizations that this evening was 
 somehow very important, and that it was what he had 
 been waiting for through the weary months of almost 
 catalepsy. It was his chance to assert himself, to break 
 his arranged life that was left untouched when all other 
 arranged lives had been broken. He was reminded of a 
 cream cake he had stolen when he was a little boy. The 
 thought of tasting it was so delicious that he never ate it 
 but took it to bed with him night after night until at last 
 he lay on it and squashed it into an uneatable mess. The 
 memory of it made him laugh out loud, and Cora, taking 
 it for a sign of happiness in him, laughed too. 
 
 "I must go now," he said; "good-night, Dorothy." 
 
 He had decided to call her and to think of her as 
 Dorothy Clay. 
 
 " Good-night," he repeated. 
 
 " Oh ! Are you going? " 
 
 " I must go. . . . Will you dine with me at the 
 Claribel on Friday at 7.30?" 
 
 " I'd love to, and I'll get a table. It's always full 
 after seven." 
 
 " Oh ! I mustn't forget the pup. I don't think I'll 
 call him Rover. I shall call him Sydney." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 "Do you mind?" 
 
 " No. I'd like your dog to be called Sydney." 
 
 She fetched the pup and returned kissing its sleepy, 
 blank face, calling it Sydney, Sydney, Sydney. 
 
 " He'll be company for you."
 
 30 PINK ROSES 
 
 " I shan't feel lonely any more," replied Trevor. 
 " I'm awfully grateful to the pup. I hope I haven't 
 talked too much. Can I come again ? " 
 
 " Whenever you like. I'll always be in for you." 
 
 She stood for a moment by the door hoping that he 
 would kiss her, but he shook hands with a courtly bow. 
 She followed him down the stairs to the hall door, but 
 again he only shook hands, and after she had closed the 
 door she stood with the back of her hand to her lips 
 and gazed up into the darkness, and she said aloud: 
 
 " Thank God I've saved a bit of money. Oh ! thank 
 God I've saved a bit of money." 
 
 Trevor walked home with the pup nestling against his 
 breast. The sky was filled with low-hanging clouds and 
 the streets were very dark with the shaded lamps. 
 London seemed beautiful and romantic to him now that 
 its garish night-life had disappeared. Anything could 
 happen in such an atmosphere. When the lights went up 
 and a new world would be disclosed, a new race and al- 
 ready a new Trevor Mathew had come into being, one 
 who was critical and eager and not at all inclined to 
 accept his inheritance unquestioned. Several times in his 
 light-heartedness he kissed the pup. . . . He had wanted 
 to kiss Dorothy Clay when he left her, but he could never 
 kiss her until she had wiped the red paint off her lips. 
 
 Meanwhile Cora Dinmont was sitting at her dressing- 
 table staring at her reflection in her mirror. She had 
 removed the paint from her face and the black from her 
 eyes. She gazed at her arms and her bosom. She was 
 proud of them, but she was a little afraid of her face 
 without its covering. Was it beautiful? Could it pos- 
 sibly be beautiful? . . . Just a touch of rouge, just a 
 hint of blue round her eyes. . . . No. That was
 
 LAW 31 
 
 wrong. She removed it and nodded and smiled at herself. 
 
 "Hello! Dorothy Clay!" she said. "Hello! Dorothy 
 Clay. Sydney Collier's come, and he isn't a clergyman ! " 
 
 So she sat deliriously and happily shedding the trap- 
 pings of Cora Dinmont and groping gradually back into 
 the past until it became so vivid that through the open 
 window she could smell the beanfields and the meadow- 
 sweet, and hear the water tumbling over the weir from 
 the canal into the little river, and she could hear the 
 rooks stirring and cawing in the trees. . . . She would 
 get a blue crepe de chine dress made, and she would wear 
 white stockings with it. 
 
 She nodded and smiled at her reflection. 
 
 " Good-night, Dorothy Clay," she said. 
 
 Then she turned off the light and jumped into her pre- 
 posterous bed with its pink silk coverlet and decorations 
 of pink ribbon, and lay aching with happiness at being 
 alone.
 
 Ill 
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 
 
 ON Friday afternoon Cora Dinmont, almost unrecog- 
 nizable without her paint, went to the Cafe Claribel to 
 order a table for two. First of all, she thought she would 
 have the table in the screened corner by the door, but 
 then she decided that this would expose the young man 
 too much to the gazes of other women, and she decided 
 on the top corner where Trevor could sit with his back to 
 the diners, and she could see what was going on among 
 the regular frequenters of the place. She told the maitre 
 d'hotel, who looked like a gargoyle from a Dore illustra- 
 tion of Rabelais, that she wanted an extra special dinner. 
 
 "As usual?" said the maitre d'hotel, and Cora 
 frowned. 
 
 " Mr. Ysnaga has ordered a table already," said the 
 maitre d'hotel. 
 
 " I am not dining with Mr. Ysnaga," snapped Cora, 
 and she wished she could arrange to meet Trevor some- 
 where else, but she did not know his address. 
 
 She had tea at the Claribel and afterwards, the evening 
 being fine, she walked along to the Park and sat where 
 Trevor had sat on the evening of their first encounter. 
 There was no band, but she stayed until she was chilled, 
 imagining herself back in the country meeting a young 
 man like Trevor, going through all the stages of courting 
 with him, being taken home and introduced to his family, 
 
 32
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 33 
 
 and here she was so moved that tears rolled down her 
 cheeks married, living in a little house. . . . Why 
 not? Everybody said she was a good sort. She under- 
 stood men and food and marketing. She had never lost 
 her head like some girls, and she had kept wonderfully 
 fresh and young. . . . She knew several girls, French 
 girls too, who had got married. 
 
 She had bought herself a blue crepe de chine frock, 
 and she wore white suede shoes and silk stockings. Her 
 hat was a neat little blue straw with pink roses. As she 
 returned she bought some pink roses from one of the 
 old women by the fountain. Four-and-sixpence ! How 
 prices had gone up since the war! 
 
 She stood by the fountain and looked over towards 
 the Claribel. There was no sign of Trevor yet, only the 
 usual throng of officers, street-walkers of whom she 
 thought with contempt actors and actresses, touts and 
 street-vendors. She rather hated that corner now and 
 she wished a bomb would fall on it one night and kill 
 some of the lounging people who made it so noisy and 
 vulgar. Meeting her there Trevor might think her one 
 of them. . . . She saw people whom she knew going 
 into the Claribel, and she began almost to wish that he 
 would not come. The old man with the dogs was there, 
 and she felt so grateful to him that she ran over and 
 slipped five shillings into his hand. 
 
 " Make it ten, lady," he said, " and you can 'ave the 
 little dawg." 
 
 She shook her head and backed away from him in con- 
 fusion, and then Trevor arrived. He had stopped late 
 at the office, and had been to his club to cash a cheque. 
 The old man recognized him. 
 
 " Little dawg doing well, sir ? " he asked.
 
 34 PINK ROSES 
 
 " First rate, thanks," said Trevor, taking Cora's out- 
 stretched hand and bowing over it in his courtly way. 
 
 " I've got a table," she said as they passed in through 
 the swing doors which the commissionaire held open for 
 them. She annoyed him by making a silly joke about 
 dogs not being admitted, but his annoyance was soon 
 lost in the nervous tension of their entry into the grand 
 cafe-saloon of the Claribel. His senses were made exces- 
 sively acute by the novelty of the experience. 
 
 Facilis descensus averni. 
 
 The Dore maitre d'hotel swept towards them with a 
 swing of the tails of his frock-coat and with outstretched 
 hand and dancing, minding step he conducted them up 
 to the table which Cora had selected. The cafe-saloon 
 seemed endless to Trevor, all his English prejudices 
 bristling against so much foreign atmosphere. 
 
 "I thought you'd like this corner," said Cora. "It's 
 a long way from the band and we needn't see any- 
 body." 
 
 " I like it," replied Trevor as he blinked and contrasted 
 the scene with the quiet, dusty traditionalism of the 
 office. " It is quite like being abroad." 
 
 "Oh! Have you travelled much?" 
 
 " Only to Paris." 
 
 " That's all I've been to." She beamed at him. This 
 was another common bond, that they had both only been 
 to Paris. 
 
 He ordered dinner with some ceremony, just as he 
 used to do at the Savoy or the Carlton in the old days 
 with Hardman and Peto. 
 
 " I think claret, don't you ? There's nothing to beat 
 good claret." 
 
 " The Chateau-Margaux is their best claret," said
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 35 
 
 Cora, and then she was annoyed with herself for exhibit- 
 ing so much knowledge. Dorothy Clay could know 
 nothing about wine. 
 
 " Very well, then. A bottle of Chateau Margaux, sole 
 Mornay, entrecote, pommes nouvelles, creme caramel. 
 How's that?" 
 
 The Dore maitre d'hotel wrote down the order and 
 Trevor said: 
 
 " We must drink Sydney's health. I think he'll grow 
 into a dog in time. I'm going to take him down to the 
 office sometimes to teach him the Law. ... I think I 
 shall send him to Rugby and Caius." 
 
 Cora stared at him. She was not used to the Cam- 
 bridge brand of nonsense, for her college boys had been 
 of a very different stamp. 
 
 Trevor wanted to go on talking about himself. He 
 had been bottled up for so long and had not had such a 
 good listener as Cora had proved herself to be for 
 years, for he had always played the audience to his 
 friends. 
 
 " I've only one more year in London," he said. " I 
 suddenly realized that after our delicious supper the 
 other night. I'd given up thinking about time. There's 
 no reason why it shouldn't be a splendid year, is there? 
 ... I mean, if I've got to go back and live in the pre- 
 war provinces I ought to have something to remember. 
 After all, it isn't my fault that I've got a heart. If I 
 hadn't I should either be dead or have wonderful 
 memories of a Greek island, or the desert, or ruined vil- 
 lages in France or Belgium ; something that isn't English 
 any way. . . . I've been thinking. I don't see why we 
 shouldn't forget everything else for a year." 
 
 The waiter brought the Chateau Margaux, poured the
 
 36 PINK ROSES 
 
 first drops into Trevor's glass and filled Cora's. She 
 raised her glass and smiled at him. When his was full he 
 raised it, held it out towards hers, and touched it, 
 saying : 
 
 " Here's to our year." 
 
 Cora drained her glass and a faint colour crept into 
 her pale cheeks. Trevor laughed and said : 
 
 " Sydney will be a dog by then. . . . It is wonder- 
 ful what a difference a dog makes. I was beginning to 
 think I should never care for a soul again. It's the war, 
 I think. One stops, somehow." 
 
 Cora's blank expression forced him to realize that he 
 was talking over her head, and he muttered apolo- 
 getically : 
 
 " It was the Dardanelles. That was the last straw. 
 The sawdust trickled out of us all after that. ... I 
 beg your pardon." He filled her glass again. " If I'd 
 any sense I should have taken to food and drink after 
 that. Thinking was no use, was it ? " 
 
 The waiter brought the sole Mornay, and Trevor, eye- 
 ing the nearly empty bottle, said: 
 
 " Can we do another half bottle? " 
 
 " Can you? " asked Cora. 
 
 He took this as a challenge and ordered another bottle. 
 
 " It is good stuff," he said. " There is no harm in 
 good stuff." 
 
 But Cora did not hear him. With the dainty, fas- 
 tidious greediness of a cat she was eating her sole, and 
 Trevor, looking across at her, thought she was very like 
 a cat; wise and mysterious and completely competent. 
 He thought but did not say: 
 
 " Are you really not interested in the war ? Did it 
 never move you? Didn't you even feel a kind of sea-
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 37 
 
 sickness when they withdrew from the Dardanelles and 
 the feeling in the country turned from a Quixotic exalta- 
 tion to blind hatred of the Hun? " 
 
 Her healthy absorption in her food was a sufficient 
 answer to his questions and he envied her. There was 
 no pretence or consciousness about her enjoyment, and 
 she was so thoroughly happy that she did not need to 
 talk or think. This seemed marvellous to him. She had 
 some secret which had been denied him, and to account 
 for it, he told himself that she was "of the people." 
 
 " 'Do you ever read anything ? " he asked at last, in 
 a kind of desperation. 
 
 " Ooh ! The Sunday papers. I stay in bed on Sun- 
 days." 
 
 " I mean books." 
 
 " I like a pretty story now and then." 
 
 The entrecote had arrived and with it the second bottle 
 of Chateau Margaux. When he was half way through 
 that he began to smile at himself. After all it was he 
 who was to be pitied. She had lived while he had given 
 his energy to a thing called History, to which the events 
 of the last few years had given the lie. She, having 
 lived, could go on unperturbed while he, having thought, 
 was left exposed and groping. History had been given 
 the lie, and the Law was a dusty anachronism that had 
 grown out of old tyrannies and privileges to preserve 
 their letter long after their spirit had disappeared. 
 
 There was nothing anachronistic about Cora. All her 
 traditions were intact They at least had remained and 
 would remain unquestioned. She had no problems, 
 internal or external. The only question for her was 
 Food and How to get it. 
 
 " That," said Trevor, " is the only thing that matters."
 
 38 PINK ROSES 
 
 " What is ? " asked she, surprised at his so suddenly 
 breaking the glowing wine-lit silence. 
 
 " Food," he answered. " That is what it is all about, 
 Food and anxiety about the continuance of supplies." 
 
 Vaguely divining that he was talking about the war, 
 she said: 
 
 " I don't mind air-raids, but I do wish they'd put the 
 lights up." 
 
 " If they put the lights up," chuckled Trevor rather 
 drunkenly, " the people would think the war had stopped, 
 and it would stop." 
 
 "Wouldn't that be lovely? I'm so sick of soldiers. 
 They're all nerves. I've had some very bad times with 
 soldiers. Some of them are so queer. I remember there 
 was one who clung on to me and wept as if his heart was 
 breaking, and said he would never go back. I had to give 
 him brandy and then he was better. Wasn't it ter- 
 rible?" 
 
 Trevor's heart began to thump and his thoughts roved, 
 and he traced patterns with his fork on the table- 
 cloth. 
 
 " I'm a fool," he said. " I'm a damned fool. The 
 other night I went away wanting to call you Dorothy 
 Clay because I didn't like all that. Compared with a 
 lawyer's yours is an honest calling. What you do is of 
 service to humanity. You allay suffering. We foment 
 it and turn other people's quarrels into money, and our 
 impositions were so enormous that they had to be made 
 statutory." 
 
 He enjoyed talking to her in words that she could 
 not possibly understand. It was an unscrupulous attempt 
 to assert his superiority. 
 
 " I do love to hear you talk," sighed Cora. " I do
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 39 
 
 really. So few men have anything to say for them- 
 selves." 
 
 For some reason the band was patriotically disposed, 
 and played the Marseillaise, the Russian and the Japa- 
 nese anthems, and God Save the King, and with each 
 tune in turn little groups of diners stood up in reverence, 
 and then returned to their food, wine, and talk. 
 
 " And for those tunes," said Trevor, " millions of men 
 are being killed. They are sung that posterity may have 
 supper." 
 
 " D'you like cinemas?" asked Cora. 
 
 " Cinemas ? . . . I used to enjoy a good play, but 
 I'd rather forgotten about enjoying anything until I met 
 you. . . . Would you like to go to one ? " 
 
 " I like a good cinema. It's better than reading 
 because you can see for yourself, but I don't like war- 
 pictures. They give me the hump." 
 
 "Horrors?" 
 
 " No. It isn't that. It's all these men in line, and 
 sometimes they show you thousands and thousands of 
 them marching. It seems silly somehow. And I know 
 what some of them are like when they come back. They 
 want too much of a girl." 
 
 There was something in her that frightened Trevor 
 and at the same time attracted him deeply, so that the 
 superficial charm she had had for him disappeared. Her 
 eyes were big and dark, but they had no gleam of intelli- 
 gence whatever, and yet he felt that she knew and under- 
 stood him, or at least his mood, better than any one he 
 had ever known, and she made him understand himself. 
 . . . He also knew that even if he had wished it, he 
 could not escape from her, because he needed her and 
 she him.
 
 40 PINK ROSES 
 
 He would not use the word in connection with what 
 had happened, because it was so remote from what he 
 had always thought and vaguely dreamed of as love. It 
 was something better and more real than what he had 
 meant by love, which had been rather a formal thing, 
 nice, discreet, decent. He wanted to be, he must be dis- 
 turbed out of the nauseated lethargy in which his grief 
 had left him. He must have something active working 
 in his soul to withstand the corrosion of the war, and he 
 felt utterly certain that Cora understood this perfectly 
 not with her head perhaps, but with her heart, with 
 her body, her blood, her nerves, all of which offered him 
 a steady good comradeship. There was no room for 
 deceit now. His case had been revealed to him by her 
 as too desperate, and he was intensely grateful to her 
 for her unconscious revelation. 
 
 He turned and looked down the long cafe-saloon. 
 
 " Do you know any of these people ? " he asked. 
 
 " A good many of them." 
 
 "What do they do?" 
 
 " Oh ! anything. . . . The girls are always making 
 money and the men do sometimes. I wouldn't like you 
 to know any of them." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " They're not your sort." 
 
 " What is my sort? " he asked with a smile. 
 
 " Ooh ! Gentlemen and ladies. People who never 
 think about the rent." 
 
 The shrewdness of the definition pleased him. That 
 was the only distinction in the world since 1914. Some 
 people had money and others got it as best they could. 
 Manners had been swept away. 
 
 Thoughts and memories began to crowd in on him so
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 41 
 
 fast that he could no longer bear to sit still. He gulped 
 down his coffee and liqueur and asked for the bill. As 
 he was waiting for it he leaned forward, and said: 
 
 " You know, what has been wrong with me is that I 
 have had to go on thinking. Some of my friends said: 
 ' The war is right.' They have been killed. A few 
 others said : ' The war is wrong.' Some of them are in 
 prison. But it satisfied them like a gospel. I couldn't say 
 it was right or wrong. To me it was outside morality, 
 like cholera. Nothing alters that. You can't hide the 
 truth by making a hell of a noise. That is why I have 
 kept so quiet. I can't go on until I feel certain in 
 myself." 
 
 Cora smiled at him kindly. He took her hand and 
 said: 
 
 " I shan't be interfered with for a year." 
 
 " All right, kid," she said, giving his hand a warm 
 squeeze. " You're all right." 
 
 To her he seemed very young, very unhappy and more 
 than ever like Syd Collier. 
 
 With the bill the waiter brought a note for her. She 
 read it and looked angrily down the cafe-saloon and 
 shook her head. Trevor involuntarily turned, and a few 
 tables away saw a handsome Jew with a long, crooked 
 nose and black eyes of an extraordinary brilliance star- 
 ing with a confident smile. 
 
 " Who is that man? " he asked. 
 
 " His name is Jose Ysnaga," replied Cora. " He 
 wants me to go and play poker. But he doesn't play 
 straight. That nose of his can smell money a mile off. 
 . . . Let's go to a cinema." 
 
 Trevor stole another, glance at the Jew and then back 
 at Cora, and for a moment his native English caution
 
 42 PINK ROSES 
 
 asserted itself and he suspected her of luring him into 
 the company of thieves. He laughed it off, however, 
 and said: 
 
 " He looks as if he did well out of it." 
 
 " He does," said Cora. " He's a rich man, but he 
 can't go straight." 
 
 It was on the tip of Trevor's tongue to ask the hack- 
 neyed question: 
 
 " Why isn't he at the war? " 
 
 But he swallowed it as absurd. It takes more than a 
 war to divert the Ysnagas of the world from their pur- 
 poses. 
 
 As they walked down the cafe-saloon he studied the 
 man carefully, and found himself admiring his imper- 
 turbable smooth rakishness. He had a very beautiful 
 woman with him, and on his table was an iced bottle of 
 champagne, two or three liqueur bottles, and in his 
 ringed right hand he held a large cigar. He rose as 
 they passed, and it was impossible for Cora to avoid 
 speaking to him though she refused to introduce Trevor. 
 That did not prevent Ysnaga turning to him and with a 
 charmingly apologetic air explaining that he had some- 
 thing of importance to say to Miss Dinmont. Ysnaga's 
 manners were so magnificently bad as to be pardonable. 
 Nothing else could be expected of him, for he was so 
 completely himself. 
 
 Cora was very angry, and all Trevor heard of their 
 conversation was: 
 
 " I'm not going to, so there." 
 
 Ysnaga bowed with a wide crooked smile, and Cora 
 said: 
 
 " Come along, Boy." 
 
 Trevor nodded and followed her out into the street.
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 43 
 
 " He's a bad man," she said, " and he wants to make 
 everybody as bad as himself. He pretends he was born 
 in America to get out of the Army, though he's got 
 Whitechapel written all over his ugly face. But he does 
 know how to make money. He's got two factories out 
 at Bow, and the Government owes him I don't know how 
 many thousands. He was in prison when the war began." 
 
 Trevor gulped down this surprising information. It 
 startled him and jolted him even out of his excitement 
 in plunging away from the captivity of routine in which 
 he had lived. He gasped : 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 And Cora said: 
 
 " Yes. He had a cinema then, but it didn't pay. 
 . . . Do you like Dorothy Gish ? " 
 
 "Who is she?" 
 
 " She's on the films. I think she's sweet. Her and 
 Pauline Frederick I like best: I don't care for the men 
 on the films except Charlie Chaplin." 
 
 They found their way to a cinema in a by-street. The 
 doorkeeper greeted Cora familiarly, and the manager, a 
 little dwarfish rather deformed man, came up to her in 
 the dark, squeezed her arm, and said: 
 
 " Hello, Cora; you haven't been in lately." 
 
 "No. How's business?" 
 
 " Not exactly roaring, but all right." 
 
 Trevor lost his temper and dragged Cora away after 
 the girl waiting to light them to their seats. Cora was 
 pleased with him for that, and gave a contented sigh as 
 she sank into her seat. As he removed his hat she took 
 it and held it on her lap. She was delighted to have him 
 so easily surrendering to her life, for she knew that such 
 surrender was what he needed.
 
 44 PINK ROSES 
 
 He even saw the pictures through her eyes as they 
 flickered in front of him, and responded to every foolish 
 joke with a laugh and to every false sentiment with a 
 twinge of emotion, that just stirred, knew that it was not 
 really required and slipped back again. That was very 
 pleasant and left him undisturbed to the investigation of 
 what had happened and was still happening between him 
 and the lady of the pink roses. ... In the first place, 
 they had had a very good dinner; in the second, though 
 she understood hardly a word of what he said, she under- 
 stood why he said it and that was far more important. 
 A monologue with her was far more fruitful than an 
 intellectual discussion with some one of his own stand- 
 ing, and finally and above all it was physically good to be 
 with her. The dinner and the wine had made it clear 
 that that was all-important. . . . He had always ac- 
 cepted life at second-hand and by hearsay. With her he 
 must begin again without any ready-made conceptions 
 whatsoever. Even the cinema, with her, gave a truer 
 representation of life than he had obtained from all his 
 reading. His hand slipped to her arm and held it, warm, 
 strong, rotund. . . . What a good sort she was ! That 
 was the important thing to be in a world so withered of 
 humanity that it could tolerate and even take pride in its 
 slow dragging calamity. 
 
 As he caressed her arm he thought whimsically that he 
 had found much the same sort of comfort from the con- 
 tact of the pup, Sydney, nestling against his breast as he 
 took him home. There was a dog in one of the pictures, 
 a marvellously trained animal who evaded policemen 
 with great skill. Extraordinary how satisfying that 
 spectacle was, something in it emblematic of the whole of 
 human activity, always, always, evading policemen.
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 45 
 
 " You can talk here, you know," said Cora. " It isn't 
 a theatre." 
 
 " I'm so interested," said Trevor. " I did like that 
 dog." 
 
 " He is good, isn't he ? I daresay it's like people. 
 Some people are born for the films and some aren't. I 
 daresay it's the same with dogs. . . . But I shall be 
 jealous if you like dogs so much." 
 
 He gave her arm a sharp squeeze, so happy was he at 
 the confession of her interest in him. 
 
 She leaned towards him and whispered: 
 
 " It's like I always wanted it to be. Some one good- 
 looking and with a nice voice like you." 
 
 He raised her hand to his lips and kissed it, and he 
 looked with an intense sympathy at two couples in the 
 row in front of them who, sitting low in their seats, 
 were locked in each other's arms, murmuring, lost to 
 everything in the world. 
 
 The pictures flickered on. Cora sighed and sank hap- 
 pily into the new development of their friendship, and 
 Trevor's heart grew big within him as he became more 
 intensely aware of the warmth of the humanity crowded 
 into that dark, narrow room for the distraction of their 
 senses while their deeper powers groped into the life they 
 shared. It was the first time he had felt at all the power 
 of a crowd, the first time he had ever gazed into such 
 depths without dizziness and disgust. Contact with its 
 force made him want to laugh gleefully at its languid 
 aimlessness, and he had just begun to enjoy that when 
 suddenly the scene was blank and where the picture had 
 been appeared an announcement that an air-raid was in 
 progress, and the dwarfed manager, standing on the 
 cracked piano, assured the audience that the theatre was
 
 46 PINK ROSES 
 
 bomb-proof, and that there would be a quarter of an 
 hour or twenty minutes in which to take other shelter. 
 . . . But no one listened. The unity of the crowd was 
 broken. Lovers sprang apart. Women screamed. There 
 was a rush to the doors. 
 
 "Take me home," said Cora. "That's all right; the 
 floors are concrete." 
 
 As they passed into the street guns were heard, and 
 with each thud the scurrying men and women ran faster. 
 A woman near them cried : 
 
 "O God! O God! O God!" 
 
 And a man who was running with a queer swaying 
 gait swooned. Two policemen ran to pick him up. 
 
 It was only two minutes to Cora's flat. The coloured 
 maid admitted them. Her face was a yellowy grey. 
 
 " It's all right in here," said Cora. " It couldn't get 
 through the top floor. We'll have some supper pres- 
 ently." 
 
 The maid was reassured by their company, and Trevor 
 began to realize how frightened he had been. His 
 legs trembled, and he could not make his lips frame 
 words. 
 
 " Ha ! Ha ! " he said. " This is ridiculous. I've never 
 minded it like this before. ... It was being in that 
 crowd and that poor devil fainting." 
 
 The guns began again, a big gun far away, a small 
 one barking nearer. He said: 
 
 " I must go home to the pup." 
 
 " Dogs don't mind." 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I suppose they think that anything 
 men choose to do is all right. . . . Men are just the 
 same with governments. I haven't minded it so much 
 before. I just looked on . . ."
 
 CHATEAU MARGAUX 47 
 
 "Don't talk, dear," said Cora. "It isn't good for 
 you." 
 
 She put her arms round his neck and drew his head 
 down until staring at her lips he made quite sure that 
 there was not a vestige of red paint on them, and he 
 kissed her and sank deep into her happiness. 
 
 For a couple of hours the guns roared on, but they 
 heard nothing, only each other's words, the blood beating 
 in their hearts, the sweet sighing breath of contentment. 
 
 He awoke in the morning to see Cora coming in with 
 a breakfast tray. 
 
 " How you sleep ! " she said. " It's nearly eleven 
 o'clock, and Estelle has gone out to do the shopping. 
 There were only forty people killed last night, and not 
 much material damage done; so the paper says, though 
 they always lie." 
 
 As she laid down the tray he caught her in his arms 
 and hid his face in her neck: 
 
 " You dear, dear creature," he said. " I love you." 
 
 " Does it matter your being so late ? " she asked. 
 
 " No. Nothing matters. Nothing, nothing matters."
 
 IV 
 HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES 
 
 MR. HOBDAY took himself very seriously. He had been 
 head of the firm for nearly thirty years, and in his view 
 Hobday, Treves and Treves and the British Empire were 
 in their fortunes intimately linked. He read the Morn- 
 ing Post for his politics and The Times for its Law 
 Reports, and when the Daily Mail dared to question the 
 omniscience and omnipotence of Lord Kitchener he 
 called his staff into his sanctum and burned the rag with 
 the following homily : 
 
 " It is the soldiers who are going to win this war. 
 The civilian who doubts the capacity of our tried and 
 proven soldiers to win the war is a traitor to his King, 
 to his country, and to his own best self. We have never 
 lost a war yet and we are not going to lose this one. 
 Every young man in this country is now Kitchener's 
 man, and every old man wishes to God he were thirty 
 years younger. . . . M m. You may go." 
 
 Mr. William Treves was a bachelor of fifty, but he 
 had a fatty heart and assumed responsibility for Mr. 
 Robert's family when the junior partner obtained a com- 
 mission and was posted to a recruiting depot at York. 
 . . . Only the office boy and the most junior clerk were 
 required by the Army, so that the staff of this old and 
 honoured firm remained intact, but as Mr. Hobday con- 
 tinued to read the Morning Post war fever raged long 
 after it had disappeared from Trevor's thoughts. He 
 
 48
 
 HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES 49 
 
 felt completely estranged and like a wicked cynic among 
 youthful idealists. It was extraordinary how untouched 
 the firm remained. Business was good, better than ever 
 indeed. A great action between two mining companies in 
 South Africa which had been maturing for years ripened 
 at last for hearing, and enormous fees began to accrue 
 due. Mr. Hobday was generous, and though he did not 
 raise salaries he granted war bonuses in consideration of 
 the rise in prices. 
 
 This of course did not affect Trevor, whom in his 
 patriotic fervour Mr. Hobday had decided to ignore a 
 young man in his early twenties loafing about an office 
 when there was a man's work to be done in half a dozen 
 different quarters of the globe. Up to a point Mr. Hob- 
 day's resentment was just, for there was no doubt about 
 it that during his second year Trevor did loaf. He sulked 
 and thought morosely of his thwarted desire to stay at 
 Cambridge with a Fellowship, but that life had also been 
 destroyed. The accounts he had of Cambridge from his 
 friends were heartbreaking a few elderly dons, a few 
 black men, soldiers and nurses. . . . That perhaps had 
 hurt Trevor more even than the loss of his friends, and 
 such capacity for hatred as was left in him was vented 
 upon Mr. Hobday with his Morning Post, so pleased, so 
 excited, so exalted even while the world which the young 
 man was preparing to enter was blown to Hell. . . . 
 
 Mr. Hobday looked the part of the John Bull patriot 
 except that he was not ruddy. He ought to have been, 
 but his life of hard, sedentary work had made his com- 
 plexion a parchment grey, belying his native character, 
 which was that of the bluff English squire. He inspired 
 awe in his staff, confidence in his clients, and when he 
 said that the war was the summit of Great Britain's
 
 50 PINK ROSES 
 
 destiny there were at least three hundred people who 
 would accept that it was so because he could make things 
 uncomfortable for them if they thought or tried to think 
 otherwise. Trevor calculated that there must be about 
 a million Mr. Hobdays in Great Britain, and when he 
 multiplied them by the people whom they would influ- 
 ence he despaired of the war's ever ending. 
 
 On the morning after the air-raid he found the office 
 in a new spasm of hatred of the Hun. Work had ceased 
 while a symposium was held on the question of reprisals. 
 The cashier, a thin, weedy little man with a voice like 
 a captive raven, said: 
 
 "We must give them Hell! Bomb Dusseldorf, bomb 
 Cologne, bomb Berlin ! " 
 
 And the Common Law managing-clerk, who had an 
 ingenious mind developed by long practice in annoying 
 legal opponents, suggested that German prisoners should 
 be returned to the Fatherland by aeroplane, two of them 
 tied together for every civilian killed, three for every 
 woman, four for every child, and dropped into the 
 streets of the Rhine towns. 
 
 Mr. Hobday came in at that moment and applauded 
 the suggestion. 
 
 " Very good, Mr. Barnes. Very good. I'll write to 
 the War Office about it." 
 
 Trevor had left the group as Mr. Hobday came in. 
 He could not stand the man on these occasions. 
 
 In Mr. Robert's absence Trevor had been allowed to 
 use his room. Mr. Hobday looked in and said : 
 
 " Trevor, I want to speak to you a moment." 
 
 Trevor followed him into his sanctum. Mr. Hobday, 
 with the rudeness which inspired so much confidence in 
 clients, kept him standing for a quarter of an hour while
 
 HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES 51 
 
 he unfolded the Morning Post and laid it open at the 
 leading article, on his letter-basket, and Trevor 
 thought : 
 
 " This is all so out-of-date. People don't behave like 
 this any more. There isn't time for it, and the world 
 doesn't want important people." 
 
 Mr. Hobday coughed. 
 
 " You were late again this morning." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I happened to look into Mr. Robert's room. On 
 your desk I found a novel of a character of which I 
 cannot approve, a few serious historical works, a volume 
 of poems, and a number of type-written sheets of what 
 appeared to be verses." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Ordinarily I have made it and have kept it as a rule 
 not to interfere with my articled clerks. We give them 
 the entry to our business and they learn or not as they 
 please. . . . Your father is a very old friend of mine. 
 We were articled together here in this office." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " In those days young men worked." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Now young men are fighting for what we worked 
 for." 
 
 Trevor looked steadily at Mr. Hobday, marked his 
 ample waistcoat, his swelling neck that thrust out the 
 lobes of his ears, his staring, expressionless eyes, and he 
 could not help remarking: 
 
 " But we don't like what you worked for. We don't 
 want it." 
 
 Then he gasped, not at his own audacity, but at the 
 suddenness of this expression of his deepest and most
 
 52 PINK ROSES 
 
 hidden thought. He knew that he had stumbled on a 
 profound truth. Mr. Hobday's eyes started out of his 
 head. His fat hands fumbled in the air for a moment, 
 then reached out for the Morning Post, to which they 
 clung for comfort. ... It was a terrible and yet a 
 delicious moment. Mr. Hobday could not face it. After 
 a gulp or two, he said: 
 
 " You are to be pitied, Trevor. I pity you. It is of 
 course not my affair what you choose to do, but, if you 
 are going to continue to put in an appearance here, I 
 must ask you to observe the hours of the office, which are 
 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and if you do propose to occupy 
 Robert Treves's chair while he, like a man, is doing his 
 duty, I trust that you will study the Law and put frivoli- 
 ties from your mind." He paused, and then with a more 
 kindly indulgence resumed : " Come, come, Trevor. You 
 will inherit a great business, a great position. In the 
 reconstruction of the old country you should play a great 
 part. The Law has made England what she is. We are 
 fighting for the Law. . . ." 
 
 " Against humanity," thought Trevor with a flick of 
 his mind which made him realize that it was no good his 
 saying anything more. What he had already said had 
 hurt Mr. Hobday, but had produced no further impres- 
 sion. 
 
 " There must be an end to this slackness," said the 
 Head of the Firm. " Any man who slacks now is not 
 earning his keep. We need all the hands we can get in 
 this big African case. ... If you don't propose to 
 help us with that then I propose to use my influence 
 with the War Office to obtain you some work with a 
 commission, of course which can be done by an unfit 
 man. After all, it is hardly fair that you should be
 
 HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES 53 
 
 allowed to finish your articles while thousands of young 
 men have theirs suspended. . . . Equality of sacrifice, 
 you know. We must all suffer for our country's good. 
 . . . Two of the clerks are going, and it is work that 
 would interest you and would be a very valuable experi- 
 ence. It is a case in which ah ! millions are involved." 
 
 " History," said Trevor, " has become a matter of 
 millions." 
 
 " I am not jesting," said Mr. Hobday severely, and 
 Trevor, who was really interested in the train of thought 
 that he had started, strove to explain: 
 
 " I only meant that the individual is swamped. There 
 is a point at which the mind cannot take in anything 
 further." 
 
 Mr. Hobday smiled indulgently: 
 
 " Ah ! " he said. " We are suffering from neglect. 
 After all, it is perhaps a good thing that a young man of 
 position here and there should be spared. A good year's 
 work now for the remainder of your articles will be the 
 making of you. Who knows? Perhaps by then we shall 
 have won our case and the war, and the good relations 
 of this firm and your own will continue. There is no 
 more public-spirited and patriotic profession than that to 
 which we have the honour to belong. ... If you will 
 go to Mr. Barnes now he will be glad of your assistance 
 in bringing the briefs in our African case up to date. 
 . . . Good morning ! Good morning ! " 
 
 Trevor withdrew in a state of eruption. Mr. Hob- 
 day's completely innocent lack of scruple baffled him. 
 Either the War Office or the African case! . . . But 
 how exactly typical! In the Hobday world one must 
 work for the comfort or the protection of Hobday. In 
 fact, it was Hobday and not the world that mattered,
 
 54 PINK ROSES 
 
 and it was for the Hobdays that young men were left 
 friendless, ambitionless, and dispirited. 
 
 His first impulse was to fling out of the office then and 
 there; but then he reflected that it was only for a year, 
 and that if he did obey his impulse it would mean good- 
 bye to London, and stagnation in the even more uncon- 
 genial atmosphere of the manufacturing North. He sat 
 in Mr. Robert's room for a long time wrestling it out, 
 and came at last to the conclusion that he was an idiot 
 for being so angry about it. Lawyers were a hopelessly 
 narrow and cloistered class who were absolutely inca- 
 pable of realizing that the world had passed them long 
 ago, and even in its disputes was gradually learning to do 
 without them. 
 
 While Trevor cogitated Mr. Hobday wrote a friendly 
 letter to his father, in which he said : 
 
 " The boy is sound at heart, sound as a bell. He was 
 very badly hit by his rejection from the Army, but he 
 has picked up bravely, and after some friendly discussion 
 with myself has come to the conclusion that he can best 
 serve his country by preparing to follow in his father's 
 footsteps. I am wasting a good deal of my time on a 
 Tribunal listening to cowardly riff-raff who cannot think 
 impersonally even in a, grave national crisis and in cer- 
 tain other directions of which I am not at liberty to 
 speak. I am making myself felt. If the war continues, 
 that is, if victory should be long in coming, I should be 
 able to place the boy where he could gain both valuable 
 experience and invaluable influence. ..." 
 
 The river must flow along its bed, but Trevor was con- 
 scious of a new source of vitality for which he could 
 find no pleasing course. He was out of the war, was no 
 longer even emotionally engaged in it, and had begun to
 
 HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES 55 
 
 realize that he was condemned to speak an unintelligible 
 language since he had no dogma of any kind. . . . 
 Even Harry Hardman had had his dogma: 
 
 " A generation's got to go so that all the subsequent 
 generations may be free." 
 
 That had once satisfied him too, but it did so no 
 longer. The tragedy had overstepped the capacity of the 
 human mind. Everybody was lying. It was better, there- 
 fore, to keep silent, and he was sorry he had told Mr. 
 Hobday the only truth he knew, which was that he and 
 his contemporaries had never wanted the world for 
 which Mr. Hobday and his contemporaries had worked. 
 
 For the present Cora was a sufficient answer to all that 
 Cora, and Sydney, and Mr. Ysnaga, and the old man 
 with his little dogs. 
 
 Elated by the still tingling satisfaction of that Experi- 
 ence, Trevor went to the other end of the vast, dingy 
 suite of offices to Mr. Barnes's room. 
 
 " Hello ! Barnes," he said. " Mr. Hobday has asked 
 me to help you with your big case. Terrible waste of 
 money in war-time, isn't it?" 
 
 Mr. Barnes was a snuffy, keen little man with a brown 
 moustache and eyebrows that were almost moustachios, 
 beneath which peeped and darted two little short-sighted 
 brown eyes. He had hardly any nose with which to sup- 
 port his pince-nez, which he wore impatiently rammed 
 down almost to his nostrils. Even then they slipped 
 about, and had made blood-red furrows on either side of 
 his nose. 
 
 "Waste? Waste? . . . It's got to be settled before 
 the war's over or there'll be German money working on 
 the other side. If we lost a case like this it would be as 
 bad as losing the war. . . . It's British money and a
 
 56 PINK ROSES 
 
 good title against German money and hanky-panky. 
 ... If you're going to help, pull up your shirt-sleeves 
 and buckle to." 
 
 Trevor drew up a chair to the table and began to finger 
 the mountainous pile of papers, briefs, proofs, maps, 
 reports, accounts. He liked Mr. Barnes's enthusiasm. 
 
 " It's a big fight," said the little man. " It's years 
 since I had such a big fight, but there aren't the men at 
 the Bar now that there were in the old days. Nothing 
 like it. The Law's getting too technical. That's what 
 it is. And the big men at the Bar have to specialize. 
 The big money's for the man with a head for figures. 
 . . . What I used to love was a straight fight without 
 any law in it to speak of, just a little skirmishing on 
 pleadings, and then a knock-out in cross-examination. 
 But pleadings aren't what they were, and these new men 
 can't cross-examine for nuts. They're afraid of hurting 
 anybody's feelings. . . . You can make yourself very 
 useful on this, Mr. Mathew. I always think myself 
 that's it's a good thing for an article to make himself 
 useful. You never know where it's going to come in 
 when you practice yourself." . . . 
 
 Trevor was soon immersed in the papers, reading 
 figures which made his head swim, and struggling to find 
 some coherence in the long tale of concessions and pros- 
 pector's rights and licenses and flotations, registrations, 
 and at last he began to perceive that the dispute was over 
 a piece of land about twice the size of Yorkshire, on 
 which there were or were going to be or were said to be 
 gold-mines, copper-mines, and behind this particular dis- 
 pute there was a long history of disputes which had been 
 settled, some in Court, some by arbitration, some by vio- 
 lent financial means, until at last one set of interests was
 
 HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES 57 
 
 grouped against another. . . . Millions of money had 
 already changed hands, several companies had been 
 floated and wound up, but what struck Trevor as extraor- 
 dinary was that in twenty years neither gold nor copper 
 had been forthcoming. Apparently one company after 
 another had spent its subscription in litigation and had 
 disappeared or been merged in another company which 
 took up the struggle. 
 
 " A big fight, eh? " chuckled Mr. Barnes. 
 
 " Devilish big," replied Trevor. " I can't size it up 
 yet." 
 
 " Of course you can't. You just let it soak you up, 
 and then you can't think of anything else. . . . 
 There's big money behind it and big men. I often lie 
 awake and think how wonderful it is that this sort of 
 thing is going on all over the world to keep old London 
 going, and little me sitting in a quiet room fighting it out 
 for 'em, for the men who've risked their money and the 
 men who have risked their lives." 
 
 " Money first ? " asked Trevor with a smile. He was 
 beginning to enjoy himself immensely. There was some- 
 thing delightfully innocent about these good people who 
 had the newspapers as a screen between themselves and 
 facts. 
 
 "Well, not exactly that," replied Mr. Barnes. "I 
 didn't mean to convey that, but if a man loses his life 
 well, there's an end of it; but if he loses his money 
 well he wants to know about it." 
 
 " How long will the case take ? " 
 
 " Three months, perhaps longer. It certainly won't 
 be finished this term, and then there's sure to be an 
 appeal, and with luck we shall carry it to the House of 
 Lords."
 
 58 PINK ROSES 
 
 "Years, then?" 
 
 "Oh! certainly." 
 
 Trevor sank back into his work on the vast pile of 
 documents, wishing that he could share or even begin to 
 understand Mr. Barnes's enthusiasm, but any human or 
 personal interest there might ever have been in the affair 
 had disappeared, and it had become a long confused 
 struggle between rival organizations. There was a pile 
 of Counsel's opinions about as long as the Origin of 
 Species, and Trevor decided to begin on that, but he was 
 soon floundering, for there was little concern for facts 
 in these type-written sheets. Indeed, he could not find 
 much else but innumerable references to cases. 
 
 " These don't seem to be of much value," he said. 
 
 " No. But we have to consult Counsel. We can't 
 put ourselves in the wrong, you know. ..." 
 
 " How am I to get the hang of it?" 
 
 " Why should you? All you want out of it is experi- 
 ence of practice. . . . You can have my notes if you 
 like. They were made fifteen years ago." 
 
 Mr. Barnes took a shabby little black book out of a 
 drawer and threw it over to Trevor, who in ten minutes 
 knew exactly what the case was about, and that a certain 
 native tribe in Northern Rhodesia had sold a certain con- 
 cession twice to different speculators. That was the 
 fact: the rest was Law. 
 
 In the correspondence he was interested to find the 
 name of Mr. Jose Ysnaga, who had apparently played 
 a considerable part in the flotation of one of the original 
 and now defunct companies. 
 
 " That's a funny name," he said. " Ysnaga." 
 
 " Mr. Jose Ysnaga. Oh yes. We know him. There 
 aren't many solicitors in town who don't know him. If
 
 HOBDAY, TREVES AND TREVES 59 
 
 you want to know What's What behind Who's Who ask 
 Mr. Barnes of Hobday's. It's a quiet firm, but deep." 
 
 Trevor decided that he had certainly been wasting his 
 time with his academic treatment of the Law. The 
 thought of the bland, accomplished Ysnaga flooded the 
 whole of this dusty case with romance, and he surveyed 
 the pile of documents with admiration. They were in a 
 sense the creation of the wonderful Ysnaga, his gift, his 
 legacy to the world as he swept on in brilliant and suc- 
 cessful manipulation of the world's resources. 
 
 " He was in prison when the war began," he said. 
 
 " Was he ? How do you know that ? " 
 
 " From a friend of his. He is a Government con- 
 tractor now, and has two factories at Bow." 
 
 Mr. Barnes leaned back in his chair and roared with 
 laughter.
 
 V 
 RAKE'S PROGRESS 
 
 IN conversation with Sydney, Trevor admitted that he 
 was in love with Cora Dinmont, and Sydney, after a 
 saucer of milk, was sympathetic and listened with his 
 ears cocked as he lay on his master's stomach and en- 
 joyed the rumbling of his voice as it came out. So com- 
 plete was Trevor's satisfaction with the sudden transmu- 
 tation of his existence that he had no doubt that it was 
 permanent. He dined with Cora once a week and once a 
 week they walked in the Park and listened to the band, 
 and enjoyed watching the shifting crowd under the trees. 
 Somehow the people did not look as if they were part of 
 the place. They seemed transitory and almost ghoulish, 
 and very often people in the street had this effect on 
 Trevor. They were like people who had returned from 
 some forgotten period of time, like people caught in 
 Time and hungering wistfully for eternity, and to make 
 themselves easy trying one masquerade after another. 
 . . . This was especially noticeable on Flag Days, but 
 perhaps it was only the fantastic costumes and uniforms, 
 perhaps it was because of the vast number of temporary 
 buildings that had sprung up in London. Many of 
 Trevor's acquaintances had gone to work in temporary 
 buildings, and they all acquired that temporary, transi- 
 tory appearance. 
 
 But Cora Dinmont was permanent. 
 
 He took her to his rooms, and her presence clung 
 
 60
 
 RAKE'S PROGRESS 61 
 
 about them so that he was no longer tortured by the 
 absence of his friends, and she too had shed an existence 
 the thought of which was painful to her. She made him 
 talk at first because she loved the sound of his voice, but 
 after a time she began to want to understand what he 
 said, and he endeavoured to simplify his utterances and 
 in so doing realized how remote all his thoughts had been 
 from actuality. It was not so easy to speak his heart 
 out as he had imagined, though it was very easy to utter 
 the shadows of reflections. ... He read Hardman's 
 poems to Cora and was ashamed of them rather than of 
 her. They were in a faded tradition, an almost incon- 
 ceivably remote echo of Donne and Marvell. They were 
 about the war, but, like the war-people, they were tran- 
 sitory and temporary and he had undertaken to see 
 them through the press. 
 
 At first he was rather shy of telling Cora that he loved 
 her and Sydney had the benefit of his declarations, but 
 as she became more and more inflamed with him such 
 speech was easier and he even began to tell her lover's 
 nonsense. She was intoxicated with it, and was com- 
 pletely and fearlessly infatuated with him. He made her 
 laugh, and her relations with men had always been 
 serious not to say ponderous, especially since the war, 
 and she was glad not to paint her face any more and no 
 longer to be looking for clothes which attract attention, 
 but to be able to dress in what would please him quiet 
 things, good things, for he was good and quiet and she 
 wanted to be so too. 
 
 He was so good and quiet that she had no difficulty. 
 in fathoming his existence the rich, easy house at home 
 in the suburbs of a northern town, his studious and 
 gentlemanly existence at Cambridge and in London, his
 
 62 PINK ROSES 
 
 vagrant attendance at the office and herself. She was 
 the first. His beard was hardly grown and she was the 
 first! Nothing could take that from her, and no other 
 woman could ever be to him what she had been, to no 
 other woman would he turn with that childishly pathetic 
 gratitude. 
 
 The bare thought of any other woman roused jealousy 
 in her, and she became assiduous in her pursuit of him, 
 and after a long and very honest struggle against it the 
 thought of marriage took possession of her. There was 
 no reason why she should not have children, and who 
 was to know anything about her? . . . She began to 
 want a house and to imagine herself keeping it ever so 
 efficiently for him. Where he would have to live was 
 far away from London, and no one would know her 
 there. She would have a house with linen and plate and 
 thick carpets and red paper on the dining-room walls, 
 and a little car perhaps, and a garden with roses, pink 
 roses, because he was so fond of them. 
 
 She often talked to him, not very truthfully, about her 
 own home life in a little country town not a hundred 
 miles away, and as the summer wore on she had per- 
 suaded herself that she was sick with longing for the 
 old place the old bridge over the river and the market- 
 square and the Corn Exchange, where they sometimes 
 had plays and then she would ask him rather shyly : 
 
 "Are you going home this summer?" 
 
 " Not i I can help it. I don't want to go home. I 
 shall have too much of it later on. I want to take you 
 away out of this. Where do you usually go in the 
 summer ? " 
 
 " It used to be Ostend before the war. Now it's 
 Brighton or Southend or Margate."
 
 RAKE'S PROGRESS 63 
 
 " I hate those places. . . . What do you say to our 
 taking a cottage together on the Coast? We could take 
 Estelle and have a three weeks' real honeymoon. Besides, 
 the sea air would be good for Sydney. I am anxious 
 about his back legs; they don't seem to work properly." 
 
 They were in his rooms. Cora seized Sydney and 
 danced about with him and hugged him so tight that he 
 howled. Then she kissed and fondled him and held him 
 out for Trevor to caress. 
 
 " Me too ! " she said, and Trevor had to caress her 
 also. He was enchanted with her, and had no suspicion 
 that she was not in the same condition of childish glee. 
 He did not wish the relationship to be different in any 
 way. For him it was perfect as it was. There was, so 
 far as he knew, no question of money or obligation of 
 any kind. She was discreet and never made any attempt 
 to intrude upon him, never came to his rooms uninvited, 
 never rang him up at the office, where he now spent many 
 hours of the day piecing together the romantic early his- 
 tory of Mr. Jose Ysnaga as revealed in otherwise unin- 
 teresting legal documents. 
 
 For a year his life would consist of Cora and prepara- 
 tion for his Final Examination. After that the deluge. 
 In a year the war might be over and he, like every one 
 else, would come blinking and gasping out of the welter 
 to find out what the world was like, or to discover the 
 new illusions under which the world would elect to live- 
 Its old pre-war illusions were gone for ever, lost in the 
 one grand illusion of military victory. That sooner or 
 later must break and a new set of illusions would arise. 
 . . . That he could be under any illusion with regard 
 to Cora Trevor never suspected. She was so completely, 
 even abjectly, his, as to give him an indomitable sense of
 
 64 PINK ROSES 
 
 possession. She was as much his as the pup, and his 
 attitude towards her was of the same order. 
 
 Every now and then, being very acute and almost 
 uncomfortably honest, he was haunted by a dim percep- 
 tion that she and the pup had taken the place of Hard- 
 man and Peto, but he put that idea from him and when 
 it became persistent corrected it by going to see Peto 
 in his dark room. That was very dreadful, for Trevor 
 now that he had emerged from the entombment of his 
 grief, was forced to realize that Peto had stopped on the 
 other side of. the war, and that it was no use even trying 
 to talk to him about what was going on in the world, for 
 the world had changed and Peto and these others, broken 
 in soul as he was in body, would never know that it had 
 changed. They would fumble and grope for a life that 
 had for ever disappeared the life they had fought for, 
 the life which in righting they had destroyed. He could 
 not even tell Peto he had bought a pup, for his doing 
 so had been a desecration upon their existence to which 
 there could be no return. . . . No; the only way out 
 was to read to what was left of Peto, good old stuff that 
 told of an England that had been English. Even 
 Dickens was too modern : the right stuff was Tom Jones 
 and Humphry Clinker, which in solid, healthy language 
 told of an England that took its wars as it did its drink, 
 in a gentlemanly fashion, gouty in its Toryism, rheu- 
 matic in its Whiggery. To talk to Peto of London and 
 the transformation in its life was unbearable. 
 
 " You know, Jimmy," Trevor would say, " things 
 aren't the same." 
 
 And the muffled voice from behind the bandages 
 would reply: 
 
 " No. They couldn't be without old Hardman."
 
 RAKE'S PROGRESS 65 
 
 That was as far as they got. Fortunately Peto's peo- 
 ple were rich, and they had a big house down in Wales 
 to which he could be taken. He could sit there looking 
 at the mountains. They at least would be the same, and 
 Peto could believe that he had been smashed up for 
 them. 
 
 But that friendship was oozing away, and on the day 
 when Peto was taken down to Wales Trevor knew that 
 the end would come. It, like every other good thing, 
 would die a violent and unnatural death. 
 
 Sometimes it amazed him that Cora was so unmoved 
 by it all, and yet after an hour or two with his shattered 
 friend he had to seek her out, succumb to the enchant- 
 ment she had for him, and forget. She always knew 
 when he had been to the nursing home, and was jealous 
 and outraged by the hysteria in him. Her extraordinary 
 physical tranquillity would make him contemptuous of 
 himself, and he wanted to be like her, imperturbable and 
 unconscious of what was happening in the world. It was 
 either that or another plunge into a further agony in 
 which he must endure all the mental suffering that others 
 had avoided through plunging into action, the hideous 
 welter of questions to which there was no answer, be- 
 cause things were being done in which nobody nobody 
 believed, because everybody without exception was really 
 ignorant of the world in which they lived, and everybody 
 suddenly had begun to wrangle about purely external and 
 remote things. . . . No. He could not go through 
 that again. History supplied him with no clue except 
 that all wars were maintained with lies, that all wars had 
 been promoted in the name of religion, and that religion 
 had been merged in patriotism. . . . No, a thousand 
 times no. The answer to all that was Cora Dinmont,
 
 66 PINK ROSES 
 
 with v/hom there need be no mental implication whatso- 
 ever but only a happy warming of the senses which made 
 him strong enough to forget and to begin again, know- 
 ing that he had been wrong to accept the world as it had 
 been before the war, and that he and his contemporaries 
 should have said, as he so surprisingly had said to Mr. 
 Hobday : 
 
 " We don't want what you have worked for." 
 
 That had been perfectly clear to all of them, but they 
 had been content to wait until at last the Hobdays of 
 the world for they were all Kaisers, every one of them 
 forced them to accept their handiwork in mud and 
 blood, forced them to accept their infernal mechanical, 
 money-grubbing organization and to sacrifice their youth 
 to preserve it. ... It was too late now to do anything 
 or to say anything. Protest in the face of the disturb- 
 ance of millions of lives seemed even more indecent than 
 the thing itself. 
 
 It was after a visit to Peto that he came to a point of 
 crisis with Cora. Her jealousy forced her into such a 
 consuming possessiveness that she could not endure his 
 attention being away from her for a moment. She could 
 hardly suffer him to eat, but wanted his eyes upon her, 
 his hand reaching out for hers continually. 
 
 They had taken a cottage near Portsmouth for a 
 month, and she had become very sentimental about it 
 and tried to coax him into staying longer. 
 
 " I can't," he said. " I can only take a month's holi- 
 day. I have to keep to the rules of the office. Even Mr. 
 Hobday takes no more." 
 
 "But you're rich, aren't you?" 
 
 " I shall be." 
 
 " Then you can do what you like."
 
 RAKE'S PROGRESS 67 
 
 " No. I can't ... if I'm working with other 
 people." 
 
 Cora was quick enough to realize that she had made 
 a mistake, and she covered it up with a laugh. 
 
 " If I were rich I should do exactly as I pleased. I 
 would." 
 
 " Yes," he said with an indulgent smile. " That's the 
 whole point of you. ... If we like the cottage I'll 
 take it on and we'll go down for week-ends." 
 
 She was pleased with him and said she could borrow 
 a car for the trip. 
 
 " A car ? " he said. " But nobody has cars nowa- 
 days." 
 
 " Oh ! yes, they do. Can you drive? " 
 
 " I used to have my own car at Cambridge." 
 
 She opened her eyes at that. He was richer than she 
 had thought, and she sat with her eyes half closed dream- 
 ing of the big house she would have with him one day. 
 She would make him so comfortable and so happy in the 
 cottage that he would need her always. . . . He was 
 growing up at an alarming rate and she knew instinc- 
 tively that if she did not keep a tight hold on him he 
 would slip away from her. The life she had lived had 
 left her womanly instincts practically intact, and the 
 woman in her was fighting desperately to break through 
 the habits of the automaton. She had at first been sav- 
 agely maternal with Trevor and had hugged him to her 
 as a babe to her breast, but now that he was growing she 
 had to call in deeper and subtler powers, and she lived in 
 anguish lest they should fail her. . . . She knew she 
 could riot drag him down to the level of the life she had 
 lived, and she strove to raise herself to his. She loved 
 him too much to pretend, and she who was consumed
 
 68 PINK ROSES 
 
 entirely in their relationship, dreaded and hated his 
 astonishing capacity for sudden detachment, and his 
 unvarying kind, cool consideration for her. ... If 
 only he would lose his temper with her sometimes. But 
 he was always good-tempered, and, as he gained in 
 serenity, humorous and kind. 
 
 They went to their cottage by the sea, and he wrote 
 to his mother and told her he was going with a party 
 of friends, back from the front, and so could not come 
 home that summer. 
 
 His mother, who adored him, accepted his excuse with 
 a tearful smile, and said that dear Trevor was always 
 so devoted to his friends and that in times like these the 
 boys must hang together, and it was better for them to 
 console each other than to suffer the heart-wrench of 
 visiting their homes. She wrote all this, and more, to 
 Trevor, and told him that it was certainly his duty, 
 being spared the agony of the trenches, to do all he 
 could for his dear, brave friends. 
 
 Trevor excused himself on the ground that it was bet- 
 ter for his mother to have him restored to some kind of 
 sanity, than reduced to a frozen and insensible imbe- 
 cility by the mental strain which was as bad, if not 
 worse, than the physical strain of the trenches, the hor- 
 ror of knowing that the mind of a whole generation had 
 been put out of action. No one else seemed to think of 
 that which to him was the hardest thing to face. 
 
 He felt it even more in the country than in London. 
 There were no young men in the fields, none at the fish- 
 ing harbour, at which a movie was stationed. It was 
 not long before the officers on board discovered Cora, 
 and began to visit the cottage, and, to Trevor's disgust,' 
 they knew her for what she was, or had been, and made
 
 RAKE'S PROGRESS 69 
 
 no concealment of their knowledge. She got in drinks 
 for them, and they turned the cottage into a kind of pri- 
 vate public-house. Their behaviour and her easiness 
 with them made Trevor realize that he had idealised her, 
 and he could not help continuing to do so, though he was 
 angry with her failure to check or even to perceive their 
 impertinence. She never said anything to which he 
 could take exception, and when they talked of what they 
 considered the marvels of the West End of London she 
 never gave any sign of being familiar with them, but all 
 the same they knew and. they did not conceal their envy 
 of Trevor and what they regarded as his boldness. They 
 thought him a queer fish, and congratulated him on his 
 luck on being out of uniform. 
 
 Except for their attentions he enjoyed himself as he 
 had never done in his life before. He had always been 
 secretly a little afraid of the sea, but now he could sur- 
 render to it, let it pick him up and thwack him down on 
 the sands, roll over him, knock the wind out of him, and 
 he would just give in and roar with laughter. . . . He 
 had always rather hated the wind, but now he loved to 
 stand and let it batter at him and, when he tried to shout 
 into it, sweep the words away from his lips, and the 
 salty moisture of the air soothed and delighted him as it 
 browned his face, neck and hands. . . . And Cora was 
 such a wonderful joke in this setting. She could not be 
 induced to go into the sea; she sulked when the wind 
 disturbed her coiffure, and even on the sands she would 
 wear nothing save high-heeled shoes, but in a world 
 where it had become incongruous for a young man to 
 be alive he rejoiced in her incongruity. 
 
 That came out strongly in the cottage also, which was 
 very old and furnished by some amateur of village life
 
 70 PINK ROSES 
 
 with real oak, warming-pans, brass, Chelsea china, and 
 pretty chintz. Cora and Estelle, whose atmosphere was 
 that of Leicester Square, were ludicrous in it, and they 
 could not adapt themselves. Cora was admirably domes- 
 tic, but Estelle frankly and whole-heartedly disap- 
 proved. The staleness of a life of habit overwhelmed 
 her, and she was only cheerful when the officers from 
 the movie came in. Then she could produce wine, 
 liqueurs, and cigars and be herself, beaming and approv- 
 ing, her wide smile in itself an invitation and an act of 
 cajolery. Her manner often made it quite clear that she 
 thought her mistress was making a fool of herself, and 
 she shrewdly suspected the truth that Cora was not mak- 
 ing a penny out of her young man. . . . During the 
 whole month at the sea Cora never went near a shop, 
 never bought so much as a pair of stockings. Clearly 
 something must be very wrong! Long before the 
 month was up Estelle had begun to sulk and was even 
 rude to Trevor, who understood at last that she, having 
 lost her " presents," expected them from him. He gave 
 her ten pounds to cover arrears and was astonished 
 when she was not melted into gratitude. 
 
 She said, " Merci, M'sieu," with a contemptuous curl 
 of the lip which hurt and rather horrified Trevor. He 
 realized that he had made a fool of himself by introduc- 
 ing money, even indirectly, between himself and Cora 
 and also, with a shock, how serious was the financial loss 
 which he had inflicted on Estelle. Further, it was borne 
 in upon his astonished mind how impossible it was for 
 him to give the mistress a present which the maid would 
 not despise. 
 
 From that time on he was acutely conscious of Estelle 
 and knew in his heart that she despised him, and he was
 
 RAKE'S PROGRESS 71 
 
 continually puzzling his brain to find out why. He knew 
 instinctively that it was justified, but in his search for 
 an explanation could get no further than a rather bewil- 
 dered admission that to be good-tempered, gentlemanly, 
 and scholarly was not an infallible recipe for life. The 
 world, as now revealed to him, was rather overfull of 
 women, and they demanded something more. As a sub- 
 stitute for his friends Sydney was a greater success than 
 Cora, and Cora was jealous of Sydney, who was bliss- 
 fully happy when Trevor threw stones for him on the 
 seashore, but when he asked the woman to do it for him 
 she threw them at him. As for Estelle, Sydney desired a 
 world full of corners, round which to run away from her. 
 
 But on the whole the month at the sea was a success. 
 It brought out for Trevor both the good and the bad 
 of the incongruous liaison upon which he had entered. 
 It gave Cora hope that she would realize her ambitions 
 to be a respectable married lady, and Estelle had gleaned 
 that, though he did not part with it, yet Trevor had 
 money, and she was not without hope that things might 
 shortly be put on a business footing. Perhaps after all 
 her mistress was cleverer than she thought, and being 
 English, knew how to deal with English innocence. 
 
 Cora had been unable to fulfil her promise to procure 
 a car to take them down, but when the time came for the 
 return to London a magnificent car appeared, driven by 
 a black chauffeur; and, though Trevor was uneasy about 
 using it, she said that it was all right and belonged to a 
 friend of hers who often lent it to her, and, not sorry to 
 be saved from the discomfort of a journey in a train full 
 of soldiers, Trevor climbed into the tonneau and sat with 
 Sydney on his lap, his hand held firmly in Cora's lap, 
 staring drowsily at the coloured maid and the negro
 
 72 PINK ROSES 
 
 chauffeur, who were engaged in incessant animated 
 chatter. . . . Here again was incongruity! Trevor 
 Mathew, articled clerk, sceptic and anti-patriot, being 
 conveyed with his inamorata in a car, so magnificent that 
 only the most active patriotism could have earned it in 
 war-time, through the lovely somnolent southern Eng- 
 lish countryside, over which a spell seemed to have been 
 cast so that it was as though all hope had gone of its 
 ever waking from its slumber. The soul had gone out 
 of it. Soldiers had trampled its commons and heather 
 into dust. Its woods had been devastated. Its smooth 
 roads had been broken up by excessive and increasing 
 traffic. ... A dead countryside. ... A brilliant 
 machine darting through it back to the seething vat of 
 new life in London. . . . There was a keen satisfac- 
 tion in the powerful machine, in which Cora was cer- 
 tainly appropriate. It was he here who was out of place, 
 and this again he enjoyed. Life had become so tragic 
 that it could no longer produce anything serious, but it 
 could and did evolve some wonderful jokes.
 
 VI 
 LONDON 
 
 THE car glided through the mean streets by which Lon- 
 don is approached from the south, swung over West- 
 minster Bridge, and swept commandingly up Whitehall, 
 where people turned and gazed with admiration and 
 surprise. 
 
 " I expect they take me for the Commander of the 
 Turcos," said Trevor, and Cora slapped his hand and 
 laughed. 
 
 " You are almost as brown as a Turco," she said. " I 
 have had a lovely time. I shan't like my stuffy little flat 
 after that sweet cottage. I wish you'd take me home 
 with you. I don't want to be without you, Boy. . . . 
 Why should I be? . . .If you've got money you can 
 make heaps more. We could have a lovely time. . . ." 
 
 " We were very happy as we were." 
 
 " But we hadn't been together then I can't bear the 
 idea of your going away. . . . Don't go, Boy. . . . 
 Don't go. Stay with me to-night, and then we can talk 
 it out to-morrow. ..." 
 
 " They're expecting me." 
 
 " Stay and have supper, then." 
 
 He consented to do that, for he was reluctant to ter- 
 minate what had been his first complete experience, his 
 first period of real intimacy with another human being, 
 and the idea of returning to his solitude had become 
 repugnant to him. 
 
 73
 
 74 PINK ROSES 
 
 When the car stopped it seemed at least three times 
 too big for Gerrard Street, and he felt curiously ashamed 
 of it and wished he could disown it as far as the loungers 
 of Soho were concerned. After all, his attachment to 
 Cora was romantic and he resented these Italians and 
 Frenchmen, fat washerwomen and lean waiters taking, 
 as they obviously did, a cynical view of it. . . . The 
 negro chauffeur carried the luggage up, his as well, and 
 grinned in anticipation of a tip. So powerful was the 
 influence of the opulent car that Trevor gave him five 
 pounds and felt that it was a mere trifle. . . . Money, 
 like everything else, had broken loose and become light 
 and fluid. 
 
 In the flat Trevor became painfully conscious of 
 Estelle's black eyes balefully upon him. Like the car 
 in Gerrard Street, she seemed at least three times too big 
 for the flat. Trevor tried to persuade himsel f that it was 
 only the effect of returning to London from the sea, but 
 before very long he had to admit that Estelle was defi- 
 nitely hostile to him, that he was in her way, and possibly 
 in Cora's, who was blissfully unconscious of what was 
 going on. She, devoted creature, was intent only on not 
 letting him out of her sight. She could not endure it. 
 He might suddenly grow into another Trevor altogether. 
 He might at any moment say good-bye, as, according to 
 the ethic of her world, he was perfectly entitled to do, 
 for according to the ethic of her world she had merely 
 made a fool of herself and had offended against the 
 rules. He might he might meet some girl of his own 
 class, some one whom his mother would be pleased to 
 welcome. He might break down and go from one 
 woman to another. . . . And none of these things 
 could she bear. She had made him so strong and so
 
 LONDON 75 
 
 handsome and so gay. Of coujj^e, something would hap- 
 pen if she let him go. 
 
 She clung to him while Estelle in gaunt disapproba- 
 tion prepared a very meagre supper. 
 
 " Darling," she said, " you don't want to leave your 
 darling. Didn't she make him happy? Didn't she make 
 him comfortable? Wasn't she kind to him and his little 
 dog? . . . See, Sydney wants to stay" Sydney was 
 asleep on the white Angora hearthrug " Doesn't my 
 darling want to stay ? " 
 
 In the mirror of the black walnut sideboard Trevor 
 could see a reflection of the bedroom with its pink rib- 
 bons. It had been prepared in their absence with a pat- 
 tern of pink roses festooned about blue ribbons. 
 
 "Oh! my God!" he said. 
 
 "What is it, darling?" 
 
 It had become impossible for him to stay. Never, 
 never could he go into that room again. 
 
 " To be quite candid," he said, " I hate this flat. I 
 hate Soho. I hate the waiters and the washer- 
 women, who look as though they knew everybody's 
 business because they know what everybody's busi- 
 ness is." 
 
 It struck him that this was a very odd speech to be 
 making, but he could not take his eyes off the pink-rose 
 wallpaper reflected in the mirror. 
 
 " You don't like me," said Cora. 
 
 " Oh ! Don't talk nonsense. I like you better than 
 any one. I love you. I've never been so happy with 
 any one. You are one of the best creatures that ever 
 lived." 
 
 " But you're not happy now. You're cross with 
 Dorothy. Is it because of the car ? . . .1 did want a
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 drive with you more than anything, and . . . and 
 . . . it's the only car I knew ..." 
 
 He could not resist his curiosity. 
 
 "Whose car is it?" 
 
 "You won't be cross with me if I tell you?" 
 
 " No. No. Of course not." 
 
 " It's . . . it's Ysnaga's." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 " You're not jealous? " 
 
 She looked at him eagerly. Ah! How pleased she 
 would have been if he had been jealous! She clung to 
 him and looked up into his face. Trevor was seized with 
 an almost uncontrollable desire to laugh. Was he jeal- 
 ous? Well, perhaps, a little. . . . Her eyes searched 
 his, and to avoid her scrutiny he lowered his eyelids. 
 
 " God knows," he said. " You don't understand." 
 
 "What don't I understand?" 
 
 " That one doesn't want always to be happy." 
 
 " I can be terrible too. You know I can be terrible.'* 
 
 " Let me go to-night, Cora," he said. " It has been 
 very good down there, but in London it isn't the same." 
 
 She understood at last that he could not stay, but 
 because she thought him jealous she felt a little safer 
 and withdrew her opposition. 
 
 " It isn't the same here," she said. " No, I'll leave this 
 flat if you don't like it. . . . Can't we have a house? " 
 
 " No. No. We're back in London, and I'm only here 
 for another year, you know. . . . Less than a year 
 now." 
 
 For a full two minutes she sat staring at him; longing 
 to say something, but at last she burst into a passion of 
 weeping, laid her arms out on the table and rolled her 
 head from one arm to the other wailing :
 
 LONDON 77 
 
 " I love you. ... I love you. ... I love you." 
 
 He tried to comfort her, but in vain, and at last look- 
 ing up he saw Estelle standing in the doorway glaring at 
 him. She jerked her head towards the front door and, 
 acting on her suggestion, he crept out and was out in the 
 street before he recollected that he had left his bag and 
 Sydney. He decided not to go back for them and walked 
 to his rooms, where, in his overwrought condition, he 
 could have sworn as he entered, that he heard Hard- 
 man's jolly laugh, and Peto saying: 
 
 " At last the old are not going to have it all their own 
 way. The young are going to live ! " 
 
 He was alarmed and disappointed, because he had 
 thought that he was rid for ever of hallucinations and 
 the haunting sense of his friends never having been away 
 at all. Of course he didn't believe in ghosts or anything 
 of that sort, remnants of personality or whatever the 
 spooky people called it, but there were odd noises in his 
 room and Sydney had sometimes bristled and barked at 
 nothing in particular. . . . What beastly gloomy rooms 
 they were! No one but three raw young idiots would 
 have rented them at such a price too ! and taken such 
 a pride in them. The big living-room was all doors and 
 draughts. Even the books could not make it a solid 
 place. Poor books! Most of them had been Hardman's, 
 the devout reader who had a marvellous digestion so 
 that he could gulp down all the moderns as they came 
 from the press. And poor moderns with their social con- 
 science and sociological abstractions which they mistook 
 for people! Not much was left of them now that people 
 had become more ghostly even than their abstractions. 
 Ghostly figures in khaki creeping back out of the tragedy 
 into a new impossible London full of loverless, husband-
 
 7 8 PINK ROSES 
 
 less, childless women, ghostly too in their efforts to 
 conceal their bewilderment as the men through whom 
 they hoped to live were forced away from them. 
 
 Trevor sat alone in his room and stared at the doors 
 through which his friends used to appear in the morning 
 to discuss on their way to the bath the doings of the 
 previous night. Peto always dined out. He frequented 
 middle-aged gentlemen who possessed good cellars or 
 gave him dinners at the Athenaeum or the Reform. 
 Hardman, on the other hand, patronized concerts, the 
 theatre, political meetings, for he loved humanity in the 
 lump. Details hardly interested him, and certainly never 
 disgusted him as they did Trevor, who could be upset 
 and shaken to the bottom of his not very stable philos- 
 ophy by a man's ears or a woman's ankles. All Trevor's 
 knowledge of the old indolent, loquacious London came 
 through Hardman, who had loved it and designed to live 
 in it. ... But that was all over: no more Hardman, 
 no more London. It had been swamped in a tidal wave 
 from the provinces and from every country in the world. 
 
 " No," thought Trevor, " I can't stand it. I can't 
 stay here. This house is too old. Everything and every- 
 body pre-war is terribly old, really on the other side of 
 the grave. ... I shall be glad when my year is up." 
 
 He smoked pipe after pipe, and though he was ter- 
 ribly sleepy he could not drag himself to bed. He did 
 not want to sleep. He wanted to have done with this 
 room that contained his old London and was still so alive 
 that imaginary voices could be heard in it, and he was 
 uneasy in his mind about Hardman. He felt uncom- 
 fortably that he had never known but had only admired 
 him, as everybody did. Hardman had always been a 
 myth. Things had been miraculously easy for him. At
 
 LONDON 79 
 
 Uppingham he had been easily first, both in games and 
 scholarship, and long before he went to Cambridge his 
 reputation preceded him, so that without effort or 
 floundering he had only to be himself. His powers in 
 every direction were never criticized or questioned, and 
 his reputation went before him up to London, so that 
 there too he could without effort just be himself. He 
 was so gracious that it was both an honour and a delight 
 to be his friend, so charming that it was impossible to 
 know him. You were so happy in his presence that you 
 never bothered about the facts of his life. There was 
 only one fact, and that was himself. Nothing that he 
 did was half so important. . . . No doubt his mother 
 had a lock of his baby hair. His poems were hardly 
 more than that, something intimate for his friends, but 
 not for the great world. . . . 
 
 All the lights in the room were on. There was no 
 room for doubt about it. The door opened and Hard- 
 man came in wearing his horrible old dressing-gown and 
 the shabby, torn pyjamas which he loved because they 
 were the first suit he had bought at Cambridge twelve- 
 and-six and Father Ignatius had walked into the shop 
 in his monkish garb and fur hood and passed a blessing 
 on him. He slid into the corner of the Chesterfield, and 
 sat with his legs out and his hands caressing his rather 
 plump wrists. He was very happy and pleased with him- 
 self, and, as he always did when he was going to talk at 
 length, he began to twist his forelock, which often broke 
 away from his smooth hair and tried to hang down into 
 his eyes. 
 
 " You're all wrong about me, you know, old man. I 
 was just born charmed. Everything was so delicious 
 that I just gaped at it. I mean really everything, even
 
 go PINK ROSES 
 
 horrible things. I kept outside it all. That is quite easy 
 if you stop growing, but it is a rotten thing to do. I did 
 it. I was never touched by anything or anybody, never 
 established connection with anything, and people loved 
 me because I was untouched. It is very easy to do things 
 if you are like that, and such fun, because you don't 
 really do them. Women are like that, and that is why 
 they are such frauds. . . . Well, I was a fraud too. 
 Women loved me because I was a fraud, and could play 
 their game, and they knew I was safe because I couldn't 
 betray them without giving myself away. They used to 
 say that I took them seriously. Seriously! I was 
 cleverer than any of them. How could I take them seri- 
 ously when I was such a joke to myself? . . . Well, 
 that's modern love. It is all in the hands of the women. 
 I had my fill of it, and none of you ever knew, none of 
 you, but every woman I ever met knew, but they never 
 gave me away and I never gave them away. They love 
 their fraud so much that they cannot stand the real thing, 
 now I ... I couldn't ever be a real soldier, but I had 
 to pretend to be a poet going into the war flying the ban- 
 ner of an aesthetic emotion. ... It doesn't matter, 
 because we are all such liars. ... I think some of us 
 hoped that the war would turn out to be a real thing, but 
 it didn't. It is a colossal fraud, the sum of all our lies. 
 I believe the women know it too, but they won't give 
 themselves away. There never was, there never will be, 
 a real Me, but just a baby gazing enchanted, greedily and 
 excitedly at all the new toys coming into being aero- 
 planes, submarines, motor-boats, gas-masks, tin-hats, 
 Colonial soldiers, Americans male and female, camou- 
 flage, and all the other hard inhuman words coming into 
 the language, so that one can only talk comfortably in
 
 LONDON 81 
 
 polyglot slang, a kind of baby-language. . . . I'm 
 typical, you know, a stunt. Well, I always was a stunt, 
 and shall be a bigger stunt than ever. . . . Some things 
 I did really like good claret, breakfast with a brilliant 
 talker, trees and delicate tea-cups. That is all. If I 
 hadn't invented myself as a poet I could never have gone. 
 . . . Peto could, but I couldn't, and you might have 
 done in the first rush, but whenever I couldn't stand it I 
 went sick. Being a poet it was easier for me to go sick 
 than for the others, and when I was sick I wrote a poem 
 and that damned fool Cherryman published it. I'd never 
 written a line in my life until Cherryman took it into his 
 head that I was a poet. ... If they only knew; it's 
 much easier to be a poet than a soldier nowadays, a real 
 soldier. There isn't, there can't be such a thing, because, 
 like everything else, war is a trade and no longer an ad- 
 venture. . . . And when you come to think of it, that 
 is probably the reason why we won't grow up, we mod- 
 erns, because we don't want to be tradesmen. . . . The 
 tradespeople! How scornfully we used to hear that said, 
 but we are all of us tradespeople now, and probably we 
 are quite right in our instinctive perception that in the 
 long run the war is going to be good for trade." 
 
 The extraordinary thing was that, just as in the old 
 days, when Hardman talked Trevor had to listen. He 
 could not help himself. The voice drawling on enchanted 
 and hypnotized him. As it ceased he pinched himself, 
 and told himself that Hardman was not really there, but 
 that was no good, for Hardman was there wrapping his 
 old dressing-gown round him, pulling together his tat- 
 tered pyjamas, reaching out for a cigarette, getting up 
 sleepily and saying: 
 
 " Good-night."
 
 g 2 PINK ROSES 
 
 There was no doubt about that. His voice droning on 
 might have been a recurrent memory, but those two 
 syllables rapped out sharp and clear and Hardman 
 walked away with his slow, indolent gait, and slowly the 
 door was closed. The room was brilliantly lit, the cur- 
 tains were drawn. There was not a shadow anywhere. 
 
 Trevor jumped to his feet, and, with his heart thump- 
 ing, ran to the door, opened it and looked into Hard- 
 man's room. It was in darkness. He turned on the 
 light. It was empty, but he went to the bed and felt it 
 to make sure that there was no one concealed in it. 
 
 " But it was," he said. " It was. I couldn't have 
 invented all that. Harry never had anything to do with 
 women. It must have been me talking about myself. 
 . . . No. No. No one was ever charmed with me. 
 . . . But one knew. It is true so far. One knew that 
 Harry would have to die because he couldn't go on." 
 
 It was some time before he was satisfied that Hard- 
 man was not there. After all there might have been a 
 mistake, and he might have returned. It was so admir- 
 ably right that Hardman should have died in his young 
 perfection that it was scarcely credible that it could have 
 happened, except that the incredible had become the rule. 
 . . . Perhaps the inevitable things had been postponed 
 for so long that they were all happening at once. . . . 
 
 So strong, however, was the sense of Hardman's pres- 
 ence that as he closed the door he returned his friend's 
 " Good-night," and that in some obscure fashion settled 
 his conscience and he was able to go to bed and to sleep, 
 though he missed Sydney, who was in the habit of lying 
 in the crook of his knees. 
 
 In the morning the first proofs of Hardman's poems 
 arrived with a preface by Cherryman, a journalist who
 
 LONDON 83 
 
 had installed himself skilfully for the duration of the 
 war, first in a mysterious new Government department, 
 and secondly as the patron of soldier-poets, thus provid- 
 ing for his material and his social welfare. There was 
 no harm in Cherryman except that he simply did not 
 know a poem from a fly-paper. If it had been sent to 
 him by a soldier-poet he would have printed the cover of 
 a jam-jar as a poem, probably with a note on its 
 obscurity. . . . Trevor chuckled over his preface and 
 thought, having slept off his nightmare, how Hardman 
 would have enjoyed it. The influence of Marvell in the 
 poems was sufficiently strong to make even Cherryman 
 feel it, and he wrote for a page or so about the Round- 
 head poets and the singers of the new crusade against 
 tyranny and autocracy, and his remarks were so funny 
 that Trevor, chuckling over his marmalade, cried: 
 
 " Oh! thank God I am out of it all, and can see how 
 funny it is! " 
 
 As he read the poems he wished he could remember 
 more clearly what had been said in that strange dream- 
 conversation. . . . Something about London and women 
 and people being so fraudulent that they were afraid 
 of honesty. . . . There was no doubt about the dex- 
 terity of the poems. They had the same clean and 
 rather mysterious efficiency with which their author 
 made a fifty at cricket without any great effort or spec- 
 tacular hitting and certainly with no recklessness. There 
 was a good deal about England in them, but Trevor 
 could find in these utterances nothing but what a certain 
 section of London society thought they ought to think 
 about it all. . . . London and not England was in 
 Hardman's mind all the while a London which, having 
 embarked on the perilous adventure, had put on a face of
 
 8 4 PINK ROSES 
 
 Gladstonian nobility as the appropriate expression, and 
 Trevor, turning over the last page, summed it up thus : 
 
 " Women will like it." 
 
 The book was dedicated to himself and Peto, and he 
 wondered if it would have been if the author had known 
 that Peto was smashed and himself had spent a month 
 at the sea with a woman through whom there was no 
 material or social advantage to be gained. . . . There 
 was a gain in frankness in thus thinking about his dead 
 friend. The poems confirmed the dream-conversation, 
 and there was no disloyalty to Hardman, for his charm 
 was one thing, himself another. This charm belonged 
 to his friends as an undying sunlit memory, and what 
 did it matter if his poems helped women to sustain the 
 particular fraud they had evolved for the duration of 
 the war? No one had written the truth yet or anything 
 like it, simply because no one could know the truth or 
 divine the cause or gauge the effect. Circumstances had 
 arisen in a world of comedians for which there was no 
 appropriate emotion, and the only way out was to have 
 no emotion whatsoever unless one were sufficiently 
 simple to give way to emotions which are inadmissible in 
 polite society and to rely on the sanction of ignorant 
 mass opinion to save them from indecency. Hardman, 
 as poet, remained polite. He died before it became the 
 fashion for young men to blurt out the truth or the 
 facts of modern warfare. 
 
 He had been dead nearly a year, and Cherryman had 
 calculated with that London-bred instinct, which may be 
 called a social micrometer, that the time was exactly ripe 
 for publication. The public was still sanguine, it had 
 not yet begun to face facts, it was being nursed by the 
 Press out of idealism into obstinacy, and yet it wanted
 
 LONDON 85 
 
 something more than the repetition of enemy atrocities 
 to make it accept cheerfully the profound modifications 
 of its daily life which had become necessary if mili- 
 tary organization was not to be dislocated by civilian 
 habits. 
 
 Trevor knew his Cherryman, and his slight intercourse 
 with him had taught him more than he had ever hoped 
 to know about London life, as in itself, beneath all its 
 charm and opulent security, it is. He realized that Lon- 
 don was so huge that it had hardly begun to feel the 
 existence of the war at all except as an excitement that 
 was happening somehow on paper. A million young men 
 might go out of it but six million people remained, and 
 they soon got used to the absence of the missing few. 
 They accepted that a few people were responsible for 
 getting on with the war, and that these few had the 
 power to manipulate them and their lives, and they 
 acquiesced good-humouredly. Of tragedy or tragic 
 realization there was none. The appropriate thing was 
 done as nearly as possible at the appropriate moment and 
 decorum was preserved. For Cherryman the appropriate 
 thing for the early autumn was the publication of the 
 poems of Henry Hardman, and he desired to invoke 
 Trevor's assistance, and also to exploit him socially as 
 the sole survivor of the most promising trio that Cam- 
 bridge had sent to London since Tennyson, Fitz- 
 Gerald, etc. 
 
 Before his holiday all this had repelled Trevor, but 
 now it had a certain savour. He was becoming an epicure 
 in situations, an amateur of the ridiculous, and his curi- 
 osity was piqued to see how far Cherryman could carry 
 his exploitation of the pathetic remnants of youth. . . . 
 This was another remarkable thing that had happened
 
 86 PINK ROSES 
 
 to Trevor during his recent experiences. His youth had 
 left him, or rather he had flung it aside as inappropriate 
 and almost illicit in war-time London. Boys of eighteen, 
 nineteen, twenty were being stripped of theirs; he could 
 no longer, without acute and apparently futile suffering, 
 keep his. As he phrased it, the world had declared war 
 on youth and he was not sufficiently egoistic to accept 
 the challenge or, as he put it more bluntly upon occasion, 
 Youth had become a devilish thing to have about you. 
 Middle-age was your only wear. And that was the most 
 remarkable thing about Hardman's poems; they were 
 middle-aged for middle-aged people, a sop for Cherry- 
 man of whom more as we turn the kaleidoscope. 
 
 All this may seem a great deal for one young man to 
 ruminate upon over coffee and marmalade and a set of 
 proofs, but it is to be remembered that our hero and in 
 a socialized existence to be singular in any degree is to 
 be heroic had returned to London in the best of health, 
 in a state of slight emotional disturbance and intent upon 
 squaring up to his previous existence with which he was 
 on the whole so dissatisfied that he could even feel every 
 now and then that the Hobdays and the Cherrymans 
 were right. He had certainly been wrong to revolt 
 against them, for they were London, and London was 
 very big and important, but it was one thing to cease to 
 rebel, quite another to acquiesce. There was always tol- 
 erance as an alternative. Internally as well as externally 
 it is important that one should live a quiet life in which 
 there is some hope of a man finding out what he wants, 
 so that in due course he can arrange to get it. To be 
 in revolt is simply to waste time in disliking what other 
 people want to get. 
 
 Trevor did not yet know what he wanted except nega-
 
 LONDON 87 
 
 lively. He did not want to go home, nor did he wish to 
 pursue any further what was left of the life he had lived 
 with his friends. In order to give himself the pleasure 
 of doing something decisive he rang the bell and gave 
 the landlady notice. 
 
 " There's nothing wrong, Mr. Mathew, is there? And 
 we were so fond of the sweet little dog." 
 
 " No. Nothing wrong. The rooms are too big for 
 me, or else I've shrunk." 
 
 "Of course it is lonely for you now, sir," said the 
 landlady sympathetically, hoping to touch his heart, but 
 he was stonily resolved. 
 
 " I shall send away Mr. Peto's and Mr. Hardman's 
 things, and I shall sell my own. . . . Cambridge in 
 London induces a certain putrefaction." 
 
 " I'm grieved indeed, sir. We could have found you 
 another gentleman. There are lots of gentlemen coming 
 up to London to go into the War Office and the Admi- 
 ralty now that every one has got to be a soldier. ..." 
 
 " I shall sell up at once," said Trevor sharply. 
 "And I will give you three months' rent in lieu of 
 notice." 
 
 "Oh! thank you, sir. . . . And if you are really 
 going to sell, sir, might I have the first offer of the chest 
 of drawers? " 
 
 Trevor nodded his assent and went into the bathroom 
 to shave. He was offended by the shabby squalor of the 
 rooms. They had never been anything else but shabby 
 and squalid, because they had always been inhabited by 
 men, and men are such drab, shy creatures, hating 
 change, anything which may disturb the dust which lies 
 upon their thoughts. 
 
 " Good God, yes," thought Trevor, distastefully sur-
 
 88 PINK ROSES 
 
 veying the untidy bathroom, with its decrepit paint and 
 worn linoleum. " It is time I went. . . . It is time 
 j " 
 
 He suddenly began to think of Cora again. She had 
 not been in his thoughts since he had left her, and he 
 rather resented her cropping up again, although at once 
 he knew that it was she who had made his continued 
 existence in the London he had known impossible. . . . 
 If only she had not cried like that he would not have 
 wished to avoid thinking of her, but she had cried be- 
 cause she loved him and because she thought he was 
 going back to his old existence. . . . Oh, well, he 
 would go and tell her he had broken with it and then she 
 would be happy, and they could go on as before dining 
 at the Cafe Claribel. When the fine weather went they 
 would find some substitute for the Park. The world as 
 at present constituted was not a fit place into which to 
 bring children, and Cora was right, as no one else whom 
 he had met was right. Everybody else was clinging to 
 worn-out pretences. She had none, and with her and a 
 dog he had all that was honestly possible. The point of 
 this reflection lay in the abverb honestly. 
 
 He called at the flat on his way to the City. Cora was 
 in bed reading there is as yet no verb for the process 
 of what is done to a pictorial newspaper : it is certainly 
 not read the Sunday Herald. Sydney was lying in her 
 lap, and she had just finished breakfast. 
 
 Down went the Herald, away went Sydney, and 
 Trevor, overwhelmed by her delight, flew into her arms. 
 
 " Cruel, cruel darling," she murmured. 
 
 " It's all right," he said in a voice almost as honeyed. 
 " I'm going to leave my rooms. I've thought of a plan. 
 We'll live in opposite flats. . . . You can go and look
 
 LONDON 89 
 
 for them to-day. I don't want you to stay here. You 
 know I have always hated it." 
 
 Cora could only croon out her ecstasy, and she kissed 
 his eyes, his lips, his ears, and bit the tip of his nose 
 until it was bruised and swollen.
 
 VII 
 RUTH HOBDAY 
 
 MR. HENRY HOBDAY, the lawyer, lived in Bayswater, 
 where his small family, Mrs. Henry Hobday and two 
 daughters, was attended by eight servants. Mr. Charles 
 Hobday, his brother, lived at Highgate, and his large 
 family scrambled along with one f maid, or a charwoman, 
 or sometimes no assistance at all. Mr. Charles Hobday 
 saw his brother twice a year at his office, and Mr. 
 Charles Hobday used to receive from Mrs. Henry every 
 year a parcel of old clothes. Otherwise the two families 
 were strangers to each other, because success cannot 
 acknowledge failure, and Charles Hobday had failed. 
 He had refused on leaving Oxford to enter the firm, he 
 had married a lady some years older than himself who 
 had more charm and character than money, and though 
 he had made one or two scientific discoveries which had 
 profoundly modified certain trades, he had allowed him- 
 self to be swindled out of the fortune he should have 
 made. He had no commercial sense whatever, and his 
 only steady income was derived from writing a weekly 
 article in a paper devoted to the success of poultry- 
 keeping, of which he knew nothing whatsoever. He had 
 produced children as absent-mindedly as he had done 
 everything else, and when his wife died he was so used 
 to her that he hardly noticed her absence, especially as 
 his eldest girl, Ruth, had grown old enough to take her 
 place in looking after the children and his own creature 
 
 90
 
 RUTH HOBDAY 91 
 
 comforts, meagre as they were. For Ruth this promo- 
 tion was hardly noticeable, for she had served a long 
 apprenticeship and had learned from her mother all the 
 twists and dodges by which ends that will not meet can 
 be kept from slipping for ever and finally apart. Like 
 her mother she pounced on any money that came into the 
 house and allowed her father half a crown a week for 
 tobacco and sundries, and for the rest treated him as one 
 of the children, one of the seven mouths that had to be 
 fed. Like her mother, too, Ruth despised the Hobdays, 
 who had never been anything better than attorneys, while 
 the Paget-Suttons had an earl and a baron in their family, 
 and in the eighteenth century had had their town house 
 in Park Lane and their country mansion in Northamp- 
 tonshire. Ruth had still something of that atmosphere 
 about her, a little of the air of having come up to London 
 in her own barouche or chaise upon affairs or for the 
 season. 
 
 She was slight and very graceful, pale, and with small 
 but singularly well-proportioned features, a strong chin 
 and eyes that could not but look direct. Though she was 
 stern with him she was fond of her father, and regarded 
 him as a shamefully used man, and it enraged her that 
 she could not do without the hundred and fifty pounds a 
 year allowed him by his brother. Her mother had suf- 
 fered under that too, and Ruth had left school at fifteen 
 to try and make it possible to dispense with it, but in 
 vain. The children grew, they ate more, and their needs 
 increased faster than her earnings. . . . Her experi- 
 ence and her knowledge of the suffering she was put to 
 made her determined that the boys should not cease their 
 education prematurely. They all had brains, character, 
 and the breeding of the Paget-Suttons, and she would
 
 92 PINK ROSES 
 
 not have them wasted. She wanted them to join pro- 
 fessions, but no power on earth could make her ask her 
 Uncle Henry for further assistance. Sometimes when 
 her father was not in the mood to face his half-yearly 
 visit to the office to report on the family history she had 
 to go in his stead, and it was there that she first saw 
 Trevor. She marked him only as the kind of young man 
 she wished her brothers to be, rich, easy, elegant, accept- 
 ing his privileged position in the world as in the natural 
 order of things because he was fit for it, and had taken 
 some trouble to make a good show in it. Eton and 
 Cambridge had done very well for him, and he had done 
 very well for Eton and Cambridge. . . . Ruth adored 
 good manners, and she suffered tortures from a lack of 
 them in the office of the Anglo-Batavian Tropical 
 Produce Company, in which she had found employ- 
 ment. 
 
 Trevor had not noticed her. They met in the dark 
 inner passage of the office, but his walk, the ease with 
 which he made way for her, the impersonal courtesy of 
 his attitude kindled her and made her grateful. It was 
 all the more noticeable for being utterly foreign to the 
 atmosphere of Hobday, Treves and Treves. . . . Yes. 
 That was what she wanted her brothers to be, and if she 
 could only succeed in making them so the Bayswater 
 Hobdays would be answered. Their daughters could 
 never attract such men. 
 
 This was soon after Trevor had gone to Hobday's, 
 and before the war broke out. She was only once in the 
 office after that. She looked out for him but they did not 
 meet, and she assumed that he had gone off a-soldiering 
 and she was sorry. 
 
 Among other ideas disturbed by the outbreak of war
 
 RUTH HOBDAY 93 
 
 was that which she had inherited from her mother of 
 her father's hopelessness, and she tackled him: 
 
 " Father," she said, seeking him out in the large attic 
 at the top of the house which he had turned into a labora- 
 tory and workroom. " I'm sure this is your chance. 
 . . . I'm sure you could invent something that would 
 make your fortune. The boys must go to school, a 
 really good school, and this is the time for men like you 
 to come into their own. . . . Besides, prices are going 
 up and people in the City are so scared that I'm sure 
 they won't give any increase in salaries." 
 
 Charles Hobday had hardly noticed the outbreak of 
 war. One more infatuation of the world that had 
 ignored and cheated him was not his affair. He sup- 
 posed it would be like other wars, an excitement, a hub- 
 bub, a slow tailing off into oblivion, and he went on 
 experimenting without any particular aim because he 
 had long since lost the thread of his ideas and the 
 enthusiasm which had made it so plain and so tangible 
 in his youth. He was enough of a Hobday, however, to 
 regard himself and to insist on being treated as a great 
 man. 
 
 "If they want me, let them come for me," he said. 
 " They know what I have done. The War Office 
 approved a specification of mine twenty years ago. Not 
 a penny have I had from it, and of course the big people 
 have stolen and used the idea long ago. . . . Don't 
 bother me, child, I'm very busy." 
 
 " You're nothing of the kind, father. You are half 
 asleep. . . . I'm sure if you looked up your note-books 
 you will find something that they want now. Every- 
 body says it will be a terrible war, and the Germans have 
 all kinds of things that we haven't. . . . You can't
 
 94 PINK ROSES 
 
 expect them to come to you as you always say that you 
 have never taken the trouble to consolidate your repu- 
 tation." 
 
 " No more I have in a country like this which allows 
 its best ideas to go abroad and leaves its experts in 
 isolation." 
 
 He was visibly flattered. 
 
 " You are a good girl, Ruth, and I'll do as you sug- 
 gest. I have all kinds of ideas noted down, ideas, 
 half-ideas, hints and semi-suggestions, all the whis- 
 pers of discovery which are enough for an active 
 mind." 
 
 Charles had much of the Hobday loquacity and he was 
 very like his brother: indeed he was exactly what his 
 brother would have been had anything ever happened to 
 set him wondering. Charles had attacked science with 
 all the Hobday sense of infallibility, but without the 
 backing of the family machinery. The Hobdays believed 
 in the Law: science to them was one of many heresies 
 incompatible with the Church of England attitude. 
 Charles loved science and Charles had very properly suf- 
 fered, and his sins were justly visited upon his- children. 
 And in spite of himself and in spite of his heresy there 
 was in Charles a great deal of the Hobday attitude 
 towards himself. Without the family machinery he had 
 been unable to cope with marriage or paternity or any 
 other human and therefore external affair. 
 
 He was not a little nettled at being stirred up by his 
 daughter. His wife had never done such a thing. She 
 had undertaken the management of his family and his 
 household without disturbing him, and he expected as 
 much from Ruth. He had so often believed that he was 
 going to make his fortune that, while hope still burned
 
 RUTH HOBDAY 95 
 
 faintly in him it was damped down by the continued 
 monotony of scepticism which paralysed him and kept 
 him in an inertia from which it was too painful for him 
 to stir. The mere thought of taking out his old note- 
 books set every nerve in him twittering. 
 
 Ruth persisted : 
 
 " I am determined, father, that the boys shall go to 
 Cambridge if they can win scholarships. They are not 
 people who ought to be wasted, and besides it depends 
 entirely on what they do to decide the kind of men the 
 girls are to marry." 
 
 She had no thought of marrying herself, for she had 
 accepted it as her destiny to retrieve her very lively 
 young brothers and sisters from the fate which without 
 an effort on her part would certainly overtake them. 
 . . . London was spreading out in every direction in 
 streets of houses all exactly alike inhabited by millions of 
 people all exactly alike, and without a final effort on her 
 part the young Hobdays would be swallowed up in the 
 great anonymous unquestioning mass. . . . From long 
 habit she thought of her family collectively, the boys, the 
 girls, and the children, but she approached them through 
 Leslie, her eldest brother, upon whom all her ambition 
 was centred. She had no time really to make the ac- 
 quaintance of the others, and she regarded them as 
 adjuncts to her brother, for she had acquired business 
 habits and did not ask the impossible of herself. The 
 family was a proposition which she had undertaken to 
 carry through and, but for the war, she would hardly 
 have realized all her difficulties as she surmounted them. 
 With the growing pressure of the war she was faced 
 with the alternative that either Leslie or her father must 
 earn money. She knew that her father would see no
 
 96 PINK ROSES 
 
 objection to Leslie doing it, and therefore she appealed 
 to his vanity rather than to his diminished practical 
 sense, and by continued pressure she attained her object, 
 and Charles Hobday began really to work. He set about 
 it with an enthusiasm so intense that he forgot all about 
 his article on poultry, missed it for two weeks, and lost 
 his job, and when Ruth asked him why the usual cheque 
 had not arrived he remembered, and in the most crest- 
 fallen way humbled himself before her, and, really 
 alarmed, hurled himself at his experiments with explo- 
 sives with a result which made him beam with confidence 
 and for a time broke his inertia. He became so master- 
 ful that he went to see his old friend, the proprietor of 
 the poultry journal, recovered his job, and procured a 
 loan with which to continue his experiments in explo- 
 sives to destroy the enemy by the thousand. He waxed 
 extremely patriotic, and talked as though the war against 
 the German Empire were a punitive expedition against 
 an Afghan tribe. . . . And he began to talk about the 
 Hobdays much as Kaiser Wilhelm II was talking about 
 the Hohenzollerns, and to declare that there was more 
 in them than the capacity for legal chicanery. 
 
 Ruth did not pay much attention to his talk, but, 
 noting the difference his work was making in him, she 
 endeavoured to instil into him the necessity of practical 
 exploitation of results. He declared that he had made a 
 first-rate discovery and had fructified an idea he had had 
 thirty years before, and he became very mysterious about 
 it and so inflated that he could no longer stay indoors, 
 as was his habit, but walked about Hampstead Heath, 
 observed the aerial defences of the metropolis and suf- 
 fered agonies from a congestion of ideas. . . . Guns, 
 searchlights, motor-cars, aeroplanes all thrilled and de-
 
 RUTH HOBDAY 97 
 
 lighted him. This was the life for which he had always 
 hungered, and it had come too late. He was too old to 
 take an active part in it all. . . . He loved to see the 
 young men drilling, and to think of them using his explo- 
 sives, his brain in their work, the great work they were 
 called upon to do, namely the exhibition of the marvel- 
 lous ingenuity of the human mind. 
 
 Charles Hobday's enthusiasm had always outrun his 
 capacity. The Hobday in him was stronger than the 
 Charles: the inspiration, the genius in him had always 
 had to dodge the love of social machinery, and in that 
 futile effort his energies had been spent, but in what he 
 saw on Hampstead Heath both the elements in his char- 
 acter could find expression. His enthusiasm was sup- 
 ported by general enthusiasm : the war was splendid ; it 
 was wonderful; it was the great opportunity. 
 
 All this emotional excitement bubbled and frothed in 
 him and could not be damped even when his offer to 
 place his services at the disposal of the Government was 
 rejected. He would find a way! 
 
 He tried in vain to enlist his brother's influence. 
 Henry Hobday had no sympathy with a man who at 
 fifty had to be subsidized, but in conversation he let fall 
 that an old friend of the family, Sir Seymour Trenham, 
 had been lent by his great chemical firm in the North to 
 the newly created Ministry of Munitions. . . . Charles 
 had worked in a laboratory with Trenham. That was 
 the man! Providence always sends to the inspired the 
 right man at the right moment. 
 
 Charles worked night and day, and one morning 
 rare occurrence a letter arrived for him. Ruth sent 
 Leslie up with it to the attic or laboratory and she 
 was just preparing to go to the City when her father
 
 9 8 PINK ROSES 
 
 came running down in his tattered and stained dressing- 
 gown and in a confidential whisper said: 
 
 "My dear, Sir Seymour Trenham ..." 
 
 That conveyed nothing to Ruth, but she kindled to the 
 almost intolerable excitement in him. 
 
 " I wrote to him the other day. He remembers me 
 and asks me to call on him at his private house. He has 
 been lent to the Government, a most distinguished 
 man ..." 
 
 " Don't go before you have anything to show him, 
 Dad," said Ruth, anxious to cool him. 
 
 "But I have. . . . But I have. . . . That's just 
 the point." 
 
 "Really?" 
 
 " Really, really, really." 
 
 Ruth could not resist hugging him. She kissed him 
 perhaps only twice a year, but now she was caught up 
 by his hopefulness, for she knew he must have been 
 greatly stirred to have brought himself to have written. 
 
 " We'll talk about it when I come home," she said. 
 " Don't do anything until we have talked it over." 
 
 " But . . . but I don't want to waste any time," he 
 said, looking rather pathetic. Ruth's affectionate im- 
 pulse had almost overwhelmed him and made him want 
 to cry like a child who had been alone rather too long. 
 
 She set out for the City, where she was irritable all 
 day, full of a suppressed excitement which she dis- 
 trusted, and feeling that, if the new adventurousness in 
 her father came to nothing, she would not be able to go 
 on. . . . Indeed, if nothing happened, there would be 
 no solution of the financial problem other than that 
 Leslie must leave school, and that would break her heart, 
 for, if Leslie went, then the others would go too. She
 
 RUTH HOBDAY 99 
 
 could keep them afloat no longer, and what would be- 
 come of her? She would have worn herself out for 
 nothing. Already she was afraid of getting hard. In 
 imagination she could feel that creeping over her, the 
 insensible crust of suburbanism which she detested as the 
 horror of horrors, for it made life one long apology. 
 She knew them so well, the little humble people who 
 went into London every day by train and tram, all in 
 their hearts apologizing for their existence, clinging des- 
 perately to their jobs, haunted by the dread of losing 
 them. . . . Never, never could she endure the spectacle 
 of proud, clever Leslie being broken in to that, starting 
 at eighteen shillings a week and hoping for a maximum 
 of six pounds. 
 
 She returned in the evening to find that her father had 
 had an explosion so successful that he had blown out the 
 windows of his attic, removed half the roof, and burnt 
 off his moustache, one eyebrow, and blistered his left 
 hand. The doctor was in attendance, but her father's 
 ardour was unabated, and he lay sizzling, like a leaking 
 syphon, with impatience. 
 
 " You will have to go, my dear. We can't lose a 
 minute. There may be dozens of chemists working on 
 the same lines. . . . I'll dictate a letter to young Tren- 
 ham I always think of him as young and you can take 
 it to him. Tell him of my accident, and that I have 
 repeatedly offered my services to the Government. . . . 
 But you have a business head. If he sees you I'm sure 
 he will take it up. He must. He must." 
 
 Tired though she was Ruth agreed. Her firm jaw set 
 and she determined that she would not return without 
 having seen Trenham. Her father was not an igno- 
 ramus. He had been brilliant at Oxford, only something
 
 ioo PINK ROSES 
 
 had happened to him and the Hobdays had treated him 
 badly. 
 
 As she came downstairs Leslie met her and said he 
 wanted to talk to her, and drew her into the dining- 
 room. 
 
 " Look here, Sis," he said, " I don't like the look of 
 you at all. You look worn out, and the rest of us are 
 so selfish that we leave it all to you. . . . It's no good 
 thinking about Cambridge any more. There won't be 
 any Cambridge any more. All the fellows will be going 
 into the Army when they leave school. One of the mas- 
 ters was saying the other day that it's all up with people 
 like us, and it's true. I know lots of fellows whose 
 mothers do what you do for us, but they're not going to 
 do it any more. It isn't good enough. ..." 
 
 " Don't break my heart, Leslie. It isn't so bad as all 
 that. I should tell you if things were really bad. You 
 know I should, don't you? . . . You mustn't begin to 
 think of things too young. Two years more. It's only 
 two years now. That's nothing." 
 
 " I dunno," he grumbled. " I just feel it's all wrong. 
 But I want to do what you want. The chaps at school 
 think I'm something because of Uncle Henry. ... I 
 wish to hell the old man had blown himself up this after- 
 noon, then perhaps we should be all right." 
 
 "Oh, Leslie, don't!" 
 
 " Yes, we should. If he was dead Uncle Henry would 
 have to do the decent." 
 
 " It's going to be all right; really it is, Leslie. We've 
 got to think of the others. It isn't only you. A girl 
 giving up things isn't the same as a boy." 
 
 He acquiesced reluctantly. He knew more about their 
 father than she did, and was most suspicious of him
 
 RUTH HOBDAY 101 
 
 when he was most elated. As he turned at the door he 
 grumbled : 
 
 " I'm giving in to you, but I'm wrong. It isn't as if 
 I knew what I wanted to do. I don't." 
 
 " But you will know, Leslie. . . . I'm going out 
 now. Won't you take me to the tram ? " 
 
 He slung his shabby school cap on his head and walked 
 with her, a silent escort except for one observation: 
 
 " We never seem to have a jolly time somehow. I 
 want you to have a jolly time before it is too late. . . . 
 You're not bad-looking, Ruth, but you freeze any one 
 who ever looks at you. . . . The chaps I bring to the 
 house are afraid of you." 
 
 It was not his words that hurt her, but the knowledge 
 that he was unhappy. He must be suffering terrible to 
 talk like that. . . . And was it true. Was she for- 
 midable? Had she already begun to harden in her de- 
 fiant refusal ever to apologize for her existence, although 
 she lived in a suburb and worked in the City?
 
 VIII 
 WESTMINSTER 
 
 SIR SEYMOUR TRENHAM had taken a furnished house in 
 Westminster because he imagined that his services would 
 only be required for a few months, and there was no 
 reason for disturbing his household in the North. He 
 brought with him his valet, a cook, and a housemaid and 
 left the rest of his domestic staff to his wife, whose ambi- 
 tions to shine in the social life of London he vetoed. 
 His wife was very wealthy, very provincial, and he was 
 in his heart ashamed of her, because she was ashamed of 
 the city of her origin. He had, or thought he had, ac- 
 cepted the Birthday Honours title conferred on him to 
 please her, and it had only had the effect of turning her 
 thoughts to London from which his were averted be- 
 cause in his early maturity he had had to leave it to find 
 recognition of his ability. . . . He was a handsome 
 man, who had cultivated the appearance of hard strength, 
 and though he was not born in the North had outdone 
 the Northerner in the qualities which they accounted vir- 
 tues shrewdness, stubborn pugnacity, conviction of 
 superiority, but when he moved to London and was 
 established in his comfortable house in North Street he 
 was often dogged by a strange dazed feeling that the 
 life he had built up in the North had nothing to do with 
 him and had been part of a dream adventure from which 
 he had awakened. His life, though brilliantly successful, 
 had not been what it ought to have been. At home he 
 
 IDS
 
 WESTMINSTER 103 
 
 had absolute power and authority, but here he had to 
 refer to others who consulted his opinion but often 
 ignored it. He could not longer dictate, but had to con- 
 sider others. He could no longer go straight for what 
 he wanted, but had to negotiate and steer round awk- 
 ward situations and persons. . . . The disturbance and 
 mortification in his views were considerable, and he was 
 glad to be alone to readjust himself. The fussiness of 
 London at first irritated and then amused him, and Lon- 
 doners seemed to him a race as foreign to the people he 
 was used to as the French. . . . Ah! He deserved a 
 holiday. He and his colleagues had worked for twenty 
 years to be ready for this great emergency when it came. 
 They at least had been prepared, and now with a good 
 conscience he could sink into London's indolence for 
 his holiday. ... A return to a bachelor existence was 
 a good thing. His club had the best cooking in London. 
 He made friends quickly, and was asked out to dinner 
 where people listened awfully as he talked as one who 
 knew about big guns and explosives. His firm's machine- 
 gun had made good, and it was a pleasure to all to hear 
 him discreetly talk about it. ... He bought a great 
 many new clothes, laid down a good cellar of wines, and 
 revelled in the new note of distinction in his life. It 
 was, of course, what he ought always to have had. He 
 wrote to his wife every day, and promised her that if 
 the war went on for more than six months longer she 
 should join him. 
 
 He was treated almost with homage as one of the 
 elect few who knew their way about in the strange new 
 life that had suddenly crashed in upon the elegant pre- 
 occupations of the capital, and this so pleased him that 
 he could afford to be generous. At a dinner-table he
 
 104 PINK ROSES 
 
 was something comfortably unmoved and solid. When 
 ladies or literary gentlemen deplored the loss of life he 
 would say with a snap of his wide, thin-lipped mouth : 
 
 " There are plenty left." 
 
 It pleased him to contrast himself in London now with 
 himself as he had been in London in the old days, poor 
 and friendless and aching with unheeded ambition, and 
 it was in such a mood that Charles Hobday's letter found 
 him. . . . Poor old unpractical Hobday! Of course 
 he remembered him with his brain seething with so many 
 ideas that he could not sort them out. Old Hobday 
 knew but could never apply his knowledge, though he 
 had often thrown out hints that upon research by a 
 cooler mind had proved fruitful. ... Of course old 
 Hobday would have a bad time. The paper on which he 
 wrote pointed to a declension to the brink of disaster. 
 In a moment of kindly caprice Trenham answered his 
 letter. 
 
 He was out when Ruth called, and his valet, suspicious 
 of London and London ways, was reluctant to admit her, 
 but she insisted that it was most important. Sir Sey- 
 mour had written to her father who was lying ill, and 
 she could not return without seeing him. She had her 
 way, and was allowed to sit in the hall until Sir Seymour 
 returned. 
 
 What a delightful house it was! The hall was 
 panelled, and the stairs had an oak balustrade. They 
 were covered with a cool grey horsehair carpet, and the 
 floor's polished surface was relieved by two beautiful 
 Persian rugs. On the walls hung old English coloured 
 prints. 
 
 ^ It was the happiest moment of Ruth's life, the first 
 time she had ever been at one with her surroundings.
 
 WESTMINSTER 105 
 
 Her tired nerves were soothed, her weary anxious soul 
 plucked up confidence. Her eyes traced out the pattern 
 of the Persian rugs and lit up with the grotesque humour 
 of the prints. The house had an atmosphere that was 
 native to her. It was not like the houses in which she 
 had lived, for it had a history, and it had a quality, and 
 it was not like Uncle Henry's house in Bayswater, for 
 there was no ostentation in it. In a little while she was 
 quite sure that her visit was not in vain. 
 
 She was kept waiting nearly two hours. The valet 
 brought her a cup of tea and the weekly paper, and she 
 was immersed in these when a key was thrust into the 
 latch and Sir Seymour came in, returning from a dinner- 
 party at which his expert knowledge of guns and explo- 
 sives had inspired confidence in various peeresses. He 
 had begun to acquire the London manner and the pos- 
 session of a social personality which, partly owing to its 
 novelty, he regarded as superior to that to which he had 
 been accustomed. Never had he been a source of such 
 pleasure to himself. It had been well worth the long 
 exile to come so completely into his own at last. If he 
 had had his success earlier it might have spoiled him. 
 That he had married during his exile, and had children 
 in his exile, was incidental, like who was it? Oh yes, 
 Garibaldi in South America, though Lady Trenham was 
 not to be compared with the fair Peruvian. Was she a 
 Peruvian? Sir Seymour stopped on the Persian rug 
 nearest the door to decide this question. . . . Gari- 
 baldi was a great man, too, though he could not have 
 made much of a show in modern war, and what would 
 Napoleon have done? He would have sat in an office 
 scientifically manipulating a great organization. The 
 grand figures of this colossal business were invisible.
 
 io6 PINK ROSES 
 
 Power was now to the strong, fame to the fools. . . . 
 Sir Seymour had just begun to think of the things he 
 might have said at his dinner-party when he became 
 aware of something unusual in his delightful bachelor 
 quarters. Oh yes, his valet was not there to take his 
 overcoat, but that was his own fault for forgetting to 
 ring the bell. 
 
 He started as he heard a small voice saying: 
 
 " Good evening. Are you Sir Seymour Trenham ? " 
 
 He saw a slender grey-clad figure holding out a 
 letter. 
 
 "My name is Ruth Hobday," she said; "my father 
 was so pleased to get your letter. He would have come 
 himself only he has had a slight accident, so I had to 
 come, and I waited because there is no time to be lost." 
 
 " I would have given you an appointment. I am sorry 
 you have been kept waiting." 
 
 " I couldn't have come during the day." 
 
 " Oh! Have you turned out for war-work?" 
 
 " No. I worked before the war." 
 
 He led her into his little study at the back of the 
 dining-room: a panelled room with a powder-closet off 
 it which had been turned into a case for old china, silver, 
 and fans. Again Ruth was overcome with a sense of 
 finding old familiar things. 
 
 Sir Seymour opened the letter and read it perfunc- 
 torily. 
 
 " How is your father? " he asked. 
 
 " He will be in bed for a week or two. That is why it 
 is so important. He is very excited. ..." 
 
 ' Yes. I remember," said Sir Seymour with a smile. 
 
 ' Then you know what father is ? " said Ruth. 
 " People have always taken advantage of him."
 
 WESTMINSTER 107 
 
 Sir Seymour watched her tired, pretty face, and 
 guessed some of her story. That kind of man always 
 produced a large family as he gradually lost hope of pro- 
 ducing anything else. 
 
 " And yet I remember the day when I used to borrow 
 half-crowns from your father. . . . He expected every- 
 thing too easily. A few years in the North would 
 have done him a world of good. I wonder he never 
 tried it." 
 
 " Father couldn't work under other people. If he 
 hadn't been a scientist he could have been a lawyer and 
 a partner in his father's firm." 
 
 " Ah yes. . . . Mr. Henry Hobday," smiled Sir 
 Seymour. " Oddly enough I met him only a few days 
 before I had your father's letter. ... By the way, it 
 isn't quite clear what your father wants me to do." 
 
 " He has invented something for the war. ... I 
 ,. . . suppose you couldn't come and see him. It is 
 very important, because we want to keep my brother at 
 school." 
 
 It was out before she could help herself. The 
 luminous charm of this house had made her realize 
 acutely the shabby penury in which she had lived, and 
 . . . somehow, because Sir Seymour had known her 
 father and spoke of him in a friendly way there was no 
 reason for her to be on her guard. 
 
 " Father says people are getting thousands out of the 
 Government, and I hear tales in the City, and father is 
 really a very clever man. My mother used to say that 
 if he hadn't been a Hobday he would have been one of 
 the richest men in England." 
 
 Sir Seymour leaned back in his chair. Ruth's voice 
 pleased him, and she was touchingly young. Obviously
 
 I0 8 PINK ROSES 
 
 she had inherited her father's nice credulity and his un- 
 attainable innocence. 
 
 " He had great abilities, very great abilities, but now- 
 adays one needs much persistence. ... I should say 
 you had it." 
 
 Really she was very pretty as she blushed, and so 
 delicate and sensitive. It was all wrong, hideously 
 wrong, that she should be anxious and worried and 
 weighted with responsibilities. 
 
 " I shall be only too glad if I can do anything to help. 
 . . . We scientific men have had to wait for the war 
 to give us our chance in this country. Will you come 
 and see me again in three days' time, and I will let you 
 know what I think." 
 
 "About the same time?" asked Ruth hopefully. 
 
 " I will be in for you," replied Sir Seymour. 
 
 " My father will be pleased. I must go back to him 
 now. I shall have great difficulty in keeping him in 
 bed." 
 
 She held out her hand, and her new friend took it in 
 his. 
 
 " You won't mind my asking you," he said, " but what 
 work do you do ? " 
 
 " Oh, just office work. It was the easiest to learn." 
 
 He gave her hand a friendly shake and said : 
 
 " I'll think about that too." 
 
 He took her to the door and stood watching her as, 
 with her heart beating and her thoughts racing, she sped 
 along the little street. An old clock in the hall struck 
 eleven. He sighed. Ah! after all there was nothing like 
 youth, so easily aflame, so lightly plunged into suffering, 
 but through everything buoyant and full of Spring. 
 . . . How delightful it had been to find her there, and
 
 WESTMINSTER 109 
 
 through all her intense nervousness and anxiety to hear 
 the indomitable note of youth in her voice. 
 
 As for Ruth, she was near tears. It was the first time 
 she had ever relaxed, the first time she had found a 
 friend upon whom she felt she could rely. 
 
 " Oh ! He is good ! " she thought almost in ecstasy. 
 " He is a wonderful man. He understands. He can 
 even understand father, and no one has ever done that. 
 . . . And what beautiful things he has in his house! 
 Leslie shall be like him. He shall be a great, successful 
 man and have a house like that full of taste and ease 
 and comfort. ... I must make things nice at home 
 for Leslie. I'm sure he needs them. He would appre- 
 cite them. ..." 
 
 The house at Highgate was impossibly dull and dingy. 
 The furniture was good, but too, too Hobday, a name 
 that for Ruth as for her mother stood for prosperous 
 insensibility. The furniture bulked and bulged in the 
 little house, and seemed to protest against its setting. It 
 was nearly twelve as Ruth entered, but she ran upstairs 
 at once to her father's room and found him almost 
 feverish with impatience working out sums on a grubby 
 piece of paper. The figures he was manipulating were 
 enormous, running into thousands. 
 
 "Well?" he said, looking under his bandages at her 
 hands as though he expected her there and then to pour 
 a stream of golden sovereigns on to his bed. 
 
 " Oh, father," said Ruth; " I have seen him. I waited 
 for him, and he is the nicest, nicest man." 
 
 " Yes. Yes." Charles tapped on the bed impatiently. 
 
 " He is going to let me know in three days. I am to 
 go and see him. He remembers you perfectly. He says 
 you have very, very great abilities."
 
 no PINK ROSES 
 
 "Generous," said Charles, rather petulantly. "If it 
 had not been for your mother and your Uncle Henry I 
 should be where he is now or higher. I consider that 
 your Uncle Henry by his refusal to finance my early 
 projects has robbed me of not less than sixty thousand 
 pounds. ..." 
 
 " Yes. Yes. I know, father. But that is all over 
 now. I'm sure that Sir Seymour will help. He spoke 
 of you with real affection. He did indeed, and said he 
 remembered the time when you lent him half a 
 crown." 
 
 "Ah! ha!" chuckled Charles. "The lion and the 
 mouse . . . But I am not like other men. I don't 
 want riches. I only want acknowledgment, and, Ruth, 
 we will pay my brother Henry every penny of the paltry 
 sums he has advanced us. I will walk into the office 
 myself and write him out a cheque in the presence of 
 those insufferable insolent clerks of his. I will repay 
 him with interest. And you shall never go near the City 
 again. I hate the City." 
 
 " Don't count on it too much, father. But I'm sure 
 he will help. He is such a kind man, and, of course, he 
 is very influential." 
 
 " All my life," said Charles, " I have waited for the 
 big thing with a patience that no one has ever under- 
 stood. I have refused to waste my time on trifles and 
 trifling people, because I knew that my hour would 
 come. How I did not know. When I did not know. 
 ... At last, dear child, you understand your long- 
 suffering, far-seeing father. . . . The long view pays. 
 It always pays. . . . Mark my words, before the war 
 is over I shall be marching into Buckingham Palace in 
 knee breeches and silk stockings. A tap on the shoulder,
 
 WESTMINSTER in 
 
 and my brother Henry will die of a rush of envy to 
 the spleen." 
 
 Ruth laughed at him. He was like a boastful child. 
 
 " Leslie is the important person," she said. " His 
 master says his essays are quite extraordinary, and he 
 speaks at the Debating Society." 
 
 But Charles was not interested. His children had 
 forced their way into the world, and he had no doubt 
 that they would force their way through it. 
 
 " I leave that to you," he said, as thousands of times 
 he had said to his unfortunate wife. " I leave that to 
 you. I am no judge of character, and my way in life 
 has been so extraordinary that God forbid that any son 
 of mine should follow it." 
 
 Ruth knew that it was useless to attempt to argue. 
 The antagonism between father and son was too deeply 
 rooted for her to move it. She could only serve the one 
 through the other by self-abnegation, and she could feel 
 now that it only exasperated her father that while she 
 was helping him she should have any thought for Leslie 
 in her mind. . . . And in this, too, he was a Hobday, 
 leaving the parental responsibilities to social machinery. 
 For the normal Hobdays there were schools, universi- 
 ties, professions, marriages, the firm : for the abnormal 
 nothing. The problem of providing for children with- 
 out social machinery was too difficult for Charles, who 
 therefore brushed it aside. 
 
 But for Ruth that was the ever-present haunting prob- 
 lem. Leslie could be something so much better than a 
 Hobday. He, too, belonged to that life of panelled 
 rooms, Persian rugs, silver, china, fans. 
 
 She was most deeply stirred by her evening's experi- 
 ence, and she lay for hours in her bed dreaming of
 
 H2 PINK ROSES 
 
 Leslie, escaping the war through being too young for it. 
 and gradually developing into a fine man who would 
 inevitably find his way to Westminster, where he would 
 live in a delightful house, be met at his front door by an 
 efficient valet, dine out, play the host, attend Parliament 
 and make speeches which would hold his audience spell- 
 bound; he would travel, perhaps write books, collect 
 rarities and rich stuffs, marry a beautiful girl of a 
 wealthy and powerful family, and forget, forget, forget 
 for ever the struggling squalid years in Highgate, even 
 if it meant forgetting his sister Ruth. . . . Yes, she 
 would even cut herself out of his life if she were ever 
 to remind him of these days overshadowed by Henry 
 Hobday, and the City, and people like themselves who 
 could not make both ends meet. . . . She thought of 
 Westminster as the living heart of the world. In the 
 old days her mother's family had had their seat in the 
 House as of right, as they had their livings for younger 
 sons and their commissions in the Army and the Navy 
 because they were known at Westminster and could 
 move there with the necessary grace. There were por- 
 traits of a few of the old men in the house, even more 
 out of place in it than the Hobday furniture. Elegant, 
 witty faces they had one of them amazingly like Leslie, 
 and it was that elegance, that wit, that Ruth desired him 
 to have always, innate qualities that would mark him out 
 and make it impossible for him to share the featureless 
 existence all around them. . . . No other part of Lon- 
 don that she knew had so preserved its atmosphere as 
 Westminster, and she counted it a symbolically fortunate 
 accident that Sir Seymour Trenham should live in North 
 Street. 
 
 Once she had set Leslie's feet on the right road the
 
 WESTMINSTER 113 
 
 rest would be easy. It all depended on Trenham and her 
 father's inspiration. Perhaps after all there had been 
 some purpose in her father's crazy obstinacy, more in it 
 than hatred of his family and refusal to accept its stale 
 traditions, owing to the accident of meeting and marry- 
 ing her mother who, indulgent and kindly with the poor, 
 had passionately detested everything and everybody 
 middle-class. Hobday! How could her mother have 
 accepted such a name in marriage? And what had her 
 father been like when he was young? Like Leslie, per- 
 haps: passionate, moody, silent, aloof. . . . That was 
 possible, and without an effort on her part, Leslie would 
 be pathetically wasted and the whole family would be 
 submerged. 
 
 Thinking of Trenham as she lay staring into the night, 
 Ruth said: 
 
 "He must! He must! He shall!"
 
 IX 
 ROMANTICISM 
 
 FOR the first time in his life Seymour Trenham was con- 
 sciously romantic about himself, saw himself as a figure, 
 and he was not satisfied. His life had been devoted to 
 the romance of big guns, huge ships of war, blast fur- 
 naces and hardened steel. He had lived among tall chim- 
 neys and gaunt erections belching fire night and day, but 
 now in London all that had fallen away. The hard, 
 remorseless work of his life was suspended, perhaps over 
 for ever. London was giving him his reward in the life 
 of which in his soul he had always dreamed, luxury, 
 ease, leisure, and if not wit then the show of it, and if 
 not manners, then some appearance of them. In the 
 North people had been too hard for manners, too shrewd 
 for wit, and they despised any attempt to put a polish on 
 life which they liked raw and strangely savoured. In 
 London the day only began when it was time to bathe 
 and dress for dinner, and the enjoyment that then be- 
 came possible was far keener than any that has to be 
 had in workaday existence. One could linger over food 
 and wine, attend a theatre or a concert, pass on to some 
 pleasant function designed for the exhibition of pretty 
 women for charity had been invoked to cover the con- 
 tinuance of gregarious pleasures or alone he could 
 enjoy London as an evening city, one that only under 
 twilight showed its true beauty and its most secret 
 charm. There were still men to be seen in Piccadilly 
 
 114
 
 ROMANTICISM 115 
 
 who bore in their faces and gait the stamp of London, 
 old men ineffably distinguished with rare and noble Eng- 
 lish faces, men who, for all the frightful news coming in 
 from France, were unruffled in thought or in emotion. 
 Trenham used to look for such men because he envied 
 them. Their composure was deeper than his own, which 
 was based upon knowledge while theirs was unfath- 
 omable. It was, as he phrased it to himself, the only 
 thing in the world to which he would take off his hat. 
 It might be dethroned from the seat of Government, but 
 it would never lose its power because it could not dimin- 
 ish its influence. He knew who better? what could 
 be done by work and research, but beyond that lay this 
 certainty, this composure which in London he had al- 
 ways recognized and worshipped. There was none of it 
 in the North, with its uneasy reliance on money, and 
 probably it existed nowhere else in the world. . . . To 
 Trenham it was like a haunting perfume with which in 
 his youth he had been intoxicated, and now, at the sum- 
 mit of his success, he could not but desire it, and seek it 
 out that it might loosen the stiffness in his mind and the 
 hardness and awkwardness of his feelings. Tailoring 
 could do a good deal, food and wine much more, but 
 what Trenham hoped and longed for, was contact with 
 persons of quality, and he was continually disap- 
 pointed, perhaps because he expected people to be as 
 highly finished and as complete in their perfection as 
 guns. Yet he could not desist from his hope, and every 
 day brought him nearer his purpose of himself becoming 
 the immaculate Londoner. He soon discovered that his 
 reading left much to be desired, and he bought not only 
 the books of the moment but also the classics, and when 
 he discovered the Restoration comedy it was like a
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 revelation to him. Here they were in being, the com- 
 posed and certain men and women of his admiring 
 dreams. Their morals of course offended him, but he 
 could forgive that for the sake of their manners. They 
 were indolent only because the country was indolent, tak- 
 ing a rest after the Civil War. . . . He lived in hope 
 that presently his path would be crossed by some bril- 
 liant lady who would tease and please, exasperate, exult, 
 and satisfy him for the duration of the war. After 
 that he would return to the North, resume his life of 
 hard work and domestic felicity. 
 
 He felt so confident that his life would not pass by 
 without its romance that he made no deliberate effort to 
 find it. He met many beautiful women, but knew at 
 once that they had not what he desired. They could 
 flatter but not move him. Flattery was very sweet to 
 him, but he desired more. 
 
 After Ruth's visit to him he found himself constantly 
 remembering her voice, not so much with words as for 
 a certain note in it, which without egoism announced 
 continually, " I am Ruth Hobday," and he knew that he 
 could not as definitely say, " I am Seymour Trenham," 
 for he was a career, a highly specialized intellect, a figure 
 for the newspapers, two households, a war discovery, a 
 dozen other things that could not readily be composed 
 into a person, and the people among whom he moved 
 were much the same; they were clothes, social successes, 
 wives, husbands, lovers (in the technical sense), politi- 
 cians, writers, military experts, soldiers, but they were 
 not persons, and the most successful of all were merely 
 reflections of what the crowd desired, living on phrases 
 " the war to end war " " the knock-out blow " 
 " carry on " " keep smiling." . . . Moving among
 
 ROMANTICISM 117 
 
 these people Trenham could not shake off the thought 
 of the Hobdays, Ruth and her foolish old father who 
 had refused to compromise or to accept the subversion 
 of science to purely commercial ends. He thought of 
 them so much that on the day appointed for Ruth's re- 
 turn Trenham left his office early, and was all impatience 
 for her coming. 
 
 In the old days in the laboratory in any difficulty, 
 everybody had always gone to old Hobday, who from 
 his immense learning could generally supply a hint, and 
 his hints were nearly always fruitful. It was so now. 
 He had thrown out a hint which, if it were worked on, 
 would produce valuable results, but of course the old 
 man himself was too erratic and too cocksure to do 
 the work. In the ordinary course Trenham would have 
 returned such a specification because there certainly was 
 not time to test the conclusions at which the chemist 
 had jumped, but now it was a question of helping Ruth 
 who, he felt sure, was suffering from financial stress. 
 What a shame it was ! He had prepared for her a letter 
 on Ministry paper thanking Charles Hobday for his 
 valuable suggestion, and offering him a sum of 300 
 for the idea. This letter he left open, and when she 
 called, almost ill with anxiety and eager expectation, he 
 handed it to her and turned his back on her to escape 
 seeing her emotion. 
 
 "Oh!" she cried. "Oh! I knew. . . . Is it really 
 worth all that?" 
 
 She was not thinking of the money, but of the impor- 
 tance of her father's work. 
 
 " Every penny of it," said Trenham. 
 
 "Thank you; thank you," cried Ruth, returning the 
 letter to its envelope and looking gratefully at him for
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 letting her see it. She could not have borne the suspense 
 of carrying it home to her father. 
 
 " I have been thinking it over," said Trenham, " and 
 I could make arrangements for your father to work in 
 one of the Ministry's laboratories. . . . But I should 
 like to help you too. The staff of my department is 
 increasing rapidly. . . . You would like that better 
 than the City. ..." 
 
 "You are too good," faltered Ruth, and she added 
 with a smile, " You don't want too many Hobdays on 
 your salary list." 
 
 " We are taking on whole families," chuckled Tren- 
 ham, " at a reduction." 
 
 Ruth without her anxieties was another being. Her 
 youth and her natural health began at once to assert 
 themselves, and for the first time for many months she 
 began to talk without repression. Trenham leaned back 
 in his chair, and savoured to the full her high spirits, 
 and, warming to his friendliness, she told him the whole 
 story, piecing a good deal of it together impromptu and 
 in flashes of understanding : her father's quarrel with the 
 Hobdays, her mother's contempt of them widening the 
 breach, the deplorable effect of it on her father's imprac- 
 ticability, her mother's illness, her own efforts to save 
 the situation, her desperate desire to save her brother 
 from a disastrous beginning to his career, and when she 
 had finished Trenham began to tell her about himself, 
 how he had fought his way up out of a poverty-stricken 
 middle-class family, narrowly religious and hostile to 
 any enterprise, and how he had devoted himself to the 
 great firm in the North in which he was now a partner, 
 and how he found himself often wondering if it had 
 been worth while, and whether it would not have been
 
 ROMANTICISM 119 
 
 better to devote himself to pure research, almost the 
 only disinterested career now left open, and Ruth said: 
 
 " That is what father wanted to be disinterested." 
 
 " It is almost an offence nowadays to be so, and one 
 needs to be very strong to try it." 
 
 Several times during their talk the valet had entered 
 to tell Sir Seymour that dinner was ready, and at last 
 he came in and said that the cook was threatening to 
 leave unless her dinner was eaten. 
 
 " Won't you stay ? " asked Trenham. " Do ! " 
 
 And Ruth stayed. 
 
 On New Year's Eve every year her father and she 
 were commanded to dine at the Henry Hobdays. That 
 was her only experience of good cooking. She had never 
 dined at a house where the cooking was of paramount 
 importance, and where a meal was made an exquisite 
 transition from morning to afternoon, afternoon to 
 evening, or evening to night. It was so here, in this 
 delightful house where everything was perfectly in its 
 place, and nothing was ostentatious or obtrusive in its 
 function. What was wanted was ready to hand. Noth- 
 ing that was not wanted was allowed. That was the 
 difference between this house and Uncle Henry's, which 
 was overloaded and full of unnecessary articles of fur- 
 niture. 
 
 Ruth smiled with pleasure at the polished glass, the 
 shining silver, the dark pool of the smooth mahogany 
 table which reflected the light and dimly all the gracious 
 things in the room. She and her new friend ate in 
 silence, so deeply did they enjoy each other's society and 
 the delicious meal laid before them. To Ruth it 
 savoured of magic, and not as her uncle's magnificence 
 did, of money. That was the difference. Money here
 
 120 PINK ROSES 
 
 was flsed to serve personality and taste. It revealed in a 
 glowing ruddy light, most subtle and most delicate, the 
 distinguished character of her host, who sat there re- 
 specting and enjoying her silence. She felt that she 
 could never be the same again, the force of circum- 
 stances that had cramped and repressed her was driven 
 back and rendered impotent to hurt those for whom she 
 had sacrificed herself. . . . She was glad that Tren- 
 ham was grey-haired, glad that he was so handsome; he 
 seemed to her perfect in his perfect setting. It was 
 nothing to her that he was a great man, one of the grand 
 successes of the war, a power behind the scenes, and 
 so-on; she appreciated him as he was and as he desired 
 to be, and it was a very few minutes before she had a 
 sense that he and she had been sitting there for a very 
 long time, and that they both belonged to the house and 
 were as old as it, that is, able to enter into all the moods 
 and all the histories it had contained. . . . He half 
 closed his eyes as he saw how lovingly she touched the 
 old glass, how intimately her fingers responded to the 
 heavy, smooth old silver, soft and amazingly responsive 
 to hands that loved it. 
 
 In the centre of the table was a great silver bowl in 
 which pink roses floated on rose-scented water. Tren- 
 ham looked from them to Ruth's face as she kindled 
 under her pleasure. Into her cheeks had crept just the 
 same voluptuous tenderness of fleeting delicately poised 
 health and rapture, and upon her whole being was the 
 bloom of fine humanity which to him was of all that life 
 can give the most desirable. He recognized it at once. 
 She was a person of quality, no matter what the facts of 
 her life might have been or the errand upon which she 
 had come. And she was so young, so innocent, so frail,
 
 ROMANTICISM 121 
 
 as frail as the roses floating exquisite in their bloom as 
 she in hers. 
 
 " After the war," he said, " I think people will be 
 able to be more themselves. They won't be stifled and 
 afraid, or driven by routine. . . . Many of us have 
 been shocked into knowing that we haven't been our- 
 selves, but have been dragged into lives that we did not 
 particularly want, surrendering to mediocrity because it 
 was so easy. ... I have enjoyed to-night more than 
 anything I ever remember, and yet nothing particularly 
 wonderful has happened." 
 
 " A great deal for me," said Ruth, smiling at his 
 solemnity. " I ought not to have stayed." 
 
 " Oh ! yes, you ought," he replied, a little sharply. 
 " It's high time we began to do what we want to do. 
 What we want and what we ought in the long run gen- 
 erally proves to be the same." 
 
 " I wasn't thinking of that," she said. " I agree, but 
 I was thinking of my father waiting to hear. I'm sure 
 he believes that the whole war depends on his dis- 
 covery." 
 
 " I believe that," chuckled Trenham. " I was quite 
 convinced that the fate of the German Empire was set- 
 tled when I was invited up to London. . . . But the 
 war goes on, as regardless of Empire as of individuals. 
 . . . When a man has a carbuncle on his neck he thinks 
 he is all carbuncle, but he soon discovers that he remains 
 pretty much the same. The war is like that. It is only 
 all carbuncle to the Press now. The rest of us go on 
 pretty much the same." 
 
 " Will it go on for many years longer? " 
 
 " I don't know. It began for no particular reason, 
 and it will stop for no particular reason."
 
 122 PINK ROSES 
 
 " I suppose people who know are sensible about it." 
 
 " It would be a bad look-out for the world if they 
 weren't." 
 
 " As long as Leslie doesn't go," said Ruth, " I can 
 get on without thinking about it. I don't argue. It 
 just is. If Leslie went I should be in it, and I should 
 have to try to understand." 
 
 They had coffee in the study, and he showed her his 
 books, and was astonished at the amount she had read. 
 
 "Do you like pictures?" he asked. 
 
 " I've been to the National Gallery, and I always read 
 about exhibitions in the papers, and go to see them some- 
 times, but it isn't the same as books, because Leslie 
 doesn't care for them. He likes music though, especially 
 old English music, Dr. Arne and Purcell and Handel; 
 next to that he likes Modern French." 
 
 " You must bring Leslie to see me." 
 
 "Oh! May I?" 
 
 " I feel I know him already through you. I have 
 boys of my own." 
 
 She started at that. It was the first hint that the 
 whole of his life was not in this house in North Street. 
 She looked across at him, and the momentary panic she 
 was in disappeared. That was no affair of hers, and 
 she would not let it intrude upon this entrancing adven- 
 ture. . . . All the same the power of the enchantment 
 was weakened, and she looked for a loophole in the con- 
 versation which would permit her to escape. 
 
 He was reluctant for her to go. The evening's 
 intimacy with her had rounded off the life he had created 
 for himself, and had savoured this bonne bouche of 
 romanticism with which he rewarded the strenuous 
 endeavours of his career. Human relations had always
 
 ROMANTICISM 123 
 
 been subsidiary to his other activities, for, like the epi- 
 cure he was, he had kept them for the last, to be tasted 
 when by regular exercise his faculties should have been 
 disciplined and refined. . . . He had watched Ruth 
 grow in this one evening from a shy girl into a delicious 
 creature in whom was that which he had always longed 
 for charm and subtlety of taste. 
 
 " Yes," he said, as she got up to go, " you must bring 
 your brother to see me and we will have great times 
 together. Tell your father that I will see to it that his 
 work is not shelved, and he shall have the run 
 of one of our laboratories, and of course a retaining 
 salary." 
 
 This was sheer magic, and Ruth, of course, had no 
 idea that it emanated from herself. 
 
 Trenham insisted on escorting her to the Underground 
 Station. He wanted to send her home in a taxi, but 
 that she refused. 
 
 The moon was shining in a clear sky, and Trenham 
 said: 
 
 " I wonder how many years it will be before we can 
 look at the moon without thinking of aeroplanes and the 
 banging of guns." 
 
 " I had forgotten them already," said Ruth. 
 
 He understood that. He had made her happy. Beside 
 that everything else was insignificant. To make one 
 human being happy to the extent of his or her capacity 
 seemed to him more worth while than anything else in 
 the world, and he had had every other desirable thing. 
 
 " Good God ! " he said, as he sauntered home. 
 " What a life she would have had a hundred years ago, 
 and this ridiculous card-indexed world can only set her 
 to typing and shorthand ! "
 
 124 PINK ROSES 
 
 Ruth was hundreds of miles, hundreds of lives away 
 from typing and shorthand. Leslie was safe ! He would 
 be given his chance and prove himself, to say good-bye 
 to the Hobdays for ever and to pick up the traditions of 
 his stock where they had interrupted it, and she would 
 no longer suffer under the hatred of his father as the 
 Hobday nearest and most offensive to him. Charles had 
 at last proved himself. The war had brought salvation. 
 It had broken the stagnation in which all threatened to 
 rot away. She could smile indulgently at the rows of 
 little houses now. Before very long they would move 
 to London, out of Suburbia for ever, and Leslie should 
 go to Westminster School, where his brothers should 
 follow him in making a new Hobday tradition. . . . 
 Perhaps and here her sanguine thought began to leap 
 into extravagance perhaps her father was even going 
 to be famous! That would cure the nervous oppression 
 from which Leslie had suffered, and he would start fair 
 and square without having unnecessary struggles to as- 
 sert his quality. 
 
 Of herself, for herself, Ruth thought not at all. For 
 one evening she had been happy. That was compensa- 
 tion enough for all that she had suffered. She trusted 
 Trenham absolutely. That he had remembered her 
 father was almost enough to prove his sincerity and 
 decency. That he should at once have recognized the 
 value of her father's work and have acted on it made 
 him at once the one person out of the whole world whom 
 she could call friend; and he had asked her to bring 
 Leslie! To share the happiness she had had with Leslie 
 would be an almost overwhelming joy. She arrived 
 home tingling with the anticipation of it. 
 
 Leslie opened the door to her. He had been working
 
 ROMANTICISM 125 
 
 all evening at an essay on patriotism for a school prize, 
 and he was tired and sullen. 
 
 " Oh ! Leslie, Leslie, do come out and look at the 
 moon ! " 
 
 " I don't want to see the moon. I'm sick of the sound 
 of it. People talk of nothing else." 
 
 " Leslie, don't be grumpy. Everything is going to be 
 all right. The Government have bought father's idea, 
 and they are going to give him the use of a laboratory 
 and a salary." 
 
 " He won't stick to it," he growled, blinking up at the 
 moon. " You know he won't. He likes sitting in a 
 chair in slippers and dressing-gown, smoking a pipe and 
 feeling ill-used." 
 
 " Don't be bitter, Leslie. It is recognition he has al- 
 ways wanted. Now he has got it." 
 
 "People are very generous with Government money; 
 there's nothing in that. I've been writing about that. 
 People think the Government is something different 
 from themselves. They can't see that Government 
 money comes out of their own pockets." 
 
 " You are bitter, Leslie. People can't help them- 
 selves. When I saw Mr. Smart the other day he said he 
 was rather anxious about you because you had been read- 
 ing Dostoievsky." 
 
 "Oh!" 
 
 " Well, it isn't good for you. English people don't 
 get into epileptic rages." 
 
 " I wish to God they did, then something would 
 happen." 
 
 " But something has happened, Leslie. Something 
 wonderful has happened." 
 
 " It won't make any difference. It won't alter Dad, or
 
 126 PINK ROSES 
 
 me, or you, or Uncle Henry sitting in his office. ..." 
 
 He was terrible when he was in these moods. Ruth 
 felt immensely sorry for him. She put her arm round 
 him and stood with him in the moonlight, under the 
 acacia-tree which adorned their front garden, and tried 
 to soothe him. 
 
 " There are good people in the world, Leslie. Sir 
 Seymour wants me to take you to see him." 
 
 He was pleased, but could not shake off his mood, 
 and he said: 
 
 " I wish to God you wouldn't talk about me to 
 strangers, Ruth. . . . You're always doing it, and I 
 have to live up or down to the nonsense you tell them." 
 
 She told him about Trenham's house, and at last he 
 said grudgingly : 
 
 " He must be a decent old card." 
 
 "Oh! he is. He gave me his letter to Dad opened, 
 so that I could read it. I've closed it so that Dad can 
 have the pleasure of telling us, and then I shall tell him 
 that I'm leaving the City and going in to Sir Seymour's 
 Ministry. . . . We're rich, Leslie, we're rich ! " 
 
 Leslie scowled up at the moon. He had been reading 
 The Brothers Karamazov and wanted to be like Alyosha, 
 except in the moments when he thought himself the 
 embodiment of all evil, and decided that he was irrev- 
 ocably Smeadyrkov. 
 
 Ruth laughed at him. 
 
 "Isn't it wonderful? ... I should just love to 
 walk in and tell Uncle Henry what I thought of him." 
 
 " Leave that to me," said Leslie. " I shall unbutton 
 his waistcoat, pull out his shirt, shave off one of his 
 whiskers, and turn him loose in the City with a placard 
 on his back : ' This is what I get for two hundred a year
 
 ROMANTICISM 127 
 
 given to my nephews and nieces.' And on his front I 
 shall have another placard : ' Charity is a boomerang.' " 
 
 " Ssh ! " said Ruth. " He thought he was being kind." 
 
 Their father had heard their voices, and had come to 
 the top of the stairs and called: 
 
 "Ruth! Ruth! Is that you?" 
 
 She went up to him and gave him Trenham's letter. 
 His mind could not take it in. His hand trembled, he 
 clutched the letter to his bosom, and laughing and cry- 
 ing he said in a quavering and silly voice: 
 
 " Ruth, Ruth. It's come. My fortune is made. Oh ! 
 Ruth. If only your mother were alive she would take 
 back some of her words. . . . Ruth, you must leave 
 your office at once. We will pay for the repairs to the 
 house and we will move at once. ... I never did care 
 for Highgate, though the air is good. I have a fancy 
 for the neighbourhood of Baker Street. It is select with- 
 out being pretentious or genteel. And, Ruth dear, I 
 ... I must have some new clothes. Ah! Ha! Ah! 
 Ha! I always knew I should show the Hobdays that 
 . . . that . . . Oh! well it doesn't matter. . . . 
 I wish we had a bottle of port in the house. . . . Your 
 uncle used to send us some port every year until your 
 mother said something about your aunt. It was per- 
 fectly true, of course, but most unfortunate. . . . 
 Three hundred pounds, my dear. . . . The idea. . . . 
 The mere idea is worth three hundred pounds to the 
 Government. Oh ! I wish we had a bottle of port in the 
 house ! "
 
 SOPHINA 
 
 A FEW weeks later saw both Charles Hobday and his 
 daughter in the service of their country, Charles with a 
 salary of 300 a year, Ruth receiving 2 175. 6d. a week. 
 This was a loss of five shillings a week to her, but it was 
 more than compensated for in the gain of leaving the 
 City, which had been for five years the scene of her cap- 
 tivity. That was over. The fatal spell which had 
 descended upon her and her family was broken. Her 
 father was alert, gay, sanguine. In the neighbourhood 
 of Baker Street he had found the upper part of a big 
 house, and into this the Hobdays moved. It was an ugly 
 house, but it was roomy and had character and it was in 
 London, so that a large part of the day was no longer 
 spent in going to and from work. 
 
 At the Ministry Ruth was not immediately under 
 Trenham, and she rarely saw him. When they met he 
 gave her a friendly nod. and occasionally asked her if 
 she liked her work. She was with girls who for the 
 most part were working for the first time, having jumped 
 at the chance of escaping from home. The great hotel 
 in which they were housed glowed with a holiday atmos- 
 phere, and for a time Ruth was entirely happy. She 
 needed a rest, time in which to recuperate, to look 
 around her and make very sure that she really had 
 escaped from the grinding monotonous anxiety. Her 
 companions thought her " stand-offish," but she was only 
 
 its
 
 SOPHINA 129 
 
 so absorbed in the release of her feelings that very often 
 she did not hear them when they spoke to her. She 
 was one of the very few who knew anything about office 
 organization, and she was in consequence kept hard at 
 work. This also did not increase her popularity. 
 
 She was given as assistant a little Jewish girl who was 
 strange and exotic among all the rest Her name was 
 Sophina Lipinsky, though everybody called her Sophina 
 at once because she was extraneous to their atmosphere, 
 and rather like a cat that had strayed in, and as a stray 
 cat makes friends by accepting milk, so Sophina ingrati- 
 ated herself by taking tea at all hours with whoever hap- 
 pened to be making it at the moment She became at- 
 tached to Ruth, singled her out, again like a stray cat, 
 as the person, if any, to whom she belonged, and it was 
 not long before she confided her story. Ruth hardly 
 listened at first, but Sophina's persistence and the events 
 of her story stirred in Ruth an element in her being that 
 had lain dormant. 
 
 Sophina told her that she came of poor East End 
 parents, and in her neighbourhood there were several 
 young Jews who had revolted against the poverty of 
 their surroundings and against the hard money-grubbing 
 with which their parents strove to escape from it, and 
 they had discovered Art In the West End there were 
 people who had become rich through Art, and they were 
 very important Her friends then began to paint pic- 
 tures and write poems, and one or two of them man- 
 aged to establish connections with the artists in the West 
 End, and with rich people who cared for Art A few of 
 them even made a little money, and among these was 
 Finberg, a Pole from Warsaw, who was not like the 
 others because his people were political refugees and had
 
 1 30 PINK ROSES 
 
 lived in France, so that he could read French and knew 
 a little about books. He was very handsome and made 
 friends quickly. When he had made a few pounds he 
 published a little book of his poems and sent them to the 
 papers and to one or two well-known writing men. The 
 reviews were favourable, and he judged it time to break 
 ,away from the East End circle and to go up to the West 
 End to make his fortune. He had made love to Sophina, 
 and she insisted on going with him because she knew that 
 if he went alone he would forget her. He was full of 
 confidence, and also he loved her. And together they 
 moved to one room in Gray's Inn Road. They had more 
 excitement than money, but that did not matter so long 
 as they were together. Finberg was a Revolutionary, 
 and did not believe in marriage. They had a child and 
 managed to keep it alive, but Finberg was worried. His 
 manuscripts kept returning and he took to going to cafes, 
 where artists and writers met, and then the war broke 
 out and, when everybody bad to go, Finberg wouldn't 
 because he was a Revolutionary, and because his people 
 had had trouble in France, and he lost a lot of his 
 friends. No one knew how he managed to keep out of 
 the Army, but he did. . . . Sometimes he disappeared 
 for weeks and left her alone to face it out. Then he 
 came back and she was happy again, but at last he went 
 away altogether, and she thought for a long time that 
 he was in the Army, until she met him one day in the 
 street, well-dressed and looking well-fed, and he pre- 
 tended to be absorbed in a newspaper, though she knew 
 perfectly well that he had seen her. . . . She did noth- 
 ing, she could not move. It was in Piccadilly Circus; 
 she remembered standing there looking down at the old 
 woman selling flowers and thinking that she would one
 
 SOPHINA 131 
 
 day be among them. . . . Her people were strict Jews 
 and would have nothing to do with her, and she did not 
 know where to turn, but a lady who had been kind to 
 both her and Finberg sent her to learn shorthand and 
 typing, and she had found work for her at the 
 Ministry. 
 
 The story offended and yet fascinated Ruth. It had 
 in it such a stink of the Ghetto and the streets that she 
 was horrified. She liked, yet did not altogether trust, 
 Sophina, of whom she felt that she told her story too 
 glibly. It had been told too often to be convincing any 
 longer. It had lost its authenticity. 
 
 " Where do you live now? " Ruth asked her. 
 
 " Oh, I live in some rooms near Mecklenburgh 
 Square." 
 
 "And the baby?" 
 
 " Oh ! some kind friends have taken care of it. Such 
 kind people. They said children ought not to be 
 brought up in London." 
 
 Ruth smiled. A million or more babies lived in Lon- 
 don. How was Sophina's different that it should be 
 removed? Such gipsy carelessness rather affronted her 
 when she remembered all her own efforts to preserve her 
 brothers and sisters. . . . But to Sophina it seemed, 
 apparently, the most natural thing in the world that, hav- 
 ing lost Finberg, she should also lose his child. She 
 spoke of it as something pathetically romantic in the 
 past which accounted for and justified herself. She was 
 lazy and apt to be pert, because she was intelligent and 
 critical, and therefore did not take the Ministry alto- 
 gether seriously, and she was so careless that she would 
 have been sent away had not Ruth intervened and prom- 
 ised to teach her the method necessary for office work.
 
 i 3 2 PINK ROSES 
 
 She did not object to Sophina being flung out on the 
 world, but she could not bear the idea of her sponging, 
 as she knew she would. . . . She guessed that 
 Sophina's baby had been adopted by some woman hun- 
 gry for a child, and she knew that in a difficulty Sophina, 
 without the slightest compunction, would resort to black- 
 mail; and yet she liked Sophina, because she was alive, 
 with that assertive slippery vitality peculiar to the Jews. 
 Most of the other girls were as alike each other as the 
 blouses they bought in Oxford Street or the shoes they 
 purchased at one or other of the multiple shops. They 
 read, talked, laughed, flirted, spent money in order to 
 avoid thinking, but Sophina could and did think, and 
 she was calculatingly contemptuous. Often Ruth felt 
 that Sophina knew more about her than she did herself, 
 and she was a little afraid of her. 
 
 One thing Sophina knew which Ruth never suspected, 
 and this was that she had a friend in high places who 
 saw to it that her promotion was rapid. Therefore 
 Sophina clung to Ruth, and was promoted with her. . . . 
 It was not long before Ruth, with Sophina attached, 
 was working in a room with two other girls who were 
 too busy and too intent on .their advancement to pay 
 much attention to the new-comers. Ruth received her 
 instructions direct from one of Sir Seymour's secre- 
 taries, and her work and that of the others did not 
 overlap. 
 
 This secretary was a young gentleman of culture who 
 took a violent interest in Sophina as soon as he heard 
 she was a Russian, for he believed Russian literature to 
 be superior to all others, and he liked to talk about it. 
 More than once he protested that Russian defeats did 
 not matter because, after all, Dostoievsky and Tolstoi
 
 SOPHINA 133 
 
 had conquered Europe. . . . Now Sophina could not 
 speak a word of Russian, but she concealed that fact, 
 and soon the secretary began to treat her as the priestess 
 of his oracle, and she played the role admirably. . . . 
 He asked her out to dinner and, though he knew that 
 Russians are unconventional, he could not un-English 
 himself to take her out alone, and also invited Ruth, of 
 whom he was just a little afraid. She saw that Sophina 
 wanted her to go, and good-naturedly accepted. To 
 make a parti carre the young gentleman, Carline, asked 
 his friend and patron, Mr. Cherryman, who happened 
 not to be dining out that evening, to meet his marvellous 
 Russian. 
 
 They were at a polite restaurant in a cellar just off 
 Regent Street. It was Ruth's first excursion into West 
 End life, but to Sophina, of course, it was as familiar as 
 water to a duck. She had a special manner, a hauteur, 
 an air of being able to spend unlimited money, a con- 
 temptuous tolerance of this particular restaurant as not 
 being quite as good as those which it was her habit to 
 frequent. She was not singular in this. The same atti- 
 tude was in both Carline and Cherryman, whose presence 
 in the eyes of the head waiter made the party worthy of 
 honour, and to be admitted to the secrets of the kitchen 
 and the cellar. . . . The conversation was all of things 
 Russian Russian music, ballet, novels, philosophy, re- 
 ligion, Ikons, Byzantine art, folk-songs, caviare, the 
 okhrana, Azev, Bourtzev, Solovyov and many other evs 
 and ovs, and Sophina kept the ball rolling marvellously. 
 There was nothing Russian that she did not know, and 
 she gave a glowing description of life in Russia, in 
 happy oblivion that her story gave the lie to that which 
 she had told to Ruth.
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 " Ah ! " said Cherryman, after the enthusiasm for 
 Russia had frothed and fumed until dinner was nearly 
 over. " That was true enough before the war, but we 
 have altered all that. England has become a nest of 
 singing birds, as she was in the days of Elizabeth." 
 And he produced a copy of Hardman's poems, and with 
 a bow presented it to Ruth with an inscription. 
 
 She smiled and thanked him, and opened the book. 
 It was dedicated " To my friends James Peto and Trevor 
 Mathew." . . . She attached no importance to the 
 names, but the book was somehow friendly. It was a 
 relief after Carline's limpid enthusiasm and Sophina's 
 unblushing lies, and she began to like Cherryman a little 
 more. He had worried and annoyed her with his pester- 
 ing questions, with which he sought to establish her so- 
 cial connections, though he was perfectly satisfied as soon 
 as he had pinned her down to kinship with the firm of 
 Hobday, Treves and Treves. ... A niece of Henry 
 Hobday! Ah! Fine old man. Solicitor of the old 
 school. Great figure at the Law Society: ought to have 
 been knighted, but above that sort of thing. . . . 
 
 " A bit of a change for you doing your bit in a Min- 
 istry, eh, Miss Hobday?" 
 
 Ruth admitted smilingly that it was a great change. 
 
 Over coffee Cherryman read her some of Hardman's 
 poems in a peculiar little chanting voice so that she could 
 hardly hear a word and had to fall back on watching him 
 lash himself into an ecstasy, so that one big vein stood 
 out on his round, shiny forehead, and his eyelids became 
 greasy with emotion. He closed the book reverently and 
 said in a husky whisper: 
 
 " He died at Suvla Bay. . . . The most charming 
 boy. No one could resist him. No one did resist him.
 
 SOPHINA 135 
 
 . . . He lived with these two friends of his and every 
 one adored them. I assure you, Miss Hobday it may 
 sound ridiculous to you but they were like three lovely 
 debutantes in the old days. You know, they went every- 
 where; everybody talked about them; artists drew their 
 portraits. And they were so intellectual, I assure you. 
 They brought the very flower of the atmosphere of Cam- 
 bridge into London. ... At the opera, at the Russian 
 ballet ah ! the Russian ballet ! at the Savoy, at Down- 
 ing Street, wherever you went, they were there. And 
 unspoiled! Absolutely unspoiled! ... It was I who 
 discovered that Hardman was a poet. He was indiffer- 
 ent about it at first, but when a few of his verses had 
 been printed he gathered confidence, and the war the 
 war gave him his inspiration. That is our answer to 
 Carline's Russians, and we can look Europe in the 
 face!" 
 
 After this eloquence Mr. Cherryman ordered a liqueur 
 and suggested that the party should adjourn to his rooms 
 as the cafes had become intolerable since the war. 
 
 "Do you know a poet called Finberg?" asked 
 Sophina, glancing savagely across at Mr. Cherryman. 
 
 " Finberg. . . . Oh, yes." Mr. Cherryman gulped 
 uneasily and said in a quavery tone : " He is he is 
 against the war." 
 
 " He isn't against anything," sneered Sophina. " He 
 is for Finberg, and nothing else. Says he's a Russian, 
 but he's an East End Jew." 
 
 She had drunk a good deal of wine, and she was 
 annoyed with Mr. Cherryman for diverting attention 
 from herself. 
 
 " I used to know him," she continued. " Is he any 
 good as a poet ? "
 
 I 3 6 PINK ROSES 
 
 " I er I had hopes of him before the war," said 
 Mr. Cherryman, " but that has destroyed so many of our 
 hopes." 
 
 Sophina gave a snarl of satisfaction. She understood 
 that Finberg was not really any good, that he had spoiled 
 his chance and that he had left her for a shadowy ambi- 
 tion. She could not resist giving a triumphant cruel 
 laugh, and then she returned to her new game of charm- 
 ing Carline, who had begun to bask in the warmth of 
 her Russian temperament. 
 
 The party had become uncongenial to Ruth, and she 
 took refuge in the book Mr. Cherryman had given her. 
 On the whole she disliked him as she disliked the head 
 waiter, because of a certain cadging familiarity in his 
 manner. Of the two, though he was the more foolish, 
 she preferred Carline. As for Sophina, she wanted to 
 shake her for being so unscrupulous, although she could 
 not help being amused by the depth of Carline's infatua- 
 tion when she heard him almost whispering to her that 
 he could not call her Miss Lipinsky, but wished to do as 
 they did in Russia and to call her by her name and her 
 father's name Sophina Solomonovna Finotchka. . . . 
 And Sophina rose to it and actually began to talk with 
 a slight foreign accent, which she could easily achieve by 
 exaggerating her natural and racial guttural tones. 
 . . . Carline had never spent such a delightful evening. 
 He felt that he was living in a Russian novel. If only 
 ah! if only he could do something unexpected, but 
 cudgel his brains as he might he could think of nothing, 
 and much as he might crave a Russian intimacy with 
 Sophina Solomonovna he could not help being English 
 and polite to her, flattered, moved and shaken though he 
 was by her bold black eyes. He often looked uneasily
 
 SOPHINA 137 
 
 across at Ruth, thinking : " Ah ! these English women ! 
 how cold they are! How indifferent! How sluggish! 
 How without depth and ability to see beyond their 
 domestic purposes ! " And he, too, under Sophina's in- 
 fluence began to think, though not to speak, with a for- 
 eign accent, and he included in his already excessive 
 gestures a hearty Russian shrug. 
 
 The evening ended as Cherryman desired, at his rooms 
 in the Temple. Ruth was reluctant to go, but Sophina 
 wished to complete the conquest of Carline, and Cherry- 
 man was anxious to show his pictures and his first edi- 
 tions and his trophies from the battlefields a shell, a 
 Pickelhaube, a piece of a German aeroplane, a charred 
 piece of wood which he said came from the first Zeppelin 
 brought down in flames. . . . The memory of that 
 made Ruth go pale. She had seen the great mass of 
 flame descending from the sky and had thought with 
 horror of the men destroyed in it, though an even deeper 
 horror that pierced to the very bottom of her soul came 
 with the terrible shout of triumph that arose from Lon- 
 don. . . . She looked aghast at Cherryman as he 
 caressed his trophy in his fat hands. 
 
 " I motored out with Lady Manton," he said. " She 
 rang me up." 
 
 And he went prattling on in his bland innocence, which 
 made it impossible for Ruth to stay. She could not. 
 The memory of that terrible shout was too much for her. 
 At the time it had made her hide herself away and weep 
 in the dark, but she had not been able to understand, 
 and now in a dim way her faculties had begun to work 
 upon her experiences, to thread them together and 
 roughly to sift and sort out those that were not yet 
 shapely enough to be threaded. . . . Now that her
 
 138 PINK ROSES 
 
 troubles were settled, her energy was turned in upon her- 
 self, and there she found much that baffled, much that 
 troubled and disconcerted her, because it was so unex- 
 pected. . . . Sophina was putting the finishing touches 
 to her flirtation with Carline; Cherryman had not the 
 least idea of the commotion in Ruth, and he was annoyed 
 when she left him abruptly, walked up to Sophina and 
 said: 
 
 " Sophina, I really must ask you to go now. . . . 
 We ought not to have come. I blame myself." 
 
 " Oh, I say, Miss Hobday! " said Carline. " I've had 
 such a splendid time." 
 
 Sophina knew that it would not do to offend Ruth, 
 and she was the only one to recognize that Ruth was 
 upset. She could not imagine about what, and thought 
 that perhaps she had given offence with her extrava- 
 gance, which had carried her so far as she cared to go 
 - for the present. 
 
 " It is pretty late ! " she said. 
 
 " In Russia," exclaimed Carline, " there isn't such a 
 word!" 
 
 " There used not to be such a word in a Government 
 Office," said Cherryman. " But all that is changing. 
 ... It has been a delightful evening. . . . Delight- 
 ful! Don't forget your book, Miss Hobday. . . . 
 How charming this new freedom is. ... One felt it 
 coming before the war, and then it looked as though it 
 had been snuffed out. But now it looks as though the 
 right people would be able to do as they like." 
 
 Ruth felt very decidedly that Cherryman and Carline 
 were the wrong people for her, though in some odd way 
 Sophina was right. Perhaps that was only because 
 Sophina had adopted her.
 
 SOPHINA 139 
 
 Cherryman was still talking: 
 
 " It is delightful, the new social atmosphere in the 
 Ministries. We are all such friends, and we have the 
 satisfaction of easily playing our part in something 
 big." 
 
 The " easily " was so admirably inappropriate that 
 Ruth forgave him. There was no great harm in him. 
 He believed that Life was pleasant. For him the sun 
 shone all day long. It rose at precisely the same hour 
 every morning, suffused the world with a delicate rose- 
 pink, and set at the same hour every evening. He saw 
 everything through this pink haze, and Ruth, on the 
 whole, found him soothing. He was reluctant to let her 
 go. The nearest approach to grief he had ever felt was 
 at the break-up of a charming party, and for him it was 
 clear that the war had become a charming party, and he 
 looked forward to its breaking up with dread because 
 who knows? he might find himself alone. 
 
 Ruth was astonished at the new thoughts stirring in 
 her mind and at her new power of appreciating persons. 
 It had begun after her dinner with Trenham, which re- 
 mained for her a touchstone, the one outstanding event 
 of her life. It had made her determined not to drift, 
 had aroused her will only to force on her attention the 
 fact that in war-time a will was most unusual and there- 
 fore to be disapproved. Sophina, Carline, and Cherry- 
 man were perfect for war-time: all will-less drifters with 
 just enough energy to steer them out of danger. To be 
 irritated by them was to take them too seriously, but she 
 could not help contrasting Cherryman's room with Tren- 
 ham's house in North Street. The one was a litter of 
 objects collected for the sake of collecting, the other was 
 arranged to satisfy a taste.
 
 I 4 o PINK ROSES 
 
 " I hope you will come again, Miss Hobday," said 
 Cherryman. 
 
 She thought she would not, but did not say so. 
 
 " Come, Sophina." 
 
 Sophina lagged in subtly disturbing conversation with 
 Carline. 
 
 " You Russians make us look like children." 
 
 And he asked her for her address and wrote it 
 down. 
 
 They were escorted to the great gate of the Temple, 
 and as the door closed behind them Sophina said : 
 
 "I did have him on, didn't I? He asked me if I 
 would teach him Russian, and I said I would. . . . 
 My mother remembers a little Polish, but that's all. 
 What shall I do?" 
 
 "Tell him the truth, if you've any regard for him," 
 said Ruth. " I think he is at heart a nice, simple fellow." 
 
 " I know their sort," said Sophina savagely. " Fin- 
 berg used to get money out of them." 
 
 Ruth was overcome with disgust. She could not bear 
 cynicism, and there were times when Sophina seemed to 
 be made of it. 
 
 Their ways parted. Ruth offered to see Sophina 
 home, but the Jewess laughed. 
 
 "You see me home? Why, I'm as safe as you are. 
 Any one would be afraid to speak to you, but they'd 
 know they'd get as good as they gave from me. . . . 
 'Night." 
 
 She nodded and walked off briskly. She bore her 
 troubles with a flaunting lightness which often distressed 
 Ruth more than her friend's misfortunes themselves. 
 Sophina was the first girl friend she had had since she 
 left school, and it was through her that her emotions,
 
 SOPfflNA 141 
 
 nipped and starved, began painfully to creep into action 
 once more. 
 
 The night was fine. She decided to walk home. The 
 early deserted streets consoled her, for they were mys- 
 terious and beautiful. The night wind blew through 
 them to freshen them, and with its coolness on her face 
 Ruth was able to brush aside the evening's distasteful 
 impressions and achingly to dream of all that she had 
 missed home-life, the country, the sea and yellow 
 sands, leisure to enjoy the song of the heart by day, the 
 mystery of the stars by night, and the more mysterious 
 stars that shone upon the sky of the inner world. . . . 
 Life was altogether another thing by night. She had 
 always been too driven to know that. The day's toil, 
 the day's pleasures were all to fill the night with dreams. 
 . . . And she was alone, so terribly alone. Her father, 
 her brothers and sisters relied on her, but none of them 
 knew her as she wished now to reveal herself nothing 
 very wonderful, nothing remarkable, but just a human 
 being aching for contact with another. . . . The game 
 of flirtation, at which Sophina had proved herself so 
 expert, was altogether foreign to her, an art that she 
 had neither desired nor acquired. Her calm grey eyes 
 looked direct at everything they saw. They needed no 
 artful movement to attract any gaze to them, but saw 
 clearly what they wished to see and discarded what was 
 displeasing to them.
 
 XI 
 LESLIE 
 
 THOUGH Trenham took no further notice of her at the 
 Ministry than to give her a friendly nod, he had not for- 
 gotten his promise. He visited her father at his labora- 
 tory and complimented him on his work, and having so 
 far ingratiated himself he wrote and asked Ruth to bring 
 her brother to lunch with him one Sunday at his house. 
 . . . Leslie was shy and at first refused to go, but Ruth 
 told him he could not be so rude to Sir Seymour, who 
 had been so good to them all. 
 
 " I hate being helped," said Leslie. 
 
 " It wasn't a matter of helping," protested Ruth. " It 
 was simply a matter of going to the one man who was 
 honest enough to admit father's value." 
 
 "What about all the others?" asked Leslie. 
 
 " Oh, don't be so mulish ! You will like Sir Seymour 
 immensely. I should think he would be a hero to any 
 boy. . . . He is wonderful in the Ministry. You can 
 feel him there all the time. I always know when he is 
 out. You are a very lucky boy to have the chance of 
 meeting such a man." 
 
 Leslie saw that she was very eager for him to go, and 
 to oblige he swallowed his objections and his shyness, 
 brushed his hair, cleaned his teeth, and actually wore 
 gloves. . . . Ruth wore a grey frock, very simple, and 
 remembering her evening she pinned one pink rose in 
 her bosom. It was done without coquetry, merely out of 
 
 142
 
 LESLIE 143 
 
 homage to the keen pleasure she had had. ... It did 
 not escape Trenham's eyes as she and Leslie were shown 
 into his little study where he had spent the morning 
 reading. 
 
 He held Ruth's hand just a shade too long for Leslie, 
 who thrust out his gloved paw brusquely, but relented at 
 once as the great man gave him a friendly school-boyish 
 grin, and further took no especial notice of him, listened 
 respectfully when he talked, but never tried to draw him, 
 and did not even ask him what he was going to be when 
 he was a man. Leslie thawed and sat enjoying the 
 amazingly new Ruth, who revealed herself in easy desul- 
 tory conversation. Ordinarily her speech was a little 
 jerky, and she usually talked as though she were thinking 
 of something else, but her words flowed from her and 
 sentences were coined in her mind before they left her 
 lips. She and Trenham had great fun at the expense of 
 Carline and the wonderful Russian girl he had discov- 
 ered in the Ministry. 
 
 " What nonsense it all is," said Sir Seymour. " This 
 excitement about the Russians. It simply means that 
 our people haven't read our own eighteenth-century 
 literature. The Russians have barbarized that." 
 
 Ruth thought : " This will be very good for Leslie." 
 
 " It reached the Russians through Dickens," continued 
 their host. " And perhaps after all they will remind us 
 of what we have forgotten. After the war we shall have 
 to go back in literature and possibly in everything else 
 to where we left off in the eighteenth century. . . . 
 I'm glad to find time to read. There is no other escape 
 at present." 
 
 Leslie was busy with the food, and Trenham in 
 silence admired Ruth. She was so exactly right sitting
 
 144 P INK ROSES 
 
 there, as exactly wrong in the Ministry. ... If he 
 were a young man she would be the wife he would 
 choose, strong, supple, steady, and quick to understand, 
 one who could share everything and would scorn to be 
 content with comfort as the good wife's just and due. 
 That brought him to an unwelcome comparison, and he 
 said: 
 
 " The Russians I dislike because they do not know 
 how to live. They tear themselves to shreds in attempt- 
 ing to expose their disabilities." 
 
 " And the English." 
 
 " Oh ! we are not decadent yet. We have stopped 
 thinking, that is all. It has preserved us in the past, 
 and will do so again, because we can stop thinking indefi- 
 nitely until it becomes safe again." 
 
 That tickled Leslie, for it reminded him of a master 
 at school with whom he had conducted a feud over three 
 terms. 
 
 "What's the joke?" asked Trenham, a little be- 
 wildered. 
 
 Leslie blushed to the roots of his hair, and he said: 
 
 "Nothing! Nothing!" 
 
 Trenham looked affectionately at the boy. He had 
 Ruth's eyes, a good head, a rather absurd nose that had 
 not yet decided on the shape it was going to take, and 
 a very sensitive, touchingly young mouth. That again 
 was like Ruth's, and Trenham looked from her brother 
 to her and he decided that he must not see her again; 
 certainly not alone: she was too like the lady of his 
 dreams. 
 
 After lunch they walked in St. James's Park, where 
 Trenham resented the temporary buildings which had 
 been erected on the drained lake.
 
 LESLIE 145 
 
 " I suppose some people get used to these things. I 
 don't. Being a provincial I love my London and know 
 it well. It offends me to see it given over to temporary 
 purposes, and all this offends me too as being overdone. 
 . . . And St. James's Park and the Mall. But nothing 
 is sacred nowadays. Some one wants to make money, 
 and memories must be smashed. Memory is life. . . . 
 I think I should have been with Fox during the Napo- 
 leonic War. . . . We need a Fox now. Do you feel 
 cut out for it, Leslie?" 
 
 " Me ? . . . Well, I'm always on the unpopular side 
 at school. All the boys are what their fathers are, but 
 
 Trenham's eyes twinkled. He knew as Leslie did that 
 Charles Hobday was nothing. Ruth did not know, and 
 he was glad of that bond between the boy and himself. 
 
 Out of sight of the temporary buildings there were 
 still one or two corners of the Park that had retained 
 their charm. To stand and gaze from under the green 
 trees at the old houses in Queen Anne's Gate was to feel 
 that life here had been lived undisturbed for a very long 
 time, and that nothing could disturb it for it had been 
 evolved, created and had attained immortality. It was 
 as sweet and clear as a dream, and whirling round it, 
 menacing it, but finding it unattainable, was life still in 
 chaos, in process of evolution, rebellious because it must 
 take shape according to the dream and not according to 
 its crude desire. 
 
 Looking affectionately at Leslie, Trenham thought 
 with relief that he was young enough with luck to 
 escape the war. He would not be drawn into it; it would 
 make no deep impression on him and he would be able 
 to slip eagerly into the life cleared and freshened by it.
 
 i 4 6 PINK ROSES 
 
 " When I was young," he said, " I used to come and 
 look at those houses, and I made up my mind that I 
 would live in one of them. North Street is not a bad 
 shot at a fulfilled ambition." 
 
 And Leslie looked at the houses in Queen Anne's 
 Gate and made up his mind that he would live in one of 
 them some day with a valet and a spanking cook, and a 
 little panelled study full of books. He would live alone, 
 and his brothers and sisters should marry to supply him 
 with nephews and nieces to whom he would be as jolly 
 as Trenham had been to Ruth and himself. 
 
 " I'm jolly glad I brought my gloves," thought he. 
 
 " That's a good boy," said Trenham in a low voice. 
 " We must steer him through." 
 
 She raised her eyes in a slow, happy smile. That he 
 said " we " was the crown of her enjoyment of that 
 day. To share hopes for Leslie brought to light the 
 many sympathies they had in common. 
 
 " Oh, thank you," she murmured, and Trenham said : 
 
 " We must talk it over." 
 
 A squad of soldiers came swinging along Birdcage 
 Walk from the barracks. They were raw troops in the 
 stage of regarding themselves rather uneasily as a joke, 
 and they were still too self-conscious to have learned to 
 march. Ruth could not bear to look at them, and turned 
 away, but Leslie stood staring wistfully at them. To 
 him they represented something impenetrable, that 
 sooner or later he would have to face, and he gazed at 
 them fascinated until they had passed out of sight. 
 
 " One doesn't notice that any more," said Trenham. 
 
 " I do," she replied, and he knew that she was think- 
 ing of her brother. 
 
 As they walked slowly back she said:
 
 LESLIE 147 
 
 " I have been reading Hardman's poems. They may 
 have been true once, but I don't think they are true any 
 longer. . . . How can that be? Isn't truth always the 
 same?" 
 
 " Not a personal truth. . . . What he wrote may 
 have been true for millions when he wrote, but that 
 doesn't make it true for all time." 
 
 " I gave the book to Leslie. He simply couldn't read 
 it. Could you, Leslie?" 
 
 " No." 
 
 " We have travelled far since Hardman. The 
 youngsters aren't expected to have any feelings about it 
 now. They simply have to go. School is finished and 
 they go. ... Delightfully easy for their parents, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 "Don't!" said Ruth. "Don't!" 
 
 It was as though the marching soldiers had trampled 
 her happiness underfoot, and she was anxious to escape. 
 Therefore she refused Trenham's pressing invitation 
 that they should return to tea. 
 
 In Whitehall, as they were walking towards the sta- 
 tion, she became aware of some one desiring to attract 
 her attention, and looking up she saw Mr. Cherryman, 
 who, meeting her with Sir Seymour, was determined not 
 to pass unnoticed. With him was a young man whom 
 she felt vaguely she had seen before. 
 
 It was Trevor Mathew, but he hardly noticed her, so 
 irritated was he with his companion's persistence. So 
 strong was the impression of having seen him before 
 that involuntarily she turned and looked after him and 
 Trenham, roused to jealousy, turned also. Mr. Cherry- 
 man raised his hat a good eighteen inches from his head 
 and bowed as though he were hinged in the middle.
 
 i 4 8 PINK ROSES 
 
 Leslie could not keep in a guffaw. He was a solemn 
 boy, not often stirred to laughter, and when it happened 
 to him he was overcome and had to fling himself into 
 contortions. 
 
 " Leslie ! Leslie ! " cried Ruth. 
 
 " The boy's quite right," said Trenham. " It was 
 funny, very funny. They are funny, these buffoons of 
 London." 
 
 " It was he who gave me Hardman's poems," said 
 Ruth, her eyes twinkling as she recovered from her an- 
 noyance. 
 
 " That makes it all the funnier," replied Trenham. 
 
 " Good-bye, sir," said Leslie as they parted, and with 
 stiff formality he added, " Thank you for a very pleasant 
 afternoon." 
 
 " Thank you, sir," answered Trenham with a grin. 
 
 In the train Leslie's tongue was loosened: 
 
 " I think he's a topping man. He likes you, Ruth. 
 That's why I like him. He makes no bones about it. 
 A swell like that might easily put on side, but he 
 doesn't a bit. And he feels things, too. ... I do 
 hope he'll ask us again. By Jove, I'd work for a man 
 like that. I'd know he wouldn't say anything was good 
 unless it was jolly good. . . . Does he live all alone? 
 ... I shall live like that ..." 
 
 Leslie suddenly knit his brows as he thought of his 
 father and Trenham having said he was good. . . . 
 Perhaps he was. . . . But no, he couldn't be. Leslie 
 knew his father too minutely. 
 
 " I say, Ruth," he said suddenly, " did Trenham know 
 father long ago, or was it mother?" 
 
 " He worked with father a long time ago, before we 
 were born."
 
 LESLIE 149 
 
 Leslie whistled. 
 
 " I shouldn't have thought he was as old as that." 
 
 " He is younger than father," said Ruth. 
 
 It was much pleasanter to go back to the upper part 
 in the neighbourhood of Baker Street than to the little 
 house at Highgate, which had been exile. This was 
 London. There was no abrupt change of atmosphere, no 
 dwindling into a life that merely looked towards Lon- 
 don. The Hobday furniture was almost at home in the 
 big rooms, while there was space enough for the Paget- 
 Sutton portraits to get away from it. They need no 
 longer look down in such disdain, and indeed they 
 seemed to have become once more their own wicked 
 selves. It was Charles who called them wicked, a taunt 
 he had invented to fling at his wife when she was scorn- 
 ful of the Hobdays. 
 
 Over tea Leslie chattered of his lunch with the great 
 man who had become his hero, but Ruth complained of 
 a headache and went up to her little room at the top of 
 the house, from which over the roofs she could see the 
 tree-tops of Regent's Park. 
 
 Out of that happiness remained two figures, Trenham 
 and the young man whom she had met with Mr. 
 Cherryman, and she was angry with herself because they 
 stood between her and the new life that was slowly un- 
 folding before her. Except for her fears for Leslie the 
 din and bustle of the war were far behind her. She had 
 accepted her place in its machinery, and, like every one 
 else, had forgotten about it except as an increasing 
 pressure which had become a part of her habitual exist- 
 ence. She had never sought relief in intellectual trick- 
 ery, and she had no theories of emancipation, and viewed 
 almost with horror the mannish young women with
 
 I 5 o PINK ROSES 
 
 short hair, angular movements, and drawling voices who 
 were beginning to appear both in and out of khaki. 
 . . . But she was one who had always seen clearly and 
 definitely; it was necessary to her so to see, and now 
 she was aware that her vision was beginning to be 
 clouded, blurred, disturbed by mysterious movements in 
 the depth of her being. She who for so long had stood 
 alone was conscious that she could not continue to do 
 so, that she had not the force, that indeed she was not 
 alone, never alone, that another presence had become 
 dear to her, that humanity was more than a crowd linked 
 together by needs and habits, that she needed to enter 
 into humanity and could only do so through the presence 
 that had become dear to her. . . . Somehow all these 
 dim emotions were associated with Sophina and the hor- 
 rible life she had revealed of violent false emotions, 
 hungry people cadging money, Jews, poets, women with 
 painted faces and hard eyes. . . . All that had hurt 
 and at the same time had stirred her until she knew that 
 she could no longer be alone as she had been. There 
 was no need for it any longer. Old habits were broken, 
 and a new life had become possible. The change had 
 been miraculous, and she wanted the miracle to continue. 
 Unconsciously she had always rebuffed and failed to 
 understand the attentions of the youths and young men 
 who had been attracted by her. There had been no time 
 for them, and besides young men were, on the whole, 
 very tiresome and callow. But now that there was no 
 occasion for her habit of reserve she was afraid that it 
 would continue. She was uneasy, restless, perturbed, 
 and she felt that so much had happened that nothing 
 could happen again. Her heart fluttered in this new 
 anxiety, and, raising her hand to it, she missed the pink
 
 LESLIE 151 
 
 rose she had pinned at her breast, and at once her heart 
 was still as a stone. Something had happened, an event 
 of real importance. She tried to cover it up by telling 
 herself that she had dropped the rose, but she could not; 
 she did not really desire to hide from the knowledge 
 that Trenham had taken it exactly when, she could 
 not remember, but that he had done so she was certain. 
 She had gladly marked his eyes falling on it, and more 
 gladly still she remembered now a moment of intimacy, 
 almost of contact. . . . When? How? She could 
 not remember. It was too painful for her to bear such 
 recollection. . . . 
 
 He had liked Leslie, and would be a powerful friend 
 to him. She was sure that Leslie had it in him to be 
 a man of the kind she desired, and she knew that Tren- 
 ham had made a deep impression on him, had stiffened 
 him and given him the direction which from his school, 
 where he learned with such fatal ease, he could not find. 
 ... At the end of the year Leslie would go to West- 
 minster, and Ruth fell to dreaming as she gazed over 
 the roofs to the tree-tops of Regent's Park, of Sir Sey- 
 mour Trenham being kind to him and having him to his 
 house, giving him the run of his books, and what was 
 of more importance, his own mind. 
 
 Leslie was so elated by his lunch with the great man 
 that he wanted to talk about it, and after tea he went 
 up to his sister's room and knocked, received no reply, 
 and went in to find her asleep at the open window with 
 her head on her arm. He stood looking down at her, 
 and he thought, to his surprise, that she looked very 
 young. He had always thought of her as grown-up, a 
 person in authority, endowed with almost infallible wis- 
 dom. That was because she gave orders, and was Ruth,
 
 I 5 2 PINK ROSES 
 
 the person to whom everything was referred. As he 
 looked down at her he found himself wondering whether 
 she was pretty or not. Her neck was beautiful, her hair 
 rich and full of electric vitality, her skin soft and subtly 
 pallid. 
 
 " Poor old Sis ! " said Leslie, suddenly regarding him- 
 self as a man. "Poor old Sis!" and he stooped and 
 kissed her. 
 
 Ruth opened her eyes slowly and happily, and seeing 
 his hand near hers she clutched it and pressed it warmly. 
 
 " I was asleep," she said, with a smile, as she became 
 aware that while she slept miraculously new and mag- 
 nificent emotions and desires had welled up and had 
 flooded her entire being. Had she been alone she would 
 have wept in happy silence, but with Leslie present she 
 could only clutch his hand and press it warmly, rejoicing 
 that henceforth she could understand him physically and 
 need not strain with her mind to comprehend the incom- 
 prehensible, the subtle delicate movement of a budding 
 soul. 
 
 It was very quiet in the little street, and in the house, 
 which was inhabited by two other obscure families. 
 The quiet was good when so much was happening. 
 
 "I did like that man, Ruth," said Leslie. "And I 
 liked his house and the way he walks and his clothes 
 and his manner as he talks and moves. He doesn't seem 
 a bit old, really. He doesn't treat you as if you were a 
 rank outsider because you are young. He might have 
 been in the same form as me. ... I should think he 
 knows a lot, too. I saw a lot of history books on his 
 shelf and old maps, and there was a big parcel of new 
 books in the hall. . . . Did you notice?" 
 
 Was there anything that she had not noticed?
 
 LESLIE 153 
 
 " It must be you he likes, Ruth, or he'd have asked 
 Dad to lunch." 
 
 Ruth's heart beat wildly, and she smiled at herself. 
 "Be quiet! Be quiet!" 
 
 " He goes to see Dad at the laboratory." 
 
 " Oh, no. ... I've just been talking to Dad about 
 him, and Dad hates him. I think he's jealous and 
 fancies he ought to be ' Sir,' and have letters after his 
 name, and be bossing the whole war. Dad doesn't 
 change." 
 
 " I'm sure you're wrong, Leslie. It is only Dad's way 
 of talking. He had so many ideas that he thinks every- 
 body ought to get away to make room for them. If Dad 
 could have his way the world would be peopled with his 
 ideas instead of human beings. ..." 
 
 " Yes," said Leslie. " That's just the difference. Sir 
 Seymour is so big he makes room for everybody, and 
 one idea of his is worth a million of Dad's. It doesn't 
 get in anybody's way. ... I don't believe Dad knows 
 that even his own children are alive. If a bomb dropped 
 on us and wiped us out he would go on just the same. 
 . . . We ought not to exist because we can't be solved 
 by chemistry, and he feels this so strongly that in fact 
 we don't exist." 
 
 " Don't be bitter, Leslie! " said Ruth. He was always 
 like that after he had made one of his periodic attempts 
 to talk to his father. She used to try to argue with him, 
 but now she understood that he was hurt through his 
 passionate need for affection. . . . Like most families 
 who have fallen below their traditional standard of com- 
 fort, the Charles Hobdays kept themselves aloof and it 
 had been drilled into Leslie by his mother that he must 
 not easily make friends, and what he was too proud to
 
 IS4 PINK ROSES 
 
 seek outside he could not help every now and then trying 
 to win at home. 
 
 " I'm not bitter," he grumbled, " only it is hard lines. 
 I didn't choose my father, but he might at least be decent 
 about it. Some chaps I know have awful trouble with 
 their fathers because they are religious; but Dad isn't 
 that. They do know what they're up against, but with 
 Dad there's nothing, nothing at all. He never has an 
 answer in an argument. He just talks as if you weren't 
 there. He's . . . he's like a woman." 
 
 Ruth could not help laughing: 
 
 " That isn't a woman's trick, Leslie." 
 
 " Oh, yes, it is. I've heard fellows arguing with their 
 mothers. . . . It's rotten luck. I might have had a 
 father like Sir Seymour ... I might have had " 
 
 He seemed to recognize that he was being not a little 
 ridiculous, for he stopped suddenly and knelt down and 
 buried his face in Ruth's lap. Her eyes filled with tears 
 as she stroked his head, tears of thankfulness that he 
 could turn to her and was not like herself who had never 
 turned to a soul, and had still burning in her the in- 
 evitable and needful tears of youth.
 
 XII 
 THE SPIRIT OF LONDON 
 
 LIKE every other thinking person in England during this 
 fatal time Seymour Trenham had recoiled in mind from 
 the war. He could neither discover the real issues, nor 
 face those set before him, nor come to any valid opinion 
 upon them, nor find terms in which to discuss events as 
 they occurred without nervous irritation. . . . Soon 
 therefore events, huge as they were, became fictitious. 
 It was impossible except by instinct to test the truth of 
 any assertion that was made about them. Old concep- 
 tions of international conflicts had become inadequate, 
 old national feelings were thin and vapourish compared 
 with the facts upon which they were brought to bear, the 
 steady drain of the young life of the country, the destruc- 
 tion of homes, manners, social habits, organization for 
 production, the deluge of Government papers in hasty 
 imitation of continental methods. . . . There was 
 nothing for it but mechanically to continue his work, 
 and to withdraw into himself and to discover and in- 
 dulge those personal predilections which in his strenu- 
 ous career had been passed by and left unsatisfied. It 
 was a painful process, for he had never before explored 
 beneath the surface of life, but gradually he found that 
 what lay beneath the surface was infinitely more excit- 
 ing than anything that occurred externally. There was 
 a meaning in it, a purpose, a logic, and the clearer this 
 perception became the more difficult he found it to recon- 
 
 155
 
 156 PINK ROSES 
 
 cile his vision with what was presented to his eyes in 
 every day existence and indeed with what had been in 
 his life. He was accustomed to vast machinery and to 
 tremendous mechanical organization, but until he came 
 to London he had not understood to what an extent it 
 dominated humanity. . . . During the early days of 
 his work at the Ministry he had spent much time in 
 gleefully exploring London, and comparing it with the 
 city of his youth, and one day in a Tube train, oppressed 
 by the monotony of the expression on the faces of the 
 people, he had had a kind of vision of their appearing in 
 uniform, bright and a little fantastic, and now that 
 vision was being fulfilled, only the uniforms were not 
 gay but drab, khaki and grey and dull blue. It was right 
 that people who wore the same expression should wear 
 the same dress, but the result rather horrified him and 
 drove him deeper and deeper into his new habit of self- 
 exploration, which left him profoundly dissatisfied. He 
 had this in common with the mass of people, that he 
 had allowed himself to be swept along by organization. 
 The result had been extremely profitable to himself in 
 a material sense, but it had left him without any sense of 
 internal continuity. His ambition was satisfied, but his 
 most personal desire was not. He had done what was 
 wanted by the organization to which he belonged, and 
 no more. True, what he had done had been vital to that 
 organization and he had been richly rewarded, but there 
 it ended. He could spend money; he could work in his 
 own time : and until now he had been content and proud 
 of himself. 
 
 Nothing had ever troubled him greatly: nothing and 
 no one had stood in his way for long. And then, after 
 his transfer to London he had begun to question it all.
 
 THE SPIRIT OF LONDON 157 
 
 . . . Perhaps it was only the difference in the people 
 among whom he moved, among whom commercial 
 values were complicated by social considerations. No; 
 there was nothing very much in that. He was easily a 
 social success, and had no difficulty in assimilating cur- 
 rent ideas and jargon, though it took him some time to 
 recover from his bewilderment at finding the London of 
 his youth so completely disappeared. That had been a 
 London of hansom cabs, really fashionable people who 
 lived an enchanted life entirely apart, noisy thorough- 
 fares, peaceful streets and squares, a confident respecta- 
 bility splashed with rowdiness. Now the respectability 
 had disappeared; barriers between classes had been 
 broken down and London had no character, no distinc- 
 tion. Bond Street and Regent Street had become like 
 other market-places of blatant competition. There were 
 no shops left which composedly supplied quality for 
 quality, none that the average man would be afraid to 
 enter. Similarly there were no houses which had an 
 atmosphere so that a man's breeding was instantly re- 
 vealed in it, and even politics were now conducted in 
 the language of the market-place. 
 
 "There is nothing left," thought Trenham, "abso- 
 lutely nothing left." 
 
 He had always lived in the North with the dream of 
 London in his heart. That was perfectly clear to him 
 now, though in all those years he had hardly been con- 
 scious of it, and now he had to face the cruel fact that 
 the London of his dreams had been a thing so preten- 
 tious that it could not weather the storm : it had been a 
 leaking hulk, which, drifting away in fair weather had 
 sunk on the first stirring of the waters. . . . Coming 
 up, eager and sanguine, to the London of his dreams he
 
 i 5 8 PINK ROSES 
 
 had found it gone, and at first told himself that it had 
 never existed except in his own imagination. The dis- 
 appointment was bitter because he knew that he had al- 
 ways worked for it, for that and for nothing else. Eng- 
 land, Great Britain, the British Empire had always 
 meant to him, London, to sustain whose life the world 
 had been justifiably ransacked. . . . But who could 
 justify the new London? He tried loyally to do so, but 
 could not: a city hypnotized by its newspapers, for 
 whom the world was simply a place of commercial com- 
 petition, which at last had become so bitter that the 
 nations had fallen upon each other like a pack of hungry 
 dogs nosing after a bone. . . . That was the world as 
 Trenham saw it and as he accepted it. There was noth- 
 ing to be said, nothing to be thought about it. Human 
 life had become of no value, but there must be some- 
 where in humanity hopes and desires that could make it 
 struggle on when outwardly there was no satisfaction 
 to be found. 
 
 It was then that he plunged beneath the surface and 
 began to live a strangely double life, one of intense 
 excitement, as he discovered all that he had been beneath 
 his strenuous and successful activity, the other of me- 
 chanical and monotonous boredom in which without 
 effort he could put forth the skill and knowledge which 
 were demanded of him. His life at home seemed as 
 mechanical and without interest; he wrote regularly to 
 his wife without saying anything of what was in his 
 mind. It had never been his habit to do so. His mar- 
 riage had been a success. He and his wife had fallen 
 into their places in their household when they existed 
 much as the servants did to fulfil their functions in it. 
 . . . But here in London he was reluctant to think of
 
 THE SPIRIT OF LONDON 159 
 
 these things. They were as much a part of him as his 
 house or his watch-chain. He had acquired them, and 
 they were his. 
 
 But were they? That was the question that plagued 
 him more and more, especially after Ruth's visit and 
 their dinner together and the lunch with Leslie, when, 
 as she passed him in the narrow hall, he stole the pink 
 rose from her bosom. . . . Were they his? Were 
 they part of him? Were they possessed? . . . This 
 little house in North Street was his, although he did not 
 own it, the pink rose was his, although he had stolen it. 
 Their significance was alive in him, affecting every 
 breath he drew, and they made him feel sure again that 
 his dreams after all had been true, that beneath the pre- 
 tentious London which had been destroyed was another 
 which was indestructible. It lived in this little house. 
 It lived in the pink rose which he carried in his pocket- 
 book. It lived in Ruth. 
 
 He could not long disguise from himself the fact that 
 nothing else mattered. This was true. What was hap- 
 pening in the world was the confusion of many lies. 
 He was working in that confusion, helping perhaps to 
 produce order out of it, and so was Ruth, but that did 
 not alter the fact of the truth they shared. They had 
 nothing to do with it. When it had passed over they 
 and their truth would be left untouched. 
 
 He approached her through Leslie, for whom he had 
 conceived a warm affection, not only because he was 
 Ruth's brother, but because he found that Leslie also 
 lived beneath the surface of life, and was aware of its 
 movements before they were expressed in utterance or 
 in events. And in Leslie there was so much of Ruth, a 
 wonderful purity, an astonishing knowledge of and sym-
 
 160 PINK ROSES 
 
 pathy with women, to whom his attitude was one of 
 tender chivalry. Trenham discovered this one day when 
 he took Leslie to a munition factory just outside Lon- 
 don. A pretty, pale girl was pushing a trolley between 
 one machine and another. Almost imperceptibly she 
 kept trying to stop, but then forced herself to go on 
 because the machine-minders at either end depended on 
 her. Leslie noticed it at once, and went and pushed her 
 trolley and gave her the three minutes' rest which made 
 all the difference to her. It was only after Leslie had 
 acted that Trenham noticed the girl's need. He was 
 greatly disturbed, for the little scene roused in him a 
 faculty that he had never used, instinctive percep- 
 tion. . . . 
 
 Ruth avoided him for some time. It was enough for 
 her to hear about him from Leslie, who was full of ad- 
 miration for that of which Trenham was already almost 
 contemptuously weary, his ability and power. They had 
 never won him anything that was worth having. The 
 good things, the desirable things, were those which Ruth 
 and Leslie acquired so easily by understanding, by 
 readiness with unobtrusive help. Both of them gave 
 it to himself in abundance, though of course never in 
 material shape. They could both hear the meaning be- 
 hind his words, and soon when a day passed without his 
 having seen one or other of them he felt lost and empty, 
 and he arranged to be more directly in contact with Ruth 
 at the Ministry. He moved her into the room next his 
 own an enormous board-room with a vast table round 
 which were more than twenty chairs and she brought 
 Sophina with her. 
 
 Sophina became steadily more Russian as Carline 
 grew more ardent, and she developed extraordinary
 
 THE SPIRIT OF LONDON 161 
 
 tricks and mannerisms, though fortunately the effect of 
 her finding a purpose was to brace her up and make 
 her more efficient. Carline was rich : the prize was 
 worth the effort. Also her quick eyes missed very little, 
 and she was aware of the way things were tending with 
 Ruth and Trenham, and she thought that if Ruth pros- 
 pered she would have her share in it. 
 
 There were always flowers for Ruth on her desk. If 
 it was raining there was always a taxi to take her home. 
 Carline would bring her a parcel of books for Leslie on 
 those occasions, so that she could not possibly have 
 walked with them to the station. Trenham frequently 
 asked Carline and Ruth to dinner with him, and at last 
 Sophina, discovering this, made Carline take her out one 
 night when dinner had been arranged, and he telephoned 
 from a restaurant in Jermyn Street to say that he was 
 unwell and could not come. 
 
 Ruth had already arrived in North Street; she was 
 wearing a new green frock, very simply made, and 
 flowers that had been on her desk fresh that morning. 
 . . . There had been terrible news from the front. 
 The streets were deserted. It was raining. ... It was 
 a wonderful relief to go to the little house in North 
 Street and to shut out the world with the thick brocade 
 curtains. She was a little early. Trenham came down 
 jubilant with the news that Carline could not come. 
 
 " I'm glad," he said. " We never forget the Ministry 
 when he is here. We talk of nothing else. . . . Bad 
 news to-night. It is very horrible." 
 
 "Don't talk of it," said Ruth. "I was feeling so 
 safe here." 
 
 He was exalted to-night, and she had never seen him 
 so confident and so completely at his ease. They talked
 
 T 6 2 PINK ROSES 
 
 little at dinner, so engrossed were they in seeking com- 
 fort in each other's presence. Their eyes did not meet, 
 for both looked round the room, both remembering the 
 occasion on which they had enjoyed each other's com- 
 pany there; and she was suddenly uneasy at the thought 
 of having allowed herself to owe so much to him. He 
 felt that in her at once, and said: 
 
 " Please, please don't be unhappy even for a second." 
 
 She was so astonished that she looked up and smiled, 
 and their eyes met, and he was at once serious, almost 
 stern as in his heart and mind there throbbed the knowl- 
 edge of his love for her. They had shut out the world. 
 He had lived for months now beneath the surface of his 
 life, exploring, digging, and there had come welling up 
 this love. She, too, had hardly begun to live outside her 
 own thoughts and she had no defences; she had no ex- 
 perience, no acquired skill in handling small emotions 
 that she could apply to great. . . . She owed him 
 everything. That was how her feeling expressed itself, 
 and she needed no words from him to tell her that he 
 loved her. He and she had always understood each 
 other best without words. 
 
 From sternness his expression melted into tender con- 
 fidence. 
 
 " I feel so sure that it is you," he said. " You couldn't 
 lie as women do. ... You would wait for ever until 
 the one you really needed came, and then you would 
 not wait." 
 
 Her left hand began to tremble in her lap. She looked 
 down at it and wondered at it, so unaccountably trem- 
 bling. It gave her an odd pleasure to watch it, a thing 
 out of control, belonging to herself who had been so 
 completely disciplined that no unruly thought or feeling
 
 THE SPIRIT OF LONDON 163 
 
 ever dared to rear its head. And she was not afraid, 
 not afraid, not afraid. . . . She wanted to laugh at 
 herself, but suppressed it for the pleasure of suppress- 
 ing it, just to show that she could do it. 
 
 After dinner in the study she sat on the sofa, and he 
 read to her Wordsworth and Keats. Half-way through 
 the Belle Dame Sans Merci he shut the book and threw 
 it down. He was not a yard away from her. Without 
 turning he put out his hand and gripped her arm, and 
 said: 
 
 " We're pretending. Don't let us pretend any more." 
 
 " No," she said, looking down at his strong hand. 
 She placed her hand on it, only just touching it. 
 
 " You are mine," he said. " You are mine, my Ruth, 
 as nothing else was ever mine." 
 
 They had shut out the world. They were beneath the 
 surface of life. Between the beauty of what they shared 
 and the fantastic horror of life as it had taken shape 
 there was nothing in common. 
 
 " You are mine my Ruth, mine, mine, mine."
 
 XIII 
 PAYING THE PRICE 
 
 ALMOST every night at the Cafe Claribel, Trevor 
 Mathew and Cora Dinmont were to be seen dining at 
 the table in the top corner of the Cafe Saloon. They 
 sat there from a quarter-past seven to half-past eight, 
 and then went to a cinema until it closed with " God 
 Save the King." They then returned either to his flat or 
 hers, which were on the same landing in a block in 
 Shaftesbury Avenue. . . . He was not unhappy. 
 Neither was he happy. He had the satisfaction of 
 knowing that, like his freinds, he had accepted an altered 
 and an anonymous existence in response to the pressure 
 of events, and he had the interest of exploring for the 
 first time the world of women, which is not without its 
 educational importance. . . . After a while he was 
 astonished that he had ever idealized them or submitted 
 to the prevalent notion that they were somehow mysteri- 
 ous. Cora was not essentially different from himself, 
 except that she had no intelligence, but before very long 
 he was forced to admit that this was not a profound 
 difference either. She did not think, but she was more 
 practically selective than himself, and without agonizing 
 or racking her brains she had come to much the same 
 conclusion about the war as he had himself, namely, 
 that it could not absorb the whole of humanity, and that 
 therefore things would somehow be all right. The war 
 could never absorb either herself or Mr. Ysnaga, who 
 
 164
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 165 
 
 was " a sight too clever," and she had lost her profes- 
 sional interest in soldiers and with it her horror of their 
 hysteria. . . . She was frenziedly in love with Trevor, 
 and endeavoured with her jealousy completely to isolate 
 him. This was easy, because the war had snapped many 
 of his ties in London, most of them had been through 
 Hardman, and without his friend he did not care to hold 
 them, especially after Cherryman had created an almost 
 unrecognizable Hardman for the public. There were 
 times when he wished to God Cora would leave him 
 alone with Sydney, but he had to give up all hope of 
 that because she could not bear him even to nurse the 
 dog. She wanted to be with him from moment to mo- 
 ment, and did not wish either of them to do or think 
 anything apart from the other. 
 
 At first that had been a welcome rest, and he remained 
 grateful to Cora, but her jealous suspicion at first irri- 
 tated and at length frightened him. She would not even 
 believe him when he told her that he had been at the 
 office all day, and he had to give a minute description of 
 his doings there. . . . Were there any women? Any 
 typists? Any clients who came because he was so nice- 
 looking ? . . . She would not let him write letters, and 
 often burned unopened letters from his home. 
 
 He could endure it because he had suffered so much. 
 What he found it hard to bear was his longing that she 
 should have suffered. But there was never a sign of 
 that. Her enormous vitality had sent her crashing 
 through life untouched. She had violent emotions, but 
 only as a kettle has steam. They were often unpleasant 
 while they lasted, but when they had gone she was 
 blandly and innocently unconscious of them, and he 
 could only laugh at her. Indeed, she was so portentous
 
 1 66 PINK ROSES 
 
 a joke that he could not but be fond of her, and he often 
 used to chuckle as he thought that human beings are 
 most adorable in their stupidity. . . . Cora was quite 
 adorable, and he would have been perfectly happy if she 
 had just let him adore her without her adoring him, but 
 she turned it into a competition, and could not bear the 
 idea of his winning the prize. . . . When things were 
 difficult Trevor used to think: "Well, well . . . It is 
 only for a year." 
 
 It was expensive, but he had his own money, and did 
 not need to account to his father, and it was worth it 
 because it was a complete escape from the war. 
 
 His new life, the holiday at the sea had made him so 
 fit that Henry Hobday had insisted on his submitting to 
 another medical examination. Cora wept and wailed 
 when he told her, had visions of his going out to France 
 and being sent back maimed, and then bullied, tortured, 
 and worried him until he was more dead than alive. 
 Her jealous instinct knew just how far she could go, 
 and on the day appointed for his examination he had 
 been in exactly the right condition to secure complete 
 rejection. He felt wretched and really ill as he walked 
 into Scotland Yard. The sergeant who took him to his 
 undressing cell said : 
 
 " Feeling bad, sir. I don't think they'll keep you long. 
 You're one of the lucky ones." 
 
 And when Trevor came out with his complete rejec- 
 tion, and tipped him, he said: 
 
 " Congratulations, sir; though there's worse than you 
 been took." 
 
 What struck Trevor as very odd was that he was 
 conscious of no sense of transition. The life he was 
 leading and this were exactly on the same level of mind-
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 167 
 
 lessness, backed by all the force of an aboriginal brutal 
 tradition. . . . He staggered out very cold from ex- 
 posure while waiting his turn, feeling as though he had 
 bumped into something about as conscious of his exist- 
 ence as an express train. Being bullied by Cora and 
 prodded by doctors seemed to be part of the same buf- 
 feting process directed upon him in a desperate attempt 
 on the part of things in general to knock some sense into 
 his foolish, inquiring head. 
 
 There was not much left of the Cambridge Trevor, 
 still less of the Trevor who had shone for a brief year 
 in the Hardman trio. He was really feeling shockingly 
 ill when he felt a hand on his arm, and he faintly heard 
 Cherryman's voice: 
 
 " Hello, Trevor, my dear. . . . What's the matter? 
 You don't look very well." 
 
 " No," said Trevor. " I've been re-examined. I'm no 
 good." 
 
 " Poor chap ! poor chap ! " said Cherryman. " I know 
 it has been a terrible disappointment for you. Where 
 are you living now?" 
 
 Trevor lied and gave an imaginary address, which 
 Cherryman wrote down neatly in a little book. 
 
 " Do come and dine with me some day," he said. 
 " Do you remember Carline ? He has discovered a won- 
 derful Russian girl in the Ministry and he often brings 
 her. Great fun. The first thing she remembers is a 
 pogrom. . . . You know, all the things you read 
 about. By the way, aren't you in Hobdays? There's 
 a friend of hers, a Miss Ruth Hobday, also in the Min- 
 istry. ... A beauty, my dear. If it weren't for this 
 beastly war, she'd be taken up. ... But everybody is 
 too sad now, or working too hard. We take on two
 
 168 PINK ROSES 
 
 hundred new people a week in our department now, but 
 it only seems to make more work. . . . Why don't 
 you come in ? " 
 
 He looked with almost wistful pity at Trevor, who 
 had become singular by not being in a Government de- 
 partment, and Trevor felt that he was going to be asked 
 the question that had been on the hoardings, " What 
 did you do in the Great War?" 
 
 Cherryman held out a stiff hand : 
 
 " Don't forget. . . . I'm still in the same old 
 rooms." 
 
 Of course he was! It would take more than the for- 
 mation of an army to shift Cherryman! 
 
 Trevor had enjoyed meeting him, and out of their 
 meaningless conversation one name remained : Ruth 
 Hobday, who was a beauty. A niece of old Henry's. 
 Trevor had heard of the head of the firm's poor rela- 
 tions and the cracked inventor. This could not be one 
 of them, surely. They lived in the suburbs, and even the 
 clerks spoke disparagingly of Mr. Charles as a poor fool 
 who had refused to join the firm. 
 
 " Ruth Hobday ! Ruth Hobday ! " thought Trevor, 
 stamping the name in upon his mind. He did not know 
 why, perhaps to reassure himself that the whole tribe of 
 women was not contained in Cora Dinmont. 
 
 He regarded the meeting with Cherryman as a piece 
 of good luck, such as one no longer expects in the world 
 in its present condition. By all means he would go to 
 his rooms and meet Carline and his Russian, and perhaps 
 Ruth Hobday. . . . He started at the name, then knew 
 and recognized that he was longing to meet a girl of his 
 own standing, one who could give him a cool friendly 
 smile, such as girls used to give in the old days before
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 169 
 
 the war in that existence which was as far off as the 
 Roman Empire. . . . Ancient History. . . . And he 
 knew, too, in that moment that if the war went on much 
 longer he would marry Cora out of sheer non-resistance, 
 because she knew what she wanted and he did not. 
 Everything that he had wanted had been swept away. 
 . . . Dear God ! it would be good to want something 
 again, something personal. . . . One couldn't go on 
 living merely on wanting something for millions and 
 millions of people. Humanity was a nice thing to think 
 about, but millions and millions of people were horrible, 
 especially when they had forgotten all about humanity 
 in their obsession with nationality. . . . And so, as a 
 man picks up a shining pebble in the hope that it may 
 be a precious stone, Trevor repeated the name : Ruth 
 Hobday, and he wondered if it were she whom he had 
 passed in the dark passage one day. It might be. He 
 could not remember anything about her except that she 
 was young, but the idea of youth was just the comfort 
 that he needed, and his dazed thoughts began to turn to 
 spring flowers, white clouds, and an apple-tree in blos- 
 som swaying above a quiet river. . . . Oh, yes, Cam- 
 bridge Grantchester the orchard and the punts gliding 
 by full of happy people going a-picnicking. How inno- 
 cent that had all been! How could that life have grown 
 into the monstrous mockery of existence that had taken 
 possession of London and expelled from it youth and 
 charm, gaiety and eagerness? How could so sweet a 
 river flow down into such a muddy stream? And how 
 could he even now be going back to the glaring flat in 
 Shaftesbury Avenue? 
 
 Yet he could not but go on. . . . Where else could 
 he go? Peto had been taken down to Wales to spend
 
 i 7 o PINK ROSES 
 
 the rest of his life staring out of one eye at the moun- 
 tains. . . . After all, Cora was a good sort, and she 
 was a decent creature. She acted when others chattered. 
 That she was at present engaged in devouring him by 
 inches did not matter. She was engaged and passion- 
 ately, and this was as good a form of destruction as any 
 other. It was not to her devouring him that he objected 
 so much as to her having no other interest outside the 
 process. . . . But he was very vague about all that. 
 What was clear to him was that he could find no valid 
 reason for not going back. If he had been a soldier of 
 course it would have been very different. He could have 
 done as he pleased then, but, being a civilian, he 
 must remember that, after all, there are certain obliga- 
 tions. 
 
 His thoughts were more and more muddled as he 
 ascended the stairs, until at last he sank into the mind- 
 lessness into which Cora had driven him. 
 
 She had heard him and opened her door as he was 
 going into his own at which, on the inside, Sydney was 
 scratching in frantic delight. Cora was as exuberant 
 in her relief as the pup. 
 
 "They didn't take you?" she cried. "Oh! Thank 
 God! Thank God!" ' 
 
 She rushed at him, flung her arms round his neck 
 and dragged him into her own flat. Sydney followed, 
 and was shortly evicted for his usual offence. 
 
 " I don't know what I should ha' done if they'd taken 
 you. I'd ha' done something dreadful or gone into the 
 Red Cross to nurse you if you'd been wounded. . . . 
 But you look bad, Boy. Were they very hard on you? 
 ... I must feed you up and give you milk. Rum and 
 milk's good stuff."
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 171 
 
 Trevor could hardly hear what she said. He was very 
 nearly in a state of collapse, but she insisted on his mak- 
 ing love to her. It was her only idea of happiness. 
 
 At last he said : 
 
 " I think I'm going to be ill ... Somehow every- 
 thing has been too much for me. Being left out of it 
 is the worst thing that could happen to a man." 
 
 Cora blubbered. 
 
 "Oh! Don't say that! Don't say that !" 
 
 She was terrified by illness, did not know what to do 
 with it, and in her heart despised and hated it. 
 
 He said : 
 
 " Perhaps I'd better go home " 
 
 The bare idea stung her into a fury. 
 
 " No. No. No. You'll be all right, Boy. I'll look 
 after you. But you mustn't be ill. Why should you 
 be ill when we're so happy together?" 
 
 " It's a kind of seasickness," said Trevor. " Have 
 you ever been on the river and got the wash of a 
 steamer? . . . Well, it's like that. . . . We're in the 
 wash of the war, and it's making us all seasick. Much 
 better to be killed or wounded." 
 
 He was much more ill than he knew, and the next 
 morning could not get up. Cora, in alarm, carried him 
 over to his own flat and put him to bed, and telephoned 
 for the doctor, a little French Jew with a strictly West 
 End practice. He looked for the symptoms with which 
 he was familiar, and not finding them was nonplussed. 
 He knew nothing of the sickness of the soul, because he 
 had long ago come to the conclusion that there was not 
 such a thing. He regarded human beings as greedy ani- 
 mals who were at the mercy of their appetites, and, like 
 every other philosopher, found in the war the grand
 
 I 7 2 PINK ROSES 
 
 confirmation of his view. He decided that Trevor was 
 suffering from the appetite which was his especial study, 
 prescribed, gave orders as to diet, and said that there 
 was nothing much that he could do. He had never seen 
 such a complete collapse before. He shrugged his shoul- 
 ders and told Cora that the only thing was to keep the 
 patient in bed until he wanted to get up a malady of 
 the will. The patient had better be left alone as much 
 as possible, plenty of sleep alone. . . . Cora was 
 angry and affronted. When the doctor had gone she 
 turned to Trevor and told him that there was nothing 
 really wrong with him. . . . He smiled, but did not 
 reply. He could not. Though he heard her she seemed 
 to be thousands of leagues away. His head ached and 
 his mouth was dry, and his eyes burned in their sockets. 
 The thoughts that whizzed through his mind were such 
 that no one could possibly have understood them, no 
 one. They were new thoughts that were related to noth- 
 ing in the world as it was or as it had been, but to the 
 world as it was going to be. ... It was as though he 
 had been turned upside down so that the deepest 
 thoughts and feelings in him came uppermost and moved 
 most easily while obvious and superficial ideas had the 
 most bitter difficulty in emerging at all. He did not want 
 to eat or drink or sleep. He never moved, but lay still 
 at the mercy of this terrible inward activity. 
 
 Cora could only weep when she spoke to him, and did 
 not answer, and she had frightful visions of his going 
 mad, falling upon her, attacking her, killing her. . . . 
 But she would rather have that than let him go. 
 She telephoned to the office to say that he was unwell, 
 filled his room with flowers, slept on the sofa at the foot 
 of his bed, and kept Sydney away from him because the
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 173 
 
 dog was the only creature he recognized and she could 
 not bear to see his thin hand reaching out for it. 
 
 This went on for ten days, at the end of which she 
 was pulled up sharp by her maid, who, missing the tips 
 which Trevor gave her constantly, demanded her wages. 
 Cora then found that she had no money, not a shilling. 
 She had spent all her savings God knows on what 
 and she had pawned or sold her jewellery. She drew 
 out a cheque from Trevor's book and held his hand 
 while he signed it, but the Bank returned it marked 
 " R.D.," and she was so disappointed and amazed that 
 she had not wit enough to go to the Bank, explain, and 
 ask them to confirm her statement. . . . And she was 
 getting sick of the long silence. It was telling on her 
 nerves. . . . To have a maid, a good cook and house- 
 keeper like Estelle was necessary to her status. To let 
 her go was to begin to sink. When Trevor got well he 
 would never stand her working with her own hands, 
 because he was a gentleman. That was unthinkable. 
 She made Estelle look out one of her old dresses, re- 
 model it, and give it the fashionable tone, and went to 
 the Cafe Claribel. Trevor would never know. It would 
 only be until he was well. . . . She had read in books 
 that love was sacrifice. She would love him only the 
 more. She could not possibly look after him and the 
 two flats if Estelle went, and maids were very hard to 
 find because they had all gone into munitions or had 
 become the equal of their mistresses now that the Bishop 
 of London had closed the Empire promenade and upset 
 the old order of things. . . . She must look after him, 
 and there was no other way but by this great sacrifice. 
 To Cora it was a very solemn occasion. It was to her 
 as though she were raising herself at one gesture to his
 
 i 7 4 PINK ROSES 
 
 level. ... A blue dress, a large blue feather in her 
 hat, a bunch of white flowers in her bosom white for 
 sacrifice ! she went to the Claribel. . . . Ah ! The 
 smell of the place was good, and it was good to be alone. 
 But that she would not admit to herself. . . . What 
 she took for an heroic desire for sacrifice was an acute 
 nostalgia, a hunger to live again simply, unsocially, 
 without emotion, or more than passing interest. For a 
 moment she was angry with Trevor because he was so 
 damned serious, more than a little she suspected him of 
 malingering in order to keep her at a distance. . . . 
 What a jolly tune the orchestra was playing ! Some new 
 piece perhaps. The Dore gargoyle of a maitre d'hotel 
 came up to her obsequiously, and said : 
 
 " Mr. Mathew is not here yet." 
 
 " I'm alone to-night, and I don't want to sit in the 
 corner." 
 
 Some distance away in the middle of the saloon she 
 saw Mr. Ysnaga with another Jew, but she would take 
 no notice of him. If he wanted her, let him come for 
 her. . . . She was just moving to a table as two 
 Belgian officers vacated it when Mr. Ysnaga came over 
 to her. 
 
 " Hello, Cora ! ... All dressed up, eh ? I'll stand 
 you a dinner if you like. You're just the girl I want." 
 
 Automatically she gave him a sidelong look of 
 innuendo. 
 
 " All right," she said. " You know I hate paying for 
 myself." 
 
 " It's a bad sign when a lady does," said Mr. Ysnaga, 
 with his oily eyes dancing to and fro in the Jewish sub- 
 stitute for a twinkle. 
 
 They reached his table, and Mr. Ysnaga said:
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 175 
 
 " You must let me introduce you to my friend, Mr. 
 Angel." 
 
 They had finished their champagne, but they ordered 
 more, so that Cora knew they meant business. After 
 Mr. Angel had volunteered the information that if the 
 war went on for another two years he would be a mil- 
 lionaire, Mr. Ysnaga, who had ordered turbot, braised 
 ham and creme caramel for Cora, came to the point, and 
 said: 
 
 " Cora, we want a girl with a back. The public's got 
 a taste for backs just now, and you've got the best 
 back in London." 
 
 "Thanks awfully," said Cora. "But what's the 
 game ? " 
 
 " We're putting money into a show, and directly I 
 saw you just now I knew you were just the girl. You've 
 been on the stage, haven't you ? " 
 
 " Once or twice to oblige friends. But I haven't a 
 voice, and I can't dance for nuts." 
 
 " That doesn't matter. . . . That piece the band was 
 just playing was out of a show of mine. It's made a lot 
 of money. . . . There was a back in that, but not so 
 good as yours. . . . You'd get good money, and I'll 
 pay for good advertising. I was afraid you'd gone off 
 on the marrying lay." 
 
 "Me? Whatever made you think that?" 
 
 " Well, you weren't keeping that youngster." 
 
 " I'm not here to talk about him, Jose." 
 
 She began to calculate. If she accepted the offer it 
 would mean that she would have something to fall back 
 on if she did not realize her ambition with Trevor, but, 
 on the other hand, if she appeared on a music-hall stage 
 and exhibited her back well powdered and decorated
 
 I 7 6 PINK ROSES 
 
 with stage-diamonds, her plans would be jeopardized, 
 and she still wanted that big house with a red dining- 
 room and a greenhouse outside the drawing-room. 
 
 Mr. Angel admired the way she ate. He liked a 
 woman who enjoyed her food and understood its impor- 
 tance. He was a thick-set humble Jew who could hardly 
 speak English. He was pathetically humble and child- 
 ishly delighted with his success. 
 
 " You know, my tear," he said, " de Var Office owe 
 me seventy tousand pound, and I go to the Var Office 
 and a great general mit a red collar open de door to 
 me, and say: 'Come in, Mr. Angel,' and he gif me a 
 cigar and talk of de vedder, and I say I must haf moneys 
 as credit is going schmal, and he goes on talking of de 
 vedder and gifs me out of his own head anudder order 
 for twenty tousand pound. ..." 
 
 The figures were as intoxicating as wine to Cora, 
 though she knew there was no hope of getting a penny 
 more than she was actually worth out of these Jews. 
 Still, to be dining with so much money was an exhilara- 
 tion. 
 
 " Are you going to take my back on trust from Mr. 
 Ysnaga?" asked Cora, as the wine and the money went 
 to her head. 
 
 " I take nothing on trust," said Mr. Angel. " Not 
 even Government orders. De Government is vonderful. 
 It has pay me already twice for vat it does not owe me, 
 but vat it owe me it pays me mit talk about de vedder." 
 
 Mr. Angel had an electric brougham, which was wait- 
 ing outside. Cora, Mr. Ysnaga, and he got into it, and 
 were trundled off to his flat in Berkeley Street, where 
 he exhibited the treasures he had acquired since the war, 
 a pianola, a gramophone with a solid silver horn, a set
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 177 
 
 of gold plates which had belonged to a Duke, jade, china, 
 a Titian, a Vermes, a Degaer, a mass of things, jewels, 
 trinkets, bric-a-brac, which his infallible nose for money 
 had picked out as being worth far more than he had 
 paid for them, and these things also added to Cora's 
 intoxication. She lay back in a big chair between the 
 two Jews as they wagged their heads and waved their 
 hands and talked of the money that could be made now 
 that the public had to take what they could get. 
 
 "If de Government owe you money, den you're all 
 right, eh?" said Mr. Angel, with a wink and several 
 nods of his little oiled head. " I tell you vat I done for 
 my patriotism. I offered a prize of two hundred 
 pounds for de first Jewish V.C. in de Brkish Navy. 
 Hein?" 
 
 So they talked on, and at last Mr. Ysnaga slipped 
 away, leaving Cora, if she could, to win Mr. Angel's 
 approval. That was not difficult. He liked the big 
 greedy Englishwoman, and he thought diamonds would 
 look well on her. He had begun his career in South 
 Africa, and he had a drawerful of little stones of which 
 he gave her four or five as she left him about half -past 
 four in the morning. He said : 
 
 " Plenty more. . . . You come again. Hein ? You 
 got just de back for my show." 
 
 It was bigger business than she had ever done. 
 Ysnaga was getting on. He would do better as jackal 
 to Mr. Angel than plunging by himself. It was clever 
 of him to use her so promptly and she admired him for 
 it. ... As she walked home she thought that she 
 would make herself indispensable to Mr. Angel while 
 the war lasted might it go on for ages! and then 
 afterwards she would take Trevor away to Monte Carlo
 
 178 PINK ROSES 
 
 and San Sebastian and all the places frequented by the 
 big people, and he would get well and they would make 
 money and get married, and she would show him life. 
 . . . He was just an innocent baby, poor lamb, fret- 
 ting about his dead friends and the war and all that. 
 If people got killed it was their own fault. People who 
 were clever and " fly " never got hurt. They knew what 
 was what champagne and liqueurs, and music-hall 
 shows, and diamond studs and motor-cars. They got 
 on the right side of the Government. That was all that 
 was necessary. Having done that they could do as they 
 liked and go as they pleased. . . . As she reached her 
 door in Shaftesbury Avenue Cora took out the stolies the 
 Jew had given her. They shone and glittered in her 
 hands. 
 
 Estelle came down to open the door grinning with 
 happiness at the old life having begun again. Cora gave 
 her the smallest diamond, and said: 
 
 " There you are, Estelle. Don't worry me about 
 money again." 
 
 " He's been talking and singing like mad," said 
 Estelle, " but he's quiet now, and I think he's been 
 asleep." 
 
 " Did you hear what he said ? " 
 
 " Oh ! about this dam war, miss, and all that." 
 
 Cora thought savagely: 
 
 " I'll make money and show him what the war's good 
 for. Little fool ! " 
 
 But directly she entered his flat her consuming love 
 for him returned, and she reeled under the knowledge 
 of what she had done. What a fool she had been ! She 
 could easily have got money from the Bank if she had 
 only stopped to think about it; but Trevor was con-
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 179 
 
 tinually dragging her out of her depth, and then she 
 did not know what she was doing. 
 
 He was certainly looking better, and his eyes stared at 
 her with a puzzled expression. She leaned over him and 
 said: 
 
 " It's me. It's your Cora. Don't you know me? " 
 
 He said " Oh yes." 
 
 In a series of sharp shocks his memory of her returned 
 and he was overpowered with the scent of pink roses, 
 loose voluptuous blossoms that seemed to fill the room 
 and shake down their scent and their dew upon him, 
 and in his ears rang the sound of the orchestra at the 
 Cafe Claribel playing " Over There," and " While the 
 Great Big World goes Turning Round." Through the 
 roses grinned from various directions the same face, 
 Estelle, the coloured maid, with her eyes flashing a sup- 
 pressed hatred of him, and demanding money . . . 
 money . . . money. . . . And there was Mr. Ysnaga 
 with his eyes darting to and fro, and his tongue busy 
 with his teeth. 
 
 " What have I to do with all these people? " thought 
 Trevor, and at once he was answered by Cora kissing 
 his lips, his eyes, his neck, and shedding tears upon his 
 cheeks. . . . Oh yes, Cora Dinmont ! And it was war- 
 time, and things were somehow different. 
 
 As he realized this he became conscious of a sudden 
 rush of health which intoxicated him, and he said 
 childishly : 
 
 " I'm better now." 
 
 " Oh ! you've been so ill, my dear. I don't know 
 what's been the matter with you, and the doctor doesn't 
 know, but you've been terribly ill." 
 
 " Are there any letters ? "
 
 i So PINK ROSES 
 
 " Only a few," she said. " There was some one came 
 from the office to ask how you were, but that is all. 
 . . . I've been looking after you." 
 
 " Is the war still on ? " 
 
 He laughed at himself as he asked this question. Of 
 course it was still "on," and would be "on" even if it 
 stopped to-morrow. It would be in the minds of men 
 for generations, and only an imbecile could think of it 
 in terms of defeat or victory or attempt to evade facing 
 it by waving flags and howling national hymns. Per- 
 haps the people who were engaged in it could now realize 
 these truths. . . . He looked quizzically up at Cora. 
 She was not beautiful or good or even charming, but 
 she had made life bearable for him and he owed her 
 more than he could ever repay. Her costume, her hat, 
 offended him, though he had no idea what time it 
 was. 
 
 " Why are you dressed like that ? " he asked. 
 
 "Oh! I been out." 
 
 "What time is it?" 
 
 She was quick enough to lie. 
 
 " It's about half-past eleven, Boy. I been to a cinema 
 to cheer myself up. It's bad weather, and there's been 
 a big explosion at a munitions factory." 
 
 She gave him his medicine and some milk, and even 
 the unpleasant taste of the tonic was good. 
 
 "Better?" she said. 
 
 " Oh yes. I'm going to enjoy myself." 
 
 She flung her whole weight on him and hugged him 
 until he was nearly suffocated, but this again stirred his 
 common sense until he wanted to laugh until he cried. 
 There seemed to be so much of her, and it was so like 
 her to hurl her body at him when he wanted her mind,
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 181 
 
 her good-tempered bland and innocent outlook on 
 life. . . . 
 
 " I've been sleeping at the foot of your bed," she said 
 in a wheedling tone. " Now that you're better I must 
 take you away. Brighton's the best." 
 
 After more kisses, sighs, sobs, hearings and strokings 
 she went reluctantly away to her own flat and Trevor 
 lay awake enjoying the joke of his existence. Only an 
 hour or so after she had gone the post arrived and 
 slipped some letters through his door. He got out of 
 bed and stood in the passage listening to the clatter of 
 the milk being sent up in the lift at the back of the 
 building. . . . Why, it was morning! What had she 
 been doing? Why was she dressed up in that fashion? 
 Why had she lied to him ? And what had she done with 
 Sydney? . . . He went through the flat calling the 
 dog, but there was no trace of him except ancient marks 
 on the carpet. . . . Perhaps she had done away with 
 him. But the dog had heard his master moving about, 
 and was barking and scratching at the door of Cora's 
 flat. At last Trevor heard him, and crossed the landing 
 to release him. On the mat he saw something glittering, 
 stopped and picked up a small diamond. He held it in 
 the palm of his hand and stood looking distastefully at 
 Cora's door, then across at his own, pondering the ques- 
 tion whether she had dropped it or whether it had been 
 lost by some one, like Ysnaga, who had visited her. 
 Sydney, smelling his master on the other side of the 
 door, was nearly frantic and was barking in an ecstatic 
 frenzy. An angry voice from upstairs called down : 
 
 " Can't you strangle that damned dog of yours?" 
 
 Just as Trevor put the key into the lock Cora opened 
 the door and Sydney rushed out.
 
 1 82 PINK ROSES 
 
 " I heard the dog," said Trevor. 
 
 " I kept him here while you were ill." 
 
 He held out the diamond. 
 
 " I found this on your mat," he said. 
 
 " Oh yes. I've been looking for it everywhere. They 
 I had them by me, and I took them out to sell them. 
 You get a good price nowadays because of the munition 
 workers. ... I thought you'd have been asleep." 
 
 "It is morning," said Trevor; and the words had for 
 him far more than their trivial sense. It was indeed 
 morning for him, a new beginning of a new life brim- 
 ming over with possibilities, a life in which he had 
 broken away from the old illusions which had destroyed 
 so much, and had not yet formed any new ones into 
 which to recede from life's demands. . . .Life could 
 not demand too much of him, nor could he demand too 
 much of life, because it was morning and he had paid 
 the price. 
 
 He did not mind Cora's having lied to him. He was 
 only perturbed because she had had to sell her jewels, 
 and he blamed himself for not having made any financial 
 arrangements with her. Hitherto when she had wanted 
 money she had asked for it, and he had given it to her 
 exactly as if he were her husband. They stood staring 
 at each other, groping for each other's thoughts, and at 
 last she said: 
 
 " You oughtn't to be up, you know." 
 
 " Oh yes," he answered. " I'm going to get up for 
 breakfast. I'm all right. I'm all right." 
 
 "Are you!" she said roughly. "Well, I'm tired. 
 I'm going to have a good sleep. . . . Estelle can give 
 you your breakfast in bed." She turned and went away. 
 
 " Thanks. . . . Come along, Sydney."
 
 PAYING THE PRICE 183 
 
 As he closed the door of his own flat he said: 
 
 " Sydney, what's she so cross about?" 
 
 And Sydney raised himself on his hind legs and 
 clawed at his master's pyjamas to make him stoop and 
 scratch his head.
 
 XIV 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 
 
 THERE were two letters for Trevor that morning, one 
 from his mother, very anxious at not having heard from 
 him, deploring the air-raids and applauding the great 
 effort made by the women of England, opinions and 
 emotions culled direct from the newspapers, so that 
 Trevor was half-amused, half -irritated by their inepti- 
 tude. Extraordinary how the old people struggled in 
 vain to think and feel the right thing, and how remote 
 they were from striking the right note ! They could not 
 grasp what was happening or what had happened. Life 
 had been too easy for them and tragedy was past their 
 comprehension. . . . Dear old mother! Bloodthirsty 
 as a Bedouin, her letters with all her endearments and 
 affectionate thoughts were a series of Dervish dances, 
 culled from the newspaper. It was not she who felt 
 these terrible things, but it was she who wanted to feel 
 them, the more so as her own boy had been spared. 
 . . . Trevor could see her in her drawing-room trying 
 to placate and outdo the other mothers. How pathetic! 
 So utterly foreign to them, so completely disconnected 
 with the rest of their lives! It used to hurt him in the 
 days of his grief to have to read thoughts so inadequate, 
 but now he was filled with a fond indulgence. The old 
 people, after all, were only somehow not quite grown-up. 
 They did not understand, that was all. They were try- 
 
 184
 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 185 
 
 ing to do the right thing by the young people, in a way 
 to make amends to them. . . . Thinking so, Trevor 
 was filled with a rush of affection for his mother, and 
 he patted her letter as it lay on his knee and smiled at 
 it. It did not matter now that she could not understand. 
 He could understand her, and that was enough. 
 
 His other letter was from Cherryman, announcing 
 that already ten thousand copies of Hardman's poems 
 had been sold, and asking Trevor if he had any other 
 manuscripts or letters, as another volume would be called 
 for. So exquisite was Trevor's mood that he could be 
 indulgent even with Cherryman. After all, the man was 
 only a happy fool who adored success, s<5 happy that 
 nothing, not even a world-calamity, could upset him. 
 The war to him was splendid because it made his influ- 
 ential friends more powerful, and focused attention on 
 them, and dulce est pro patria mori. Cherryman was a 
 cultured gentleman for whom life had always been, al- 
 ways would be, easy. He was so soft that no one could 
 be harsh with him, or abrupt: or say what he really 
 thought, for Cherryman was a very bee to sip the honey 
 from the flower of popular opinion and hoard it against 
 wintry weather when it should come, if ever. Though 
 of course it never did and never would come. As soon 
 as it could discreetly be done Cherryman would enter 
 once more upon the round of dinner-parties, theatres, 
 suppers, dances, week-end visits. . . . Sure enough, 
 over the page there was a postscript : " I am having a 
 few friends from the various Ministries to dinner next 
 week, Wednesday. One must do something to keep 
 ourselves cheerful. Do come. Love." 
 
 Trevor grinned. The same old Cherryman! What 
 would he think if he saw Hardman's letters about him?
 
 186 PINK ROSES 
 
 There had been no more scathing critic of the old order 
 than Hardman. 
 
 Well, of that old order these two letters represented 
 the best of what was left, and here was Trevor entering 
 upon the new world through the lady of the pink roses, 
 out of compliment to whom he had a paper on his wall 
 of French grey with a frieze of pink roses. 
 
 Estelle brought his breakfast. 
 
 " Good morning, m'sieu," she said, with her evil grin. 
 " I'm glad yo' better." 
 
 " Wonderfully better," replied Trevor. " I can't be- 
 lieve that I've been ill. . . . Is your mistress asleep? " 
 
 "No ..." Estelle grinned. "She looking at her 
 back, m'sieu." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " Trying on," explained Estelle. 
 
 "What? . . . New clothes?" 
 
 " Not 'xactly clothes, m'sieu." 
 
 Estelle was mysterious and happy. She gave him a 
 rather impertinent nod and left him, to return in a 
 moment with the morning papers. He ate a hearty 
 breakfast and read these curious sheets which raved 
 about the war in the terms of a generation ago. One 
 paper took its note from Disraeli, another from Glad- 
 stone, another from Bright, and he remembered a dis- 
 cussion with his friends in his old rooms in which they 
 had come to the conclusion, since proved only too fully, 
 that there had been no thought in England since the 
 Education Act. Politicians had left it to the people, the 
 people to the politicians, until there was complete stag- 
 nation, the ideal condition for the middle-classes. These 
 newspapers were just delightfully irrelevant, utterly 
 ignorant of and indifferent to what was really happening
 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 187 
 
 in Europe, impervious to any idea, blissfully unconscious 
 of any social development that might be, and surely was. 
 taking place. They were " getting on with the war," 
 and they were incapable of realizing that the war might 
 be connected vitally with other human activities. The 
 efforts of those who controlled them were directed 
 wholly to keeping their papers up to the pitch of vio- 
 lence of the simple news of a great offensive. They 
 had begun to discuss everything in the terms of military 
 operations. 
 
 The doctor arrived. 
 
 " Ah ! bon, bon. C'est bien," he said, seeing Trevor 
 sitting up and chuckling over newspapers. " You are 
 better, eh?" 
 
 " Wonderfully better," replied Trevor. " I'm enjoy- 
 ing myself. I haven't done that for two years." 
 
 " Ah ! You should not take things so hard. But for 
 you English the war is bad form. You do not under- 
 stand it that one should take trouble over anything so 
 bestial. You want it be like the football, but the Ger- 
 mans do not play the football." 
 
 " Is that what the French think of us? " said Trevor. 
 
 " For the French it is serious. Yes. It must go on 
 until the Germans are beaten. Yes. Not only because 
 we hate the Germans, but because we must kill the fear 
 of the militarism before we can get on with serious 
 things. . . . Till then we must suffer disgusting things 
 and fools and chauvinists." 
 
 "And newspapers?" asked Trevor. 
 
 " Ah ! They are bad, but what would you ? It would 
 not do for the English to know the truth. They are so 
 innocent. They would think us all scoundrels. They 
 would never understand that in Europe there is happen-
 
 i88 PINK ROSES 
 
 ing something serious, much more serious than war. 
 They will not belie\e it because one cannot define it. 
 It is defining itself. When it is definite they will believe 
 it and give it a legal sanction, but by that time something 
 else will have begun to arrive in Europe. In England 
 you do not live. Although life here is charming, so nice, 
 so nice with everybody trying to be good, everybody 
 taking a commission, everybody protecting and pro- 
 tected. When a Frenchman goes into the army he is 
 poilu, a dirty fellow, he feels and knows that he is 
 dirty, but when an Englishman goes into the Army he 
 is St. George. Ah! I love it." 
 
 He was a little alert man with inquisitive eyebrows 
 and short-sighted eyes peering through narrow spec- 
 tacles. He talked very quickly and with many misplaced 
 accents, so that much of what he said escaped Trevor's 
 ears. 
 
 " I have thought often of your case," he said. " It is 
 you will forgive me an excess of innocence a refusal 
 to believe that things are as they are. A Frenchman in 
 that condition would find an idea. He would fight for 
 it, die for it, go to prison for it, murder Poincare and 
 Clemenceau for it, but here there is no idea to find. 
 There is nothing to make you murder Asquith and 
 Lloyd George. Why should you? They are only men. 
 They have no idea either, and men are good-natured 
 animals. They only want to kill ideas.* 
 
 " That's very interesting," said Trevor. " But I do 
 accept things as they are." 
 
 " Pardon," said the doctor, with a smile. " You are 
 English. Only action could satisfy, and to act it is nec- 
 essary for you to have illusions. . . . Moi, je suis 
 gynecologue. . . . Illusions are impossible for me.
 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 189 
 
 . . . Ideas disgust me. That is why I too am not in 
 the war. How? I attended Belgian refugees. That 
 was my contribution to the calamity. What is yours?" 
 
 Trevor looked round his room. That was his contri- 
 bution, and he was very satisfied with it. He had moved 
 out of the stagnation not very far, but far enough to be 
 able to look at life from a new angle. He tried to 
 explain this to the little doctor, who chuckled and said: 
 
 " Ah ! vous etes vraiment patriote. It is precisely 
 what you need in England, but it would go hard with 
 you if you tried to explain that to a Tribunal. Ah! A 
 Tribunal ! And that, too, is adorably English. In other 
 countries if you have conscription you have conscrip- 
 tion, but here as for once in a way you cannot call it by 
 another name, you invent exceptions and make them a 
 disgrace. Conscription is a horrible thing, yes. But 
 here you make it good form. Ha! So you look at life 
 from a new angle and fall out of it. Bonne chance! 
 ... I was afraid you had the idea to see life and 
 had seen too much for your innocence. ..." 
 
 Trevor chuckled. " Not yet. How much do I owe 
 you?" 
 
 " Ah ! Nothing, nothing. The pleasure has been 
 mine to meet an Englishman who can laugh at his news- 
 papers and not be angry with them. I tell you, when 
 I first came to England I was amazed. I read first of a 
 breach of promise. Breach of promise! What is that? 
 ... I bought every paper to understand, and I did 
 not. MonDieu! I did not understand a word of it. Of 
 what, then, are Englishwomen made? That is the mys- 
 tery. I am a doctor, and I cannot find the clue. . . . 
 They are like the British Constitution, they would drive 
 any other nation mad, but they suit the English, and
 
 IQO PINK ROSES 
 
 there is no more to be said. They are attractive, yes, 
 but like flowers or dogs. Us n'ont pas le parfum de la 
 femme, le charme epanoui de la Femme." 
 
 " Would you mind saying that in English ? " asked 
 Trevor. 
 
 " In English it cannot be said. It means something 
 which has gone, or which you have lost, or which you 
 
 have never had, or But it is impossible to explain. 
 
 A docility, a discipline. I have the idea that you have 
 paid a very heavy price for your wealth, but as you have 
 paid cheerfully that too is good. What you cannot do 
 by intelligence perhaps you can do better by sentiment. 
 . . . Bonne chance, mon ami." 
 
 " Good luck," said Trevor. " Come again. . . . 
 Just what I need, to talk things over with an outsider. 
 The English point of view seems to have disappeared, 
 and I don't know where I am. I don't think we ever 
 imagined that other people thought about us at all ex- 
 cept perhaps with envy." 
 
 " Ah yes," replied the doctor. " That is it. We envy 
 you. You are so happy. You can imagine nothing 
 worse than not being happy." 
 
 Trevor thought with a pang : " Was that all that was 
 worrying me ? Was I simply aching to be happy ? " 
 
 There was enough truth in that to make him uncom- 
 fortable. He thought of Cora, and it seemed to him that 
 he had been moved by her out of his lethargy because 
 she was gay and happy and lived in the Cafe Claribel 
 with its brilliant lights, its many mirrors, and its inso- 
 lently bright music as in her natural element. If so he 
 had not quite been playing the game. 
 
 The little doctor, though he did not know the cause 
 of it, laughed at his discomfiture.
 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 191 
 
 " Never mind," he said. " You will have your social 
 revolution without horror, so nice, so nice and gentle- 
 manly. You will simply teach the proletariat to be 
 gentlemanly, and the class war, like everything else un- 
 pleasant, will melt away under your hands." 
 
 That was so far from Trevor's thoughts that he could 
 make no effort to follow it. The doctor put this down 
 to English ignorance, and he added: 
 
 " Mais en Angleterre vous n'etes pas instruit. Votre 
 theorie est deplorable, mais votre pratique passe. II n'y 
 a pas de quoi ." 
 
 Trevor, like a good Englishman, was beginning to 
 regard the Frenchman as a chattering monkey. He had 
 been discomfited and did not like it, and fell back on 
 traditional contempt. He knew instinctively that what 
 at bottom amused the doctor was himself taking his ad- 
 venture with Cora seriously. But what could he do! 
 He was neither a commercial Englishman, nor yet an 
 emancipated and cynical Continental. It had been a seri- 
 ous matter, very serious, and for all he knew, would con- 
 tinue to be so. 
 
 The doctor's expression as he polished his hat with his 
 coat-sleeve showed pity, amazement, indulgence, admira- 
 tion, envy, and an almost tearful contempt. The doctor 
 was thinking, and Trevor knew that he was thinking : 
 
 " Que fait-il done dans cette galere?" 
 
 And as that was the question that had begun to twinge 
 in Trevor's young and ardent and fortunately irregular 
 heart, he was annoyed that any one should know it. But 
 then, foreigners are so disconcerting, so uncomfortably 
 realistic. 
 
 " Wait a moment ! " he said, as the doctor was going. 
 " Do you mind handing me that book ? "
 
 I 9 2 PINK ROSES 
 
 He pointed to Hardman's poems, which lay on his 
 dressing-table. The doctor took up the book. 
 
 "Ah! ga," he said. "I have read the reviews. I 
 know. That is all the English have to say about it. A 
 romance, an adventure, the Croisade do you say Cru- 
 sade? the Crusade of the Innocents. We have our 
 Barbusse." 
 
 He shrugged the whole of his body. 
 
 " It is what I say. You are happy, you English. You 
 simply do not want to know. But what will you do in 
 a world that must know or perish? " 
 
 Beneath the little doctor's banter there was a smoulder- 
 ing passion which almost burst into flame as he said 
 these words. He rather frightened Trevor because his 
 voice became suddenly impersonal. He was no longer a 
 Frenchman, hardly even a human being, but simply a 
 mind that must know, and Trevor was violently excited. 
 This was the new thing. This was the power behind 
 the upheaval, the power against which all the stupid peo- 
 ple in all the countries were fighting, the power that was 
 governing and would govern the world. 
 
 " I will know," he said. " I will know." 
 
 It was a strange moment, and the doctor liked it no 
 more than he. One does not admit the truth when life 
 is dominated by illusions. It is somehow a betrayal. 
 Time ripens slowly for truth, and those who are before 
 their time must live in silence. To return to normal con- 
 sciousness Trevor said: 
 
 " The book is dedicated to me. He was my friend." 
 
 " I commiserate you," said the doctor. " You will 
 console yourself." 
 
 " Come again." 
 
 " Avec plaisir. I have so much to do with the bodies
 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 193 
 
 of women that I forget sometimes that men have 
 minds." 
 
 " Is your practice all ? " 
 
 " Yes. Je suis cynique. J'attende la verite. Elle ne 
 vient pas et il faut vivre. I will gladly come again if 
 only to see an Englishman suffer in his mind." 
 
 This time he really went, and Trevor was left to his 
 breakfast, the newspapers, and Sydney, whom he ad- 
 dressed at length: 
 
 " I wonder if it is the same with English dogs, Syd- 
 ney. Must you have everything definite? I think you 
 must. You must have me to be definitely your master. 
 I'm sure a French dog would be more detached and just 
 a little critical. . . . Queer. All the time one is think- 
 ing things that one never says until everybody is think- 
 ing them, and then they are not worth saying, and we 
 listen in amazement to people who can explain them- 
 selves. But after all they are only chattering, and life 
 is to be lived. Life doesn't wait until we are ready for 
 it. After all, practical knowledge is something. At any* 
 rate one can't argue about it. I shouldn't be here now 
 if I had waited until I had found an exact reason for 
 it. You wouldn't be here if I had stopped to find out 
 if I really wanted a dog. I didn't, but I do now." 
 
 Sydney wagged his tail and looked imploringly at the 
 milk-jug. Trevor poured him out a saucerful and held 
 it while Sydney gulped it down. 
 
 " And now," said Trevor, " we have to go out into 
 the world to find out what it is really like Mr. Hobday, 
 Mr. Barnes, Mr. Ysnaga, my mother, my father, Estelle, 
 Cora, Cherryman but there is no doubt about Cherry- 
 man. I would as soon doubt the Lord Mayor. . . . 
 It would be fun to know what the English are really up
 
 194 
 
 PINK ROSES 
 
 to. That is what the Germans wanted to know. Was 
 macht England?" 
 
 Sydney barked. 
 
 " You don't like the language ? Well, I won't do it 
 again ..." 
 
 Cora came in. She was dressed in a loose Japanese 
 mantle. 
 
 " I do hate you having that beastly dog on the bed." 
 
 Her appearance gave Trevor an intense pleasure. She 
 was so robust and healthy, so completely without self- 
 consciousness. 
 
 " You look quite well, darling," she said. " I want 
 you to tell me what you think of my back." 
 
 She had been admiring it all the morning, and turning 
 over in her mind what line she had better take with him. 
 He was so odd that there was no telling whether he 
 really cared for her or not, and she had decided to put 
 him to the test by telling him of her offer to go on the 
 stage. 
 
 She threw off her mantle and stood in her silk petti- 
 coat with her back completely exposed from below the 
 waist upwards. It was certainly a magnificent back with 
 superb lines on either side of the spine and shadows 
 made by the softly clad muscles under the shoulders. 
 She moved her arms, as she had seen dancers do, to 
 make play with her muscles, and Trevor was entranced. 
 
 " You certainly are beautifully made," he said. 
 
 " Aren't I ? I've had an offer to go on the stage." 
 
 He was annoyed. That was what she wanted. As 
 the first shadow passed across his face she flew across to 
 him. 
 
 " I won't, if it makes my darling cross." 
 
 Sydney snarled at her.
 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 195 
 
 " Get away, you little brute," and with one sweep of 
 her arm she flung the dog into the corner, where he lay 
 yelping. 
 
 " I'm not cross," he said. " If you want to go. ... 
 But I didn't know you had any talent. I shouldn't have 
 suspected. ..." 
 
 " It was only Jose Ysnaga," she said. " I saw him 
 while you were ill. He's got a show coming on, him and 
 another Jew. They're making heaps of money, and they 
 want more. They love the theatre, Jews." 
 
 Trevor thought: 
 
 " It is quite right. It is what she should do. I ought 
 not to interfere with her in any way." 
 
 (He had been brought up in Liberal traditions.) 
 
 " It's only the money," she said. " And it might be 
 a bit of fun. But of course you mightn't like me to 
 show my back with diamonds on it, and I daresay one 
 leg with a diamond buckle on it. That's what they do 
 in shows." 
 
 " I have a lot to learn," thought Trevor, whose 
 memory of the lighter stage was clouded and still roseate 
 from the champagne he had drunk to make it bearable. 
 " Is that all," he said aloud, unable to conceal the bored 
 disgust that rose in him. 
 
 " Well, they talked as though it was the chief thing," 
 she said. 
 
 " Oh ! so you've been talking it over." 
 
 She thought he was jealous, and so he was, though 
 very faintly. 
 
 " I don't want ever to do anything you don't like. I 
 don't want anything but you. . . . But if I did that 
 then you wouldn't have to go to your office. Ftl soon be 
 making lots of money. I'm very good at that, and a
 
 ig6 PINK ROSES 
 
 woman can do what she likes with the stage just now. 
 There's heaps of money in it, and Ysnaga says you can't 
 keep the public out. He knows what he's talking about, 
 does Ysnaga, though he's reckless." 
 
 " I don't like Ysnaga," said Trevor, striving in vain 
 to recover the delightful intellectual detachment of his 
 first moments of recovery. There was too much of Cora 
 to allow of that, and she had changed. He was intrigued 
 to find out the nature of it. Somehow she was not so 
 oppressively enamoured and he liked her better. She 
 was franker, gayer, more herself, less vainly struggling 
 to be something which she imagined he would like her 
 to be. 
 
 " You know, Cora," he said, " we can't go back to 
 the life we were living the Cafe Claribel, a cinema, an 
 occasional theatre, going to bed late and getting up later, 
 quarrelling and making it up." 
 
 "Ooh! I hate quarrelling with you," she said. "It 
 used to tear my heart out. You're so nice, you're so 
 young. I'd like to eat you, and then do what I damn 
 well pleased." 
 
 " Well do," he said. 
 
 "Eat you?" 
 
 " No. What you damn well please." 
 
 "And afterwards?" 
 
 " Time enough to think of that." 
 
 " You're not going to slip off home? " she asked, in a 
 fury of suspicion. 
 
 " No. . . . No. . . . I'm too happy. ... I don't 
 think I could bear home just now. It has become so old- 
 fashioned the idea of it, I mean." 
 
 " My home's with you," she said, kissing him. " I've 
 always thought of home when I'm with you. I often
 
 BREAKFAST IN BED 197 
 
 see you and me sitting in a big dining-room with a nice 
 maid laying the plates on a long dining-table. You're 
 older, of course, and I've forgotten all about London, 
 and we're just happy. Of course, the war is over, and 
 all that ..." 
 
 Her voice was so sentimental that Trevor, feeling sure 
 that she was going to talk about a little voice crymg 
 upstairs, cut her short with : 
 
 " One doesn't make plans nowadays, Cora. One 
 waits for something to turn up and decide anything 
 that has to be decided." 
 
 "We'll travel, then?" 
 
 " They won't let us travel for years. When they have 
 forgotten about German spies they will be looking out 
 for anarchists." 
 
 Disappointed at her failure to draw him into the 
 delightful game of making plans, she said: 
 
 "Ooh! well, you're better. That's the main thing. 
 And we're happy as we are. Lots of girls 'd give their 
 eyes to be me. Did the doctor say you could get up?" 
 
 " We didn't discuss that," said Trevor. " He simply 
 said I was well. . . . And so I am. We'll go out 
 to-night, if you like." 
 
 She got his clothes for him and helped him to dress, 
 but he was so weak that there could be no question of 
 his going out. He wrote her a cheque for ten pounds. 
 She went out and cashed it, wired to the Metropole at 
 Brighton for a room, and bought a magnificent dinner, 
 caviare, cold pheasant, potato salad, cheese, crystallized 
 fruits, chocolates, and two bottles of champagne. 
 
 After d,inner he tried to read to her, but it was no 
 good. She could not listen, though she tried very hard. 
 Watching her, he discovered that she simply lost the
 
 198 PINK ROSES 
 
 thread of a sentence of any length, and that words used 
 in their exact sense had no meaning for her. He was 
 a little depressed, but also relieved, that his new clean 
 intellectual life, to preserve which he had struggled for 
 so long, did not exist for her, and he was amused at the 
 comfortable pleasure it gave him to have his relationship 
 with her defined. He was neither ashamed of it nor 
 proud of them. It just was a thing that had happened 
 to him and had somehow acquired a permanent quality, 
 perhaps because Cora was permanent, an unalterable 
 type, a personality that had always been and always 
 would be. Everything else in the world mi v ght be shift- 
 ing and inapprehensible, but she remained. 
 
 His reading bored her bored her until she wanted to 
 scream. She had to pinch herself to remember that he 
 had been ill and that she must be nice to him. But she 
 wanted him to " wake up," to want fun and nothing 
 else, to take life as though it were a box of crystallized 
 fruits, like the box lying between them. It was a large 
 box, but while he read she devoured the whole of its 
 contents, beginning with the cherries and ending with 
 the limes.
 
 XV 
 BRIGHTON 
 
 THE Metropole was exactly what Trevor wanted after 
 his illness, Brighton the very place to keep him enter- 
 tained and gave him opportunities for salted observa- 
 tion. To begin with, the train contained comic types that 
 seemed to have been especially created to be set side by 
 side: enormously fat men, full-bosomed bejewelled 
 women, middle-aged men whose character was in their 
 trousers and their spats, absurd young women delight- 
 fully conscious of being wicked, raffish young men try- 
 ing hard to look as if they were rich and used to travel- 
 ling first class, nervously sanguine of amorous adven- 
 ture as they eyed the self-conscious young women, queer 
 ancient men who looked as though they had miraculously 
 made a fortune out of a travelling Punch and Judy 
 Show, soldiers in khaki and hospital blue, thin and 
 sickly-looking young officers with red and green tabs. 
 ... A wonderful show. ... A Punch and Judy 
 Show. . . . And Trevor saw it all with the clear eyes 
 of convalescence. . . . Even the antique memories 
 aroused by the names of the stations struck an absurd 
 note, and so did the sight of blue-coat boys in yellow 
 stockings walking the lanes near Horsham. ... In 
 the strange throng Trevor felt a reluctance to give up 
 anything that had become familiar. There were types 
 that ought long ago to have been forgotten, but now 
 
 199
 
 200 PINK ROSES 
 
 obviously persisted with undiminished zest; types that 
 reminded him of Frith's Derby Day, people for whom 
 life was one long Derby. Two couples in his own car- 
 riage were obviously music-hall performers, terribly, 
 bewilderingly rich, amusing automata who went on from 
 year to year and had lost all sense, even all taste for life. 
 They were going to Brighton because Brighton was ex- 
 pensive, the best place, next to London, in which to 
 throw money away. 
 
 As the train slowed down he jumped out, because he 
 did not wish to miss one of these comic people. They 
 had even a manner reserved for arriving at Brighton, 
 a deliberate holiday air of being released for the time 
 being from their responsibilities and routine. They 
 opened their mouths as if to gulp in the sea air, though 
 the atmosphere of the station was as foul as that of 
 Victoria: but especially and most wonderfully they 
 brought London with them in their expression, their 
 walk, their obvious refusal to accept any impression. 
 . . . There was a rich Jew who tore fussily along the 
 platform, seeing nothing, knowing nothing, but that he 
 must spend Saturday night and Sunday at his seaside 
 house, and go back to his office on Monday morning. 
 Every line of his back said fussily: " I am a very busy 
 man ! I am a very busy man ! " . . . Trevor delighted 
 in them all. It was worth while to have been ill to gain 
 this heightened sense of external detail. . . . 
 
 Cora, too, had her Brighton manner. She belonged 
 perfectly to the place, and found nothing strange in the 
 people. 
 
 " What are you staring at ? Have you never been to 
 the seaside before?" 
 
 " Not in war-time," he replied. " One would expect
 
 BRIGHTON 201 
 
 it to be different, but it isn't, except for the soldiers, and 
 even they only look like people dressed up to look at the 
 sea." 
 
 Indeed, the number of soldiers in the streets and on 
 the Parade was astounding, and they had nothing, noth- 
 ing whatever to do except to stroll listlessly along and 
 spring to the salute when an officer passed them. Their 
 vacancy, far more than their khaki, was the only indi- 
 cation in the bustling holiday scene that there was some- 
 where in the world an immense oppressive tragedy from 
 which no one could escape. . . . Here thousands 
 seemed to have escaped. The hotel was full to over- 
 flowing of oppressively rich people whose one aim was 
 to spend money and to be seen spending it, and the first 
 person they met in the hall was Mr. Ysnaga. He was 
 standing rubbing at his finger-nails, just by the bureau, 
 slyly watching the arrivals and peering at the register to 
 find out their names. 
 
 "Why, Cora!" he said. 
 
 " Oh, damn ! " she muttered under her breath. 
 
 "If I'd have known you could have come down with 
 us by car." 
 
 There was no way out of it. She had to introduce 
 Trevor, who, on the whole, was rather pleased. He was 
 feeling charitable towards the whole world, and was in 
 revolt against the exclusiveness and reserve which had 
 always rather stood in his way. 
 
 He gave Ysnaga his hand with a friendly grin : 
 
 " I've been ill," he said. " We've come down for con- 
 valescence." 
 
 " Wonderful air, Brighton; and now it's a great place 
 for meeting your pals." 
 
 He stood scrutinizing Trevor with that extraordinary
 
 202 PINK ROSES 
 
 lack of manners which in a Jew seems to be incurable, 
 and sized him up as: 
 
 " No nous. Rich but cautious. Probably trust funds. 
 Oxford or Cambridge. Innocent as a babe. What the 
 hell does he want with Cora?" 
 
 He asked politely: 
 
 " Any news in London. We left this morning and 
 went out of our way on business. My friend is looking 
 out for a big house with a tradition, pictures, men in 
 armour, walled garden, all that, and a maze if possible. 
 He's set his heart on a maze." He grinned, as he did 
 everything, slyly. " I tell him that if he waits a little 
 longer he'll be able to buy Hampton Court." 
 
 " A modern Wolsey ? " asked Trevor; but Mr. Ysnaga 
 had never heard of Wolsey. To him the greatest figure 
 in history, so far as he knew it, was Rufus Isaacs. 
 
 Trevor did not, could not like the Jew. 
 
 " Oil and water don't mix," he thought. 
 
 " Well," said Mr. Ysnaga, " I hope you'll soon get 
 strong. If you would like it, I'm sure my friend would 
 let you have his car." 
 
 " Thank you," said Trevor. 
 
 The porter was ready to take their luggage up to their 
 room. They were registered as Mr. and Mrs. T. Mathew. 
 
 As they entered the lift Mr. Angel came down the 
 stairs, as usual almost tottering on his little loose legs 
 that were so ridiculously inadequate for his heavy, thick- 
 set body. Mr. Ysnaga stood pulling at his long nose 
 pondering the situation, which was a little difficult be- 
 cause Cora had made a deep impression on Mr. Angel's 
 susceptibilities. 
 
 " Cora's here," he said, as the future millionaire 
 joined him.
 
 BRIGHTON 203 
 
 " Dat's good. Dat's good." 
 
 " She's brought down a young friend who's been ill." 
 
 "A nice girl?" 
 
 " No. It's a boy. A college pup who's been a friend 
 of hers for a long time. . . . She's that kind-hearted. 
 She'd do the same for a cat or a dog or an elephant. 
 Any sick thing she'll take charge of, and she'll roar and 
 howl if you take it away from her. ..." 
 
 " Ach ! I knew she was a good girl," said Mr. Angel, 
 perspiring with appreciation. Mr. Ysnaga perspired 
 with relief. He knew that Mr. Angel was almost hys- 
 terically kind. 
 
 " Ach! she's a fine girl and a good girl. Vot a vife 
 she vould make! Ask them to dinner. Is the boy a 
 shentleman?" 
 
 " Yes, I said college," replied Mr. Ysnaga. " He 
 looks as if he'd been put through it. I've seen the same 
 eyes in men who have had shell-shock." 
 
 " Ve can't do too much for dose poor boys," said Mr. 
 Angel. 
 
 Upstairs, from the windoSv of their room at the 
 front of the hotel Trevor looked out at the wintry sea. 
 A strong wind was blowing, the water was almost black, 
 and white horses tossed and spumed out of the waves. 
 He laughed and said: 
 
 " You shall wheel me down in a bath-chair like little 
 Dombey, Cora, and I will look wistful and pale, and 
 ask : * What are the wild waves saying ? ' 
 
 But Cora was not listening. She was slowly unpack- 
 ing, and she was boiling over with hatred of Mr. 
 Ysnaga because she had had to introduce Trevor to him. 
 
 " By Jove, it is good," said Trevor. " Winter's the 
 time for the sea. It's alive then. . . I wish we'd
 
 204 PINK ROSES 
 
 brought Sydney, but they don't like dogs in hotels, and 
 it isn't fair to the dog either. ..." 
 
 He turned away from the window and watched Cora. 
 Extraordinary the number o f things a woman could find 
 to do, and her insistence on doing everything thor- 
 oughly! Why not unpack as you want things? . . . 
 But no, she must have everything taken out and put in 
 its place. She must make even an hotel bedroom an 
 abiding-place and surround herself with familiar detail. 
 The very bed must be decked out to be like her own, and 
 Cora adorned this bed with pink ribbons and a satin 
 night-dress case embroidered with pink roses, and across 
 the end of it she threw her muslin dressing-gown, on 
 which again were pink roses. . . . Trevor enjoyed 
 watching her. He had never seen her before without 
 the cloud of his chaotic feelings. She had been a refuge, 
 an asylum, rather than a person, and he had been young 
 and suffering, and now, being young, he thought he 
 was neither, that all the troubles of his life were over, 
 and that henceforth in a pleasant philosophic detach- 
 ment which he had longed to enjoy for ever at Cam- 
 bridge he could live in security in delightfully inap- 
 propriate surroundings. Cora had satisfied his curiosity 
 about women, whose mystery was surely over-rated, and 
 he would be able to devote himself to showing the impor- 
 tance of doing nothing. Cora's movements pleased 
 him vastly. He liked her way of turning everything, 
 absolutely everything, into physical enjoyment. When 
 she sat in a chair she seemed to sink into its embrace, 
 when she dressed herself she melted into her clothes, 
 and when she put on her shoes she could never help 
 stroking her legs in approval. . . . All that pleased 
 him. It was so gloriously healthy in all the nervous
 
 BRIGHTON 205 
 
 excitement that pervaded the streets, the thoroughfares, 
 and all public places. ... It was a little disconcerting, 
 perhaps, that her pleasure in him was of exactly the 
 same order as her delight in shops and stockings and 
 muslin dressing-gowns and good wine, but that again 
 had the advantage of leaving him free to think his own 
 thoughts and ride his own hobby-horses unmolested. 
 
 A messenger arrived with a note from Mr. Angel, in 
 which he hoped that Cora would dine with him and 
 bring her friend, if he were well enough. She crum- 
 pled up the note and said: 
 
 " Certainly not." 
 
 " Certainly not what?" asked Trevor, who was lying 
 back in a big chair, watching her. 
 
 She decided net to lie, and said: 
 
 " It's Ysnaga. He wants us both to dine with him 
 and his old friend." 
 
 "Another Jew?" 
 
 " Yes. A low Jew." 
 
 " I'd like to go. I'm interested in Jews. They are 
 important in modern life." 
 
 " I shan't go." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 " Oh ! I've a headache . . . I'll dine here. You can 
 go. It will do you good to go among the people. You're 
 always talking about them." 
 
 " Well, I'll stay with you." 
 
 " No. Don't offend them. They'll think you despise 
 them because they're Jews. I couldn't face it. You 
 don't know what it's been like all the time you've been 
 ill." 
 
 By this she had really persuaded herself that the strain 
 had been very severe upon her, and she convinced Trevor
 
 206 PINK ROSES 
 
 that it was so. He went to her and made a fuss of her, 
 told her what a splendid creature she was, and how he 
 loved her, and would be eternally grateful to her, and 
 this made her so happy that in the end she felt she was 
 making a great sacrifice in letting him dine with Mr. 
 Angel and Mr. Ysnaga when she was too unwell to go. 
 At last she had almost to force him out of the room, 
 while she stayed and enjoyed a time of crucial anxiety, 
 wondering whether Mr. Angel would be jealous. . . . 
 Though she was going to have a big house and a red 
 dining-room with Trevor and be a good woman, yet 
 Mr. Angel had a drawer full of diamonds. . . . 
 Downstairs in the great dining-room the three men 
 dined together at a window looking out to the sea, and 
 the only one who thought of Cora at all was Mr. 
 Ysnaga, and he was simply calculating as to what would 
 happen to Cora if she broke with Trevor, who had had 
 so remarkable an effect on her. Would she just sink 
 back, take to drink, and muddling through, or would 
 her admirable commercial sense assert itself and help 
 her to exploit the new charm she had won? 
 
 Mr. Angel was so kind that Trevor warmed to him 
 at once. The little Jew looked anxiously at his pale face, 
 and made minute inquiries as to his symptoms, his diges- 
 tion, his sleep, the length of his illness, the quality of 
 his medical attendance. A son or a brother could not 
 have given him more anxiety, and when he discovered 
 that Trevor was debarred by his heart from taking part 
 in the war he both commiserated and congratulated him 
 in one breath. With a few veiled leading questions he 
 discovered that his young friend was rich, and had al- 
 ways been used to wealth, and his homage was un- 
 bounded.
 
 BRIGHTON 207 
 
 The dinner was wild in its extravagance. Hardly 
 anything that they ate was in season, and they had a 
 different wine with every course, and Mr. Angel looked 
 with pathetic dog-like eyes at Trevor, hoping against 
 hope that he would be astonished, and when he was not 
 was confirmed in his adoration of him as an English gen- 
 tleman. He was in evening clothes with a velvet collar 
 and much-braided trousers, and in his shirt front shone 
 an enormous diamond, and Trevor found after a time 
 that it was better to keep his host's manners more 
 audible than visible; and this suited Mr. Angel, because 
 he could never meet the eye of any interlocutor. 
 
 With dessert he became expansive: 
 
 " Sixteen years ago," he said, " I had not a penny, 
 not a fard'n in de welt, and dat was how I began. I 
 had a friend, a Russian Jew, so simple. Straight from 
 Russia. In London he vos unhappy. Lipinsky his 
 name vos. Ach! He vos so unhappy dat he could not 
 lift up his kop, his head, to make a living. He vos a 
 tailor, and made suits all day for a few shillings. Veil ! 
 De Vest End vos too far for him to go who had come 
 all de vay from Russia. Dey are like dat: many of 
 them. From Russia to the East End, dat is as far as 
 dey can go. But I vos clever, and knew my vays about. 
 Mr. Lipinsky made suits and got no money, but I could 
 get money. I bought Lipinsky's suits, for a few shil- 
 lings, and I had a friend who stole silk handkerchiefs. I 
 put a silk handkerchief in de pocket of Lipinsky's suits, 
 press dem veil, give dem a schmell and a smart look, and 
 take dem to a Vest End pawnbroker. ' Give me two 
 pounds on dis suit,' I say, walking in like a flash Vest 
 End Jew, and de pawnbroker give . . . Veil, I had 
 hundreds of suits like dat; and so I make beginnings.
 
 208 PINK ROSES 
 
 Only beginnings are interesting. See? It goes on like 
 dat. . . . Vot is cheap in one place is dear in an- 
 other." 
 
 And he went on talking lovingly about the Jews until 
 Trevor was entranced with this revelation of that world 
 within the world, so passionate, so vital, so full of in- 
 domitable energy. It was quite clear from Mr. Angel's 
 talk that he was rather bewildered with the complexity 
 of the Gentile world. He admired and loved it; hun- 
 gered to be of it, but could not release his tenacious grip 
 on essentials. His humanity saved him from being 
 ignoble in his insistence that a man must eat and make 
 money before there was room for anything else. This 
 insistence was not explicit. It ran through all this talk, 
 and made it seem to Trevor like a hot wind blowing 
 from some sun-scorched place in which life could not be 
 comfortable. 
 
 " And Mr. Lipinsky," he asked. " Is he still making 
 suits ? " 
 
 " By the thousand ! " beamed Mr. Angel. " He is in 
 one of my factories. I do not forget my friends. But 
 he is sad. His wife is dead, and his daughter Sophina 
 is with thieves and schelms in de Vest End. She got a 
 taste for eveningdress " 
 
 Mr. Angel pronounced evening dress as one word with 
 the accent on the first syllable, and he made it convey 
 what was in his mind: nobility, ease, good manners, 
 everything desirable and unattainable by Jews, and he 
 also conveyed the terrible fate that overtakes young 
 Jewesses who think that there are short cuts to these 
 things. 
 
 Trevor knew a little about Jews, because at Cam- 
 bridge he had passed through a period of hero worship
 
 BRIGHTON 209 
 
 of Lassalle, and he tried to talk about him, but the name 
 meant no more to Mr. Angel than that of Moses. What 
 absorbed him was the rise of poor Jews to opulence and 
 glory, so that they could feast with real gentlemen, like 
 Trevor Mathew, and apparently for him it had been 
 something of a struggle until the war came, which swept 
 away all resistance to his operations and also, alas! all 
 the gentlemen and all the ladies. 
 
 As the dinner drew to its close, Mr. Angel said : 
 
 " Ach ! You begin to look better already. To- 
 morrow you shall have my car for a drive over the 
 Downs. You must be well so that when you come back 
 to London you can begin to make yourself a career, 
 hein ? I'll buy you a newspaper, eh ? Or you could write 
 a book, eh? And I vould advertise it all over Lon- 
 don. ..." 
 
 " But I'm going to be a lawyer." 
 
 " Veil, de Prime Minister of England is a lawyer, 
 isn't he?" 
 
 " I'd rather just enjoy myself, thanks," said Trevor, 
 and his answer delighted Mr. Angel. 
 
 " A good-looking boy like you," he said, " could marry 
 de richest girl in de welt, and make himself famous, and 
 be good to de poor and get all de vomen to vote for 
 him. But first you must get veil." 
 
 His offers were so overwhelming, he was so nervously 
 eager to do something to help that Trevor could find no 
 way out of accepting the use of the car on the morrow, 
 hoping against hope that he would not have also to 
 accept the company of Mr. Ysnaga and Mr. Angel. 
 
 That fear was set at rest on the Sunday afternoon. 
 The two Jews had to go to see a friend who had a big 
 business.
 
 210 PINK ROSES 
 
 Mr. Ysnaga whispered to Cora as she stood waiting 
 for the car : 
 
 " He's raving about the boy, quite silly about 
 him." 
 
 " You leave the boy alone," said Cora jealously. 
 " He's too good for the likes of you." 
 
 Ysnaga grinned and looked down his long nose. Mr. 
 Atigel was fussing round Trevor as though he were a 
 prize animal with a delicate constitution that he had 
 bought for thousands of guineas. 
 
 " You must wrap up veil. The chief thing after an 
 illness is not to catch cold. ..." He turned to Cora 
 and said, " You must look after him veil, Cora. Don't 
 let him valk a step." 
 
 He fussed round while they got into the car, himself 
 wrapped the immense fur round them, and stood waving 
 his hand as the negro chauffeur pressed the accelerator 
 and set the car moving. 
 
 The back of the chauffeur's head was familiar to 
 Trevor. He looked round at the car. It was that in 
 which they had driven up from Sussex. That somehow 
 annoyed him, and at the same time made him want to 
 laugh uncontrollably at the idea of his life being bound 
 up with these gorgeous Hebrews. He had, too, a 
 happy sense of being reconciled at last to this new civili- 
 zation which had sprung into being in his own lifetime, 
 a civilization in which, so long as you had money in your 
 pocket, you need make no exertion of mind or body, and 
 if you were so minded, could just lie back and laugh. 
 That was his inclination now, to lie back and laugh and 
 to contemplate his old life dwindling into the remote 
 distance, a narrow life of earnest effort, of easily satis- 
 fied ambitions, of self -contentment, and most damnably
 
 BRIGHTON 2ii 
 
 exclusive in its morals. ... It was still going on up 
 in the North, waiting to receive him after he had been 
 schooled to it by Hobday, Treves and Treves, and 
 Henry Hobday was its perfect exemplar. Bred, trained, 
 schooled in the law, he was braced and renewed 
 by the lawlessness of Mr. Angel, who had pawned 
 worthless clothes, and Mr. Ysnaga, who had been in 
 prison. 
 
 The car was powerful. The reserve of force in it 
 was intoxicating, and soon they were up on the Downs 
 scudding along the chalk-white roads, and eating up the 
 steep hills, plunging into little sheltered villages in the 
 folds of the Downs, then climbing up to a green summit 
 from which they could see the sea under the wintry 
 sun cold and glassy. Great ships went slowly by far 
 out, and ominous grey warships filed past on patrol. It 
 was very cool, and the air nipped and stung. Once they 
 were out in the open the negro chauffeur gave vent to his 
 pride in the car and sent it rocking and humming along 
 at sixty, seventy-five an hour, and for three miles on the 
 very top of the Downs above Lewes, he tried to race an 
 aeroplane which appeared above them filling the air with 
 the hum of its engines and the whizz of its planes as the 
 wind sang through them. Speed ! Ah, that was the real 
 thing that had sent the old ideas scattering like so many 
 chickens on the road. . . . The car went loping down 
 a long hill with its engine shut off. At the bottom they 
 turned a corner and came on a flock of sheep with an 
 old shepherd, brown as a walnut, half-asleep, pushing 
 himself along with his heavy stick. . . . Cora screamed. 
 The chauffeur turned up a grassy bank, and almost over- 
 turned the car, but with a dexterous and mighty twist of 
 the front wheels righted it, and came down into the road
 
 212 PINK ROSES 
 
 again. The sheep started running, huddling together, 
 stopping, running on again, and it took them more than 
 half an hour to pass them, while the engine thrummed 
 impatiently, and then they only escaped by turning up 
 a narrow lane which they had to pursue for several 
 miles until at last it brought them out suddenly and un- 
 expectedly on the Brighton road, with its black tarred 
 surface and its heavily burdened telegraph poles. . . . 
 As they turned into it they came on a car which had 
 stopped. It contained a lovely girl, and on its step was 
 sitting disconsolately a very distinguished-looking, grey- 
 haired man. Trevor pressed the " stop " button, and the 
 negro chauffeur drew up. 
 
 " Can we do anything ? " asked Trevor. 
 
 " My damn fool of a chauffeur sent me out with the 
 tank leaking. I've stopped that, but I've run out of 
 petrol." 
 
 The negro turned and said: 
 
 " Plenty petrol, saV 
 
 He got down, took out a can of petrol and handed it 
 to the disconsolate stranger, who was profuse in his 
 thanks. Trevor had an impression that he had met him 
 before, but thought he might have seen his portrait in 
 the papers. The stranger had that kind of face, probably 
 a successful business man promoted into some kind of 
 Controller. The girl he was sure he had seen, but he could 
 not remember where. . . . He thought her extraor- 
 dinarily beautiful, and he was deeply moved by the sad- 
 ness in her eyes and the firmness of her lips. She never 
 looked at him, but stared straight in front of her as 
 though she were trying to define some vague thought 
 in her mind. Her expression, her whole attitude, put 
 a stop to Trevor's exhilaration, and he was maddened
 
 BRIGHTON 213 
 
 when, as they moved off, Cora, turning contemptuously, 
 said: 
 
 " Some City man with his typist." 
 
 " Not at all. She looks more like his daughter." 
 
 " Daughter ! " she sniffed. 
 
 Trevor lay back and cudgelled his brains to find out 
 where and when he had seen the couple before. They 
 had been somehow different, perhaps not alone. . . . 
 No. He could not place them. 
 
 "What are you thinking about?" asked Cora, jeal- 
 ously. 
 
 " Nothing. Sheep, I think. They do take a hell of 
 a time to get out of the way." 
 
 They were in Brighton again, the object of envious 
 eyes, and some of the women, who knew Cora, made 
 audible remarks. At the hotel they were received with 
 all the respect due to a duke and duchess, and both of 
 them took it as just and due to them. Had they not 
 enjoyed an excursion in the motor car of a future mil- 
 lionaire? 
 
 Cora went upstairs, but Trevor stayed in the hall hop- 
 ing that the stranger and the beautiful girl would arrive, 
 but they did not come, and at last he went up to his 
 room. Cora was brushing her hair, and had changed 
 into her muslin peignoir with the pattern of pink roses. 
 Trevor stared at them. They were the clue he had been 
 seeking. A grey dress. . . . But what had that to do 
 with pink roses? 
 
 He went to the window and looked out at the grey 
 sea. Oh! yes. There was a boy, a nice boy of whom 
 he remembered thinking that it was a pity he would 
 have to grow up into a soldier instead of a man. . . ., 
 But where?
 
 2i 4 PINK ROSES 
 
 Cora started chattering, and he silenced her abruptly. 
 
 " How dare you speak to me like that ! " she said. 
 " How dare you ? " 
 
 "I didn't mean to be rude; I was thinking." 
 
 " That's just like a man. He leans on a woman when 
 he is ill, and forgets all about her when he is well." 
 
 " Don't be silly, Cora. I was only trying to remember 
 something." 
 
 " You're quite different down here. I don't believe 
 you love me a bit." 
 
 " Of course I love you, Cora, or I shouldn't be here. 
 ... I wish you could get that firmly and finally into 
 your head, that it would be impossible for me if I did 
 not love you. ..." 
 
 Again a messenger arrived with a note from Mr. 
 Angel inviting them both to dinner. 
 
 " Oh, damn the Jew ! " said Trevor irritably. " Why 
 can't he leave us alone? He behaves as though he had 
 bought us. ... We'll have dinner up here." 
 
 " I want to go," said Cora. " They're going back to 
 London to-morrow, and we shall have all our time to 
 ourselves." 
 
 " Then why didn't you come last night? " 
 
 " I had a headache." 
 
 Her chatter had wrecked his pursuit of the clue, the 
 grey dress and a boy. . . . Where on earth had he 
 seen them before and why had she changed so vitally? 
 He tried to tell himself that it was no affair of his, and 
 to occupy himself and to shake off the teasing memory, 
 he decided to pay Mr. Angel the compliment of evening 
 dress. 
 
 " I like your old Jew, Cora," he said. " He's a 
 scoundrel, but he is so amazingly kind. That's one
 
 BRIGHTON 
 
 thing that good people seem to forget in their struggle 
 to maintain their goodness to be kind." He was think- 
 ing of his father and mother. " They want to know 
 what people have done before they will try to find out 
 what they want." 
 
 " I've never met anybody good except you, Boy," said 
 Cora, falling in love with him all over again when she 
 saw him, clean-cut and handsome, in his evening clothes. 
 
 " Eveningdress," he said, mimicking Mr. Angel. 
 " Der vos no shordt cut to eveningdress for Jewish 
 girls." 
 
 Cora shrieked with laughter. 
 
 "That's him to the life, Boy. . . . Ooh! You are 
 clever. You could make fifty pounds a week on the 
 halls. ... I often think it's a pity you're so well off. 
 It would make a man of you to be poor. . . . Do run 
 down and get me some flowers. I want to look my best 
 to-night. You look so topping in your evening dress." 
 
 Trevor went down and bought her some chrysanthe- 
 mums. In the florist's shop was a bunch of delicious 
 rose-buds, and they set him off thinking again. . . . 
 A grey dress. ... A boy. ... A boy. ... A 
 grey dress. ... It was maddening that his memory 
 should stop short at that. In London, of course: and 
 he thought of the office, but that was absurd. He had 
 never seen a beautiful girl in the office, and Cora's sug- 
 gestion that she was a typist was cruelly grotesque. A 
 girl with those eyes and that chin would never endure 
 drudgery of that kind nor, surely, would any one dare 
 inflict it on her. . . 
 
 "Lovely roses," said the florist; "the last this year." 
 
 "How much?" 
 
 " Ten shillings a bunch."
 
 216 PINK ROSES 
 
 Trevor wanted to buy them for himself. He knew 
 that Cora would take them as a tender allusion to their 
 meeting in the park, and that had slipped away into the 
 irrecoverable, almost the immemorable past. It was one 
 of the things which already he discarded as being on the 
 other side of his illness. 
 
 " How much for one ? " he asked. 
 
 " One shilling," said the florist. 
 
 Trevor had given up thinking of war prices, which 
 had become so fluid that one simply gulped down his 
 astonishment and paid. The world had been hitched to 
 all the cars of all the Angels, and there was simply no 
 keeping pace with it. 
 
 The florist gave him one rose-bud, and he pinned it 
 in his coat and went upstairs again fingering it lovingly. 
 Cora's eyes fastened on it as soon as he entered, and 
 he explained: 
 
 " I bought it for luck. There were only a few left, 
 and I thought you would like something more showy." 
 
 Her lower lip began to work. 
 
 "I never thought of roses," she said. "You know 
 what they mean to me. I won't wear your horrid 
 chrysanthemums. Give me the rose." 
 
 Reluctantly he gave it to her, and she pinned it on 
 the bosom of her gorgeous blue gown, where it was 
 lost, dismally, hopelessly, and Trevor felt sorry. It 
 needed a simple grey dress. . . . Oh, damn the grey 
 dress! 
 
 Mr. Angel had also been to the florist, and his table 
 in the window was overwhelmed with flowers and green- 
 stuff. He was again in evening dress and had a green 
 silk handkerchief stuffed into his waistcoat, and the first 
 thing he said was:
 
 BRIGHTON 217 
 
 " If you like I can leave the car for you next veek. 
 I can buy a new one." 
 
 " Oh no, thanks," said Trevor. " It will do me good 
 to walk. I'll crawl along to the Parade, and when I can 
 walk as far as Rottingdean then I shall know it is time 
 to go back to work." 
 
 " Vork ! " said Mr. Angel. " In ten years it vill be 
 time for you to talk of vork. You find out vot de vorld 
 is like first, hein ? " 
 
 " I'm doing my best," said Trevor, with a grin. " One 
 learns something in a lawyer's office." 
 
 "What office are you in?" asked Mr. Ysnaga 
 politely. 
 
 " Hobday, Treves and Treves. A commercial 
 firm." 
 
 Mr. Ysnaga's face gave an almost imperceptible 
 twitch. 
 
 "Oh, yes!" he said. "I know them. Mr. Barnes 
 still there?" 
 
 "Still there," answered Trevor. "Working like a 
 ferret." 
 
 " Barnes ! " cried Cora. " Why, that's the man 
 
 And her face winced as Mr. Ysnaga kicked her under 
 the table. 
 
 " De law," said Mr. Angel, " is too slow for me. Ven 
 I have a dispute I settle him and take my revenge after- 
 wards." 
 
 Trevor felt absolutely certain that Mr. Ysnaga had 
 kicked Cora under the table, and he was annoyed. He 
 remembered little Mr. Barnes in the office throwing back 
 his head and shouting with laughter at the thought of 
 Mr. Ysnaga in prison, and he was suddenly sickened by 
 his society. Angel he liked. Cora was the human being
 
 218 PINK ROSES 
 
 nearest to him, but Ysnaga was well, to put it bluntly 
 a swindler. It was written all over his face. 
 
 The dinner was not going well, but Mr. Angel was 
 oblivious of it. He was prostrate in adoration of the 
 young gentleman who had put on evening dress in his 
 honour, and wore it as only an English gentleman could. 
 He had been quite hurt that Trevor would not accept his 
 car for the week, but to hide his feelings talked volubly 
 of his plans for making more money out of the theatre, 
 and at last his talk swamped the discomfort of the 
 sudden intrusion of Mr. Barnes. 
 
 " I'm never wrong about money," said Mr. Angel. 
 " Dere's money in Cora and dere's money in 
 you. ..." 
 
 ' You should hear him mimic," said Cora. " He 
 keeps me laughing sometimes for hours, and you should 
 see him making fun of the cinema. He'd make you die 
 of laughing, and there's a friend of his, Mr. Cherryman, 
 whom I've never seen, but it's the man alive." 
 
 " The public likes mimicry," said Mr. Ysnaga, uncom- 
 fortably attempting to keep his end up. " They love 
 imitations of George Robey and Crock and George 
 Formby ..." 
 
 But nobody paid any attention to him, and his face 
 shone with his uneasiness. He had worked for years to 
 make himself indispensable to Mr. Angel, and now he 
 was being brushed aside by the old fool's extraordinary 
 passion for the young Englishman. 
 
 " Do ... do Mr. Cherryman," urged Cora, and 
 Trevor, to oblige, gave an exact imitation of the editor 
 of the Hardman poems, shaking his shoulders as he 
 talked in a little voice, saying the things that everybody 
 was saying, hurt if anybody expressed his own thoughts
 
 BRIGHTON 219 
 
 or his own feelings, eager to be charmed by everything 
 and everybody, finding everything and everybody charm- 
 ing, exquisite, divine. . . . Mr. Angel laughed until 
 the tears rolled down his cheeks. " Ho ! Ho ! Ho ! " he 
 said. " That's him . . . Oh ! That's him. I've never 
 met him, but there's thousands of him, and they're run- 
 ning the war. Ho! Ho! Ho! They're running the 
 war!" 
 
 But Trevor's thoughts were sixty miles away. His 
 concentration on Cherryman had reminded him. Of 
 course he had been with Cherryman, just turning into 
 St. James's Park when Cherryman had swept his hat off 
 to the stranger, and the girl and a boy. She was wear- 
 ing a grey dress, and at her breast she had a single pink 
 rose, and so little had he noticed them at the time that 
 he had not even asked who they were. Father, daughter, 
 and son, probably. ... A nice family, good people, 
 and very pleasant to think of now with the old Tew 
 laughing until greasy tears oozed out of his eyes, and 
 Mr. Ysnaga calculating, always calculating, and Cora 
 eating, drinking, laughing voluptuously. . . . He glared 
 at the pink rose-bud at her bosom and longed to pluck 
 it out. It was so inappropriate as to be almost a dese- 
 cration. 
 
 "Ho! Ho! Ho!" laughed Mr. Angel. "Ho! I 
 haven't enjoyed myself so for years and years. Ach! 
 You must come to dinner with me in London, to see my 
 flat." 
 
 Cora winced. 
 
 " I haf pictures, and jade, and jewels, and old furni- 
 ture, and china and porcelain, and a gramophone, and 
 an electrophone and a pianola, and soon I shall have a 
 big house in the country when a lord sells up, and then
 
 220 PINK ROSES 
 
 I shall have a band of my own, and a music-hall at the 
 week-end parties. . . . Ach! if you would only help 
 me mit it all, and bring young gentlemans like your- 
 self. ..." 
 
 The prospect thus opened was so fantastic that it 
 almost tempted Trevor. What could he not do with the 
 dazzling opportunity ? . . . But he shrugged his shoul- 
 ders. There was nothing particular that he wanted to 
 do. His own generation was guttered out. The younger 
 generation would probably not understand him, and the 
 ideas that he and his friends had had were made to look 
 rather silly by the war and the immense change it had 
 wrought in the social fabric. . . . Still, a millionaire 
 asking him, almost imploring him, to waste his money 
 for him. . . . He looked across at Cora. No, it was 
 impossible. With her there could be nothing but food 
 and clothes and music-halls. She and Ysnaga could 
 waste Mr. Angel's money magnificently. . . . 
 
 At once he was furious with himself for coupling her 
 name with Ysnaga's. That was one of the things he 
 could never admit to himself. He did not know, did not 
 want to know, what had been in her life and before him- 
 self. And he had fully developed the British faculty of 
 not seeing what he did not wish to see. 
 
 " I vant a place mit a great park," said Mr. Angel, 
 " and an old vail dot runs for miles and miles along de 
 road. And ven people go by in der cars I vant dem to 
 say: 'Who lives dere? . . . Oh! dot's Angel, vot used 
 to pawn Mr. Lipinsky's trousers in de Vest End . . .' 
 And I should feel so happy in it if you vos dere. It 
 could be your place too, and you could be Prime Min- 
 ister of England. ..." 
 
 " No great difficulty about that/' said Trevor. " Any-
 
 BRIGHTON 221 
 
 body who really wanted the job could have it now for 
 the asking." 
 
 He was so worried by the rose-bud in Cora's bosom 
 that he could not pay much attention to what Mr. Angel 
 said, and Mr. Ysnaga brightened up. 
 
 " To-morrow," he said, " Mr. Angel and I are going 
 to look for a park. I thought of looking in the Good- 
 wood district. That's a great place for the big bugs. 
 Some of 'em must be feeling a draught." 
 
 " I von't buy a dem thing," said Mr. Angel, pettishly, 
 " unless Mr. Mathew promises dot he vill come to shtay 
 mit me." 
 
 " I'll promise," said Trevor carelessly. 
 
 " Den it's a pargain. . . . Ach! If you could imi- 
 tate for me my General at de Var Office. You know, 
 Mr. Mathew, he helps me on mit my coat as if I was a 
 lord, and shakes hands mit me mit his vite hand and de 
 nails all manicured ..." 
 
 It Lad just began to penetrate to Cora's brain what 
 was being offered to Trevor, and she was gasping like a 
 fish. ... A big house and a red dining-room ! These 
 new possibilities blew that ideal sky high. . . . She 
 saw herself with cars, as many drawing-rooms as she 
 liked, footmen, maids, a man and wife at the lodge, like 
 the people in the manor-house at home, but ten times, a 
 thousand times, as rich, and with London London to 
 be ransacked, if only she could manage Trevor. She 
 knew she could. He had made no protest as one by one 
 she had snipped the threads that bound him to his for- 
 mer life. . . . What a chance! It almost turned her 
 sick. Here he was being offered almost inconceivable 
 wealth and power, and he was treating it nonchalantly, 
 behaving as though Mr. Angel were offering him a cigar.
 
 222 PINK ROSES 
 
 It was almost more than she could bear. She could see 
 Ysnaga's little eyes glistening from one to the other, 
 from Angel to Trevor and from Trevor to herself, just 
 as in the old days he uSed to look. She had forgotten 
 the old days for so long now, and suddenly she found 
 herself staring into them with horror. . . . Ysnaga, 
 as she had first found him in a poor restaurant in the 
 West End, down at heel and woefully shabby, but 
 agued with ambition and talking romantically big about 
 himself. . . . She had picked him up and cleaned him 
 down and he had been useful to her. . . . And now 
 she wanted Trevor to be terribly, terribly rich, so that 
 she could show her mettle. . . . She could hardly rest 
 until, upon Mr. Angel's insistence, Trevor promised that 
 he would go and see him in London, and would stay with 
 him in his park when he bought it from a lord. 
 
 The two Jews and Cora were feverishly excited, but 
 Trevor was thinking of St. James's Park and a grey 
 dress and a pink rose, and, if there was any fever in 
 him it was to go back to London as soon as possible, 
 and to ask Cherryman about the grey-haired man and 
 the girl in the grey dress and the boy.
 
 XVI 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 
 
 IT took Sophina Lipinsky six weeks to discover and to 
 accept that there was not the slightest chance of Carline 
 marrying her. Of her as woman he was almost oblivious. 
 With her as Russian he was infatuated : she quickly made 
 up her mind as to the best way to exploit the situation 
 that had arisen. Out of her life with Finberg she 
 remembered just enough to keep her going, and when 
 in difficulties she found the easiest way out was to talk 
 broken English. She had known Russian and Polish 
 Jews at home, and she had a good ear and could repro- 
 duce their accent: but she was hard put to it for her 
 invention to keep pace with Carline's appetite. He had 
 sentimentalized the Russian peasant, and looked to Dos- 
 toievsky's Idiot as the type which should save the world 
 and give London society the savour which it had lost. 
 He rilled his rooms with Ikons which he obtained from 
 civil servants who were sent on missions to Petrograd, 
 and he seriously contemplated joining the Russian Ortho- 
 dox Church. . . . What he wanted from Sophina was 
 to learn how to be a Russian. He had tried with various 
 Russian men, but they had laughed at him and had 
 snubbed him unmercifully. Sophina to him was a gift 
 sent straight from Heaven. He knew that Russians sat 
 or lay on the floor, that they slept on the stove, that they 
 spent days and nights in cafes, listening to gipsies, that 
 
 233
 
 224 PINK ROSES 
 
 they were always on the verge of suicide, that they in- 
 variably carried revolvers to be ready for it, that they 
 talked for hours on end, that they wanted to be Russian, 
 only Russian, and nothing but Russian, that they drank 
 vodka and ate enormously, that they took sugar and 
 lemon in their tea, that they lived in groups and all to- 
 gether ran wildly from house to house discussing either 
 some profound idealism or an obscure psychological com- 
 plex in one of their friends, that they did nothing at all 
 for long stretches of time, that what they did was done 
 spasmodically and frantically, that they hated and 
 dreaded Jews, and that they told each other comic stories 
 from Tschekov, poetic passages from Poushkin and 
 witticisms from Gogol. And he did all these things, but 
 never quite to his satisfaction, and he looked to Sophina 
 to give him the real Russian flavour. She did her best, 
 read Dostoievsky and Tolstoi, but even then was often 
 in difficulties until she invented an early life for herself 
 which solved the problem. 
 
 She told him, to his exquisite delight, that she of course 
 had not lived a normal life in Russia, as she had been 
 taken at a very early age into the school for the Imperial 
 Russian Ballet, where life was more strict and strenuous 
 even than that of a convent. She had been trained and 
 trained, beaten, half-starved, drilled, taught nothing but 
 dancing, dancing, dancing, from morning to night : noth- 
 ing else, nothing for her head, nothing for the soul, her 
 Russian soul. 
 
 No invention could have been luckier. Carline was 
 ecstatic. His Russian passion had begun with the Russian 
 Ballet : and had only been nurtured by the plentiful supply 
 of Russian novels which had been put forth in such abun- 
 dance because there is no copyright in them, and the
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 225 
 
 Russian author goes unpaid: the Russian alliance had 
 brought it to its fever heat, and that vast country which 
 to most Englishmen remained an enigma became to Car- 
 line a definitely Holy Russia, the place from which a 
 new religion would come, the great power which would 
 save England from devouring Germany : the steam-roller. 
 The war had made him take Russia more seriously than 
 was in his capacity, and it was an intense relief to him 
 when Sophina revealed her connection with the Russian 
 Ballet. He could then slip back into the years before this 
 war, and abandon the strained intensity which had been 
 forced upon him by the removal of all the delightful 
 institutions that had existed for his amusement. He 
 would sigh and say : 
 
 " Oh, if they were only here now! I hate revues. I 
 loathe rag-time." 
 
 And for Sophina, too, it was a serious matter. She 
 had always hoped that somehow Ruth would be able to 
 help her to find her way to solid ground; but Ruth had 
 suddenly altered, had become reserved, guarded, almost 
 indifferent, and refused to accompany her to Mr. Cherry- 
 man's or Mr. Carline's flat. At first she took it as rather 
 a joke, and yet another proof of Carline's gullibility that 
 he swallowed her story of the Russian Ballet, but it soon 
 passed beyond that. . . . Cherryman had a pianola, and 
 he insisted on her dancing when they went there, for they 
 were, by his insistence, almost inseparable, and he treated 
 her almost as if she were what she had desired to be to 
 him. He bought her clothes, little trinkets, Russian, of 
 course, paid her bills, and as the price of food went up, 
 sent her parcels from Fortnum & Mason. 
 
 It was one night when she was dancing that the great 
 idea came to her.
 
 226 PINK ROSES 
 
 Why not? 
 
 The idea grew apace, took possession of her. Why 
 not? 
 
 Surely any fool could learn to dance as well as the 
 heavy-eyed women on the music-halls. Carline knew 
 everybody. All his friends were working for various 
 funds. She could begin by dancing to the soldiers, who 
 had to put up with what they could get. A wonderful 
 idea. She would do it. She would show that swine of a 
 Finberg, she would show her father that a Jewish girl 
 can make her way without her family and without being 
 given by a match-maker to a man who covets her and 
 her dowry. She would show them. Besides, she had 
 begun to enjoy dancing. When she was successful and 
 famous her father would forgive her. She knew that 
 he had made money since the war, and that, as so often 
 happened among the Jews, a rich friend had remembered 
 help given in his time of poverty. 
 
 She remained at the Ministry with Ruth, who was now 
 working entirely for Trenham and not at all in connection 
 with the rest of the department, and Ruth was always 
 willing to do her work for her while she went away. She 
 could find time then for lessons, and she practised early 
 in the morning and late at night, not only at dancing but 
 at the new personality she desired to assume. Sophina 
 Dolgorova : she found the name in a book and she began 
 in season and out to wear furs, for which Carline gladly 
 paid. The only thing that amazed her was that she had 
 not thought of it before. That was Finberg's fault, with 
 his nonsense about pictures and poetry. The stage was 
 the obvious thing for making money and conquering the 
 West End. Even if you could paint pictures and write 
 poetry, who cared? If you could sing or dance or act,
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 227 
 
 or even if you couldn't, you could appear at the Coliseum 
 before almost the whole of the West End packed into 
 one building. 
 
 Carline paid for her lessons, and when, after a few 
 weeks, she announced that she had recovered her form 
 ah ! but it was terrible to remember the tortures she had 
 undergone as a child he arranged a party in Cherry- 
 man's rooms, to which he invited Trenham, Ruth who 
 refused several poets, a few actresses, several ladies of 
 title and a number of young men in the Guards who had 
 not yet made up their minds what branch of the Army 
 best suited them, and had stayed in London changing 
 from one to the other. They had joined the Army in 
 peace-time, and could not get accustomed to the idea of 
 war, for they had never perceived the connection be- 
 tween the two. Cherryman invited more poets, several 
 ladies of title, a novelist who had written several books 
 about Russia in the Russian style, and, as an after- 
 thought, Trevor Mathew, all that was left of the brilliant 
 trio of pre-war days. 
 
 He wrote : 
 
 " My dear, of course it isn't a party. How could one 
 in such times? It is just to meet a remarkable Russian 
 dancer who is to appear for various charities. Do come, 
 Love. . . . The poems are having an enormous sale in 
 America." 
 
 Trevor, who had returned to London a few days be- 
 fore, decided to go. He wanted to ask Cherryman about 
 the man and the girl in the motor-car. He told Cora that 
 there were some old friends of his with whom he wished 
 to resume contact for various reasons, primarily because 
 they might be useful later on. Cora took that as a sign 
 of grace in him, and thought he meant that he would
 
 228 PINK ROSES 
 
 introduce them to Mr. Angel so as to give him the entree 
 he desired to good society. 
 
 " Very well, darling," she said. " I'll find things to do, 
 only don't be late." 
 
 " No. I won't be late. And by the way, Cora, my 
 people are getting restive. You mustn't mind if I go up 
 there for a few days." 
 
 "Oh! Must you?" 
 
 " It's only fair. I haven't been near them for months. 
 I've hardly written to them. They don't even know that 
 I've been ill." 
 
 " Very well," she said reluctantly. " I hate your being 
 out of my sight." 
 
 "Afraid?" 
 
 " No. Only time flies so. The year will soon be 
 up." 
 
 " Time enough to worry about that," he said, with a 
 sudden twinge at the bottom of his spine. Sooner or 
 later he would have to face his own world and give an 
 account of himself. How, if Cora would not let him? 
 She had changed greatly since his illness, loved him more, 
 claimed more, gave more. He was beginning to be a little 
 afraid, not so much of her as for her. Sometimes he 
 wished he could hate her a little, but he had never been 
 able to hate very well. 
 
 It was rather painful to him to go to Cherryman's flat. 
 So many times had he climbed those stairs with Hardman 
 and Peto in the days when they had run like frisky colts 
 through London. Even more painful was it when he 
 entered the room again, for it was exactly the same. 
 There still were the collected pictures, the collected 
 books, the collected people, and there still was Cherry- 
 man obviously thinking:
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 229 
 
 " How happy I am ! How happy I am ! What de- 
 lightful people." 
 
 And just as before Cherryman came towards him shift- 
 ing his shoulders and wagging his hindquarters, and 
 saying : 
 
 "Come in, my dear. ... Isn't this delightful? I'm 
 so happy, though my conscience is weary. Still Dol- 
 gorova is anxious to dance for charity. She is a pupil 
 of Karsavina's. ... I must introduce you." 
 
 The room was full of tobacco smoke, and it was too 
 brilliantly lit, so that it was difficult for a moment or two 
 to see people distinctly. Trevor found his hand gripped 
 and heard a voice saying: 
 
 " Hello, Trevor, old man ! It's an age since I saw you. 
 Where have you been ? " 
 
 " In London," said Trevor. 
 
 " Nonsense. You couldn't hide yourself in London. I 
 bet you've been to Mesopotamia or Egypt or America 
 with Northcliffe." 
 
 " No, no," said Trevor ; but the young Guardsman, a 
 friend of Peto's, insisted and decided in his own mind 
 that Trevor had been to America, and was being mys- 
 terious and important about it. 
 
 " When are they coming in ? Ah ! You won't say. 
 Well, it doesn't matter. We're all writing poetry now. 
 My brother does it, so do I. We've published a book. 
 It's frightfully easy. Isn't it queer that one should have 
 had such an awful respect for it, but, of course, we don't 
 rhyme nowadays." 
 
 Through the smoke Trevor saw the head of his 
 stranger of the motor-car on the Brighton road. He 
 turned away from his poet to Cherryman, and asked 
 excitedly :
 
 230 PINK ROSES 
 
 " Cherryman, who is that? " 
 
 " Oh ! That's Carline's chief, Trenham. Do you want 
 to know him ? " 
 
 " No," answered Trevor. " No, I don't want to know 
 him." 
 
 He was surprised at his own emphasis, but there was 
 no doubt about it. He did not want to know Trenham, 
 who, as it happened, was in a black mood, heartily, vio- 
 lently despising the people among whom he found him- 
 self. He had accepted because he thought Ruth would be 
 going, as Sophina was her friend. So he looked sourly 
 on, feeling that he was an old man, at the same time 
 thanking God for it if this was youth. That it was not. 
 He knew that. Ruth was youth, but nowhere could he 
 find anything like her. The only person in the room who 
 pleased him was Trevor, and of him he was blackly 
 jealous because he too was young, graceful, handsome, 
 easy, and had a forward look in his eyes. And suddenly 
 he too remembered. It was the young man of the motor- 
 car on the Brighton road, the huge, vulgar, silver-fitted 
 car in which sat the large, handsome, expressionless-look- 
 ing woman. That eased his jealousy and he thought : 
 "Some actor!" and had the satisfaction of dismissing 
 Trevor from his thoughts. Trevor, on the other hand, 
 could not stop staring at him, resenting his own dislike, 
 for Trenham stood out as a man of quality. However, he 
 was soon engaged in conversation, passing from person 
 to person, all of whom with a long face talked to him 
 about Harry Hardman's poems. At last he reached Mile. 
 Dolgorova, and with the memory of his Jews still power- 
 ful upon him he knew her at once for what she was. He 
 placed her mentally at once with Mr. Angel and Mr. 
 Ysnaga, and because of them felt for her an amused
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 231 
 
 tolerance, almost an affection which increased into a real 
 pleasure in her society when through her rather pretty 
 foreign accent came the unmistakable thick Yiddish accent 
 of Spital Square. (Trevor had heard a lot about that 
 from Mr. Angel.) 
 
 He began politely: 
 
 " We miss your ballets, Mile. Dolgorova. I thought 
 you were all in America. The Americans get the best of 
 everything nowadays. I suppose they can pay for it." 
 
 " Aw naw," said Sophina. " I stay be'ind. Which 
 Ministry are you in, Mr. Mathew? " 
 
 " I'm an invalid," said Trevor. " I have been spared. 
 You must find England quite like Russia now with every 
 one an official." 
 
 " Aw yaus," said Sophina. " Quait laike Russia, 
 quait," and she nodded vehemently. She was not very 
 comfortable with Trevor. He was not like Cafline and 
 Cherryman, and it was harder work keeping it up with 
 him, but in another sense she was easier with him because, 
 unlike the others, he observed and was interested in her 
 real personality underneath her affectation. This was 
 disconcerting, but she liked it. He was a challenge to 
 her. The rest, she knew, would be pleased and charmed 
 if a lead were given, as it would be by her patron. They 
 could not be critical because she was Russian. 
 
 General conversation went on interminably because 
 Cherryman was so convinced that everybody was happy 
 that he could not bring himself to interrupt, and Sophina 
 began to scowl and tap with her foot on the floor. She 
 looked daggers at the other women, who were listening 
 with bored politeness to the young men. Trevor, like 
 Trenham, had given it up after a while, and the two of 
 them, as chance would have it, stood apart in opposite
 
 232 PINK ROSES 
 
 corners, both glum and restive, yet neither daring to be 
 so impolite as to go before the evening's entertainment 
 had been given. At last Sophina went to Carline, and, 
 in the extraordinary jargon which she had invented for 
 his benefit, urged him to go to the pianola. Every one 
 heard the word pianola with relief, and one end of the 
 room was soon cleared. It was the end in which Trevor 
 and Trenham were standing in opposite corners, and they 
 gave it a certain theatrical form, the more so as they 
 were unconscious of having been drawn into the show. 
 Sophina, however, had perceived it at once and began to 
 dance almost as soon as the first notes of Carnival were 
 sounded, so as to give them no time to move. 
 
 " Ah ! Carnival ! " sighed some one in the audience 
 settling down to remembered delights. 
 
 Sophina looked remarkably well. She had cut her hair 
 short and it stood out in a bristling brush without orna- 
 ment of any kind, and she was dressed in a modified ballet 
 costume, the skirt of which came below her knees. She 
 was not of a very pronounced Jewish type and might at 
 a pinch have passed for an Italian or a Caucasian. Her 
 Carnival was not bad, but a Columbine without a Harle- 
 quin is a little banal, and she did better with a trepak, in 
 which her racial animal spirits could let themselves go. 
 Everybody applauded, and she was wise enough to leave 
 it at that. She was pressed by one or two of the women 
 to dance at charity performances in which they were in- 
 terested, and that was what she wanted. 
 
 Trevor thought the time had come to make his escape, 
 but he was hemmed in, and to avoid being drawn into 
 conversation again took up a little brown book with a 
 futurist cover. It was called London Poems, by Sieg- 
 mund Finberg, and he found himself mildly interested in
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 233 
 
 them, chiefly because they brought back to him the days 
 before the war when young men had screamed cacopho- 
 nously for violence. Well, they had got it. How remote 
 all that seemed! And how appropriate to this evening 
 were the poems of S. Finberg. The whole evening struck 
 him as a pathetic attempt to re-capture the life of pre- 
 war days which could never come again. What was 
 coming? Life could not stop still at Mr. Angel and Mr. 
 Ysnaga and Cora and the patriotic Henry Hobday. 
 
 Sophina, who for Carline's benefit had every now and 
 then to play Dostoievskyish tricks, came up to him and 
 snatched the book out of his hand and stood staring at 
 him in defiance to create one of those Russian psycho- 
 logical moments for which Carline's soul craved, and it 
 was more psychological than she had reckoned, for her 
 eyes fell on the hated word Finberg, and she was for a 
 second no longer the spoiled and petted dancer Dolgorova, 
 but the embittered and vindictive little Jewess. Trevor 
 saw that, but no one else did, though everybody felt that 
 things were somehow awkward. She dropped the book, 
 and Trevor picked it up with a graceful bow and a kindly 
 smile, and said : 
 
 " It is very bad poetry, Mademoiselle. Thank you." 
 
 " I'd like a drink," said Mile. Dolgorova in unmistak- 
 able Whitechapel, and this also Trevor was the only one 
 to notice, for Carline and Cherryman had begun to 
 exclaim: "Isn't she wonderful? Ah! the Russians are 
 unspoilt! They live! Such passion! Something bar- 
 baric and yet profoundly religious in the Russian soul ! " 
 And these phrases were echoed on every side. 
 
 Trenham was more struck with the ease with which 
 Trevor turned the situation without humiliating Sophina, 
 and he had to alter his mind as to Trevor's being an actor,
 
 234 PINK ROSES 
 
 but his jealousy remained and even increased. He felt 
 resentfully that life had always been easy for the young 
 man. He was used to London, could move happily in it, 
 select instinctively, and had not to grope for what he 
 wanted. And watching Trevor, wondering about him, 
 relishing his qualities, his clean-cut face and figure, and 
 unmistakable charm, Trenham suffered agonies as his 
 passion for Ruth Hobday broke through the enchantment 
 in which it had hitherto lived and set him reeling as it 
 poured through him and demanded contact with realities 
 and to assert itself in terms of society and humanity. It 
 was so sudden, so overpowering that Trenham's jaw 
 dropped and his hand went to his throat, and he felt 
 stifled in that atmosphere, in which there was no one 
 who could feel, who could understand what was hap- 
 pening to him, except Trevor. Against his will Trenham 
 had to walk towards Trevor, who moved just at that 
 moment, and escaped. Without saying good-night to his 
 host or a word to Sophina, Trenham plunged after 
 him. 
 
 " My chief looks out of sorts to-night," said Carline. 
 " Extraordinary how provincial some of these big men 
 are. They can't get used to London." 
 
 " You see," said Cherryman, " they are used to being 
 cock of -the walk." 
 
 Trembling with an unreasonable rage, Trenham walked 
 after Trevor, who had turned down to the Embankment 
 Gate. 
 
 " Excuse me, sir," he said, as he caught him up at the 
 Gate, " didn't I have the pleasure of meeting you on the 
 Brighton road ? " 
 
 " Good-night, gentlemen," said the gate-keeper, touch- 
 ing his hat.
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 235 
 
 Trevor stopped, and wondered why the question should 
 be put so emotionally. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " I was glad we were able to help 
 you out of your difficulty." 
 
 44 My name is Trenham. I'm from the North, where 
 we are a little more outspoken than you are here in 
 London." 
 
 " So am I," answered Trevor. " I'm only here to read 
 Law." 
 
 "Oh! I thought " 
 
 "What?" 
 
 " I thought you were older." 
 
 " I have just been ill," said Trevor. " That may ac- 
 count for it. I was staying down at Brighton after a 
 queer illness. I mean, I wasn't very ill, but the war got 
 hold of me and did what it liked with me. It was every 
 bit as bad as being recruited and swept out to France. 
 I mean being left lying to find out some meaning in it 
 all. It was like being squeezed slowly to death. . . . 
 One isn't left out of it, you know. That is impos- 
 sible." 
 
 " I don't know," said Trenham. " There are thousands 
 who are. Look at my Ministry. It pays for the fine 
 dinners they would have had if if we hadn't all lost our 
 heads. I confess I don't think about the war. I suppose 
 in a way it has always been my job, getting ready for it 
 and seeing it through. I'm paid to find out ways of 
 killing people. I don't turn squeamish when the people 
 who pay me begin to do it." 
 
 " I don't think about it either now," said Trevor, who 
 had begun to like the big, gloomy man striding along by 
 his side. " I still feel it as an enemy that may get me 
 down at any moment. One isn't romantic any more, and
 
 236 PINK ROSES 
 
 what I feel is that the danger to be guarded against is 
 not the killing of people there are plenty left but the 
 moral suppuration which is poisoning the lives of those 
 who remain. I don't know what to do about it. I don't 
 know even that anything can be done." 
 
 " You're not like anybody else I've ever met," said 
 Trenham, and his heart cried : " Except one." 
 
 " Oh, I don't know about that," said Trevor. " What 
 would you do if you were offered the run of a million, 
 and a park, and a newspaper, and a theatre? ..." 
 
 "If I were young," said Trenham "if I were 
 young ..." 
 
 But he lost the thread of his thought, so violent was 
 his jealousy of Trevor. To be young! To be like Ruth! 
 To have that quality of conscious courage which was like 
 a new thing come into the world. . . . Ah ! that was it. 
 Conscious courage! If he had had it what would he not 
 have done? He would never have been entrapped in 
 the vast commercial organization which had gutted his 
 brain and thwarted his passion for pure science, never 
 have been caught in marriage, never have let his life 
 trickle away up North. . . . If he were young now to 
 face life with Ruth, if he were like this boy by his side 
 who talked so easily of profundities, so unconsciously of 
 truth, of things that had always been true, if only there 
 had been time to recognize them. Time ! Time ... If 
 only Time would stop now! If only . . . But Trenham 
 was not one to let himself be swept away by the desire 
 for the miraculous. 
 
 "A million?" 
 
 " Yes," said Trevor. " All made since the war by a 
 man whose profession used to be pawning clothes. He 
 makes them now."
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 237 
 
 "A million?" asked Trenham again. "Well, these 
 are surprising times. To do as you like? " 
 
 " That's my trouble," said Trevor. " He is a Jew. I 
 should be expected to make it earn a profit. On the other 
 hand a Christian would not have made the offer. As 
 far as I can make out my Jew wants to make a splash, 
 but doesn't know how to, because he can't understand 
 ideas or idealism. I should like to reform the newspapers, 
 organize the book-market, force people to read just as 
 they have been forced into the Army, bring the theatre 
 up to date, and create all kinds of means by which the 
 young could say what they liked. I would advertise good 
 things just as the idiots who now run the bureaucracy 
 advertise bad things. . . . It is all very chaotic at present 
 in me, but I know the direction in which I should 
 move. But it's an odd thing to happen to a man, isn't 
 it?" 
 
 " It is what every young man dreams," answered 
 Trenham. "If it happened I can understand that one 
 would feel stunned. If it had happened to me when I 
 was young I think I should have run away from it. I'm 
 sure I should. The responsibility is too great except for 
 a Jew or a fool who has no idea of what money might 
 do." 
 
 They had walked along nearly to Westminster. Tren- 
 ham thought of the night when Ruth had first come to 
 see him. So much had happened since then to alter his 
 life, to sift it and leave him with what was of worth and 
 living enough to be handed on. . . . He wagged his 
 head towards the Houses of Parliament, and said: 
 
 " Any thought of entering that place with your mil- 
 lion?" 
 
 " It isn't mine yet," replied Trevor, " but I think not.
 
 238 PINK ROSES 
 
 It is out of date. I should want to invent new ways of 
 doing things to stop the infernal reiteration that is going 
 on. It makes one want to go to the Front to find quiet. 
 Don't you think there is something in that ? All the half- 
 dozen ways of looking at things have been repeated so 
 often that at last they have all become exactly alike. 
 That is what I would like to stop. I sometimes think 
 that if one man really said what he thought and was 
 correctly reported by the newspapers everything would 
 become different. But no one can, because it has become 
 impossible for anybody to think anything but what was 
 thought a generation ago. That has been so stamped on 
 our minds by repetition that we simply cannot understand 
 each other if we try to talk individually and like men. 
 . . . It is years since I talked to anybody as much as 
 I have to you to-night; I used to get angry about it, 
 but now it only strikes me as comic. People have got 
 into uniform, and they accept that as the answer to all 
 their problems. . . . I've been too ill, but I've bought a 
 dog instead. One is forced to do something to avoid 
 thinking." 
 
 They stopped under the Abbey. Trenham had been 
 so interested in Trevor's eager talk that he had thought 
 of inviting him to North Street to continue, but as they 
 crossed Palace Yard Trevor had waved his hand towards 
 Whitehall and said : 
 
 " That was where I saw you first. I was with Cherry- 
 man. ... I find more and more that life is made up 
 of little things acutely realized." 
 
 Trenham felt uneasy. The keen and living subtlety in 
 Trevor was a thing to which he could not respond though 
 he could recognize and appreciate it, and he was forced 
 into asking himself whether these young people had not
 
 THE RUSSIAN FLAVOUR 239 
 
 developed new powers with which to approach and ex- 
 plore life. He had often had a suspicion that this might 
 have happened, but in Trevor there was no denying it. 
 The only question that remained was, how far was he 
 typical ? . . . Ruth and Leslie were the same to a certain 
 extent, young people working through their own intuition 
 and bringing to the surface qualities that were almost un- 
 recognizable. And if that were so, if the young had new 
 powers, and if they had in them the desire to make of 
 life a new thing, how appalling was the responsibility of 
 the older generation in forcing upon them a stereotyped 
 course of conduct, and a fearful undertaking dominated 
 by out-worn catch-words, phrases, dusty remnants of 
 ideas, and the hysterical self -hypnotism of demagogues. 
 . . . But if that was so why did the young so patiently 
 accept it? Why did they just shrug at the ruin of a con- 
 tinent? What faith had they to sustain them and to 
 make them so indifferently allow such misery? . . . 
 Trenham felt sure that Trevor could give some sort of 
 answer to these questions, but because of Ruth he could 
 not bear to ask him more. He had found in Trevor the 
 clue to more than one mystery in Ruth, and he was 
 afraid. 
 
 They stood for some time rather awkwardly, both 
 puzzled and a little hurt by the barrier that stood be- 
 tween them because they respected each other, and had 
 both gained a great deal. 
 
 " I've enjoyed talking to you," said Trevor, " because 
 you don't belong to a mob big or little." He laughed. 
 "You were the only man in that room besides myself, 
 who smelt the Jewess in Carline's Russian." 
 
 Trenham gave a deep chuckle as he answered : 
 
 " Carline is my secretary and Miss Lipinsky works at
 
 2 4 o PINK ROSES 
 
 my Ministry. I hope I haven't brought you too far out 
 of your way." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Trevor. " I live in Shaftesbury Ave- 
 nue. It's convenient." 
 
 Trenham's thoughts floated to the woman in the silver- 
 fitted car. Shaftesbury Avenue placed her, but only 
 added to his perplexity about this modern young man. 
 It was scarcely credible to him that Trevor could be 
 enamoured of such a woman, but because he wanted to 
 believe it he believed it, knowing at the same time he 
 was doing a thing of which his young friend was in- 
 capable. Watching him walk away he thought : 
 
 " He walks differently too. He walks as though he 
 were beautifully dressed, and as though he were certain 
 of his quality, and as though he were certain that cir- 
 cumstances will adapt themselves to him. . . . But that 
 is not new. . . . Damn it all. I've caught his habit 
 of thinking about people and trying to find out what 
 they really are." 
 
 And Trevor too had been moved by this encounter, 
 which had removed the last vestiges of his old habit of 
 thinking that what he did in London did not matter, as 
 his real life was waiting for him up North, a position 
 into which he could easily slide, family interests and ties 
 which would quickly absorb him and make him " safe." 
 He was recognizing slowly that this was the very last 
 thing he wished to be, and his insight had seen in Tren- 
 ham the type of successful Northerner he might become, 
 superior certainly, but still provincial and awkward, in- 
 tolerant and reserved and suspicious. . . . With Cora he 
 had fallen into the habit of living for the moment and of 
 not thinking of the rest of his year, but Trenham, redolent 
 of the North, had brought him back to it with a crash.
 
 XVII 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 
 
 AFTER the visit to Brighton it was some weeks before 
 Trevor returned to the office. He could not bring him- 
 self to make the customary journey, because the office 
 seemed to him a part of a life that was dead: not only 
 his personal life, but everything, everything that sur- 
 rounded it, domestic habits first and strongest of all, then 
 education, then religion. All had become so remote that 
 it was clear and distinct, and unreal, so that he gazed at 
 it with an affectionate tolerance, and thought of it as an 
 old man thinks of his childhood, forgetting suffering and 
 pain and remembering moments of eagerness, and all the 
 more easily because it was so certainly ended that nothing 
 out of it could arise and insist on being dealt with. 
 Trevor had exactly that comfortable sense about it, that 
 the old world in which he had been so fortunately placed, 
 was dead. Nothing remained of it, not even its ideas, 
 which had been so frayed and so weakly that they could 
 not keep pace with the practice of life, so that for a 
 time men had to live horribly without ideas. . . . People 
 went on prattling about Socialism and Fabianism and 
 bureaucracy and democracy, but what they said was con- 
 tinually mocked by events. Military experts, financial 
 experts, social experts, all prognosticated and all were 
 wrong, ironically and laughably, and the moulding of 
 opinion remained in their hands, and simple people like 
 Mr. Henry Hobday believed them all invariably from 
 
 241
 
 242 PINK ROSES 
 
 day to day. Therefore Trevor, who knew that the world 
 according to Henry Hobday was dead, could not bear to 
 go near him or any of his works. The only thing that 
 attracted him was the big African case, through which he 
 hoped to find out more of the early life and adventures 
 of Mr. Ysnaga, and it was not until he remembered how 
 disconcerted that remarkable individual had been at the 
 mention of Mr. Barnes of Hobdays that at length he was 
 able to conquer his aversion and resume his activities as 
 an articled clerk, for which, in his heart, he knew that 
 he was too grown-up. . . . That was it ! He had grown 
 up, and the world of Hobday had been, and was still, a 
 world of credulous children. All his intolerance van- 
 ished, and he was able to walk as usual down to Charing 
 Cross Station, buy a Daily News and a Daily Mail, and 
 travel by District train to the Mansion House, from which 
 he had only three minutes' walk. 
 
 The clerks smiled as he entered the outer office, and 
 the cashier said : 
 
 " Good morning, Mr. Mathew. Well, you are a 
 stranger ! " 
 
 " I feel it," answered Trevor, with his pleasant smile, 
 which made the new office-boy dart to open the door for 
 him. 
 
 " Thank you," said Trevor, turning into the dark 
 passage leading to the room dedicated to the partners. 
 He almost bumped into Mr. Henry Hobday, and said : 
 
 " O ! I beg your pardon. Good morning." 
 
 " Trevor! " said the head of the firm in a deep, severe 
 voice. " Trevor ! I wish to see you in my room at once. 
 I shall be back in a moment." 
 
 Trevor went through the door on which was written 
 " Mr. Henry Hobday," and waited, remembering the
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 243 
 
 alarm with which on previous occasions he had stood 
 there. How foolish! There was nothing to be alarmed 
 about. The old man simply did not know what he was 
 talking about, and was as ignorant of life as a schoolboy 
 or a monk, but it was precisely that which had been so 
 terrifying. Such dictatorial confidence had come out of 
 that bland imperturbable ignorance which not even the 
 war had shaken. Mr. Henry Hobday was a success in a 
 world of failures, now for years dedicated to failure in a 
 calamity so vast that it almost dubbed the universe a 
 failure, but served, after all, to emphasize the success of 
 Mr. Henry Hobday. . . . That had been terrifying to 
 Trevor, but it was so no longer. He was in a position 
 of experience and suffering to confirm what he had said 
 to Mr. Henry Hobday on a memorable occasion. 
 
 The head of the firm came slowly, treading the dark 
 passage ; every step heavily underlined a painful thought, 
 a carefully pondered censorious phrase; he entered the 
 room with the deliberation of a captive hippopotamus, 
 sinking into its tank, and Trevor thought of himself as 
 a sodden bun floating on the water which would presently 
 be swallowed down with several gallons of the greenish 
 liquid which was the monster's native element. Mr. 
 Hobday sank more and more slowly into his chair until 
 his hindquarters imperceptibly and almost voluptuously 
 touched and sank into the Russian leather of his arm- 
 chair. Then in a rumbling, sonorous voice he said : 
 
 " Trevor, I have received a most unhappy letter from 
 your mother, and I wish to speak to you as man to man." 
 
 " Wait a moment," said Trevor. " Why should my 
 mother write to you? " 
 
 Mr. Hobday looked amazed. This conversation was 
 being directed, very seriously, by himself. He was not
 
 244 PWK ROSES 
 
 prepared for questions. He just raised his eyebrows with 
 the expression which had put the fear of God and the 
 firm into a generation of clerks, and as Trevor was silent 
 he assumed that it had had the desired effect, whereas 
 Trevor was merely taking a detached interest in the work- 
 ing of the mechanism of this phenomenon which he had 
 once almost revered. What absorbed him was the ob- 
 vious fact that Mr. Hobday was acting purely out of habit 
 and without any personal feeling whatever. His mouth 
 opened mechanically, words came out of it like tin-cans 
 out of a machine. They clattered almost metallically. 
 He said : 
 
 " Trevor, only my regard for your father and mother 
 makes me speak. I know, we all realize that times are 
 not normal, and if you were in the Army of course no one 
 would say a word. . . . I refer to the manner of living 
 you have chosen. ... I should have thought that as you 
 had been spared you would have set an example to those 
 who, after a victorious conclusion of the war, will 
 return." 
 
 " That," thought Trevor, with a twinkle in his eye, " is 
 precisely what I want to do." 
 
 " Your private life is, of course, your own. ... I am 
 speaking for your father's sake. Let me come to the 
 point. You are living openly, flagrantly, with a notorious 
 woman of the town. I have heard my clerks sniggering 
 about it. ... " 
 
 " I happen to live," said Trevor acidly, " in the flat 
 opposite a very charming woman who has been extremely 
 good to me during my illness." 
 
 " That is your account of it." 
 
 " Certainly. That is all that anybody is entitled to 
 know or to discuss about me."
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 245 
 
 Mr. Hobday blinked. This was not in order. It was 
 not the proper move in response to his. 
 
 " But what is one to think ? " he asked. 
 
 " Why think anything? It is of no interest to any one 
 but myself." 
 
 " And your mother . . . ? " 
 
 " Please keep my mother out of it, Mr. Hobday." 
 
 " But I am speaking on her behalf ..." 
 
 " I decline to hear you." 
 
 Mr. Hobday rose slowly from his Russian leather chair 
 and laid a fat hand on his desk, and leaned ponderously 
 forward : 
 
 " Trevor, I implore you to abandon this unseemly 
 levity. I can understand a young man's temptations. 
 But there is a vast difference between yielding to tempta- 
 tion and courting ruin. . . . Once let a woman of that 
 class get a hold on you and she will never let you gc. 
 . . . And I implore you to think of the example. You're 
 a young man with responsibilities, with wealth, position, 
 an honoured name. We are living in times when, owing 
 to a variety of causes, the lower classes are showing signs 
 of being extremely restive. What will they want to do if 
 young men with your privileges set them such an 
 example ? . . . I ask you, is this is this a proper prepa- 
 ration for the life you will have to live? " 
 
 " Yes," said Trevor, with his frankest and most boyish 
 smile. " I assure you, Mr. Hobday, I loathe visionaries 
 as vehemently as you. And if I were vicious I should 
 necessarily be hypocritical. I am neither the one nor the 
 other, and 1 decline to discuss the matter any further." 
 
 Again Mr. Hobday sank slowly into his chair, and 
 again his hindquarters caressed the familiar Russian 
 leather. On the whole he felt safer sitting down. He
 
 246 PINK ROSES 
 
 thought for some moments, then slowly opened the 
 drawer and took out a letter. 
 
 "I am deeply pained," he said. "To justify myself 
 I must ask you if you would mind reading your mother's 
 letter. I am a father myself, or perhaps I should not 
 have been so moved." 
 
 " Very well," said Trevor, taking the letter as it was 
 held out to him. 
 
 DEAR MR. HOBDAY, 
 
 Your news of Trevor, which my husband has given me, has 
 pained me more than I can say. We had not heard from him for 
 some time, and were naturally anxious, and your letter came like a 
 bomb-shell. We did not even know he had been ill, though his 
 trustee had given my husband a hint that he was spending a great 
 deal of money. I always dreaded his going to London. There are 
 such dangerous people there. 1 know Trevor would never marry 
 without bringing his bride to me, and that he has said nothing about 
 it is the most reassuring thing left to me in my grief. I know you 
 will be kind to him, dear Mr. Hobday, and help him in every way. 
 We are glad he has been with you these years, and are looking 
 forward to his return, though it goes to my heart when I think of 
 the other mothers whose sons, good sons and bad sons, and the bad 
 sons are perhaps the dearest, have gone and will not return. 
 
 Yours sincerely, 
 
 ELINOR MATHEW. 
 
 Trevor gulped and tears came to his eyes. What was 
 the old fool talking about? There was nothing to be said, 
 and how dared he attempt to interfere between mother 
 and son? For Trevor the one clear meaning of the letter 
 was that his mother trusted him. She had had the tale 
 of his doings twisted, distorted, and made horrible by this 
 old man, and she trusted him, and that the old man could 
 not see because he trusted nothing and nobody, and he 
 offered this letter, so vital, so important to Trevor as jus- 
 tification for his own impertinence, but because of the 
 letter Trevor could not be angry with him. The man, 
 after the fashion of his kind, had simply judged without
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 247 
 
 knowledge of the persons and the circumstances. He 
 misunderstood Trevor's silence, and thought it safe to 
 observe : 
 
 " I could not feel it more if you were my own 
 son." 
 
 44 1 have nothing to say," replied Trevor, reluctantly 
 handing the letter back. He longed to keep it, so precious 
 was its humanity to him in its healing, vivifying power. 
 
 " Why," he thought, " that is just what we are all after. 
 Trust!" 
 
 " Come, come," said the head of the firm, assuming a 
 man-of-the-world manner. " As one man to another, 
 don't you see that certain rules of conduct must be 
 observed. Of course I understand what London is like, 
 especially in wartime. No doubt the lady is charming, 
 but why let anybody know ? . . . " 
 
 "If you don't mind, we won't discuss it any more. 
 Thank you for letting me see my mother's letter. If I 
 had done anything of which I should be ashamed to tell 
 her, you could rest assured that I should not be here in 
 your office. ... If you don't mind, we won't talk about 
 it any more." 
 
 " I'm only asking you to see reason," protested Mr. 
 Henry Hobday, now not at all comfortable in his role of 
 man of the world, to which Trevor had made no response 
 whatever. " A scrape is a scrape, and every young man 
 has to be warned some time or other. . . . Come, come, 
 you've had your good time, suppose you think of others 
 for once in a way. Once you get mixed up with people 
 of that kind there is no knowing where it may end. . . . 
 Suppose this lady should insist on your marrying her? " 
 
 " I might do worse," said Trevor, out of pure mischief. 
 The idea of marriage had never entered his head.
 
 248 PINK ROSES 
 
 Mr. Hobday bounced out of his chair. 
 
 " You fool ! You young fool ! Can't you see the risks 
 you are running, not to speak of the opportunities you 
 are throwing away. If I were in your position, with the 
 luck to be left at home while other young men were 
 facing death and terror abroad, I should be making a full 
 use of my time, getting to know people, working out my 
 career, making myself useful to people in the swim . . ." 
 
 " It may interest you to know," said Trevor, " that I 
 have already been offered the use of a million to do as 
 I like." 
 
 " A . . .a million! " Mr. Hobday's jaw dropped. 
 
 " It is not quite a million yet, but it will be if the war 
 goes on another year. I am to help to spend it." 
 
 Mr. Hobday sank into his chair again, and after a long 
 silence he said archly : 
 
 " Ah ! SkO you haven't been wasting your time, then. 
 Quite a romance! " His eyes twitched as he thought of 
 the letter he had written to Trevor's mother. " Heigh ! 
 So you are out for the big game for all your quietness, 
 and there was something in the brilliant reports we had 
 of you at Cambridge. Of course we can't give dinner- 
 parties nowadays. ..." 
 
 (" Thank God," thought Trevor, who had suffered at 
 the Hobday dinners.) 
 
 "... but if you are free any evening." 
 
 " I'm afraid I am not often free," said Trevor. " And, 
 if you don't mind, I want to write to my mother, and it 
 would help me if you would let me have her letter to 
 you." 
 
 " Oh, certainly, certainly," said Mr. Hobday, staring 
 in credulous amazement at this mysterious young man 
 who had plunged into London life and come up with a
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 249 
 
 million in his hands, and he handed him his precious 
 letter. Trevor put it in his pocket-book and said : 
 
 "Is that all?" 
 
 " It is a load off my mind." 
 
 Trevor smiled. If he had a million he might be re- 
 sponsible for all the tenants of the flats in Shaftesbury 
 Avenue, and he would be approved. The word had been 
 enough to relax the stern morality which had confronted 
 him on his entry to the sanctum that derived its air of 
 stolidity from the Law Reports which lined its walls. 
 
 " I have been hasty," said Mr. Hobday, who by now 
 was beginning to be angry with himself. " I I was only 
 anxious about your health. Do be careful of yourself, 
 dear boy. Your frankness has put my mind at rest, 
 entirely at rest. It has been my unfortunate experience 
 that ah! people so rarely tell the truth about them- 
 selves." 
 
 With his mother's letter in his pocket-book, Trevor 
 could not feel angry. He was elated and buoyed up. 
 
 " That's all right," he said. " We're growing up, you 
 know." 
 
 "Eh?" 
 
 Trevor repeated his remark, but its meaning did not 
 penetrate Mr. Hobday's mind, which was reeling under 
 the idea of a million pounds. He held out his fat hand, 
 and Trevor shook it, though its contact was unpleasant 
 to him, for it felt like a bag of flour. 
 
 Still elated he strolled through to see Mr. Barnes to 
 find out how the African case was getting on, and in the 
 outer office he was amazed to see the girl in the grey dress 
 whom he had seen twice before, once in the motor on the 
 Brighton road, and once at the corner of Whitehall. She 
 was in some distress, and she winced almost imperceptibly
 
 25Q PINK ROSES 
 
 when she saw him, for she recognized him without being 
 able to place him, though she remembered him as the 
 young man she had met twice before, the young man 
 whom, in the old Highgate days, she had taken as a model 
 for Leslie. He stopped involuntarily to stare at her, gave 
 her a bow of silent apology, and passed on. . . . She, too, 
 would be like his mother. She, too, would trust abso- 
 lutely. 
 
 As he reached Mr. Barnes' room, he remembered Tren- 
 ham Trenham and that girl ! Cora had said : " Some 
 City man and his typist ! " Impossible ! . . . Mr. Barnes 
 was out. The heap of papers in the room had grown 
 higher. Those on which he had been working had not 
 been touched and were thick with dust. . . . Trenham 
 and the girl in grey! . . . He sat down, dusted his 
 papers, but was restless, wanted to smoke, and remem- 
 bered that he had left his pipe in Mr. Robert's 
 room. 
 
 As he passed through the general office he asked the 
 cashier who the young lady was. The clerks tittered and 
 winked at each other, for Trevor's newly acquired repu- 
 tation was a delight to them. 
 
 " That's Mr. Hobday's niece," said the cashier. 
 " Daughter of his mad brother Charles, who refused to 
 enter the firm. She used to come here fairly often before 
 the war, but she hasn't been lately." 
 
 " Thanks," said Trevor, and as he passed through the 
 door leading to the partners' rooms there was an audible 
 titter. He went into his own room, got his pipe, and was 
 just coming out when through the half-open door of Mr. 
 Hobday's room he heard the rumbling voice saying in 
 the tone of a political speech : 
 
 " I am proud of the boy! Proud of him! And I am
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 251 
 
 astonished that you, his sister, should come here with such 
 a request." 
 
 " But he is only just seventeen." 
 
 Ruth's voice! Trevor was thrilled by it, glad of it. 
 For the pleasure of hearing it he could not move away, 
 but stood in his doorway absently filling his pipe. 
 
 " He is only seventeen ! He is not old enough to under- 
 stand ! He only went, I am sure of it because he was 
 so wretched at school. . . . He is a clever boy, and so 
 sensitive, too sensitive. He complained that all the spirit 
 had gone out of the school. There were only old men 
 and parsons left. All the young masters had gone. . . . 
 I tell you, uncle, he feels more than ordinary people. 
 Young people are more sensitive nowadays, and he looks 
 so young. They ought never to have taken him." 
 
 " Come, come," replied Mr. Hobday. " Suppose all the 
 sisters and wives and mothers had behaved like this in 
 the old voluntary days, where should we be now? Of 
 course he wants to fight for his beautiful sister. You 
 should be proud of him. I am. I am as proud of him 
 as if he were a son of my own. ... I will see that he 
 has money and cigarettes. ..." 
 
 " Be quiet," said Ruth. " You don't know what you're 
 talking about. I want you to help me to get him out. 
 They have no right to keep him. ... It was a sudden 
 impulse. I know he is horrified now at what he has done. 
 It was something! But you don't understand, you don't 
 understand ..." v 
 
 " If he is over-sensitive," said Mr. Hobday, " the Army 
 will make a man of him, and the sooner the better, as he 
 will have to make his own way in the world." 
 
 " I must tell you," said Ruth, in a cool, deliberate tone. 
 " There was a terrible quarrel at home. Leslie has never
 
 2=;2 PINK ROSES 
 
 understood father, and father is a little difficult. But 
 for that you are to blame ..." 
 
 " I ? " 
 
 Trevor slipped back into his own room and stood 
 quivering. He could still hear their voices, but not what 
 they said : his booming and foolish ; hers quiet, strong, 
 purposeful. 
 
 Ruth said : 
 
 "Yes; you should either have helped father properly 
 to de what he wanted to do, or you should have left him 
 alone. You wanted to humiliate him and you did, but 
 you humiliated us too. What had we done to you, we 
 children? . . . You helped to make us poor, and then 
 were ashamed of us because we were poor. You had 
 provided for us! Two hundred a year and a parcel of 
 old clothes at Christmas! You wanted to break my 
 father's dreams and myjtnother's pride. You did neither, 
 and you never had the feeling to think how lonely and 
 helpless we were. . . . And that told on us. The weight 
 of it fell on me first and then on Leslie. ... It has 
 made him what you would call queer, sudden unac- 
 countable plunges, strange fantastic moods, and a terrible, 
 terrible knowledge. . . . You never helped us then. You 
 won't help us now, and so I must tell you what you are 
 and what you have done ! " 
 
 Her uncle smfled deprecatingly : 
 
 " You are still only a child." 
 
 " I have worked for my living since I was sixteen. I 
 am a woman now, and women are beginning to under- 
 stand what it means to trust to old men who have for- 
 gotten how youth can suffer ..." 
 
 Mr. Hobday's smile widened, and he said very indul- 
 gently :
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 253 
 
 " In wartime we are none of us quite normal. I can 
 well understand a high-spirited boy not willing to wait 
 until he is a conscript. There is stuff in the Hobdays. 
 You should be proud of him, my dear. He is quite safe 
 until he is nineteen, and the life will be the making of 
 him. Indeed, I am so pleased with him that I am pre- 
 pared when the war is over to send him to Oxford or 
 Cambridge, and to treat him as if he were my own son, 
 and to give him in this office the place that would have 
 been his by right if his father had entered the firm." He 
 beamed with pleasure in his own generosity, and Ruth, 
 acknowledging it as such, was put to some confusion for 
 a moment or two. 
 
 " That is beside the point," she said. " Leslie isn't an 
 ordinary boy. It is very good of you to offer all that, 
 but I don't think any of the young people want to accept 
 life ready-made any more. ... I have been thinking it 
 over, and I believe that it must have been in my father's 
 mind too when he refused to do as his father wished, and 
 it is stronger and more articulate in us. I simply don't 
 want Leslie to waste the next few years." 
 
 " Waste ! " exclaimed Mr. Hobday. " Waste ! In the 
 service of his country ! He is in khaki ! " 
 
 Ruth saw that her uncle's prejudice was impenetrable. 
 It had been drilled into his mind that the sole duty of the 
 young was to accept regimentation in silence, and Ruth's 
 protest, mild though it was, had offended him almost as 
 a breach of manners. His Morning Post that day had 
 told him to believe that every fit man must be forced out 
 of civilian employment, and for the day that was his 
 thought on the affairs of the nation. It had been a source 
 of some uneasiness to him that he had no son to give to 
 the cause, and he was very pleased, in his strangely-
 
 254 PINK ROSES 
 
 working heart, that his nephew had so pluckily made the 
 great sacrifice before it was asked of him. He said 
 kindly : 
 
 " I know it must be in some ways a disappointment to 
 you, Ruth. You have been very brave and you have done 
 very well, but we must all suffer if we are to maintain 
 our supremacy." 
 
 Ruth was beginning to feel irritable at his constantly 
 falling back on newspaper phrases. Life had become very 
 real to her lately, and rather difficult, and Leslie's sudden 
 departure had made her feel very acutely that the future 
 was in danger, that nothing was being done to safeguard 
 it, and that the younger generation, gagged and unable 
 to utter a word, had been betrayed. Their hopes and 
 dreams were at the mercy of innumerable little tyrants 
 of whom Mr. Henry Hobday was the type most near to 
 her and most powerful in her own affairs. It was some- 
 how degrading to receive a favour, even justice, at his 
 hands. 
 
 " Very well, uncle," she said. " That is the last thing 
 I shall ask of you. ... I have had to be obliged to you 
 all my life. I used to believe the fault was my father's, 
 but don't let us open old quarrels." 
 
 She opened her purse and took out the half-yearly 
 cheque made out to her father and handed it over the 
 wide desk. Mr. Hobday took it up suspiciously, glanced 
 at it, and gasped. 
 
 " There has never been an opportunity before," she 
 said. " In time the whole amount shall be refunded. 
 . . . Good morning." 
 
 Mr. Hobday could find not a word to say. Really! 
 What was the world coming to ? . . . The whole morn- 
 ing had been wasted in dealing with rebellious young-
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 255 
 
 sters. With extraordinary rapidity thoughts flooded 
 through his slow brain: A million Ruth Marriage. 
 . . . And he remembered that young women were apt 
 to grow fractious and unsettled as their marriage-time 
 approached. . . . And then he was almost honest enough 
 to realize that he wanted that million in the Hobday 
 family. . . . 
 
 " Absurd ! " he said. " My brother . . . your father 
 is entitled to that as a member of the family. It was my 
 father's wish. . . . However, as you please. ... It can 
 accumulate for the children and can go into War Bonds." 
 
 For a moment he was held back by jealousy. All at- 
 tempts to interest Trevor in his own daughters had failed 
 lamentably, and it was just like the irony of things that 
 the idiotic Charles's daughter should be a beauty. How- 
 ever, he conquered that and repeated : " One moment." 
 He heaved out of his chair and out of the room, and by 
 the time he was in the passage had persuaded himself that 
 he was willing to risk even his niece in the fulfilment of 
 his duty towards Trevor's father and mother. The best 
 tonic for a young man engaged in sowing his wild oats 
 was an encounter with a pure young girl. He opened 
 Mr. Robert Treves* door and said : 
 
 " Trevor, can you spare me one moment ? " 
 
 " Any number," said Trevor genially. 
 
 " I ah ! want to introduce you to my niece, Ruth." 
 
 Trevor was in the passage in one stride, across it, and 
 in Mr. Hobday's room before the eminent lawyer had 
 swung round like a battleship on the turn of the tide, 
 and by the time he reached his room Ruth and Trevor 
 were shaking hands and smiling at each other in recog- 
 nition. . . . Mr. Hobday pulled his nose, and said 
 peevishly :
 
 256 PINK ROSES 
 
 " You ought to have waited for me to introduce 
 you." 
 
 " We have heaps of friends in common," said Trevor. 
 " It was only a question of time. We were bound to 
 meet." 
 
 " I am very glad," murmured Ruth, with a half- 
 frightened glance behind her. " Very glad. But I must 
 be going now, back to my Ministry, you know." 
 
 "Are you in the same Ministry as Cherryman?" 
 asked Trevor. 
 
 " No, but a friend of his, Mr. Carline, is immediately 
 above me." 
 
 " And Mademoiselle Dolgorova? " 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 " Carline's Russian." 
 
 Ruth laughed. " O ! Sophina ! She is my assistant." 
 
 " May I suggest," said Mr. Hobday benevolently 
 after all he only wanted to be benevolent " that if you 
 wish to discuss your friends you should go out to lunch 
 now." 
 
 " Will you ? " asked Trevor, and Ruth nodded. They 
 left the pillar of Society rubbing his hands and smiling 
 to himself. . . . Yes, that was the way to handle these 
 young people. Give them love's young dream, and they 
 would leave serious matters to their elders and stop fret- 
 ting over things that lay beyond their understanding. . . . 
 
 Both Ruth and Trevor were very far from love's young 
 dream as understood by Mr. Henry Hobday. They were 
 simply delighted to meet as people who could understand 
 each other. Both knew at once that they spoke the same 
 inward language, and they were only amused when, as 
 they closed the outer door, they heard the cashier say: 
 
 "Quick work!"
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 257 
 
 " I can't believe it," said Trevor, as they walked down 
 the stone steps. " I can't believe that you are his 
 niece." 
 
 " Nor can I," answered Ruth. " But my father's name 
 is the same, and we were always taught that the world 
 existed for the Hobdays. I am sure my uncle believes 
 that the war is being fought to protect them." 
 
 " Where would you like to lunch ? I feel that we have 
 a great deal to talk about : and a lot of time to make up." 
 
 " I . . .1 don't think I ought to stay. ... I have 
 missed a whole morning's work. I have never done such 
 a thing before, but I had bad news this morning about 
 my brother. He didn't come home last night, and this 
 morning I heard that he had joined the Army." 
 
 "Oh!" Trevor was keenly alive to her distress. 
 " One forgets that that is going on all the time, but one 
 ought not to forget it. The married men and the older 
 men make a fuss, but the boys are going all the time 
 without a word." 
 
 " Straight from school, without having lived," said 
 Ruth. " And my brother has gone before his time." 
 
 Trevor took her to an old City chop-house in which 
 were seated old types of City clerks and merchants, who 
 stared indifferently, with a faint shade of resentment at 
 the handsome young couple who intruded upon their 
 mustiness flavoured with a thick stale odour of cooking 
 and sawdust soaked in beer. At the very top of the house 
 was a Ladies' Room, which they had to themselves. It 
 was so still and quiet that it was obvious that no one had 
 entered it for many days, and it was some minutes before 
 a breathless and astonished waiter arrived to attend them. 
 Trevor ordered chops, apple pudding, and a small bottle 
 of claret.
 
 258 PINK ROSES 
 
 " It was amazing luck/' he said. " I had not been near 
 the office for weeks. There are times when I can't stand 
 it. I mean, the ruin going on all round, and old Hobday 
 beg pardon, your, uncle doing better and better. I 
 can't stand it. If he has to pay more, he makes more, 
 and a reduced staff doesn't seem to make any difference 
 to him." 
 
 He was not particularly interested in Mr. Hobday, but 
 he had to say something if only to distract her attention 
 from the new pleasure he had in looking at her. Her 
 throat and her lips especially fascinated him, while her 
 voiced moved him almost intolerably, and every now and 
 then he had to gasp from the novel sensation of breathing 
 in her presence pure air. This sensation was accentuated 
 by the stuffiness of the chop-house. 
 
 From the windows they looked into a narrow city 
 street, and through the windows opposite they could see 
 men and girls working at ledgers, files, rotary machines, 
 typewriting, and machines for addressing envelopes. 
 
 " The city isn't new to me," said Ruth. " I worked 
 for years as a typist." 
 
 That knocked at Trevor's heart: he had been trying 
 to pretend that it was not she whom he had seen on the 
 Brighton road. She had not seen him on that occasion. 
 
 " Oh ! " he said, a little crestfallen. " Did you like it ? " 
 
 " Hardly. But we were desperately poor. My father 
 had a mania for chemistry, and before the war that was 
 a terrible thing to have." 
 
 The waiter brought their chops and fried potatoes. 
 
 " Still," she said, " I'm glad I worked. It was a good 
 preparation for what I am doing now quite important 
 work, if war- work is important. You're not against the 
 war, are you ? "
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 259 
 
 " One might as well be against an earthquake," an- 
 swered Trevor. " I hate the waste, and I hate the use of 
 public powers for private profit. When I've said that I've 
 said all I have to say about the war. ... I want to talk 
 about you. I saw you once when I was with Cherryman. 
 You were wearing a grey dress, with a pink rose. . . . 
 Your brother was with you, too." 
 
 Again Ruth looked behind her with a half -frightened 
 expression in her candid eyes that could conceal nothing 
 and counterfeit nothing. 
 
 "Are you afraid for your brother? You needn't be. 
 If he is under age you can insist on their letting him 
 
 go." 
 
 " That is why I went to see my uncle this morning. 
 My father can't, and my uncle won't, do anything. You 
 see, they are both Hobdays and obstinate. That is why 
 I don't think the war will ever stop, because England is 
 full of Hobdays who won't go either forward or back- 
 ward, and think that once a thing has happened it is 
 unalterable and somehow sanctified. Once a thing is defi- 
 nite, then they don't want it changed. ... I think they 
 are very simple-minded. . . . One gets into the habit 
 of thinking of them as 'they' as though they were 
 children or animals, and as though nothing that they did 
 was binding on us." 
 
 " That's just it," said Trevor. " It isn't. ... I say, 
 you are thinking the same things as I am. It doesn't 
 matter what they do, because they can't bind us. I mean, 
 when they think materially we think spiritually, so that 
 the same things, the same words, have different meanings 
 for us. That's true, isn't it ? " 
 
 She nodded, her cheeks rosy with excitement, and her 
 eyes bade him continue.
 
 26o PINK ROSES 
 
 " They haven't risen to the occasion, and we have. 
 That's why we say nothing. We know that we are 
 going to begin all over again, and so we want them to 
 ruin and smash what they have built up so carefully. 
 We let them do it even if it; kills us, and we don't mind. 
 We don't even think or talk of revolution, because we 
 know that the revolution has happened in our souls. We 
 believe in each other and not in things any more. We 
 are going to live through each other and not through 
 things and property and external values. ... I haven't 
 been able to talk about it to any one before, but I can 
 to you, because I've had something splendid from my 
 mother. . . . You must meet my mother. She always 
 let me do whatever I wanted to do, even if at first sight 
 it looked wrong. . . . You know we're all sick to death 
 of doing easy things and possible things. We want to 
 try for the unattainable, and to dig things out of our- 
 selves instead of mopping up everything we see like pup- 
 pies. . . . Am I boring you? I'm so excited." 
 
 " No, no," said Ruth. " Go on. Do go on. It has 
 happened. I know it has happened. That is why it is 
 so exhausting until the diplomatists make up their minds 
 that they must do what the financiers tell them. We 
 want to get on with the things that matter." 
 
 " The onl} r things that matter," interrupted Trevor, 
 " are people real people." 
 
 " My brother," said Ruth. " That is why I mind so 
 terribly. He would have been one of your people. . . . 
 All the boys and girls have it in them. They all want 
 to understand each other." 
 
 " You're not drinking anything. Suppose we drink a 
 toast : ' To the young people and the revolution in their 
 souls' . . Pink roses!"
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 261 
 
 " Why did you say that? " asked Ruth. 
 
 " Some day I'll tell you. ... I mean little, tight rose- 
 buds, like the one you were wearing that day in White- 
 hall." 
 
 Ruth looked out of the window and a troubled expres- 
 sion crossed her eyes. 
 
 " I know that what you say is true. ... It makes one 
 long for everybody to stop talking. Then we could hear 
 only the guns. They would soon die down if we were 
 allowed to hear them. . . . And then I should like 
 silence for a long time, and after that to hear faintly the 
 new song breaking like the dawn." 
 
 " I think it will happen like that," said Trevor simply. 
 " The fools will go on talking Leagues of Nations, 
 Socialism, Imperialism, Social Revolution, but we shan't 
 hear them. We shall be listening for that which will 
 silence even the fools. . . . Nothing else matters." 
 
 Ruth turned her eyes full on him, and said: 
 
 " I am glad that you are free." 
 
 " And I am glad that you are," he replied. 
 
 And that is how people win their freedom, by acknowl- 
 edging it in each other. 
 
 They sat on in silence, there was no frothiness in either 
 of them. The word " Love " never entered their minds. 
 They were not even conscious of each other as man and 
 woman, but only as human beings. ... It was delight- 
 fully appropriate that this, their first taste of the new 
 intercourse that had become possible should have been 
 given to them in an old musty eating-house in the very 
 heart of the world's largest market-place. 
 
 " What will you be? " asked Ruth. 
 
 "What should I be except myself?" asked Trevor,
 
 262 PINK ROSES 
 
 and she felt that she was rebuked, and was even so both 
 ashamed of and annoyed with herself. 
 
 " I sometimes think," he said, " that the war is the 
 old men's odd way of acknowledging the spiritual revolu- 
 tion. They wanted to give it material expression. No 
 wonder they are in a mess and can't realize it. You see, 
 they haven't a clue, and we have." 
 
 " Thank you. You are very fortunate." 
 
 "How?" 
 
 " You can find words." 
 
 He grinned mischievously. 
 
 " That's my danger," he said. " I am always apt to 
 talk too much." 
 
 " But you don't. . . . You haven't. ... I didn't 
 mean that." 
 
 " I know you didn't. . . . Can I help you on with your 
 coat? . . . I've come to an end of my capacity for idle- 
 ness, and I must go back to work." 
 
 " Can you bear a lawyer's office? " 
 
 " I am going to spend my life in one. . . . May I 
 write and arrange another meeting." 
 
 " Please. . . . Only not very soon. ..." 
 
 He understood her. She wanted to take stock of her 
 life, even as he did. 
 
 To their amazement they found when they reached the 
 ground floor that it was after half -past four. 
 
 Trevor laughed, and said : 
 
 " So much for my desire to work. I shall just be in 
 time for tea at the office." 
 
 "So will I," said Ruth. "I shall be in time for 
 Sophina's third tea. . . . Good-bye. Thank you so 
 much." 
 
 He helped her to mount a 'bus and stood by the Man-
 
 HENRY HOBDAY PROTESTS 263 
 
 sion House watching it as it moved away into the gather- 
 ing grey twilight that filled Queen Victoria Street. He 
 was aflame with joy, and it seemed to him that soon, very 
 soon, light must begin to break, and the familiar scene, 
 sordid in its pompous heaviness the City of London, 
 indolent in its wealth must be illumined and trans- 
 figured. He was so quick with joy that even his idealism 
 seemed a joke to him, a spirit that moved in him as 
 easily and with as living a force as the blood in his 
 veins.
 
 XVIII 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 
 
 As she was carried westward through the grey London 
 light Ruth could laugh at the unreasoning impulse which 
 had made her go to her uncle to ask him to sympathize 
 and help her with her overpowering desire to save her 
 brother from the holocaust. It was foolish of her. How 
 could her uncle sympathize? For him the war was a 
 thing that had happened, an end in itself, an answer to all 
 questions, religious, political, social. For him the don- 
 ning of uniform was a symbol of noble acquiescence 
 which was indubitably right. To admit the possibility 
 of another point of view would be for him to admit the 
 possibility of doubt, and an act of blasphemy. He had 
 ascribed her desire to save Leslie to womanish weakness, 
 and had been indulgently kind about it. That was as 
 far as he could go. The war was to him something which 
 the younger generation could not even begin to under- 
 stand because they had to deal with facts while he lived 
 in serene enjoyment of its splendid fictions. They had 
 to follow it through all its phases while his mind re- 
 mained in the intoxication of the first few weeks working 
 with the ideas proper to the campaigns in the Transvaal, 
 Afghanistan, and even the Crimea. Reiteration which 
 made the young increasingly incredulous glued him up in 
 his inappropriate notions. The misunderstanding was 
 complete.
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 265 
 
 Ruth had suffered from it in other directions, but she 
 had never clarified it until her few hours of complete 
 understanding with Trevor. He had forced her to admit 
 her own thoughts and to realize the tension in which she 
 lived as day by day, minute by minute, her desire for 
 life in accordance with what she believed was thwarted 
 by the general activity as to the validity of which she was 
 profoundly sceptical. . . . How dull the streets had 
 become! The Colonial soldiers sauntering up and down 
 the Strand filled her with pity, so lost they looked, so 
 innocently bewildered, though in that they were like 
 everybody else, except that they were bewildered without 
 suffering, whereas the Londoners showed in their faces 
 the strain, the almost painful dull anger as the face of 
 their city was changed and their hospitality was put to an 
 intolerable test. . . . Ruth could remember the warm 
 immoderate generosity with which the Belgian refugees 
 had been welcomed, but after them had come the deluge, 
 from the provinces and all parts of the world until 
 London was no more and its old habits were swept away 
 and it had become only a kind of clearing-house, and 
 Ruth, like a good Londoner, resented the loss of dignity 
 in the great city. The astonishing events of this great 
 day in her life made her aware of that resentment, and 
 also revealed to her how narrow and circumspect her 
 existence had become, how hopeless, and without thought 
 for the future. Her brother's plunge had been the last 
 straw. She had clung to him as the being through whom 
 the slow havoc of the present would be repaired, and 
 when he was taken from her she had been overcome by 
 despair. She could no longer pretend. Her life, like mil- 
 lions of other lives, was thwarted, and it was only an 
 aggravation to know that she was one of millions. The
 
 266 PINK ROSES 
 
 calm gaiety, the affected air of efficiency in which other 
 women took refuge were impossible for her. In them 
 she could find no fulfilment, and that for her was essen- 
 tial. . . . And then suddenly, in her uncle's office of all 
 places, she had understood and been understood by an- 
 other human being, and she knew that she had been wrong 
 to chafe against the phantasmagoria of the war. That 
 would pass as the old ideas passed, and there would be 
 life again on the terms of those who had the courage and 
 the patience not to surrender. So great was the relief 
 of her experience that she had no detailed memory of 
 Trevor or of anything that he had said. The shock of the 
 delight had been as great as the shock of tragic news, and 
 it had left her almost dazed mind without control of the 
 emotions and impressions which for many many months 
 had lain dormant in her and now suddenly forced their 
 way out. And as the minutes went by her condition 
 became only the more painful. As she reached the Min- 
 istry and entered it, she began to watch herself critically 
 and a little contemptuous as the Ruth Hobday who had 
 been, the egoistic, confident, obdurate young woman who 
 had a confirmed and vicious habit of managing and of 
 making others live and act according to herself, by virtue 
 of her own strength of personality, and her own fixed 
 will. ... A fine triumph that, to have forced her way 
 up out of suburban, poor g-entility into a position of some 
 confidence and power in this new society of genteel 
 persons which had gathered round the War Govern- 
 ment. 
 
 As she had foretold, she found Sophina making her 
 third tea. Sophina looked at her crossly, and said : 
 
 " I do think you might have let us know you weren't 
 coming. Sir Seymour has been pacing in and out like
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 267 
 
 a caged puma all day long. . . . I've done my best, but 
 you know I can't read your shorthand, and you and he 
 have your own ways." 
 
 " I'm sorry," said Ruth, taking off her hat. " I had 
 to go to the City. I've had bad news. My brother has 
 gone into the Army." 
 
 " I shouldn't worry about that," said Sophina. " The 
 war's going to be over soon. Down in the East End 
 there's great goings-on. They say Russia's out of the 
 war and there's going to be a Revolution. . . . Oh! I 
 wish I could be in it." 
 
 Ruth could not help smiling. Sophina by now took her 
 Russian history quite seriously. 
 
 " It's a bit thick, though," said Sophina, glad to chat- 
 ter, for she had been alone nearly all day, " the way they 
 take every one into the Army but those who ought to 
 go. I could tell you of East End Jews. ..." 
 
 " No, no," said Ruth. 
 
 " Yes, I could. I could tell you what they do to them- 
 selves to get out of it. It's only in this country that they 
 take conscription so seriously. The people who live in 
 Russia and Germany and France know all about it. If 
 I'd known about your brother I could have ..." 
 
 " Please stop ! " cried Ruth. " My brother has gone of 
 his own accord." 
 
 "Well, I never!" 
 
 " It has made me hate the war so that I don't think 
 I can even stay here." 
 
 "Oh, don't be a mug! What about the girls who've 
 only been married for a week ? ... Be sensible. No- 
 body's left you a fortune, have they? Money's money, 
 and it's no good nosing round trying to find out what they 
 give it you for. I'm going to off it as soon as I can, but
 
 268 PINK ROSES 
 
 two-ten is two-ten, and besides there's more in it than 
 that." 
 
 She said this with two or three emphatic nods. 
 
 The door leading to Trenham's room opened, and he 
 came in. 
 
 " I think Mr. Carline wants you, Miss Lipinsky," he 
 said. 
 
 With a nod at her teapot Sophina gathered up some 
 minutes she had been typing, and left the room. 
 
 " What is the matter ? Has anything happened ? It 
 was not like you not to let me know," said Trenham. " I 
 have been nearly frantic with anxiety." 
 
 He tried to seize her hands, but she withdrew them. 
 
 " I telephoned your father at the laboratory. . . . He 
 thought you were here as usual. Where have you been ? " 
 
 " To my uncle's." 
 
 " Is anything wrong? " 
 
 " Everything. You know it." 
 
 "No, no ... Ruth, you ..." 
 
 " You know it is wrong." 
 
 " We can't talk about it here. . . . Let us dine to- 
 night ... at North Street." 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Out then." 
 
 "We might be seen. It was you who were always 
 afraid of that. Now it is my turn." 
 
 " For God's sake tell me what has happened." 
 
 " It is Leslie. I don't know how it all came about. It 
 was my fault, I think. We were talking about what he 
 would do, and I said you would help him. I'm sure that 
 was it. He quarrelled with my father and said terrible 
 things to him, told him he had always lived on charity, 
 and was being employed out of charity. ... Is it true ? '
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 269 
 
 " No, of course not. He is doing very useful work." 
 " But his great invention has that been used ? " 
 
 T 
 
 " You know it has not." 
 
 " My dear, dear child please, please ..." 
 
 " Leslie knew it. He always knew it. He knew we 
 were in a false position. . . . You can't deceive the 
 young people. They are terrible . . . terrible. . . . 
 After his quarrel with my father, Leslie asked me point- 
 blank if you were paying his school fees. ... Of course 
 you are not, but he is so suspicious. He won't believe 
 even me, even me. . . . And he went and joined the 
 Army, a boy like that and they have taken him ..." 
 
 " How ridiculous it all is," said Trenham kindly. 
 " Don't worry, my darling. We'll soon get him out. 
 Why didn't you come straight to me? You could have 
 saved yourself all this, and me to-day's agony." 
 
 Ruth stood up and looked him straight in the eyes. 
 
 " I want to know," she said. " Did you ever use my 
 father's invention ? " 
 
 " There was an idea in it." 
 
 " Has it been used ? " 
 
 " It it may have been." 
 
 " Is he paid by the Government or by you ? " 
 
 " By the Government, of course. He is very useful 
 really. Why do you stand there like an accusing angel ? 
 a very lovely one." 
 
 " I'm not accusing you, Seymour. I'm accusing my- 
 self. I haven't any right to accuse anybody but myself." 
 
 He understood at last that she was serious. 
 
 " Ruth, that's all. I don't know what to say. I'm 
 I only know that it has been the first real happiness I 
 have ever known. , . What has all this nonsense about
 
 270 PINK ROSES 
 
 your father to do with that ? I'd worked with him when 
 I was young. He was a good man then, and I wanted to 
 help you. ... Is that a crime, to want to help ? Is it ? 
 . . . You stand there with your eyes accusing me . . ." 
 
 "Not you . . . Not you ..." 
 
 Ruth was staring at him, staring, staring, taking in 
 every detail of his features, the strong, heavy jowl, the 
 sensitive lips, the unhappy hungry eyes, and she was filled 
 with pity for him and knew that she had always pitied 
 him, so profoundly, so passionately indeed, in response 
 to his passion, that she had forgotten herself in him. 
 
 " I swear to you, Ruth," he said, " that I have loved 
 you with the only love of my life. It has not been a light 
 thing. ... I stole the rose from your grey dress that 
 Sunday. I thought that would be enough, so great and 
 pure was my love. But I wanted you. I wanted you 
 in my house. You made it perfect, alive, the glorious 
 answer to all the damned vulgarity and hypocrisy of life 
 as it is now. ... It has not been a little thing. I want 
 it to be greater still. I shan't go back. I'd been planning 
 everything. I didn't want to tell you yet. The little 
 house is to be yours, always yours. Everything that I 
 'have, everything that I am, is yours." 
 
 She shook her head slowly from side to side, and tears 
 of utter misery rolled down her cheeks. It was she who 
 was at fault, because, pitying him, she could not take 
 what he had to give, the passion stored up through his 
 life for the being in whom he should find the quality he 
 had always idolized. That pity had left her, and she was 
 rilled with loathing of it, the blind egoistic passion. . . . 
 How dared she, how dared any human being pity an- 
 other? To understand and to love : yes, that was healthy, 
 that was strong, but pity was weak and destructive, an
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 271 
 
 emotion only of illusions. She had deceived herself, she 
 had deceived him, out of pity. . . . She tottered towards 
 him: 
 
 "Oh, Seymour, forgive me ..." 
 
 " My beautiful, beautiful Ruth. There is no question 
 of forgiveness. I love you. I swear I will make you 
 happy. ... I swear ..." 
 
 " No. No. No. No. No. Not that ... I have 
 lied to you. ... I have lied to you. ... I don't love 
 you." 
 
 He placed his hand roughly over her mouth in an at- 
 tempt to silence her, and stood staring horribly, incredu- 
 lously, into her eyes, and against the enormous powerful 
 strength in his hand she nodded and went on nodding in 
 her agony to force out the truth between her and him. 
 He forced her head back until she had to close her eyes, 
 and he said between his teeth : 
 
 " I knew this was bound to come. I thought the time 
 would come when I should have to master you. . . . You 
 are mine ; do you hear ? Mine ! You're young ..." 
 
 At last she could resist no more and stood breathlessly 
 still. Ah ! That was clear gain, not to resist and to let 
 his will rush through her and find no answering will in 
 her. It was he then who weakened. He let her go and 
 staggered away from her, refusing to admit what she had 
 told him without a word. He had loved her, worshipped 
 her, idealized her, and he would not believe that she had 
 gone from him. 
 
 She had recovered herself, and was determined to 
 understand and to forestall every movement as it took 
 place in him. He was old, he belonged to the old world, 
 in which men and women had understood almost every- 
 thing but themselves. For his sake she had plunged
 
 272 PINK ROSES 
 
 down into that old world, but now she had climbed out 
 of it again, and she was the stronger and the better for 
 her understanding of it. 
 
 She said : 
 
 " I want to tell you everything, Seymour. I will dine 
 with you to-night if you like, but not at North Street." 
 
 " Why not at North Street? " 
 
 " Does it matter where ? So long as we can be quiet 
 and can try to understand each other." 
 
 " Very well,'* he said. " We shall have to stay late to 
 catch up the correspondence." 
 
 She took up her note-book. 
 
 " Do you want me now ? " she asked. 
 
 " Please. . . . But I don't understand you, Ruth. I 
 don't understand you. . . . I'll be ready for you in half 
 an hour." 
 
 He stood gazing at her in perplexity for some moments, 
 winced at the memory of what she had said to him, then 
 turned and walked slowly out with his head lowered so 
 that his back looked to her like that of a heavy old 
 man. 
 
 Sophina returned with her arms full of buff papers. 
 
 " Oh, well, I'm not long for this job. Ruth, old dear. 
 . . . Carline's going to put up a bit of money for me, and 
 I'm going into a show. I have been lucky. There's a 
 lot of real Russians knocking around, and I haven't met 
 one of them. I think they must run away when they 
 see him. ... I had a bit of a fright the other day when 
 I was dancing at a hospital. The Russian Ambassador's 
 daughter was there, but she was such a fine lady she 
 wouldn't speak to me. She looked a bit like you, Ruth, 
 the way you look at people when they get a bit above 
 themselves. . ."
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 273 
 
 "Really? "said Ruth. 
 
 "Yes. The way you looked just now when I came 
 into the room. I bet I make a lot of money when the 
 war stops." 
 
 "Money?" said Ruth. 
 
 " You ought to marry a rich man with your looks, 
 Ruth. And there will be rich men after the war, mark 
 my words. ... I don't think either you or me was cut 
 out for typewriting." 
 
 Trenham's bell rang, and Ruth went in to him. They 
 worked without a word for a couple of hours, and by that 
 time the Ministry was empty. A converted hotel, it was 
 extraordinarily dismal, and typical of the upheaval and 
 desolation of the war. Trenham remarked on this. 
 
 " I am beginning to hate London," he said. " I some- 
 times think the trenches must be cheerful in comparison. 
 I meet young officers who long to go back. They see the 
 changes which have come over us so gradually that we 
 have not noticed them." 
 
 It eased him to talk. He was dreading his interview 
 with Ruth. At the back of his mind he had been repeat- 
 ing over and over to himself what she had said, and 
 living again through the sickening sensation that had 
 come over him as she had suddenly snapped her resistance 
 to him. It had been so staggeringly sudden. Never, 
 never had he had the smallest doubt that he possessed 
 her. He had loved, told his love, and won her so that 
 everything else had become definitely what it had always 
 been extraneous, and he had vaguely planned how to 
 preserve this beauty in his life when the time came for 
 him to return to the North Ruth in North Street, which 
 he would visit constantly, and long holidays abroad every 
 year.
 
 274 PINK ROSES 
 
 They wandered through the crowded streets, full of 
 sauntering soldiers and loud-voiced women, with news- 
 vendors shouting and muttering the news from Russia, 
 which for the moment seemed to be the centre of events. 
 He took her arm and they walked as they had so often 
 done, absorbed in each other, hardly heeding what was 
 going on around them, scarcely knowing which way they 
 turned. 
 
 As they reached Piccadilly Circus there was an air-raid 
 warning. Involuntarily they ran and entered a lighted 
 doorway out of which poured presently a stream of for- 
 eigners, Belgians, French, Jews, soldiers, prostitutes, 
 serving-women, waiters . . . 
 
 " Doesn't look as if this was safe," said Trenham. 
 
 " I don't mind," said Ruth, " so long as I am not in 
 the street. It is the frightened people I mind more than 
 the noise or the danger. What is this place ? " 
 
 " It's the Cafe Claribel. ... If you are not frightened 
 we had better have dinner." 
 
 A fair number of people had stayed in the cafe saloon. 
 The Dore gargoyle maitre d'hotel was unperturbed. It 
 would take more than a German bomb to remove him 
 unless it removed the whole of the Claribel, and then he 
 would gladly die. . . . He slipped forward on seeing the 
 unusually distinguished new client, and with arm out- 
 stretched he guided Ruth and Trenham to a table. 
 
 Trenham nodded his thanks, gave up his hat and coat, 
 and sat glowering round. It was not the place he would 
 have chosen for a fateful and intimate conversation. He 
 ordered dinner, frugal and plain as Ruth liked it, 
 and to postpone whatever she might wish to say, re- 
 marked : 
 
 " By the way, do you remember the car stopping on
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 275 
 
 the Brighton road ? Extraordinary thing, I met the young 
 man who gave us the petrol. It was the other night at 
 Carline's. His name is Trevor Mathew, a remarkable 
 youngster. I thought he was an actor at first, but it seems 
 he is a lawyer. Very good firm up North. His father 
 stood for my constituency. Good family, I believe. It 
 was the car and the nigger chauffeur and the lady in the 
 car that misled me." 
 
 Ruth turned pale and her lip quivered. So Trevor had 
 seen her then the first time. And what was all this 
 about a car and a negro chauffeur and a lady in the car ? 
 It sounded just fantastic: so unlike the Trevor she had 
 met that morning. 
 
 Trenham went on : 
 
 " I asked Carline about him. It seems he was a great 
 friend of young Harry Hardman, and was of course 
 overshadowed by him, but they and another youngster 
 were the social success of London before the war, a new 
 kind of young man. . . . Carline spoke of them with 
 tears in his eyes. You know, the tone he uses when he 
 talks of the Russian Ballet or any of the wonders these 
 London people brag about before the war. By the way, 
 how provincial they are! How completely ignorant of 
 anything outside their own ten thousand people ! I don't 
 wonder the Ministries had to be made for them to keep 
 them embalmed for the duration. . . . You don't seem 
 to be listening! " 
 
 " Oh yes, yes," said Ruth. " I was listening. Do go 
 on." 
 
 "Well, it was at Carline's party or at Cherryman's. 
 They were all so happy, like little birds. I felt it was such 
 a pity they should be shut up by the war. Why shouldn't 
 they twitter? ... I didn't feel at home in it, and I stood
 
 276 PINK ROSES 
 
 in a corner looking on. So did young Mathevv. I like 
 him immensely, the clean look of him, but I don't think 
 he liked me. He walked home with me, or nearly home. 
 I wanted him to come and talk, but he wouldn't. He 
 ... By the way, he works in your uncle's office." 
 
 His eyes darted a piercing glance at her. She felt, but 
 did not see it, and said absently : 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Some distance away in the corner of the cafe saloon she 
 had caught sight of Trevor sitting with his back to her, 
 and opposite him was a woman with a hard, handsome 
 face, who watched him with jealous eyes. She averted 
 her gaze, dreading that Trenham should follow its direc- 
 tion, turn, and see him. Trenham went on : 
 
 " He told me an extraordinary story, something about 
 a Jew and a million, and how easy it would be to change 
 the face of things. I think he's a bit of a dreamer, and 
 probably very unhappy with things as they are. . . . 
 That sort of thing is all very well, but one of the keenest 
 pleasures left in the world is blowing arguments to hell 
 with a joke. Take that pleasure away, and there is very 
 little left to spice the rest. People will argue, and in 
 the last resort what are you to do ? " 
 
 " Don't," said Ruth. " I can't bear your being 
 cynical." 
 
 " That isn't cynicism, my dear. It is reason. ... I 
 heard a man at the Club the other night airing a theory 
 that the war came about because the men couldn't stand 
 the women any more and preferred to go out and kill each 
 other. . . . One theory is as good as another, and that 
 seemed to me very sweeping and complete. One couldn't 
 disprove it." 
 
 Ruth kept saying to herself :
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 277 
 
 " He will never understand. He will never under- 
 stand!" 
 
 He was a very wonderful man, strong, powerful, intel- 
 lectual, decisive, but because nothing had a spiritual mean- 
 ing for him he was clumsy, though he was sensitive 
 enough to feel dissatisfied with everything except Love. 
 That ideal remained. He drowned his dissatisfaction in 
 it, and she knew that she had to destroy it for him. But 
 now it had become impossible for her to speak. The 
 sight of Trevor with that woman devouring him with her 
 eyes made her dumb. She could not reconcile Trevor as 
 he had been that morning with Trevor as she saw him 
 now, sitting there perfectly at his ease, apparently quite 
 happy. Trevor with such a woman! One who was 
 soaked in her own desires. ... It was even worse for 
 her when she saw a little Jew with black, oiled hair and 
 quick, darting black eyes go up to him and shake hands 
 with him familiarly, and give an offhand intimate nod 
 to the woman. So intent and so horrified was her gaze 
 that Trenham could not help giving a hurried glance 
 round. He did not recognize Trevor, however, and with 
 a kindly smile he said : 
 
 " You shouldn't mind such people, Ruth. They live 
 their lives and don't interfere with us." 
 
 He stopped short, for he had recognized the woman. 
 He looked at Ruth, bit his lip, and was silent. A minute 
 or two later he said : 
 
 " Don't look at them. . . . What's the matter with 
 you to-day? You seem to be feeling things too much. 
 ... It would have been much better to go home. I 
 wonder why women can never forgive that. ..." 
 
 " Because women are responsible," said Ruth, aston- 
 ished at the power and force of her own thought. ' They
 
 278 PINK ROSES 
 
 are responsible for everything, everything. I would 
 never blame a man for anything he did. I don't blame 
 you, Seymour. I blame myself. . . . I'm worse than 
 that woman, because she doesn't pretend ..." 
 
 The air-raid had begun. They could hear the booming 
 and thudding of the guns. 
 
 " Don't. Don't," said Trenham pleadingly. " Don't. 
 . . . Don't talk about it. ... Don't think about it. One 
 can't think of these things in the old way. I love you. 
 When peace comes there will be nothing for us two but 
 our love." 
 
 " Seymour," said Ruth, " I think it would be best if 
 I stayed away for a week or two, and then I shall know 
 what to say, what I mean, what I want." 
 
 " You mean that ? " 
 
 "Yes. Yes. . . . I'm not fanciful. You know me 
 well enough to realize that I'm not . . ." 
 
 There was a tremendous crash. The windows shook : 
 a sound of breaking and falling glass : the floor trembled : 
 the whole building seemed to veer over and right itself 
 like a ship in a storm: piles of plates slithered down: 
 everybody jumped up: two or three women fainted. A 
 man at the next table said, with a slow smile : 
 
 "That's done it!" 
 
 The guns boomed and thudded. 
 
 "We'd better get out of this," said Trenham, but Ruth, 
 trembling, resumed her seat, and said : 
 
 " That must have been very near." 
 
 " Piccadilly, I should think. You see, it's just that 
 affecting your nerves without your knowing it." 
 
 Ruth began to feel hopeless. He would evade her every 
 attempt to make herself clear, and if she failed to do 
 that she would remain entangled with him for ever and
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 279 
 
 ever because he loved her, with an old man's confiding, 
 indulgent, corrosive love. . . . She looked up at the 
 group in the corner. They had not moved. There was 
 permanence in them too. They looked as though they 
 would sit there for ever. Could what Trevor had said 
 be only a theory, about as important as the Club theory 
 of which Trenham had spoken? No. No. No. It had 
 gone straight to her soul, where it had released her own 
 thought, her own feeling, and showed what was in her 
 own life to be false and superficial and without reaction 
 to her own feeling. It had done more than that even. 
 It had given her the clue to the immense falsity that 
 governed the world, so that every appearance corre- 
 sponded to no reality, even the war. . . . That was tri- 
 vial and superficial because it corresponded to nothing 
 that was spiritually true and had become mechanical and 
 habitual. 
 
 In a very few moments the people in the restaurant 
 had recovered themselves. The band began to play again. 
 Fresh people came in. Waiters returned and were busy 
 fetching wine and liqueurs to restore panic-stricken 
 nerves. 
 
 " All the same," thought Ruth, " I can't let him go 
 away thinking that nothing has happened. If I did that 
 it would be the end of me. It would be like a dropped 
 stitch, and I should spend the rest of my life trying to 
 pick it up." 
 
 She smiled at him. She was very fond of him, her 
 big, clumsy, helpless man, and it was so much better now 
 that her blinding pity for him was gone. ... He was 
 elated by her smile, as eager as a dog that has not been 
 spoken to by its master for a long time. 
 
 "You know, Seymour," she said, "Leslie is right.
 
 280 PINK ROSES 
 
 The young people are tremendously right in insisting on 
 having things out. ... I want to say ..." 
 
 " Oh, very well ! I'll listen," he grumbled. 
 
 " I want to say that it wasn't quite fair of you to 
 pretend that father's invention was good ..." 
 
 " I only wanted to be kind." 
 
 " It put things wrong from the start, and if it hadn't 
 been for Leslie they might have gone on being wrong for 
 ever. ... I think men are going to be very wonderful 
 now. They will just force women to be truthful by 
 understanding them. Leslie knew, and he couldn't stand 
 my father being so pleased with himself, and then I'm 
 sure he knew about you and me." 
 
 "No!" 
 
 " Yes. He wouldn't have minded if it had been a true 
 thing, but you see he and I ... Well, I could deceive 
 myself, but I couldn't deceive him. That is what hap- 
 pened. Don't you see ? " 
 
 Trenham shook his head. His eyes sought hers in dog- 
 like pleading misery. 
 
 " That is what I meant," she said, " when I said I was 
 worse than that woman. We can't lie when boys like 
 Leslie are being killed out there every day. If every- 
 body stopped lying there would be no need for them to 
 be killed." 
 
 " I love you, Ruth, I love you, Ruth," said Trenham, 
 in a low despairing voice. " It has been the one true 
 thing of my life. Don't kill it. Oh, for God's sake don't 
 kill it!" 
 
 " You see," she went on, " I hadn't lived at all when 
 I came to North Street. I had just worked. There 
 hadn't been time or room ..." 
 
 Trenham nodded and kept his head bowed. He under-
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 281 
 
 stood that he had profited by her ignorance, and that for 
 some reason which he could not grasp she was ignorant 
 no more. 
 
 " Yes," he said. " Yes." 
 
 " You see," she said, " it is that kind of thing in 
 women that has forced the boys out." 
 
 That he could not follow. She seemed to him to be 
 merely fantastic, and it hurt him intolerably. 
 
 " That's enough, Ruth . . . Keep Leslie out of it now. 
 I'll see that he's all right. I'm not going to let them 
 waste a boy like that. They have wasted far too many 
 already. I'll see that he's all right. I have loved you, 
 Ruth. I understand. You will love me in time. I'll give 
 you years, if you want it." 
 
 She shook her head sadly. He took out his pocket- 
 book, and let the faded pink rose fall on to the 
 table. 
 
 " I stole that," he said. " That's what you mean, isn't 
 it? I'll give it back to you, if you like." 
 
 " No. No. We're not children, though we have been. 
 I don't want it back. I'm not trying to destroy what 
 has been only to make sure that it shan't destroy me 
 or you. You especially, because there are others in your 
 life." 
 
 He carried the pink rose to his lips. 
 
 " It was just a dream, then," he said, " and North 
 Street is just a dream too. I used to fancy that the kind 
 of life that made those houses was coming again. And 
 I wanted to be in it, a lovely, dainty, composed life, and 
 then you came and there was such a life. Ugliness and 
 monotony and mechanical hardness had all slipped away, 
 and then we were gracious and elegant. When we walked 
 in St. James's Park I used to fancy we were Mirabell
 
 282 PINK ROSES 
 
 and Millamant taking the air after a delicious quarrel, 
 or Tom Jones and Sophia come up in the coach along 
 the Bath Road. I never felt that I was a day older than 
 you. I suppose I was a fool, but I loved you and I know 
 that you will love me. I knew it couldn't go on as it 
 has been, but I didn't want you to wake from the dream. 
 I ... I ..." 
 
 " Will you leave it to me, then? " 
 
 "Yes. 'What can I do?" 
 
 There was despair in his voice, and he struggled. He 
 would not let her see the agony he was in. 
 
 Cora Dinmont had caught sight of Ruth, and drew 
 Trevor's attention to her as the eloping typist of the 
 Brighton road. Ruth had only just time to hold the 
 menu in front of her face as he turned. Cora marked the 
 glad recognition in his eyes, and a fury came into her 
 own. 
 
 " You were wrong about them," said Trevor. " He is 
 Sir Seymour Trenham, the explosives expert brought 
 down from Newcastle for the war." 
 
 " And the girl? " drawled Cora. 
 
 " I believe she works in his department. She is the 
 niece of the head of my firm. Mr. Hobday." 
 
 Cora simmered with spite. She could have every sym- 
 pathy with Ruth as a typist, but Ruth as a lady was an 
 object of hatred. 
 
 "Well." she said, "she ain't half as good-looking as 
 she thinks. Just the sort to marry an old man like that. 
 I think it's disgusting what girls like that will do for 
 money." 
 
 Trevor laughed at her good-humouredly, and was even 
 more amused to see Mr. Ysnaga, after a keen, sly glance 
 at Ruth and Trenham. decide that they could not possibly
 
 RUTH AND TRENHAM 283 
 
 be milked and were not and never likely to be of his 
 world. 
 
 " I must take you home," said Trenham. 
 
 " For the last time." she said, feeling much happier. 
 
 " For a while," said he. " For a while, perhaps. We 
 will always be friends whatever happens." 
 
 " Oh, yes," said Ruth. 
 
 The guns had stopped when they passed out into 
 Piccadilly Circus, and the streets were absolutely deserted. 
 There were neither 'buses nor taxis in sight, and they had 
 to go by train. In the Tube station there were whole 
 families sitting staring vacantly in front of them, children 
 lying asleep, mothers holding their babies wrapped up 
 in blankets, men smoking, spitting, wandering noisily up 
 and down. 
 
 Trenham held Ruth's arm tightly clutched in his. It 
 was torture to him to lose contact with her, and he said, 
 with a grim smile and heartrendingly jocular tone : 
 
 " It isn't only arguments that the fools blow to hell 
 with their guns." 
 
 Ruth looked up at him gratefully: 
 
 " We could always be happy together, you and I. ... 
 But if it had gone on as we were I should have found the 
 world full of ugliness to-morrow. ..." 
 
 " Should I have done that for you? " 
 
 " No. I should have done it for myself." 
 
 He looked so puzzled in his hurt. He was like a great 
 boy only of the older generation, the generation that 
 had never grown up, the generation represented by the 
 Kaiser, and Roosevelt, and all the other boys who had 
 grown grey and tubby without noticing it. He was so 
 good, so decent, and, looking up at him, it hurt Ruth to 
 think of Trevor sitting so happily and so much at his ease
 
 284 PINK ROSES 
 
 with those inexplicable people. It was Trevor who had 
 made her new happiness possible, Trevor through whom 
 she had understood Leslie, and through Leslie herself 
 and Trenham. . . . What was the meaning of it all? 
 To her it was as disastrous and terrible as the pitiful poor 
 people still huddled in the Tube, although the signal of 
 safety had been given long ago. 
 
 Trenham would not leave her without embracing her. 
 He held her long in his arms and whispered : 
 " You will love me, Ruth, you will love me." 
 And all the while she thought with anguish of Trevor 
 and that woman, that monstrous devouring woman, and 
 it was almost a comfort to her to hope that what Tren- 
 ham said would come true, and that she would love him, 
 until she remembered that Trevor had spoken of her grey 
 dress, that Sunday in Whitehall, her grey dress and the 
 pink rose.
 
 XIX 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 
 
 TREVOR had not failed to mark the effect of the word 
 " million " on Mr. Hobday's mind, and his own thoughts 
 were turned more seriously than they had been to Mr. 
 Angel. That apparently was the magic word which kept 
 people satisfied. Millions of men were being killed, mil- 
 lions were being spent every day, thousands of millions 
 were now owing, millions had been subscribed for 
 charitable purposes, millions of women were engaged in 
 war-work, credits were voted by the hundred million, mil- 
 lions of new voters were added to the register, and 
 Sunday newspapers were circulated by the million. As 
 long as things were done on that scale nobody worried, 
 nobody attempted to think, nobody wished to criticize. 
 Breathe the word, and even the most cherished moral 
 prejudices were suspended and the most rigid rules could 
 be broken with impunity. It was to this that Trevor at- 
 tributed the hypnotic power of the newspapers. They 
 screamed and shrieked the word " million " in different 
 forms of type until all their readers felt that they were 
 millionaires and could do as they damn well pleased, if 
 not always individually, then in the mass, nationally. 
 Having had the good fortune not to be caught up in this 
 Gadarene unanimity, Trevor was more and more fas- 
 cinated by the idea of what he could do with a million 
 used honestly for genuine ideals and things of permanent 
 worth. He had to admit that one million was very little 
 
 ass
 
 286 PINK ROSES 
 
 compared with thousands of millions, but on the other 
 hand one man could make more effective use of one 
 million than millions of people could of many millions. 
 
 He inquired, therefore, into what Mr. Angel and Mr. 
 Ysnaga were doing, and found that they were only intent 
 on making more millions. Mr. Ysnaga's one bright idea 
 was to organize a system of tally-men to go among the 
 munition workers with expensive luxuries pianos, fur- 
 coats, jewellery, scented soaps. With a sound commer- 
 cial instinct he proposed to treat the munition workers 
 as concessionaires treat natives in tropical countries. 
 That was good business, but Mr. Angel wanted to be an 
 English gentleman, and there Mr. Ysnaga could not 
 help him while Trevor could, and as schemes began to 
 flower in his mind he attempted to conquer his reluctance 
 and was willing to help Mr. Angel in return for a free 
 hand. He could see no reason why money vulgarly 
 acquired should be vulgarly used, and why modern or- 
 ganization should be devoted entirely to economic and 
 social purposes. In the old days it had been a favourite 
 discussion with Hardman and Peto as to whether the 
 proper way to straighten out social tangles was not to 
 begin by organizing the intellectual and spiritual life of 
 the country, and Hardman used to declare that with a 
 million and half a dozen young men could bring even 
 the Church and the Law to their senses, smash the news- 
 papers, and make possible an aristocracy of imaginative 
 people, men and women of quality, who would be con- 
 stantly recruited from the generations as it became pos- 
 sible for them to live for something more than the day's 
 eating and sleeping. . . . That idealist side of Hard- 
 man had been the real man, and Trevor felt that he owed 
 it to him to attempt to fulfil his dream and put the poet,
 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 287 
 
 who had only been an after-thought, in his place. The 
 poet had been collared by the newspapers, who had made 
 of Hardman, the rather sardonic critic of modern so- 
 ciety, a patriotic prig. That was depressing. If the 
 newspapers could do that, what was there that they could 
 not do? 
 
 The difficulty was where to begin. And if he began, 
 where would it end? He was not a revolutionary. He 
 wished to destroy nothing. Rather he wished to restore 
 vitality to decayed traditions, to reveal the overlaid Eng- 
 land that had produced Shakespeare and Milton, Fielding 
 and Swift. If money could do it he would go for the 
 money, but he was not altogether sure that money could 
 do it. A theatre, a bookshop, a publishing house. It 
 was a question of ramming taste down people's throats 
 until they acquired it; only of course the difficulty would 
 be that people as they acquired taste would be nauseated 
 by the old habits and they would ascribe their nausea 
 to the new thing. 
 
 He thoroughly enjoyed these speculations and arrived 
 at one very definite and important conclusion, that for 
 England the problem was not political, but, as the de- 
 cadents of the nineties had seen in their funny, exag- 
 gerated way, a question of aesthetics. The English really 
 had nothing to worry about except their deplorable taste. 
 It gave him a peculiar mischievous pleasure to air these 
 views to Cora who, perceiving that they pointed straight 
 to Mr. Angel, was delighted. She thought Trevor would 
 make a splendid theatre-manager because he looked so 
 fine in his evening clothes. As usual, he was jocular and 
 a little ironical, and she could not perceive how serious 
 he was beneath his almost flippant triviality, and when he 
 talked to her about reviving Ben Jonson and Beaumont
 
 288 PINK ROSES 
 
 and Fletcher and Congreve she plucked up courage and 
 told him that Mr. Ysnaga wanted her to go on the stage. 
 She thought he meant to stay in London and throw in 
 his lot with Mr. Angel, who had lately bought a theatre 
 and also in the country a great mansion with a park 
 walled round for seven miles in each direction, two 
 villages, and half a dozen country houses. In one of 
 these Cora designed to live with Trevor, for she imagined 
 that, once he had decided against going North, he would 
 marry her, if only because she was so useful in managing 
 Mr. Ysnaga and Mr. Angel. 
 
 " The stage ? " he said. " Good idea. It will give you 
 something to do." 
 
 " I only want to do it if it is going to help you, if you 
 want to do all these things you are always talking about. 
 It's all women on the stage. And Angel is really keen 
 on you. His feelings are quite hurt because you don't 
 ask him for anything." 
 
 " There's nothing that I want for myself." 
 
 " Oh ! You are funny. You have been a bit funny 
 ever since you were ill. Well, shall I go on the stage? 
 The new show is in rehearsal. I'd get ten pounds a week, 
 but they'd expect me to show myself a bit in Town. 
 Would you mind ? " 
 
 She wanted him to say that he did, but he was so in- 
 tent upon his own problems that he replied absently : 
 
 " Not a bit. I think it's time you lived your own life." 
 
 She was enraged, for she took his perfectly innocent 
 words as an insulting reference to her former existence. 
 
 " All right, Mr. Innocence, if that's all you 
 care ..." 
 
 Sydney, who always hated Cora when she lost her 
 temper, leaped to his feet on Trevor's stomach, where he
 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 289 
 
 had been lying, and barked at her. He had grown into a 
 passable dog. 
 
 " Put that dog down ! " she cried. " You're always 
 nursing the beast as if it was a baby. So I'm to live my 
 own life, am I? ... That's what I get for looking 
 after you when you were sick, and chucking all my 
 friends and everything for you, is it ? Well, it's a damn 
 sight better life than any you'll ever know." 
 
 " Don't be absurd, Cora," said Trevor, throwing Syd- 
 ney down. " All that points to what I say. You want 
 to do something because the monotony of this life is 
 fretting your nerves away." 
 
 " I don't mind the monotony, so long as it's with 
 you." 
 
 Trevor was almost livid with irritation. Was there 
 nothing that a woman would not endure for the posses- 
 sion of a man? 
 
 " What do you do when I am out? " he asked. 
 
 " I wait for you to come back," she replied, with an 
 overwhelming sense of conscious virtue. 
 
 " That's my point," he said. " I mean I want you to 
 want to do something for its own sake and simply be- 
 cause you like it ; not because you think I like it." 
 
 That was too complicated for Cora. The answer to 
 all his objections, the salve of all her own dissatisfaction, 
 was that she was in love with him, and Love, she 
 thought, had made her a good woman. 
 
 " If you're dull," she said, " why don't you have your 
 friends to see you ? " 
 
 " I have no friends." 
 
 " There's that Cherryman and Carline, and that Tren- 
 ham man. You talked about him a lot. The flat's big 
 enough. Why don't you have 'em here? Mr. Angel's
 
 290 PINK ROSES 
 
 dying to meet some swells. Why don't you ask him to 
 meet them ? He's rich enough to meet anybody. Or do 
 you think they'd turn up their noses because we're not 
 married? You didn't mind down at the sea that time. 
 If you'd only make up your mind what you want to do we 
 could get married if that's in the way, and go ahead." 
 
 Trevor felt dizzy, as though he was standing on the 
 brink of an abyss. She had often hovered tremulously 
 round the subject, but had never been outspoken before, 
 and the thought of marriage had never crossed his 
 mind. 
 
 " I thought," he said, " that we weren't going to make 
 any plans until the end of the year." 
 
 " It isn't me," she cried. " It's you that's complain- 
 ing. I simply mentioned that Mr. Ysnaga wanted me 
 to go into the new show, and you begin to throw my 
 old life in my teeth." 
 
 " I did nothing of the kind." 
 
 " Yes, you did," she said, almost weeping. " And you 
 said your friends wouldn't come here because of me." 
 
 " Absolute invention ! " muttered Trevor. 
 
 " It isn't invention. It's the truth. I'm not a liar, 
 if I have been good to men. You said you were going 
 on the stage, and I wanted to go too." 
 
 Trevor's brain reeled. So all his idealistic projects 
 only meant to her that he thought of going on the stage. 
 If that was what they were to her, what on earth would 
 Mr. Angel and Mr. Ysnaga make of them? 
 
 " All right," he said. " I don't care a damn. If you 
 want to meet people, you shall. There aren't any barriers 
 nowadays. Nobody can object to anybody. You shall 
 have my friends. You shall have everybody I know. I 
 live with you. I'm not ashamed of you, only you must
 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 291 
 
 stop this jealous crouching over me. Why, you are 
 jealous even of the dog. The longer we go on the 
 worse you ..." 
 
 He stopped suddenly, as like a piece of ice dropped 
 into his brain, the idea stabbed home to him that she was 
 thinking all the time of the approaching hour when he 
 must leave her, and that she intended to marry him : and 
 behind her slyly moved the sinister figure of Mr. 
 Ysnaga. 
 
 " Don't let us make fools of ourselves, Cora," he said. 
 " I lost my temper. I beg your pardon. I shall be 
 only too glad if you do go on the stage. You will be 
 helping ..." 
 
 Again he stopped. What had happened to falsify his 
 utterance so confoundedly? When he thought a thing 
 it was true. When he spoke it at once it sounded false, 
 insincere, and to Cora especially it was becoming difficult 
 to be simple and truthful. In everything, even about 
 food, clothes, drink, and money he had to talk to her in 
 words, of one syllable. He began again : 
 
 "You will be ..." 
 
 No. It was no good. She would not be helping him. 
 The stage on which she would be acceptable would be 
 the stage of legs and lingerie. . . . What he really 
 wanted to say was that she would be relieving him, 
 saving him a great deal of trouble, only that he could 
 not allow himself even to think. . . . For a moment or 
 two he thought as she said, calculatingly, and he fancied 
 that it would be a good thing if she kept the two 
 Hebrews occupied with the public activity which they 
 could understand, while quietly, and at their expense, he 
 set about putting his schemes into practice. The only 
 way, he was sure, was to do it without talking about
 
 292 PINK ROSES 
 
 it, buy the people and the bricks and mortar he wanted, 
 and send the bill in to Angel. Yes, that was how Cora 
 would be useful to him. 
 
 " Well," she said, " finish what you were going to say. 
 I'm all right. I've got the best back in London. That's 
 not a thing to be sneezed at. You've got to be busy or 
 these damned Jews will go cold. I know them. They 
 don't sit in chairs hugging dogs while the grass grows 
 under their feet." 
 
 This was a cutting reference to Sydney, who had 
 jumped back on his master's stomach. 
 
 " All right," said Trevor. " I'm glad you want to 
 help. You'll enjoy being in the theatre, and we'll intro- 
 duce Angel to some lords and ladies ..." 
 
 "AndCherryman?" 
 
 " Of course Cherryman. You couldn't start anything 
 in London without Cherryman. He's a kind of man- 
 milliner, who provides the ladies with fashionable ideals, 
 poets, painters, eccentrics." 
 
 He smiled as he thought that Cora as a great bare back 
 artist would be more acceptable than Cora as the Lady 
 of the Opposite Flat. That restored the good-humoured, 
 delighted amusement he had always loved in London as 
 a place that, side by side with immense gravity, bred 
 romantic oddities, from whom flashed an inspired folly 
 that brought more illumination than ever came from 
 religious ecstasy or the tragic and passionate adherence 
 to the logic of an idea. It came, he thought, from the 
 obstinate refusal of the English to take tragedy tragi- 
 cally. When they could feel no more they could laugh, 
 and they could turn even horror into farce. 
 
 Cora stood looking down at him as he scratched the 
 dog he had bought to avoid meeting her.
 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 293 
 
 " Well," she said. " You are a queer fish. So quiet 
 there's never any knowing what you are up to." 
 
 " Very often I don't know myself," said Trevor. 
 " I'm glad we're going to move, and I think you and the 
 Hebrews can do more for England than all the high- 
 minded men of principle put together. You know, my 
 dear, their principles aren't their own, they are only 
 inherited. They live on them as they live on inherited 
 dividends. They . . . That's what I'm up against, 
 Cora. I don't want to go North. I want to live on my 
 own feelings, my own thoughts, my own ideals." 
 
 " There you go talking again," she protested. " And 
 I did think you were going to be sensible at last. If I'm 
 going on the stage I must have a press agent, and I must 
 be photographed." 
 
 44 So you shall," he said. " So you shall. Only for 
 God's sake let me talk or I shall burst. I've been a 
 listener all my life, and no one has ever said what I 
 wanted them to say. Well, now they're going to. I'm 
 going to teach them their catechism. ' I am a member 
 of humanity, a child of love, and an inheritor of the 
 kingdom of my soul.' ' 
 
 44 That's wrong," said Cora, who had been well drilled 
 in Christianity at her Sunday School. 
 
 " No. It's the same old catechism, only saying exactly 
 what it means instead of muddling it with Hebraistic 
 terms." 
 
 " Well, you are extraordinary," she said. " I'd never 
 have thought you were a bit religious. I had a brother 
 went off his head with it: preaching. But he was an 
 awful man. They had to lock him up because he wanted 
 to go up to London to murder me. He said I was burn- 
 ing his soul in hell."
 
 294 PINK ROSES 
 
 They were both by now thoroughly excited at having 
 broken the tension in which they had lived for so long, 
 and Cora felt that the victory was hers. She was shrewd 
 enough to know that the months of quiet living had been 
 the making of her and that without the accident of meet- 
 ing him all these dizzy developments would never have 
 been possible. He had shown a way where none had been 
 visible, and even Mr. Ysnaga had perceived that with 
 Trevor she had trebled her value in the market, and his 
 adventurous mind set no limit on the money that could 
 be got through Trevor's touch which, without disturb- 
 ance of any kind, made old things new and faded pleas- 
 ures bloom again. Cora herself did not understand it, 
 but she knew that Mr. Ysnaga did, and that Mr. Angel 
 was humbly prostrate before Trevor, not only because 
 he was young and educated at Cambridge College, but 
 because he was somehow exceptional, like a good picture 
 or a rare piece of china. Mr. Angel had a nose for such 
 things, and it had become Mr. Ysnaga's function to 
 ferret them out for him. 
 
 And somehow with the relaxation of the tension her 
 jealousy also was eased. She was delighted and happy 
 to think that by going on the stage she was going to help 
 Trevor, and she knew that by doing as Ysnaga wished 
 she was committing Trevor to a greater destiny. 
 
 " That is one thing," said Trevor. " The next thing 
 is the party. Cherryman's the man. It isn't me, you 
 know, Cora. It's Hardman doing all these things. I 
 never had a thought outside studying up the Law and 
 going home and settling down some day, and being senior 
 partner and sitting on committees. It was Hardman. 
 He was always talking about setting England mad with 
 the desire for the unattainable. He used to say the Eng-
 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 295 
 
 lish had ideas and they loathe politics, but they can go 
 mad for something so deeply desired that it cannot pos- 
 sibly become articulate. I wish you'd known Hardman. 
 I was thinking of him when I met you. You know, the 
 day when I smelt pink roses and walked out of life into 
 something that was not quite life but something more, 
 something peculiarly English, a long, brooding, vivid 
 memory." 
 
 Cora laughed at him. 
 
 " Go on talking, Boy," she said. " It does you good. 
 I'm off now at once to have some photos taken, and 
 before we have the party I'll have my name in the papers 
 and outside the theatre. . . . Angel's bought it, by the 
 way. The money that man has, and the money he 
 makes ! So long, old dear." 
 
 She ran off merrily, and Trevor, thinking moodily of 
 Hardman and how deeply he was committed to his loy- 
 alty to him, called Sydney and returned to his own flat. 
 He had not been there more than a moment or two when 
 there was a ring at the bell and he went to the door to 
 find his mother standing there. She stood still for a 
 moment or two while her soft eyes scanned him for 
 reassurance. 
 
 44 Why, mother ! " he said, holding her at arm's length 
 and taking in the dear rosy face, so strong and calm 
 beneath its gentleness, the clear grey eyes, the silken grey 
 hair under the almost quakerish bonnet. 
 
 44 You are looking so much better," she said. " I de- 
 clare. You are no longer a boy. You frightened me by 
 being a boy so long. What a strange place to choose to 
 live in ! Isn't it very noisy? " 
 
 44 No. It isn't noisy. At least I don't notice it. I 
 came here because I wanted people."
 
 296 PINK ROSES 
 
 " Yes. It must be lonely for you." 
 
 " It was pretty bad after the Dardanelles. I don't 
 suppose you feel it so much up North. But London was 
 in a fever. It was a sort of helpless rage. It has been 
 better since the Government went. We can make fools 
 of ourselves in our own way. I mean, we don't have to 
 pretend that anything is serious except the war, and we 
 don't have to respect anybody. That's our way of doing 
 things, just a mass movement . . . like shoving down 
 the railings of Hyde Park in order to get the vote, or 
 shoving in a scrum to get a hoof at the ball." 
 
 " I'm very glad," said his mother, looking at him 
 lovingly. 
 
 That was all she had come to say, to make sure and 
 then to say just that. Details, facts, were of no interest 
 to her. She wanted to know how it was with her boy, 
 and when she knew that it was well she was ready to 
 withdraw. She had only come for the day and stayed 
 long enough to give him all the news from home, and to 
 tell him how they were looking forward to his return to 
 them for good. 
 
 " I have been reading your friend Hardman's poems," 
 she said. " Some of them are beautiful, but I don't think 
 he always says what he means to say." 
 
 " That's true," answered Trevor. " The real Hard- 
 man isn't in them at all. I don't think the real Hard- 
 man would have appeared before he was forty. There 
 was such a lot of him." 
 
 " And it is just those men who will be needed." 
 
 " That's it," said Trevor indignantly. " Any stupid 
 brute could have done Second-Lieutenant's work. I'd 
 much rather it had been me than Hardman. You see, 
 mother, he was essentially a man who would wait his
 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 297 
 
 time. That is why all this fuss about his poetry is so 
 indecent. He'll have to work against that always as long 
 as he lives." 
 
 " You talk about him as though he were alive," said 
 she. 
 
 " So he is," said Trevor, and he was filled with a 
 quivering sense that here in this love as in all his loves 
 his friend would always be with him, and that with each 
 gain of love he would be able to plunge deeper into that 
 rare intimacy. His mother understood. No harm could 
 ever come to this son of hers. He was bound to a ful- 
 filment that would live all through his life and even be- 
 yond it. She was of Quaker stock and was practised in 
 silence, the silence that strengthens, purifies, and unites 
 even where words have divided. 
 
 " I'm very glad," she said. " I was hurt only that 
 you did not tell us you were ill." 
 
 " I had to go through it alone," he said. " I had a 
 good friend to look after me." 
 
 " Oh yes." She smiled at his suppressing the fact that 
 the friend was a woman, and she was relieved too. He 
 was untouched. There was no thought in him of being 
 in love. He had wasted nothing. Whatever he had 
 been through and if he could not tell her, it was not 
 for her to ask was clear gain. 
 
 As she rose to go there was another ring at the bell, 
 and he darted to the door, fearing lest it might be Cora, 
 in whom he knew there was much that would lacerate 
 his mother. It was Mr. Angel. 
 
 "Oh! come in, Mr. Angel. My mother is here. I 
 want to introduce you to her." 
 
 Mr. Angel was overcome. He wanted to turn 
 tail.
 
 298 PINK ROSES 
 
 " I can tell you my pusiness on de mat," he said. 
 
 " No, no, come in," said Trevor, dragging Mr. Angel, 
 breathless and perspiring, into his sitting-room. 
 
 " Mother, this is a friend of mine, Mr. Angel." 
 
 " A friend is too much," protested the unhappy Jew, 
 hiding his short crooked legs behind the sofa. 
 
 " I'm sure my son does not use the word lightly," said 
 Mrs. Mathew. 
 
 " He's a vonderful poy, ma'am," said Mr. Angel. " I 
 should be so proud of dat poy as if I vos a hen vot laid 
 a ostrich egg." 
 
 Mrs. Mathew laughed merrily. It was so like Trevor 
 to introduce a perfectly incongruous acquaintance, and 
 to expect him to be welcomed with open arms. And she 
 used her merriment to cover her retreat. 
 
 Trevor took her to the door, and she stood for a mo- 
 ment looking over at the door of the opposite flat, hesi- 
 tated a moment, then decided to say nothing, kissed him 
 and took his arm as they walked downstairs into the 
 street, where he hailed a taxi for her. 
 
 When he returned he found Mr. Angel mopping his 
 brow, still perspiring from the anguish of the meeting. 
 
 " I didn't say anything horrible, did I? " 
 
 " No, no," laughed Trevor. " Sit down. She liked 
 you. The mater can make people feel they aren't there 
 if she doesn't like them." 
 
 Mr. Angel spread out his knees, planted his jewelled 
 hands on them, and heaved a sigh or two as his stomach 
 settled down. 
 
 " Veil," he said, " I been to de Var Office and dat 
 general vot shpeaks to me like a lord say dat poy can be 
 recalled if you'll gif him de regimental number. Qvite 
 strong in his language he vos, and he said de damn re-
 
 PLOTS AND PLANS 299 
 
 cruiting officers vos doing all dey could to make de Var 
 Office unpopular. Dey likes popularity, de generals." 
 
 Trevor had asked Mr. Angel to do what Mr. Hobday 
 had refused, and Mr. Angel had trotted off as delightedly 
 as an office-boy running an errand for a considerate 
 employer. 
 
 " De general vos so happy dat I had not come for my 
 moneys." 
 
 " I'm ever so much obliged," said Trevor. " You are 
 very kind. It means a great deal, I know." 
 
 "Vos de name Hobday?" 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " Hobday, Treves and Treves? " 
 
 " Yes. That's the firm I'm with." 
 
 " Ach ! So ! I'm der company on de other side in 
 de African case. It ruined me in Africa. But dere's 
 millions in it, millions." 
 
 Mr. Angel looked uncomfortable. 
 
 " You don't have much to do with it ? " 
 
 " No. Only as much or as little as I choose." 
 
 Mr. Angel was obviously relieved. It was clear that 
 Trevor did not know much about it. He changed the 
 subject, and said excitedly: 
 
 "You remember I offer a prize for de first Jewish 
 V.C. in the British Navy. Veil, he has been von ! " 
 
 He beamed. 
 
 "Hurray!" said Trevor. 'That just gives me my 
 excuse for the party: a real patriotic party in honour 
 of the V.C" 
 
 " De Jewish V.C.," said Mr. Angel solemnly.
 
 XX 
 TREVOR AND LESLIE 
 
 WITH so much contributing to his happiness Trevor 
 became light-heartedly fantastic and thought of nothing 
 but his party, to which he invited everybody he met. He 
 was so absurdly happy that people smiled as they saw 
 him pass, for it was long since young men had walked 
 the air in London. He invited Mr. Barnes and the 
 cashier at the office, and sent invitations to Cherryman 
 and Carline, asking them to bring whom they pleased 
 and as many as possible. He hunted up old acquaint- 
 ances and asked them, attended rehearsals at the theatre, 
 and invited the principal comedian and the singing ladies 
 a real olla podrida of London people. It made him 
 heady with anticipation because it reminded him of 
 Hardman's evenings at Cambridge, which had been a 
 university in themselves, from which not even the shyest 
 student could stay away (Hardman and Peto used to 
 drag recalcitrants in by force) Mr. Angel would come, 
 of course, with the V.C., and Trevor made him ask his 
 general at the War Office. . . . Only one serious 
 thought impeded his gaiety, and that was of young Leslie 
 Hobday, who must be rescued in time for the party. 
 For some obscure reason Trevor felt that he could not 
 ask Ruth. It would have been as inappropriate as to ask 
 his mother. 
 
 He obtained her address from the cashier at the office 
 
 300
 
 TREVOR AND LESLIE 301 
 
 and wrote to her to ask for Leslie's regimental number. 
 She did not reply, and after waiting a day or two, de- 
 ciding that his letter might have gone astray, he called 
 on her at the Ministry, but was informed that she was 
 away and was not expected back for a fortnight. As he 
 was turning disconsolately away, having lost almost all 
 his eager pleasure because Leslie was still languishing in 
 the Army, Sophina came tripping down the stairs dressed 
 d la Russe. She nodded and smiled several times before 
 he recognized her. What? Mademoiselle Dolgorova? 
 Sophina Solomonovna? 
 
 " How do you do? " he said. " I didn't expect ..." 
 
 " Oh, I work here," she replied, " until I can get a 
 dancing engagement." 
 
 " I wanted to see Miss Hobday." 
 
 " Oh ! She's ill, poor darling. She's been away 
 nearly a week. She never got over her brother going. 
 It was such a queer thing. He seemed such a sensible 
 boy. You'd have thought he'd have waited." 
 
 " But he didn't." 
 
 " No." 
 
 She was just going to pass on, when he said: 
 
 " Oh ! by the way, Mile. Dolgorova, I'm giving a party 
 on the ninth. I've asked Carline and Cherryman, and 
 there are to be some theatrical people ..." 
 
 Sophina's eyes glittered. 
 
 "I should be so glad if you'd come and dance. 
 We're funny people, we English, and the party is in 
 honour of the first Jewish V.C." 
 
 Sophina's lip curled at the distasteful word. 
 
 " I haven't seen him, but some friends of mine are 
 immensely proud of him." 
 
 He was thinking:
 
 302 PINK ROSES 
 
 " Of course I oughtn't to have mentioned the word 
 Jew. It sounds so awkward. It never fits into any 
 sentence, suggests the unmentionable, God knows why. 
 Lassalle was a Jew, and so was Karl Marx ..." 
 
 Really he must shake off the confounded habit of let- 
 ting his thoughts run away with him. 
 
 He said: 
 
 " I hope Miss Hobday will soon be better. I only 
 met her once. Please remember me if you are writing." 
 
 Sophina had guessed that he was implicated in Ruth's 
 distress, though she was not certain whether he was 
 aware of it. Men are so dense. 
 
 She said: 
 
 "Of course," and asked him for his address, the 
 necessity for which had escaped him. He found his 
 card and gave it her, and she slipped away smiling, be- 
 cause he had made her happy. Sophina said : 
 
 " He is in love with her. He is rich. He is young." 
 And she congratulated herself on her wisdom in attach- 
 ing herself to Ruth, and then as she thought of Tren- 
 ham she put out her tongue. 
 
 She had walked only a few yards when Trevor came 
 running after her. 
 
 " I say," he said; " if you want to go on the stage I 
 can help you. I know some people these friends of 
 mine are putting on a show and I'll tell them if you 
 like." 
 
 "Oh, thanks!" she said. "If it's the Ysnaga show, 
 I've tried " 
 
 " That's it. But I can make them give you a chance." 
 
 "Can you?" 
 
 "If you'll be at the theatre to-morrow I'll take you 
 to Mr. Ysnaga himself."
 
 TREVOR AND LESLIE 303 
 
 " I know," said Sophina a little bitterly. " They only 
 take people on the nod." 
 
 " Very well. I'll nod and they shall take you. You've 
 worked hard for it." 
 
 "Worked! I should think I have." She thought of 
 Carline and the months of affected Russianism. 
 
 " Worked! Well, I think I deserve a bit o' luck." 
 
 There was not much Russian about Sophina now. 
 Her lips and her eyes glistened with her devouring ambi- 
 tions, that were like flames to burn through the wax of 
 the lewd town of the Gentile Londoners. Her little body 
 was taut with elation as she danced along, feeling cer- 
 tain in herself that her real chance had come at last, 
 her chance to show Finberg and her father and Carline, 
 for the matter of that, what she was made of. She saw 
 herself intriguing and forcing her way to power and 
 control in the theatre world, and every nerve in her 
 tingled for the fight. Ah! Wouldn't she send some of 
 the men reeling and wouldn't she just flay some of the 
 women, the carcases, with neither energy nor talent to 
 justify their being where they were with so much ma- 
 chinery set in motion to exhibit them to the public. The 
 public! That was what she wanted to have her share 
 in, amusing, exciting, and insulting the public, just to 
 show them what a Jewess could do, a Jewess born in 
 the gutter and bred from a stock cramped and starved 
 in the Ghetto in Russia . . . Russia? But this was 
 fat, rich England, fat and rich even in the middle of 
 the great war which had brought Russia to ruin. The 
 Jews knew, they had always known, that the war meant 
 ruin to Russia, and they were fiercely, savagely glad. 
 . . . The energy released in her was astonishing, but 
 she repressed it. As Trevor left her she said :
 
 3 o 4 PINK ROSES 
 
 " Oh, you are good ! " 
 
 " Not at all. Not at all." 
 
 Sophina watched him as he walked away, and, think- 
 ing of Ruth, she said: 
 
 " She'll get him. I'll see that she gets him." 
 
 It was too late to dream of going to the office before 
 lunch. Trevor decided that he must dispose of the 
 Leslie Hobday affair, and went to the house near Baker 
 Street. Its poor gentility disappointed him, for it was 
 not the kind of place he had imagined as Ruth's house. 
 The door was opened by Leslie himself, looking as white 
 as a ghost: hollow-cheeked and wretched. At first 
 Trevor did not recognize him, and said : 
 
 "Is this Mr. Hobday's?" 
 
 "Yes. It is. He's out" 
 
 "Can I see Miss Ruth Hobday?" 
 
 " She's away." 
 
 " Will you ask her then to send her brother's regi- 
 mental number to me, at her uncle's office." 
 
 " Did my uncle send you ? " asked Leslie, in a fero- 
 cious tone. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then go to hell. I haven't got a regimental num- 
 ber. I crocked, and they kicked me out." He tried to 
 slam the door, but Trevor put his foot in it and cried : 
 
 " Wait a moment. Wait a moment." 
 
 "What for?" 
 
 Trevor did not quite know why he wanted the door 
 left open. He repeated: 
 
 " Wait a moment." 
 
 "Who are you, anyway?" asked Leslie. 
 
 " My name's Trevor Mathew. I remember seeing you 
 once at the corner of Whitehall. But you ..."
 
 TREVOR AND LESLIE 305 
 
 " Come in," said Leslie, suddenly changing his man- 
 ner. He liked this young man with his quiet per- 
 sistence. 
 
 Trevor obeyed him and followed him into the shabby 
 dining-room, in which the Hobday furniture and the 
 Paget-Sutton portraits were at war. 
 
 " Sit down," said Leslie. 
 
 Trevor sat down. 
 
 " How long have you been in my uncle's firm ? " 
 
 " Nearly three years now." 
 
 " Going to stay there? " 
 
 " No. I have a firm of my own up North." 
 
 " I see. Look here, if I played my cards probably I 
 could go into my uncle's firm. Is it worth it, or is it 
 hell?" 
 
 " Oh, no. It's a bit dusty and old-fashioned. The 
 old man is like a paper-weight sitting on the dusty pile 
 of documents. As soon as he goes the draught will clean 
 them up a bit. There'll be a big draught when he goes." 
 
 " I've made a fool of myself," said Leslie. " I 
 wanted to strike out for myself. You think it would be 
 all right if I went in there?" 
 
 " Well, your name's Hobday, just as mine's Mathew. 
 Even if you don't like all that it stands for, there's 
 a good deal in it. I'm in the same boat." 
 
 " Are you ? " asked Leslie eagerly. 
 
 " Yes. There's an old firm waiting for me too. I'd 
 like to start afresh, but it isn't as easy as all that. I 
 mean, one can't behave as though one hadn't a name or 
 a memory. You can hate your uncle as much as you 
 please, but he stands for a good deal more than himself." 
 
 " I say, you are decent," said Leslie. " Girls aren't 
 any good, are they? "
 
 306 PINK ROSES 
 
 " Not much," replied Trevor. " They don't know." 
 
 " No, they don't," said Leslie emphatically. " And 
 what makes it worse, they think they do. My sister has 
 fussed herself over it until she is ill, and there wouldn't 
 have been anything to fuss about if I'd had a talk with 
 you. Ruth's all right, but she's only a girl after all, 
 and looking after a family is a man's work. You don't 
 know my father, do you ? " 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Well. He kicked against the Hobdays, and they 
 cracked him like a nut. Where did you go to school ? " 
 
 " Eton." 
 
 " Oh ! I've just gone to Westminster, but it's rotten. 
 Nothing to look forward to but the old war, and every- 
 body mad keen about the Army. It's rough luck on us, 
 isn't it?" 
 
 "The war?" 
 
 Leslie nodded and looked away. It was Trevor's first 
 real contact with anybody much younger than himself. 
 It was dramatically and splendidly the one thing needful 
 for him. Leslie slipped into the terrible void left by 
 Hardman, and more than filled it. He had a passionate 
 quality which Hardman had lacked. Nothing would 
 ever be easy for Leslie, whereas for Hardman, as for 
 Trevor, everything had been easy, fatally easy, The 
 way had been made smooth for them, even for their 
 triumphant response to the need of the moment in the 
 first months of the war. . . . But for Leslie there 
 would be a grinding struggle for everything, to recover 
 the ground that had been lost, to regain traditions that 
 had been obscured, to redeem his inheritance from the 
 bragging defiance to which the elders, losing touch with 
 the young, had descended in their pathetic efforts to
 
 TREVOR AND LESLIE 307 
 
 speak for those who should come after them. Trevor 
 understood that what he had been through was a trifle 
 compared to the ordeal which had been imposed on 
 Leslie, and that unless they joined hands the struggle 
 would grow harder as time went on, and boys fighting 
 their way into manhood would be crippled and done to 
 death, though life should preserve a peaceful and serene 
 surface. . . . 
 
 Odd how the war had made people think of them- 
 selves in relation to, things greater than themselves, as 
 symbolic, as being linked with others for purposes 
 greater than their desires! Trevor was fully conscious 
 of this. He had come clean through his struggle while 
 the boy, so vivid, so eager, so nervously wrought up, 
 was in the middle of his, and only for a moment com- 
 forted and consoled by the presence of this friend who 
 could understand. 
 
 " I had to go into the Army," he explained, " to get 
 rid of it. I can talk to you. You don't mind? You 
 know, all the fellows who have gone, who don't know. 
 We do know. They think we're awfulry young, but we 
 do know all the things that people like my father have 
 pretended not to know. We've got to know, because 
 something's hurting us all the time and we've got to find 
 a way out. You know what I mean. Evolution, and 
 all that. ... All right, I haven't been reading books. 
 It's what I've been thinking for a long time, and I ex- 
 pect lots of fellows have been thinking the same thing. 
 You have." 
 
 " Something like it." 
 
 " Well, it's as if things were rushing away from you 
 at about a million miles an hour, and all the things 
 you'd been told were important turned out to be nothing
 
 3 o8 PINK ROSES 
 
 at all, and as if when you tried to play the game accord- 
 ing to the rules it turned crazy because the game was a 
 new game, and the rules were old rules." 
 
 " Why, that's the war ! " said Trevor, beginning to 
 grasp what the boy was driving at. 
 
 " That's it. We aren't playing the old game any more. 
 Nothing that my father did can ever be done by me 
 because I'm a different being, something quite new. So 
 are you. So is Ruth. I can tell them, the new people, 
 as soon as I see them, and I can't make out why the old 
 game goes on." 
 
 " You see," said Trevor, " we are not allowed to say 
 that it is a new game because the old people think we 
 want to say that it is better. But we don't say anything 
 of the kind. We only say that it's new. Whether it is 
 better or not remains to be proved. If we start out with 
 a bigger truth you can be sure that we shall breed a 
 bigger lie because people will always pretend to under- 
 stand when they don't understand, and to believe when 
 they don't believe. But the people who are the first to 
 play the new game will have a lovely time. And, I say, 
 about going into the office, your uncle and my father 
 were friends when they were young, and they've 
 worked together all their lives. I think they've played 
 their old game pretty well. You've made up my mind 
 for me, Leslie. I'm going on where they left off, and 
 if you go in too we can play the new game together." 
 
 "Oh, I say! How ripping!" said Leslie, his pale 
 cheeks flushed with excitement. " You must come again 
 when Ruth is at home. She knows, although she's only 
 a girl, and wants everything tidy and precise." 
 
 " I hoped to see her to-day," replied Trevor, " but 
 I'm glad I found you in. You must come and see me,
 
 TREVOR AND LESLIE 309 
 
 too, and we'll make plans. By the way, would you like 
 a dog? I've got a fox-terrier I want to give away. 
 He has a poor time cooped up in a flat in the West 
 End; I'd like you to have him." 
 
 Leslie's eyes shone. 
 
 "Wouldn't I just," he cried. "Can I have him 
 
 now?" 
 
 Trevor laughed and invited Leslie there and then to 
 come back with him and take Sydney away.
 
 XXI 
 
 RUTH RETURNS 
 
 RUTH fled to a quiet inn in the Chilterns to wrestle with 
 herself, and to discover the truth both of events and 
 the persons involved. Emotional battering at both was 
 no good at all, though it might have been enjoyable. It 
 could only end in bitterness. That was her great dis- 
 covery. In London, where she could not but be con- 
 centrated upon persons, Leslie, her father, Trenham, 
 and, remotely, Trevor, she could not weep and her 
 thoughts must move through tunnels hot as fire in her 
 mind. In the country she could relax. She was away 
 from them all and could grapple with events, and first 
 of all she could weep out her pain. 
 
 The country she had chosen was perfectly suitable. 
 Fat, heavy, dull, overgrown with grass, monotonous 
 with its woods and meadows unrelieved by water. Of 
 vivid beauty there was -none, save now and then in the 
 sky, but hedgerows, lanes, and woods soothed her as she 
 wandered through them, and gradually she sank into 
 them and was absorbed in their mood. Only then could 
 she begin to think, and rather to her surprise she found 
 herself facing squarely the facts as they had been, re- 
 gretting nothing, blaming no one. indulging neither in 
 self-pity nor self-reproach. She remembered first of all 
 the pink rose and the gladness in her when she knew 
 that Trenham had taken it, and her joy in his need of 
 
 310
 
 RUTH RETURNS 311 
 
 her. She flinched from nothing then. There had been 
 no vanity in it, none. Feelings and emotions that had 
 been suppressed in her had come tumbling out, clamorous 
 as a new spring. They were young, very young emo- 
 tions. Ah! how lovely they had been, like songs, like 
 the colour of spring buds. It was extraordinary how 
 tenderly Trenham had taken them, how he had cherished 
 them, and terrible it was how he had not seen them 
 fade, almost at once. They ought never to have been 
 given, never taken, but they had surprised her with their 
 loveliness, and it had been so sweet to have them loved. 
 In a grown woman how could a man know that it was 
 only young love flowering too late? Certainly she 
 could not blame Trenham. He had been more than con- 
 tent, tragically happy he had been with the illusion after 
 the reality had faded at his touch, and there had begun 
 that for which she must now suffer. She had allowed 
 him to worship the illusion without undeceiving him. 
 She had told herself that the full flowering would come 
 and it had not come. For him it had been a great, 
 a triumphant passion, for her only the little song of 
 young love. The pity of it! For him she could have 
 gone on pretending. Lovers can go on pretending for 
 ever that there are only they two in the world, but Leslie 
 had felt the loss of truth in her, long before, many days 
 before she was aware of it herself, and he had forced 
 her to know what she was doing. And then and then 
 came Trevor with his happy, easy candour. And he 
 was untouched too. He was as she had been, innocent, 
 childish, happy with the little songs that flowered in his 
 heart, but possessed with a kind of vision that made 
 him strong, and unable to pretend. 
 
 For hours she was able to forget her suffering in just
 
 312 PINK ROSES 
 
 lying back and thinking of Trevor. Something of 
 Harlequin in him, of Pierrot, as though a spell were 
 upon him, perhaps a spell of horror who knows? 
 some power stronger than himself that made it possible 
 for him to play with life even at its most terrible. Her 
 one meeting with him had contained more life than all 
 the rest of her experience. It alone, without her own 
 honesty and courage, had made it impossible for her to 
 go on pretending for ever. For that other the full 
 flowering could never be, never, because neither he nor 
 she had waited for the first pretty song to die away. 
 They had lived on that which was only meant to charm, 
 and it had died. That was something for which all her 
 life she must suffer. That she knew and that she 
 bravely faced, though many tears were shed for it. 
 
 Worse was the thought of Leslie, and the shame she 
 had unwittingly had in his torment, for nothing less than 
 that could have made him act so desperately so youth- 
 fully too and he was always so old and deliberate in 
 his actions without a word to her, and without even 
 turning to her for sympathy. She remembered that he 
 had been with her when she noticed that the pink rose 
 was gone. Had he turned from her then? Was sex so 
 strong in a woman that it could repel everything that 
 was not part of the immediate object of its desire? Was 
 that why women always, always failed of full accom- 
 plishment in all other things? Here it needed an 
 agonized effort to keep the thread of her thoughts, the 
 driving passionate thought to which she was committed. 
 Her sex throbbed and leaped in her in the attempt to 
 crush out all other desires. And that she would not 
 have. Not for a moment would she sink back into the 
 old conceptions, the idea of goodness, the notion of
 
 RUTH RETURNS 313 
 
 prayer, the strange antiquated superstitions about 
 womanhood which women had accepted in their indul- 
 gence for spoiled and humoured men. There was noth- 
 ing evil in her sex, though it was terrible in its force. 
 She cried within herself: 
 
 " I will understand ! I will understand ! " 
 
 And by sheer force of will she controlled the power 
 in her that wished to sweep all her other faculties with 
 it and use them to its own ends. Leslie must come first. 
 That other could look after himself, but Leslie was only 
 a child, and she owed it to him to nurse him into man- 
 hood. The family's responsibilities by her mother's 
 death and her father's folly had been thrown upon her 
 and she must not fail in them, as she had failed. . . . 
 If she must be sacrificed she should have accepted that. 
 This she knew was where she had erred. A sudden 
 serenity had been offered to her and she had clutched at 
 it. Young love had sung in her, and she had let its 
 song be turned to harm. 
 
 That much she made clear to herself, and for days 
 she was tortured with the thought of Leslie suffering 
 because of her inability to comprehend. So cruel, so 
 stupid, so childish an error she ought never to have com- 
 mitted, and she could only face life again on condition 
 that she understood all its implications. 
 
 Her paleness, her silence alarmed the good woman of 
 the inn, who prepared choice dishes for her and made 
 her drink much new milk. 
 
 Out of doors in the lanes and the woods she could 
 wander without thinking, lost in a pained fruitful brood- 
 ing, loathing the idea that Leslie should go out into the 
 aw fnl experience of the war, not at peace either with 
 her or with himself. She thought of the war rather as
 
 3H PINK ROSES 
 
 a condition into which men passed, going out of life to 
 face the risk of never returning into it again, for surely 
 the \var was something beneath human consciousness, 
 something that repelled every human thought and neces- 
 sitated a laying down of truth, a surrender of faith, an 
 acceptance of nullity. To do that a man, or a boy for 
 that matter, must needs be at peace or the evil of the 
 war must creep into his life to destroy it. But what 
 could she do? What could she do? 
 
 She wrote long letters to Leslie, but never posted 
 them. Beyond a certain degree of intimacy letters only 
 created misunderstanding, for words written were of no 
 avail. She needed to hold the poor boy in her arms, 
 to kiss his lips, to stroke his hair, to let her tears mingle 
 with his, to press her face close to his so that she could 
 feel the heat of his tears and to taste them to share 
 his bitterness, to take it into herself, to take all his hurt 
 and burn it away with her love. And often she im- 
 agined that she was with him so, and she cried: 
 
 " Oh, Leslie, Leslie, my dear ! . . . I love you so. 
 I didn't mean to hurt you. I was happy for a little 
 while. It was wrong of me. It was a poor little hap- 
 piness. Forgive me ! Forgive me ! " 
 
 But as she imagined him he lay like a stone, his young 
 face drawn and looking old and terribly wise, having 
 judged her. 
 
 She was at her extremest suffering when she had his 
 letter saying he had been released. At first she could 
 not believe it, but it was in his hand and was written 
 from home, just a note scrawled impatiently, and she 
 felt that he was annoyed with her for not being there 
 when he arrived. Once again she had been wrong and 
 had sacrificed him to her own emotions, and, forgetting
 
 RUTH RETURNS 315 
 
 how hard her trial had been, she called herself selfish 
 for having run away into solitude to enjoy her agony, 
 and she began to think a little bitterly of the hardship 
 of being a woman and so easily absorbed in whatever 
 might be happening to herself, always, always the per- 
 sonal outlook the personal interest. . . . How could 
 men be so detached, so disinterested, so quietly and 
 almost automatically self-critical? They could laugh so 
 easily even when things were at their worst, and she 
 could only get as far as the desire to laugh, and the 
 perception that laughter was good and clean and whole- 
 some. She thought that perhaps it was impossible for 
 a woman to stand alone, and that brought her with a 
 sickening swiftness to the social aspect of what she had 
 done. She had attempted to stand alone, to ignore 
 her own obligations and those of the man with whom 
 she had sung the pathetic song of young love. . . . 
 Something that she had lived in contact with another 
 being, and therefore with humanity, must remain a 
 secret, always a secret, moving only in secret through 
 her own life in all its years, and in other lives not mov- 
 ing at all, a thing fixed and immovable, an impediment 
 created by herself. The injury was as definite as a 
 wound upon her body, and she was as conscious of it 
 as though it had been so, and then she thought of all the 
 wounded who had returned maimed for life. They bore 
 their afflictions cheerfully, and seemed to grow accus- 
 tomed to them and perhaps she would do so too. . . . 
 Then she swung back to the baffling idea of the handicap 
 under which women live, and this tormented her for a 
 long time until inexplicably she began to laugh. There 
 was no occasion for it, unless it was the sight of the 
 shining beech-buds swinging against the blue sky catch-
 
 316 PINK ROSES 
 
 ing the pale light of the winter sun that had no warmth 
 to bring them to their bursting point. She was alone in 
 the woods. There was not even a bird in sight, though 
 far away she could hear the melancholy cooing of wood- 
 pigeons, and far up every now and then a hawk hovered 
 and swung on the wind, eyeing the brown sea of the 
 woods for its prey. The wind whispered through the 
 topmost twigs of the trees, and the light sank into their 
 shadow as upon deep water, and Ruth, as she walked 
 deeper and deeper into the tangled wilderness, felt that 
 she would never return, since here it did not matter that 
 she was wounded because she could be alone. And she 
 laughed with the music of full happiness. A startled 
 fawn leaped upon the brown wet bracken, stared at her, 
 and darted away, and she longed to touch it, to hold its 
 slender neck in her arms and to stroke its tender throat. 
 She ran after it, the dear fawn that had broken the 
 stillness into which she had been sinking. And again 
 she laughed at the absurdity of that impulse, and as she 
 laughed she gained complete surrender, and accepted 
 that as she was a woman she must be personal in her 
 outlook. Life is through persons, and a man takes his 
 risks lightly knowing that he can always fall back upon 
 a woman. In the end the whole burden falls upon 
 women. Ruth accepted this exultantly, for she knew she 
 had reached the truth of her own being. She could 
 bring fruitfulness to a man's soul. That was her power 
 as a woman. Had she sacrificed it? . . . No. No. 
 No. She had not given it, but she had given honestly 
 all she had to give. 
 
 She became then fiercely, passionately personal, and 
 yielded to what she had been avoiding all the while, the 
 thought of Trevor. Her impression of him had been
 
 RUTH RETURNS 317 
 
 true. There was in him something untouched, some- 
 thing of Pierrot wandering pale and mischievous outside 
 life. Perhaps it was only because he had escaped the 
 destiny of his generation. Perhaps but she could not 
 deal in reasons now. She was certain of this fact. He 
 was Pierrot playing at life, amusing himself with that 
 woman of the cafe. 
 
 She retraced her footsteps. Nothing existed for her 
 but Trevor. She was glad even that she had been 
 wounded, for she had a strength and a knowledge of 
 life which he lacked. It could only be given to him by 
 a woman who knew her power. An insensible woman 
 or a girl as untouched as himself could only amuse him, 
 only play the Pierrot game with him. 
 
 There was not the smallest doubt in her that what 
 she desired would come to pass. She knew not how. 
 Within herself as within him it had happened. When? 
 Long ago perhaps. It might be even as long ago as the 
 day when she had passed him in the darkness of her 
 uncle's office, or the day when she had seen him in 
 Whitehall, when she wore the grey dress and the pink 
 rose which that other had stolen. Or perhaps it had 
 sprung to life in them as they sat oblivious of time in 
 the chop-house in the City. 
 
 When she reached the inn she found another letter 
 from Leslie telling her to come home at once. Trevor 
 had been to see him, and had given him a dog. 
 
 Ruth kissed his letter, fondled it, read it over and 
 over again. The news was what she had longed for. 
 That those two should be friends was already a fulfil- 
 ment: Leslie and Trevor. . . .Oh! what could they 
 not be to each other and what could she not make of the 
 two of them, both young, both saved from the terrible
 
 318 PINK ROSES 
 
 fate of the young to help in the task of achieving the 
 hopes and dreams of those who were gone. 
 
 When she returned Leslie met her at the station with 
 Sydney, from whom he would not part for a moment, 
 not only because Sydney was a dog, but because he was 
 Trevor's dog. 
 
 " This is my dog," said Leslie proudly, and that was 
 all Ruth wanted him to say, for he was a boy again, 
 utterly forgetful that he had ever had a trouble or a 
 tortured thought too strong for his young mind or an 
 emotion too great for his boyish soul. 
 
 But Sydney was suspicious of her. The only woman 
 he had known was Cora Dinmont, and her he hated. 
 He crouched away behind Leslie's legs, and cocked an 
 appraising eye at her. 
 
 "You were a silly ass to go away," said Leslie. 
 " Trevor came to see you, but he's my friend now."
 
 XXII 
 THE PARTY 
 
 THE meeting with Leslie had shocked Trevor also into 
 facing facts, and an admission that he had never had 
 the smallest real intention of not taking up the life for 
 which he was designed by birth, tradition, and circum- 
 stance. Hardman's doctrine of inspired folly was all 
 very well, but it was only tolerable on condition that it 
 should emerge from life solidly based, organized, and 
 ordered. Perhaps Hardman had understood that, per- 
 haps if he had lived he would have been more explicit 
 about it, though probably he would have done something 
 perfectly crazy which nobody would have understood 
 just to prevent people taking him seriously. 
 
 " You know, Trevor," Hardman had said once, " you 
 take me much too seriously. Everybody does. It is 
 the old habit of turning persons into dogmas. It 
 doesn't work nowadays. They tried it with poor old 
 Meredith, but it didn't work. It doesn't work. It only 
 turns them into a juju. Look at the Kaiser and 
 Kitchener." 
 
 How sound Hardman had been! Trevor, trying to 
 live up to him, felt like an undertaker asked to organize 
 a wedding. His funeral carriages could be decorated 
 with white flowers and ribbons; but what the devil was 
 he to do about the black horses. Oh well ! The party 
 was the best he could do. He would steer Cora and 
 
 319
 
 320 PINK ROSES 
 
 Sophina into the theatre, and then when the last of his 
 year came, he would return to the North and keep in 
 touch with them and Mr. Angel and Mr. Ysnaga, be- 
 cause there was never any knowing what might come 
 out of it all. And there would be Leslie to steer 
 through. Oh yes, on the whole things had turned out 
 very well, very well. 
 
 The agony of the war, which had reached its bitterest 
 intensity at the turn of the Dardanelles, broke with the 
 Russian Revolution. Every fibre of Trevor's being 
 kindled to that bursting of the spring of human hope, 
 and leaped into flame. The event was all the greater 
 for being anonymous. No great name came out of it, 
 because it was too immense an uprising of the human 
 spirit for any ambitious fool to turn it to his own ac- 
 count. Trevor understood it very well. The human 
 spirit had flamed forth at its only outlet. Everywhere 
 else it was cramped and confined by the mechanical 
 organization of life. Only in Russia, still feudal, still 
 hundreds of years behind the times, could it effectively 
 assert itself, and it had done so. That was the cardinal 
 fact. It had made plain for all the world to see, even 
 through the smoke and the fumes of war, the spirit of 
 the young, that which sustains, guides, and leads hu- 
 manity and drives it ever on in pursuit of the unat- 
 tainable. 
 
 For days after the splendid news Trevor's life was 
 one long chant of pure idealism. He knew that it did 
 not matter now what happened. The truth had been 
 uttered in the vast gesture in the East, and the West 
 might go on mechanically denying it as it had been doing 
 for a whole generation before the moment of utterance, 
 but in the end to that truth it must come. Life,
 
 THE PARTY 321 
 
 treasure, youth, honour, all human things may be 
 thrown away, but the march of truth is irresistible. 
 Above all, thought Trevor, there was no hurry. There 
 was time, there was room for everything. And as 
 the paean of his idealism sank back into his soul he 
 moved about in the very spirit of Harlequin, touching 
 doors which did not open, stirring up people who only 
 laughed at him, but happily and indulgently. How 
 easily he could have turned the material in his hands 
 into a commonplace success. He had Hardman's fame, 
 Angel's millions, Ysnaga's cunning, but he refused to 
 exploit any of these things. He preferred to bide his 
 time until there were more like himself and Leslie, who 
 knew that the long awaited new life had begun to blos- 
 som in the souls of men. 
 
 The great case was opened at the Law Courts. He 
 had never arrived at any real grasp of its detail, but he 
 understood that it was a very important affair to Mr. 
 Barnes an infinitely greater thing than the Russian Revo- 
 lution because it would take six weeks, and there were 
 five counsel on either side, with the leaders' briefs 
 marked five thousand guineas. Mr. Barnes hummed and 
 buzzed with excitement. Trevor went to Court with 
 him, and there, sitting in the well of the Court, was Mr. 
 Ysnaga, looking very bored. At the sight of him Mr. 
 Barnes showed his teeth and was as frenzied with excite- 
 ment as a chained terrier watching a rat run down a 
 yard. 
 
 "I've subpoenaed him," he said. 'The dirty pup. 
 I'll get him for perjury this time. Last time I got him 
 on false pretences. That's him. He's at the bottom 
 of this affair. Would you believe it, they're so certain 
 of winning this case that they've already sol'd acres and
 
 322 PINK ROSES 
 
 acres of land although it doesn't belong to them, and 
 eight or nine companies floated on the strength of it 
 and not a penny has any one ever seen of their money, 
 and we've got to prove that they have no title." 
 
 Trevor sat listening sleepily to the opening of the 
 case, marvelling at the extraordinary procedure, with 
 its muffled solemnity, its archaic phraseology, its deadly 
 slowness, with the judge nodding on the bench, silks 
 and juniors lying back gazing up at the ceiling, the few 
 people in Court trying vainly to catch what was being 
 said. And after a time he could not bear it any longer, 
 made excuses and walked away. As he passed through 
 the closed door he caught Mr. Ysnaga's eye slanting in 
 his direction in a kind of wink, and out in the corridor 
 he met Mr. Ysnaga, who had slipped out from the other 
 side of the Court. 
 
 " Bit of a surprise to see you here," said Mr. Ysnaga. 
 
 " Oh I it's our great case," replied Trevor. " We live 
 on it." 
 
 " I used to," said Mr. Ysnaga, " but it's about finished 
 as far as I'm concerned. They've subpoenaed me out 
 of spite. It doesn't look like any witnesses to-day 
 though. It's got nothing to do with me. I've 
 sold out of the City. Dear old West End for me, 
 what?" 
 
 "Is Mr. Angel in it?" 
 
 " Yes. He's having a go at it now. He'd like to own 
 a gold mine (5r two, but I've always said that nothing 
 but a war on the damned niggers will settle it. It's 
 the same old story. As long as the niggers are there 
 appealing to the Government you get two sets of people 
 squabbling, because they both hope to get the goods for 
 nothing. Chase 'em out and they'll come to terms."
 
 THE PARTY 323 
 
 Trevor was charmed by the contrast between this 
 trivial commercialism and the glowing ideals that be- 
 cause of the Russian Revolution possessed his own 
 mind. He felt affectionate even towards Mr. Ysnaga 
 and said : 
 
 "How's the show?" 
 
 " Tip-top. That Russian girl you brought me is some 
 dancer. You should see her and old Cora glaring at 
 each other's hair. There'll be trouble one of these days. 
 By the way, you wouldn't care to go on the films ? The 
 Government's spending a lot of money on it now, and 
 you've got just the face for it." 
 
 "No, thanks." 
 
 " There's heaps of money in it," said Mr. Ysnaga, 
 wistfully. 
 
 "I'll stick to the law," replied Trevor. "I'll come 
 and see you cross-examined, and don't forget my 
 party." 
 
 Mr. Ysnaga took a taxi to the theatre, and Trevor 
 went down to Westminster to take Leslie out to lunch, 
 as he had fallen into the habit of doing two or three 
 times a week. 
 
 " I promised I'd call for Ruth," said Leslie. " She's 
 just gone back to the Ministry. She's been to see my 
 uncle about me, and I'm to go to Cambridge if I'm still 
 unfit when I'm eighteen and then I'm to go into the 
 office. And my uncle has been to see father and was 
 awfully decent. He thinks no end of you." 
 
 This was news to Trevor, who had been under the 
 impression that Mr. Hobday on the whole disliked him. 
 They called for Ruth, who came down looking very 
 tired, though she forgot that at once in the joy of seeing 
 them together for the first time.
 
 324 PINK ROSES 
 
 " I miss Sophina," she said, " though I see her some- 
 times. She always talks of you, and likes Leslie." 
 
 " Oh, shut up ! " said Leslie. 
 
 " I've just heard that she is a great success," remarked 
 Trevor. "Of course she would be, out of sheer ambi- 
 tion." 
 
 " She's had a hard time," said Ruth kindly, and 
 Trevor ruminating, replied : 
 
 " Oh, we've all had that," and his eyes added : 
 
 "Even you." 
 
 They lunched at a popular restaurant in Victoria 
 Street, and Trevor, wanting to share everything with 
 them, was torn with a desire to ask them to his party 
 but he could not bring himself to mention it, and casting 
 beyond it, he said: 
 
 " In the summer I want to take Leslie up North with 
 me. We have a house in the Lakes, looking down on 
 Coniston. You'd love it, and I want you both to meet 
 my mother. She understands young people. She has 
 lived her life and has kept an inexhaustible store in 
 reserve. Very English. Don't you think that's what 
 we want? We've had enough of being British. It 
 means nothing just Jews and money and patent medi- 
 cines and Sunlight Soap ..." 
 
 Ruth said: 
 
 "Your home must be . . ." She could not say 
 what. Only she wanted to speak the word home in con- 
 nection with him, the rare thing and the rare man 
 together. 
 
 " I've been to the Law Courts this morning," he said. 
 " There's a dead place for you. And the case I was 
 listening to has been going on for nearly thirty years, 
 since before I was born. . . . Leslie will cut his
 
 THE PARTY 325 
 
 lawyer's teeth on it and it will go on, and there'll be 
 another like it when his son goes into the firm. One 
 can't be revolutionary in the face of that." 
 
 Ruth enjoyed his mood of whimsical resignation. It 
 was so exactly right for him. 
 
 " I mean," he said, " that is the real solid thing that 
 is going on all the time, and it does somehow prevent 
 the rogues and the dear bourgeois innocents who want 
 their ten per cent, from having things all their own way. 
 That and our folly make us what we are. We can get 
 along without revolutions." 
 
 Leslie drank in his hero's words. He could hardly 
 bear the excitement roused in him at the prospect of 
 spending the holidays in the Lakes in Trevor's own 
 house with Trevor's own people and Trevor's own 
 fishing-rods and guns. And the thought of it for 
 Trevor had focussed all the strange events of this year 
 in which he had passed through more than was given 
 to most men in a lifetime: nothing great, nothing 
 heroic, but just life tortured into truth, and out of 
 it all he had won two persons, these two, Ruth and 
 Leslie, who would be to him far more than Hardman 
 and Peto had been or could ever have been. Those 
 two would have gone their ways, but these would remain 
 with him. He knew that always, and he was rich 
 indeed. Decidedly it would be wrong to ask them to 
 the party. 
 
 So it was to be a farewell party. He could leave the 
 charming, fantastic figures of London grouped round the 
 first Jewish V.C. in the British Navy. At the thought 
 of it he laughed outright. He could promote Cherryman 
 into being Mr. Angel's English gentleman, who should 
 show him how to spend his money, and Carline could be
 
 326 PINK ROSES 
 
 left with his dreams of being an English Kerensky, 
 Lenin, and Trotzky rolled into one, or, failing that, he 
 could be transferred to the Ministry of Information 
 his most probable destiny as an authority on Russian 
 affairs. He could not refrain from laughing. 
 
 "What's the joke?" asked Ruth. 
 
 " Pink roses," replied he : and she was for a moment 
 alarmed. " I mean," he added, " that it has turned out 
 all right. One always knows long before things actually 
 happen whether they are going to turn out well or ill. 
 I'll tell you about it some time. But it began with pink 
 roses in the Park, and and they've all steered their way 
 into the music-hall, which is the appointed end of every- 
 thing in modern England music-hall government, 
 music-hall newspapers, music-hall art, music-hall finance. 
 Nothing is left except the Law Courts and the Trade 
 Unions. They will fight it out between them, and you 
 and I and Leslie will run away with the bone." 
 
 " But who is ending in the music-hall ? " asked Leslie, 
 puzzled and well out of his depth. 
 
 " Sophina," said Trevor. He caught Ruth's eye, and 
 they both laughed merrily. 
 
 " It's all right, Leslie," said Trevor reassuringly, for 
 Leslie thought they were laughing at him. " It is all as 
 old as the hills. There's nothing new in it. Life repeats 
 itself, and the young people have the best of it in the 
 end, but this time even the old people are going to 
 realize it : because they have gone too far and we are not 
 going to raise a finger to get them out of their mess. 
 The young have always been too sorry for the old, and 
 the old have taken advantage of it . . ." 
 
 "That's father!" said Leslie. 
 
 " Trenham ! " thought Ruth, and looking across at
 
 THE PARTY 327 
 
 Trevor she wondered if he knew and if she would be 
 spared the pain of telling him. It would be just like him 
 to have understood perfectly, so that there was no need 
 to do anything but let the past slip away with all the 
 remains of the old world that were being swept down 
 at such a dizzy rate on the backward current of time. 
 And she understood him perfectly. He was telling her 
 that the woman of the cafe had been nothing but a fan- 
 tastic yet fruitful experience, and that he was in no way 
 personally bound to her. 
 
 " We must all go to see Sophina dance," he said. 
 
 "Of course," answered Ruth, getting up to go. 
 
 " Will she be a success ? " 
 
 " The greatest possible. Her pearls and her diamonds 
 will be fabulous, and she will squander more in her life- 
 time than would restore the whole of Belgium, and she 
 will be applauded for it, and quite rightly." 
 
 Trevor and Leslie escorted Ruth back to the Min- 
 istry, and then slipped behind the Abbey through Dean's 
 Yard to the school. That was a little corner of London 
 untouched by the music-hall spirit. It would remain and 
 its power would be effective long after the din of the 
 scramble for novelty had died away, because the seeds of 
 destiny ripen slowly. They are planted far back in the 
 ages and mankind even twentieth-century mankind- 
 must Jive by its fruits. Leslie was aching to hear what 
 Trevor thought of Ruth, and he trembled with delight 
 when his friend said : 
 
 "I shan't let you come to stay without your sister. 
 She's well . . . There's no one quite like her, is 
 there?" 
 
 On the day of the party the evening papers were full 
 of the cross-examination of Mr. Ysnaga, who had given
 
 328 PINK ROSES 
 
 evidence on subpoena in the great African case. In the 
 first place he spoke German; in the second he had traded 
 with Germany before the war; in the third he had acted 
 as agent of a German Metallurgical concern; in the 
 fourth he had been in prison in South Africa, in Eng- 
 land, in America; in the fifth But there is no need 
 
 to peruse the chapters of Mr. Ysnaga's misadventures. 
 He had always been in prison for business, never for 
 anything that touched his personal and private honour. 
 He stood forth before the world and his own conscience 
 an honest Jew, and he got what he wanted out of Mr. 
 Barnes's subpoena: an advertsement for himself as an 
 impresario, and all the arts of leading counsel could not 
 trip him into perjury. He blandly admitted all the 
 charges brought against him and the part he had played 
 in the complicated history of the African Edmonton 
 Lands Company. Mr. Barnes of Hobdays had shot his 
 bolt. There was no one else whom he could touch. 
 The case was as good as lost : though that meant nothing, 
 as there would be an appeal. 
 
 Trevor had listened to the proceedings, and was filled 
 with admiration of Mr. Ysnaga, who brushed aside all 
 insinuations with " Before the war." That was before 
 the war. He was now a patriot making khaki and 
 supplying Government films, with a share in a munitions 
 factory and a large holding in War Bonds. To attack 
 such patriotism with old and stale accusations seemed 
 nothing short of dastardly, and Mr. Ysnaga slipped 
 down from the witness-box smiling blandly, having 
 Napoleonically turned defeat into triumph. 
 
 Trevor thought that his would be something like a 
 party with Mr. Ysnaga and the Jewish V.C. as its lions. 
 No duchess in pre-war days had done better than that.
 
 THE PARTY 329 
 
 He had decided to throw open both the flats, and he 
 filled both with artificial pink roses, wonderfully imitated 
 and scented. Mr. Angel sent him two silken Union Jacks 
 from his factory with which to strike the patriotic note, 
 and Cora borrowed some brilliant draperies from the 
 theatre wardrobe. A piano was hired; also gleaming 
 cutlery and napery. 
 
 Even though the two flats were thrown open there 
 was hardly room enough, for Cherryman had sniffed 
 both money and success: the beginning perhaps of a new 
 Society, and had informed every one of his enormous 
 acquaintance of the gathering. The guardsmen were 
 there: the poets, the long-haired, bearded men from 
 Bloomsbury, the short-haired girls from the Slade, 
 painters in khaki, commissioned to paint war pictures, 
 young ladies who organized for charities, elegant young 
 men who organized Imperialism for the Round Table, 
 and deliberately shabby young men who did the same 
 for democracy, for the I.L.P., and the Radical Group. 
 Imagistes, American poetasters, derelicts from the Cafe 
 Royal, all kinds of people credible and incredible: come- 
 dians and chorus ladies from the theatre: Cherryman, 
 Carline, adoring Troshky (as he called him) and all 
 agog for the further triumph of Sophina Solomonovna. 
 Mr. Ysnaga and Mr. Angel were there. (They had a 
 long consultation with counsel after the day in Court.) 
 Because they were late and the patriotic note could not 
 be sounded without them, the ball was set rolling 
 by a young lady from the theatre singing her song 
 from the new revue, and after that Sophina was to 
 dance. 
 
 She had gathered confidence in the theatre, knew 
 exactly what she could do, and made no attempt to go
 
 330 PINK ROSES 
 
 beyond her capacity. Every one applauded her except 
 Cora, who glared at her, suspecting her of designs upon 
 Trevor. She knew Soptiina for what she was, the push- 
 ing little Jewess: too clever by half for any Christian 
 woman. And Cora suffered, too, because she had no 
 accomplishments. She showed as much of her back as 
 she could, but no one took any notice of it. It needed 
 the limelight. But in spite of these mortifications Cora 
 enjoyed her party. It was the beginning of things un- 
 dreamed of only a year ago when she was living in 
 Gerrard Street with Estelle, and Estelle too loved the 
 party, with a lot of rich men and clever women, though 
 she strongly disapproved of the artistic and intellectual 
 element introduced by Cherryman. They were neither 
 one thing nor the other according to Estelle, neither 
 rich nor on the game. She regarded them as nonde- 
 script and somehow indecent: rather what she had al- 
 ways suspected Trevor of being. 
 
 He, for his part, revelled in the party, though he 
 longed for Mr. Angel and Mr. Ysnaga to come to give 
 it the patriotic finishing touch. How Hardman would 
 have loved it! What jokes he would have invented! 
 What legs he would have pulled, metaphorically and in 
 fact! How he would have delighted in introducing the 
 young man who talked of Chinese poetry and nothing 
 else to Cora! Trevor did that. Dear old Cora, with 
 her Jews and her money and her bare back, she could 
 be happy anywhere! Since she had gone into the 
 theatre she had lost her old restless jealousy, and she 
 seemed to accept that she was losing him and that every 
 day brought her nearer to the end. 
 
 " Let me introduce you," said Trevor. " Miss Cora 
 Dinmont Mr. Twemlow, who knows all about the
 
 THE PARTY 331 
 
 Chinese aristocracy." And as he moved away he heard 
 Mr. Twemlow saying: 
 
 " There has never been anything like it : the perfection 
 of aristocracy in China is the great period ..." 
 
 And at the other end of the room was Sophina danc- 
 ing with a Jewish gusto which might well pass for Rus- 
 sian barbarism, and just at that moment, timed to 
 perfection, Mr. Angel and Mr. Ysnaga arrived in 
 eveningdress accompanied by the first Jewish V.C. in 
 the uniform of a Lieutenant R.N.V.R. The music went 
 on. Sophina danced. 
 
 " Ach ! Trevor ! Dare you are ! " said Mr. Angel in 
 his thickest accent. " Here he is ! De first Jew 
 to vin de V.C. in de Navy. Tell him vere it vos, 
 
 poy." 
 
 The Jewish V.C., a slight, simple-looking young man, 
 glanced furtively from side to side. He seemed op- 
 pressed by the society in which he found himself, and 
 yet, Trevor thought, familiar enough with it. 
 
 " It was in a scrap off the Dogger Bank." 
 
 "Submarines!" said Mr. Angel, with a juicily 
 rolled " r." 
 
 " Yes. Submarines. It was dirty weather, and we'd 
 been on patrol ..." He muttered so that he was 
 hardly audible, when suddenly there was a shriek : 
 
 "Finberg!" 
 
 And through the crowded room, almost in one bound, 
 came Sophina. 
 
 " Finberg ! You dirty sneak ! " 
 
 With one hand she seized him by the collar and tore 
 it open and wrenched off his black tie, and with the 
 other she pulled his hair and shook his head until it 
 seemed it must surely part from his body. Nobody
 
 332 PINK ROSES 
 
 moved. Nobody attempted to rescue the hero. Only 
 Mr. Angel said falteringly: 
 
 "Finberg?" 
 
 Trevor turned to Cherryman, and said: 
 
 "Is it Finberg?" 
 
 " Yes," answered Cherryman. " That's Finberg." 
 
 Mr. Ysnaga cried : 
 
 " You said your name was Solomon." 
 
 But Finberg was not in a condition to deal with the 
 situation. 
 
 " He's had two hundred of my money ! " said Mr. 
 'Angel. 
 
 Mr. Ysnaga slipped out. 
 
 " Yes," said Sophina, " Finberg's his name, a dirty 
 swindling Yid who crawled out of the East End 
 to write poetry. You ask him if he knows Spital 
 Square." 
 
 " Oh ! shut up, Phina," said Finberg, hanging his 
 head. 
 
 " If you ask me," she screamed, " he's a deserter from 
 the Army." 
 
 Trevor tried to lead her away. 
 
 " That's all right," said Finberg, turning to Mr. 
 Angel. " She used to live with me. Her name's 
 Lipinsky. You probably know her father." 
 
 Trevor said to Finberg: 
 
 " Better get out ! " 
 
 And the unlucky hero tried to slip away, but as he 
 reached the door Mr. Ysnaga arrived with two police- 
 men, and Finberg was led away. Mr. Angel was nearly 
 weeping. 
 
 " Vy did you do dat, Mr. Ysnaga? I don't vant to 
 charge him."
 
 THE PARTY 333 
 
 "He's a dirty rotter!" said Sophina, her eyes still 
 blazing. 
 
 For the rest the incident had passed, and the Jews 
 were left to themselves. 
 
 " He's a dirty rotter," she said. " I knew he'd end 
 like that. If it hadn't been for him I'd never have 
 quarrelled with my father." 
 
 " Is it Solomon Lipinsky ? " asked Mr. Angel. 
 
 Sophina bowed her head. 
 
 " He quarrels with a good girl like you ? Ach ! Kom. 
 Kom. Aus min haus heraus, eh ? . . . Schade ! " 
 
 The explosion had had the effect of sorting the 
 guests. The theatricals drifted across to Cora's flat: the 
 intellectuals stayed in Trevor's, and both enjoyed them- 
 selves according to their lights, but no one enjoyed the 
 party as much as their host. ... It was good-bye, 
 good-bye. He knew now which way he was going. 
 . . . Pink roses no more. That enchantment was 
 broken, as also was the desire to work marvels with the 
 magic word " million." That was for the mob and 
 their masters. For the individuals who emerged there 
 was life which no enchantment could attain, no magic 
 transmogrify. And life was simple. Life for a man 
 was contained in his friend and his love, two things, 
 purity and power, and for a woman this was the truth 
 he had learned from Ruth's eyes life was conception, 
 first of her man, then of her child. 
 
 Trevor laughed. Ah ! how happy he was ! He would 
 slip away soon, leaving them all in their music-hall. 
 ... In his flat silence had been obtained while Mr. 
 Twemlow read a Chinese lyric of six lines. From Cora's 
 , flat came the strains of an American war-song. . . . 
 Trevor stood in the passage, away from both groups,
 
 334 PINK ROSES 
 
 and thought of Coniston and a boat, Leslie fishing, Ruth 
 steering, himself rowing. . . . That was the way. To 
 pick up old traditions and make them new. Home, love, 
 a friend. . . . These things led to the unattainable. 
 . . . What friends Ruth and Hardman would have 
 been. . . . Oh, the pity of it! . . .So much to 
 struggle through. ... So much vain barren folly. 
 What Hardman had meant was the splendid folly which 
 clings to illusions until they become reality. That he 
 had done, that he would always do. . . . The pink 
 roses of illusion had in reality become a little dewy bud. 
 ... So good-bye, good-bye, pink roses. . . . 
 
 While the party was in full swing he stole away, got 
 into a taxi and drove to the house where he had lived 
 with Hardman and Peto. The old rooms were vacant. 
 . . . He took them for the next few months. . . . 
 It was useless, he knew, attempting any kind of explana- 
 tion with Cora. He sent her a wire saying he had been 
 called away, and told himself he would write to her. 
 He had drifted into her existence. He would drift out 
 again. That was what she must have expected. . . . 
 It was right that it should be. He had performed the 
 whole duty of man; he had left nothing as he found it. 
 Besides, the new life had begun, and he wanted Leslie 
 to come and see him in Hardman's room, to sit as Hard- 
 man used to do on the sofa, throwing out his legs, hold- 
 ing a cushion on his stomach and eating sweets. . . . 
 And after that the pink rose-bud on the grey dress 
 with the clear grey eyes shining above them, meeting 
 one day the grey eyes as clear that also had loved 
 him, and had looked clean into his soul and had under- 
 stood and trusted him. ... As his mother had 
 trusted him, so he trusted Ruth, for he knew. ,. ... w
 
 THE PARTY 335 
 
 There was no need for him to be told, and he trusted 
 her. ..." Ruth, Ruth, there is nothing lost, nothing, 
 nothing. They wanted us to live in the old life, but we 
 could not do it because of each other. . . . Love has 
 to begin again every time, at the beginning, in the world 
 as it is and as it will be. ... Good-bye, pink roses, 
 good-bye ..." And he thought fantastically of Mr. 
 Ysnaga and Sophina together dancing a Bacchanal, scat- 
 tering rose-leaves and treading them with their tripping 
 feet. . . . Oh yes. Mr. Ysnaga was a wonderful 
 man, a wonderful man. . . . And presently another 
 young man would come under the spell of pink roses, 
 and Mr. Ysnaga would make another leap forward in 
 wealth and power, and the young man would drift 
 away. . . . That was the way of the world. That 
 was how the world worked. One bought a dog without 
 meaning to buy it and in the end one was in love, be- 
 cause oh! because youth finds a way.
 
 A 000126479