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Produced by Chris Curnow, Lindy Walsh, Stephen Blundell and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www. pgdp. net Tales of Space and Time Tales of Space and Time _By_ H. G. WELLS, _Author of "When the Sleeper Wakes" "The War of the Worlds" etc. _ [Device] HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS LONDON AND NEW YORK 1900 Copyright, 1899, by HARPER & BROTHERS _All rights reserved_ Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Dialect and variant spellings have been retained. Contents PAGE THE CRYSTAL EGG 1 THE STAR 35 A STORY OF THE STONE AGE 59 A STORY OF THE DAYS TO COME 165 THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES 325 THE CRYSTAL EGG There was, until a year ago, a little and very grimy-looking shop near Seven Dials, over which, in weather-worn yellow lettering, the name of "C. Cave, Naturalist and Dealer in Antiquities," was inscribed. The contents of its window were curiously variegated. They comprised some elephant tusks and an imperfect set of chessmen, beads and weapons, a box of eyes, two skulls of tigers and one human, several moth-eaten stuffed monkeys (one holding a lamp), an old-fashioned cabinet, a flyblown ostrich egg or so, some fishing-tackle, and an extraordinarily dirty, empty glass fish-tank. There was also, at the moment the story begins, a mass of crystal, worked into the shape of an egg and brilliantly polished. And at that two people, who stood outside the window, were looking, one of them a tall, thin clergyman, the other a black-bearded young man of dusky complexion and unobtrusive costume. The dusky young man spoke with eager gesticulation, and seemed anxious for his companion to purchase the article. While they were there, Mr. Cave came into his shop, his beard still wagging with the bread and butter of his tea. When he saw these men and the object of their regard, his countenance fell. He glanced guiltily over his shoulder, and softly shut the door. He was a little old man, with pale face and peculiar watery blue eyes; his hair was a dirty grey, and he wore a shabby blue frock coat, an ancient silk hat, and carpet slippers very much down at heel. He remained watching the two men as they talked. The clergyman went deep into his trouser pocket, examined a handful of money, and showed his teeth in an agreeable smile. Mr. Cave seemed still more depressed when they came into the shop. The clergyman, without any ceremony, asked the price of the crystal egg. Mr. Cave glanced nervously towards the door leading into the parlour, and said five pounds. The clergyman protested that the price was high, to his companion as well as to Mr. Cave--it was, indeed, very much more than Mr. Cave had intended to ask, when he had stocked the article--and an attempt at bargaining ensued. Mr. Cave stepped to the shop-door, and held it open. "Five pounds is my price," he said, as though he wished to save himself the trouble of unprofitable discussion. As he did so, the upper portion of a woman's face appeared above the blind in the glass upper panel of the door leading into the parlour, and stared curiously at the two customers. "Five pounds is my price," said Mr. Cave, with a quiver in his voice. The swarthy young man had so far remained a spectator, watching Cave keenly. Now he spoke. "Give him five pounds," he said. The clergyman glanced at him to see if he were in earnest, and, when he looked at Mr. Cave again, he saw that the latter's face was white. "It's a lot of money," said the clergyman, and, diving into his pocket, began counting his resources. He had little more than thirty shillings, and he appealed to his companion, with whom he seemed to be on terms of considerable intimacy. This gave Mr. Cave an opportunity of collecting his thoughts, and he began to explain in an agitated manner that the crystal was not, as a matter of fact, entirely free for sale. His two customers were naturally surprised at this, and inquired why he had not thought of that before he began to bargain. Mr. Cave became confused, but he stuck to his story, that the crystal was not in the market that afternoon, that a probable purchaser of it had already appeared. The two, treating this as an attempt to raise the price still further, made as if they would leave the shop. But at this point the parlour door opened, and the owner of the dark fringe and the little eyes appeared. She was a coarse-featured, corpulent woman, younger and very much larger than Mr. Cave; she walked heavily, and her face was flushed. "That crystal _is_ for sale," she said. "And five pounds is a good enough price for it. I can't think what you're about, Cave, not to take the gentleman's offer! " Mr. Cave, greatly perturbed by the irruption, looked angrily at her over the rims of his spectacles, and, without excessive assurance, asserted his right to manage his business in his own way. An altercation began. The two customers watched the scene with interest and some amusement, occasionally assisting Mrs. Cave with suggestions. Mr. Cave, hard driven, persisted in a confused and impossible story of an enquiry for the crystal that morning, and his agitation became painful. But he stuck to his point with extraordinary persistence. It was the young Oriental who ended this curious controversy. He proposed that they should call again in the course of two days--so as to give the alleged enquirer a fair chance. "And then we must insist," said the clergyman, "Five pounds. " Mrs. Cave took it on herself to apologise for her husband, explaining that he was sometimes "a little odd," and as the two customers left, the couple prepared for a free discussion of the incident in all its bearings. Mrs. Cave talked to her husband with singular directness. The poor little man, quivering with emotion, muddled himself between his stories, maintaining on the one hand that he had another customer in view, and on the other asserting that the crystal was honestly worth ten guineas. "Why did you ask five pounds? " said his wife. "_Do_ let me manage my business my own way! " said Mr. Cave. Mr. Cave had living with him a step-daughter and a step-son, and at supper that night the transaction was re-discussed. None of them had a high opinion of Mr. Cave's business methods, and this action seemed a culminating folly. "It's my opinion he's refused that crystal before," said the step-son, a loose-limbed lout of eighteen. "But _Five Pounds_! " said the step-daughter, an argumentative young woman of six-and-twenty. Mr. Cave's answers were wretched; he could only mumble weak assertions that he knew his own business best. They drove him from his half-eaten supper into the shop, to close it for the night, his ears aflame and tears of vexation behind his spectacles. "Why had he left the crystal in the window so long? The folly of it! " That was the trouble closest in his mind. For a time he could see no way of evading sale. After supper his step-daughter and step-son smartened themselves up and went out and his wife retired upstairs to reflect upon the business aspects of the crystal, over a little sugar and lemon and so forth in hot water. Mr. Cave went into the shop, and stayed there until late, ostensibly to make ornamental rockeries for goldfish cases but really for a private purpose that will be better explained later. The next day Mrs. Cave found that the crystal had been removed from the window, and was lying behind some second-hand books on angling. She replaced it in a conspicuous position. But she did not argue further about it, as a nervous headache disinclined her from debate. Mr. Cave was always disinclined. The day passed disagreeably. Mr. Cave was, if anything, more absent-minded than usual, and uncommonly irritable withal. In the afternoon, when his wife was taking her customary sleep, he removed the crystal from the window again. The next day Mr. Cave had to deliver a consignment of dog-fish at one of the hospital schools, where they were needed for dissection. In his absence Mrs. Cave's mind reverted to the topic of the crystal, and the methods of expenditure suitable to a windfall of five pounds. She had already devised some very agreeable expedients, among others a dress of green silk for herself and a trip to Richmond, when a jangling of the front door bell summoned her into the shop. The customer was an examination coach who came to complain of the non-delivery of certain frogs asked for the previous day. Mrs. Cave did not approve of this particular branch of Mr. Cave's business, and the gentleman, who had called in a somewhat aggressive mood, retired after a brief exchange of words--entirely civil so far as he was concerned. Mrs. Cave's eye then naturally turned to the window; for the sight of the crystal was an assurance of the five pounds and of her dreams. What was her surprise to find it gone! She went to the place behind the locker on the counter, where she had discovered it the day before. It was not there; and she immediately began an eager search about the shop. When Mr. Cave returned from his business with the dog-fish, about a quarter to two in the afternoon, he found the shop in some confusion, and his wife, extremely exasperated and on her knees behind the counter, routing among his taxidermic material. Her face came up hot and angry over the counter, as the jangling bell announced his return, and she forthwith accused him of "hiding it. " "Hid _what_? " asked Mr. Cave. "The crystal! " At that Mr. Cave, apparently much surprised, rushed to the window. "Isn't it here? " he said. "Great Heavens! what has become of it? " Just then, Mr. Cave's step-son re-entered the shop from the inner room--he had come home a minute or so before Mr. Cave--and he was blaspheming freely. He was apprenticed to a second-hand furniture dealer down the road, but he had his meals at home, and he was naturally annoyed to find no dinner ready. But, when he heard of the loss of the crystal, he forgot his meal, and his anger was diverted from his mother to his step-father. Their first idea, of course, was that he had hidden it. But Mr. Cave stoutly denied all knowledge of its fate--freely offering his bedabbled affidavit in the matter--and at last was worked up to the point of accusing, first, his wife and then his step-son of having taken it with a view to a private sale. So began an exceedingly acrimonious and emotional discussion, which ended for Mrs. Cave in a peculiar nervous condition midway between hysterics and amuck, and caused the step-son to be half-an-hour late at the furniture establishment in the afternoon. Mr. Cave took refuge from his wife's emotions in the shop. In the evening the matter was resumed, with less passion and in a judicial spirit, under the presidency of the step-daughter. The supper passed unhappily and culminated in a painful scene. Mr. Cave gave way at last to extreme exasperation, and went out banging the front door violently. The rest of the family, having discussed him with the freedom his absence warranted, hunted the house from garret to cellar, hoping to light upon the crystal. The next day the two customers called again. They were received by Mrs. Cave almost in tears. It transpired that no one _could_ imagine all that she had stood from Cave at various times in her married pilgrimage. . . . She also gave a garbled account of the disappearance. The clergyman and the Oriental laughed silently at one another, and said it was very extraordinary. As Mrs. Cave seemed disposed to give them the complete history of her life they made to leave the shop. Thereupon Mrs. Cave, still clinging to hope, asked for the clergyman's address, so that, if she could get anything out of Cave, she might communicate it. The address was duly given, but apparently was afterwards mislaid. Mrs. Cave can remember nothing about it. In the evening of that day, the Caves seem to have exhausted their emotions, and Mr. Cave, who had been out in the afternoon, supped in a gloomy isolation that contrasted pleasantly with the impassioned controversy of the previous days. For some time matters were very badly strained in the Cave household, but neither crystal nor customer reappeared. Now, without mincing the matter, we must admit that Mr. Cave was a liar. He knew perfectly well where the crystal was. It was in the rooms of Mr. Jacoby Wace, Assistant Demonstrator at St. Catherine's Hospital, Westbourne Street. It stood on the sideboard partially covered by a black velvet cloth, and beside a decanter of American whisky. It is from Mr. Wace, indeed, that the particulars upon which this narrative is based were derived. Cave had taken off the thing to the hospital hidden in the dog-fish sack, and there had pressed the young investigator to keep it for him. Mr. Wace was a little dubious at first. His relationship to Cave was peculiar. He had a taste for singular characters, and he had more than once invited the old man to smoke and drink in his rooms, and to unfold his rather amusing views of life in general and of his wife in particular. Mr. Wace had encountered Mrs. Cave, too, on occasions when Mr. Cave was not at home to attend to him. He knew the constant interference to which Cave was subjected, and having weighed the story judicially, he decided to give the crystal a refuge. Mr. Cave promised to explain the reasons for his remarkable affection for the crystal more fully on a later occasion, but he spoke distinctly of seeing visions therein. He called on Mr. Wace the same evening. He told a complicated story. The crystal he said had come into his possession with other oddments at the forced sale of another curiosity dealer's effects, and not knowing what its value might be, he had ticketed it at ten shillings. It had hung upon his hands at that price for some months, and he was thinking of "reducing the figure," when he made a singular discovery. At that time his health was very bad--and it must be borne in mind that, throughout all this experience, his physical condition was one of ebb--and he was in considerable distress by reason of the negligence, the positive ill-treatment even, he received from his wife and step-children. His wife was vain, extravagant, unfeeling, and had a growing taste for private drinking; his step-daughter was mean and over-reaching; and his step-son had conceived a violent dislike for him, and lost no chance of showing it. The requirements of his business pressed heavily upon him, and Mr. Wace does not think that he was altogether free from occasional intemperance. He had begun life in a comfortable position, he was a man of fair education, and he suffered, for weeks at a stretch, from melancholia and insomnia. Afraid to disturb his family, he would slip quietly from his wife's side, when his thoughts became intolerable, and wander about the house. And about three o'clock one morning, late in August, chance directed him into the shop. The dirty little place was impenetrably black except in one spot, where he perceived an unusual glow of light. Approaching this, he discovered it to be the crystal egg, which was standing on the corner of the counter towards the window. A thin ray smote through a crack in the shutters, impinged upon the object, and seemed as it were to fill its entire interior. It occurred to Mr. Cave that this was not in accordance with the laws of optics as he had known them in his younger days. He could understand the rays being refracted by the crystal and coming to a focus in its interior, but this diffusion jarred with his physical conceptions. He approached the crystal nearly, peering into it and round it, with a transient revival of the scientific curiosity that in his youth had determined his choice of a calling. He was surprised to find the light not steady, but writhing within the substance of the egg, as though that object was a hollow sphere of some luminous vapour. In moving about to get different points of view, he suddenly found that he had come between it and the ray, and that the crystal none the less remained luminous. Greatly astonished, he lifted it out of the light ray and carried it to the darkest part of the shop. It remained bright for some four or five minutes, when it slowly faded and went out. He placed it in the thin streak of daylight, and its luminousness was almost immediately restored. So far, at least, Mr. Wace was able to verify the remarkable story of Mr. Cave. He has himself repeatedly held this crystal in a ray of light (which had to be of a less diameter than one millimetre). And in a perfect darkness, such as could be produced by velvet wrapping, the crystal did undoubtedly appear very faintly phosphorescent. It would seem, however, that the luminousness was of some exceptional sort, and not equally visible to all eyes; for Mr. Harbinger--whose name will be familiar to the scientific reader in connection with the Pasteur Institute--was quite unable to see any light whatever. And Mr. Wace's own capacity for its appreciation was out of comparison inferior to that of Mr. Cave's. Even with Mr. Cave the power varied very considerably: his vision was most vivid during states of extreme weakness and fatigue. Now, from the outset this light in the crystal exercised a curious fascination upon Mr. Cave. And it says more for his loneliness of soul than a volume of pathetic writing could do, that he told no human being of his curious observations. He seems to have been living in such an atmosphere of petty spite that to admit the existence of a pleasure would have been to risk the loss of it. He found that as the dawn advanced, and the amount of diffused light increased, the crystal became to all appearance non-luminous. And for some time he was unable to see anything in it, except at night-time, in dark corners of the shop. But the use of an old velvet cloth, which he used as a background for a collection of minerals, occurred to him, and by doubling this, and putting it over his head and hands, he was able to get a sight of the luminous movement within the crystal even in the daytime. He was very cautious lest he should be thus discovered by his wife, and he practised this occupation only in the afternoons, while she was asleep upstairs, and then circumspectly in a hollow under the counter. And one day, turning the crystal about in his hands, he saw something. It came and went like a flash, but it gave him the impression that the object had for a moment opened to him the view of a wide and spacious and strange country; and, turning it about, he did, just as the light faded, see the same vision again. Now, it would be tedious and unnecessary to state all the phases of Mr. Cave's discovery from this point. Suffice that the effect was this: the crystal, being peered into at an angle of about 137 degrees from the direction of the illuminating ray, gave a clear and consistent picture of a wide and peculiar countryside. It was not dream-like at all: it produced a definite impression of reality, and the better the light the more real and solid it seemed. It was a moving picture: that is to say, certain objects moved in it, but slowly in an orderly manner like real things, and, according as the direction of the lighting and vision changed, the picture changed also. It must, indeed, have been like looking through an oval glass at a view, and turning the glass about to get at different aspects. Mr. Cave's statements, Mr. Wace assures me, were extremely circumstantial, and entirely free from any of that emotional quality that taints hallucinatory impressions. But it must be remembered that all the efforts of Mr. Wace to see any similar clarity in the faint opalescence of the crystal were wholly unsuccessful, try as he would. The difference in intensity of the impressions received by the two men was very great, and it is quite conceivable that what was a view to Mr. Cave was a mere blurred nebulosity to Mr. Wace. The view, as Mr. Cave described it, was invariably of an extensive plain, and he seemed always to be looking at it from a considerable height, as if from a tower or a mast. To the east and to the west the plain was bounded at a remote distance by vast reddish cliffs, which reminded him of those he had seen in some picture; but what the picture was Mr. Wace was unable to ascertain. These cliffs passed north and south--he could tell the points of the compass by the stars that were visible of a night--receding in an almost illimitable perspective and fading into the mists of the distance before they met. He was nearer the eastern set of cliffs, on the occasion of his first vision the sun was rising over them, and black against the sunlight and pale against their shadow appeared a multitude of soaring forms that Mr. Cave regarded as birds. A vast range of buildings spread below him; he seemed to be looking down upon them; and, as they approached the blurred and refracted edge of the picture, they became indistinct. There were also trees curious in shape, and in colouring, a deep mossy green and an exquisite grey, beside a wide and shining canal. And something great and brilliantly coloured flew across the picture. But the first time Mr.

Cave saw these pictures he saw only in flashes, his hands shook, his head moved, the vision came and went, and grew foggy and indistinct. And at first he had the greatest difficulty in finding the picture again once the direction of it was lost. His next clear vision, which came about a week after the first, the interval having yielded nothing but tantalising glimpses and some useful experience, showed him the view down the length of the valley. The view was different, but he had a curious persuasion, which his subsequent observations abundantly confirmed, that he was regarding this strange world from exactly the same spot, although he was looking in a different direction. The long façade of the great building, whose roof he had looked down upon before, was now receding in perspective. He recognised the roof. In the front of the façade was a terrace of massive proportions and extraordinary length, and down the middle of the terrace, at certain intervals, stood huge but very graceful masts, bearing small shiny objects which reflected the setting sun. The import of these small objects did not occur to Mr. Cave until some time after, as he was describing the scene to Mr. Wace. The terrace overhung a thicket of the most luxuriant and graceful vegetation, and beyond this was a wide grassy lawn on which certain broad creatures, in form like beetles but enormously larger, reposed. Beyond this again was a richly decorated causeway of pinkish stone; and beyond that, and lined with dense _red_ weeds, and passing up the valley exactly parallel with the distant cliffs, was a broad and mirror-like expanse of water. The air seemed full of squadrons of great birds, manœuvring in stately curves; and across the river was a multitude of splendid buildings, richly coloured and glittering with metallic tracery and facets, among a forest of moss-like and lichenous trees. And suddenly something flapped repeatedly across the vision, like the fluttering of a jewelled fan or the beating of a wing, and a face, or rather the upper part of a face with very large eyes, came as it were close to his own and as if on the other side of the crystal. Mr. Cave was so startled and so impressed by the absolute reality of these eyes, that he drew his head back from the crystal to look behind it. He had become so absorbed in watching that he was quite surprised to find himself in the cool darkness of his little shop, with its familiar odour of methyl, mustiness, and decay. And, as he blinked about him, the glowing crystal faded, and went out. Such were the first general impressions of Mr. Cave. The story is curiously direct and circumstantial. From the outset, when the valley first flashed momentarily on his senses, his imagination was strangely affected, and, as he began to appreciate the details of the scene he saw, his wonder rose to the point of a passion. He went about his business listless and distraught, thinking only of the time when he should be able to return to his watching. And then a few weeks after his first sight of the valley came the two customers, the stress and excitement of their offer, and the narrow escape of the crystal from sale, as I have already told. Now, while the thing was Mr. Cave's secret, it remained a mere wonder, a thing to creep to covertly and peep at, as a child might peep upon a forbidden garden. But Mr. Wace has, for a young scientific investigator, a particularly lucid and consecutive habit of mind. Directly the crystal and its story came to him, and he had satisfied himself, by seeing the phosphorescence with his own eyes, that there really was a certain evidence for Mr. Cave's statements, he proceeded to develop the matter systematically. Mr. Cave was only too eager to come and feast his eyes on this wonderland he saw, and he came every night from half-past eight until half-past ten, and sometimes, in Mr. Wace's absence, during the day. On Sunday afternoons, also, he came. From the outset Mr. Wace made copious notes, and it was due to his scientific method that the relation between the direction from which the initiating ray entered the crystal and the orientation of the picture were proved. And, by covering the crystal in a box perforated only with a small aperture to admit the exciting ray, and by substituting black holland for his buff blinds, he greatly improved the conditions of the observations; so that in a little while they were able to survey the valley in any direction they desired. So having cleared the way, we may give a brief account of this visionary world within the crystal. The things were in all cases seen by Mr. Cave, and the method of working was invariably for him to watch the crystal and report what he saw, while Mr. Wace (who as a science student had learnt the trick of writing in the dark) wrote a brief note of his report. When the crystal faded, it was put into its box in the proper position and the electric light turned on. Mr. Wace asked questions, and suggested observations to clear up difficult points. Nothing, indeed, could have been less visionary and more matter-of-fact. The attention of Mr. Cave had been speedily directed to the bird-like creatures he had seen so abundantly present in each of his earlier visions. His first impression was soon corrected, and he considered for a time that they might represent a diurnal species of bat. Then he thought, grotesquely enough, that they might be cherubs. Their heads were round, and curiously human, and it was the eyes of one of them that had so startled him on his second observation. They had broad, silvery wings, not feathered, but glistening almost as brilliantly as new-killed fish and with the same subtle play of colour, and these wings were not built on the plan of bird-wing or bat, Mr. Wace learned, but supported by curved ribs radiating from the body. (A sort of butterfly wing with curved ribs seems best to express their appearance. ) The body was small, but fitted with two bunches of prehensile organs, like long tentacles, immediately under the mouth. Incredible as it appeared to Mr. Wace, the persuasion at last became irresistible, that it was these creatures which owned the great quasi-human buildings and the magnificent garden that made the broad valley so splendid. And Mr. Cave perceived that the buildings, with other peculiarities, had no doors, but that the great circular windows, which opened freely, gave the creatures egress and entrance. They would alight upon their tentacles, fold their wings to a smallness almost rod-like, and hop into the interior. But among them was a multitude of smaller-winged creatures, like great dragon-flies and moths and flying beetles, and across the greensward brilliantly-coloured gigantic ground-beetles crawled lazily to and fro. Moreover, on the causeways and terraces, large-headed creatures similar to the greater winged flies, but wingless, were visible, hopping busily upon their hand-like tangle of tentacles. Allusion has already been made to the glittering objects upon masts that stood upon the terrace of the nearer building. It dawned upon Mr. Cave, after regarding one of these masts very fixedly on one particularly vivid day, that the glittering object there was a crystal exactly like that into which he peered. And a still more careful scrutiny convinced him that each one in a vista of nearly twenty carried a similar object. Occasionally one of the large flying creatures would flutter up to one, and, folding its wings and coiling a number of its tentacles about the mast, would regard the crystal fixedly for a space,--sometimes for as long as fifteen minutes. And a series of observations, made at the suggestion of Mr. Wace, convinced both watchers that, so far as this visionary world was concerned, the crystal into which they peered actually stood at the summit of the endmost mast on the terrace, and that on one occasion at least one of these inhabitants of this other world had looked into Mr. Cave's face while he was making these observations. So much for the essential facts of this very singular story. Unless we dismiss it all as the ingenious fabrication of Mr. Wace, we have to believe one of two things: either that Mr. Cave's crystal was in two worlds at once, and that, while it was carried about in one, it remained stationary in the other, which seems altogether absurd; or else that it had some peculiar relation of sympathy with another and exactly similar crystal in this other world, so that what was seen in the interior of the one in this world was, under suitable conditions, visible to an observer in the corresponding crystal in the other world; and _vice versa_. At present, indeed, we do not know of any way in which two crystals could so come _en rapport_, but nowadays we know enough to understand that the thing is not altogether impossible. This view of the crystals as _en rapport_ was the supposition that occurred to Mr. Wace, and to me at least it seems extremely plausible. . . . And where was this other world? On this, also, the alert intelligence of Mr. Wace speedily threw light. After sunset, the sky darkened rapidly--there was a very brief twilight interval indeed--and the stars shone out. They were recognisably the same as those we see, arranged in the same constellations. Mr. Cave recognised the Bear, the Pleiades, Aldebaran, and Sirius: so that the other world must be somewhere in the solar system, and, at the utmost, only a few hundreds of millions of miles from our own. Following up this clue, Mr. Wace learned that the midnight sky was a darker blue even than our midwinter sky, and that the sun seemed a little smaller. _And there were two small moons! _ "like our moon but smaller, and quite differently marked" one of which moved so rapidly that its motion was clearly visible as one regarded it. These moons were never high in the sky, but vanished as they rose: that is, every time they revolved they were eclipsed because they were so near their primary planet. And all this answers quite completely, although Mr. Cave did not know it, to what must be the condition of things on Mars. Indeed, it seems an exceedingly plausible conclusion that peering into this crystal Mr. Cave did actually see the planet Mars and its inhabitants. And, if that be the case, then the evening star that shone so brilliantly in the sky of that distant vision, was neither more nor less than our own familiar earth. For a time the Martians--if they were Martians--do not seem to have known of Mr. Cave's inspection. Once or twice one would come to peer, and go away very shortly to some other mast, as though the vision was unsatisfactory. During this time Mr. Cave was able to watch the proceedings of these winged people without being disturbed by their attentions, and, although his report is necessarily vague and fragmentary, it is nevertheless very suggestive. Imagine the impression of humanity a Martian observer would get who, after a difficult process of preparation and with considerable fatigue to the eyes, was able to peer at London from the steeple of St. Martin's Church for stretches, at longest, of four minutes at a time. Mr. Cave was unable to ascertain if the winged Martians were the same as the Martians who hopped about the causeways and terraces, and if the latter could put on wings at will. He several times saw certain clumsy bipeds, dimly suggestive of apes, white and partially translucent, feeding among certain of the lichenous trees, and once some of these fled before one of the hopping, round-headed Martians. The latter caught one in its tentacles, and then the picture faded suddenly and left Mr. Cave most tantalisingly in the dark. On another occasion a vast thing, that Mr. Cave thought at first was some gigantic insect, appeared advancing along the causeway beside the canal with extraordinary rapidity. As this drew nearer Mr. Cave perceived that it was a mechanism of shining metals and of extraordinary complexity. And then, when he looked again, it had passed out of sight. After a time Mr. Wace aspired to attract the attention of the Martians, and the next time that the strange eyes of one of them appeared close to the crystal Mr. Cave cried out and sprang away, and they immediately turned on the light and began to gesticulate in a manner suggestive of signalling. But when at last Mr. Cave examined the crystal again the Martian had departed. Thus far these observations had progressed in early November, and then Mr. Cave, feeling that the suspicions of his family about the crystal were allayed, began to take it to and fro with him in order that, as occasion arose in the daytime or night, he might comfort himself with what was fast becoming the most real thing in his existence. In December Mr. Wace's work in connection with a forthcoming examination became heavy, the sittings were reluctantly suspended for a week, and for ten or eleven days--he is not quite sure which--he saw nothing of Cave. He then grew anxious to resume these investigations, and, the stress of his seasonal labours being abated, he went down to Seven Dials. At the corner he noticed a shutter before a bird fancier's window, and then another at a cobbler's. Mr. Cave's shop was closed. He rapped and the door was opened by the step-son in black. He at once called Mrs. Cave, who was, Mr. Wace could not but observe, in cheap but ample widow's weeds of the most imposing pattern. Without any very great surprise Mr. Wace learnt that Cave was dead and already buried. She was in tears, and her voice was a little thick. She had just returned from Highgate. Her mind seemed occupied with her own prospects and the honourable details of the obsequies, but Mr. Wace was at last able to learn the particulars of Cave's death. He had been found dead in his shop in the early morning, the day after his last visit to Mr. Wace, and the crystal had been clasped in his stone-cold hands. His face was smiling, said Mrs. Cave, and the velvet cloth from the minerals lay on the floor at his feet. He must have been dead five or six hours when he was found. This came as a great shock to Wace, and he began to reproach himself bitterly for having neglected the plain symptoms of the old man's ill-health. But his chief thought was of the crystal. He approached that topic in a gingerly manner, because he knew Mrs. Cave's peculiarities. He was dumbfounded to learn that it was sold. Mrs. Cave's first impulse, directly Cave's body had been taken upstairs, had been to write to the mad clergyman who had offered five pounds for the crystal, informing him of its recovery; but after a violent hunt in which her daughter joined her, they were convinced of the loss of his address. As they were without the means required to mourn and bury Cave in the elaborate style the dignity of an old Seven Dials inhabitant demands, they had appealed to a friendly fellow-tradesman in Great Portland Street. He had very kindly taken over a portion of the stock at a valuation. The valuation was his own and the crystal egg was included in one of the lots. Mr. Wace, after a few suitable consolatory observations, a little off-handedly proffered perhaps, hurried at once to Great Portland Street. But there he learned that the crystal egg had already been sold to a tall, dark man in grey. And there the material facts in this curious, and to me at least very suggestive, story come abruptly to an end. The Great Portland Street dealer did not know who the tall dark man in grey was, nor had he observed him with sufficient attention to describe him minutely. He did not even know which way this person had gone after leaving the shop. For a time Mr. Wace remained in the shop, trying the dealer's patience with hopeless questions, venting his own exasperation. And at last, realising abruptly that the whole thing had passed out of his hands, had vanished like a vision of the night, he returned to his own rooms, a little astonished to find the notes he had made still tangible and visible upon his untidy table. His annoyance and disappointment were naturally very great. He made a second call (equally ineffectual) upon the Great Portland Street dealer, and he resorted to advertisements in such periodicals as were likely to come into the hands of a _bric-a-brac_ collector. He also wrote letters to _The Daily Chronicle_ and _Nature_, but both those periodicals, suspecting a hoax, asked him to reconsider his action before they printed, and he was advised that such a strange story, unfortunately so bare of supporting evidence, might imperil his reputation as an investigator. Moreover, the calls of his proper work were urgent. So that after a month or so, save for an occasional reminder to certain dealers, he had reluctantly to abandon the quest for the crystal egg, and from that day to this it remains undiscovered. Occasionally, however, he tells me, and I can quite believe him, he has bursts of zeal, in which he abandons his more urgent occupation and resumes the search. Whether or not it will remain lost for ever, with the material and origin of it, are things equally speculative at the present time. If the present purchaser is a collector, one would have expected the enquiries of Mr. Wace to have reached him through the dealers. He has been able to discover Mr. Cave's clergyman and "Oriental"--no other than the Rev. James Parker and the young Prince of Bosso-Kuni in Java. I am obliged to them for certain particulars. The object of the Prince was simply curiosity--and extravagance. He was so eager to buy, because Cave was so oddly reluctant to sell. It is just as possible that the buyer in the second instance was simply a casual purchaser and not a collector at all, and the crystal egg, for all I know, may at the present moment be within a mile of me, decorating a drawing-room or serving as a paper-weight--its remarkable functions all unknown. Indeed, it is partly with the idea of such a possibility that I have thrown this narrative into a form that will give it a chance of being read by the ordinary consumer of fiction. My own ideas in the matter are practically identical with those of Mr. Wace. I believe the crystal on the mast in Mars and the crystal egg of Mr. Cave's to be in some physical, but at present quite inexplicable, way _en rapport_, and we both believe further that the terrestrial crystal must have been--possibly at some remote date--sent hither from that planet, in order to give the Martians a near view of our affairs. Possibly the fellows to the crystals in the other masts are also on our globe. No theory of hallucination suffices for the facts. The Star THE STAR It was on the first day of the new year that the announcement was made, almost simultaneously from three observatories, that the motion of the planet Neptune, the outermost of all the planets that wheel about the sun, had become very erratic. Ogilvy had already called attention to a suspected retardation in its velocity in December. Such a piece of news was scarcely calculated to interest a world the greater portion of whose inhabitants were unaware of the existence of the planet Neptune, nor outside the astronomical profession did the subsequent discovery of a faint remote speck of light in the region of the perturbed planet cause any very great excitement. Scientific people, however, found the intelligence remarkable enough, even before it became known that the new body was rapidly growing larger and brighter, that its motion was quite different from the orderly progress of the planets, and that the deflection of Neptune and its satellite was becoming now of an unprecedented kind. Few people without a training in science can realise the huge isolation of the solar system. The sun with its specks of planets, its dust of planetoids, and its impalpable comets, swims in a vacant immensity that almost defeats the imagination. Beyond the orbit of Neptune there is space, vacant so far as human observation has penetrated, without warmth or light or sound, blank emptiness, for twenty million times a million miles. That is the smallest estimate of the distance to be traversed before the very nearest of the stars is attained. And, saving a few comets more unsubstantial than the thinnest flame, no matter had ever to human knowledge crossed this gulf of space, until early in the twentieth century this strange wanderer appeared. A vast mass of matter it was, bulky, heavy, rushing without warning out of the black mystery of the sky into the radiance of the sun. By the second day it was clearly visible to any decent instrument, as a speck with a barely sensible diameter, in the constellation Leo near Regulus. In a little while an opera glass could attain it. On the third day of the new year the newspaper readers of two hemispheres were made aware for the first time of the real importance of this unusual apparition in the heavens. "A Planetary Collision," one London paper headed the news, and proclaimed Duchaine's opinion that this strange new planet would probably collide with Neptune. The leader writers enlarged upon the topic. So that in most of the capitals of the world, on January 3rd, there was an expectation, however vague of some imminent phenomenon in the sky; and as the night followed the sunset round the globe, thousands of men turned their eyes skyward to see--the old familiar stars just as they had always been. Until it was dawn in London and Pollux setting and the stars overhead grown pale. The Winter's dawn it was, a sickly filtering accumulation of daylight, and the light of gas and candles shone yellow in the windows to show where people were astir. But the yawning policeman saw the thing, the busy crowds in the markets stopped agape, workmen going to their work betimes, milkmen, the drivers of news-carts, dissipation going home jaded and pale, homeless wanderers, sentinels on their beats, and in the country, labourers trudging afield, poachers slinking home, all over the dusky quickening country it could be seen--and out at sea by seamen watching for the day--a great white star, come suddenly into the westward sky! Brighter it was than any star in our skies; brighter than the evening star at its brightest. It still glowed out white and large, no mere twinkling spot of light, but a small round clear shining disc, an hour after the day had come. And where science has not reached, men stared and feared, telling one another of the wars and pestilences that are foreshadowed by these fiery signs in the Heavens. Sturdy Boers, dusky Hottentots, Gold Coast negroes, Frenchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, stood in the warmth of the sunrise watching the setting of this strange new star. And in a hundred observatories there had been suppressed excitement, rising almost to shouting pitch, as the two remote bodies had rushed together, and a hurrying to and fro, to gather photographic apparatus and spectroscope, and this appliance and that, to record this novel astonishing sight, the destruction of a world. For it was a world, a sister planet of our earth, far greater than our earth indeed, that had so suddenly flashed into flaming death. Neptune it was, had been struck, fairly and squarely, by the strange planet from outer space and the heat of the concussion had incontinently turned two solid globes into one vast mass of incandescence. Round the world that day, two hours before the dawn, went the pallid great white star, fading only as it sank westward and the sun mounted above it. Everywhere men marvelled at it, but of all those who saw it none could have marvelled more than those sailors, habitual watchers of the stars, who far away at sea had heard nothing of its advent and saw it now rise like a pigmy moon and climb zenithward and hang overhead and sink westward with the passing of the night. And when next it rose over Europe everywhere were crowds of watchers on hilly slopes, on house-roofs, in open spaces, staring eastward for the rising of the great new star. It rose with a white glow in front of it, like the glare of a white fire, and those who had seen it come into existence the night before cried out at the sight of it. "It is larger," they cried. "It is brighter! " And, indeed the moon a quarter full and sinking in the west was in its apparent size beyond comparison, but scarcely in all its breadth had it as much brightness now as the little circle of the strange new star. "It is brighter! " cried the people clustering in the streets. But in the dim observatories the watchers held their breath and peered at one another. "_It is nearer_," they said. "_Nearer! _" And voice after voice repeated, "It is nearer," and the clicking telegraph took that up, and it trembled along telephone wires, and in a thousand cities grimy compositors fingered the type. "It is nearer. " Men writing in offices, struck with a strange realisation, flung down their pens, men talking in a thousand places suddenly came upon a grotesque possibility in those words, "It is nearer. " It hurried along awakening streets, it was shouted down the frost-stilled ways of quiet villages, men who had read these things from the throbbing tape stood in yellow-lit doorways shouting the news to the passers-by. "It is nearer. " Pretty women, flushed and glittering, heard the news told jestingly between the dances, and feigned an intelligent interest they did not feel. "Nearer! Indeed. How curious! How very, very clever people must be to find out things like that! " Lonely tramps faring through the wintry night murmured those words to comfort themselves--looking skyward. "It has need to be nearer, for the night's as cold as charity. Don't seem much warmth from it if it _is_ nearer, all the same. " "What is a new star to me? " cried the weeping woman kneeling beside her dead. The schoolboy, rising early for his examination work, puzzled it out for himself--with the great white star, shining broad and bright through the frost-flowers of his window. "Centrifugal, centripetal," he said, with his chin on his fist. "Stop a planet in its flight, rob it of its centrifugal force, what then? Centripetal has it, and down it falls into the sun! And this--! " "Do _we_ come in the way? I wonder--" The light of that day went the way of its brethren, and with the later watches of the frosty darkness rose the strange star again. And it was now so bright that the waxing moon seemed but a pale yellow ghost of itself, hanging huge in the sunset. In a South African city a great man had married, and the streets were alight to welcome his return with his bride. "Even the skies have illuminated," said the flatterer. Under Capricorn, two negro lovers, daring the wild beasts and evil spirits, for love of one another, crouched together in a cane brake where the fire-flies hovered. "That is our star," they whispered, and felt strangely comforted by the sweet brilliance of its light. The master mathematician sat in his private room and pushed the papers from him. His calculations were already finished. In a small white phial there still remained a little of the drug that had kept him awake and active for four long nights. Each day, serene, explicit, patient as ever, he had given his lecture to his students, and then had come back at once to this momentous calculation. His face was grave, a little drawn and hectic from his drugged activity. For some time he seemed lost in thought. Then he went to the window, and the blind went up with a click. Half way up the sky, over the clustering roofs, chimneys and steeples of the city, hung the star. He looked at it as one might look into the eyes of a brave enemy.

"You may kill me," he said after a silence. "But I can hold you--and all the universe for that matter--in the grip of this little brain. I would not change. Even now. " He looked at the little phial. "There will be no need of sleep again," he said. The next day at noon, punctual to the minute, he entered his lecture theatre, put his hat on the end of the table as his habit was, and carefully selected a large piece of chalk. It was a joke among his students that he could not lecture without that piece of chalk to fumble in his fingers, and once he had been stricken to impotence by their hiding his supply. He came and looked under his grey eyebrows at the rising tiers of young fresh faces, and spoke with his accustomed studied commonness of phrasing. "Circumstances have arisen--circumstances beyond my control," he said and paused, "which will debar me from completing the course I had designed. It would seem, gentlemen, if I may put the thing clearly and briefly, that--Man has lived in vain. " The students glanced at one another. Had they heard aright? Mad? Raised eyebrows and grinning lips there were, but one or two faces remained intent upon his calm grey-fringed face. "It will be interesting," he was saying, "to devote this morning to an exposition, so far as I can make it clear to you, of the calculations that have led me to this conclusion. Let us assume--" He turned towards the blackboard, meditating a diagram in the way that was usual to him. "What was that about 'lived in vain? '" whispered one student to another. "Listen," said the other, nodding towards the lecturer. And presently they began to understand. That night the star rose later, for its proper eastward motion had carried it some way across Leo towards Virgo, and its brightness was so great that the sky became a luminous blue as it rose, and every star was hidden in its turn, save only Jupiter near the zenith, Capella, Aldebaran, Sirius and the pointers of the Bear. It was very white and beautiful. In many parts of the world that night a pallid halo encircled it about. It was perceptibly larger; in the clear refractive sky of the tropics it seemed as if it were nearly a quarter the size of the moon. The frost was still on the ground in England, but the world was as brightly lit as if it were midsummer moonlight. One could see to read quite ordinary print by that cold clear light, and in the cities the lamps burnt yellow and wan. And everywhere the world was awake that night, and throughout Christendom a sombre murmur hung in the keen air over the countryside like the belling of bees in the heather, and this murmurous tumult grew to a clangour in the cities. It was the tolling of the bells in a million belfry towers and steeples, summoning the people to sleep no more, to sin no more, but to gather in their churches and pray. And overhead, growing larger and brighter, as the earth rolled on its way and the night passed, rose the dazzling star. And the streets and houses were alight in all the cities, the shipyards glared, and whatever roads led to high country were lit and crowded all night long. And in all the seas about the civilised lands, ships with throbbing engines, and ships with bellying sails, crowded with men and living creatures, were standing out to ocean and the north. For already the warning of the master mathematician had been telegraphed all over the world, and translated into a hundred tongues. The new planet and Neptune, locked in a fiery embrace, were whirling headlong, ever faster and faster towards the sun. Already every second this blazing mass flew a hundred miles, and every second its terrific velocity increased. As it flew now, indeed, it must pass a hundred million of miles wide of the earth and scarcely affect it. But near its destined path, as yet only slightly perturbed, spun the mighty planet Jupiter and his moons sweeping splendid round the sun. Every moment now the attraction between the fiery star and the greatest of the planets grew stronger. And the result of that attraction? Inevitably Jupiter would be deflected from its orbit into an elliptical path, and the burning star, swung by his attraction wide of its sunward rush, would "describe a curved path" and perhaps collide with, and certainly pass very close to, our earth. "Earthquakes, volcanic outbreaks, cyclones, sea waves, floods, and a steady rise in temperature to I know not what limit"--so prophesied the master mathematician. And overhead, to carry out his words, lonely and cold and livid, blazed the star of the coming doom. To many who stared at it that night until their eyes ached, it seemed that it was visibly approaching. And that night, too, the weather changed, and the frost that had gripped all Central Europe and France and England softened towards a thaw. But you must not imagine because I have spoken of people praying through the night and people going aboard ships and people fleeing towards mountainous country that the whole world was already in a terror because of the star. As a matter of fact, use and wont still ruled the world, and save for the talk of idle moments and the splendour of the night, nine human beings out of ten were still busy at their common occupations. In all the cities the shops, save one here and there, opened and closed at their proper hours, the doctor and the undertaker plied their trades, the workers gathered in the factories, soldiers drilled, scholars studied, lovers sought one another, thieves lurked and fled, politicians planned their schemes. The presses of the newspapers roared through the nights, and many a priest of this church and that would not open his holy building to further what he considered a foolish panic. The newspapers insisted on the lesson of the year 1000--for then, too, people had anticipated the end. The star was no star--mere gas--a comet; and were it a star it could not possibly strike the earth. There was no precedent for such a thing. Common sense was sturdy everywhere, scornful, jesting, a little inclined to persecute the obdurate fearful. That night, at seven-fifteen by Greenwich time, the star would be at its nearest to Jupiter. Then the world would see the turn things would take. The master mathematician's grim warnings were treated by many as so much mere elaborate self-advertisement. Common sense at last, a little heated by argument, signified its unalterable convictions by going to bed. So, too, barbarism and savagery, already tired of the novelty, went about their nightly business, and save for a howling dog here and there, the beast world left the star unheeded. And yet, when at last the watchers in the European States saw the star rise, an hour later it is true, but no larger than it had been the night before, there were still plenty awake to laugh at the master mathematician--to take the danger as if it had passed. But hereafter the laughter ceased. The star grew--it grew with a terrible steadiness hour after hour, a little larger each hour, a little nearer the midnight zenith, and brighter and brighter, until it had turned night into a second day. Had it come straight to the earth instead of in a curved path, had it lost no velocity to Jupiter, it must have leapt the intervening gulf in a day, but as it was it took five days altogether to come by our planet. The next night it had become a third the size of the moon before it set to English eyes, and the thaw was assured. It rose over America near the size of the moon, but blinding white to look at, and _hot_; and a breath of hot wind blew now with its rising and gathering strength, and in Virginia, and Brazil, and down the St. Lawrence valley, it shone intermittently through a driving reek of thunder-clouds, flickering violet lightning, and hail unprecedented. In Manitoba was a thaw and devastating floods. And upon all the mountains of the earth the snow and ice began to melt that night, and all the rivers coming out of high country flowed thick and turbid, and soon--in their upper reaches--with swirling trees and the bodies of beasts and men. They rose steadily, steadily in the ghostly brilliance, and came trickling over their banks at last, behind the flying population of their valleys. And along the coast of Argentina and up the South Atlantic the tides were higher than had ever been in the memory of man, and the storms drove the waters in many cases scores of miles inland, drowning whole cities. And so great grew the heat during the night that the rising of the sun was like the coming of a shadow. The earthquakes began and grew until all down America from the Arctic Circle to Cape Horn, hillsides were sliding, fissures were opening, and houses and walls crumbling to destruction. The whole side of Cotopaxi slipped out in one vast convulsion, and a tumult of lava poured out so high and broad and swift and liquid that in one day it reached the sea. So the star, with the wan moon in its wake, marched across the Pacific, trailed the thunderstorms like the hem of a robe, and the growing tidal wave that toiled behind it, frothing and eager, poured over island and island and swept them clear of men. Until that wave came at last--in a blinding light and with the breath of a furnace, swift and terrible it came--a wall of water, fifty feet high, roaring hungrily, upon the long coasts of Asia, and swept inland across the plains of China. For a space the star, hotter now and larger and brighter than the sun in its strength, showed with pitiless brilliance the wide and populous country; towns and villages with their pagodas and trees, roads, wide cultivated fields, millions of sleepless people staring in helpless terror at the incandescent sky; and then, low and growing, came the murmur of the flood. And thus it was with millions of men that night--a flight nowhither, with limbs heavy with heat and breath fierce and scant, and the flood like a wall swift and white behind. And then death. China was lit glowing white, but over Japan and Java and all the islands of Eastern Asia the great star was a ball of dull red fire because of the steam and smoke and ashes the volcanoes were spouting forth to salute its coming. Above was the lava, hot gases and ash, and below the seething floods, and the whole earth swayed and rumbled with the earthquake shocks. Soon the immemorial snows of Thibet and the Himalaya were melting and pouring down by ten million deepening converging channels upon the plains of Burmah and Hindostan. The tangled summits of the Indian jungles were aflame in a thousand places, and below the hurrying waters around the stems were dark objects that still struggled feebly and reflected the blood-red tongues of fire. And in a rudderless confusion a multitude of men and women fled down the broad river-ways to that one last hope of men--the open sea. Larger grew the star, and larger, hotter, and brighter with a terrible swiftness now. The tropical ocean had lost its phosphorescence, and the whirling steam rose in ghostly wreaths from the black waves that plunged incessantly, speckled with storm-tossed ships. And then came a wonder. It seemed to those who in Europe watched for the rising of the star that the world must have ceased its rotation. In a thousand open spaces of down and upland the people who had fled thither from the floods and the falling houses and sliding slopes of hill watched for that rising in vain. Hour followed hour through a terrible suspense, and the star rose not. Once again men set their eyes upon the old constellations they had counted lost to them forever. In England it was hot and clear overhead, though the ground quivered perpetually, but in the tropics, Sirius and Capella and Aldebaran showed through a veil of steam. And when at last the great star rose near ten hours late, the sun rose close upon it, and in the centre of its white heart was a disc of black. Over Asia it was the star had begun to fall behind the movement of the sky, and then suddenly, as it hung over India, its light had been veiled. All the plain of India from the mouth of the Indus to the mouths of the Ganges was a shallow waste of shining water that night, out of which rose temples and palaces, mounds and hills, black with people. Every minaret was a clustering mass of people, who fell one by one into the turbid waters, as heat and terror overcame them. The whole land seemed a-wailing, and suddenly there swept a shadow across that furnace of despair, and a breath of cold wind, and a gathering of clouds, out of the cooling air. Men looking up, near blinded, at the star, saw that a black disc was creeping across the light. It was the moon, coming between the star and the earth. And even as men cried to God at this respite, out of the East with a strange inexplicable swiftness sprang the sun. And then star, sun and moon rushed together across the heavens. So it was that presently, to the European watchers, star and sun rose close upon each other, drove headlong for a space and then slower, and at last came to rest, star and sun merged into one glare of flame at the zenith of the sky. The moon no longer eclipsed the star but was lost to sight in the brilliance of the sky. And though those who were still alive regarded it for the most part with that dull stupidity that hunger, fatigue, heat and despair engender, there were still men who could perceive the meaning of these signs. Star and earth had been at their nearest, had swung about one another, and the star had passed. Already it was receding, swifter and swifter, in the last stage of its headlong journey downward into the sun. And then the clouds gathered, blotting out the vision of the sky, the thunder and lightning wove a garment round the world; all over the earth was such a downpour of rain as men had never before seen, and where the volcanoes flared red against the cloud canopy there descended torrents of mud. Everywhere the waters were pouring off the land, leaving mud-silted ruins, and the earth littered like a storm-worn beach with all that had floated, and the dead bodies of the men and brutes, its children. For days the water streamed off the land, sweeping away soil and trees and houses in the way, and piling huge dykes and scooping out Titanic gullies over the country side. Those were the days of darkness that followed the star and the heat. All through them, and for many weeks and months, the earthquakes continued. But the star had passed, and men, hunger-driven and gathering courage only slowly, might creep back to their ruined cities, buried granaries, and sodden fields. Such few ships as had escaped the storms of that time came stunned and shattered and sounding their way cautiously through the new marks and shoals of once familiar ports. And as the storms subsided men perceived that everywhere the days were hotter than of yore, and the sun larger, and the moon, shrunk to a third of its former size, took now fourscore days between its new and new. But of the new brotherhood that grew presently among men, of the saving of laws and books and machines, of the strange change that had come over Iceland and Greenland and the shores of Baffin's Bay, so that the sailors coming there presently found them green and gracious, and could scarce believe their eyes, this story does not tell. Nor of the movement of mankind now that the earth was hotter, northward and southward towards the poles of the earth. It concerns itself only with the coming and the passing of the Star. The Martian astronomers--for there are astronomers on Mars, although they are very different beings from men--were naturally profoundly interested by these things. They saw them from their own standpoint of course. "Considering the mass and temperature of the missile that was flung through our solar system into the sun," one wrote, "it is astonishing what a little damage the earth, which it missed so narrowly, has sustained. All the familiar continental markings and the masses of the seas remain intact, and indeed the only difference seems to be a shrinkage of the white discolouration (supposed to be frozen water) round either pole. " Which only shows how small the vastest of human catastrophes may seem, at a distance of a few million miles. A Story of the Stone Age A STORY OF THE STONE AGE I--UGH-LOMI AND UYA This story is of a time beyond the memory of man, before the beginning of history, a time when one might have walked dryshod from France (as we call it now) to England, and when a broad and sluggish Thames flowed through its marshes to meet its father Rhine, flowing through a wide and level country that is under water in these latter days, and which we know by the name of the North Sea. In that remote age the valley which runs along the foot of the Downs did not exist, and the south of Surrey was a range of hills, fir-clad on the middle slopes, and snow-capped for the better part of the year. The cores of its summits still remain as Leith Hill, and Pitch Hill, and Hindhead. On the lower slopes of the range, below the grassy spaces where the wild horses grazed, were forests of yew and sweet-chestnut and elm, and the thickets and dark places hid the grizzly bear and the hyæna, and the grey apes clambered through the branches. And still lower amidst the woodland and marsh and open grass along the Wey did this little drama play itself out to the end that I have to tell. Fifty thousand years ago it was, fifty thousand years--if the reckoning of geologists is correct. And in those days the spring-time was as joyful as it is now, and sent the blood coursing in just the same fashion. The afternoon sky was blue with piled white clouds sailing through it, and the southwest wind came like a soft caress. The new-come swallows drove to and fro. The reaches of the river were spangled with white ranunculus, the marshy places were starred with lady's-smock and lit with marsh-mallow wherever the regiments of the sedges lowered their swords, and the northward-moving hippopotami, shiny black monsters, sporting clumsily, came floundering and blundering through it all, rejoicing dimly and possessed with one clear idea, to splash the river muddy. Up the river and well in sight of the hippopotami, a number of little buff-coloured animals dabbled in the water. There was no fear, no rivalry, and no enmity between them and the hippopotami. As the great bulks came crashing through the reeds and smashed the mirror of the water into silvery splashes, these little creatures shouted and gesticulated with glee. It was the surest sign of high spring. "Boloo! " they cried. "Baayah. Boloo! " They were the children of the men folk, the smoke of whose encampment rose from the knoll at the river's bend. Wild-eyed youngsters they were, with matted hair and little broad-nosed impish faces, covered (as some children are covered even nowadays) with a delicate down of hair. They were narrow in the loins and long in the arms. And their ears had no lobes, and had little pointed tips, a thing that still, in rare instances, survives. Stark-naked vivid little gipsies, as active as monkeys and as full of chatter, though a little wanting in words. Their elders were hidden from the wallowing hippopotami by the crest of the knoll. The human squatting-place was a trampled area among the dead brown fronds of Royal Fern, through which the crosiers of this year's growth were unrolling to the light and warmth. The fire was a smouldering heap of char, light grey and black, replenished by the old women from time to time with brown leaves. Most of the men were asleep--they slept sitting with their foreheads on their knees. They had killed that morning a good quarry, enough for all, a deer that had been wounded by hunting dogs; so that there had been no quarrelling among them, and some of the women were still gnawing the bones that lay scattered about. Others were making a heap of leaves and sticks to feed Brother Fire when the darkness came again, that he might grow strong and tall therewith, and guard them against the beasts. And two were piling flints that they brought, an armful at a time, from the bend of the river where the children were at play. None of these buff-skinned savages were clothed, but some wore about their hips rude girdles of adder-skin or crackling undressed hide, from which depended little bags, not made, but torn from the paws of beasts, and carrying the rudely-dressed flints that were men's chief weapons and tools. And one woman, the mate of Uya the Cunning Man, wore a wonderful necklace of perforated fossils--that others had worn before her. Beside some of the sleeping men lay the big antlers of the elk, with the tines chipped to sharp edges, and long sticks, hacked at the ends with flints into sharp points. There was little else save these things and the smouldering fire to mark these human beings off from the wild animals that ranged the country. But Uya the Cunning did not sleep, but sat with a bone in his hand and scraped busily thereon with a flint, a thing no animal would do. He was the oldest man in the tribe, beetle-browed, prognathous, lank-armed; he had a beard and his cheeks were hairy, and his chest and arms were black with thick hair. And by virtue both of his strength and cunning he was master of the tribe, and his share was always the most and the best. Eudena had hidden herself among the alders, because she was afraid of Uya. She was still a girl, and her eyes were bright and her smile pleasant to see. He had given her a piece of the liver, a man's piece, and a wonderful treat for a girl to get; but as she took it the other woman with the necklace had looked at her, an evil glance, and Ugh-lomi had made a noise in his throat. At that, Uya had looked at him long and steadfastly, and Ugh-lomi's face had fallen. And then Uya had looked at her. She was frightened and she had stolen away, while the feeding was still going on, and Uya was busy with the marrow of a bone. Afterwards he had wandered about as if looking for her. And now she crouched among the alders, wondering mightily what Uya might be doing with the flint and the bone. And Ugh-lomi was not to be seen. Presently a squirrel came leaping through the alders, and she lay so quiet the little man was within six feet of her before he saw her. Whereupon he dashed up a stem in a hurry and began to chatter and scold her. "What are you doing here," he asked, "away from the other men beasts? " "Peace," said Eudena, but he only chattered more, and then she began to break off the little black cones to throw at him. He dodged and defied her, and she grew excited and rose up to throw better, and then she saw Uya coming down the knoll. He had seen the movement of her pale arm amidst the thicket--he was very keen-eyed. At that she forgot the squirrel and set off through the alders and reeds as fast as she could go. She did not care where she went so long as she escaped Uya. She splashed nearly knee-deep through a swampy place, and saw in front of her a slope of ferns--growing more slender and green as they passed up out of the light into the shade of the young chestnuts. She was soon amidst the trees--she was very fleet of foot, and she ran on and on until the forest was old and the vales great, and the vines about their stems where the light came were thick as young trees, and the ropes of ivy stout and tight. On she went, and she doubled and doubled again, and then at last lay down amidst some ferns in a hollow place near a thicket, and listened with her heart beating in her ears. She heard footsteps presently rustling among the dead leaves, far off, and they died away and everything was still again, except the scandalising of the midges--for the evening was drawing on--and the incessant whisper of the leaves. She laughed silently to think the cunning Uya should go by her. She was not frightened. Sometimes, playing with the other girls and lads, she had fled into the wood, though never so far as this. It was pleasant to be hidden and alone. She lay a long time there, glad of her escape, and then she sat up listening. It was a rapid pattering growing louder and coming towards her, and in a little while she could hear grunting noises and the snapping of twigs. It was a drove of lean grisly wild swine. She turned about her, for a boar is an ill fellow to pass too closely, on account of the sideway slash of his tusks, and she made off slantingly through the trees. But the patter came nearer, they were not feeding as they wandered, but going fast--or else they would not overtake her--and she caught the limb of a tree, swung on to it, and ran up the stem with something of the agility of a monkey. Down below the sharp bristling backs of the swine were already passing when she looked. And she knew the short, sharp grunts they made meant fear. What were they afraid of? A man? They were in a great hurry for just a man. And then, so suddenly it made her grip on the branch tighten involuntarily, a fawn started in the brake and rushed after the swine. Something else went by, low and grey, with a long body; she did not know what it was, indeed she saw it only momentarily through the interstices of the young leaves; and then there came a pause. She remained stiff and expectant, as rigid almost as though she was a part of the tree she clung to, peering down. Then, far away among the trees, clear for a moment, then hidden, then visible knee-deep in ferns, then gone again, ran a man. She knew it was young Ugh-lomi by the fair colour of his hair, and there was red upon his face. Somehow his frantic flight and that scarlet mark made her feel sick. And then nearer, running heavily and breathing hard, came another man. At first she could not see, and then she saw, foreshortened and clear to her, Uya, running with great strides and his eyes staring. He was not going after Ugh-lomi. His face was white. It was Uya--_afraid_! He passed, and was still loud hearing, when something else, something large and with grizzled fur, swinging along with soft swift strides, came rushing in pursuit of him. Eudena suddenly became rigid, ceased to breathe, her clutch convulsive, and her eyes starting. She had never seen the thing before, she did not even see him clearly now, but she knew at once it was the Terror of the Woodshade. His name was a legend, the children would frighten one another, frighten even themselves with his name, and run screaming to the squatting-place. No man had ever killed any of his kind. Even the mighty mammoth feared his anger. It was the grizzly bear, the lord of the world as the world went then. As he ran he made a continuous growling grumble. "Men in my very lair! Fighting and blood. At the very mouth of my lair. Men, men, men. Fighting and blood. " For he was the lord of the wood and of the caves. Long after he had passed she remained, a girl of stone, staring down through the branches. All her power of action had gone from her. She gripped by instinct with hands and knees and feet. It was some time before she could think, and then only one thing was clear in her mind, that the Terror was between her and the tribe--that it would be impossible to descend. Presently when her fear was a little abated she clambered into a more comfortable position, where a great branch forked. The trees rose about her, so that she could see nothing of Brother Fire, who is black by day. Birds began to stir, and things that had gone into hiding for fear of her movements crept out. . . . After a time the taller branches flamed out at the touch of the sunset. High overhead the rooks, who were wiser than men, went cawing home to their squatting-places among the elms. Looking down, things were clearer and darker. Eudena thought of going back to the squatting-place; she let herself down some way, and then the fear of the Terror of the Woodshade came again. While she hesitated a rabbit squealed dismally, and she dared not descend farther. The shadows gathered, and the deeps of the forest began stirring. Eudena went up the tree again to be nearer the light. Down below the shadows came out of their hiding-places and walked abroad. Overhead the blue deepened. A dreadful stillness came, and then the leaves began whispering. Eudena shivered and thought of Brother Fire. The shadows now were gathering in the trees, they sat on the branches and watched her. Branches and leaves were turned to ominous, quiet black shapes that would spring on her if she stirred. Then the white owl, flitting silently, came ghostly through the shades. Darker grew the world and darker, until the leaves and twigs against the sky were black, and the ground was hidden. She remained there all night, an age-long vigil, straining her ears for the things that went on below in the darkness, and keeping motionless lest some stealthy beast should discover her. Man in those days was never alone in the dark, save for such rare accidents as this. Age after age he had learnt the lesson of its terror--a lesson we poor children of his have nowadays painfully to unlearn. Eudena, though in age a woman, was in heart like a little child. She kept as still, poor little animal, as a hare before it is started. The stars gathered and watched her--her one grain of comfort. In one bright one she fancied there was something like Ugh-lomi. Then she fancied it _was_ Ugh-lomi. And near him, red and duller, was Uya, and as the night passed Ugh-lomi fled before him up the sky. She tried to see Brother Fire, who guarded the squatting-place from beasts, but he was not in sight. And far away she heard the mammoths trumpeting as they went down to the drinking-place, and once some huge bulk with heavy paces hurried along, making a noise like a calf, but what it was she could not see. But she thought from the voice it was Yaaa the rhinoceros, who stabs with his nose, goes always alone, and rages without cause. At last the little stars began to hide, and then the larger ones. It was like all the animals vanishing before the Terror. The Sun was coming, lord of the sky, as the grizzly was lord of the forest. Eudena wondered what would happen if one star stayed behind.

And then the sky paled to the dawn. When the daylight came the fear of lurking things passed, and she could descend. She was stiff, but not so stiff as you would have been, dear young lady (by virtue of your upbringing), and as she had not been trained to eat at least once in three hours, but instead had often fasted three days, she did not feel uncomfortably hungry. She crept down the tree very cautiously, and went her way stealthily through the wood, and not a squirrel sprang or deer started but the terror of the grizzly bear froze her marrow. Her desire was now to find her people again. Her dread of Uya the Cunning was consumed by a greater dread of loneliness. But she had lost her direction. She had run heedlessly overnight, and she could not tell whether the squatting-place was sunward or where it lay. Ever and again she stopped and listened, and at last, very far away, she heard a measured chinking. It was so faint even in the morning stillness that she could tell it must be far away. But she knew the sound was that of a man sharpening a flint. Presently the trees began to thin out, and then came a regiment of nettles barring the way. She turned aside, and then she came to a fallen tree that she knew, with a noise of bees about it. And so presently she was in sight of the knoll, very far off, and the river under it, and the children and the hippopotami just as they had been yesterday, and the thin spire of smoke swaying in the morning breeze. Far away by the river was the cluster of alders where she had hidden. And at the sight of that the fear of Uya returned, and she crept into a thicket of bracken, out of which a rabbit scuttled, and lay awhile to watch the squatting-place. The men were mostly out of sight, saving Wau, the flint-chopper; and at that she felt safer. They were away hunting food, no doubt. Some of the women, too, were down in the stream, stooping intent, seeking mussels, crayfish, and water-snails, and at the sight of their occupation Eudena felt hungry. She rose, and ran through the fern, designing to join them. As she went she heard a voice among the bracken calling softly. She stopped. Then suddenly she heard a rustle behind her, and turning, saw Ugh-lomi rising out of the fern. There were streaks of brown blood and dirt on his face, and his eyes were fierce, and the white stone of Uya, the white Fire Stone, that none but Uya dared to touch, was in his hand. In a stride he was beside her, and gripped her arm. He swung her about, and thrust her before him towards the woods. "Uya," he said, and waved his arms about. She heard a cry, looked back, and saw all the women standing up, and two wading out of the stream. Then came a nearer howling, and the old woman with the beard, who watched the fire on the knoll, was waving her arms, and Wau, the man who had been chipping the flint, was getting to his feet. The little children too were hurrying and shouting. "Come! " said Ugh-lomi, and dragged her by the arm. She still did not understand. "Uya has called the death word," said Ugh-lomi, and she glanced back at the screaming curve of figures, and understood. Wau and all the women and children were coming towards them, a scattered array of buff shock-headed figures, howling, leaping, and crying. Over the knoll two youths hurried. Down among the ferns to the right came a man, heading them off from the wood. Ugh-lomi left her arm, and the two began running side by side, leaping the bracken and stepping clear and wide. Eudena, knowing her fleetness and the fleetness of Ugh-lomi, laughed aloud at the unequal chase. They were an exceptionally straight-limbed couple for those days. They soon cleared the open, and drew near the wood of chestnut-trees again--neither afraid now because neither was alone. They slackened their pace, already not excessive. And suddenly Eudena cried and swerved aside, pointing, and looking up through the tree-stems. Ugh-lomi saw the feet and legs of men running towards him. Eudena was already running off at a tangent. And as he too turned to follow her they heard the voice of Uya coming through the trees, and roaring out his rage at them. Then terror came in their hearts, not the terror that numbs, but the terror that makes one silent and swift. They were cut off now on two sides. They were in a sort of corner of pursuit. On the right hand, and near by them, came the men swift and heavy, with bearded Uya, antler in hand, leading them; and on the left, scattered as one scatters corn, yellow dashes among the fern and grass, ran Wau and the women; and even the little children from the shallow had joined the chase. The two parties converged upon them. Off they went, with Eudena ahead. They knew there was no mercy for them. There was no hunting so sweet to these ancient men as the hunting of men. Once the fierce passion of the chase was lit, the feeble beginnings of humanity in them were thrown to the winds. And Uya in the night had marked Ugh-lomi with the death word. Ugh-lomi was the day's quarry, the appointed feast. They ran straight--it was their only chance--taking whatever ground came in the way--a spread of stinging nettles, an open glade, a clump of grass out of which a hyæna fled snarling. Then woods again, long stretches of shady leaf-mould and moss under the green trunks. Then a stiff slope, tree-clad, and long vistas of trees, a glade, a succulent green area of black mud, a wide open space again, and then a clump of lacerating brambles, with beast tracks through it. Behind them the chase trailed out and scattered, with Uya ever at their heels. Eudena kept the first place, running light and with her breath easy, for Ugh-lomi carried the Fire Stone in his hand. It told on his pace--not at first, but after a time. His footsteps behind her suddenly grew remote. Glancing over her shoulder as they crossed another open space, Eudena saw that Ugh-lomi was many yards behind her, and Uya close upon him, with antler already raised in the air to strike him down. Wau and the others were but just emerging from the shadow of the woods. Seeing Ugh-lomi in peril, Eudena ran sideways, looking back, threw up her arms and cried aloud, just as the antler flew. And young Ugh-lomi, expecting this and understanding her cry, ducked his head, so that the missile merely struck his scalp lightly, making but a trivial wound, and flew over him. He turned forthwith, the quartzite Fire Stone in both hands, and hurled it straight at Uya's body as he ran loose from the throw. Uya shouted, but could not dodge it. It took him under the ribs, heavy and flat, and he reeled and went down without a cry. Ugh-lomi caught up the antler--one tine of it was tipped with his own blood--and came running on again with a red trickle just coming out of his hair. Uya rolled over twice, and lay a moment before he got up, and then he did not run fast. The colour of his face was changed. Wau overtook him, and then others, and he coughed and laboured in his breath. But he kept on. At last the two fugitives gained the bank of the river, where the stream ran deep and narrow, and they still had fifty yards in hand of Wau, the foremost pursuer, the man who made the smiting-stones. He carried one, a large flint, the shape of an oyster and double the size, chipped to a chisel edge, in either hand. They sprang down the steep bank into the stream, rushed through the water, swam the deep current in two or three strokes, and came out wading again, dripping and refreshed, to clamber up the farther bank. It was undermined, and with willows growing thickly therefrom, so that it needed clambering. And while Eudena was still among the silvery branches and Ugh-lomi still in the water--for the antler had encumbered him--Wau came up against the sky on the opposite bank, and the smiting-stone, thrown cunningly, took the side of Eudena's knee. She struggled to the top and fell. They heard the pursuers shout to one another, and Ugh-lomi climbing to her and moving jerkily to mar Wau's aim, felt the second smiting-stone graze his ear, and heard the water splash below him. Then it was Ugh-lomi, the stripling, proved himself to have come to man's estate. For running on, he found Eudena fell behind, limping, and at that he turned, and crying savagely and with a face terrible with sudden wrath and trickling blood, ran swiftly past her back to the bank, whirling the antler round his head. And Eudena kept on, running stoutly still, though she must needs limp at every step, and the pain was already sharp. So that Wau, rising over the edge and clutching the straight willow branches, saw Ugh-lomi towering over him, gigantic against the blue; saw his whole body swing round, and the grip of his hands upon the antler. The edge of the antler came sweeping through the air, and he saw no more. The water under the osiers whirled and eddied and went crimson six feet down the stream. Uya following stopped knee-high across the stream, and the man who was swimming turned about. The other men who trailed after--they were none of them very mighty men (for Uya was more cunning than strong, brooking no sturdy rivals)--slackened momentarily at the sight of Ugh-lomi standing there above the willows, bloody and terrible, between them and the halting girl, with the huge antler waving in his hand. It seemed as though he had gone into the water a youth, and come out of it a man full grown. He knew what there was behind him. A broad stretch of grass, and then a thicket, and in that Eudena could hide. That was clear in his mind, though his thinking powers were too feeble to see what should happen thereafter. Uya stood knee-deep, undecided and unarmed. His heavy mouth hung open, showing his canine teeth, and he panted heavily. His side was flushed and bruised under the hair. The other man beside him carried a sharpened stick. The rest of the hunters came up one by one to the top of the bank, hairy, long-armed men clutching flints and sticks. Two ran off along the bank down stream, and then clambered to the water, where Wau had come to the surface struggling weakly. Before they could reach him he went under again. Two others threatened Ugh-lomi from the bank. He answered back, shouts, vague insults, gestures. Then Uya, who had been hesitating, roared with rage, and whirling his fists plunged into the water. His followers splashed after him. Ugh-lomi glanced over his shoulder and found Eudena already vanished into the thicket. He would perhaps have waited for Uya, but Uya preferred to spar in the water below him until the others were beside him. Human tactics in those days, in all serious fighting, were the tactics of the pack. Prey that turned at bay they gathered around and rushed. Ugh-lomi felt the rush coming, and hurling the antler at Uya, turned about and fled. When he halted to look back from the shadow of the thicket, he found only three of his pursuers had followed him across the river, and they were going back again. Uya, with a bleeding mouth, was on the farther side of the stream again, but lower down, and holding his hand to his side. The others were in the river dragging something to shore. For a time at least the chase was intermitted. Ugh-lomi stood watching for a space, and snarled at the sight of Uya. Then he turned and plunged into the thicket. In a minute, Eudena came hastening to join him, and they went on hand in hand. He dimly perceived the pain she suffered from the cut and bruised knee, and chose the easier ways. But they went on all that day, mile after mile, through wood and thicket, until at last they came to the chalkland, open grass with rare woods of beech, and the birch growing near water, and they saw the Wealden mountains nearer, and groups of horses grazing together. They went circumspectly, keeping always near thicket and cover, for this was a strange region--even its ways were strange. Steadily the ground rose, until the chestnut forests spread wide and blue below them, and the Thames marshes shone silvery, high and far. They saw no men, for in those days men were still only just come into this part of the world, and were moving but slowly along the river-ways. Towards evening they came on the river again, but now it ran in a gorge, between high cliffs of white chalk that sometimes overhung it. Down the cliffs was a scrub of birches and there were many birds there. And high up the cliff was a little shelf by a tree, whereon they clambered to pass the night. They had had scarcely any food; it was not the time of year for berries, and they had no time to go aside to snare or waylay. They tramped in a hungry weary silence, gnawing at twigs and leaves. But over the surface of the cliffs were a multitude of snails, and in a bush were the freshly laid eggs of a little bird, and then Ugh-lomi threw at and killed a squirrel in a beech-tree, so that at last they fed well. Ugh-lomi watched during the night, his chin on his knees; and he heard young foxes crying hard by, and the noise of mammoths down the gorge, and the hyænas yelling and laughing far away. It was chilly, but they dared not light a fire. Whenever he dozed, his spirit went abroad, and straightway met with the spirit of Uya, and they fought. And always Ugh-lomi was paralysed so that he could not smite nor run, and then he would awake suddenly. Eudena, too, dreamt evil things of Uya, so that they both awoke with the fear of him in their hearts, and by the light of the dawn they saw a woolly rhinoceros go blundering down the valley. During the day they caressed one another and were glad of the sunshine, and Eudena's leg was so stiff she sat on the ledge all day. Ugh-lomi found great flints sticking out of the cliff face, greater than any he had seen, and he dragged some to the ledge and began chipping, so as to be armed against Uya when he came again. And at one he laughed heartily, and Eudena laughed, and they threw it about in derision. It had a hole in it. They stuck their fingers through it, it was very funny indeed. Then they peeped at one another through it. Afterwards, Ugh-lomi got himself a stick, and thrusting by chance at this foolish flint, the stick went in and stuck there. He had rammed it in too tightly to withdraw it. That was still stranger--scarcely funny, terrible almost, and for a time Ugh-lomi did not greatly care to touch the thing. It was as if the flint had bit and held with its teeth. But then he got familiar with the odd combination. He swung it about, and perceived that the stick with the heavy stone on the end struck a better blow than anything he knew. He went to and fro swinging it, and striking with it; but later he tired of it and threw it aside. In the afternoon he went up over the brow of the white cliff, and lay watching by a rabbit-warren until the rabbits came out to play. There were no men thereabouts, and the rabbits were heedless. He threw a smiting-stone he had made and got a kill. That night they made a fire from flint sparks and bracken fronds, and talked and caressed by it. And in their sleep Uya's spirit came again, and suddenly, while Ugh-lomi was trying to fight vainly, the foolish flint on the stick came into his hand, and he struck Uya with it, and behold! it killed him. But afterwards came other dreams of Uya--for spirits take a lot of killing, and he had to be killed again. Then after that the stone would not keep on the stick. He awoke tired and rather gloomy, and was sulky all the forenoon, in spite of Eudena's kindliness, and instead of hunting he sat chipping a sharp edge to the singular flint, and looking strangely at her. Then he bound the perforated flint on to the stick with strips of rabbit skin. And afterwards he walked up and down the ledge, striking with it, and muttering to himself, and thinking of Uya. It felt very fine and heavy in the hand. Several days, more than there was any counting in those days, five days, it may be, or six, did Ugh-lomi and Eudena stay on that shelf in the gorge of the river, and they lost all fear of men, and their fire burnt redly of a night. And they were very merry together; there was food every day, sweet water, and no enemies. Eudena's knee was well in a couple of days, for those ancient savages had quick-healing flesh. Indeed, they were very happy. On one of those days Ugh-lomi dropped a chunk of flint over the cliff. He saw it fall, and go bounding across the river bank into the river, and after laughing and thinking it over a little he tried another. This smashed a bush of hazel in the most interesting way. They spent all the morning dropping stones from the ledge, and in the afternoon they discovered this new and interesting pastime was also possible from the cliffbrow. The next day they had forgotten this delight. Or at least, it seemed they had forgotten. But Uya came in dreams to spoil the paradise. Three nights he came fighting Ugh-lomi. In the morning after these dreams Ugh-lomi would walk up and down, threatening him and swinging the axe, and at last came the night after Ugh-lomi brained the otter, and they had feasted. Uya went too far. Ugh-lomi awoke, scowling under his heavy brows, and he took his axe, and extending his hand towards Eudena he bade her wait for him upon the ledge. Then he clambered down the white declivity, glanced up once from the foot of it and flourished his axe, and without looking back again went striding along the river bank until the overhanging cliff at the bend hid him. Two days and nights did Eudena sit alone by the fire on the ledge waiting, and in the night the beasts howled over the cliffs and down the valley, and on the cliff over against her the hunched hyænas prowled black against the sky. But no evil thing came near her save fear. Once, far away, she heard the roaring of a lion, following the horses as they came northward over the grass lands with the spring. All that time she waited--the waiting that is pain. And the third day Ugh-lomi came back, up the river. The plumes of a raven were in his hair. The first axe was red-stained, and had long dark hairs upon it, and he carried the necklace that had marked the favourite of Uya in his hand. He walked in the soft places, giving no heed to his trail. Save a raw cut below his jaw there was not a wound upon him. "Uya! " cried Ugh-lomi exultant, and Eudena saw it was well. He put the necklace on Eudena, and they ate and drank together. And after eating he began to rehearse the whole story from the beginning, when Uya had cast his eyes on Eudena, and Uya and Ugh-lomi, fighting in the forest, had been chased by the bear, eking out his scanty words with abundant pantomime, springing to his feet and whirling the stone axe round when it came to the fighting. The last fight was a mighty one, stamping and shouting, and once a blow at the fire that sent a torrent of sparks up into the night. And Eudena sat red in the light of the fire, gloating on him, her face flushed and her eyes shining, and the necklace Uya had made about her neck. It was a splendid time, and the stars that look down on us looked down on her, our ancestor--who has been dead now these fifty thousand years. II--THE CAVE BEAR In the days when Eudena and Ugh-lomi fled from the people of Uya towards the fir-clad mountains of the Weald, across the forests of sweet chestnut and the grass-clad chalkland, and hid themselves at last in the gorge of the river between the chalk cliffs, men were few and their squatting-places far between. The nearest men to them were those of the tribe, a full day's journey down the river, and up the mountains there were none. Man was indeed a newcomer to this part of the world in that ancient time, coming slowly along the rivers, generation after generation, from one squatting-place to another, from the south-westward. And the animals that held the land, the hippopotamus and rhinoceros of the river valleys, the horses of the grass plains, the deer and swine of the woods, the grey apes in the branches, the cattle of the uplands, feared him but little--let alone the mammoths in the mountains and the elephants that came through the land in the summer-time out of the south. For why should they fear him, with but the rough, chipped flints that he had not learnt to haft and which he threw but ill, and the poor spear of sharpened wood, as all the weapons he had against hoof and horn, tooth and claw? Andoo, the huge cave bear, who lived in the cave up the gorge, had never even seen a man in all his wise and respectable life, until midway through one night, as he was prowling down the gorge along the cliff edge, he saw the glare of Eudena's fire upon the ledge, and Eudena red and shining, and Ugh-lomi, with a gigantic shadow mocking him upon the white cliff, going to and fro, shaking his mane of hair, and waving the axe of stone--the first axe of stone--while he chanted of the killing of Uya. The cave bear was far up the gorge, and he saw the thing slanting-ways and far off. He was so surprised he stood quite still upon the edge, sniffing the novel odour of burning bracken, and wondering whether the dawn was coming up in the wrong place. He was the lord of the rocks and caves, was the cave bear, as his slighter brother, the grizzly, was lord of the thick woods below, and as the dappled lion--the lion of those days was dappled--was lord of the thorn-thickets, reed-beds, and open plains. He was the greatest of all meat-eaters; he knew no fear, none preyed on him, and none gave him battle; only the rhinoceros was beyond his strength. Even the mammoth shunned his country. This invasion perplexed him. He noticed these new beasts were shaped like monkeys, and sparsely hairy like young pigs. "Monkey and young pig," said the cave bear. "It might not be so bad. But that red thing that jumps, and the black thing jumping with it yonder! Never in my life have I seen such things before! " He came slowly along the brow of the cliff towards them, stopping thrice to sniff and peer, and the reek of the fire grew stronger. A couple of hyænas also were so intent upon the thing below that Andoo, coming soft and easy, was close upon them before they knew of him or he of them. They started guiltily and went lurching off. Coming round in a wheel, a hundred yards off, they began yelling and calling him names to revenge themselves for the start they had had. "Ya-ha! " they cried. "Who can't grub his own burrow? Who eats roots like a pig? . . . Ya-ha! " for even in those days the hyæna's manners were just as offensive as they are now. "Who answers the hyæna? " growled Andoo, peering through the midnight dimness at them, and then going to look at the cliff edge. There was Ugh-lomi still telling his story, and the fire getting low, and the scent of the burning hot and strong. Andoo stood on the edge of the chalk cliff for some time, shifting his vast weight from foot to foot, and swaying his head to and fro, with his mouth open, his ears erect and twitching, and the nostrils of his big, black muzzle sniffing. He was very curious, was the cave bear, more curious than any of the bears that live now, and the flickering fire and the incomprehensible movements of the man, let alone the intrusion into his indisputable province, stirred him with a sense of strange new happenings. He had been after red deer fawn that night, for the cave bear was a miscellaneous hunter, but this quite turned him from that enterprise. "Ya-ha! " yelled the hyænas behind. "Ya-ha-ha! " Peering through the starlight, Andoo saw there were now three or four going to and fro against the grey hillside. "They will hang about me now all the night . . . until I kill," said Andoo. "Filth of the world! " And mainly to annoy them, he resolved to watch the red flicker in the gorge until the dawn came to drive the hyæna scum home. And after a time they vanished, and he heard their voices, like a party of Cockney beanfeasters, away in the beechwoods. Then they came slinking near again. Andoo yawned and went on along the cliff, and they followed. Then he stopped and went back. It was a splendid night, beset with shining constellations, the same stars, but not the same constellations we know, for since those days all the stars have had time to move into new places. Far away across the open space beyond where the heavy-shouldered, lean-bodied hyænas blundered and howled, was a beechwood, and the mountain slopes rose beyond, a dim mystery, until their snow-capped summits came out white and cold and clear, touched by the first rays of the yet unseen moon. It was a vast silence, save when the yell of the hyænas flung a vanishing discordance across its peace, or when from down the hills the trumpeting of the new-come elephants came faintly on the faint breeze. And below now, the red flicker had dwindled and was steady, and shone a deeper red, and Ugh-lomi had finished his story and was preparing to sleep, and Eudena sat and listened to the strange voices of unknown beasts, and watched the dark eastern sky growing deeply luminous at the advent of the moon. Down below, the river talked to itself, and things unseen went to and fro. After a time the bear went away, but in an hour he was back again. Then, as if struck by a thought, he turned, and went up the gorge. . . . The night passed, and Ugh-lomi slept on. The waning moon rose and lit the gaunt white cliff overhead with a light that was pale and vague. The gorge remained in a deeper shadow and seemed all the darker. Then by imperceptible degrees, the day came stealing in the wake of the moonlight. Eudena's eyes wandered to the cliff brow overhead once, and then again. Each time the line was sharp and clear against the sky, and yet she had a dim perception of something lurking there.

The red of the fire grew deeper and deeper, grey scales spread upon it, its vertical column of smoke became more and more visible, and up and down the gorge things that had been unseen grew clear in a colourless illumination. She may have dozed. Suddenly she started up from her squatting position, erect and alert, scrutinising the cliff up and down. She made the faintest sound, and Ugh-lomi too, light-sleeping like an animal, was instantly awake. He caught up his axe and came noiselessly to her side. The light was still dim, the world now all in black and dark grey, and one sickly star still lingered overhead. The ledge they were on was a little grassy space, six feet wide, perhaps, and twenty feet long, sloping outwardly, and with a handful of St. John's wort growing near the edge. Below it the soft, white rock fell away in a steep slope of nearly fifty feet to the thick bush of hazel that fringed the river. Down the river this slope increased, until some way off a thin grass held its own right up to the crest of the cliff. Overhead, forty or fifty feet of rock bulged into the great masses characteristic of chalk, but at the end of the ledge a gully, a precipitous groove of discoloured rock, slashed the face of the cliff, and gave a footing to a scrubby growth, by which Eudena and Ugh-lomi went up and down. They stood as noiseless as startled deer, with every sense expectant. For a minute they heard nothing, and then came a faint rattling of dust down the gully, and the creaking of twigs. Ugh-lomi gripped his axe, and went to the edge of the ledge, for the bulge of the chalk overhead had hidden the upper part of the gully. And forthwith, with a sudden contraction of the heart, he saw the cave bear half-way down from the brow, and making a gingerly backward step with his flat hind-foot. His hind-quarters were towards Ugh-lomi, and he clawed at the rocks and bushes so that he seemed flattened against the cliff. He looked none the less for that. From his shining snout to his stumpy tail he was a lion and a half, the length of two tall men. He looked over his shoulder, and his huge mouth was open with the exertion of holding up his great carcase, and his tongue lay out. . . . He got his footing, and came down slowly, a yard nearer. "Bear," said Ugh-lomi, looking round with his face white. But Eudena, with terror in her eyes, was pointing down the cliff. Ugh-lomi's mouth fell open. For down below, with her big fore-feet against the rock, stood another big brown-grey bulk--the she-bear. She was not so big as Andoo, but she was big enough for all that. Then suddenly Ugh-lomi gave a cry, and catching up a handful of the litter of ferns that lay scattered on the ledge, he thrust it into the pallid ash of the fire. "Brother Fire! " he cried, "Brother Fire! " And Eudena, starting into activity, did likewise. "Brother Fire! Help, help! Brother Fire! " Brother Fire was still red in his heart, but he turned to grey as they scattered him. "Brother Fire! " they screamed. But he whispered and passed, and there was nothing but ashes. Then Ugh-lomi danced with anger and struck the ashes with his fist. But Eudena began to hammer the firestone against a flint. And the eyes of each were turning ever and again towards the gully by which Andoo was climbing down. Brother Fire! Suddenly the huge furry hind-quarters of the bear came into view, beneath the bulge of the chalk that had hidden him. He was still clambering gingerly down the nearly vertical surface. His head was yet out of sight, but they could hear him talking to himself. "Pig and monkey," said the cave bear. "It ought to be good. " Eudena struck a spark and blew at it; it twinkled brighter and then--went out. At that she cast down flint and firestone and stared blankly. Then she sprang to her feet and scrambled a yard or so up the cliff above the ledge. How she hung on even for a moment I do not know, for the chalk was vertical and without grip for a monkey. In a couple of seconds she had slid back to the ledge again with bleeding hands. Ugh-lomi was making frantic rushes about the ledge--now he would go to the edge, now to the gully. He did not know what to do, he could not think. The she-bear looked smaller than her mate--much. If they rushed down on her together, _one_ might live. "Ugh? " said the cave bear, and Ugh-lomi turned again and saw his little eyes peering under the bulge of the chalk. Eudena, cowering at the end of the ledge, began to scream like a gripped rabbit. At that a sort of madness came upon Ugh-lomi. With a mighty cry, he caught up his axe and ran towards Andoo. The monster gave a grunt of surprise. In a moment Ugh-lomi was clinging to a bush right underneath the bear, and in another he was hanging to its back half buried in fur, with one fist clutched in the hair under its jaw. The bear was too astonished at this fantastic attack to do more than cling passive. And then the axe, the first of all axes, rang on its skull. The bear's head twisted from side to side, and he began a petulant scolding growl. The axe bit within an inch of the left eye, and the hot blood blinded that side. At that the brute roared with surprise and anger, and his teeth gnashed six inches from Ugh-lomi's face. Then the axe, clubbed close, came down heavily on the corner of the jaw. The next blow blinded the right side and called forth a roar, this time of pain. Eudena saw the huge, flat feet slipping and sliding, and suddenly the bear gave a clumsy leap sideways, as if for the ledge. Then everything vanished, and the hazels smashed, and a roar of pain and a tumult of shouts and growls came up from far below. Eudena screamed and ran to the edge and peered over. For a moment, man and bears were a heap together, Ugh-lomi uppermost; and then he had sprung clear and was scaling the gully again, with the bears rolling and striking at one another among the hazels. But he had left his axe below, and three knob-ended streaks of carmine were shooting down his thigh. "Up! " he cried, and in a moment Eudena was leading the way to the top of the cliff. In half a minute they were at the crest, their hearts pumping noisily, with Andoo and his wife far and safe below them. Andoo was sitting on his haunches, both paws at work, trying with quick exasperated movements to wipe the blindness out of his eyes, and the she-bear stood on all-fours a little way off, ruffled in appearance and growling angrily. Ugh-lomi flung himself flat on the grass, and lay panting and bleeding with his face on his arms. For a second Eudena regarded the bears, then she came and sat beside him, looking at him. . . . Presently she put forth her hand timidly and touched him, and made the guttural sound that was his name. He turned over and raised himself on his arm. His face was pale, like the face of one who is afraid. He looked at her steadfastly for a moment, and then suddenly he laughed. "Waugh! " he said exultantly. "Waugh! " said she--a simple but expressive conversation. Then Ugh-lomi came and knelt beside her, and on hands and knees peered over the brow and examined the gorge. His breath was steady now, and the blood on his leg had ceased to flow, though the scratches the she-bear had made were open and wide. He squatted up and sat staring at the footmarks of the great bear as they came to the gully--they were as wide as his head and twice as long. Then he jumped up and went along the cliff face until the ledge was visible. Here he sat down for some time thinking, while Eudena watched him. Presently she saw the bears had gone. At last Ugh-lomi rose, as one whose mind is made up. He returned towards the gully, Eudena keeping close by him, and together they clambered to the ledge. They took the firestone and a flint, and then Ugh-lomi went down to the foot of the cliff very cautiously, and found his axe. They returned to the cliff as quietly as they could, and set off at a brisk walk. The ledge was a home no longer, with such callers in the neighbourhood. Ugh-lomi carried the axe and Eudena the firestone. So simple was a Palæolithic removal. They went up-stream, although it might lead to the very lair of the cave bear, because there was no other way to go. Down the stream was the tribe, and had not Ugh-lomi killed Uya and Wau? By the stream they had to keep--because of drinking. So they marched through beech trees, with the gorge deepening until the river flowed, a frothing rapid, five hundred feet below them. Of all the changeful things in this world of change, the courses of rivers in deep valleys change least. It was the river Wey, the river we know to-day, and they marched over the very spots where nowadays stand little Guildford and Godalming--the first human beings to come into the land. Once a grey ape chattered and vanished, and all along the cliff edge, vast and even, ran the spoor of the great cave bear. And then the spoor of the bear fell away from the cliff, showing, Ugh-lomi thought, that he came from some place to the left, and keeping to the cliff's edge, they presently came to an end. They found themselves looking down on a great semi-circular space caused by the collapse of the cliff. It had smashed right across the gorge, banking the up-stream water back in a pool which overflowed in a rapid. The slip had happened long ago. It was grassed over, but the face of the cliffs that stood about the semicircle was still almost fresh-looking and white as on the day when the rock must have broken and slid down. Starkly exposed and black under the foot of these cliffs were the mouths of several caves. And as they stood there, looking at the space, and disinclined to skirt it, because they thought the bears' lair lay somewhere on the left in the direction they must needs take, they saw suddenly first one bear and then two coming up the grass slope to the right and going across the amphitheatre towards the caves. Andoo was first; he dropped a little on his fore-foot and his mien was despondent, and the she-bear came shuffling behind. Eudena and Ugh-lomi stepped back from the cliff until they could just see the bears over the verge. Then Ugh-lomi stopped. Eudena pulled his arm, but he turned with a forbidding gesture, and her hand dropped. Ugh-lomi stood watching the bears, with his axe in his hand, until they had vanished into the cave. He growled softly, and shook the axe at the she-bear's receding quarters. Then to Eudena's terror, instead of creeping off with her, he lay flat down and crawled forward into such a position that he could just see the cave. It was bears--and he did it as calmly as if it had been rabbits he was watching! He lay still, like a barked log, sun-dappled, in the shadow of the trees. He was thinking. And Eudena had learnt, even when a little girl, that when Ugh-lomi became still like that, jaw-bone on fist, novel things presently began to happen. It was an hour before the thinking was over; it was noon when the two little savages had found their way to the cliff brow that overhung the bears' cave. And all the long afternoon they fought desperately with a great boulder of chalk; trundling it, with nothing but their unaided sturdy muscles, from the gully where it had hung like a loose tooth, towards the cliff top. It was full two yards about, it stood as high as Eudena's waist, it was obtuse-angled and toothed with flints. And when the sun set it was poised, three inches from the edge, above the cave of the great cave bear. In the cave conversation languished during that afternoon. The she-bear snoozed sulkily in her corner--for she was fond of pig and monkey--and Andoo was busy licking the side of his paw and smearing his face to cool the smart and inflammation of his wounds. Afterwards he went and sat just within the mouth of the cave, blinking out at the afternoon sun with his uninjured eye, and thinking. "I never was so startled in my life," he said at last. "They are the most extraordinary beasts. Attacking _me_! " "I don't like them," said the she-bear, out of the darkness behind. "A feebler sort of beast I _never_ saw. I can't think what the world is coming to. Scraggy, weedy legs. . . . Wonder how they keep warm in winter? " "Very likely they don't," said the she-bear. "I suppose it's a sort of monkey gone wrong. " "It's a change," said the she-bear. A pause. "The advantage he had was merely accidental," said Andoo. "These things _will_ happen at times. " "_I_ can't understand why you let go," said the she-bear. That matter had been discussed before, and settled. So Andoo, being a bear of experience, remained silent for a space. Then he resumed upon a different aspect of the matter. "He has a sort of claw--a long claw that he seemed to have first on one paw and then on the other. Just one claw. They're very odd things. The bright thing, too, they seemed to have--like that glare that comes in the sky in daytime--only it jumps about--it's really worth seeing. It's a thing with a root, too--like grass when it is windy. " "Does it bite? " asked the she-bear. "If it bites it can't be a plant. " "No----I don't know," said Andoo. "But it's curious, anyhow. " "I wonder if they _are_ good eating? " said the she-bear. "They look it," said Andoo, with appetite--for the cave bear, like the polar bear, was an incurable carnivore--no roots or honey for _him_. The two bears fell into a meditation for a space. Then Andoo resumed his simple attentions to his eye. The sunlight up the green slope before the cave mouth grew warmer in tone and warmer, until it was a ruddy amber. "Curious sort of thing--day," said the cave bear. "Lot too much of it, I think. Quite unsuitable for hunting. Dazzles me always. I can't smell nearly so well by day. " The she-bear did not answer, but there came a measured crunching sound out of the darkness. She had turned up a bone. Andoo yawned. "Well," he said. He strolled to the cave mouth and stood with his head projecting, surveying the amphitheatre. He found he had to turn his head completely round to see objects on his right-hand side. No doubt that eye would be all right to-morrow. He yawned again. There was a tap overhead, and a big mass of chalk flew out from the cliff face, dropped a yard in front of his nose, and starred into a dozen unequal fragments. It startled him extremely. When he had recovered a little from his shock, he went and sniffed curiously at the representative pieces of the fallen projectile. They had a distinctive flavour, oddly reminiscent of the two drab animals of the ledge. He sat up and pawed the larger lump, and walked round it several times, trying to find a man about it somewhere. . . . When night had come he went off down the river gorge to see if he could cut off either of the ledge's occupants. The ledge was empty, there were no signs of the red thing, but as he was rather hungry he did not loiter long that night, but pushed on to pick up a red deer fawn. He forgot about the drab animals. He found a fawn, but the doe was close by and made an ugly fight for her young. Andoo had to leave the fawn, but as her blood was up she stuck to the attack, and at last he got in a blow of his paw on her nose, and so got hold of her. More meat but less delicacy, and the she-bear, following, had her share. The next afternoon, curiously enough, the very fellow of the first white rock fell, and smashed precisely according to precedent. The aim of the third, that fell the night after, however, was better. It hit Andoo's unspeculative skull with a crack that echoed up the cliff, and the white fragments went dancing to all the points of the compass. The she-bear coming after him and sniffing curiously at him, found him lying in an odd sort of attitude, with his head wet and all out of shape. She was a young she-bear, and inexperienced, and having sniffed about him for some time and licked him a little, and so forth, she decided to leave him until the odd mood had passed, and went on her hunting alone. She looked up the fawn of the red doe they had killed two nights ago, and found it. But it was lonely hunting without Andoo, and she returned caveward before dawn. The sky was grey and overcast, the trees up the gorge were black and unfamiliar, and into her ursine mind came a dim sense of strange and dreary happenings. She lifted up her voice and called Andoo by name. The sides of the gorge re-echoed her. As she approached the caves she saw in the half light, and heard a couple of jackals scuttle off, and immediately after a hyæna howled and a dozen clumsy bulks went lumbering up the slope, and stopped and yelled derision. "Lord of the rocks and caves--ya-ha! " came down the wind. The dismal feeling in the she-bear's mind became suddenly acute. She shuffled across the amphitheatre. "Ya-ha! " said the hyænas, retreating. "Ya-ha! " The cave bear was not lying quite in the same attitude, because the hyænas had been busy, and in one place his ribs showed white. Dotted over the turf about him lay the smashed fragments of the three great lumps of chalk. And the air was full of the scent of death. The she-bear stopped dead. Even now, that the great and wonderful Andoo was killed was beyond her believing. Then she heard far overhead a sound, a queer sound, a little like the shout of a hyæna but fuller and lower in pitch. She looked up, her little dawn-blinded eyes seeing little, her nostrils quivering. And there, on the cliff edge, far above her against the bright pink of dawn, were two little shaggy round dark things, the heads of Eudena and Ugh-lomi, as they shouted derision at her. But though she could not see them very distinctly she could hear, and dimly she began to apprehend. A novel feeling as of imminent strange evils came into her heart. She began to examine the smashed fragments of chalk that lay about Andoo. For a space she stood still, looking about her and making a low continuous sound that was almost a moan. Then she went back incredulously to Andoo to make one last effort to rouse him. III--THE FIRST HORSEMAN In the days before Ugh-lomi there was little trouble between the horses and men. They lived apart--the men in the river swamps and thickets, the horses on the wide grassy uplands between the chestnuts and the pines. Sometimes a pony would come straying into the clogging marshes to make a flint-hacked meal, and sometimes the tribe would find one, the kill of a lion, and drive off the jackals, and feast heartily while the sun was high. These horses of the old time were clumsy at the fetlock and dun-coloured, with a rough tail and big head. They came every spring-time north-westward into the country, after the swallows and before the hippopotami, as the grass on the wide downland stretches grew long. They came only in small bodies thus far, each herd, a stallion and two or three mares and a foal or so, having its own stretch of country, and they went again when the chestnut-trees were yellow and the wolves came down the Wealden mountains. It was their custom to graze right out in the open, going into cover only in the heat of the day. They avoided the long stretches of thorn and beechwood, preferring an isolated group of trees void of ambuscade, so that it was hard to come upon them. They were never fighters; their heels and teeth were for one another, but in the clear country, once they were started, no living thing came near them, though perhaps the elephant might have done so had he felt the need. And in those days man seemed a harmless thing enough. No whisper of prophetic intelligence told the species of the terrible slavery that was to come, of the whip and spur and bearing-rein, the clumsy load and the slippery street, the insufficient food, and the knacker's yard, that was to replace the wide grass-land and the freedom of the earth. Down in the Wey marshes Ugh-lomi and Eudena had never seen the horses closely, but now they saw them every day as the two of them raided out from their lair on the ledge in the gorge, raiding together in search of food. They had returned to the ledge after the killing of Andoo; for of the she-bear they were not afraid. The she-bear had become afraid of them, and when she winded them she went aside. The two went together everywhere; for since they had left the tribe Eudena was not so much Ugh-lomi's woman as his mate; she learnt to hunt even--as much, that is, as any woman could. She was indeed a marvellous woman. He would lie for hours watching a beast, or planning catches in that shock head of his, and she would stay beside him, with her bright eyes upon him, offering no irritating suggestions--as still as any man. A wonderful woman! At the top of the cliff was an open grassy lawn and then beechwoods, and going through the beechwoods one came to the edge of the rolling grassy expanse, and in sight of the horses. Here, on the edge of the wood and bracken, were the rabbit-burrows, and here among the fronds Eudena and Ugh-lomi would lie with their throwing-stones ready, until the little people came out to nibble and play in the sunset. And while Eudena would sit, a silent figure of watchfulness, regarding the burrows, Ugh-lomi's eyes were ever away across the greensward at those wonderful grazing strangers. In a dim way he appreciated their grace and their supple nimbleness. As the sun declined in the evening-time, and the heat of the day passed, they would become active, would start chasing one another, neighing, dodging, shaking their manes, coming round in great curves, sometimes so close that the pounding of the turf sounded like hurried thunder. It looked so fine that Ugh-lomi wanted to join in badly.

And sometimes one would roll over on the turf, kicking four hoofs heavenward, which seemed formidable and was certainly much less alluring. Dim imaginings ran through Ugh-lomi's mind as he watched--by virtue of which two rabbits lived the longer. And sleeping, his brains were clearer and bolder--for that was the way in those days. He came near the horses, he dreamt, and fought, smiting-stone against hoof, but then the horses changed to men, or, at least, to men with horses' heads, and he awoke in a cold sweat of terror. Yet the next day in the morning, as the horses were grazing, one of the mares whinnied, and they saw Ugh-lomi coming up the wind. They all stopped their eating and watched him. Ugh-lomi was not coming towards them, but strolling obliquely across the open, looking at anything in the world but horses. He had stuck three fern-fronds into the mat of his hair, giving him a remarkable appearance, and he walked very slowly. "What's up now? " said the Master Horse, who was capable, but inexperienced. "It looks more like the first half of an animal than anything else in the world," he said. "Fore-legs and no hind. " "It's only one of those pink monkey things," said the Eldest Mare. "They're a sort of river monkey. They're quite common on the plains. " Ugh-lomi continued his oblique advance. The Eldest Mare was struck with the want of motive in his proceedings. "Fool! " said the Eldest Mare, in a quick conclusive way she had. She resumed her grazing. The Master Horse and the Second Mare followed suit. "Look! he's nearer," said the Foal with a stripe. One of the younger foals made uneasy movements. Ugh-lomi squatted down, and sat regarding the horses fixedly. In a little while he was satisfied that they meant neither flight nor hostilities. He began to consider his next procedure. He did not feel anxious to kill, but he had his axe with him, and the spirit of sport was upon him. How would one kill one of these creatures? --these great beautiful creatures! Eudena, watching him with a fearful admiration from the cover of the bracken, saw him presently go on all fours, and so proceed again. But the horses preferred him a biped to a quadruped, and the Master Horse threw up his head and gave the word to move. Ugh-lomi thought they were off for good, but after a minute's gallop they came round in a wide curve, and stood winding him. Then, as a rise in the ground hid him, they tailed out, the Master Horse leading, and approached him spirally. He was as ignorant of the possibilities of a horse as they were of his. And at this stage it would seem he funked. He knew this kind of stalking would make red deer or buffalo charge, if it were persisted in. At any rate Eudena saw him jump up and come walking towards her with the fern plumes held in his hand. She stood up, and he grinned to show that the whole thing was an immense lark, and that what he had done was just what he had planned to do from the very beginning. So that incident ended. But he was very thoughtful all that day. The next day this foolish drab creature with the leonine mane, instead of going about the grazing or hunting he was made for, was prowling round the horses again. The Eldest Mare was all for silent contempt. "I suppose he wants to learn something from us," she said, and "_Let_ him. " The next day he was at it again. The Master Horse decided he meant absolutely nothing. But as a matter of fact, Ugh-lomi, the first of men to feel that curious spell of the horse that binds us even to this day, meant a great deal. He admired them unreservedly. There was a rudiment of the snob in him, I am afraid, and he wanted to be near these beautifully-curved animals. Then there were vague conceptions of a kill. If only they would let him come near them! But they drew the line, he found, at fifty yards. If he came nearer than that they moved off--with dignity. I suppose it was the way he had blinded Andoo that made him think of leaping on the back of one of them. But though Eudena after a time came out in the open too, and they did some unobtrusive stalking, things stopped there. Then one memorable day a new idea came to Ugh-lomi. The horse looks down and level, but he does not look up. No animals look up--they have too much common-sense. It was only that fantastic creature, man, could waste his wits skyward. Ugh-lomi made no philosophical deductions, but he perceived the thing was so. So he spent a weary day in a beech that stood in the open, while Eudena stalked. Usually the horses went into the shade in the heat of the afternoon, but that day the sky was overcast, and they would not, in spite of Eudena's solicitude. It was two days after that that Ugh-lomi had his desire. The day was blazing hot, and the multiplying flies asserted themselves. The horses stopped grazing before midday, and came into the shadow below him, and stood in couples nose to tail, flapping. The Master Horse, by virtue of his heels, came closest to the tree. And suddenly there was a rustle and a creak, a _thud_. . . . Then a sharp chipped flint bit him on the cheek. The Master Horse stumbled, came on one knee, rose to his feet, and was off like the wind. The air was full of the whirl of limbs, the prance of hoofs, and snorts of alarm. Ugh-lomi was pitched a foot in the air, came down again, up again, his stomach was hit violently, and then his knees got a grip of something between them. He found himself clutching with knees, feet, and hands, careering violently with extraordinary oscillation through the air--his axe gone heaven knows whither. "Hold tight," said Mother Instinct, and he did. He was aware of a lot of coarse hair in his face, some of it between his teeth, and of green turf streaming past in front of his eyes. He saw the shoulder of the Master Horse, vast and sleek, with the muscles flowing swiftly under the skin. He perceived that his arms were round the neck, and that the violent jerkings he experienced had a sort of rhythm. Then he was in the midst of a wild rush of tree-stems, and then there were fronds of bracken about, and then more open turf. Then a stream of pebbles rushing past, little pebbles flying sideways athwart the stream from the blow of the swift hoofs. Ugh-lomi began to feel frightfully sick and giddy, but he was not the stuff to leave go simply because he was uncomfortable. He dared not leave his grip, but he tried to make himself more comfortable. He released his hug on the neck, gripping the mane instead. He slipped his knees forward, and pushing back, came into a sitting position where the quarters broaden. It was nervous work, but he managed it, and at last he was fairly seated astride, breathless indeed, and uncertain, but with that frightful pounding of his body at any rate relieved. Slowly the fragments of Ugh-lomi's mind got into order again. The pace seemed to him terrific, but a kind of exultation was beginning to oust his first frantic terror. The air rushed by, sweet and wonderful, the rhythm of the hoofs changed and broke up and returned into itself again. They were on turf now, a wide glade--the beech-trees a hundred yards away on either side, and a succulent band of green starred with pink blossom and shot with silver water here and there, meandered down the middle. Far off was a glimpse of blue valley--far away. The exultation grew. It was man's first taste of pace. Then came a wide space dappled with flying fallow deer scattering this way and that, and then a couple of jackals, mistaking Ugh-lomi for a lion, came hurrying after him. And when they saw it was not a lion they still came on out of curiosity. On galloped the horse, with his one idea of escape, and after him the jackals, with pricked ears and quickly-barked remarks. "Which kills which? " said the first jackal. "It's the horse being killed," said the second. They gave the howl of following, and the horse answered to it as a horse answers nowadays to the spur. On they rushed, a little tornado through the quiet day, putting up startled birds, sending a dozen unexpected things darting to cover, raising a myriad of indignant dung-flies, smashing little blossoms, flowering complacently, back into their parental turf. Trees again, and then splash, splash across a torrent; then a hare shot out of a tuft of grass under the very hoofs of the Master Horse, and the jackals left them incontinently. So presently they broke into the open again, a wide expanse of turfy hillside--the very grassy downs that fall northward nowadays from the Epsom Stand. The first hot bolt of the Master Horse was long since over. He was falling into a measured trot, and Ugh-lomi, albeit bruised exceedingly and quite uncertain of the future, was in a state of glorious enjoyment. And now came a new development. The pace broke again, the Master Horse came round on a short curve, and stopped dead. . . . Ugh-lomi became alert. He wished he had a flint, but the throwing-flint he had carried in a thong about his waist was--like the axe--heaven knows where. The Master Horse turned his head, and Ugh-lomi became aware of an eye and teeth. He whipped his leg into a position of security, and hit at the cheek with his fist. Then the head went down somewhere out of existence apparently, and the back he was sitting on flew up into a dome. Ugh-lomi became a thing of instinct again--strictly prehensile; he held by knees and feet, and his head seemed sliding towards the turf. His fingers were twisted into the shock of mane, and the rough hair of the horse saved him. The gradient he was on lowered again, and then--"Whup! " said Ugh-lomi astonished, and the slant was the other way up. But Ugh-lomi was a thousand generations nearer the primordial than man: no monkey could have held on better. And the lion had been training the horse for countless generations against the tactics of rolling and rearing back. But he kicked like a master, and buck-jumped rather neatly. In five minutes Ugh-lomi lived a lifetime. If he came off the horse would kill him, he felt assured. Then the Master Horse decided to stick to his old tactics again, and suddenly went off at a gallop. He headed down the slope, taking the steep places at a rush, swerving neither to the right nor to the left, and, as they rode down, the wide expanse of valley sank out of sight behind the approaching skirmishers of oak and hawthorn. They skirted a sudden hollow with the pool of a spring, rank weeds and silver bushes. The ground grew softer and the grass taller, and on the right-hand side and the left came scattered bushes of May--still splashed with belated blossom. Presently the bushes thickened until they lashed the passing rider, and little flashes and gouts of blood came out on horse and man. Then the way opened again. And then came a wonderful adventure. A sudden squeal of unreasonable anger rose amidst the bushes, the squeal of some creature bitterly wronged. And crashing after them appeared a big, grey-blue shape. It was Yaaa the big-horned rhinoceros, in one of those fits of fury of his, charging full tilt, after the manner of his kind. He had been startled at his feeding, and someone, it did not matter who, was to be ripped and trampled therefore. He was bearing down on them from the left, with his wicked little eye red, his great horn down and his tail like a jury-mast behind him. For a minute Ugh-lomi was minded to slip off and dodge, and then behold! the staccato of the hoofs grew swifter, and the rhinoceros and his stumpy hurrying little legs seemed to slide out at the back corner of Ugh-lomi's eye. In two minutes they were through the bushes of May, and out in the open, going fast. For a space he could hear the ponderous paces in pursuit receding behind him, and then it was just as if Yaaa had not lost his temper, as if Yaaa had never existed. The pace never faltered, on they rode and on. Ugh-lomi was now all exultation. To exult in those days was to insult. "Ya-ha! big nose! " he said, trying to crane back and see some remote speck of a pursuer. "Why don't you carry your smiting-stone in your fist? " he ended with a frantic whoop. But that whoop was unfortunate, for coming close to the ear of the horse, and being quite unexpected, it startled the stallion extremely. He shied violently. Ugh-lomi suddenly found himself uncomfortable again. He was hanging on to the horse, he found, by one arm and one knee. The rest of the ride was honourable but unpleasant. The view was chiefly of blue sky, and that was combined with the most unpleasant physical sensations. Finally, a bush of thorn lashed him and he let go. He hit the ground with his cheek and shoulder, and then, after a complicated and extraordinarily rapid movement, hit it again with the end of his backbone. He saw splashes and sparks of light and colour. The ground seemed bouncing about just like the horse had done. Then he found he was sitting on turf, six yards beyond the bush. In front of him was a space of grass, growing greener and greener, and a number of human beings in the distance, and the horse was going round at a smart gallop quite a long way off to the right. The human beings were on the opposite side of the river, some still in the water, but they were all running away as hard as they could go. The advent of a monster that took to pieces was not the sort of novelty they cared for. For quite a minute Ugh-lomi sat regarding them in a purely spectacular spirit. The bend of the river, the knoll among the reeds and royal ferns, the thin streams of smoke going up to Heaven, were all perfectly familiar to him. It was the squatting-place of the Sons of Uya, of Uya from whom he had fled with Eudena, and whom he had waylaid in the chestnut woods and killed with the First Axe. He rose to his feet, still dazed from his fall, and as he did so the scattering fugitives turned and regarded him. Some pointed to the receding horse and chattered. He walked slowly towards them, staring. He forgot the horse, he forgot his own bruises, in the growing interest of this encounter. There were fewer of them than there had been--he supposed the others must have hid--the heap of fern for the night fire was not so high. By the flint heaps should have sat Wau--but then he remembered he had killed Wau. Suddenly brought back to this familiar scene, the gorge and the bears and Eudena seemed things remote, things dreamt of. He stopped at the bank and stood regarding the tribe. His mathematical abilities were of the slightest, but it was certain there were fewer. The men might be away, but there were fewer women and children. He gave the shout of home-coming. His quarrel had been with Uya and Wau--not with the others. "Children of Uya! " he cried. They answered with his name, a little fearfully because of the strange way he had come. For a space they spoke together. Then an old woman lifted a shrill voice and answered him. "Our Lord is a Lion. " Ugh-lomi did not understand that saying. They answered him again several together, "Uya comes again. He comes as a Lion. Our Lord is a Lion. He comes at night. He slays whom he will. But none other may slay us, Ugh-lomi, none other may slay us. " Still Ugh-lomi did not understand. "Our Lord is a Lion. He speaks no more to men. " Ugh-lomi stood regarding them. He had had dreams--he knew that though he had killed Uya, Uya still existed. And now they told him Uya was a Lion. The shrivelled old woman, the mistress of the fire-minders, suddenly turned and spoke softly to those next to her. She was a very old woman indeed, she had been the first of Uya's wives, and he had let her live beyond the age to which it is seemly a woman should be permitted to live. She had been cunning from the first, cunning to please Uya and to get food. And now she was great in counsel. She spoke softly, and Ugh-lomi watched her shrivelled form across the river with a curious distaste. Then she called aloud, "Come over to us, Ugh-lomi. " A girl suddenly lifted up her voice. "Come over to us, Ugh-lomi," she said. And they all began crying, "Come over to us, Ugh-lomi. " It was strange how their manner changed after the old woman called. He stood quite still watching them all. It was pleasant to be called, and the girl who had called first was a pretty one. But she made him think of Eudena. "Come over to us, Ugh-lomi," they cried, and the voice of the shrivelled old woman rose above them all. At the sound of her voice his hesitation returned. He stood on the river bank, Ugh-lomi--Ugh the Thinker--with his thoughts slowly taking shape. Presently one and then another paused to see what he would do. He was minded to go back, he was minded not to. Suddenly his fear or his caution got the upper hand. Without answering them he turned, and walked back towards the distant thorn-trees, the way he had come. Forthwith the whole tribe started crying to him again very eagerly. He hesitated and turned, then he went on, then he turned again, and then once again, regarding them with troubled eyes as they called. The last time he took two paces back, before his fear stopped him. They saw him stop once more, and suddenly shake his head and vanish among the hawthorn-trees. Then all the women and children lifted up their voices together, and called to him in one last vain effort. Far down the river the reeds were stirring in the breeze, where, convenient for his new sort of feeding, the old lion, who had taken to man-eating, had made his lair. The old woman turned her face that way, and pointed to the hawthorn thickets. "Uya," she screamed, "there goes thine enemy! There goes thine enemy, Uya! Why do you devour us nightly? We have tried to snare him! There goes thine enemy, Uya! " But the lion who preyed upon the tribe was taking his siesta. The cry went unheard. That day he had dined on one of the plumper girls, and his mood was a comfortable placidity. He really did not understand that he was Uya or that Ugh-lomi was his enemy. So it was that Ugh-lomi rode the horse, and heard first of Uya the lion, who had taken the place of Uya the Master, and was eating up the tribe. And as he hurried back to the gorge his mind was no longer full of the horse, but of the thought that Uya was still alive, to slay or be slain. Over and over again he saw the shrunken band of women and children crying that Uya was a lion. Uya was a lion! And presently, fearing the twilight might come upon him, Ugh-lomi began running. IV--UYA THE LION The old lion was in luck. The tribe had a certain pride in their ruler, but that was all the satisfaction they got out of it. He came the very night that Ugh-lomi killed Uya the Cunning, and so it was they named him Uya. It was the old woman, the fire-minder, who first named him Uya. A shower had lowered the fires to a glow, and made the night dark. And as they conversed together, and peered at one another in the darkness, and wondered fearfully what Uya would do to them in their dreams now that he was dead, they heard the mounting reverberations of the lion's roar close at hand. Then everything was still. They held their breath, so that almost the only sounds were the patter of the rain and the hiss of the raindrops in the ashes. And then, after an interminable time, a crash, and a shriek of fear, and a growling. They sprang to their feet, shouting, screaming, running this way and that, but brands would not burn, and in a minute the victim was being dragged away through the ferns. It was Irk, the brother of Wau. So the lion came. The ferns were still wet from the rain the next night, and he came and took Click with the red hair. That sufficed for two nights. And then in the dark between the moons he came three nights, night after night, and that though they had good fires. He was an old lion with stumpy teeth, but very silent and very cool; he knew of fires before; these were not the first of mankind that had ministered to his old age. The third night he came between the outer fire and the inner, and he leapt the flint heap, and pulled down Irm the son of Irk, who had seemed like to be the leader. That was a dreadful night, because they lit great flares of fern and ran screaming, and the lion missed his hold of Irm. By the glare of the fire they saw Irm struggle up, and run a little way towards them, and then the lion in two bounds had him down again. That was the last of Irm.

So fear came, and all the delight of spring passed out of their lives. Already there were five gone out of the tribe, and four nights added three more to the number. Food-seeking became spiritless, none knew who might go next, and all day the women toiled, even the favourite women, gathering litter and sticks for the night fires. And the hunters hunted ill: in the warm spring-time hunger came again as though it was still winter. The tribe might have moved, had they had a leader, but they had no leader, and none knew where to go that the lion could not follow them. So the old lion waxed fat and thanked heaven for the kindly race of men. Two of the children and a youth died while the moon was still new, and then it was the shrivelled old fire-minder first bethought herself in a dream of Eudena and Ugh-lomi, and of the way Uya had been slain. She had lived in fear of Uya all her days, and now she lived in fear of the lion. That Ugh-lomi could kill Uya for good--Ugh-lomi whom she had seen born--was impossible. It was Uya still seeking his enemy! And then came the strange return of Ugh-lomi, a wonderful animal seen galloping far across the river, that suddenly changed into two animals, a horse and a man. Following this portent, the vision of Ugh-lomi on the farther bank of the river. . . . Yes, it was all plain to her. Uya was punishing them, because they had not hunted down Ugh-lomi and Eudena. The men came straggling back to the chances of the night while the sun was still golden in the sky. They were received with the story of Ugh-lomi. She went across the river with them and showed them his spoor hesitating on the farther bank. Siss the Tracker knew the feet for Ugh-lomi's. "Uya needs Ugh-lomi," cried the old woman, standing on the left of the bend, a gesticulating figure of flaring bronze in the sunset. Her cries were strange sounds, flitting to and fro on the borderland of speech, but this was the sense they carried: "The lion needs Eudena. He comes night after night seeking Eudena and Ugh-lomi. When he cannot find Eudena and Ugh-lomi, he grows angry and he kills. Hunt Eudena and Ugh-lomi, Eudena whom he pursued, and Ugh-lomi for whom he gave the death-word! Hunt Eudena and Ugh-lomi! " She turned to the distant reed-bed, as sometimes she had turned to Uya in his life. "Is it not so, my lord? " she cried. And, as if in answer, the tall reeds bowed before a breath of wind. Far into the twilight the sound of hacking was heard from the squatting-places. It was the men sharpening their ashen spears against the hunting of the morrow. And in the night, early before the moon rose, the lion came and took the girl of Siss the Tracker. In the morning before the sun had risen, Siss the Tracker, and the lad Wau-Hau, who now chipped flints, and One Eye, and Bo, and the Snail-eater, the two red-haired men, and Cat's-skin and Snake, all the men that were left alive of the Sons of Uya, taking their ash spears and their smiting-stones, and with throwing-stones in the beast-paw bags, started forth upon the trail of Ugh-lomi through the hawthorn thickets where Yaaa the Rhinoceros and his brothers were feeding, and up the bare downland towards the beechwoods. That night the fires burnt high and fierce, as the waxing moon set, and the lion left the crouching women and children in peace. And the next day, while the sun was still high, the hunters returned--all save One Eye, who lay dead with a smashed skull at the foot of the ledge. (When Ugh-lomi came back that evening from stalking the horses, he found the vultures already busy over him. ) And with them the hunters brought Eudena bruised and wounded, but alive. That had been the strange order of the shrivelled old woman, that she was to be brought alive--"She is no kill for us. She is for Uya the Lion. " Her hands were tied with thongs, as though she had been a man, and she came weary and drooping--her hair over her eyes and matted with blood. They walked about her, and ever and again the Snail-eater, whose name she had given, would laugh and strike her with his ashen spear. And after he had struck her with his spear, he would look over his shoulder like one who had done an over-bold deed. The others, too, looked over their shoulders ever and again, and all were in a hurry save Eudena. When the old woman saw them coming, she cried aloud with joy. They made Eudena cross the river with her hands tied, although the current was strong and when she slipped the old woman screamed, first with joy and then for fear she might be drowned. And when they had dragged Eudena to shore, she could not stand for a time, albeit they beat her sore. So they let her sit with her feet touching the water, and her eyes staring before her, and her face set, whatever they might do or say. All the tribe came down to the squatting-place, even curly little Haha, who as yet could scarcely toddle, and stood staring at Eudena and the old woman, as now we should stare at some strange wounded beast and its captor. The old woman tore off the necklace of Uya that was about Eudena's neck, and put it on herself--she had been the first to wear it. Then she tore at Eudena's hair, and took a spear from Siss and beat her with all her might. And when she had vented the warmth of her heart on the girl she looked closely into her face. Eudena's eyes were closed and her features were set, and she lay so still that for a moment the old woman feared she was dead. And then her nostrils quivered. At that the old woman slapped her face and laughed and gave the spear to Siss again, and went a little way off from her and began to talk and jeer at her after her manner. The old woman had more words than any in the tribe. And her talk was a terrible thing to hear. Sometimes she screamed and moaned incoherently, and sometimes the shape of her guttural cries was the mere phantom of thoughts. But she conveyed to Eudena, nevertheless, much of the things that were yet to come, of the Lion and of the torment he would do her. "And Ugh-lomi! Ha, ha! Ugh-lomi is slain? " And suddenly Eudena's eyes opened and she sat up again, and her look met the old woman's fair and level. "No," she said slowly, like one trying to remember, "I did not see my Ugh-lomi slain. I did not see my Ugh-lomi slain. " "Tell her," cried the old woman. "Tell her--he that killed him. Tell her how Ugh-lomi was slain. " She looked, and all the women and children there looked, from man to man. None answered her. They stood shame-faced. "Tell her," said the old woman. The men looked at one another. Eudena's face suddenly lit. "Tell her," she said. "Tell her, mighty men! Tell her the killing of Ugh-lomi. " The old woman rose and struck her sharply across her mouth. "We could not find Ugh-lomi," said Siss the Tracker, slowly. "Who hunts two, kills none. " Then Eudena's heart leapt, but she kept her face hard. It was as well, for the old woman looked at her sharply, with murder in her eyes. Then the old woman turned her tongue upon the men because they had feared to go on after Ugh-lomi. She dreaded no one now Uya was slain. She scolded them as one scolds children. And they scowled at her, and began to accuse one another. Until suddenly Siss the Tracker raised his voice and bade her hold her peace. And so when the sun was setting they took Eudena and went--though their hearts sank within them--along the trail the old lion had made in the reeds. All the men went together. At one place was a group of alders, and here they hastily bound Eudena where the lion might find her when he came abroad in the twilight, and having done so they hurried back until they were near the squatting-place. Then they stopped. Siss stopped first and looked back again at the alders. They could see her head even from the squatting-place, a little black shock under the limb of the larger tree. That was as well. All the women and children stood watching upon the crest of the mound. And the old woman stood and screamed for the lion to take her whom he sought, and counselled him on the torments he might do her. Eudena was very weary now, stunned by beatings and fatigue and sorrow, and only the fear of the thing that was still to come upheld her. The sun was broad and blood-red between the stems of the distant chestnuts, and the west was all on fire; the evening breeze had died to a warm tranquillity. The air was full of midge swarms, the fish in the river hard by would leap at times, and now and again a cockchafer would drone through the air. Out of the corner of her eye Eudena could see a part of the squatting-knoll, and little figures standing and staring at her. And--a very little sound but very clear--she could hear the beating of the firestone. Dark and near to her and still was the reed-fringed thicket of the lair. Presently the firestone ceased. She looked for the sun and found he had gone, and overhead and growing brighter was the waxing moon. She looked towards the thicket of the lair, seeking shapes in the reeds, and then suddenly she began to wriggle and wriggle, weeping and calling upon Ugh-lomi. But Ugh-lomi was far away. When they saw her head moving with her struggles, they shouted together on the knoll, and she desisted and was still. And then came the bats, and the star that was like Ugh-lomi crept out of its blue hiding-place in the west. She called to it, but softly, because she feared the lion. And all through the coming of the twilight the thicket was still. So the dark crept upon Eudena, and the moon grew bright, and the shadows of things that had fled up the hillside and vanished with the evening came back to them short and black. And the dark shapes in the thicket of reeds and alders where the lion lay, gathered, and a faint stir began there. But nothing came out therefrom all through the gathering of the darkness. She looked at the squatting-place and saw the fires glowing smoky-red, and the men and women going to and fro. The other way, over the river, a white mist was rising. Then far away came the whimpering of young foxes and the yell of a hyæna. There were long gaps of aching waiting. After a long time some animal splashed in the water, and seemed to cross the river at the ford beyond the lair, but what animal it was she could not see. From the distant drinking-pools she could hear the sound of splashing, and the noise of elephants--so still was the night. The earth was now a colourless arrangement of white reflections and impenetrable shadows, under the blue sky. The silvery moon was already spotted with the filigree crests of the chestnut woods, and over the shadowy eastward hills the stars were multiplying. The knoll fires were bright red now, and black figures stood waiting against them. They were waiting for a scream. . . . Surely it would be soon. The night suddenly seemed full of movement. She held her breath. Things were passing--one, two, three--subtly sneaking shadows. . . . Jackals. Then a long waiting again. Then, asserting itself as real at once over all the sounds her mind had imagined, came a stir in the thicket, then a vigorous movement. There was a snap. The reeds crashed heavily, once, twice, thrice, and then everything was still save a measured swishing. She heard a low tremulous growl, and then everything was still again. The stillness lengthened--would it never end? She held her breath; she bit her lips to stop screaming. Then something scuttled through the undergrowth. Her scream was involuntary. She did not hear the answering yell from the mound. Immediately the thicket woke up to vigorous movement again. She saw the grass stems waving in the light of the setting moon, the alders swaying. She struggled violently--her last struggle. But nothing came towards her. A dozen monsters seemed rushing about in that little place for a couple of minutes, and then again came silence. The moon sank behind the distant chestnuts and the night was dark. Then an odd sound, a sobbing panting, that grew faster and fainter. Yet another silence, and then dim sounds and the grunting of some animal. Everything was still again. Far away eastwards an elephant trumpeted, and from the woods came a snarling and yelping that died away. In the long interval the moon shone out again, between the stems of the trees on the ridge, sending two great bars of light and a bar of darkness across the reedy waste. Then came a steady rustling, a splash, and the reeds swayed wider and wider apart. And at last they broke open, cleft from root to crest. . . . The end had come. She looked to see the thing that had come out of the reeds. For a moment it seemed certainly the great head and jaw she expected, and then it dwindled and changed. It was a dark low thing, that remained silent, but it was not the lion. It became still--everything became still. She peered. It was like some gigantic frog, two limbs and a slanting body. Its head moved about searching the shadows. . . . A rustle, and it moved clumsily, with a sort of hopping. And as it moved it gave a low groan. The blood rushing through her veins was suddenly joy. "_Ugh-lomi! _" she whispered. The thing stopped. "_Eudena_," he answered softly with pain in his voice, and peering into the alders. He moved again, and came out of the shadow beyond the reeds into the moonlight. All his body was covered with dark smears. She saw he was dragging his legs, and that he gripped his axe, the first axe, in one hand. In another moment he had struggled into the position of all fours, and had staggered over to her. "The lion," he said in a strange mingling of exultation and anguish. "Wau! --I have slain a lion. With my own hand. Even as I slew the great bear. " He moved to emphasise his words, and suddenly broke off with a faint cry. For a space he did not move. "Let me free," whispered Eudena. . . . He answered her no words but pulled himself up from his crawling attitude by means of the alder stem, and hacked at her thongs with the sharp edge of his axe. She heard him sob at each blow. He cut away the thongs about her chest and arms, and then his hand dropped. His chest struck against her shoulder and he slipped down beside her and lay still. But the rest of her release was easy. Very hastily she freed herself. She made one step from the tree, and her head was spinning. Her last conscious movement was towards him. She reeled, and dropped. Her hand fell upon his thigh. It was soft and wet, and gave way under her pressure; he cried out at her touch, and writhed and lay still again. Presently a dark dog-like shape came very softly through the reeds. Then stopped dead and stood sniffing, hesitated, and at last turned and slunk back into the shadows. Long was the time they remained there motionless, with the light of the setting moon shining on their limbs. Very slowly, as slowly as the setting of the moon, did the shadow of the reeds towards the mound flow over them. Presently their legs were hidden, and Ugh-lomi was but a bust of silver. The shadow crept to his neck, crept over his face, and so at last the darkness of the night swallowed them up. The shadow became full of instinctive stirrings. There was a patter of feet, and a faint snarling--the sound of a blow. * * * * * There was little sleep that night for the women and children at the squatting-place until they heard Eudena scream. But the men were weary and sat dozing. When Eudena screamed they felt assured of their safety, and hurried to get the nearest places to the fires. The old woman laughed at the scream, and laughed again because Si, the little friend of Eudena, whimpered. Directly the dawn came they were all alert and looking towards the alders. They could see that Eudena had been taken. They could not help feeling glad to think that Uya was appeased. But across the minds of the men the thought of Ugh-lomi fell like a shadow. They could understand revenge, for the world was old in revenge, but they did not think of rescue. Suddenly a hyæna fled out of the thicket, and came galloping across the reed space. His muzzle and paws were dark-stained. At that sight all the men shouted and clutched at throwing-stones and ran towards him, for no animal is so pitiful a coward as the hyæna by day. All men hated the hyæna because he preyed on children, and would come and bite when one was sleeping on the edge of the squatting-place. And Cat's-skin, throwing fair and straight, hit the brute shrewdly on the flank, whereat the whole tribe yelled with delight. At the noise they made there came a flapping of wings from the lair of the lion, and three white-headed vultures rose slowly and circled and came to rest amidst the branches of an alder, overlooking the lair. "Our lord is abroad," said the old woman, pointing. "The vultures have their share of Eudena. " For a space they remained there, and then first one and then another dropped back into the thicket. Then over the eastern woods, and touching the whole world to life and colour, poured, with the exaltation of a trumpet blast, the light of the rising sun. At the sight of him the children shouted together, and clapped their hands and began to race off towards the water. Only little Si lagged behind and looked wonderingly at the alders where she had seen the head of Eudena overnight. But Uya, the old lion, was not abroad, but at home, and he lay very still, and a little on one side. He was not in his lair, but a little way from it in a place of trampled grass. Under one eye was a little wound, the feeble little bite of the first axe. But all the ground beneath his chest was ruddy brown with a vivid streak, and in his chest was a little hole that had been made by Ugh-lomi's stabbing-spear. Along his side and at his neck the vultures had marked their claims. For so Ugh-lomi had slain him, lying stricken under his paw and thrusting haphazard at his chest. He had driven the spear in with all his strength and stabbed the giant to the heart. So it was the reign of the lion, of the second incarnation of Uya the Master, came to an end. From the knoll the bustle of preparation grew, the hacking of spears and throwing-stones. None spake the name of Ugh-lomi for fear that it might bring him. The men were going to keep together, close together, in the hunting for a day or so. And their hunting was to be Ugh-lomi, lest instead he should come a-hunting them. But Ugh-lomi was lying very still and silent, outside the lion's lair, and Eudena squatted beside him, with the ash spear, all smeared with lion's blood, gripped in her hand. V--THE FIGHT IN THE LION'S THICKET Ugh-lomi lay still, his back against an alder, and his thigh was a red mass terrible to see. No civilised man could have lived who had been so sorely wounded, but Eudena got him thorns to close his wounds, and squatted beside him day and night, smiting the flies from him with a fan of reeds by day, and in the night threatening the hyænas with the first axe in her hand; and in a little while he began to heal. It was high summer, and there was no rain. Little food they had during the first two days his wounds were open. In the low place where they hid were no roots nor little beasts, and the stream, with its water-snails and fish, was in the open a hundred yards away. She could not go abroad by day for fear of the tribe, her brothers and sisters, nor by night for fear of the beasts, both on his account and hers. So they shared the lion with the vultures. But there was a trickle of water near by, and Eudena brought him plenty in her hands. Where Ugh-lomi lay was well hidden from the tribe by a thicket of alders, and all fenced about with bulrushes and tall reeds. The dead lion he had killed lay near his old lair on a place of trampled reeds fifty yards away, in sight through the reed-stems, and the vultures fought each other for the choicest pieces and kept the jackals off him.

Very soon a cloud of flies that looked like bees hung over him, and Ugh-lomi could hear their humming. And when Ugh-lomi's flesh was already healing--and it was not many days before that began--only a few bones of the lion remained scattered and shining white. For the most part Ugh-lomi sat still during the day, looking before him at nothing, sometimes he would mutter of the horses and bears and lions, and sometimes he would beat the ground with the first axe and say the names of the tribe--he seemed to have no fear of bringing the tribe--for hours together. But chiefly he slept, dreaming little because of his loss of blood and the slightness of his food. During the short summer night both kept awake. All the while the darkness lasted things moved about them, things they never saw by day. For some nights the hyænas did not come, and then one moonless night near a dozen came and fought for what was left of the lion. The night was a tumult of growling, and Ugh-lomi and Eudena could hear the bones snap in their teeth. But they knew the hyæna dare not attack any creature alive and awake, and so they were not greatly afraid. Of a daytime Eudena would go along the narrow path the old lion had made in the reeds until she was beyond the bend, and then she would creep into the thicket and watch the tribe. She would lie close by the alders where they had bound her to offer her up to the lion, and thence she could see them on the knoll by the fire, small and clear, as she had seen them that night. But she told Ugh-lomi little of what she saw, because she feared to bring them by their names. For so they believed in those days, that naming called. She saw the men prepare stabbing-spears and throwing-stones on the morning after Ugh-lomi had slain the lion, and go out to hunt him, leaving the women and children on the knoll. Little they knew how near he was as they tracked off in single file towards the hills, with Siss the Tracker leading them. And she watched the women and children, after the men had gone, gathering fern-fronds and twigs for the night fire, and the boys and girls running and playing together. But the very old woman made her feel afraid. Towards noon, when most of the others were down at the stream by the bend, she came and stood on the hither side of the knoll, a gnarled brown figure, and gesticulated so that Eudena could scarce believe she was not seen. Eudena lay like a hare in its form, with shining eyes fixed on the bent witch away there, and presently she dimly understood it was the lion the old woman was worshipping--the lion Ugh-lomi had slain. And the next day the hunters came back weary, carrying a fawn, and Eudena watched the feast enviously. And then came a strange thing. She saw--distinctly she heard--the old woman shrieking and gesticulating and pointing towards her. She was afraid, and crept like a snake out of sight again. But presently curiosity overcame her and she was back at her spying-place, and as she peered her heart stopped, for there were all the men, with their weapons in their hands, walking together towards her from the knoll. She dared not move lest her movement should be seen, but she pressed herself close to the ground. The sun was low and the golden light was in the faces of the men. She saw they carried a piece of rich red meat thrust through by an ashen stake. Presently they stopped. "Go on! " screamed the old woman. Cat's-skin grumbled, and they came on, searching the thicket with sun-dazzled eyes. "Here! " said Siss. And they took the ashen stake with the meat upon it and thrust it into the ground. "Uya! " cried Siss, "behold thy portion. And Ugh-lomi we have slain. Of a truth we have slain Ugh-lomi. This day we slew Ugh-lomi, and to-morrow we will bring his body to you. " And the others repeated the words. They looked at each other and behind them, and partly turned and began going back. At first they walked half turned to the thicket, then facing the mound they walked faster looking over their shoulders, then faster; soon they ran, it was a race at last, until they were near the knoll. Then Siss who was hindmost was first to slacken his pace. The sunset passed and the twilight came, the fires glowed red against the hazy blue of the distant chestnut-trees, and the voices over the mound were merry. Eudena lay scarcely stirring, looking from the mound to the meat and then to the mound. She was hungry, but she was afraid. At last she crept back to Ugh-lomi. He looked round at the little rustle of her approach. His face was in shadow. "Have you got me some food? " he said. She said she could find nothing, but that she would seek further, and went back along the lion's path until she could see the mound again, but she could not bring herself to take the meat; she had the brute's instinct of a snare. She felt very miserable. She crept back at last towards Ugh-lomi and heard him stirring and moaning. She turned back to the mound again; then she saw something in the darkness near the stake, and peering distinguished a jackal. In a flash she was brave and angry; she sprang up, cried out, and ran towards the offering. She stumbled and fell, and heard the growling of the jackal going off. When she arose only the ashen stake lay on the ground, the meat was gone. So she went back, to fast through the night with Ugh-lomi; and Ugh-lomi was angry with her, because she had no food for him; but she told him nothing of the things she had seen. Two days passed and they were near starving, when the tribe slew a horse. Then came the same ceremony, and a haunch was left on the ashen stake; but this time Eudena did not hesitate. By acting and words she made Ugh-lomi understand, but he ate most of the food before he understood; and then as her meaning passed to him he grew merry with his food. "I am Uya," he said; "I am the Lion. I am the Great Cave Bear, I who was only Ugh-lomi. I am Wau the Cunning. It is well that they should feed me, for presently I will kill them all. " Then Eudena's heart was light, and she laughed with him; and afterwards she ate what he had left of the horseflesh with gladness. After that it was he had a dream, and the next day he made Eudena bring him the lion's teeth and claws--so much of them as she could find--and hack him a club of alder. And he put the teeth and claws very cunningly into the wood so that the points were outward. Very long it took him, and he blunted two of the teeth hammering them in, and was very angry and threw the thing away; but afterwards he dragged himself to where he had thrown it and finished it--a club of a new sort set with teeth. That day there was more meat for them both, an offering to the lion from the tribe. It was one day--more than a hand's fingers of days, more than anyone had skill to count--after Ugh-lomi had made the club, that Eudena while he was asleep was lying in the thicket watching the squatting-place. There had been no meat for three days. And the old woman came and worshipped after her manner. Now while she worshipped, Eudena's little friend Si and another, the child of the first girl Siss had loved, came over the knoll and stood regarding her skinny figure, and presently they began to mock her. Eudena found this entertaining, but suddenly the old woman turned on them quickly and saw them. For a moment she stood and they stood motionless, and then with a shriek of rage, she rushed towards them, and all three disappeared over the crest of the knoll. Presently the children reappeared among the ferns beyond the shoulder of the hill. Little Si ran first, for she was an active girl, and the other child ran squealing with the old woman close upon her. And over the knoll came Siss with a bone in his hand, and Bo and Cat's-skin obsequiously behind him, each holding a piece of food, and they laughed aloud and shouted to see the old woman so angry. And with a shriek the child was caught and the old woman set to work slapping and the child screaming, and it was very good after-dinner fun for them. Little Si ran on a little way and stopped at last between fear and curiosity. And suddenly came the mother of the child, with hair streaming, panting, and with a stone in her hand, and the old woman turned about like a wild cat. She was the equal of any woman, was the chief of the fire-minders, in spite of her years; but before she could do anything Siss shouted to her and the clamour rose loud. Other shock heads came into sight. It seemed the whole tribe was at home and feasting. But the old woman dared not go on wreaking herself on the child Siss befriended. Everyone made noises and called names--even little Si. Abruptly the old woman let go of the child she had caught and made a swift run at Si for Si had no friends; and Si, realising her danger when it was almost upon her, made off headlong, with a faint cry of terror, not heeding whither she ran, straight to the lair of the lion. She swerved aside into the reeds presently, realising now whither she went. But the old woman was a wonderful old woman, as active as she was spiteful, and she caught Si by the streaming hair within thirty yards of Eudena. All the tribe now was running down the knoll and shouting and laughing ready to see the fun. Then something stirred in Eudena; something that had never stirred in her before; and, thinking all of little Si and nothing of her fear, she sprang up from her ambush and ran swiftly forward. The old woman did not see her, for she was busy beating little Si's face with her hand, beating with all her heart, and suddenly something hard and heavy struck her cheek. She went reeling, and saw Eudena with flaming eyes and cheeks between her and little Si. She shrieked with astonishment and terror, and little Si, not understanding, set off towards the gaping tribe. They were quite close now, for the sight of Eudena had driven their fading fear of the lion out of their heads. In a moment Eudena had turned from the cowering old woman and overtaken Si. "Si! " she cried, "Si! " She caught the child up in her arms as it stopped, pressed the nail-lined face to hers, and turned about to run towards her lair, the lair of the old lion. The old woman stood waist-high in the reeds, and screamed foul things and inarticulate rage, but did not dare to intercept her; and at the bend of the path Eudena looked back and saw all the men of the tribe crying to one another and Siss coming at a trot along the lion's trail. She ran straight along the narrow way through the reeds to the shady place where Ugh-lomi sat with his healing thigh, just awakened by the shouting and rubbing his eyes. She came to him, a woman, with little Si in her arms. Her heart throbbed in her throat. "Ugh-lomi! " she cried, "Ugh-lomi, the tribe comes! " Ugh-lomi sat staring in stupid astonishment at her and Si. She pointed with Si in one arm. She sought among her feeble store of words to explain. She could hear the men calling. Apparently they had stopped outside. She put down Si and caught up the new club with the lion's teeth, and put it into Ugh-lomi's hand, and ran three yards and picked up the first axe. "Ah! " said Ugh-lomi, waving the new club, and suddenly he perceived the occasion and, rolling over, began to struggle to his feet. He stood but clumsily. He supported himself by one hand against the tree, and just touched the ground gingerly with the toe of his wounded leg. In the other hand he gripped the new club. He looked at his healing thigh; and suddenly the reeds began whispering, and ceased and whispered again, and coming cautiously along the track, bending down and holding his fire-hardened stabbing-stick of ash in his hand, appeared Siss. He stopped dead, and his eyes met Ugh-lomi's. Ugh-lomi forgot he had a wounded leg. He stood firmly on both feet. Something trickled. He glanced down and saw a little gout of blood had oozed out along the edge of the healing wound. He rubbed his hand there to give him the grip of his club, and fixed his eyes again on Siss. "Wau! " he cried, and sprang forward, and Siss, still stooping and watchful, drove his stabbing-stick up very quickly in an ugly thrust. It ripped Ugh-lomi's guarding arm and the club came down in a counter that Siss was never to understand. He fell, as an ox falls to the pole-axe, at Ugh-lomi's feet. To Bo it seemed the strangest thing. He had a comforting sense of tall reeds on either side, and an impregnable rampart, Siss, between him and any danger. Snail-eater was close behind and there was no danger there. He was prepared to shove behind and send Siss to death or victory. That was his place as second man. He saw the butt of the spear Siss carried leap away from him, and suddenly a dull whack and the broad back fell away forward, and he looked Ugh-lomi in the face over his prostrate leader. It felt to Bo as if his heart had fallen down a well. He had a throwing-stone in one hand and an ashen stabbing-stick in the other. He did not live to the end of his momentary hesitation which to use. Snail-eater was a readier man, and besides Bo did not fall forward as Siss had done, but gave at his knees and hips, crumpling up with the toothed club upon his head. The Snail-eater drove his spear forward swift and straight, and took Ugh-lomi in the muscle of the shoulder, and then he drove him hard with the smiting-stone in his other hand, shouting out as he did so. The new club swished ineffectually through the reeds. Eudena saw Ugh-lomi come staggering back from the narrow path into the open space, tripping over Siss and with a foot of ashen stake sticking out of him over his arm. And then the Snail-eater, whose name she had given, had his final injury from her, as his exultant face came out of the reeds after his spear. For she swung the first axe swift and high, and hit him fair and square on the temple; and down he went on Siss at prostrate Ugh-lomi's feet. But before Ugh-lomi could get up, the two red-haired men were tumbling out of the reeds, spears and smiting-stones ready, and Snake hard behind them. One she struck on the neck, but not to fell him, and he blundered aside and spoilt his brother's blow at Ugh-lomi's head. In a moment Ugh-lomi dropped his club and had his assailant by the waist, and had pitched him sideways sprawling. He snatched at his club again and recovered it. The man Eudena had hit stabbed at her with his spear as he stumbled from her blow, and involuntarily she gave ground to avoid him. He hesitated between her and Ugh-lomi, half turned, gave a vague cry at finding Ugh-lomi so near, and in a moment Ugh-lomi had him by the throat, and the club had its third victim. As he went down Ugh-lomi shouted--no words, but an exultant cry. The other red-haired man was six feet from her with his back to her, and a darker red streaking his head. He was struggling to his feet. She had an irrational impulse to stop his rising. She flung the axe at him, missed, saw his face in profile, and he had swerved beyond little Si, and was running through the reeds. She had a transitory vision of Snake standing in the throat of the path, half turned away from her, and then she saw his back. She saw the club whirling through the air, and the shock head of Ugh-lomi, with blood in the hair and blood upon the shoulder, vanishing below the reeds in pursuit. Then she heard Snake scream like a woman. She ran past Si to where the handle of the axe stuck out of a clump of fern, and turning, found herself panting and alone with three motionless bodies. The air was full of shouts and screams. For a space she was sick and giddy, and then it came into her head that Ugh-lomi was being killed along the reed-path, and with an inarticulate cry she leapt over the body of Bo and hurried after him. Snake's feet lay across the path, and his head was among the reeds. She followed the path until it bent round and opened out by the alders, and thence she saw all that was left of the tribe in the open, scattering like dead leaves before a gale, and going back over the knoll. Ugh-lomi was hard upon Cat's-skin. But Cat's-skin was fleet of foot and got away, and so did young Wau-Hau when Ugh-lomi turned upon him, and Ugh-lomi pursued Wau-Hau far beyond the knoll before he desisted. He had the rage of battle on him now, and the wood thrust through his shoulder stung him like a spur. When she saw he was in no danger she stopped running and stood panting, watching the distant active figures run up and vanish one by one over the knoll. In a little time she was alone again. Everything had happened very swiftly. The smoke of Brother Fire rose straight and steady from the squatting-place, just as it had done ten minutes ago, when the old woman had stood yonder worshipping the lion. And after a long time, as it seemed, Ugh-lomi reappeared over the knoll, and came back to Eudena, triumphant and breathing heavily. She stood, her hair about her eyes and hot-faced, with the blood-stained axe in her hand, at the place where the tribe had offered her as a sacrifice to the lion. "Wau! " cried Ugh-lomi at the sight of her, his face alight with the fellowship of battle, and he waved his new club, red now and hairy; and at the sight of his glowing face her tense pose relaxed somewhat, and she stood sobbing and rejoicing. Ugh-lomi had a queer unaccountable pang at the sight of her tears; but he only shouted "Wau! " the louder and shook the axe east and west. He called manfully to her to follow him and turned back, striding, with the club swinging in his hand, towards the squatting-place, as if he had never left the tribe; and she ceased her weeping and followed quickly as a woman should. So Ugh-lomi and Eudena came back to the squatting-place from which they had fled many days before from the face of Uya; and by the squatting-place lay a deer half eaten, just as there had been before Ugh-lomi was man or Eudena woman. So Ugh-lomi sat down to eat, and Eudena beside him like a man, and the rest of the tribe watched them from safe hiding-places. And after a time one of the elder girls came back timorously, carrying little Si in her arms, and Eudena called to them by name, and offered them food. But the elder girl was afraid and would not come, though Si struggled to come to Eudena. Afterwards, when Ugh-lomi had eaten, he sat dozing, and at last he slept, and slowly the others came out of the hiding-places and drew near. And when Ugh-lomi woke, save that there were no men to be seen, it seemed as though he had never left the tribe. Now, there is a thing strange but true: that all through this fight Ugh-lomi forgot that he was lame, and was not lame, and after he had rested behold! he was a lame man; and he remained a lame man to the end of his days. Cat's-skin and the second red-haired man and Wau-Hau, who chipped flints cunningly, as his father had done before him, fled from the face of Ugh-lomi, and none knew where they hid. But two days after they came and squatted a good way off from the knoll among the bracken under the chestnuts and watched. Ugh-lomi's rage had gone, he moved to go against them and did not, and at sundown they went away. That day, too, they found the old woman among the ferns, where Ugh-lomi had blundered upon her when he had pursued Wau-Hau. She was dead and more ugly than ever, but whole. The jackals and vultures had tried her and left her;--she was ever a wonderful old woman. The next day the three men came again and squatted nearer, and Wau-Hau had two rabbits to hold up, and the red-haired man a wood-pigeon, and Ugh-lomi stood before the women and mocked them. The next day they sat again nearer--without stones or sticks, and with the same offerings, and Cat's-skin had a trout. It was rare men caught fish in those days, but Cat's-skin would stand silently in the water for hours and catch them with his hand. And the fourth day Ugh-lomi suffered these three to come to the squatting-place in peace, with the food they had with them. Ugh-lomi ate the trout. Thereafter for many moons Ugh-lomi was master and had his will in peace. And on the fulness of time he was killed and eaten even as Uya had been slain. A Story of the Days to Come A STORY OF THE DAYS TO COME I--THE CURE FOR LOVE The excellent Mr. Morris was an Englishman, and he lived in the days of Queen Victoria the Good. He was a prosperous and very sensible man; he read the _Times_ and went to church, and as he grew towards middle age an expression of quiet contented contempt for all who were not as himself settled on his face. He was one of those people who do everything that is right and proper and sensible with inevitable regularity. He always wore just the right and proper clothes, steering the narrow way between the smart and the shabby, always subscribed to the right charities, just the judicious compromise between ostentation and meanness, and never failed to have his hair cut to exactly the proper length. Everything that it was right and proper for a man in his position to possess, he possessed; and everything that it was not right and proper for a man in his position to possess, he did not possess. And among other right and proper possessions, this Mr. Morris had a wife and children. They were the right sort of wife, and the right sort and number of children, of course; nothing imaginative or highty-flighty about any of them, so far as Mr. Morris could see; they wore perfectly correct clothing, neither smart nor hygienic nor faddy in any way, but just sensible; and they lived in a nice sensible house in the later Victorian sham Queen Anne style of architecture, with sham half-timbering of chocolate-painted plaster in the gables, Lincrusta Walton sham carved oak panels, a terrace of terra cotta to imitate stone, and cathedral glass in the front door. His boys went to good solid schools, and were put to respectable professions; his girls, in spite of a fantastic protest or so, were all married to suitable, steady, oldish young men with good prospects. And when it was a fit and proper thing for him to do so, Mr. Morris died. His tomb was of marble, and, without any art nonsense or laudatory inscription, quietly imposing--such being the fashion of his time. He underwent various changes according to the accepted custom in these cases, and long before this story begins his bones even had become dust, and were scattered to the four quarters of heaven. And his sons and his grandsons and his great-grandsons and his great-great-grandsons, they too were dust and ashes, and were scattered likewise. It was a thing he could not have imagined, that a day would come when even his great-great-grandsons would be scattered to the four winds of heaven. If any one had suggested it to him he would have resented it. He was one of those worthy people who take no interest in the future of mankind at all. He had grave doubts, indeed, if there was any future for mankind after he was dead. It seemed quite impossible and quite uninteresting to imagine anything happening after he was dead. Yet the thing was so, and when even his great-great-grandson was dead and decayed and forgotten, when the sham half-timbered house had gone the way of all shams, and the _Times_ was extinct, and the silk hat a ridiculous antiquity, and the modestly imposing stone that had been sacred to Mr. Morris had been burnt to make lime for mortar, and all that Mr. Morris had found real and important was sere and dead, the world was still going on, and people were still going about it, just as heedless and impatient of the Future, or, indeed, of anything but their own selves and property, as Mr. Morris had been. And, strange to tell, and much as Mr. Morris would have been angered if any one had foreshadowed it to him, all over the world there were scattered a multitude of people, filled with the breath of life, in whose veins the blood of Mr. Morris flowed. Just as some day the life which is gathered now in the reader of this very story may also be scattered far and wide about this world, and mingled with a thousand alien strains, beyond all thought and tracing. And among the descendants of this Mr. Morris was one almost as sensible and clear-headed as his ancestor. He had just the same stout, short frame as that ancient man of the nineteenth century, from whom his name of Morris--he spelt it Mwres--came; he had the same half-contemptuous expression of face. He was a prosperous person, too, as times went, and he disliked the "new-fangled," and bothers about the future and the lower classes, just as much as the ancestral Morris had done. He did not read the _Times_: indeed, he did not know there ever had been a _Times_--that institution had foundered somewhere in the intervening gulf of years; but the phonograph machine, that talked to him as he made his toilet of a morning, might have been the voice of a reincarnated Blowitz when it dealt with the world's affairs. This phonographic machine was the size and shape of a Dutch clock, and down the front of it were electric barometric indicators, and an electric clock and calendar, and automatic engagement reminders, and where the clock would have been was the mouth of a trumpet. When it had news the trumpet gobbled like a turkey, "Galloop, galloop," and then brayed out its message as, let us say, a trumpet might bray. It would tell Mwres in full, rich, throaty tones about the overnight accidents to the omnibus flying-machines that plied around the world, the latest arrivals at the fashionable resorts in Tibet, and of all the great monopolist company meetings of the day before, while he was dressing. If Mwres did not like hearing what it said, he had only to touch a stud, and it would choke a little and talk about something else. Of course his toilet differed very much from that of his ancestor. It is doubtful which would have been the more shocked and pained to find himself in the clothing of the other. Mwres would certainly have sooner gone forth to the world stark naked than in the silk hat, frock coat, grey trousers and watch-chain that had filled Mr. Morris with sombre self-respect in the past. For Mwres there was no shaving to do: a skilful operator had long ago removed every hair-root from his face. His legs he encased in pleasant pink and amber garments of an air-tight material, which with the help of an ingenious little pump he distended so as to suggest enormous muscles. Above this he also wore pneumatic garments beneath an amber silk tunic, so that he was clothed in air and admirably protected against sudden extremes of heat or cold. Over this he flung a scarlet cloak with its edge fantastically curved. On his head, which had been skilfully deprived of every scrap of hair, he adjusted a pleasant little cap of bright scarlet, held on by suction and inflated with hydrogen, and curiously like the comb of a cock. So his toilet was complete; and, conscious of being soberly and becomingly attired, he was ready to face his fellow-beings with a tranquil eye. This Mwres--the civility of "Mr. " had vanished ages ago--was one of the officials under the Wind Vane and Waterfall Trust, the great company that owned every wind wheel and waterfall in the world, and which pumped all the water and supplied all the electric energy that people in these latter days required. He lived in a vast hotel near that part of London called Seventh Way, and had very large and comfortable apartments on the seventeenth floor. Households and family life had long since disappeared with the progressive refinement of manners; and indeed the steady rise in rents and land values, the disappearance of domestic servants, the elaboration of cookery, had rendered the separate domicile of Victorian times impossible, even had any one desired such a savage seclusion. When his toilet was completed he went towards one of the two doors of his apartment--there were doors at opposite ends, each marked with a huge arrow pointing one one way and one the other--touched a stud to open it, and emerged on a wide passage, the centre of which bore chairs and was moving at a steady pace to the left. On some of these chairs were seated gaily-dressed men and women. He nodded to an acquaintance--it was not in those days etiquette to talk before breakfast--and seated himself on one of these chairs, and in a few seconds he had been carried to the doors of a lift, by which he descended to the great and splendid hall in which his breakfast would be automatically served. It was a very different meal from a Victorian breakfast. The rude masses of bread needing to be carved and smeared over with animal fat before they could be made palatable, the still recognisable fragments of recently killed animals, hideously charred and hacked, the eggs torn ruthlessly from beneath some protesting hen,--such things as these, though they constituted the ordinary fare of Victorian times, would have awakened only horror and disgust in the refined minds of the people of these latter days. Instead were pastes and cakes of agreeable and variegated design, without any suggestion in colour or form of the unfortunate animals from which their substance and juices were derived. They appeared on little dishes sliding out upon a rail from a little box at one side of the table.

The surface of the table, to judge by touch and eye, would have appeared to a nineteenth-century person to be covered with fine white damask, but this was really an oxidised metallic surface, and could be cleaned instantly after a meal. There were hundreds of such little tables in the hall, and at most of them were other latter-day citizens singly or in groups. And as Mwres seated himself before his elegant repast, the invisible orchestra, which had been resting during an interval, resumed and filled the air with music. But Mwres did not display any great interest either in his breakfast or the music; his eye wandered incessantly about the hall, as though he expected a belated guest. At last he rose eagerly and waved his hand, and simultaneously across the hall appeared a tall dark figure in a costume of yellow and olive green. As this person, walking amidst the tables with measured steps, drew near, the pallid earnestness of his face and the unusual intensity of his eyes became apparent. Mwres reseated himself and pointed to a chair beside him. "I feared you would never come," he said. In spite of the intervening space of time, the English language was still almost exactly the same as it had been in England under Victoria the Good. The invention of the phonograph and suchlike means of recording sound, and the gradual replacement of books by such contrivances, had not only saved the human eyesight from decay, but had also by the establishment of a sure standard arrested the process of change in accent that had hitherto been so inevitable. "I was delayed by an interesting case," said the man in green and yellow. "A prominent politician--ahem! --suffering from overwork. " He glanced at the breakfast and seated himself. "I have been awake for forty hours. " "Eh dear! " said Mwres: "fancy that! You hypnotists have your work to do. " The hypnotist helped himself to some attractive amber-coloured jelly. "I happen to be a good deal in request," he said modestly. "Heaven knows what we should do without you. " "Oh! we're not so indispensable as all that," said the hypnotist, ruminating the flavour of the jelly. "The world did very well without us for some thousands of years. Two hundred years ago even--not one! In practice, that is. Physicians by the thousand, of course--frightfully clumsy brutes for the most part, and following one another like sheep--but doctors of the mind, except a few empirical flounderers there were none. " He concentrated his mind on the jelly. "But were people so sane--? " began Mwres. The hypnotist shook his head. "It didn't matter then if they were a bit silly or faddy. Life was so easy-going then. No competition worth speaking of--no pressure. A human being had to be very lopsided before anything happened. Then, you know, they clapped 'em away in what they called a lunatic asylum. " "I know," said Mwres. "In these confounded historical romances that every one is listening to, they always rescue a beautiful girl from an asylum or something of the sort. I don't know if you attend to that rubbish. " "I must confess I do," said the hypnotist. "It carries one out of oneself to hear of those quaint, adventurous, half-civilised days of the nineteenth century, when men were stout and women simple. I like a good swaggering story before all things. Curious times they were, with their smutty railways and puffing old iron trains, their rum little houses and their horse vehicles. I suppose you don't read books? " "Dear, no! " said Mwres, "I went to a modern school and we had none of that old-fashioned nonsense. Phonographs are good enough for me. " "Of course," said the hypnotist, "of course"; and surveyed the table for his next choice. "You know," he said, helping himself to a dark blue confection that promised well, "in those days our business was scarcely thought of. I daresay if any one had told them that in two hundred years' time a class of men would be entirely occupied in impressing things upon the memory, effacing unpleasant ideas, controlling and overcoming instinctive but undesirable impulses, and so forth, by means of hypnotism, they would have refused to believe the thing possible. Few people knew that an order made during a mesmeric trance, even an order to forget or an order to desire, could be given so as to be obeyed after the trance was over. Yet there were men alive then who could have told them the thing was as absolutely certain to come about as--well, the transit of Venus. " "They knew of hypnotism, then? " "Oh, dear, yes! They used it--for painless dentistry and things like that! This blue stuff is confoundedly good: what is it? " "Haven't the faintest idea," said Mwres, "but I admit it's very good. Take some more. " The hypnotist repeated his praises, and there was an appreciative pause. "Speaking of these historical romances," said Mwres, with an attempt at an easy, off-hand manner, "brings me--ah--to the matter I--ah--had in mind when I asked you--when I expressed a wish to see you. " He paused and took a deep breath. The hypnotist turned an attentive eye upon him, and continued eating. "The fact is," said Mwres, "I have a--in fact a--daughter. Well, you know I have given her--ah--every educational advantage. Lectures--not a solitary lecturer of ability in the world but she has had a telephone direct, dancing, deportment, conversation, philosophy, art criticism . . . " He indicated catholic culture by a gesture of his hand. "I had intended her to marry a very good friend of mine--Bindon of the Lighting Commission--plain little man, you know, and a bit unpleasant in some of his ways, but an excellent fellow really--an excellent fellow. " "Yes," said the hypnotist, "go on. How old is she? " "Eighteen. " "A dangerous age. Well? " "Well: it seems that she has been indulging in these historical romances--excessively. Excessively. Even to the neglect of her philosophy. Filled her mind with unutterable nonsense about soldiers who fight--what is it? --Etruscans? " "Egyptians. " "Egyptians--very probably. Hack about with swords and revolvers and things--bloodshed galore--horrible! --and about young men on torpedo catchers who blow up--Spaniards, I fancy--and all sorts of irregular adventurers. And she has got it into her head that she must marry for Love, and that poor little Bindon--" "I've met similar cases," said the hypnotist. "Who is the other young man? " Mwres maintained an appearance of resigned calm. "You may well ask," he said. "He is"--and his voice sank with shame--"a mere attendant upon the stage on which the flying-machines from Paris alight. He has--as they say in the romances--good looks. He is quite young and very eccentric. Affects the antique--he can read and write! So can she. And instead of communicating by telephone, like sensible people, they write and deliver--what is it? " "Notes? " "No--not notes. . . . Ah--poems. " The hypnotist raised his eyebrows. "How did she meet him? " "Tripped coming down from the flying-machine from Paris--and fell into his arms. The mischief was done in a moment! " "Yes? " "Well--that's all. Things must be stopped. That is what I want to consult you about. What must be done? What _can_ be done? Of course I'm not a hypnotist; my knowledge is limited. But you--? " "Hypnotism is not magic," said the man in green, putting both arms on the table. "Oh, precisely! But still--! " "People cannot be hypnotised without their consent. If she is able to stand out against marrying Bindon, she will probably stand out against being hypnotised. But if once she can be hypnotised--even by somebody else--the thing is done. " "You can--? " "Oh, certainly! Once we get her amenable, then we can suggest that she _must_ marry Bindon--that that is her fate; or that the young man is repulsive, and that when she sees him she will be giddy and faint, or any little thing of that sort. Or if we can get her into a sufficiently profound trance we can suggest that she should forget him altogether--" "Precisely. " "But the problem is to get her hypnotised. Of course no sort of proposal or suggestion must come from you--because no doubt she already distrusts you in the matter. " The hypnotist leant his head upon his arm and thought. "It's hard a man cannot dispose of his own daughter," said Mwres irrelevantly. "You must give me the name and address of the young lady," said the hypnotist, "and any information bearing upon the matter. And, by the bye, is there any money in the affair? " Mwres hesitated. "There's a sum--in fact, a considerable sum--invested in the Patent Road Company. From her mother. That's what makes the thing so exasperating. " "Exactly," said the hypnotist. And he proceeded to cross-examine Mwres on the entire affair. It was a lengthy interview. And meanwhile "Elizebeθ Mwres," as she spelt her name, or "Elizabeth Morris" as a nineteenth-century person would have put it, was sitting in a quiet waiting-place beneath the great stage upon which the flying-machine from Paris descended. And beside her sat her slender, handsome lover reading her the poem he had written that morning while on duty upon the stage. When he had finished they sat for a time in silence; and then, as if for their special entertainment, the great machine that had come flying through the air from America that morning rushed down out of the sky. At first it was a little oblong, faint and blue amidst the distant fleecy clouds; and then it grew swiftly large and white, and larger and whiter, until they could see the separate tiers of sails, each hundreds of feet wide, and the lank body they supported, and at last even the swinging seats of the passengers in a dotted row. Although it was falling it seemed to them to be rushing up the sky, and over the roof-spaces of the city below its shadow leapt towards them. They heard the whistling rush of the air about it and its yelling siren, shrill and swelling, to warn those who were on its landing-stage of its arrival. And abruptly the note fell down a couple of octaves, and it had passed, and the sky was clear and void, and she could turn her sweet eyes again to Denton at her side. Their silence ended; and Denton, speaking in a little language of broken English that was, they fancied, their private possession--though lovers have used such little languages since the world began--told her how they too would leap into the air one morning out of all the obstacles and difficulties about them, and fly to a sunlit city of delight he knew of in Japan, half-way about the world. She loved the dream, but she feared the leap; and she put him off with "Some day, dearest one, some day," to all his pleading that it might be soon; and at last came a shrilling of whistles, and it was time for him to go back to his duties on the stage. They parted--as lovers have been wont to part for thousands of years. She walked down a passage to a lift, and so came to one of the streets of that latter-day London, all glazed in with glass from the weather, and with incessant moving platforms that went to all parts of the city. And by one of these she returned to her apartments in the Hotel for Women where she lived, the apartments that were in telephonic communication with all the best lecturers in the world. But the sunlight of the flying stage was in her heart, and the wisdom of all the best lecturers in the world seemed folly in that light. She spent the middle part of the day in the gymnasium, and took her midday meal with two other girls and their common chaperone--for it was still the custom to have a chaperone in the case of motherless girls of the more prosperous classes. The chaperone had a visitor that day, a man in green and yellow, with a white face and vivid eyes, who talked amazingly. Among other things, he fell to praising a new historical romance that one of the great popular story-tellers of the day had just put forth. It was, of course, about the spacious times of Queen Victoria; and the author, among other pleasing novelties, made a little argument before each section of the story, in imitation of the chapter headings of the old-fashioned books: as for example, "How the Cabmen of Pimlico stopped the Victoria Omnibuses, and of the Great Fight in Palace Yard," and "How the Piccadilly Policeman was slain in the midst of his Duty. " The man in green and yellow praised this innovation. "These pithy sentences," he said, "are admirable. They show at a glance those headlong, tumultuous times, when men and animals jostled in the filthy streets, and death might wait for one at every corner. Life was life then! How great the world must have seemed then! How marvellous! They were still parts of the world absolutely unexplored. Nowadays we have almost abolished wonder, we lead lives so trim and orderly that courage, endurance, faith, all the noble virtues seem fading from mankind. " And so on, taking the girls' thoughts with him, until the life they led, life in the vast and intricate London of the twenty-second century, a life interspersed with soaring excursions to every part of the globe, seemed to them a monotonous misery compared with the dædal past. At first Elizabeth did not join in the conversation, but after a time the subject became so interesting that she made a few shy interpolations. But he scarcely seemed to notice her as he talked. He went on to describe a new method of entertaining people. They were hypnotised, and then suggestions were made to them so skilfully that they seemed to be living in ancient times again. They played out a little romance in the past as vivid as reality, and when at last they awakened they remembered all they had been through as though it were a real thing. "It is a thing we have sought to do for years and years," said the hypnotist. "It is practically an artificial dream. And we know the way at last. Think of all it opens out to us--the enrichment of our experience, the recovery of adventure, the refuge it offers from this sordid, competitive life in which we live! Think! " "And you can do that! " said the chaperone eagerly. "The thing is possible at last," the hypnotist said. "You may order a dream as you wish. " The chaperone was the first to be hypnotised, and the dream, she said, was wonderful, when she came to again. The other two girls, encouraged by her enthusiasm, also placed themselves in the hands of the hypnotist and had plunges into the romantic past. No one suggested that Elizabeth should try this novel entertainment; it was at her own request at last that she was taken into that land of dreams where there is neither any freedom of choice nor will. . . . And so the mischief was done. One day, when Denton went down to that quiet seat beneath the flying stage, Elizabeth was not in her wonted place. He was disappointed, and a little angry. The next day she did not come, and the next also. He was afraid. To hide his fear from himself, he set to work to write sonnets for her when she should come again. . . . For three days he fought against his dread by such distraction, and then the truth was before him clear and cold, and would not be denied. She might be ill, she might be dead; but he would not believe that he had been betrayed. There followed a week of misery. And then he knew she was the only thing on earth worth having, and that he must seek her, however hopeless the search, until she was found once more. He had some small private means of his own, and so he threw over his appointment on the flying stage, and set himself to find this girl who had become at last all the world to him. He did not know where she lived, and little of her circumstances; for it had been part of the delight of her girlish romance that he should know nothing of her, nothing of the difference of their station. The ways of the city opened before him east and west, north and south. Even in Victorian days London was a maze, that little London with its poor four millions of people; but the London he explored, the London of the twenty-second century, was a London of thirty million souls. At first he was energetic and headlong, taking time neither to eat nor sleep. He sought for weeks and months, he went through every imaginable phase of fatigue and despair, over-excitement and anger. Long after hope was dead, by the sheer inertia of his desire he still went to and fro, peering into faces and looking this way and that, in the incessant ways and lifts and passages of that interminable hive of men. At last chance was kind to him, and he saw her. It was in a time of festivity. He was hungry; he had paid the inclusive fee and had gone into one of the gigantic dining-places of the city; he was pushing his way among the tables and scrutinising by mere force of habit every group he passed. He stood still, robbed of all power of motion, his eyes wide, his lips apart. Elizabeth sat scarcely twenty yards away from him, looking straight at him. Her eyes were as hard to him, as hard and expressionless and void of recognition, as the eyes of a statue. She looked at him for a moment, and then her gaze passed beyond him. Had he had only her eyes to judge by he might have doubted if it was indeed Elizabeth, but he knew her by the gesture of her hand, by the grace of a wanton little curl that floated over her ear as she moved her head. Something was said to her, and she turned smiling tolerantly to the man beside her, a little man in foolish raiment knobbed and spiked like some odd reptile with pneumatic horns--the Bindon of her father's choice. For a moment Denton stood white and wild-eyed; then came a terrible faintness, and he sat before one of the little tables. He sat down with his back to her, and for a time he did not dare to look at her again. When at last he did, she and Bindon and two other people were standing up to go. The others were her father and her chaperone. He sat as if incapable of action until the four figures were remote and small, and then he rose up possessed with the one idea of pursuit. For a space he feared he had lost them, and then he came upon Elizabeth and her chaperone again in one of the streets of moving platforms that intersected the city. Bindon and Mwres had disappeared. He could not control himself to patience. He felt he must speak to her forthwith, or die. He pushed forward to where they were seated, and sat down beside them. His white face was convulsed with half-hysterical excitement. He laid his hand on her wrist. "Elizabeth? " he said. She turned in unfeigned astonishment. Nothing but the fear of a strange man showed in her face. "Elizabeth," he cried, and his voice was strange to him: "dearest--you _know_ me? " Elizabeth's face showed nothing but alarm and perplexity. She drew herself away from him. The chaperone, a little grey-headed woman with mobile features, leant forward to intervene. Her resolute bright eyes examined Denton. "_What_ do you say? " she asked. "This young lady," said Denton,--"she knows me. " "Do you know him, dear? " "No," said Elizabeth in a strange voice, and with a hand to her forehead, speaking almost as one who repeats a lesson. "No, I do not know him. I _know_--I do not know him. " "But--but . . . Not know me! It is I--Denton. Denton! To whom you used to talk. Don't you remember the flying stages? The little seat in the open air? The verses--" "No," cried Elizabeth,--"no. I do not know him. I do not know him. There is something. . . . But I don't know. All I know is that I do not know him. " Her face was a face of infinite distress. The sharp eyes of the chaperone flitted to and fro from the girl to the man.

"You see? " she said, with the faint shadow of a smile. "She does not know you. " "I do not know you," said Elizabeth. "Of that I am sure. " "But, dear--the songs--the little verses--" "She does not know you," said the chaperone. "You must not. . . . You have made a mistake. You must not go on talking to us after that. You must not annoy us on the public ways. " "But--" said Denton, and for a moment his miserably haggard face appealed against fate. "You must not persist, young man," protested the chaperone. "_Elizabeth! _" he cried. Her face was the face of one who is tormented. "I do not know you," she cried, hand to brow. "Oh, I do not know you! " For an instant Denton sat stunned. Then he stood up and groaned aloud. He made a strange gesture of appeal towards the remote glass roof of the public way, then turned and went plunging recklessly from one moving platform to another, and vanished amidst the swarms of people going to and fro thereon. The chaperone's eyes followed him, and then she looked at the curious faces about her. "Dear," asked Elizabeth, clasping her hand, and too deeply moved to heed observation, "who was that man? Who _was_ that man? " The chaperone raised her eyebrows. She spoke in a clear, audible voice. "Some half-witted creature. I have never set eyes on him before. " "Never? " "Never, dear. Do not trouble your mind about a thing like this. " * * * * * And soon after this the celebrated hypnotist who dressed in green and yellow had another client. The young man paced his consulting-room, pale and disordered. "I want to forget," he cried. "I _must_ forget. " The hypnotist watched him with quiet eyes, studied his face and clothes and bearing. "To forget anything--pleasure or pain--is to be, by so much--_less_. However, you know your own concern. My fee is high. " "If only I can forget--" "That's easy enough with you. You wish it. I've done much harder things. Quite recently. I hardly expected to do it: the thing was done against the will of the hypnotised person. A love affair too--like yours. A girl. So rest assured. " The young man came and sat beside the hypnotist. His manner was a forced calm. He looked into the hypnotist's eyes. "I will tell you. Of course you will want to know what it is. There was a girl. Her name was Elizabeth Mwres. Well . . . " He stopped. He had seen the instant surprise on the hypnotist's face. In that instant he knew. He stood up. He seemed to dominate the seated figure by his side. He gripped the shoulder of green and gold. For a time he could not find words. "_Give her me back! _" he said at last. "Give her me back! " "What do you mean? " gasped the hypnotist. "Give her me back. " "Give whom? " "Elizabeth Mwres--the girl--" The hypnotist tried to free himself; he rose to his feet. Denton's grip tightened. "Let go! " cried the hypnotist, thrusting an arm against Denton's chest. In a moment the two men were locked in a clumsy wrestle. Neither had the slightest training--for athleticism, except for exhibition and to afford opportunity for betting, had faded out of the earth--but Denton was not only the younger but the stronger of the two. They swayed across the room, and then the hypnotist had gone down under his antagonist. They fell together. . . . Denton leaped to his feet, dismayed at his own fury; but the hypnotist lay still, and suddenly from a little white mark where his forehead had struck a stool shot a hurrying band of red. For a space Denton stood over him irresolute, trembling. A fear of the consequences entered his gently nurtured mind. He turned towards the door. "No," he said aloud, and came back to the middle of the room. Overcoming the instinctive repugnance of one who had seen no act of violence in all his life before, he knelt down beside his antagonist and felt his heart. Then he peered at the wound. He rose quietly and looked about him. He began to see more of the situation. When presently the hypnotist recovered his senses, his head ached severely, his back was against Denton's knees and Denton was sponging his face. The hypnotist did not speak. But presently he indicated by a gesture that in his opinion he had been sponged enough. "Let me get up," he said. "Not yet," said Denton. "You have assaulted me, you scoundrel! " "We are alone," said Denton, "and the door is secure. " There was an interval of thought. "Unless I sponge," said Denton, "your forehead will develop a tremendous bruise. " "You can go on sponging," said the hypnotist sulkily. There was another pause. "We might be in the Stone Age," said the hypnotist. "Violence! Struggle! " "In the Stone Age no man dared to come between man and woman," said Denton. The hypnotist thought again. "What are you going to do? " he asked. "While you were insensible I found the girl's address on your tablets. I did not know it before. I telephoned. She will be here soon. Then--" "She will bring her chaperone. " "That is all right. " "But what--? I don't see. What do you mean to do? " "I looked about for a weapon also. It is an astonishing thing how few weapons there are nowadays. If you consider that in the Stone Age men owned scarcely anything _but_ weapons. I hit at last upon this lamp. I have wrenched off the wires and things, and I hold it so. " He extended it over the hypnotist's shoulders. "With that I can quite easily smash your skull. I _will_--unless you do as I tell you. " "Violence is no remedy," said the hypnotist, quoting from the "Modern Man's Book of Moral Maxims. " "It's an undesirable disease," said Denton. "Well? " "You will tell that chaperone you are going to order the girl to marry that knobby little brute with the red hair and ferrety eyes. I believe that's how things stand? " "Yes--that's how things stand. " "And, pretending to do that, you will restore her memory of me. " "It's unprofessional. " "Look here! If I cannot have that girl I would rather die than not. I don't propose to respect your little fancies. If anything goes wrong you shall not live five minutes. This is a rude makeshift of a weapon, and it may quite conceivably be painful to kill you. But I will. It is unusual, I know, nowadays to do things like this--mainly because there is so little in life that is worth being violent about. " "The chaperone will see you directly she comes--" "I shall stand in that recess. Behind you. " The hypnotist thought. "You are a determined young man," he said, "and only half civilised. I have tried to do my duty to my client, but in this affair you seem likely to get your own way. . . . " "You mean to deal straightly. " "I'm not going to risk having my brains scattered in a petty affair like this. " "And afterwards? " "There is nothing a hypnotist or doctor hates so much as a scandal. I at least am no savage. I am annoyed. . . . But in a day or so I shall bear no malice. . . . " "Thank you. And now that we understand each other, there is no necessity to keep you sitting any longer on the floor. " II--THE VACANT COUNTRY The world, they say, changed more between the year 1800 and the year 1900 than it had done in the previous five hundred years. That century, the nineteenth century, was the dawn of a new epoch in the history of mankind--the epoch of the great cities, the end of the old order of country life. In the beginning of the nineteenth century the majority of mankind still lived upon the countryside, as their way of life had been for countless generations. All over the world they dwelt in little towns and villages then, and engaged either directly in agriculture, or in occupations that were of service to the agriculturist. They travelled rarely, and dwelt close to their work, because swift means of transit had not yet come. The few who travelled went either on foot, or in slow sailing-ships, or by means of jogging horses incapable of more than sixty miles a day. Think of it! --sixty miles a day. Here and there, in those sluggish times, a town grew a little larger than its neighbours, as a port or as a centre of government; but all the towns in the world with more than a hundred thousand inhabitants could be counted on a man's fingers. So it was in the beginning of the nineteenth century. By the end, the invention of railways, telegraphs, steamships, and complex agricultural machinery, had changed all these things: changed them beyond all hope of return. The vast shops, the varied pleasures, the countless conveniences of the larger towns were suddenly possible, and no sooner existed than they were brought into competition with the homely resources of the rural centres. Mankind were drawn to the cities by an overwhelming attraction. The demand for labour fell with the increase of machinery, the local markets were entirely superseded, and there was a rapid growth of the larger centres at the expense of the open country. The flow of population townward was the constant preoccupation of Victorian writers. In Great Britain and New England, in India and China, the same thing was remarked: everywhere a few swollen towns were visibly replacing the ancient order. That this was an inevitable result of improved means of travel and transport--that, given swift means of transit, these things must be--was realised by few; and the most puerile schemes were devised to overcome the mysterious magnetism of the urban centres, and keep the people on the land. Yet the developments of the nineteenth century were only the dawning of the new order. The first great cities of the new time were horribly inconvenient, darkened by smoky fogs, insanitary and noisy; but the discovery of new methods of building, new methods of heating, changed all this. Between 1900 and 2000 the march of change was still more rapid; and between 2000 and 2100 the continually accelerated progress of human invention made the reign of Victoria the Good seem at last an almost incredible vision of idyllic tranquil days. The introduction of railways was only the first step in that development of those means of locomotion which finally revolutionised human life. By the year 2000 railways and roads had vanished together. The railways, robbed of their rails, had become weedy ridges and ditches upon the face of the world; the old roads, strange barbaric tracks of flint and soil, hammered by hand or rolled by rough iron rollers, strewn with miscellaneous filth, and cut by iron hoofs and wheels into ruts and puddles often many inches deep, had been replaced by patent tracks made of a substance called Eadhamite. This Eadhamite--it was named after its patentee--ranks with the invention of printing and steam as one of the epoch-making discoveries of the world's history. When Eadham discovered the substance, he probably thought of it as a mere cheap substitute for india rubber; it cost a few shillings a ton. But you can never tell all an invention will do. It was the genius of a man named Warming that pointed to the possibility of using it, not only for the tires of wheels, but as a road substance, and who organised the enormous network of public ways that speedily covered the world. These public ways were made with longitudinal divisions. On the outer on either side went foot cyclists and conveyances travelling at a less speed than twenty-five miles an hour; in the middle, motors capable of speed up to a hundred; and the inner, Warming (in the face of enormous ridicule) reserved for vehicles travelling at speeds of a hundred miles an hour and upward. For ten years his inner ways were vacant. Before he died they were the most crowded of all, and vast light frameworks with wheels of twenty and thirty feet in diameter, hurled along them at paces that year after year rose steadily towards two hundred miles an hour. And by the time this revolution was accomplished, a parallel revolution had transformed the ever-growing cities. Before the development of practical science the fogs and filth of Victorian times vanished. Electric heating replaced fires (in 2013 the lighting of a fire that did not absolutely consume its own smoke was made an indictable nuisance), and all the city ways, all public squares and places, were covered in with a recently invented glass-like substance. The roofing of London became practically continuous. Certain short-sighted and foolish legislation against tall buildings was abolished, and London, from a squat expanse of petty houses--feebly archaic in design--rose steadily towards the sky. To the municipal responsibility for water, light, and drainage, was added another, and that was ventilation. But to tell of all the changes in human convenience that these two hundred years brought about, to tell of the long foreseen invention of flying, to describe how life in households was steadily supplanted by life in interminable hotels, how at last even those who were still concerned in agricultural work came to live in the towns and to go to and fro to their work every day, to describe how at last in all England only four towns remained, each with many millions of people, and how there were left no inhabited houses in all the countryside: to tell all this would take us far from our story of Denton and his Elizabeth. They had been separated and reunited, and still they could not marry. For Denton--it was his only fault--had no money. Neither had Elizabeth until she was twenty-one, and as yet she was only eighteen. At twenty-one all the property of her mother would come to her, for that was the custom of the time. She did not know that it was possible to anticipate her fortune, and Denton was far too delicate a lover to suggest such a thing. So things stuck hopelessly between them. Elizabeth said that she was very unhappy, and that nobody understood her but Denton, and that when she was away from him she was wretched; and Denton said that his heart longed for her day and night. And they met as often as they could to enjoy the discussion of their sorrows. They met one day at their little seat upon the flying stage. The precise site of this meeting was where in Victorian times the road from Wimbledon came out upon the common. They were, however, five hundred feet above that point. Their seat looked far over London. To convey the appearance of it all to a nineteenth-century reader would have been difficult. One would have had to tell him to think of the Crystal Palace, of the newly built "mammoth" hotels--as those little affairs were called--of the larger railway stations of his time, and to imagine such buildings enlarged to vast proportions and run together and continuous over the whole metropolitan area. If then he was told that this continuous roof-space bore a huge forest of rotating wind-wheels, he would have begun very dimly to appreciate what to these young people was the commonest sight in their lives. To their eyes it had something of the quality of a prison, and they were talking, as they had talked a hundred times before, of how they might escape from it and be at last happy together: escape from it, that is, before the appointed three years were at an end. It was, they both agreed, not only impossible but almost wicked, to wait three years. "Before that," said Denton--and the notes of his voice told of a splendid chest--"_we might both be dead_! " Their vigorous young hands had to grip at this, and then Elizabeth had a still more poignant thought that brought the tears from her wholesome eyes and down her healthy cheeks. "_One_ of us," she said, "_one_ of us might be--" She choked; she could not say the word that is so terrible to the young and happy. Yet to marry and be very poor in the cities of that time was--for any one who had lived pleasantly--a very dreadful thing. In the old agricultural days that had drawn to an end in the eighteenth century there had been a pretty proverb of love in a cottage; and indeed in those days the poor of the countryside had dwelt in flower-covered, diamond-windowed cottages of thatch and plaster, with the sweet air and earth about them, amidst tangled hedges and the song of birds, and with the ever-changing sky overhead. But all this had changed (the change was already beginning in the nineteenth century), and a new sort of life was opening for the poor--in the lower quarters of the city. In the nineteenth century the lower quarters were still beneath the sky; they were areas of land on clay or other unsuitable soil, liable to floods or exposed to the smoke of more fortunate districts, insufficiently supplied with water, and as insanitary as the great fear of infectious diseases felt by the wealthier classes permitted. In the twenty-second century, however, the growth of the city storey above storey, and the coalescence of buildings, had led to a different arrangement. The prosperous people lived in a vast series of sumptuous hotels in the upper storeys and halls of the city fabric; the industrial population dwelt beneath in the tremendous ground-floor and basement, so to speak, of the place. In the refinement of life and manners these lower classes differed little from their ancestors, the East-enders of Queen Victoria's time; but they had developed a distinct dialect of their own. In these under ways they lived and died, rarely ascending to the surface except when work took them there. Since for most of them this was the sort of life to which they had been born, they found no great misery in such circumstances; but for people like Denton and Elizabeth, such a plunge would have seemed more terrible than death. "And yet what else is there? " asked Elizabeth. Denton professed not to know. Apart from his own feeling of delicacy, he was not sure how Elizabeth would like the idea of borrowing on the strength of her expectations. The passage from London to Paris even, said Elizabeth, was beyond their means; and in Paris, as in any other city in the world, life would be just as costly and impossible as in London. Well might Denton cry aloud: "If only we had lived in those days, dearest! If only we had lived in the past! " For to their eyes even nineteenth-century Whitechapel was seen through a mist of romance. "Is there _nothing_? " cried Elizabeth, suddenly weeping. "Must we really wait for those three long years? Fancy _three_ years--six-and-thirty months! " The human capacity for patience had not grown with the ages. Then suddenly Denton was moved to speak of something that had already flickered across his mind. He had hit upon it at last. It seemed to him so wild a suggestion that he made it only half seriously. But to put a thing into words has ever a way of making it seem more real and possible than it seemed before. And so it was with him. "Suppose," he said, "we went into the country? " She looked at him to see if he was serious in proposing such an adventure. "The country? " "Yes--beyond there. Beyond the hills. " "How could we live?

" she said. "_Where_ could we live? " "It is not impossible," he said. "People used to live in the country. " "But then there were houses. " "There are the ruins of villages and towns now. On the clay lands they are gone, of course. But they are still left on the grazing land, because it does not pay the Food Company to remove them. I know that--for certain. Besides, one sees them from the flying machines, you know. Well, we might shelter in some one of these, and repair it with our hands. Do you know, the thing is not so wild as it seems. Some of the men who go out every day to look after the crops and herds might be paid to bring us food. . . . " She stood in front of him. "How strange it would be if one really could. . . . " "Why not? " "But no one dares. " "That is no reason. " "It would be--oh! it would be so romantic and strange. If only it were possible. " "Why not possible? " "There are so many things. Think of all the things we have, things that we should miss. " "Should we miss them? After all, the life we lead is very unreal--very artificial. " He began to expand his idea, and as he warmed to his exposition the fantastic quality of his first proposal faded away. She thought. "But I have heard of prowlers--escaped criminals. " He nodded. He hesitated over his answer because he thought it sounded boyish. He blushed. "I could get some one I know to make me a sword. " She looked at him with enthusiasm growing in her eyes. She had heard of swords, had seen one in a museum; she thought of those ancient days when men wore them as a common thing. His suggestion seemed an impossible dream to her, and perhaps for that reason she was eager for more detail. And inventing for the most part as he went along, he told her, how they might live in the country as the old-world people had done. With every detail her interest grew, for she was one of those girls for whom romance and adventure have a fascination. His suggestion seemed, I say, an impossible dream to her on that day, but the next day they talked about it again, and it was strangely less impossible. "At first we should take food," said Denton. "We could carry food for ten or twelve days. " It was an age of compact artificial nourishment, and such a provision had none of the unwieldy suggestion it would have had in the nineteenth century. "But--until our house," she asked--"until it was ready, where should we sleep? " "It is summer. " "But . . . What do you mean? " "There was a time when there were no houses in the world; when all mankind slept always in the open air. " "But for us! The emptiness! No walls--no ceiling! " "Dear," he said, "in London you have many beautiful ceilings. Artists paint them and stud them with lights. But I have seen a ceiling more beautiful than any in London. . . . " "But where? " "It is the ceiling under which we two would be alone. . . . " "You mean. . . ? " "Dear," he said, "it is something the world has forgotten. It is Heaven and all the host of stars. " Each time they talked the thing seemed more possible and more desirable to them. In a week or so it was quite possible. Another week, and it was the inevitable thing they had to do. A great enthusiasm for the country seized hold of them and possessed them. The sordid tumult of the town, they said, overwhelmed them. They marvelled that this simple way out of their troubles had never come upon them before. One morning near Midsummer-day, there was a new minor official upon the flying stage, and Denton's place was to know him no more. Our two young people had secretly married, and were going forth manfully out of the city in which they and their ancestors before them had lived all their days. She wore a new dress of white cut in an old-fashioned pattern, and he had a bundle of provisions strapped athwart his back, and in his hand he carried--rather shame-facedly it is true, and under his purple cloak--an implement of archaic form, a cross-hilted thing of tempered steel. Imagine that going forth! In their days the sprawling suburbs of Victorian times with their vile roads, petty houses, foolish little gardens of shrub and geranium, and all their futile, pretentious privacies, had disappeared: the towering buildings of the new age, the mechanical ways, the electric and water mains, all came to an end together, like a wall, like a cliff, near four hundred feet in height, abrupt and sheer. All about the city spread the carrot, swede, and turnip fields of the Food Company, vegetables that were the basis of a thousand varied foods, and weeds and hedgerow tangles had been utterly extirpated. The incessant expense of weeding that went on year after year in the petty, wasteful and barbaric farming of the ancient days, the Food Company had economised for ever more by a campaign of extermination. Here and there, however, neat rows of bramble standards and apple trees with whitewashed stems, intersected the fields, and at places groups of gigantic teazles reared their favoured spikes. Here and there huge agricultural machines hunched under waterproof covers. The mingled waters of the Wey and Mole and Wandle ran in rectangular channels; and wherever a gentle elevation of the ground permitted a fountain of deodorised sewage distributed its benefits athwart the land and made a rainbow of the sunlight. By a great archway in that enormous city wall emerged the Eadhamite road to Portsmouth, swarming in the morning sunshine with an enormous traffic bearing the blue-clad servants of the Food Company to their toil. A rushing traffic, beside which they seemed two scarce-moving dots. Along the outer tracks hummed and rattled the tardy little old-fashioned motors of such as had duties within twenty miles or so of the city; the inner ways were filled with vaster mechanisms--swift monocycles bearing a score of men, lank multicycles, quadricycles sagging with heavy loads, empty gigantic produce carts that would come back again filled before the sun was setting, all with throbbing engines and noiseless wheels and a perpetual wild melody of horns and gongs. Along the very verge of the outermost way our young people went in silence, newly wed and oddly shy of one another's company. Many were the things shouted to them as they tramped along, for in 2100 a foot-passenger on an English road was almost as strange a sight as a motor car would have been in 1800. But they went on with steadfast eyes into the country, paying no heed to such cries. Before them in the south rose the Downs, blue at first, and as they came nearer changing to green, surmounted by the row of gigantic wind-wheels that supplemented the wind-wheels upon the roof-spaces of the city, and broken and restless with the long morning shadows of those whirling vanes. By midday they had come so near that they could see here and there little patches of pallid dots--the sheep the Meat Department of the Food Company owned. In another hour they had passed the clay and the root crops and the single fence that hedged them in, and the prohibition against trespass no longer held: the levelled roadway plunged into a cutting with all its traffic, and they could leave it and walk over the greensward and up the open hillside. Never had these children of the latter days been together in such a lonely place. They were both very hungry and footsore--for walking was a rare exercise--and presently they sat down on the weedless, close-cropped grass, and looked back for the first time at the city from which they had come, shining wide and splendid in the blue haze of the valley of the Thames. Elizabeth was a little afraid of the unenclosed sheep away up the slope--she had never been near big unrestrained animals before--but Denton reassured her. And overhead a white-winged bird circled in the blue. They talked but little until they had eaten, and then their tongues were loosened. He spoke of the happiness that was now certainly theirs, of the folly of not breaking sooner out of that magnificent prison of latter-day life, of the old romantic days that had passed from the world for ever. And then he became boastful. He took up the sword that lay on the ground beside him, and she took it from his hand and ran a tremulous finger along the blade. "And you could," she said, "_you_--could raise this and strike a man? " "Why not? If there were need. " "But," she said, "it seems so horrible. It would slash. . . . There would be"--her voice sank,--"_blood_. " "In the old romances you have read often enough . . . " "Oh, I know: in those--yes. But that is different. One knows it is not blood, but just a sort of red ink. . . . And _you_--killing! " She looked at him doubtfully, and then handed him back the sword. After they had rested and eaten, they rose up and went on their way towards the hills. They passed quite close to a huge flock of sheep, who stared and bleated at their unaccustomed figures. She had never seen sheep before, and she shivered to think such gentle things must needs be slain for food. A sheep-dog barked from a distance, and then a shepherd appeared amidst the supports of the wind-wheels, and came down towards them. When he drew near he called out asking whither they were going. Denton hesitated, and told him briefly that they sought some ruined house among the Downs, in which they might live together. He tried to speak in an off-hand manner, as though it was a usual thing to do. The man stared incredulously. "Have you _done_ anything? " he asked. "Nothing," said Denton. "Only we don't want to live in a city any longer. Why should we live in cities? " The shepherd stared more incredulously than ever. "You can't live here," he said. "We mean to try. " The shepherd stared from one to the other. "You'll go back to-morrow," he said. "It looks pleasant enough in the sunlight. . . . Are you sure you've done nothing? We shepherds are not such _great_ friends of the police. " Denton looked at him steadfastly. "No," he said. "But we are too poor to live in the city, and we can't bear the thought of wearing clothes of blue canvas and doing drudgery. We are going to live a simple life here, like the people of old. " The shepherd was a bearded man with a thoughtful face. He glanced at Elizabeth's fragile beauty. "_They_ had simple minds," he said. "So have we," said Denton. The shepherd smiled. "If you go along here," he said, "along the crest beneath the wind-wheels, you will see a heap of mounds and ruins on your right-hand side. That was once a town called Epsom. There are no houses there, and the bricks have been used for a sheep pen. Go on, and another heap on the edge of the root-land is Leatherhead; and then the hill turns away along the border of a valley, and there are woods of beech. Keep along the crest. You will come to quite wild places. In some parts, in spite of all the weeding that is done, ferns and bluebells and other such useless plants are growing still. And through it all underneath the wind-wheels runs a straight lane paved with stones, a roadway of the Romans two thousand years old. Go to the right of that, down into the valley and follow it along by the banks of the river. You come presently to a street of houses, many with the roofs still sound upon them. There you may find shelter. " They thanked him. "But it's a quiet place. There is no light after dark there, and I have heard tell of robbers. It is lonely. Nothing happens there. The phonographs of the story-tellers, the kinematograph entertainments, the news machines--none of them are to be found there. If you are hungry there is no food, if you are ill no doctor . . . " He stopped. "We shall try it," said Denton, moving to go on. Then a thought struck him, and he made an agreement with the shepherd, and learnt where they might find him, to buy and bring them anything of which they stood in need, out of the city. And in the evening they came to the deserted village, with its houses that seemed so small and odd to them: they found it golden in the glory of the sunset, and desolate and still. They went from one deserted house to another, marvelling at their quaint simplicity, and debating which they should choose. And at last, in a sunlit corner of a room that had lost its outer wall, they came upon a wild flower, a little flower of blue that the weeders of the Food Company had overlooked. That house they decided upon; but they did not remain in it long that night, because they were resolved to feast upon nature. And moreover the houses became very gaunt and shadowy after the sunlight had faded out of the sky. So after they had rested a little time they went to the crest of the hill again to see with their own eyes the silence of heaven set with stars, about which the old poets had had so many things to tell. It was a wonderful sight, and Denton talked like the stars, and when they went down the hill at last the sky was pale with dawn. They slept but little, and in the morning when they woke a thrush was singing in a tree. So these young people of the twenty-second century began their exile. That morning they were very busy exploring the resources of this new home in which they were going to live the simple life. They did not explore very fast or very far, because they went everywhere hand-in-hand; but they found the beginnings of some furniture. Beyond the village was a store of winter fodder for the sheep of the Food Company, and Denton dragged great armfuls to the house to make a bed; and in several of the houses were old fungus-eaten chairs and tables--rough, barbaric, clumsy furniture, it seemed to them, and made of wood. They repeated many of the things they had said on the previous day, and towards evening they found another flower, a harebell. In the late afternoon some Company shepherds went down the river valley riding on a big multicycle; but they hid from them, because their presence, Elizabeth said, seemed to spoil the romance of this old-world place altogether. In this fashion they lived a week. For all that week the days were cloudless, and the nights nights of starry glory, that were invaded each a little more by a crescent moon. Yet something of the first splendour of their coming faded--faded imperceptibly day after day; Denton's eloquence became fitful, and lacked fresh topics of inspiration; the fatigue of their long march from London told in a certain stiffness of the limbs, and each suffered from a slight unaccountable cold. Moreover, Denton became aware of unoccupied time. In one place among the carelessly heaped lumber of the old times he found a rust-eaten spade, and with this he made a fitful attack on the razed and grass-grown garden--though he had nothing to plant or sow. He returned to Elizabeth with a sweat-streaming face, after half an hour of such work. "There were giants in those days," he said, not understanding what wont and training will do. And their walk that day led them along the hills until they could see the city shimmering far away in the valley. "I wonder how things are going on there," he said. And then came a change in the weather. "Come out and see the clouds," she cried; and behold! they were a sombre purple in the north and east, streaming up to ragged edges at the zenith. And as they went up the hill these hurrying streamers blotted out the sunset. Suddenly the wind set the beech-trees swaying and whispering, and Elizabeth shivered. And then far away the lightning flashed, flashed like a sword that is drawn suddenly, and the distant thunder marched about the sky, and even as they stood astonished, pattering upon them came the first headlong raindrops of the storm. In an instant the last streak of sunset was hidden by a falling curtain of hail, and the lightning flashed again, and the voice of the thunder roared louder, and all about them the world scowled dark and strange. Seizing hands, these children of the city ran down the hill to their home, in infinite astonishment. And ere they reached it, Elizabeth was weeping with dismay, and the darkling ground about them was white and brittle and active with the pelting hail. Then began a strange and terrible night for them. For the first time in their civilised lives they were in absolute darkness; they were wet and cold and shivering, all about them hissed the hail, and through the long neglected ceilings of the derelict home came noisy spouts of water and formed pools and rivulets on the creaking floors. As the gusts of the storm struck the worn-out building, it groaned and shuddered, and now a mass of plaster from the wall would slide and smash, and now some loosened tile would rattle down the roof and crash into the empty greenhouse below. Elizabeth shuddered, and was still; Denton wrapped his gay and flimsy city cloak about her, and so they crouched in the darkness. And ever the thunder broke louder and nearer, and ever more lurid flashed the lightning, jerking into a momentary gaunt clearness the steaming, dripping room in which they sheltered. Never before had they been in the open air save when the sun was shining. All their time had been spent in the warm and airy ways and halls and rooms of the latter-day city. It was to them that night as if they were in some other world, some disordered chaos of stress and tumult, and almost beyond hoping that they should ever see the city ways again. The storm seemed to last interminably, until at last they dozed between the thunderclaps, and then very swiftly it fell and ceased. And as the last patter of the rain died away they heard an unfamiliar sound. "What is that? " cried Elizabeth. It came again. It was the barking of dogs. It drove down the desert lane and passed; and through the window, whitening the wall before them and throwing upon it the shadow of the window-frame and of a tree in black silhouette, shone the light of the waxing moon. . . . Just as the pale dawn was drawing the things about them into sight, the fitful barking of dogs came near again, and stopped. They listened. After a pause they heard the quick pattering of feet seeking round the house, and short, half-smothered barks. Then again everything was still. "Ssh! " whispered Elizabeth, and pointed to the door of their room. Denton went half-way towards the door, and stood listening. He came back with a face of affected unconcern. "They must be the sheep-dogs of the Food Company," he said. "They will do us no harm. " He sat down again beside her. "What a night it has been! " he said, to hide how keenly he was listening. "I don't like dogs," answered Elizabeth, after a long silence. "Dogs never hurt any one," said Denton. "In the old days--in the nineteenth century--everybody had a dog. " "There was a romance I heard once. A dog killed a man. " "Not this sort of dog," said Denton confidently. "Some of those romances--are exaggerated. " Suddenly a half bark and a pattering up the staircase; the sound of panting. Denton sprang to his feet and drew the sword out of the damp straw upon which they had been lying. Then in the doorway appeared a gaunt sheep-dog, and halted there.

Behind it stared another. For an instant man and brute faced each other, hesitating. Then Denton, being ignorant of dogs, made a sharp step forward. "Go away," he said, with a clumsy motion of his sword. The dog started and growled. Denton stopped sharply. "Good dog! " he said. The growling jerked into a bark. "Good dog! " said Denton. The second dog growled and barked. A third out of sight down the staircase took up the barking also. Outside others gave tongue--a large number it seemed to Denton. "This is annoying," said Denton, without taking his eye off the brutes before him. "Of course the shepherds won't come out of the city for hours yet. Naturally these dogs don't quite make us out. " "I can't hear," shouted Elizabeth. She stood up and came to him. Denton tried again, but the barking still drowned his voice. The sound had a curious effect upon his blood. Odd disused emotions began to stir; his face changed as he shouted. He tried again; the barking seemed to mock him, and one dog danced a pace forward, bristling. Suddenly he turned, and uttering certain words in the dialect of the underways, words incomprehensible to Elizabeth, he made for the dogs. There was a sudden cessation of the barking, a growl and a snapping. Elizabeth saw the snarling head of the foremost dog, its white teeth and retracted ears, and the flash of the thrust blade. The brute leapt into the air and was flung back. Then Denton, with a shout, was driving the dogs before him. The sword flashed above his head with a sudden new freedom of gesture, and then he vanished down the staircase. She made six steps to follow him, and on the landing there was blood. She stopped, and hearing the tumult of dogs and Denton's shouts pass out of the house, ran to the window. Nine wolfish sheep-dogs were scattering, one writhed before the porch; and Denton, tasting that strange delight of combat that slumbers still in the blood of even the most civilised man, was shouting and running across the garden space. And then she saw something that for a moment he did not see. The dogs circled round this way and that, and came again. They had him in the open. In an instant she divined the situation. She would have called to him. For a moment she felt sick and helpless, and then, obeying a strange impulse, she gathered up her white skirt and ran downstairs. In the hall was the rusting spade. That was it! She seized it and ran out. She came none too soon. One dog rolled before him, well-nigh slashed in half; but a second had him by the thigh, a third gripped his collar behind, and a fourth had the blade of the sword between its teeth, tasting its own blood. He parried the leap of a fifth with his left arm. It might have been the first century instead of the twenty-second, so far as she was concerned. All the gentleness of her eighteen years of city life vanished before this primordial need. The spade smote hard and sure, and cleft a dog's skull. Another, crouching for a spring, yelped with dismay at this unexpected antagonist, and rushed aside. Two wasted precious moments on the binding of a feminine skirt. The collar of Denton's cloak tore and parted as he staggered back; and that dog too felt the spade, and ceased to trouble him. He sheathed his sword in the brute at his thigh. "To the wall! " cried Elizabeth; and in three seconds the fight was at an end, and our young people stood side by side, while a remnant of five dogs, with ears and tails of disaster, fled shamefully from the stricken field. For a moment they stood panting and victorious, and then Elizabeth, dropping her spade, covered her face, and sank to the ground in a paroxysm of weeping. Denton looked about him, thrust the point of his sword into the ground so that it was at hand, and stooped to comfort her. * * * * * At last their more tumultuous emotions subsided, and they could talk again. She leant upon the wall, and he sat upon it so that he could keep an eye open for any returning dogs. Two, at any rate, were up on the hillside and keeping up a vexatious barking. She was tear-stained, but not very wretched now, because for half an hour he had been repeating that she was brave and had saved his life. But a new fear was growing in her mind. "They are the dogs of the Food Company," she said. "There will be trouble. " "I am afraid so. Very likely they will prosecute us for trespass. " A pause. "In the old times," he said, "this sort of thing happened day after day. " "Last night! " she said. "I could not live through another such night. " He looked at her. Her face was pale for want of sleep, and drawn and haggard. He came to a sudden resolution. "We must go back," he said. She looked at the dead dogs, and shivered. "We cannot stay here," she said. "We must go back," he repeated, glancing over his shoulder to see if the enemy kept their distance. "We have been happy for a time. . . . But the world is too civilised. Ours is the age of cities. More of this will kill us. " "But what are we to do? How can we live there? " Denton hesitated. His heel kicked against the wall on which he sat. "It's a thing I haven't mentioned before," he said, and coughed; "but . . . " "Yes? " "You could raise money on your expectations," he said. "Could I? " she said eagerly. "Of course you could. What a child you are! " She stood up, and her face was bright. "Why did you not tell me before? " she asked. "And all this time we have been here! " He looked at her for a moment, and smiled. Then the smile vanished. "I thought it ought to come from you," he said. "I didn't like to ask for your money. And besides--at first I thought this would be rather fine. " There was a pause. "It _has_ been fine," he said; and glanced once more over his shoulder. "Until all this began. " "Yes," she said, "those first days. The first three days. " They looked for a space into one another's faces, and then Denton slid down from the wall and took her hand. "To each generation," he said, "the life of its time. I see it all plainly now. In the city--that is the life to which we were born. To live in any other fashion . . . Coming here was a dream, and this--is the awakening. " "It was a pleasant dream," she said,--"in the beginning. " For a long space neither spoke. "If we would reach the city before the shepherds come here, we must start," said Denton. "We must get our food out of the house and eat as we go. " Denton glanced about him again, and, giving the dead dogs a wide berth, they walked across the garden space and into the house together. They found the wallet with their food, and descended the blood-stained stairs again. In the hall Elizabeth stopped. "One minute," she said. "There is something here. " She led the way into the room in which that one little blue flower was blooming. She stooped to it, she touched it with her hand. "I want it," she said; and then, "I cannot take it. . . . " Impulsively she stooped and kissed its petals. Then silently, side by side, they went across the empty garden-space into the old high road, and set their faces resolutely towards the distant city--towards the complex mechanical city of those latter days, the city that had swallowed up mankind. III--THE WAYS OF THE CITY Prominent if not paramount among world-changing inventions in the history of man is that series of contrivances in locomotion that began with the railway and ended for a century or more with the motor and the patent road. That these contrivances, together with the device of limited liability joint stock companies and the supersession of agricultural labourers by skilled men with ingenious machinery, would necessarily concentrate mankind in cities of unparallelled magnitude and work an entire revolution in human life, became, after the event, a thing so obvious that it is a matter of astonishment it was not more clearly anticipated. Yet that any steps should be taken to anticipate the miseries such a revolution might entail does not appear even to have been suggested; and the idea that the moral prohibitions and sanctions, the privileges and concessions, the conception of property and responsibility, of comfort and beauty, that had rendered the mainly agricultural states of the past prosperous and happy, would fail in the rising torrent of novel opportunities and novel stimulations, never seems to have entered the nineteenth-century mind. That a citizen, kindly and fair in his ordinary life, could as a shareholder become almost murderously greedy; that commercial methods that were reasonable and honourable on the old-fashioned countryside, should on an enlarged scale be deadly and overwhelming; that ancient charity was modern pauperisation, and ancient employment modern sweating; that, in fact, a revision and enlargement of the duties and rights of man had become urgently necessary, were things it could not entertain, nourished as it was on an archaic system of education and profoundly retrospective and legal in all its habits of thought. It was known that the accumulation of men in cities involved unprecedented dangers of pestilence; there was an energetic development of sanitation; but that the diseases of gambling and usury, of luxury and tyranny should become endemic, and produce horrible consequences was beyond the scope of nineteenth-century thought. And so, as if it were some inorganic process, practically unhindered by the creative will of man, the growth of the swarming unhappy cities that mark the twenty-first century accomplished itself. The new society was divided into three main classes. At the summit slumbered the property owner, enormously rich by accident rather than design, potent save for the will and aim, the last _avatar_ of Hamlet in the world. Below was the enormous multitude of workers employed by the gigantic companies that monopolised control; and between these two the dwindling middle class, officials of innumerable sorts, foremen, managers, the medical, legal, artistic, and scholastic classes, and the minor rich, a middle class whose members led a life of insecure luxury and precarious speculation amidst the movements of the great managers. Already the love story and the marrying of two persons of this middle class have been told: how they overcame the obstacles between them, and how they tried the simple old-fashioned way of living on the countryside and came back speedily enough into the city of London. Denton had no means, so Elizabeth borrowed money on the securities that her father Mwres held in trust for her until she was one-and-twenty. The rate of interest she paid was of course high, because of the uncertainty of her security, and the arithmetic of lovers is often sketchy and optimistic. Yet they had very glorious times after that return. They determined they would not go to a Pleasure city nor waste their days rushing through the air from one part of the world to the other, for in spite of one disillusionment, their tastes were still old-fashioned. They furnished their little room with quaint old Victorian furniture, and found a shop on the forty-second floor in Seventh Way where printed books of the old sort were still to be bought. It was their pet affectation to read print instead of hearing phonographs. And when presently there came a sweet little girl, to unite them further if it were possible, Elizabeth would not send it to a _creche_, as the custom was, but insisted on nursing it at home. The rent of their apartments was raised on account of this singular proceeding, but that they did not mind. It only meant borrowing a little more. Presently Elizabeth was of age, and Denton had a business interview with her father that was not agreeable. An exceedingly disagreeable interview with their money-lender followed, from which he brought home a white face. On his return Elizabeth had to tell him of a new and marvellous intonation of "Goo" that their daughter had devised, but Denton was inattentive. In the midst, just as she was at the cream of her description, he interrupted. "How much money do you think we have left, now that everything is settled? " She stared and stopped her appreciative swaying of the Goo genius that had accompanied her description. "You don't mean. . . ? " "Yes," he answered. "Ever so much. We have been wild. It's the interest. Or something. And the shares you had, slumped. Your father did not mind. Said it was not his business, after what had happened. He's going to marry again. . . . Well--we have scarcely a thousand left! " "Only a thousand? " "Only a thousand. " And Elizabeth sat down. For a moment she regarded him with a white face, then her eyes went about the quaint, old-fashioned room, with its middle Victorian furniture and genuine oleographs, and rested at last on the little lump of humanity within her arms. Denton glanced at her and stood downcast. Then he swung round on his heel and walked up and down very rapidly. "I must get something to do," he broke out presently. "I am an idle scoundrel. I ought to have thought of this before. I have been a selfish fool. I wanted to be with you all day. . . . " He stopped, looking at her white face. Suddenly he came and kissed her and the little face that nestled against her breast. "It's all right, dear," he said, standing over her; "you won't be lonely now--now Dings is beginning to talk to you. And I can soon get something to do, you know. Soon. . . . Easily. . . . It's only a shock at first. But it will come all right. It's sure to come right. I will go out again as soon as I have rested, and find what can be done. For the present it's hard to think of anything. . . . " "It would be hard to leave these rooms," said Elizabeth; "but----" "There won't be any need of that--trust me. " "They are expensive. " Denton waved that aside. He began talking of the work he could do. He was not very explicit what it would be; but he was quite sure that there was something to keep them comfortably in the happy middle class, whose way of life was the only one they knew. "There are three-and-thirty million people in London," he said: "some of them _must_ have need of me. " "Some _must_. " "The trouble is . . . Well--Bindon, that brown little old man your father wanted you to marry. He's an important person. . . . I can't go back to my flying-stage work, because he is now a Commissioner of the Flying Stage Clerks. " "I didn't know that," said Elizabeth. "He was made that in the last few weeks . . . or things would be easy enough, for they liked me on the flying stage. But there's dozens of other things to be done--dozens. Don't you worry, dear. I'll rest a little while, and then we'll dine, and then I'll start on my rounds. I know lots of people--lots. " So they rested, and then they went to the public dining-room and dined, and then he started on his search for employment. But they soon realised that in the matter of one convenience the world was just as badly off as it had ever been, and that was a nice, secure, honourable, remunerative employment, leaving ample leisure for the private life, and demanding no special ability, no violent exertion nor risk, and no sacrifice of any sort for its attainment. He evolved a number of brilliant projects, and spent many days hurrying from one part of the enormous city to another in search of influential friends; and all his influential friends were glad to see him, and very sanguine until it came to definite proposals, and then they became guarded and vague. He would part with them coldly, and think over their behaviour, and get irritated on his way back, and stop at some telephone office and spend money on an animated but unprofitable quarrel. And as the days passed, he got so worried and irritated that even to seem kind and careless before Elizabeth cost him an effort--as she, being a loving woman, perceived very clearly. After an extremely complex preface one day, she helped him out with a painful suggestion. He had expected her to weep and give way to despair when it came to selling all their joyfully bought early Victorian treasures, their quaint objects of art, their antimacassars, bead mats, repp curtains, veneered furniture, gold-framed steel engravings and pencil drawings, wax flowers under shades, stuffed birds, and all sorts of choice old things; but it was she who made the proposal. The sacrifice seemed to fill her with pleasure, and so did the idea of shifting to apartments ten or twelve floors lower in another hotel. "So long as Dings is with us, nothing matters," she said. "It's all experience. " So he kissed her, said she was braver than when she fought the sheep-dogs, called her Boadicea, and abstained very carefully from reminding her that they would have to pay a considerably higher rent on account of the little voice with which Dings greeted the perpetual uproar of the city. His idea had been to get Elizabeth out of the way when it came to selling the absurd furniture about which their affections were twined and tangled; but when it came to the sale it was Elizabeth who haggled with the dealer while Denton went about the running ways of the city, white and sick with sorrow and the fear of what was still to come. When they moved into their sparsely furnished pink-and-white apartments in a cheap hotel, there came an outbreak of furious energy on his part, and then nearly a week of lethargy during which he sulked at home. Through those days Elizabeth shone like a star, and at the end Denton's misery found a vent in tears. And then he went out into the city ways again, and--to his utter amazement--found some work to do. His standard of employment had fallen steadily until at last it had reached the lowest level of independent workers. At first he had aspired to some high official position in the great Flying or Wind Vane or Water Companies, or to an appointment on one of the General Intelligence Organisations that had replaced newspapers, or to some professional partnership, but those were the dreams of the beginning. From that he had passed to speculation, and three hundred gold "lions" out of Elizabeth's thousand had vanished one evening in the share market. Now he was glad his good looks secured him a trial in the position of salesman to the Suzannah Hat Syndicate, a Syndicate, dealing in ladies' caps, hair decorations, and hats--for though the city was completely covered in, ladies still wore extremely elaborate and beautiful hats at the theatres and places of public worship. It would have been amusing if one could have confronted a Regent Street shopkeeper of the nineteenth century with the development of his establishment in which Denton's duties lay. Nineteenth Way was still sometimes called Regent Street, but it was now a street of moving platforms and nearly eight hundred feet wide.

The middle space was immovable and gave access by staircases descending into subterranean ways to the houses on either side. Right and left were an ascending series of continuous platforms each of which travelled about five miles an hour faster than the one internal to it, so that one could step from platform to platform until one reached the swiftest outer way and so go about the city. The establishment of the Suzannah Hat Syndicate projected a vast _façade_ upon the outer way, sending out overhead at either end an overlapping series of huge white glass screens, on which gigantic animated pictures of the faces of well-known beautiful living women wearing novelties in hats were thrown. A dense crowd was always collected in the stationary central way watching a vast kinematograph which displayed the changing fashion. The whole front of the building was in perpetual chromatic change, and all down the _façade_--four hundred feet it measured--and all across the street of moving ways, laced and winked and glittered in a thousand varieties of colour and lettering the inscription-- SUZANNA! 'ETS! SUZANNA! 'ETS! A broadside of gigantic phonographs drowned all conversation in the moving way and roared "_hats_" at the passer-by, while far down the street and up, other batteries counselled the public to "walk down for Suzannah," and queried, "Why _don't_ you buy the girl a hat? " For the benefit of those who chanced to be deaf--and deafness was not uncommon in the London of that age, inscriptions of all sizes were thrown from the roof above upon the moving platforms themselves, and on one's hand or on the bald head of the man before one, or on a lady's shoulders, or in a sudden jet of flame before one's feet, the moving finger wrote in unanticipated letters of fire "_'ets r chip t'de_," or simply "_'ets_. " And spite of all these efforts so high was the pitch at which the city lived, so trained became one's eyes and ears to ignore all sorts of advertisement, that many a citizen had passed that place thousands of times and was still unaware of the existence of the Suzannah Hat Syndicate. To enter the building one descended the staircase in the middle way and walked through a public passage in which pretty girls promenaded, girls who were willing to wear a ticketed hat for a small fee. The entrance chamber was a large hall in which wax heads fashionably adorned rotated gracefully upon pedestals, and from this one passed through a cash office to an interminable series of little rooms, each room with its salesman, its three or four hats and pins, its mirrors, its kinematographs, telephones and hat slides in communication with the central depôt, its comfortable lounge and tempting refreshments. A salesman in such an apartment did Denton now become. It was his business to attend to any of the incessant stream of ladies who chose to stop with him, to behave as winningly as possible, to offer refreshment, to converse on any topic the possible customer chose, and to guide the conversation dexterously but not insistently towards hats. He was to suggest trying on various types of hat and to show by his manner and bearing, but without any coarse flattery, the enhanced impression made by the hats he wished to sell. He had several mirrors, adapted by various subtleties of curvature and tint to different types of face and complexion, and much depended on the proper use of these. Denton flung himself at these curious and not very congenial duties with a good will and energy that would have amazed him a year before; but all to no purpose. The Senior Manageress, who had selected him for appointment and conferred various small marks of favour upon him, suddenly changed in her manner, declared for no assignable cause that he was stupid, and dismissed him at the end of six weeks of salesmanship. So Denton had to resume his ineffectual search for employment. This second search did not last very long. Their money was at the ebb. To eke it out a little longer they resolved to part with their darling Dings, and took that small person to one of the public _creches_ that abounded in the city. That was the common use of the time. The industrial emancipation of women, the correlated disorganisation of the secluded "home," had rendered _creches_ a necessity for all but very rich and exceptionally-minded people. Therein children encountered hygienic and educational advantages impossible without such organisation. _Creches_ were of all classes and types of luxury, down to those of the Labour Company, where children were taken on credit, to be redeemed in labour as they grew up. But both Denton and Elizabeth being, as I have explained, strange old-fashioned young people, full of nineteenth-century ideas, hated these convenient _creches_ exceedingly and at last took their little daughter to one with extreme reluctance. They were received by a motherly person in a uniform who was very brisk and prompt in her manner until Elizabeth wept at the mention of parting from her child. The motherly person, after a brief astonishment at this unusual emotion, changed suddenly into a creature of hope and comfort, and so won Elizabeth's gratitude for life. They were conducted into a vast room presided over by several nurses and with hundreds of two-year-old girls grouped about the toy-covered floor. This was the Two-year-old Room. Two nurses came forward, and Elizabeth watched their bearing towards Dings with jealous eyes. They were kind--it was clear they felt kind, and yet . . . Presently it was time to go. By that time Dings was happily established in a corner, sitting on the floor with her arms filled, and herself, indeed, for the most part hidden by an unaccustomed wealth of toys. She seemed careless of all human relationships as her parents receded. They were forbidden to upset her by saying good-bye. At the door Elizabeth glanced back for the last time, and behold! Dings had dropped her new wealth and was standing with a dubious face. Suddenly Elizabeth gasped, and the motherly nurse pushed her forward and closed the door. "You can come again soon, dear," she said, with unexpected tenderness in her eyes. For a moment Elizabeth stared at her with a blank face. "You can come again soon," repeated the nurse. Then with a swift transition Elizabeth was weeping in the nurse's arms. So it was that Denton's heart was won also. And three weeks after our young people were absolutely penniless, and only one way lay open. They must go to the Labour Company. So soon as the rent was a week overdue their few remaining possessions were seized, and with scant courtesy they were shown the way out of the hotel. Elizabeth walked along the passage towards the staircase that ascended to the motionless middle way, too dulled by misery to think. Denton stopped behind to finish a stinging and unsatisfactory argument with the hotel porter, and then came hurrying after her, flushed and hot. He slackened his pace as he overtook her, and together they ascended to the middle way in silence. There they found two seats vacant and sat down. "We need not go there--_yet_? " said Elizabeth. "No--not till we are hungry," said Denton. They said no more. Elizabeth's eyes sought a resting-place and found none. To the right roared the eastward ways, to the left the ways in the opposite direction, swarming with people. Backwards and forwards along a cable overhead rushed a string of gesticulating men, dressed like clowns, each marked on back and chest with one gigantic letter, so that altogether they spelt out: "PURKINJE'S DIGESTIVE PILLS. " An anæmic little woman in horrible coarse blue canvas pointed a little girl to one of this string of hurrying advertisements. "Look! " said the anæmic woman: "there's yer father. " "Which? " said the little girl. "'Im wiv his nose coloured red," said the anæmic woman. The little girl began to cry, and Elizabeth could have cried too. "Ain't 'e kickin' 'is legs! --_just! _" said the anæmic woman in blue, trying to make things bright again. "Looky--_now! _" On the _façade_ to the right a huge intensely bright disc of weird colour span incessantly, and letters of fire that came and went spelt out-- "DOES THIS MAKE YOU GIDDY? " Then a pause, followed by "TAKE A PURKINJE'S DIGESTIVE PILL. " A vast and desolating braying began. "If you love Swagger Literature, put your telephone on to Bruggles, the Greatest Author of all Time. The Greatest Thinker of all Time. Teaches you Morals up to your Scalp! The very image of Socrates, except the back of his head, which is like Shakspeare. He has six toes, dresses in red, and never cleans his teeth. Hear HIM! " Denton's voice became audible in a gap in the uproar. "I never ought to have married you," he was saying. "I have wasted your money, ruined you, brought you to misery. I am a scoundrel. . . . Oh, this accursed world! " She tried to speak, and for some moments could not. She grasped his hand. "No," she said at last. A half-formed desire suddenly became determination. She stood up. "Will you come? " He rose also. "We need not go there yet. " "Not that. But I want you to come to the flying stages--where we met. You know? The little seat. " He hesitated. "_Can_ you? " he said, doubtfully. "Must," she answered. He hesitated still for a moment, then moved to obey her will. And so it was they spent their last half-day of freedom out under the open air in the little seat under the flying stages where they had been wont to meet five short years ago. There she told him, what she could not tell him in the tumultuous public ways, that she did not repent even now of their marriage--that whatever discomfort and misery life still had for them, she was content with the things that had been. The weather was kind to them, the seat was sunlit and warm, and overhead the shining aëroplanes went and came. At last towards sunsetting their time was at an end, and they made their vows to one another and clasped hands, and then rose up and went back into the ways of the city, a shabby-looking, heavy-hearted pair, tired and hungry. Soon they came to one of the pale blue signs that marked a Labour Company Bureau. For a space they stood in the middle way regarding this and at last descended, and entered the waiting-room. The Labour Company had originally been a charitable organisation; its aim was to supply food, shelter, and work to all comers. This it was bound to do by the conditions of its incorporation, and it was also bound to supply food and shelter and medical attendance to all incapable of work who chose to demand its aid. In exchange these incapables paid labour notes, which they had to redeem upon recovery. They signed these labour notes with thumb-marks, which were photographed and indexed in such a way that this world-wide Labour Company could identify any one of its two or three hundred million clients at the cost of an hour's inquiry. The day's labour was defined as two spells in a treadmill used in generating electrical force, or its equivalent, and its due performance could be enforced by law. In practice the Labour Company found it advisable to add to its statutory obligations of food and shelter a few pence a day as an inducement to effort; and its enterprise had not only abolished pauperisation altogether, but supplied practically all but the very highest and most responsible labour throughout the world. Nearly a third of the population of the world were its serfs and debtors from the cradle to the grave. In this practical, unsentimental way the problem of the unemployed had been most satisfactorily met and overcome. No one starved in the public ways, and no rags, no costume less sanitary and sufficient than the Labour Company's hygienic but inelegant blue canvas, pained the eye throughout the whole world. It was the constant theme of the phonographic newspapers how much the world had progressed since nineteenth-century days, when the bodies of those killed by the vehicular traffic or dead of starvation, were, they alleged, a common feature in all the busier streets. Denton and Elizabeth sat apart in the waiting-room until their turn came. Most of the others collected there seemed limp and taciturn, but three or four young people gaudily dressed made up for the quietude of their companions. They were life clients of the Company, born in the Company's _creche_ and destined to die in its hospital, and they had been out for a spree with some shillings or so of extra pay. They talked vociferously in a later development of the Cockney dialect, manifestly very proud of themselves. Elizabeth's eyes went from these to the less assertive figures. One seemed exceptionally pitiful to her. It was a woman of perhaps forty-five, with gold-stained hair and a painted face, down which abundant tears had trickled; she had a pinched nose, hungry eyes, lean hands and shoulders, and her dusty worn-out finery told the story of her life. Another was a grey-bearded old man in the costume of a bishop of one of the high episcopal sects--for religion was now also a business, and had its ups and downs. And beside him a sickly, dissipated-looking boy of perhaps two-and-twenty glared at Fate. Presently Elizabeth and then Denton interviewed the manageress--for the Company preferred women in this capacity--and found she possessed an energetic face, a contemptuous manner, and a particularly unpleasant voice. They were given various checks, including one to certify that they need not have their heads cropped; and when they had given their thumb-marks, learnt the number corresponding thereunto, and exchanged their shabby middle-class clothes for duly numbered blue canvas suits, they repaired to the huge plain dining-room for their first meal under these new conditions. Afterwards they were to return to her for instructions about their work. When they had made the exchange of their clothing Elizabeth did not seem able to look at Denton at first; but he looked at her, and saw with astonishment that even in blue canvas she was still beautiful. And then their soup and bread came sliding on its little rail down the long table towards them and stopped with a jerk, and he forgot the matter. For they had had no proper meal for three days. After they had dined they rested for a time. Neither talked--there was nothing to say; and presently they got up and went back to the manageress to learn what they had to do. The manageress referred to a tablet. "Y'r rooms won't be here; it'll be in the Highbury Ward, Ninety-seventh Way, number two thousand and seventeen. Better make a note of it on y'r card. _You_, nought nought nought, type seven, sixty-four, b. c. d. , _gamma_ forty-one, female; you 'ave to go to the Metal-beating Company and try that for a day--fourpence bonus if ye're satisfactory; and _you_, nought seven one, type four, seven hundred and nine, g. f. b. , _pi_ five and ninety, male; you 'ave to go to the Photographic Company on Eighty-first Way, and learn something or other--_I_ don't know--thrippence. 'Ere's y'r cards. That's all. Next! _What? _ Didn't catch it all? Lor! So suppose I must go over it all again. Why don't you listen? Keerless, unprovident people! One'd think these things didn't matter. " Their ways to their work lay together for a time. And now they found they could talk. Curiously enough, the worst of their depression seemed over now that they had actually donned the blue. Denton could talk with interest even of the work that lay before them. "Whatever it is," he said, "it can't be so hateful as that hat shop. And after we have paid for Dings, we shall still have a whole penny a day between us even now. Afterwards--we may improve,--get more money. " Elizabeth was less inclined to speech. "I wonder why work should seem so hateful," she said. "It's odd," said Denton. "I suppose it wouldn't be if it were not the thought of being ordered about. . . . I hope we shall have decent managers. " Elizabeth did not answer. She was not thinking of that. She was tracing out some thoughts of her own. "Of course," she said presently, "we have been using up work all our lives. It's only fair--" She stopped. It was too intricate. "We paid for it," said Denton, for at that time he had not troubled himself about these complicated things. "We did nothing--and yet we paid for it. That's what I cannot understand. " "Perhaps we are paying," said Elizabeth presently--for her theology was old-fashioned and simple. Presently it was time for them to part, and each went to the appointed work. Denton's was to mind a complicated hydraulic press that seemed almost an intelligent thing. This press worked by the sea-water that was destined finally to flush the city drains--for the world had long since abandoned the folly of pouring drinkable water into its sewers. This water was brought close to the eastward edge of the city by a huge canal, and then raised by an enormous battery of pumps into reservoirs at a level of four hundred feet above the sea, from which it spread by a billion arterial branches over the city. Thence it poured down, cleansing, sluicing, working machinery of all sorts, through an infinite variety of capillary channels into the great drains, the _cloacae maximae_, and so carried the sewage out to the agricultural areas that surrounded London on every side. The press was employed in one of the processes of the photographic manufacture, but the nature of the process it did not concern Denton to understand. The most salient fact to his mind was that it had to be conducted in ruby light, and as a consequence the room in which he worked was lit by one coloured globe that poured a lurid and painful illumination about the room. In the darkest corner stood the press whose servant Denton had now become: it was a huge, dim, glittering thing with a projecting hood that had a remote resemblance to a bowed head, and, squatting like some metal Buddha in this weird light that ministered to its needs, it seemed to Denton in certain moods almost as if this must needs be the obscure idol to which humanity in some strange aberration had offered up his life. His duties had a varied monotony. Such items as the following will convey an idea of the service of the press. The thing worked with a busy clicking so long as things went well; but if the paste that came pouring through a feeder from another room and which it was perpetually compressing into thin plates, changed in quality the rhythm of its click altered and Denton hastened to make certain adjustments. The slightest delay involved a waste of paste and the docking of one or more of his daily pence. If the supply of paste waned--there were hand processes of a peculiar sort involved in its preparation, and sometimes the workers had convulsions which deranged their output--Denton had to throw the press out of gear. In the painful vigilance a multitude of such trivial attentions entailed, painful because of the incessant effort its absence of natural interest required, Denton had now to pass one-third of his days. Save for an occasional visit from the manager, a kindly but singularly foul-mouthed man, Denton passed his working hours in solitude. Elizabeth's work was of a more social sort. There was a fashion for covering the private apartments of the very wealthy with metal plates beautifully embossed with repeated patterns. The taste of the time demanded, however, that the repetition of the patterns should not be exact--not mechanical, but "natural"--and it was found that the most pleasing arrangement of pattern irregularity was obtained by employing women of refinement and natural taste to punch out the patterns with small dies. So many square feet of plates was exacted from Elizabeth as a minimum, and for whatever square feet she did in excess she received a small payment. The room, like most rooms of women workers, was under a manageress: men had been found by the Labour Company not only less exacting but extremely liable to excuse favoured ladies from a proper share of their duties. The manageress was a not unkindly, taciturn person, with the hardened remains of beauty of the brunette type; and the other women workers, who of course hated her, associated her name scandalously with one of the metal-work directors in order to explain her position. Only two or three of Elizabeth's fellow-workers were born labour serfs; plain, morose girls, but most of them corresponded to what the nineteenth century would have called a "reduced" gentlewoman. But the ideal of what constituted a gentlewoman had altered: the faint, faded, negative virtue, the modulated voice and restrained gesture of the old-fashioned gentlewoman had vanished from the earth. Most of her companions showed in discoloured hair, ruined complexions, and the texture of their reminiscent conversations, the vanished glories of a conquering youth. All of these artistic workers were much older than Elizabeth, and two openly expressed their surprise that any one so young and pleasant should come to share their toil. But Elizabeth did not trouble them with her old-world moral conceptions. They were permitted, and even encouraged to converse with each other, for the directors very properly judged that anything that conduced to variations of mood made for pleasing fluctuations in their patterning; and Elizabeth was almost forced to hear the stories of these lives with which her own interwove: garbled and distorted they were by vanity indeed and yet comprehensible enough. And soon she began to appreciate the small spites and cliques, the little misunderstandings and alliances that enmeshed about her. One woman was excessively garrulous and descriptive about a wonderful son of hers; another had cultivated a foolish coarseness of speech, that she seemed to regard as the wittiest expression of originality conceivable; a third mused for ever on dress, and whispered to Elizabeth how she saved her pence day after day, and would presently have a glorious day of freedom, wearing . . . and then followed hours of description; two others sat always together, and called one another pet names, until one day some little thing happened, and they sat apart, blind and deaf as it seemed to one another's being. And always from them all came an incessant tap, tap, tap, tap, and the manageress listened always to the rhythm to mark if one fell away. Tap, tap, tap, tap: so their days passed, so their lives must pass. Elizabeth sat among them, kindly and quiet, grey-hearted, marvelling at Fate: tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap; tap, tap, tap. So there came to Denton and Elizabeth a long succession of laborious days, that hardened their hands, wove strange threads of some new and sterner substance into the soft prettiness of their lives, and drew grave lines and shadows on their faces. The bright, convenient ways of the former life had receded to an inaccessible distance; slowly they learnt the lesson of the underworld--sombre and laborious, vast and pregnant. There were many little things happened: things that would be tedious and miserable to tell, things that were bitter and grievous to bear--indignities, tyrannies, such as must ever season the bread of the poor in cities; and one thing that was not little, but seemed like the utter blackening of life to them, which was that the child they had given life to sickened and died. But that story, that ancient, perpetually recurring story, has been told so often, has been told so beautifully, that there is no need to tell it over again here. There was the same sharp fear, the same long anxiety, the deferred inevitable blow, and the black silence. It has always been the same; it will always be the same. It is one of the things that must be. And it was Elizabeth who was the first to speak, after an aching, dull interspace of days: not, indeed, of the foolish little name that was a name no longer, but of the darkness that brooded over her soul. They had come through the shrieking, tumultuous ways of the city together; the clamour of trade, of yelling competitive religions, of political appeal, had beat upon deaf ears; the glare of focussed lights, of dancing letters, and fiery advertisements, had fallen upon the set, miserable faces unheeded. They took their dinner in the dining-hall at a place apart. "I want," said Elizabeth clumsily, "to go out to the flying stages--to that seat. Here, one can say nothing. . . . " Denton looked at her. "It will be night," he said. "I have asked,--it is a fine night. " She stopped. He perceived she could find no words to explain herself. Suddenly he understood that she wished to see the stars once more, the stars they had watched together from the open downland in that wild honeymoon of theirs five years ago. Something caught at his throat. He looked away from her. "There will be plenty of time to go," he said, in a matter-of-fact tone. And at last they came out to their little seat on the flying stage, and sat there for a long time in silence. The little seat was in shadow, but the zenith was pale blue with the effulgence of the stage overhead, and all the city spread below them, squares and circles and patches of brilliance caught in a mesh-work of light. The little stars seemed very faint and small: near as they had been to the old-world watcher, they had become now infinitely remote. Yet one could see them in the darkened patches amidst the glare, and especially in the northward sky, the ancient constellations gliding steadfast and patient about the pole. Long our two people sat in silence, and at last Elizabeth sighed. "If I understood," she said, "if I could understand. When one is down there the city seems everything--the noise, the hurry, the voices--you must live, you must scramble. Here--it is nothing; a thing that passes. One can think in peace. " "Yes," said Denton. "How flimsy it all is! From here more than half of it is swallowed by the night. .

. . It will pass. " "We shall pass first," said Elizabeth. "I know," said Denton. "If life were not a moment, the whole of history would seem like the happening of a day. . . . Yes--we shall pass. And the city will pass, and all the things that are to come. Man and the Overman and wonders unspeakable. And yet . . . " He paused, and then began afresh. "I know what you feel. At least I fancy. . . . Down there one thinks of one's work, one's little vexations and pleasures, one's eating and drinking and ease and pain. One lives, and one must die. Down there and everyday--our sorrow seemed the end of life. . . . "Up here it is different. For instance, down there it would seem impossible almost to go on living if one were horribly disfigured, horribly crippled, disgraced. Up here--under these stars--none of those things would matter. They don't matter. . . . They are a part of something. One seems just to touch that something--under the stars. . . . " He stopped. The vague, impalpable things in his mind, cloudy emotions half shaped towards ideas, vanished before the rough grasp of words. "It is hard to express," he said lamely. They sat through a long stillness. "It is well to come here," he said at last. "We stop--our minds are very finite. After all we are just poor animals rising out of the brute, each with a mind, the poor beginning of a mind. We are so stupid. So much hurts. And yet . . . "I know, I know--and some day we shall _see_. "All this frightful stress, all this discord will resolve to harmony, and we shall know it. Nothing is but it makes for that. Nothing. All the failures--every little thing makes for that harmony. Everything is necessary to it, we shall find. We shall find. Nothing, not even the most dreadful thing, could be left out. Not even the most trivial. Every tap of your hammer on the brass, every moment of work, my idleness even . . . Dear one! every movement of our poor little one . . . All these things go on for ever. And the faint impalpable things. We, sitting here together. --Everything . . . "The passion that joined us, and what has come since. It is not passion now. More than anything else it is sorrow. _Dear_ . . . " He could say no more, could follow his thoughts no further. Elizabeth made no answer--she was very still; but presently her hand sought his and found it. IV--UNDERNEATH Under the stars one may reach upward and touch resignation, whatever the evil thing may be, but in the heat and stress of the day's work we lapse again, come disgust and anger and intolerable moods. How little is all our magnanimity--an accident! a phase! The very Saints of old had first to flee the world. And Denton and his Elizabeth could not flee their world, no longer were there open roads to unclaimed lands where men might live freely--however hardly--and keep their souls in peace. The city had swallowed up mankind. For a time these two Labour Serfs were kept at their original occupations, she at her brass stamping and Denton at his press; and then came a move for him that brought with it fresh and still bitterer experiences of life in the underways of the great city. He was transferred to the care of a rather more elaborate press in the central factory of the London Tile Trust. In this new situation he had to work in a long vaulted room with a number of other men, for the most part born Labour Serfs. He came to this intercourse reluctantly. His upbringing had been refined, and, until his ill fortune had brought him to that costume, he had never spoken in his life, except by way of command or some immediate necessity, to the white-faced wearers of the blue canvas. Now at last came contact; he had to work beside them, share their tools, eat with them. To both Elizabeth and himself this seemed a further degradation. His taste would have seemed extreme to a man of the nineteenth century. But slowly and inevitably in the intervening years a gulf had opened between the wearers of the blue canvas and the classes above, a difference not simply of circumstances and habits of life, but of habits of thought--even of language. The underways had developed a dialect of their own: above, too, had arisen a dialect, a code of thought, a language of "culture," which aimed by a sedulous search after fresh distinction to widen perpetually the space between itself and "vulgarity. " The bond of a common faith, moreover, no longer held the race together. The last years of the nineteenth century were distinguished by the rapid development among the prosperous idle of esoteric perversions of the popular religion: glosses and interpretations that reduced the broad teachings of the carpenter of Nazareth to the exquisite narrowness of their lives. And, spite of their inclination towards the ancient fashion of living, neither Elizabeth nor Denton had been sufficiently original to escape the suggestion of their surroundings. In matters of common behaviour they had followed the ways of their class, and so when they fell at last to be Labour Serfs it seemed to them almost as though they were falling among offensive inferior animals; they felt as a nineteenth-century duke and duchess might have felt who were forced to take rooms in the Jago. Their natural impulse was to maintain a "distance. " But Denton's first idea of a dignified isolation from his new surroundings was soon rudely dispelled. He had imagined that his fall to the position of a Labour Serf was the end of his lesson, that when their little daughter had died he had plumbed the deeps of life; but indeed these things were only the beginning. Life demands something more from us than acquiescence. And now in a roomful of machine minders he was to learn a wider lesson, to make the acquaintance of another factor in life, a factor as elemental as the loss of things dear to us, more elemental even than toil. His quiet discouragement of conversation was an immediate cause of offence--was interpreted, rightly enough I fear, as disdain. His ignorance of the vulgar dialect, a thing upon which he had hitherto prided himself, suddenly took upon itself a new aspect. He failed to perceive at once that his reception of the coarse and stupid but genially intended remarks that greeted his appearance must have stung the makers of these advances like blows in their faces. "Don't understand," he said rather coldly, and at hazard, "No, thank you. " The man who had addressed him stared, scowled, and turned away. A second, who also failed at Denton's unaccustomed ear, took the trouble to repeat his remark, and Denton discovered he was being offered the use of an oil can. He expressed polite thanks, and this second man embarked upon a penetrating conversation. Denton, he remarked, had been a swell, and he wanted to know how he had come to wear the blue. He clearly expected an interesting record of vice and extravagance. Had Denton ever been at a Pleasure City? Denton was speedily to discover how the existence of these wonderful places of delight permeated and defiled the thought and honour of these unwilling, hopeless workers of the underworld. His aristocratic temperament resented these questions. He answered "No" curtly. The man persisted with a still more personal question, and this time it was Denton who turned away. "Gorblimey! " said his interlocutor, much astonished. It presently forced itself upon Denton's mind that this remarkable conversation was being repeated in indignant tones to more sympathetic hearers, and that it gave rise to astonishment and ironical laughter. They looked at Denton with manifestly enhanced interest. A curious perception of isolation dawned upon him. He tried to think of his press and its unfamiliar peculiarities. . . . The machines kept everybody pretty busy during the first spell, and then came a recess. It was only an interval for refreshment, too brief for any one to go out to a Labour Company dining-room. Denton followed his fellow-workers into a short gallery, in which were a number of bins of refuse from the presses. Each man produced a packet of food. Denton had no packet. The manager, a careless young man who held his position by influence, had omitted to warn Denton that it was necessary to apply for this provision. He stood apart, feeling hungry. The others drew together in a group and talked in undertones, glancing at him ever and again. He became uneasy. His appearance of disregard cost him an increasing effort. He tried to think of the levers of his new press. Presently one, a man shorter but much broader and stouter than Denton, came forward to him. Denton turned to him as unconcernedly as possible. "Here! " said the delegate--as Denton judged him to be--extending a cube of bread in a not too clean hand. He had a swart, broad-nosed face, and his mouth hung down towards one corner. Denton felt doubtful for the instant whether this was meant for civility or insult. His impulse was to decline. "No, thanks," he said; and, at the man's change of expression, "I'm not hungry. " There came a laugh from the group behind. "Told you so," said the man who had offered Denton the loan of an oil can. "He's top side, he is. You ain't good enough for 'im. " The swart face grew a shade darker. "Here," said its owner, still extending the bread, and speaking in a lower tone; "you got to eat this. See? " Denton looked into the threatening face before him, and odd little currents of energy seemed to be running through his limbs and body. "I don't want it," he said, trying a pleasant smile that twitched and failed. The thickset man advanced his face, and the bread became a physical threat in his hand. Denton's mind rushed together to the one problem of his antagonist's eyes. "Eat it," said the swart man. There came a pause, and then they both moved quickly. The cube of bread described a complicated path, a curve that would have ended in Denton's face; and then his fist hit the wrist of the hand that gripped it, and it flew upward, and out of the conflict--its part played. He stepped back quickly, fists clenched and arms tense. The hot, dark countenance receded, became an alert hostility, watching its chance. Denton for one instant felt confident, and strangely buoyant and serene. His heart beat quickly. He felt his body alive, and glowing to the tips. "Scrap, boys! " shouted some one, and then the dark figure had leapt forward, ducked back and sideways, and come in again. Denton struck out, and was hit. One of his eyes seemed to him to be demolished, and he felt a soft lip under his fist just before he was hit again--this time under the chin. A huge fan of fiery needles shot open. He had a momentary persuasion that his head was knocked to pieces, and then something hit his head and back from behind, and the fight became an uninteresting, an impersonal thing. He was aware that time--seconds or minutes--had passed, abstract, uneventful time. He was lying with his head in a heap of ashes, and something wet and warm ran swiftly into his neck. The first shock broke up into discrete sensations. All his head throbbed; his eye and his chin throbbed exceedingly, and the taste of blood was in his mouth. "He's all right," said a voice. "He's opening his eyes. " "Serve him----well right," said a second. His mates were standing about him. He made an effort and sat up. He put his hand to the back of his head, and his hair was wet and full of cinders. A laugh greeted the gesture. His eye was partially closed. He perceived what had happened. His momentary anticipation of a final victory had vanished. "Looks surprised," said some one. "'Ave any more? " said a wit; and then, imitating Denton's refined accent. "No, thank you. " Denton perceived the swart man with a blood-stained handkerchief before his face, and somewhat in the background. "Where's that bit of bread he's got to eat? " said a little ferret-faced creature; and sought with his foot in the ashes of the adjacent bin. Denton had a moment of internal debate. He knew the code of honour requires a man to pursue a fight he has begun to the bitter end; but this was his first taste of the bitterness. He was resolved to rise again, but he felt no passionate impulse. It occurred to him--and the thought was no very violent spur--that he was perhaps after all a coward. For a moment his will was heavy, a lump of lead. "'Ere it is," said the little ferret-faced man, and stooped to pick up a cindery cube. He looked at Denton, then at the others. Slowly, unwillingly, Denton stood up. A dirty-faced albino extended a hand to the ferret-faced man. "Gimme that toke," he said. He advanced threateningly, bread in hand, to Denton. "So you ain't 'ad your bellyful yet," he said. "Eh? " Now it was coming. "No, I haven't," said Denton, with a catching of the breath, and resolved to try this brute behind the ear before he himself got stunned again. He knew he would be stunned again. He was astonished how ill he had judged himself beforehand. A few ridiculous lunges, and down he would go again. He watched the albino's eyes. The albino was grinning confidently, like a man who plans an agreeable trick. A sudden perception of impending indignities stung Denton. "You leave 'im alone, Jim," said the swart man suddenly over the blood-stained rag. "He ain't done nothing to you. " The albino's grin vanished. He stopped. He looked from one to the other. It seemed to Denton that the swart man demanded the privilege of his destruction. The albino would have been better. "You leave 'im alone," said the swart man. "See? 'E's 'ad 'is licks. " A clattering bell lifted up its voice and solved the situation. The albino hesitated. "Lucky for you," he said, adding a foul metaphor, and turned with the others towards the press-room again. "Wait for the end of the spell, mate," said the albino over his shoulder--an afterthought. The swart man waited for the albino to precede him. Denton realised that he had a reprieve. The men passed towards an open door. Denton became aware of his duties, and hurried to join the tail of the queue. At the doorway of the vaulted gallery of presses a yellow-uniformed labour policeman stood ticking a card. He had ignored the swart man's hæmorrhage. "Hurry up there! " he said to Denton. "Hello! " he said, at the sight of his facial disarray. "Who's been hitting _you_? " "That's my affair," said Denton. "Not if it spiles your work, it ain't," said the man in yellow. "You mind that. " Denton made no answer. He was a rough--a labourer. He wore the blue canvas. The laws of assault and battery, he knew, were not for the likes of him. He went to his press. He could feel the skin of his brow and chin and head lifting themselves to noble bruises, felt the throb and pain of each aspiring contusion. His nervous system slid down to lethargy; at each movement in his press adjustment he felt he lifted a weight. And as for his honour--that too throbbed and puffed. How did he stand? What precisely had happened in the last ten minutes? What would happen next? He knew that here was enormous matter for thought, and he could not think save in disordered snatches. His mood was a sort of stagnant astonishment. All his conceptions were overthrown.

He had regarded his security from physical violence as inherent, as one of the conditions of life. So, indeed, it had been while he wore his middle-class costume, had his middle-class property to serve for his defence. But who would interfere among Labour roughs fighting together? And indeed in those days no man would. In the Underworld there was no law between man and man; the law and machinery of the state had become for them something that held men down, fended them off from much desirable property and pleasure, and that was all. Violence, that ocean in which the brutes live for ever, and from which a thousand dykes and contrivances have won our hazardous civilised life, had flowed in again upon the sinking underways and submerged them. The fist ruled. Denton had come right down at last to the elemental--fist and trick and the stubborn heart and fellowship--even as it was in the beginning. The rhythm of his machine changed, and his thoughts were interrupted. Presently he could think again. Strange how quickly things had happened! He bore these men who had thrashed him no very vivid ill-will. He was bruised and enlightened. He saw with absolute fairness now the reasonableness of his unpopularity. He had behaved like a fool. Disdain, seclusion, are the privilege of the strong. The fallen aristocrat still clinging to his pointless distinction is surely the most pitiful creature of pretence in all this clamant universe. Good heavens! what was there for him to despise in these men? What a pity he had not appreciated all this better five hours ago! What would happen at the end of the spell? He could not tell. He could not imagine. He could not imagine the thoughts of these men. He was sensible only of their hostility and utter want of sympathy. Vague possibilities of shame and violence chased one another across his mind. Could he devise some weapon? He recalled his assault upon the hypnotist, but there were no detachable lamps here. He could see nothing that he could catch up in his defence. For a space he thought of a headlong bolt for the security of the public ways directly the spell was over. Apart from the trivial consideration of his self-respect, he perceived that this would be only a foolish postponement and aggravation of his trouble. He perceived the ferret-faced man and the albino talking together with their eyes towards him. Presently they were talking to the swart man, who stood with his broad back studiously towards Denton. At last came the end of the second spell. The lender of oil cans stopped his press sharply and turned round, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. His eyes had the quiet expectation of one who seats himself in a theatre. Now was the crisis, and all the little nerves of Denton's being seemed leaping and dancing. He had decided to show fight if any fresh indignity was offered him. He stopped his press and turned. With an enormous affectation of ease he walked down the vault and entered the passage of the ash pits, only to discover he had left his jacket--which he had taken off because of the heat of the vault--beside his press. He walked back. He met the albino eye to eye. He heard the ferret-faced man in expostulation. "'E reely ought, eat it," said the ferret-faced man. "'E did reely. " "No--you leave 'im alone," said the swart man. Apparently nothing further was to happen to him that day. He passed out to the passage and staircase that led up to the moving platforms of the city. He emerged on the livid brilliance and streaming movement of the public street. He became acutely aware of his disfigured face, and felt his swelling bruises with a limp, investigatory hand. He went up to the swiftest platform, and seated himself on a Labour Company bench. He lapsed into a pensive torpor. The immediate dangers and stresses of his position he saw with a sort of static clearness. What would they do to-morrow? He could not tell. What would Elizabeth think of his brutalisation? He could not tell. He was exhausted. He was aroused presently by a hand upon his arm. He looked up, and saw the swart man seated beside him. He started. Surely he was safe from violence in the public way! The swart man's face retained no traces of his share in the fight; his expression was free from hostility--seemed almost deferential. "'Scuse me," he said, with a total absence of truculence. Denton realised that no assault was intended. He stared, awaiting the next development. It was evident the next sentence was premeditated. "Whad--I--was--going--to say--was this," said the swart man, and sought through a silence for further words. "Whad--I--was--going--to say--was this," he repeated. Finally he abandoned that gambit. "_You're_ aw right," he cried, laying a grimy hand on Denton's grimy sleeve. "_You're_ aw right. You're a ge'man. Sorry--very sorry. Wanted to tell you that. " Denton realised that there must exist motives beyond a mere impulse to abominable proceedings in the man. He meditated, and swallowed an unworthy pride. "I did not mean to be offensive to you," he said, "in refusing that bit of bread. " "Meant it friendly," said the swart man, recalling the scene; "but--in front of that blarsted Whitey and his snigger--Well--I _'ad_ to scrap. " "Yes," said Denton with sudden fervour: "I was a fool. " "Ah! " said the swart man, with great satisfaction. "_That's_ aw right. Shake! " And Denton shook. The moving platform was rushing by the establishment of a face moulder, and its lower front was a huge display of mirror, designed to stimulate the thirst for more symmetrical features. Denton caught the reflection of himself and his new friend, enormously twisted and broadened. His own face was puffed, one-sided, and blood-stained; a grin of idiotic and insincere amiability distorted its latitude. A wisp of hair occluded one eye. The trick of the mirror presented the swart man as a gross expansion of lip and nostril. They were linked by shaking hands. Then abruptly this vision passed--to return to memory in the anæmic meditations of a waking dawn. As he shook, the swart man made some muddled remark, to the effect that he had always known he could get on with a gentleman if one came his way. He prolonged the shaking until Denton, under the influence of the mirror, withdrew his hand. The swart man became pensive, spat impressively on the platform, and resumed his theme. "Whad I was going to say was this," he said; was gravelled, and shook his head at his foot. Denton became curious. "Go on," he said, attentive. The swart man took the plunge. He grasped Denton's arm, became intimate in his attitude. "'Scuse me," he said. "Fact is, you done know _'ow_ to scrap. Done know _'ow_ to. Why--you done know 'ow to _begin_. You'll get killed if you don't mind. 'Ouldin' your 'ands--_There! _" He reinforced his statement by objurgation, watching the effect of each oath with a wary eye. "F'r instance. You're tall. Long arms. You get a longer reach than any one in the brasted vault. Gobblimey, but I thought I'd got a Tough on. 'Stead of which . . . 'Scuse me. I wouldn't have _'it_ you if I'd known. It's like fighting sacks. 'Tisn' right. Y'r arms seemed 'ung on 'ooks. Reg'lar--'ung on 'ooks. There! " Denton stared, and then surprised and hurt his battered chin by a sudden laugh. Bitter tears came into his eyes. "Go on," he said. The swart man reverted to his formula. He was good enough to say he liked the look of Denton, thought he had stood up "amazing plucky. On'y pluck ain't no good--ain't no brasted good--if you don't 'old your 'ands. "Whad I was going to say was this," he said. "Lemme show you 'ow to scrap. Jest lemme. You're ig'nant, you ain't no class; but you might be a very decent scrapper--very decent. Shown. That's what I meant to say. " Denton hesitated. "But--" he said, "I can't give you anything--" "That's the ge'man all over," said the swart man. "Who arst you to? " "But your time? " "If you don't get learnt scrapping you'll get killed,--don't you make no bones of that. " Denton thought. "I don't know," he said. He looked at the face beside him, and all its native coarseness shouted at him. He felt a quick revulsion from his transient friendliness. It seemed to him incredible that it should be necessary for him to be indebted to such a creature. "The chaps are always scrapping," said the swart man. "Always. And, of course--if one gets waxy and 'its you vital . . . " "By God! " cried Denton; "I wish one would. " "Of course, if you feel like that--" "You don't understand. " "P'raps I don't," said the swart man; and lapsed into a fuming silence. When he spoke again his voice was less friendly, and he prodded Denton by way of address. "Look see! " he said: "are you going to let me show you 'ow to scrap? " "It's tremendously kind of you," said Denton; "but--" There was a pause. The swart man rose and bent over Denton. "Too much ge'man," he said--"eh? I got a red face. . . . By gosh! you are--you _are_ a brasted fool! " He turned away, and instantly Denton realised the truth of this remark. The swart man descended with dignity to a cross way, and Denton, after a momentary impulse to pursuit, remained on the platform. For a time the things that had happened filled his mind. In one day his graceful system of resignation had been shattered beyond hope. Brute force, the final, the fundamental, had thrust its face through all his explanations and glosses and consolations and grinned enigmatically. Though he was hungry and tired, he did not go on directly to the Labour Hotel, where he would meet Elizabeth. He found he was beginning to think, he wanted very greatly to think; and so, wrapped in a monstrous cloud of meditation, he went the circuit of the city on his moving platform twice. You figure him, tearing through the glaring, thunder-voiced city at a pace of fifty miles an hour, the city upon the planet that spins along its chartless path through space many thousands of miles an hour, funking most terribly, and trying to understand why the heart and will in him should suffer and keep alive. When at last he came to Elizabeth, she was white and anxious. He might have noted she was in trouble, had it not been for his own preoccupation. He feared most that she would desire to know every detail of his indignities, that she would be sympathetic or indignant. He saw her eyebrows rise at the sight of him. "I've had rough handling," he said, and gasped. "It's too fresh--too hot. I don't want to talk about it. " He sat down with an unavoidable air of sullenness. She stared at him in astonishment, and as she read something of the significant hieroglyphic of his battered face, her lips whitened. Her hand--it was thinner now than in the days of their prosperity, and her first finger was a little altered by the metal punching she did--clenched convulsively. "This horrible world! " she said, and said no more. In these latter days they had become a very silent couple; they said scarcely a word to each other that night, but each followed a private train of thought. In the small hours, as Elizabeth lay awake, Denton started up beside her suddenly--he had been lying as still as a dead man. "I cannot stand it! " cried Denton. "I _will_ not stand it! " She saw him dimly, sitting up; saw his arm lunge as if in a furious blow at the enshrouding night. Then for a space he was still. "It is too much--it is more than one can bear! " She could say nothing. To her, also, it seemed that this was as far as one could go. She waited through a long stillness. She could see that Denton sat with his arms about his knees, his chin almost touching them. Then he laughed. "No," he said at last, "I'm going to stand it. That's the peculiar thing. There isn't a grain of suicide in us--not a grain. I suppose all the people with a turn that way have gone. We're going through with it--to the end. " Elizabeth thought grayly, and realised that this also was true. "We're going through with it. To think of all who have gone through with it: all the generations--endless--endless. Little beasts that snapped and snarled, snapping and snarling, snapping and snarling, generation after generation. " His monotone, ended abruptly, resumed after a vast interval. "There were ninety thousand years of stone age. A Denton somewhere in all those years. Apostolic succession. The grace of going through. Let me see! Ninety--nine hundred--three nines, twenty-seven--_three thousand_ generations of men! --men more or less. And each fought, and was bruised, and shamed, and somehow held his own--going through with it--passing it on. . . . And thousands more to come perhaps--thousands! "Passing it on. I wonder if they will thank us. " His voice assumed an argumentative note. "If one could find something definite . . . If one could say, 'This is why--this is why it goes on. . . . '" He became still, and Elizabeth's eyes slowly separated him from the darkness until at last she could see how he sat with his head resting on his hand. A sense of the enormous remoteness of their minds came to her; that dim suggestion of another being seemed to her a figure of their mutual understanding. What could he be thinking now? What might he not say next? Another age seemed to elapse before he sighed and whispered: "No. I don't understand it. No! " Then a long interval, and he repeated this. But the second time it had the tone almost of a solution. She became aware that he was preparing to lie down. She marked his movements, perceived with astonishment how he adjusted his pillow with a careful regard to comfort. He lay down with a sigh of contentment almost. His passion had passed. He lay still, and presently his breathing became regular and deep. But Elizabeth remained with eyes wide open in the darkness, until the clamour of a bell and the sudden brilliance of the electric light warned them that the Labour Company had need of them for yet another day. That day came a scuffle with the albino Whitey and the little ferret-faced man. Blunt, the swart artist in scrapping, having first let Denton grasp the bearing of his lesson, intervened, not without a certain quality of patronage. "Drop 'is 'air, Whitey, and let the man be," said his gross voice through a shower of indignities. "Can't you see 'e don't know _'ow_ to scrap? " And Denton, lying shamefully in the dust, realised that he must accept that course of instruction after all. He made his apology straight and clean. He scrambled up and walked to Blunt. "I was a fool, and you are right," he said. "If it isn't too late . . . " That night, after the second spell, Denton went with Blunt to certain waste and slime-soaked vaults under the Port of London, to learn the first beginnings of the high art of scrapping as it had been perfected in the great world of the underways: how to hit or kick a man so as to hurt him excruciatingly or make him violently sick, how to hit or kick "vital," how to use glass in one's garments as a club and to spread red ruin with various domestic implements, how to anticipate and demolish your adversary's intentions in other directions; all the pleasant devices, in fact, that had grown up among the disinherited of the great cities of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, were spread out by a gifted exponent for Denton's learning.

Blunt's bashfulness fell from him as the instruction proceeded, and he developed a certain expert dignity, a quality of fatherly consideration. He treated Denton with the utmost consideration, only "flicking him up a bit" now and then, to keep the interest hot, and roaring with laughter at a happy fluke of Denton's that covered his mouth with blood. "I'm always keerless of my mouth," said Blunt, admitting a weakness. "Always. It don't seem to matter, like, just getting bashed in the mouth--not if your chin's all right. Tastin' blood does me good. Always. But I better not 'it you again. " Denton went home, to fall asleep exhausted and wake in the small hours with aching limbs and all his bruises tingling. Was it worth while that he should go on living? He listened to Elizabeth's breathing, and remembering that he must have awaked her the previous night, he lay very still. He was sick with infinite disgust at the new conditions of his life. He hated it all, hated even the genial savage who had protected him so generously. The monstrous fraud of civilisation glared stark before his eyes; he saw it as a vast lunatic growth, producing a deepening torrent of savagery below, and above ever more flimsy gentility and silly wastefulness. He could see no redeeming reason, no touch of honour, either in the life he had led or in this life to which he had fallen. Civilisation presented itself as some catastrophic product as little concerned with men--save as victims--as a cyclone or a planetary collision. He, and therefore all mankind, seemed living utterly in vain. His mind sought some strange expedients of escape, if not for himself then at least for Elizabeth. But he meant them for himself. What if he hunted up Mwres and told him of their disaster? It came to him as an astonishing thing how utterly Mwres and Bindon had passed out of his range. Where were they? What were they doing? From that he passed to thoughts of utter dishonour. And finally, not arising in any way out of this mental tumult, but ending it as dawn ends the night, came the clear and obvious conclusion of the night before: the conviction that he had to go through with things; that, apart from any remoter view and quite sufficient for all his thought and energy, he had to stand up and fight among his fellows and quit himself like a man. The second night's instruction was perhaps less dreadful than the first; and the third was even endurable, for Blunt dealt out some praise. The fourth day Denton chanced upon the fact that the ferret-faced man was a coward. There passed a fortnight of smouldering days and feverish instruction at night; Blunt, with many blasphemies, testified that never had he met so apt a pupil; and all night long Denton dreamt of kicks and counters and gouges and cunning tricks. For all that time no further outrages were attempted, for fear of Blunt; and then came the second crisis. Blunt did not come one day--afterwards he admitted his deliberate intention--and through the tedious morning Whitey awaited the interval between the spells with an ostentatious impatience. He knew nothing of the scrapping lessons, and he spent the time in telling Denton and the vault generally of certain disagreeable proceedings he had in mind. Whitey was not popular, and the vault disgorged to see him haze the new man with only a languid interest. But matters changed when Whitey's attempt to open the proceedings by kicking Denton in the face was met by an excellently executed duck, catch and throw, that completed the flight of Whitey's foot in its orbit and brought Whitey's head into the ash-heap that had once received Denton's. Whitey arose a shade whiter, and now blasphemously bent upon vital injuries. There were indecisive passages, foiled enterprises that deepened Whitey's evidently growing perplexity; and then things developed into a grouping of Denton uppermost with Whitey's throat in his hand, his knee on Whitey's chest, and a tearful Whitey with a black face, protruding tongue and broken finger endeavouring to explain the misunderstanding by means of hoarse sounds. Moreover, it was evident that among the bystanders there had never been a more popular person than Denton. Denton, with proper precaution, released his antagonist and stood up. His blood seemed changed to some sort of fluid fire, his limbs felt light and supernaturally strong. The idea that he was a martyr in the civilisation machine had vanished from his mind. He was a man in a world of men. The little ferret-faced man was the first in the competition to pat him on the back. The lender of oil cans was a radiant sun of genial congratulation. . . . It seemed incredible to Denton that he had ever thought of despair. Denton was convinced that not only had he to go through with things, but that he could. He sat on the canvas pallet expounding this new aspect to Elizabeth. One side of his face was bruised. She had not recently fought, she had not been patted on the back, there were no hot bruises upon her face, only a pallor and a new line or so about the mouth. She was taking the woman's share. She looked steadfastly at Denton in his new mood of prophecy. "I feel that there is something," he was saying, "something that goes on, a Being of Life in which we live and move and have our being, something that began fifty--a hundred million years ago, perhaps, that goes on--on: growing, spreading, to things beyond us--things that will justify us all. . . . That will explain and justify my fighting--these bruises, and all the pain of it. It's the chisel--yes, the chisel of the Maker. If only I could make you feel as I feel, if I could make you! You _will_, dear, I know you will. " "No," she said in a low voice. "No, I shall not. " "So I might have thought--" She shook her head. "No," she said, "I have thought as well. What you say--doesn't convince me. " She looked at his face resolutely. "I hate it," she said, and caught at her breath. "You do not understand, you do not think. There was a time when you said things and I believed them. I am growing wiser. You are a man, you can fight, force your way. You do not mind bruises. You can be coarse and ugly, and still a man. Yes--it makes you. It makes you. You are right. Only a woman is not like that. We are different. We have let ourselves get civilised too soon. This underworld is not for us. " She paused and began again. "I hate it! I hate this horrible canvas! I hate it more than--more than the worst that can happen. It hurts my fingers to touch it. It is horrible to the skin. And the women I work with day after day! I lie awake at nights and think how I may be growing like them. . . . " She stopped. "I _am_ growing like them," she cried passionately. Denton stared at her distress. "But--" he said and stopped. "You don't understand. What have I? What have I to save me? _You_ can fight. Fighting is man's work. But women--women are different. . . . I have thought it all out, I have done nothing but think night and day. Look at the colour of my face! I cannot go on. I cannot endure this life. . . . I cannot endure it. " She stopped. She hesitated. "You do not know all," she said abruptly, and for an instant her lips had a bitter smile. "I have been asked to leave you. " "Leave me! " She made no answer save an affirmative movement of the head. Denton stood up sharply. They stared at one another through a long silence. Suddenly she turned herself about, and flung face downward upon their canvas bed. She did not sob, she made no sound. She lay still upon her face. After a vast, distressful void her shoulders heaved and she began to weep silently. "Elizabeth! " he whispered--"Elizabeth! " Very softly he sat down beside her, bent down, put his arm across her in a doubtful caress, seeking vainly for some clue to this intolerable situation. "Elizabeth," he whispered in her ear. She thrust him from her with her hand. "I cannot bear a child to be a slave! " and broke out into loud and bitter weeping. Denton's face changed--became blank dismay. Presently he slipped from the bed and stood on his feet. All the complacency had vanished from his face, had given place to impotent rage. He began to rave and curse at the intolerable forces which pressed upon him, at all the accidents and hot desires and heedlessness that mock the life of man. His little voice rose in that little room, and he shook his fist, this animalcule of the earth, at all that environed him about, at the millions about him, at his past and future and all the insensate vastness of the overwhelming city. V--BINDON INTERVENES In Bindon's younger days he had dabbled in speculation and made three brilliant flukes. For the rest of his life he had the wisdom to let gambling alone, and the conceit to believe himself a very clever man. A certain desire for influence and reputation interested him in the business intrigues of the giant city in which his flukes were made. He became at last one of the most influential shareholders in the company that owned the London flying stages to which the aëroplanes came from all parts of the world. This much for his public activities. In his private life he was a man of pleasure. And this is the story of his heart. But before proceeding to such depths, one must devote a little time to the exterior of this person. Its physical basis was slender, and short, and dark; and the face, which was fine-featured and assisted by pigments, varied from an insecure self-complacency to an intelligent uneasiness. His face and head had been depilated, according to the cleanly and hygienic fashion of the time, so that the colour and contour of his hair varied with his costume. This he was constantly changing. At times he would distend himself with pneumatic vestments in the rococo vein. From among the billowy developments of this style, and beneath a translucent and illuminated headdress, his eye watched jealously for the respect of the less fashionable world. At other times he emphasised his elegant slenderness in close-fitting garments of black satin. For effects of dignity he would assume broad pneumatic shoulders, from which hung a robe of carefully arranged folds of China silk, and a classical Bindon in pink tights was also a transient phenomenon in the eternal pageant of Destiny. In the days when he hoped to marry Elizabeth, he sought to impress and charm her, and at the same time to take off something of his burthen of forty years, by wearing the last fancy of the contemporary buck, a costume of elastic material with distensible warts and horns, changing in colour as he walked, by an ingenious arrangement of versatile chromatophores. And no doubt, if Elizabeth's affection had not been already engaged by the worthless Denton, and if her tastes had not had that odd bias for old-fashioned ways, this extremely _chic_ conception would have ravished her. Bindon had consulted Elizabeth's father before presenting himself in this garb--he was one of those men who always invite criticism of their costume--and Mwres had pronounced him all that the heart of woman could desire. But the affair of the hypnotist proved that his knowledge of the heart of woman was incomplete. Bindon's idea of marrying had been formed some little time before Mwres threw Elizabeth's budding womanhood in his way. It was one of Bindon's most cherished secrets that he had a considerable capacity for a pure and simple life of a grossly sentimental type. The thought imparted a sort of pathetic seriousness to the offensive and quite inconsequent and unmeaning excesses, which he was pleased to regard as dashing wickedness, and which a number of good people also were so unwise as to treat in that desirable manner. As a consequence of these excesses, and perhaps by reason also of an inherited tendency to early decay, his liver became seriously affected, and he suffered increasing inconvenience when travelling by aëroplane. It was during his convalescence from a protracted bilious attack that it occurred to him that in spite of all the terrible fascinations of Vice, if he found a beautiful, gentle, good young woman of a not too violently intellectual type to devote her life to him, he might yet be saved to Goodness, and even rear a spirited family in his likeness to solace his declining years. But like so many experienced men of the world, he doubted if there were any good women. Of such as he had heard tell he was outwardly sceptical and privately much afraid. When the aspiring Mwres effected his introduction to Elizabeth, it seemed to him that his good fortune was complete. He fell in love with her at once. Of course, he had always been falling in love since he was sixteen, in accordance with the extremely varied recipes to be found in the accumulated literature of many centuries. But this was different. This was real love. It seemed to him to call forth all the lurking goodness in his nature. He felt that for her sake he could give up a way of life that had already produced the gravest lesions on his liver and nervous system. His imagination presented him with idyllic pictures of the life of the reformed rake. He would never be sentimental with her, or silly; but always a little cynical and bitter, as became the past. Yet he was sure she would have an intuition of his real greatness and goodness. And in due course he would confess things to her, pour his version of what he regarded as his wickedness--showing what a complex of Goethe, and Benvenuto Cellini, and Shelley, and all those other chaps he really was--into her shocked, very beautiful, and no doubt sympathetic ear. And preparatory to these things he wooed her with infinite subtlety and respect. And the reserve with which Elizabeth treated him seemed nothing more nor less than an exquisite modesty touched and enhanced by an equally exquisite lack of ideas. Bindon knew nothing of her wandering affections, nor of the attempt made by Mwres to utilise hypnotism as a corrective to this digression of her heart; he conceived he was on the best of terms with Elizabeth, and had made her quite successfully various significant presents of jewellery and the more virtuous cosmetics, when her elopement with Denton threw the world out of gear for him. His first aspect of the matter was rage begotten of wounded vanity, and as Mwres was the most convenient person, he vented the first brunt of it upon him. He went immediately and insulted the desolate father grossly, and then spent an active and determined day going to and fro about the city and interviewing people in a consistent and partly-successful attempt to ruin that matrimonial speculator. The effectual nature of these activities gave him a temporary exhilaration, and he went to the dining-place he had frequented in his wicked days in a devil-may-care frame of mind, and dined altogether too amply and cheerfully with two other golden youths in their early forties. He threw up the game; no woman was worth being good for, and he astonished even himself by the strain of witty cynicism he developed. One of the other desperate blades, warmed with wine, made a facetious allusion to his disappointment, but at the time this did not seem unpleasant. The next morning found his liver and temper inflamed. He kicked his phonographic-news machine to pieces, dismissed his valet, and resolved that he would perpetrate a terrible revenge upon Elizabeth. Or Denton. Or somebody. But anyhow, it was to be a terrible revenge; and the friend who had made fun at him should no longer see him in the light of a foolish girl's victim. He knew something of the little property that was due to her, and that this would be the only support of the young couple until Mwres should relent. If Mwres did not relent, and if unpropitious things should happen to the affair in which Elizabeth's expectations lay, they would come upon evil times and be sufficiently amenable to temptation of a sinister sort. Bindon's imagination, abandoning its beautiful idealism altogether, expanded the idea of temptation of a sinister sort. He figured himself as the implacable, the intricate and powerful man of wealth pursuing this maiden who had scorned him. And suddenly her image came upon his mind vivid and dominant, and for the first time in his life Bindon realised something of the real power of passion. His imagination stood aside like a respectful footman who has done his work in ushering in the emotion. "My God! " cried Bindon: "I will have her! If I have to kill myself to get her! And that other fellow--! " After an interview with his medical man and a penance for his overnight excesses in the form of bitter drugs, a mitigated but absolutely resolute Bindon sought out Mwres. Mwres he found properly smashed, and impoverished and humble, in a mood of frantic self-preservation, ready to sell himself body and soul, much more any interest in a disobedient daughter, to recover his lost position in the world. In the reasonable discussion that followed, it was agreed that these misguided young people should be left to sink into distress, or possibly even assisted towards that improving discipline by Bindon's financial influence. "And then? " said Mwres. "They will come to the Labour Company," said Bindon. "They will wear the blue canvas. " "And then? " "She will divorce him," he said, and sat for a moment intent upon that prospect. For in those days the austere limitations of divorce of Victorian times were extraordinarily relaxed, and a couple might separate on a hundred different scores. Then suddenly Bindon astonished himself and Mwres by jumping to his feet. "She _shall_ divorce him! " he cried. "I will have it so--I will work it so. By God! it shall be so. He shall be disgraced, so that she must. He shall be smashed and pulverised. " The idea of smashing and pulverising inflamed him further. He began a Jovian pacing up and down the little office. "I will have her," he cried. "I _will_ have her! Heaven and Hell shall not save her from me! " His passion evaporated in its expression, and left him at the end simply histrionic. He struck an attitude and ignored with heroic determination a sharp twinge of pain about the diaphragm. And Mwres sat with his pneumatic cap deflated and himself very visibly impressed. And so, with a fair persistency, Bindon sat himself to the work of being Elizabeth's malignant providence, using with ingenious dexterity every particle of advantage wealth in those days gave a man over his fellow-creatures. A resort to the consolations of religion hindered these operations not at all. He would go and talk with an interesting, experienced and sympathetic Father of the Huysmanite sect of the Isis cult, about all the irrational little proceedings he was pleased to regard as his heaven-dismaying wickedness, and the interesting, experienced and sympathetic Father representing Heaven dismayed, would with a pleasing affectation of horror, suggest simple and easy penances, and recommend a monastic foundation that was airy, cool, hygienic, and not vulgarised, for viscerally disordered penitent sinners of the refined and wealthy type. And after these excursions, Bindon would come back to London quite active and passionate again. He would machinate with really considerable energy, and repair to a certain gallery high above the street of moving ways, from which he could view the entrance to the barrack of the Labour Company in the ward which sheltered Denton and Elizabeth. And at last one day he saw Elizabeth go in, and thereby his passion was renewed. So in the fullness of time the complicated devices of Bindon ripened, and he could go to Mwres and tell him that the young people were near despair. "It's time for you," he said, "to let your parental affections have play. She's been in blue canvas some months, and they've been cooped together in one of those Labour dens, and the little girl is dead. She knows now what his manhood is worth to her, by way of protection, poor girl. She'll see things now in a clearer light. You go to her--I don't want to appear in this affair yet--and point out to her how necessary it is that she should get a divorce from him. . . . " "She's obstinate," said Mwres doubtfully. "Spirit! " said Bindon. "She's a wonderful girl--a wonderful girl! " "She'll refuse. " "Of course she will. But leave it open to her. Leave it open to her. And some day--in that stuffy den, in that irksome, toilsome life they can't help it--_they'll have a quarrel_. And then--" Mwres meditated over the matter, and did as he was told. Then Bindon, as he had arranged with his spiritual adviser, went into retreat. The retreat of the Huysmanite sect was a beautiful place, with the sweetest air in London, lit by natural sunlight, and with restful quadrangles of real grass open to the sky, where at the same time the penitent man of pleasure might enjoy all the pleasures of loafing and all the satisfaction of distinguished austerity. And, save for participation in the simple and wholesome dietary of the place and in certain magnificent chants, Bindon spent all his time in meditation upon the theme of Elizabeth, and the extreme purification his soul had undergone since he first saw her, and whether he would be able to get a dispensation to marry her from the experienced and sympathetic Father in spite of the approaching "sin" of her divorce; and then . . . Bindon would lean against a pillar of the quadrangle and lapse into reveries on the superiority of virtuous love to any other form of indulgence. A curious feeling in his back and chest that was trying to attract his attention, a disposition to be hot or shiver, a general sense of ill-health and cutaneous discomfort he did his best to ignore. All that of course belonged to the old life that he was shaking off. When he came out of retreat he went at once to Mwres to ask for news of Elizabeth. Mwres was clearly under the impression that he was an exemplary father, profoundly touched about the heart by his child's unhappiness.

"She was pale," he said, greatly moved; "She was pale. When I asked her to come away and leave him--and be happy--she put her head down upon the table"--Mwres sniffed--"and cried. " His agitation was so great that he could say no more. "Ah! " said Bindon, respecting this manly grief. "Oh! " said Bindon quite suddenly, with his hand to his side. Mwres looked up sharply out of the pit of his sorrows, startled. "What's the matter? " he asked, visibly concerned. "A most violent pain. Excuse me! You were telling me about Elizabeth. " And Mwres, after a decent solicitude for Bindon's pain, proceeded with his report. It was even unexpectedly hopeful. Elizabeth, in her first emotion at discovering that her father had not absolutely deserted her, had been frank with him about her sorrows and disgusts. "Yes," said Bindon, magnificently, "I shall have her yet. " And then that novel pain twitched him for the second time. For these lower pains the priest was comparatively ineffectual, inclining rather to regard the body and them as mental illusions amenable to contemplation; so Bindon took it to a man of a class he loathed, a medical man of extraordinary repute and incivility. "We must go all over you," said the medical man, and did so with the most disgusting frankness. "Did you ever bring any children into the world? " asked this gross materialist among other impertinent questions. "Not that I know of," said Bindon, too amazed to stand upon his dignity. "Ah! " said the medical man, and proceeded with his punching and sounding. Medical science in those days was just reaching the beginnings of precision. "You'd better go right away," said the medical man, "and make the Euthanasia. The sooner the better. " Bindon gasped. He had been trying not to understand the technical explanations and anticipations in which the medical man had indulged. "I say! " he said. "But do you mean to say . . . Your science . . . " "Nothing," said the medical man. "A few opiates. The thing is your own doing, you know, to a certain extent. " "I was sorely tempted in my youth. " "It's not that so much. But you come of a bad stock. Even if you'd have taken precautions you'd have had bad times to wind up with. The mistake was getting born. The indiscretions of the parents. And you've shirked exercise, and so forth. " "I had no one to advise me. " "Medical men are always willing. " "I was a spirited young fellow. " "We won't argue; the mischief's done now. You've lived. We can't start you again. You ought never to have started at all. Frankly--the Euthanasia! " Bindon hated him in silence for a space. Every word of this brutal expert jarred upon his refinements. He was so gross, so impermeable to all the subtler issues of being. But it is no good picking a quarrel with a doctor. "My religious beliefs," he said, "I don't approve of suicide. " "You've been doing it all your life. " "Well, anyhow, I've come to take a serious view of life now. " "You're bound to, if you go on living. You'll hurt. But for practical purposes it's late. However, if you mean to do that--perhaps I'd better mix you a little something. You'll hurt a great deal. These little twinges . . . " "Twinges! " "Mere preliminary notices. " "How long can I go on? I mean, before I hurt--really. " "You'll get it hot soon. Perhaps three days. " Bindon tried to argue for an extension of time, and in the midst of his pleading gasped, put his hand to his side. Suddenly the extraordinary pathos of his life came to him clear and vivid. "It's hard," he said. "It's infernally hard! I've been no man's enemy but my own. I've always treated everybody quite fairly. " The medical man stared at him without any sympathy for some seconds. He was reflecting how excellent it was that there were no more Bindons to carry on that line of pathos. He felt quite optimistic. Then he turned to his telephone and ordered up a prescription from the Central Pharmacy. He was interrupted by a voice behind him. "By God! " cried Bindon; "I'll have her yet. " The physician stared over his shoulder at Bindon's expression, and then altered the prescription. So soon as this painful interview was over, Bindon gave way to rage. He settled that the medical man was not only an unsympathetic brute and wanting in the first beginnings of a gentleman, but also highly incompetent; and he went off to four other practitioners in succession, with a view to the establishment of this intuition. But to guard against surprises he kept that little prescription in his pocket. With each he began by expressing his grave doubts of the first doctor's intelligence, honesty and professional knowledge, and then stated his symptoms, suppressing only a few more material facts in each case. These were always subsequently elicited by the doctor. In spite of the welcome depreciation of another practitioner, none of these eminent specialists would give Bindon any hope of eluding the anguish and helplessness that loomed now close upon him. To the last of them he unburthened his mind of an accumulated disgust with medical science. "After centuries and centuries," he exclaimed hotly; "and you can do nothing--except admit your helplessness. I say, 'save me'--and what do you do? " "No doubt it's hard on you," said the doctor. "But you should have taken precautions. " "How was I to know? " "It wasn't our place to run after you," said the medical man, picking a thread of cotton from his purple sleeve. "Why should we save _you_ in particular? You see--from one point of view--people with imaginations and passions like yours have to go--they have to go. " "Go? " "Die out. It's an eddy. " He was a young man with a serene face. He smiled at Bindon. "We get on with research, you know; we give advice when people have the sense to ask for it. And we bide our time. " "Bide your time? " "We hardly know enough yet to take over the management, you know. " "The management? " "You needn't be anxious. Science is young yet. It's got to keep on growing for a few generations. We know enough now to know we don't know enough yet. . . . But the time is coming, all the same. _You_ won't see the time. But, between ourselves, you rich men and party bosses, with your natural play of the passions and patriotism and religion and so forth, have made rather a mess of things; haven't you? These Underways! And all that sort of thing. Some of us have a sort of fancy that in time we may know enough to take over a little more than the ventilation and drains. Knowledge keeps on piling up, you know. It keeps on growing. And there's not the slightest hurry for a generation or so. Some day--some day, men will live in a different way. " He looked at Bindon and meditated. "There'll be a lot of dying out before that day can come. " Bindon attempted to point out to this young man how silly and irrelevant such talk was to a sick man like himself, how impertinent and uncivil it was to him, an older man occupying a position in the official world of extraordinary power and influence. He insisted that a doctor was paid to cure people--he laid great stress on "_paid_"--and had no business to glance even for a moment at "those other questions. " "But we do," said the young man, insisting upon facts, and Bindon lost his temper. His indignation carried him home. That these incompetent impostors, who were unable to save the life of a really influential man like himself, should dream of some day robbing the legitimate property owners of social control, of inflicting one knew not what tyranny upon the world. Curse science! He fumed over the intolerable prospect for some time, and then the pain returned, and he recalled the made-up prescription of the first doctor, still happily in his pocket. He took a dose forthwith. It calmed and soothed him greatly, and he could sit down in his most comfortable chair beside his library (of phonographic records), and think over the altered aspect of affairs. His indignation passed, his anger and his passion crumbled under the subtle attack of that prescription, pathos became his sole ruler. He stared about him, at his magnificent and voluptuously appointed apartment, at his statuary and discreetly veiled pictures, and all the evidences of a cultivated and elegant wickedness; he touched a stud and the sad pipings of Tristan's shepherd filled the air. His eye wandered from one object to another. They were costly and gross and florid--but they were his. They presented in concrete form his ideals, his conceptions of beauty and desire, his idea of all that is precious in life. And now--he must leave it all like a common man. He was, he felt, a slender and delicate flame, burning out. So must all life flame up and pass, he thought. His eyes filled with tears. Then it came into his head that he was alone. Nobody cared for him, nobody needed him! at any moment he might begin to hurt vividly. He might even howl. Nobody would mind. According to all the doctors he would have excellent reason for howling in a day or so. It recalled what his spiritual adviser had said of the decline of faith and fidelity, the degeneration of the age. He beheld himself as a pathetic proof of this; he, the subtle, able, important, voluptuous, cynical, complex Bindon, possibly howling, and not one faithful simple creature in all the world to howl in sympathy. Not one faithful simple soul was there--no shepherd to pipe to him! Had all such faithful simple creatures vanished from this harsh and urgent earth? He wondered whether the horrid vulgar crowd that perpetually went about the city could possibly know what he thought of them. If they did he felt sure _some_ would try to earn a better opinion. Surely the world went from bad to worse. It was becoming impossible for Bindons. Perhaps some day . . . He was quite sure that the one thing he had needed in life was sympathy. For a time he regretted that he left no sonnets--no enigmatical pictures or something of that sort behind him to carry on his being until at last the sympathetic mind should come. . . . It seemed incredible to him that this that came was extinction. Yet his sympathetic spiritual guide was in this matter annoyingly figurative and vague. Curse science! It had undermined all faith--all hope. To go out, to vanish from theatre and street, from office and dining-place, from the dear eyes of womankind. And not to be missed! On the whole to leave the world happier! He reflected that he had never worn his heart upon his sleeve. Had he after all been _too_ unsympathetic? Few people could suspect how subtly profound he really was beneath the mask of that cynical gaiety of his. They would not understand the loss they had suffered. Elizabeth, for example, had not suspected. . . . He had reserved that. His thoughts having come to Elizabeth gravitated about her for some time. How _little_ Elizabeth understood him! That thought became intolerable. Before all other things he must set that right. He realised that there was still something for him to do in life, his struggle against Elizabeth was even yet not over. He could never overcome her now, as he had hoped and prayed. But he might still impress her! From that idea he expanded. He might impress her profoundly--he might impress her so that she should for evermore regret her treatment of him. The thing that she must realise before everything else was his magnanimity. His magnanimity! Yes! he had loved her with amazing greatness of heart. He had not seen it so clearly before--but of course he was going to leave her all his property. He saw it instantly, as a thing determined and inevitable. She would think how good he was, how spaciously generous; surrounded by all that makes life tolerable from his hand, she would recall with infinite regret her scorn and coldness. And when she sought expression for that regret, she would find that occasion gone forever, she should be met by a locked door, by a disdainful stillness, by a white dead face. He closed his eyes and remained for a space imagining himself that white dead face. From that he passed to other aspects of the matter, but his determination was assured. He meditated elaborately before he took action, for the drug he had taken inclined him to a lethargic and dignified melancholy. In certain respects he modified details. If he left all his property to Elizabeth it would include the voluptuously appointed room he occupied, and for many reasons he did not care to leave that to her. On the other hand, it had to be left to some one. In his clogged condition this worried him extremely. In the end he decided to leave it to the sympathetic exponent of the fashionable religious cult, whose conversation had been so pleasing in the past. "_He_ will understand," said Bindon with a sentimental sigh. "He knows what Evil means--he understands something of the Stupendous Fascination of the Sphinx of Sin. Yes--he will understand. " By that phrase it was that Bindon was pleased to dignify certain unhealthy and undignified departures from sane conduct to which a misguided vanity and an ill-controlled curiosity had led him. He sat for a space thinking how very Hellenic and Italian and Neronic, and all those things, he had been. Even now--might one not try a sonnet? A penetrating voice to echo down the ages, sensuous, sinister, and sad. For a space he forgot Elizabeth. In the course of half an hour he spoilt three phonographic coils, got a headache, took a second dose to calm himself, and reverted to magnanimity and his former design. At last he faced the unpalatable problem of Denton. It needed all his newborn magnanimity before he could swallow the thought of Denton; but at last this greatly misunderstood man, assisted by his sedative and the near approach of death, effected even that. If he was at all exclusive about Denton, if he should display the slightest distrust, if he attempted any specific exclusion of that young man, she might--_misunderstand_. Yes--she should have her Denton still. His magnanimity must go even to that. He tried to think only of Elizabeth in the matter. He rose with a sigh, and limped across to the telephonic apparatus that communicated with his solicitor. In ten minutes a will duly attested and with its proper thumb-mark signature lay in the solicitor's office three miles away. And then for a space Bindon sat very still. Suddenly he started out of a vague reverie and pressed an investigatory hand to his side. Then he jumped eagerly to his feet and rushed to the telephone. The Euthanasia Company had rarely been called by a client in a greater hurry. So it came at last that Denton and his Elizabeth, against all hope, returned unseparated from the labour servitude to which they had fallen. Elizabeth came out from her cramped subterranean den of metal-beaters and all the sordid circumstances of blue canvas, as one comes out of a nightmare. Back towards the sunlight their fortune took them; once the bequest was known to them, the bare thought of another day's hammering became intolerable. They went up long lifts and stairs to levels that they had not seen since the days of their disaster. At first she was full of this sensation of escape; even to think of the underways was intolerable; only after many months could she begin to recall with sympathy the faded women who were still below there, murmuring scandals and reminiscences and folly, and tapping away their lives. Her choice of the apartments they presently took expressed the vehemence of her release. They were rooms upon the very verge of the city; they had a roof space and a balcony upon the city wall, wide open to the sun and wind, the country and the sky. And in that balcony comes the last scene in this story. It was a summer sunsetting, and the hills of Surrey were very blue and clear. Denton leant upon the balcony regarding them, and Elizabeth sat by his side. Very wide and spacious was the view, for their balcony hung five hundred feet above the ancient level of the ground. The oblongs of the Food Company, broken here and there by the ruins--grotesque little holes and sheds--of the ancient suburbs, and intersected by shining streams of sewage, passed at last into a remote diapering at the foot of the distant hills. There once had been the squatting-place of the children of Uya. On those further slopes gaunt machines of unknown import worked slackly at the end of their spell, and the hill crest was set with stagnant wind vanes. Along the great south road the Labour Company's field workers in huge wheeled mechanical vehicles, were hurrying back to their meals, their last spell finished. And through the air a dozen little private aëroplanes sailed down towards the city. Familiar scene as it was to the eyes of Denton and Elizabeth, it would have filled the minds of their ancestors with incredulous amazement. Denton's thoughts fluttered towards the future in a vain attempt at what that scene might be in another two hundred years, and, recoiling, turned towards the past. He shared something of the growing knowledge of the time; he could picture the quaint smoke-grimed Victorian city with its narrow little roads of beaten earth, its wide common-land, ill-organised, ill-built suburbs, and irregular enclosures; the old countryside of the Stuart times, with its little villages and its petty London; the England of the monasteries, the far older England of the Roman dominion, and then before that a wild country with here and there the huts of some warring tribe. These huts must have come and gone and come again through a space of years that made the Roman camp and villa seem but yesterday; and before those years, before even the huts, there had been men in the valley.

Even then--so recent had it all been when one judged it by the standards of geological time--this valley had been here; and those hills yonder, higher, perhaps, and snow-tipped, had still been yonder hills, and the Thames had flowed down from the Cotswolds to the sea. But the men had been but the shapes of men, creatures of darkness and ignorance, victims of beasts and floods, storms and pestilence and incessant hunger. They had held a precarious foothold amidst bears and lions and all the monstrous violence of the past. Already some at least of these enemies were overcome. . . . For a time Denton pursued the thoughts of this spacious vision, trying in obedience to his instinct to find his place and proportion in the scheme. "It has been chance," he said, "it has been luck. We have come through. It happens we have come through. Not by any strength of our own. . . . "And yet . . . No. I don't know. " He was silent for a long time before he spoke again. "After all--there is a long time yet. There have scarcely been men for twenty thousand years--and there has been life for twenty millions. And what are generations? What are generations? It is enormous, and we are so little. Yet we know--we feel. We are not dumb atoms, we are part of it--part of it--to the limits of our strength and will. Even to die is part of it. Whether we die or live, we are in the making. . . . "As time goes on--_perhaps_--men will be wiser. . . . Wiser. . . . "Will they ever understand? " He became silent again. Elizabeth said nothing to these things, but she regarded his dreaming face with infinite affection. Her mind was not very active that evening. A great contentment possessed her. After a time she laid a gentle hand on his beside her. He fondled it softly, still looking out upon the spacious gold-woven view. So they sat as the sun went down. Until presently Elizabeth shivered. Denton recalled himself abruptly from these spacious issues of his leisure, and went in to fetch her a shawl. The Man Who Could Work Miracles THE MAN WHO COULD WORK MIRACLES A PANTOUM IN PROSE It is doubtful whether the gift was innate. For my own part, I think it came to him suddenly. Indeed, until he was thirty he was a sceptic, and did not believe in miraculous powers. And here, since it is the most convenient place, I must mention that he was a little man, and had eyes of a hot brown, very erect red hair, a moustache with ends that he twisted up, and freckles. His name was George McWhirter Fotheringay--not the sort of name by any means to lead to any expectation of miracles--and he was clerk at Gomshott's. He was greatly addicted to assertive argument. It was while he was asserting the impossibility of miracles that he had his first intimation of his extraordinary powers. This particular argument was being held in the bar of the Long Dragon, and Toddy Beamish was conducting the opposition by a monotonous but effective "So _you_ say," that drove Mr. Fotheringay to the very limit of his patience. There were present, besides these two, a very dusty cyclist, landlord Cox, and Miss Maybridge, the perfectly respectable and rather portly barmaid of the Dragon. Miss Maybridge was standing with her back to Mr. Fotheringay, washing glasses; the others were watching him, more or less amused by the present ineffectiveness of the assertive method. Goaded by the Torres Vedras tactics of Mr. Beamish, Mr. Fotheringay determined to make an unusual rhetorical effort. "Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to the course of nature done by power of Will, something what couldn't happen without being specially willed. " "So _you_ say," said Mr. Beamish, repulsing him. Mr. Fotheringay appealed to the cyclist, who had hitherto been a silent auditor, and received his assent--given with a hesitating cough and a glance at Mr. Beamish. The landlord would express no opinion, and Mr. Fotheringay, returning to Mr. Beamish, received the unexpected concession of a qualified assent to his definition of a miracle. "For instance," said Mr. Fotheringay, greatly encouraged. "Here would be a miracle. That lamp, in the natural course of nature, couldn't burn like that upsy-down, could it, Beamish? " "_You_ say it couldn't," said Beamish. "And you? " said Fotheringay. "You don't mean to say--eh? " "No," said Beamish reluctantly. "No, it couldn't. " "Very well," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Then here comes someone, as it might be me, along here, and stands as it might be here, and says to that lamp, as I might do, collecting all my will--Turn upsy-down without breaking, and go on burning steady, and--Hullo! " It was enough to make anyone say "Hullo! " The impossible, the incredible, was visible to them all. The lamp hung inverted in the air, burning quietly with its flame pointing down. It was as solid, as indisputable as ever a lamp was, the prosaic common lamp of the Long Dragon bar. Mr. Fotheringay stood with an extended forefinger and the knitted brows of one anticipating a catastrophic smash. The cyclist, who was sitting next the lamp, ducked and jumped across the bar. Everybody jumped, more or less. Miss Maybridge turned and screamed. For nearly three seconds the lamp remained still. A faint cry of mental distress came from Mr. Fotheringay. "I can't keep it up," he said, "any longer. " He staggered back, and the inverted lamp suddenly flared, fell against the corner of the bar, bounced aside, smashed upon the floor, and went out. It was lucky it had a metal receiver, or the whole place would have been in a blaze. Mr. Cox was the first to speak, and his remark, shorn of needless excrescences, was to the effect that Fotheringay was a fool. Fotheringay was beyond disputing even so fundamental a proposition as that! He was astonished beyond measure at the thing that had occurred. The subsequent conversation threw absolutely no light on the matter so far as Fotheringay was concerned; the general opinion not only followed Mr. Cox very closely but very vehemently. Everyone accused Fotheringay of a silly trick, and presented him to himself as a foolish destroyer of comfort and security. His mind was in a tornado of perplexity, he was himself inclined to agree with them, and he made a remarkably ineffectual opposition to the proposal of his departure. He went home flushed and heated, coat-collar crumpled, eyes smarting and ears red. He watched each of the ten street lamps nervously as he passed it. It was only when he found himself alone in his little bed-room in Church Row that he was able to grapple seriously with his memories of the occurrence, and ask, "What on earth happened? " He had removed his coat and boots, and was sitting on the bed with his hands in his pockets repeating the text of his defence for the seventeenth time, "_I_ didn't want the confounded thing to upset," when it occurred to him that at the precise moment he had said the commanding words he had inadvertently willed the thing he said, and that when he had seen the lamp in the air he had felt that it depended on him to maintain it there without being clear how this was to be done. He had not a particularly complex mind, or he might have stuck for a time at that "inadvertently willed," embracing, as it does, the abstrusest problems of voluntary action; but as it was, the idea came to him with a quite acceptable haziness. And from that, following, as I must admit, no clear logical path, he came to the test of experiment. He pointed resolutely to his candle and collected his mind, though he felt he did a foolish thing. "Be raised up," he said. But in a second that feeling vanished. The candle was raised, hung in the air one giddy moment, and as Mr. Fotheringay gasped, fell with a smash on his toilet-table, leaving him in darkness save for the expiring glow of its wick. For a time Mr. Fotheringay sat in the darkness, perfectly still. "It did happen, after all," he said. "And 'ow _I'm_ to explain it I _don't_ know. " He sighed heavily, and began feeling in his pockets for a match. He could find none, and he rose and groped about the toilet-table. "I wish I had a match," he said. He resorted to his coat, and there was none there, and then it dawned upon him that miracles were possible even with matches. He extended a hand and scowled at it in the dark. "Let there be a match in that hand," he said. He felt some light object fall across his palm, and his fingers closed upon a match. After several ineffectual attempts to light this, he discovered it was a safety-match. He threw it down, and then it occurred to him that he might have willed it lit. He did, and perceived it burning in the midst of his toilet-table mat. He caught it up hastily, and it went out. His perception of possibilities enlarged, and he felt for and replaced the candle in its candlestick. "Here! _you_ be lit," said Mr. Fotheringay, and forthwith the candle was flaring, and he saw a little black hole in the toilet-cover, with a wisp of smoke rising from it. For a time he stared from this to the little flame and back, and then looked up and met his own gaze in the looking glass. By this help he communed with himself in silence for a time. "How about miracles now? " said Mr. Fotheringay at last, addressing his reflection. The subsequent meditations of Mr. Fotheringay were of a severe but confused description. So far, he could see it was a case of pure willing with him. The nature of his experiences so far disinclined him for any further experiments, at least until he had reconsidered them. But he lifted a sheet of paper, and turned a glass of water pink and then green, and he created a snail, which he miraculously annihilated, and got himself a miraculous new tooth-brush. Somewhen in the small hours he had reached the fact that his will-power must be of a particularly rare and pungent quality, a fact of which he had certainly had inklings before, but no certain assurance. The scare and perplexity of his first discovery was now qualified by pride in this evidence of singularity and by vague intimations of advantage. He became aware that the church clock was striking one, and as it did not occur to him that his daily duties at Gomshott's might be miraculously dispensed with, he resumed undressing, in order to get to bed without further delay. As he struggled to get his shirt over his head, he was struck with a brilliant idea. "Let me be in bed," he said, and found himself so. "Undressed," he stipulated; and, finding the sheets cold, added hastily, "and in my nightshirt--no, in a nice soft woollen nightshirt. Ah! " he said with immense enjoyment. "And now let me be comfortably asleep. . . . " He awoke at his usual hour and was pensive all through breakfast-time, wondering whether his overnight experience might not be a particularly vivid dream. At length his mind turned again to cautious experiments. For instance, he had three eggs for breakfast; two his landlady had supplied, good, but shoppy, and one was a delicious fresh goose-egg, laid, cooked, and served by his extraordinary will. He hurried off to Gomshott's in a state of profound but carefully concealed excitement, and only remembered the shell of the third egg when his landlady spoke of it that night. All day he could do no work because of this astonishingly new self-knowledge, but this caused him no inconvenience, because he made up for it miraculously in his last ten minutes. As the day wore on his state of mind passed from wonder to elation, albeit the circumstances of his dismissal from the Long Dragon were still disagreeable to recall, and a garbled account of the matter that had reached his colleagues led to some badinage. It was evident he must be careful how he lifted frangible articles, but in other ways his gift promised more and more as he turned it over in his mind. He intended among other things to increase his personal property by unostentatious acts of creation. He called into existence a pair of very splendid diamond studs, and hastily annihilated them again as young Gomshott came across the counting-house to his desk. He was afraid young Gomshott might wonder how he had come by them. He saw quite clearly the gift required caution and watchfulness in its exercise, but so far as he could judge the difficulties attending its mastery would be no greater than those he had already faced in the study of cycling. It was that analogy, perhaps, quite as much as the feeling that he would be unwelcome in the Long Dragon, that drove him out after supper into the lane beyond the gas-works, to rehearse a few miracles in private. There was possibly a certain want of originality in his attempts, for apart from his will-power Mr. Fotheringay was not a very exceptional man. The miracle of Moses' rod came to his mind, but the night was dark and unfavourable to the proper control of large miraculous snakes. Then he recollected the story of "Tannhäuser" that he had read on the back of the Philharmonic programme. That seemed to him singularly attractive and harmless. He stuck his walking-stick--a very nice Poona-Penang lawyer--into the turf that edged the footpath, and commanded the dry wood to blossom. The air was immediately full of the scent of roses, and by means of a match he saw for himself that this beautiful miracle was indeed accomplished. His satisfaction was ended by advancing footsteps. Afraid of a premature discovery of his powers, he addressed the blossoming stick hastily: "Go back. " What he meant was "Change back;" but of course he was confused. The stick receded at a considerable velocity, and incontinently came a cry of anger and a bad word from the approaching person. "Who are you throwing brambles at, you fool? " cried a voice. "That got me on the shin. " "I'm sorry, old chap," said Mr. Fotheringay, and then realising the awkward nature of the explanation, caught nervously at his moustache. He saw Winch, one of the three Immering constables, advancing. "What d'yer mean by it? " asked the constable. "Hullo! It's you, is it? The gent that broke the lamp at the Long Dragon! " "I don't mean anything by it," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Nothing at all. " "What d'yer do it for then? " "Oh, bother! " said Mr. Fotheringay. "Bother indeed! D'yer know that stick hurt? What d'yer do it for, eh? " For the moment Mr. Fotheringay could not think what he had done it for. His silence seemed to irritate Mr. Winch. "You've been assaulting the police, young man, this time. That's what _you_ done. " "Look here, Mr. Winch," said Mr. Fotheringay, annoyed and confused, "I'm very sorry. The fact is----" "Well? " He could think of no way but the truth. "I was working a miracle. " He tried to speak in an off-hand way, but try as he would he couldn't. "Working a----! 'Ere, don't you talk rot. Working a miracle, indeed! Miracle! Well, that's downright funny! Why, you's the chap that don't believe in miracles. . . . Fact is, this is another of your silly conjuring tricks--that's what this is. Now, I tell you----" But Mr. Fotheringay never heard what Mr. Winch was going to tell him. He realised he had given himself away, flung his valuable secret to all the winds of heaven. A violent gust of irritation swept him to action. He turned on the constable swiftly and fiercely. "Here," he said, "I've had enough of this, I have! I'll show you a silly conjuring trick, I will! Go to Hades! Go, now! " He was alone! Mr. Fotheringay performed no more miracles that night, nor did he trouble to see what had become of his flowering stick. He returned to the town, scared and very quiet, and went to his bed-room. "Lord! " he said, "it's a powerful gift--an extremely powerful gift. I didn't hardly mean as much as that. Not really. . . . I wonder what Hades is like! " He sat on the bed taking off his boots.

Struck by a happy thought he transferred the constable to San Francisco, and without any more interference with normal causation went soberly to bed. In the night he dreamt of the anger of Winch. The next day Mr. Fotheringay heard two interesting items of news. Someone had planted a most beautiful climbing rose against the elder Mr. Gomshott's private house in the Lullaborough Road, and the river as far as Rawling's Mill was to be dragged for Constable Winch. Mr. Fotheringay was abstracted and thoughtful all that day, and performed no miracles except certain provisions for Winch, and the miracle of completing his day's work with punctual perfection in spite of all the bee-swarm of thoughts that hummed through his mind. And the extraordinary abstraction and meekness of his manner was remarked by several people, and made a matter for jesting. For the most part he was thinking of Winch. On Sunday evening he went to chapel, and oddly enough, Mr. Maydig, who took a certain interest in occult matters, preached about "things that are not lawful. " Mr. Fotheringay was not a regular chapel goer, but the system of assertive scepticism, to which I have already alluded, was now very much shaken. The tenor of the sermon threw an entirely new light on these novel gifts, and he suddenly decided to consult Mr. Maydig immediately after the service. So soon as that was determined, he found himself wondering why he had not done so before. Mr. Maydig, a lean, excitable man with quite remarkably long wrists and neck, was gratified at a request for a private conversation from a young man whose carelessness in religious matters was a subject for general remark in the town. After a few necessary delays, he conducted him to the study of the Manse, which was contiguous to the chapel, seated him comfortably, and, standing in front of a cheerful fire--his legs threw a Rhodian arch of shadow on the opposite wall--requested Mr. Fotheringay to state his business. At first Mr. Fotheringay was a little abashed, and found some difficulty in opening the matter. "You will scarcely believe me, Mr. Maydig, I am afraid"--and so forth for some time. He tried a question at last, and asked Mr. Maydig his opinion of miracles. Mr. Maydig was still saying "Well" in an extremely judicial tone, when Mr. Fotheringay interrupted again: "You don't believe, I suppose, that some common sort of person--like myself, for instance--as it might be sitting here now, might have some sort of twist inside him that made him able to do things by his will. " "It's possible," said Mr. Maydig. "Something of the sort, perhaps, is possible. " "If I might make free with something here, I think I might show you by a sort of experiment," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Now, take that tobacco-jar on the table, for instance. What I want to know is whether what I am going to do with it is a miracle or not. Just half a minute, Mr. Maydig, please. " He knitted his brows, pointed to the tobacco-jar and said: "Be a bowl of vi'lets. " The tobacco-jar did as it was ordered. Mr. Maydig started violently at the change, and stood looking from the thaumaturgist to the bowl of flowers. He said nothing. Presently he ventured to lean over the table and smell the violets; they were fresh-picked and very fine ones. Then he stared at Mr. Fotheringay again. "How did you do that? " he asked. Mr. Fotheringay pulled his moustache. "Just told it--and there you are. Is that a miracle, or is it black art, or what is it? And what do you think's the matter with me? That's what I want to ask. " "It's a most extraordinary occurrence. " "And this day last week I knew no more that I could do things like that than you did. It came quite sudden. It's something odd about my will, I suppose, and that's as far as I can see. " "Is _that_--the only thing. Could you do other things besides that? " "Lord, yes! " said Mr. Fotheringay. "Just anything. " He thought, and suddenly recalled a conjuring entertainment he had seen. "Here! " He pointed. "Change into a bowl of fish--no, not that--change into a glass bowl full of water with goldfish swimming in it. That's better! You see that, Mr. Maydig? " "It's astonishing. It's incredible. You are either a most extraordinary . . . But no----" "I could change it into anything," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Just anything. Here! be a pigeon, will you? " In another moment a blue pigeon was fluttering round the room and making Mr. Maydig duck every time it came near him. "Stop there, will you," said Mr. Fotheringay; and the pigeon hung motionless in the air. "I could change it back to a bowl of flowers," he said, and after replacing the pigeon on the table worked that miracle. "I expect you will want your pipe in a bit," he said, and restored the tobacco-jar. Mr. Maydig had followed all these later changes in a sort of ejaculatory silence. He stared at Mr. Fotheringay and, in a very gingerly manner, picked up the tobacco-jar, examined it, replaced it on the table. "_Well! _" was the only expression of his feelings. "Now, after that it's easier to explain what I came about," said Mr. Fotheringay; and proceeded to a lengthy and involved narrative of his strange experiences, beginning with the affair of the lamp in the Long Dragon and complicated by persistent allusions to Winch. As he went on, the transient pride Mr. Maydig's consternation had caused passed away; he became the very ordinary Mr. Fotheringay of everyday intercourse again. Mr. Maydig listened intently, the tobacco-jar in his hand, and his bearing changed also with the course of the narrative. Presently, while Mr. Fotheringay was dealing with the miracle of the third egg, the minister interrupted with a fluttering extended hand-- "It is possible," he said. "It is credible. It is amazing, of course, but it reconciles a number of amazing difficulties. The power to work miracles is a gift--a peculiar quality like genius or second sight--hitherto it has come very rarely and to exceptional people. But in this case . . . I have always wondered at the miracles of Mahomet, and at Yogi's miracles, and the miracles of Madame Blavatsky. But, of course! Yes, it is simply a gift! It carries out so beautifully the arguments of that great thinker"--Mr. Maydig's voice sank--"his Grace the Duke of Argyll. Here we plumb some profounder law--deeper than the ordinary laws of nature. Yes--yes. Go on. Go on! " Mr. Fotheringay proceeded to tell of his misadventure with Winch, and Mr. Maydig, no longer overawed or scared, began to jerk his limbs about and interject astonishment. "It's this what troubled me most," proceeded Mr. Fotheringay; "it's this I'm most mijitly in want of advice for; of course he's at San Francisco--wherever San Francisco may be--but of course it's awkward for both of us, as you'll see, Mr. Maydig. I don't see how he can understand what has happened, and I daresay he's scared and exasperated something tremendous, and trying to get at me. I daresay he keeps on starting off to come here. I send him back, by a miracle, every few hours, when I think of it. And of course, that's a thing he won't be able to understand, and it's bound to annoy him; and, of course, if he takes a ticket every time it will cost him a lot of money. I done the best I could for him, but of course it's difficult for him to put himself in my place. I thought afterwards that his clothes might have got scorched, you know--if Hades is all it's supposed to be--before I shifted him. In that case I suppose they'd have locked him up in San Francisco. Of course I willed him a new suit of clothes on him directly I thought of it. But, you see, I'm already in a deuce of a tangle----" Mr. Maydig looked serious. "I see you are in a tangle. Yes, it's a difficult position. How you are to end it . . . " He became diffuse and inconclusive. "However, we'll leave Winch for a little and discuss the larger question. I don't think this is a case of the black art or anything of the sort. I don't think there is any taint of criminality about it at all, Mr. Fotheringay--none whatever, unless you are suppressing material facts. No, it's miracles--pure miracles--miracles, if I may say so, of the very highest class. " He began to pace the hearthrug and gesticulate, while Mr. Fotheringay sat with his arm on the table and his head on his arm, looking worried. "I don't see how I'm to manage about Winch," he said. "A gift of working miracles--apparently a very powerful gift," said Mr. Maydig, "will find a way about Winch--never fear. My dear Sir, you are a most important man--a man of the most astonishing possibilities. As evidence, for example! And in other ways, the things you may do. . . . " "Yes, _I've_ thought of a thing or two," said Mr. Fotheringay. "But--some of the things came a bit twisty. You saw that fish at first? Wrong sort of bowl and wrong sort of fish. And I thought I'd ask someone. " "A proper course," said Mr. Maydig, "a very proper course--altogether the proper course. " He stopped and looked at Mr. Fotheringay. "It's practically an unlimited gift. Let us test your powers, for instance. If they really _are_ . . . If they really are all they seem to be. " And so, incredible as it may seem, in the study of the little house behind the Congregational Chapel, on the evening of Sunday, Nov. 10, 1896, Mr. Fotheringay, egged on and inspired by Mr. Maydig, began to work miracles. The reader's attention is specially and definitely called to the date. He will object, probably has already objected, that certain points in this story are improbable, that if any things of the sort already described had indeed occurred, they would have been in all the papers a year ago. The details immediately following he will find particularly hard to accept, because among other things they involve the conclusion that he or she, the reader in question, must have been killed in a violent and unprecedented manner more than a year ago. Now a miracle is nothing if not improbable, and as a matter of fact the reader _was_ killed in a violent and unprecedented manner a year ago. In the subsequent course of this story that will become perfectly clear and credible, as every right-minded and reasonable reader will admit. But this is not the place for the end of the story, being but little beyond the hither side of the middle. And at first the miracles worked by Mr. Fotheringay were timid little miracles--little things with the cups and parlour fitments, as feeble as the miracles of Theosophists, and, feeble as they were, they were received with awe by his collaborator. He would have preferred to settle the Winch business out of hand, but Mr. Maydig would not let him. But after they had worked a dozen of these domestic trivialities, their sense of power grew, their imagination began to show signs of stimulation, and their ambition enlarged. Their first larger enterprise was due to hunger and the negligence of Mrs. Minchin, Mr. Maydig's housekeeper. The meal to which the minister conducted Mr. Fotheringay was certainly ill-laid and uninviting as refreshment for two industrious miracle-workers; but they were seated, and Mr. Maydig was descanting in sorrow rather than in anger upon his housekeeper's shortcomings, before it occurred to Mr. Fotheringay that an opportunity lay before him. "Don't you think, Mr. Maydig," he said, "if it isn't a liberty, _I_----" "My dear Mr. Fotheringay! Of course! No--I didn't think. " Mr. Fotheringay waved his hand. "What shall we have? " he said, in a large, inclusive spirit, and, at Mr. Maydig's order, revised the supper very thoroughly. "As for me," he said, eyeing Mr. Maydig's selection, "I am always particularly fond of a tankard of stout and a nice Welsh rarebit, and I'll order that. I ain't much given to Burgundy," and forthwith stout and Welsh rarebit promptly appeared at his command. They sat long at their supper, talking like equals, as Mr. Fotheringay presently perceived, with a glow of surprise and gratification, of all the miracles they would presently do. "And, by the bye, Mr. Maydig," said Mr. Fotheringay, "I might perhaps be able to help you--in a domestic way. " "Don't quite follow," said Mr. Maydig pouring out a glass of miraculous old Burgundy. Mr. Fotheringay helped himself to a second Welsh rarebit out of vacancy, and took a mouthful. "I was thinking," he said, "I might be able (_chum, chum_) to work (_chum, chum_) a miracle with Mrs. Minchin (_chum, chum_)--make her a better woman. " Mr. Maydig put down the glass and looked doubtful. "She's---- She strongly objects to interference, you know, Mr. Fotheringay. And--as a matter of fact--it's well past eleven and she's probably in bed and asleep. Do you think, on the whole----" Mr. Fotheringay considered these objections. "I don't see that it shouldn't be done in her sleep. " For a time Mr. Maydig opposed the idea, and then he yielded. Mr. Fotheringay issued his orders, and a little less at their ease, perhaps, the two gentlemen proceeded with their repast. Mr. Maydig was enlarging on the changes he might expect in his housekeeper next day, with an optimism that seemed even to Mr. Fotheringay's supper senses a little forced and hectic, when a series of confused noises from upstairs began. Their eyes exchanged interrogations, and Mr. Maydig left the room hastily. Mr. Fotheringay heard him calling up to his housekeeper and then his footsteps going softly up to her. In a minute or so the minister returned, his step light, his face radiant. "Wonderful! " he said, "and touching! Most touching! " He began pacing the hearthrug. "A repentance--a most touching repentance--through the crack of the door. Poor woman! A most wonderful change! She had got up. She must have got up at once. She had got up out of her sleep to smash a private bottle of brandy in her box. And to confess it too! . . . But this gives us--it opens--a most amazing vista of possibilities. If we can work this miraculous change in _her_ . . . " "The thing's unlimited seemingly," said Mr.

Fotheringay. "And about Mr. Winch--" "Altogether unlimited. " And from the hearthrug Mr. Maydig, waving the Winch difficulty aside, unfolded a series of wonderful proposals--proposals he invented as he went along. Now what those proposals were does not concern the essentials of this story. Suffice it that they were designed in a spirit of infinite benevolence, the sort of benevolence that used to be called post-prandial. Suffice it, too, that the problem of Winch remained unsolved. Nor is it necessary to describe how far that series got to its fulfilment. There were astonishing changes. The small hours found Mr. Maydig and Mr. Fotheringay careering across the chilly market-square under the still moon, in a sort of ecstasy of thaumaturgy, Mr. Maydig all flap and gesture, Mr. Fotheringay short and bristling, and no longer abashed at his greatness. They had reformed every drunkard in the Parliamentary division, changed all the beer and alcohol to water (Mr. Maydig had overruled Mr. Fotheringay on this point); they had, further, greatly improved the railway communication of the place, drained Flinder's swamp, improved the soil of One Tree Hill, and cured the Vicar's wart. And they were going to see what could be done with the injured pier at South Bridge. "The place," gasped Mr. Maydig, "won't be the same place to-morrow. How surprised and thankful everyone will be! " And just at that moment the church clock struck three. "I say," said Mr. Fotheringay, "that's three o'clock! I must be getting back. I've got to be at business by eight. And besides, Mrs. Wimms--" "We're only beginning," said Mr. Maydig, full of the sweetness of unlimited power. "We're only beginning. Think of all the good we're doing. When people wake--" "But--," said Mr. Fotheringay. Mr. Maydig gripped his arm suddenly. His eyes were bright and wild. "My dear chap," he said, "there's no hurry. Look"--he pointed to the moon at the zenith--"Joshua! " "Joshua? " said Mr. Fotheringay. "Joshua," said Mr. Maydig. "Why not? Stop it. " Mr. Fotheringay looked at the moon. "That's a bit tall," he said after a pause. "Why not? " said Mr. Maydig. "Of course it doesn't stop. You stop the rotation of the earth, you know. Time stops. It isn't as if we were doing harm. " "H'm! " said Mr. Fotheringay. "Well. " He sighed. "I'll try. Here--" He buttoned up his jacket and addressed himself to the habitable globe, with as good an assumption of confidence as lay in his power. "Jest stop rotating, will you," said Mr. Fotheringay. Incontinently he was flying head over heels through the air at the rate of dozens of miles a minute. In spite of the innumerable circles he was describing per second, he thought; for thought is wonderful--sometimes as sluggish as flowing pitch, sometimes as instantaneous as light. He thought in a second, and willed. "Let me come down safe and sound. Whatever else happens, let me down safe and sound. " He willed it only just in time, for his clothes, heated by his rapid flight through the air, were already beginning to singe. He came down with a forcible, but by no means injurious bump in what appeared to be a mound of fresh-turned earth. A large mass of metal and masonry, extraordinarily like the clock-tower in the middle of the market-square, hit the earth near him, ricochetted over him, and flew into stonework, bricks, and masonry, like a bursting bomb. A hurtling cow hit one of the larger blocks and smashed like an egg. There was a crash that made all the most violent crashes of his past life seem like the sound of falling dust, and this was followed by a descending series of lesser crashes. A vast wind roared throughout earth and heaven, so that he could scarcely lift his head to look. For a while he was too breathless and astonished even to see where he was or what had happened. And his first movement was to feel his head and reassure himself that his streaming hair was still his own. "Lord! " gasped Mr. Fotheringay, scarce able to speak for the gale, "I've had a squeak! What's gone wrong? Storms and thunder. And only a minute ago a fine night. It's Maydig set me on to this sort of thing. _What_ a wind! If I go on fooling in this way I'm bound to have a thundering accident! . . . "Where's Maydig? "What a confounded mess everything's in! " He looked about him so far as his flapping jacket would permit. The appearance of things was really extremely strange. "The sky's all right anyhow," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And that's about all that is all right. And even there it looks like a terrific gale coming up. But there's the moon overhead. Just as it was just now. Bright as midday. But as for the rest--Where's the village? Where's--where's anything? And what on earth set this wind a-blowing? _I_ didn't order no wind. " Mr. Fotheringay struggled to get to his feet in vain, and after one failure, remained on all fours, holding on. He surveyed the moonlit world to leeward, with the tails of his jacket streaming over his head. "There's something seriously wrong," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And what it is--goodness knows. " Far and wide nothing was visible in the white glare through the haze of dust that drove before a screaming gale but tumbled masses of earth and heaps of inchoate ruins, no trees, no houses, no familiar shapes, only a wilderness of disorder vanishing at last into the darkness beneath the whirling columns and streamers, the lightnings and thunderings of a swiftly rising storm. Near him in the livid glare was something that might once have been an elm-tree, a smashed mass of splinters, shivered from boughs to base, and further a twisted mass of iron girders--only too evidently the viaduct--rose out of the piled confusion. You see, when Mr. Fotheringay had arrested the rotation of the solid globe, he had made no stipulation concerning the trifling movables upon its surface. And the earth spins so fast that the surface at its equator is travelling at rather more than a thousand miles an hour, and in these latitudes at more than half that pace. So that the village, and Mr. Maydig, and Mr. Fotheringay, and everybody and everything had been jerked violently forward at about nine miles per second--that is to say, much more violently than if they had been fired out of a cannon. And every human being, every living creature, every house, and every tree--all the world as we know it--had been so jerked and smashed and utterly destroyed. That was all. These things Mr. Fotheringay did not, of course, fully appreciate. But he perceived that his miracle had miscarried, and with that a great disgust of miracles came upon him. He was in darkness now, for the clouds had swept together and blotted out his momentary glimpse of the moon, and the air was full of fitful struggling tortured wraiths of hail. A great roaring of wind and waters filled earth and sky, and, peering under his hand through the dust and sleet to windward, he saw by the play of the lightnings a vast wall of water pouring towards him. "Maydig! " screamed Mr. Fotheringay's feeble voice amid the elemental uproar. "Here! --Maydig! "Stop! " cried Mr. Fotheringay to the advancing water. "Oh, for goodness' sake, stop! "Just a moment," said Mr. Fotheringay to the lightnings and thunder. "Stop jest a moment while I collect my thoughts. . . . And now what shall I do? " he said. "What _shall_ I do? Lord! I wish Maydig was about. "I know," said Mr. Fotheringay. "And for goodness' sake let's have it right _this_ time. " He remained on all fours, leaning against the wind, very intent to have everything right. "Ah! " he said. "Let nothing what I'm going to order happen until I say 'Off! '. . . . Lord! I wish I'd thought of that before! " He lifted his little voice against the whirlwind, shouting louder and louder in the vain desire to hear himself speak. "Now then! --here goes! Mind about that what I said just now. In the first place, when all I've got to say is done, let me lose my miraculous power, let my will become just like anybody else's will, and all these dangerous miracles be stopped. I don't like them. I'd rather I didn't work 'em. Ever so much. That's the first thing. And the second is--let me be back just before the miracles begin; let everything be just as it was before that blessed lamp turned up. It's a big job, but it's the last. Have you got it? No more miracles, everything as it was--me back in the Long Dragon just before I drank my half-pint. That's it! Yes. " He dug his fingers into the mould, closed his eyes, and said "Off! " Everything became perfectly still. He perceived that he was standing erect. "So _you_ say," said a voice. He opened his eyes. He was in the bar of the Long Dragon, arguing about miracles with Toddy Beamish. He had a vague sense of some great thing forgotten that instantaneously passed. You see that, except for the loss of his miraculous powers, everything was back as it had been, his mind and memory therefore were now just as they had been at the time when this story began. So that he knew absolutely nothing of all that is told here, knows nothing of all that is told here to this day. And among other things, of course, he still did not believe in miracles. "I tell you that miracles, properly speaking, can't possibly happen," he said, "whatever you like to hold. And I'm prepared to prove it up to the hilt. " "That's what _you_ think," said Toddy Beamish, and "Prove it if you can. " "Looky here, Mr. Beamish," said Mr. Fotheringay. "Let us clearly understand what a miracle is. It's something contrariwise to the course of nature done by power of Will. . . . " THE END Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO. Edinburgh & London When the Sleeper Wakes A Story of the Days to Come. By H. G. WELLS, Author of "The War of the Worlds," &c. "When the Sleeper Wakes," by far the longest story Mr. Wells has yet given us, presents a spacious picture of the development of our civilisation during the next two hundred years. The sleeper is a typical liberal-minded man of means of the nineteenth century, and he awakens from a cataleptic trance in the year 2100, to discover that by an ironic combination of circumstances he has become the central figure of an enormous political convulsion. His attempt to rise to the responsibilities of his position, his struggle for power--inspired by an enthusiastic girl--with the great political organiser Ostrog, give the great structural lines of the story. "He fell to sleep a fanatical democrat--a socialist: he woke a tyrant; he died fighting with the people against the tyranny he had unconsciously fashioned while he slept. Surely a theme of magnificent possibilities--a theme more fertile in romance even than the central idea of 'The War of the Worlds. ' The discovery of such material is in itself no mean triumph. "--_Bookman. _ "One of the cleverest books ever written. "--_Birmingham Post. _ "Mr. Wells sustains his reputation as the leading novelist of the unknown in his latest effort of imagination, 'When the Sleeper Wakes. '"--_The World. _ "There is more than the triumph of extravagant fancy in Mr. Wells's book; its undertones are well worth attention too. "--_The World. _ "Mr. Wells beats Jules Verne on his own ground. "--_Daily News. _ "An enthralling effort of imagination, vivid and bizarre as a powerful nightmare. "--_The Guardian. _ "This is undoubtedly a most remarkable book, a _tour de force_ of the intellect and imagination. "--_The Queen. _ Harper & Brothers, 45 Albemarle Street London, W. Successful Short Stories _By Thomas Hardy_ A Group of Noble Dames. _Price 6s. _ Life's Little Ironies. _Price 6s. _ Wessex Tales. _Price 6s. _ _By Mary E. Wilkins_ A New England Nun. _Price 6s. _ Silence. _Price 6s. _ _By Mrs. Francis Blundell_ In a North Country Village. Illustrated by Frank Felloes. _Price 6s. _ _By E. F. Benson_ Six Common Things. _Price 3s. 6d. _ _By Barry Pain_ In a Canadian Canoe. _Price 3s. 6d. _ _By Eden Phillpotts_ Down Dartmoor Way. _Price 6s. _ _By Annie Trumbull Slosson_ Seven Dreamers. _Price 6s. _ _By Margaret Deland_ Old Chester Tales. Illustrated by Howard Pyle. _Price 6s. _ Harper & Brothers, 45 Albemarle Street London, W. End of Project Gutenberg's Tales of Space and Time, by Herbert George Wells

Produced by David Widger THE RED ROOM By H. G. Wells “I can assure you,” said I, “that it will take a very tangible ghost to frighten me. ” And I stood up before the fire with my glass in my hand. “It is your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm, and glanced at me askance. “Eight-and-twenty years,” said I, “I have lived, and never a ghost have I seen as yet. ” The old woman sat staring hard into the fire, her pale eyes wide open. “Ay,” she broke in; “and eight-and-twenty years you have lived and never seen the likes of this house, I reckon. There’s a many things to see, when one’s still but eight-and-twenty. ” She swayed her head slowly from side to side. “A many things to see and sorrow for.

” I half suspected the old people were trying to enhance the spiritual terrors of their house by their droning insistence. I put down my empty glass on the table and looked about the room, and caught a glimpse of myself, abbreviated and broadened to an impossible sturdiness, in the queer old mirror at the end of the room. “Well,” I said, “if I see anything to-night, I shall be so much the wiser. For I come to the business with an open mind. ” “It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm once more. I heard the faint sound of a stick and a shambling step on the flags in the passage outside. The door creaked on its hinges as a second old man entered, more bent, more wrinkled, more aged even than the first. He supported himself by the help of a crutch, his eyes were covered by a shade, and his lower lip, half averted, hung pale and pink from his decaying yellow teeth. He made straight for an armchair on the opposite side of the table, sat down clumsily, and began to cough. The man with the withered hand gave the newcomer a short glance of positive dislike; the old woman took no notice of his arrival, but remained with her eyes fixed steadily on the fire. “I said--it’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered hand, when the coughing had ceased for a while.

“It’s my own choosing,” I answered. The man with the shade became aware of my presence for the first time, and threw his head back for a moment, and sidewise, to see me. I caught a momentary glimpse of his eyes, small and bright and inflamed. Then he began to cough and splutter again. “Why don’t you drink? ” said the man with the withered arm, pushing the beer toward him. The man with the shade poured out a glassful with a shaking hand, that splashed half as much again on the deal table. A monstrous shadow of him crouched upon the wall, and mocked his action as he poured and drank. I must confess I had scarcely expected these grotesque custodians. There is, to my mind, something inhuman in senility, something crouching and atavistic; the human qualities seem to drop from old people insensibly day by day. The three of them made me feel uncomfortable with their gaunt silences, their bent carriage, their evident unfriendliness to me and to one another.

And that night, perhaps, I was in the mood for uncomfortable impressions. I resolved to get away from their vague fore-shadowings of the evil things upstairs. “If,” said I, “you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will make myself comfortable there. ” The old man with the cough jerked his head back so suddenly that it startled me, and shot another glance of his red eyes at me from out of the darkness under the shade, but no one answered me. I waited a minute, glancing from one to the other. The old woman stared like a dead body, glaring into the fire with lack-lustre eyes. “If,” I said, a little louder, “if you will show me to this haunted room of yours, I will relieve you from the task of entertaining me. ” “There’s a candle on the slab outside the door,” said the man with the withered hand, looking at my feet as he addressed me. “But if you go to the Red Room to-night--” “This night of all nights! ” said the old woman, softly. “--You go alone.

” “Very well,” I answered, shortly, “and which way do I go? ” “You go along the passage for a bit,” said he, nodding his head on his shoulder at the door, “until you come to a spiral staircase; and on the second landing is a door covered with green baize. Go through that, and down the long corridor to the end, and the Red Room is on your left up the steps. ” “Have I got that right? ” I said, and repeated his directions. He corrected me in one particular. “And you are really going? ” said the man with the shade, looking at me again for the third time with that queer, unnatural tilting of the face. “This night of all nights! ” whispered the old woman. “It is what I came for,” I said, and moved toward the door.

As I did so, the old man with the shade rose and staggered round the table, so as to be closer to the others and to the fire. At the door I turned and looked at them, and saw they were all close together, dark against the firelight, staring at me over their shoulders, with an intent expression on their ancient faces. “Good-night,” I said, setting the door open. “It’s your own choosing,” said the man with the withered arm. I left the door wide open until the candle was well alight, and then I shut them in, and walked down the chilly, echoing passage. I must confess that the oddness of these three old pensioners in whose charge her ladyship had left the castle, and the deep-toned, old-fashioned furniture of the housekeeper’s room, in which they foregathered, had affected me curiously in spite of my effort to keep myself at a matter-of-fact phase. They seemed to belong to another age, an older age, an age when things spiritual were indeed to be feared, when common sense was uncommon, an age when omens and witches were credible, and ghosts beyond denying. Their very existence, thought I, is spectral; the cut of their clothing, fashions born in dead brains; the ornaments and conveniences in the room about them even are ghostly--the thoughts of vanished men, which still haunt rather than participate in the world of to-day. And the passage I was in, long and shadowy, with a film of moisture glistening on the wall, was as gaunt and cold as a thing that is dead and rigid. But with an effort I sent such thoughts to the right-about. The long, drafty subterranean passage was chilly and dusty, and my candle flared and made the shadows cower and quiver.

The echoes rang up and down the spiral staircase, and a shadow came sweeping up after me, and another fled before me into the darkness overhead. I came to the wide landing and stopped there for a moment listening to a rustling that I fancied I heard creeping behind me, and then, satisfied of the absolute silence, pushed open the unwilling baize-covered door and stood in the silent corridor. The effect was scarcely what I expected, for the moonlight, coming in by the great window on the grand staircase, picked out everything in vivid black shadow or reticulated silvery illumination. Everything seemed in its proper position; the house might have been deserted on the yesterday instead of twelve months ago. There were candles in the sockets of the sconces, and whatever dust had gathered on the carpets or upon the polished flooring was distributed so evenly as to be invisible in my candlelight. A waiting stillness was over everything. I was about to advance, and stopped abruptly. A bronze group stood upon the landing hidden from me by a corner of the wall; but its shadow fell with marvelous distinctness upon the white paneling, and gave me the impression of some one crouching to waylay me. The thing jumped upon my attention suddenly. I stood rigid for half a moment, perhaps. Then, with my hand in the pocket that held the revolver, I advanced, only to discover a Ganymede and Eagle, glistening in the moonlight.

That incident for a time restored my nerve, and a dim porcelain Chinaman on a buhl table, whose head rocked as I passed, scarcely startled me. The door of the Red Room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy corner. I moved my candle from side to side in order to see clearly the nature of the recess in which I stood, before opening the door. Here it was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my shoulder at the black Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door of the Red Room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid silence of the corridor. I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft surveying the scene of my vigil, the great Red Room of Lorraine Castle, in which the young Duke had died; or rather in which he had begun his dying, for he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. There were other and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-incredible beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that came to her husband’s jest of frightening her. And looking round that huge shadowy room with its black window bays, its recesses and alcoves, its dusty brown-red hangings and dark gigantic furniture, one could well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its germinating darknesses. My candle was a little tongue of light in the vastness of the chamber; its rays failed to pierce to the opposite end of the room, and left an ocean of dull red mystery and suggestion, sentinel shadows and watching darknesses beyond its island of light. And the stillness of desolation brooded over it all.

I must confess some impalpable quality of that ancient room disturbed me. I tried to fight the feeling down. I resolved to make a systematic examination of the place, and so, by leaving nothing to the imagination, dispel the fanciful suggestions of the obscurity before they obtained a hold upon me. After satisfying myself of the fastening of the door, I began to walk round the room, peering round each article of furniture, tucking up the valances of the bed and opening its curtains wide. In one place there was a distinct echo to my footsteps, the noises I made seemed so little that they enhanced rather than broke the silence of the place. I pulled up the blinds and examined the fastenings of the several windows. Attracted by the fall of a particle of dust, I leaned forward and looked up the blackness of the wide chimney. Then, trying to preserve my scientific attitude of mind, I walked round and began tapping the oak paneling for any secret opening, but I desisted before reaching the alcove. I saw my face in a mirror--white. There were two big mirrors in the room, each with a pair of sconces bearing candles, and on the mantelshelf, too, were candles in china candle-sticks. All these I lit one after the other.

The fire was laid--an unexpected consideration from the old housekeeper--and I lit it, to keep down any disposition to shiver, and when it was burning well I stood round with my back to it and regarded the room again. I had pulled up a chintz-covered armchair and a table to form a kind of barricade before me. On this lay my revolver, ready to hand. My precise examination had done me a little good, but I still found the remoter darkness of the place and its perfect stillness too stimulating for the imagination. The echoing of the stir and crackling of the fire was no sort of comfort to me. The shadow in the alcove at the end of the room began to display that undefinable quality of a presence, that odd suggestion of a lurking living thing that comes so easily in silence and solitude. And to reassure myself, I walked with a candle into it and satisfied myself that there was nothing tangible there. I stood that candle upon the floor of the alcove and left it in that position. By this time I was in a state of considerable nervous tension, although to my reason there was no adequate cause for my condition. My mind, however, was perfectly clear. I postulated quite unreservedly that nothing supernatural could happen, and to pass the time I began stringing some rhymes together, Ingoldsby fashion, concerning the original legend of the place.

A few I spoke aloud, but the echoes were not pleasant. For the same reason I also abandoned, after a time, a conversation with myself upon the impossibility of ghosts and haunting. My mind reverted to the three old and distorted people downstairs, and I tried to keep it upon that topic. The sombre reds and grays of the room troubled me; even with its seven candles the place was merely dim. The light in the alcove flaring in a draft, and the fire flickering, kept the shadows and penumbra perpetually shifting and stirring in a noiseless flighty dance. Casting about for a remedy, I recalled the wax candles I had seen in the corridor, and, with a slight effort, carrying a candle and leaving the door open, I walked out into the moonlight, and presently returned with as many as ten. These I put in the various knick-knacks of china with which the room was sparsely adorned, and lit and placed them where the shadows had lain deepest, some on the floor, some in the window recesses, arranging and rearranging them until at last my seventeen candles were so placed that not an inch of the room but had the direct light of at least one of them. It occurred to me that when the ghost came I could warn him not to trip over them. The room was now quite brightly illuminated. There was something very cheering and reassuring in these little silent streaming flames, and to notice their steady diminution of length offered me an occupation and gave me a reassuring sense of the passage of time. Even with that, however, the brooding expectation of the vigil weighed heavily enough upon me.

I stood watching the minute hand of my watch creep towards midnight. Then something happened in the alcove. I did not see the candle go out, I simply turned and saw that the darkness was there, as one might start and see the unexpected presence of a stranger. The black shadow had sprung back to its place. “By Jove,” said I aloud, recovering from my surprise, “that draft’s a strong one;” and taking the matchbox from the table, I walked across the room in a leisurely manner to relight the corner again. My first match would not strike, and as I succeeded with the second, something seemed to blink on the wall before me. I turned my head involuntarily and saw that the two candles on the little table by the fireplace were extinguished. I rose at once to my feet. “Odd,” I said. “Did I do that myself in a flash of absent-mindedness? ” I walked back, relit one, and as I did so I saw the candle in the right sconce of one of the mirrors wink and go right out, and almost immediately its companion followed it.

The flames vanished as if the wick had been suddenly nipped between a finger and thumb, leaving the wick neither glowing nor smoking, but black. While I stood gaping the candle at the foot of the bed went out, and the shadows seemed to take another step toward me. “This won’t do! ” said I, and first one and then another candle on the mantelshelf followed. “What’s up? ” I cried, with a queer high note getting into my voice somehow. At that the candle on the corner of the wardrobe went out, and the one I had relit in the alcove followed. “Steady on! ” I said, “those candles are wanted,” speaking with a half-hysterical facetiousness, and scratching away at a match the while, “for the mantel candlesticks. ” My hands trembled so much that twice I missed the rough paper of the matchbox. As the mantel emerged from darkness again, two candles in the remoter end of the room were eclipsed.

But with the same match I also relit the larger mirror candles, and those on the floor near the doorway, so that for the moment I seemed to gain on the extinctions. But then in a noiseless volley there vanished four lights at once in different corners of the room, and I struck another match in quivering haste, and stood hesitating whither to take it. As I stood undecided, an invisible hand seemed to sweep out the two candles on the table. With a cry of terror I dashed at the alcove, then into the corner and then into the window, relighting three as two more vanished by the fireplace, and then, perceiving a better way, I dropped matches on the iron-bound deedbox in the corner, and caught up the bedroom candlestick. With this I avoided the delay of striking matches, but for all that the steady process of extinction went on, and the shadows I feared and fought against returned, and crept in upon me, first a step gained on this side of me, then on that. I was now almost frantic with the horror of the coming darkness, and my self-possession deserted me. I leaped panting from candle to candle in a vain struggle against that remorseless advance. I bruised myself in the thigh against the table, I sent a chair headlong, I stumbled and fell and whisked the cloth from the table in my fall. My candle rolled away from me and I snatched another as I rose. Abruptly this was blown out as I swung it off the table by the wind of my sudden movement, and immediately the two remaining candles followed. But there was light still in the room, a red light, that streamed across the ceiling and staved off the shadows from me.

The fire! Of course I could still thrust my candle between the bars and relight it. I turned to where the flames were still dancing between the glowing coals and splashing red reflections upon the furniture; made two steps toward the grate, and incontinently the flames dwindled and vanished, the glow vanished, the reflections rushed together and disappeared, and as I thrust the candle between the bars darkness closed upon me like the shutting of an eye, wrapped about me in a stifling embrace, sealed my vision, and crushed the last vestiges of self-possession from my brain. And it was not only palpable darkness, but intolerable terror. The candle fell from my hands. I flung out my arms in a vain effort to thrust that ponderous blackness away from me, and lifting up my voice, screamed with all my might, once, twice, thrice. Then I think I must have staggered to my feet. I know I thought suddenly of the moonlit corridor, and with my head bowed and my arms over my face, made a stumbling run for the door. But I had forgotten the exact position of the door, and I struck myself heavily against the corner of the bed. I staggered back, turned, and was either struck or struck myself against some other bulky furnishing. I have a vague memory of battering myself thus to and fro in the darkness, of a heavy blow at last upon my forehead, of a horrible sensation of falling that lasted an age, of my last frantic effort to keep my footing, and then I remember no more.

I opened my eyes in daylight. My head was roughly bandaged, and the man with the withered hand was watching my face. I looked about me trying to remember what had happened, and for a space I could not recollect. I rolled my eyes into the corner and saw the old woman, no longer abstracted, no longer terrible, pouring out some drops of medicine from a little blue phial into a glass. “Where am I? ” I said. “I seem to remember you, and yet I can not remember who you are. ” They told me then, and I heard of the haunted Red Room as one who hears a tale. “We found you at dawn,” said he, “and there was blood on your forehead and lips. ” I wondered that I had ever disliked him. The three of them in the daylight seemed commonplace old folk enough.

The man with the green shade had his head bent as one who sleeps. It was very slowly I recovered the memory of my experience. “You believe now,” said the old man with the withered hand, “that the room is haunted? ” He spoke no longer as one who greets an intruder, but as one who condoles with a friend. “Yes,” said I, “the room is haunted. ” “And you have seen it. And we who have been here all our lives have never set eyes upon it. Because we have never dared. Tell us, is it truly the old earl who--” “No,” said I, “it is not. ” “I told you so,” said the old lady, with the glass in her hand. “It is his poor young countess who was frightened--” “It is not,” I said.

“There is neither ghost of earl nor ghost of countess in that room; there is no ghost there at all, but worse, far worse, something impalpable--” “Well? ” they said. “The worst of all the things that haunt poor mortal men,” said I; “and that is, in all its nakedness--‘Fear! ’ Fear that will not have light nor sound, that will not bear with reason, that deafens and darkens and overwhelms. It followed me through the corridor, it fought against me in the room--” I stopped abruptly. There was an interval of silence. My hand went up to my bandages. “The candles went out one after another, and I fled--” Then the man with the shade lifted his face sideways to see me and spoke. “That is it,” said he. “I knew that was it. A Power of Darkness.

To put such a curse upon a home! It lurks there always. You can feel it even in the daytime, even of a bright summer’s day, in the hangings, in the curtains, keeping behind you however you face about. In the dusk it creeps in the corridor and follows you, so that you dare not turn. It is even as you say. Fear itself is in that room. Black Fear. . . . And there it will be.

. . so long as this house of sin endures. ”

Produced by Richard Tonsing and the Online DistributedProofreading Team at http://www. pgdp. net (This file wasproduced from images generously made available by TheInternet Archive) THE UNDYING FIRE _Mr. Wells has also written the following novels_: LOVE AND MR. LEWISHAM KIPPS MR. POLLY THE WHEELS OF CHANCE THE NEW MACHIAVELLI ANN VERONICA TONO BUNGAY MARRIAGE BEALBY THE PASSIONATE FRIENDS THE WIFE OF SIR ISAAC HARMAN THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT MR. BRITLING SEES IT THROUGH THE SOUL OF A BISHOP JOAN AND PETER_The following fantastic and imaginative romances_: THE WAR OF THE WORLDS THE TIME MACHINE THE WONDERFUL VISIT THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU THE SEA LADY THE SLEEPER AWAKES THE FOOD OF THE GODS THE WAR IN THE AIR THE FIRST MEN IN THE MOON IN THE DAYS OF THE COMET THE WORLD SET FREE And numerous short stories now collected in one volume under the title of THE COUNTRY OF THE BLIND_A series of books upon social, religious, and political questions_: ANTICIPATIONS (1900) MANKIND IN THE MAKING FIRST AND LAST THINGS NEW WORLDS FOR OLD A MODERN UTOPIA THE FUTURE IN AMERICA AN ENGLISHMAN LOOKS AT THE WORLD WHAT IS COMING? ITALY, FRANCE, AND GREAT BRITAIN AT WAR GOD THE INVISIBLE KING IN THE FOURTH YEAR_And two little books about children’s play, called_: FLOOR GAMES and LITTLE WARS THE UNDYING FIRE A CONTEMPORARY NOVEL BY H. G. WELLS New York THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 1919 _All rights reserved_ COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY H. G. WELLS. Set up and electrotyped. Published May, 1919. Norwood Press J. S. Cushing Co. —Berwick & Smith Co. Norwood, Mass. , U. S. A. To All Schoolmasters and Schoolmistresses and every Teacher in the World------------------------------------------------------------------------ CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE 1. THE PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN 1 2. AT SEA VIEW, SUNDERING-ON-SEA 17 3. THE THREE VISITORS 39 4. DO WE TRULY DIE? 100 5. ELIHU REPROVES JOB 133 6. THE OPERATION 200 7. LETTERS AND A TELEGRAM 214 THE UNDYING FIRE CHAPTER THE FIRST THE PROLOGUE IN HEAVEN § 1Two eternal beings, magnificently enhaloed, the one in a blinding excessof white radiance and the other in a bewildering extravagance ofcolours, converse amidst stupendous surroundings. These surroundings areby tradition palatial, but there is now also a marked cosmic tendencyabout them. They have no definite locality; they are above andcomprehensive of the material universe. There is a quality in the scene as if a futurist with a considerableknowledge of modern chemical and physical speculation and some obscuretheological animus had repainted the designs of a pre-Raphaelite. Thevast pillars vanish into unfathomable darknesses, and the complicatedcurves and whorls of the decorations seem to have been traced by theflight of elemental particles. Suns and planets spin and glitter throughthe avanturine depths of a floor of crystalline ether. Great wingedshapes are in attendance, wrought of iridescences and bearing globes,stars, rolls of the law, flaming swords, and similar symbols. The voicesof the Cherubim and Seraphim can be heard crying continually, “Holy,Holy, Holy. ”Now, as in the ancient story, it is a reception of the sons of God. The Master of the gathering, to whom one might reasonably attribute asublime boredom, seeing that everything that can possibly happen isnecessarily known to him, displays on the contrary as lively an interestin his interlocutor as ever. This interlocutor is of course Satan, theUnexpected. The contrast of these two eternal beings is very marked; while theDeity, veiled and almost hidden in light, with his hair like wool andhis eyes like the blue of infinite space, conveys an effect of stable,remote, and mountainous grandeur, Satan has the compact alertness ofhabitual travel; he is as definite as a grip-sack, and he brings aflavour of initiative and even bustle upon a scene that would otherwisebe one of serene perfection. His halo even has a slightly travelledlook. He has been going to and fro in the earth and walking up and downin it; his labels are still upon him. His status in heaven remains asundefined as it was in the time of Job; it is uncertain to this daywhether he is to be regarded as one of the sons of God or as aninexplicable intruder among them. (But see upon this question theEncyclopædia Biblica under his name. ) Whatever his origin there can belittle doubt of his increasing assurance of independence and importancein the Divine presence. His freedom may be sanctioned or innate, but hehimself has no doubt remaining of the security of his personal autonomy. He believes that he is a necessary accessory to God, and that hisincalculable quality is an indispensable relief to the acquiescences ofthe Archangels. He never misses these reunions. If God is omnipresent bya calm necessity, Satan is everywhere by an infinite activity. Theyengage in unending metaphysical differences into which Satan hasimported a tone of friendly badinage. They play chess together. But the chess they play is not the little ingenious game that originatedin India; it is on an altogether different scale. The Ruler of theUniverse creates the board, the pieces, and the rules; he makes all themoves; he may make as many moves as he likes whenever he likes; hisantagonist, however, is permitted to introduce a slight inexplicableinaccuracy into each move, which necessitates further moves incorrection. The Creator determines and conceals the aim of the game, andit is never clear whether the purpose of the adversary is to defeat orassist him in his unfathomable project. Apparently the adversary cannotwin, but also he cannot lose so long as he can keep the game going. Buthe is concerned, it would seem, in preventing the development of anyreasoned scheme in the game. § 2Celestial badinage is at once too high and broad to come readily withinthe compass of earthly print and understanding. The Satanic element ofunexpectedness can fill the whole sphere of Being with laughter; thrillsbegotten of those vast reverberations startle our poor wits at thestrangest moments. It is the humour of Satan to thrust upon the Masterhis own title of the Unique and to seek to wrest from him the authorshipof life. (But such jesting distresses the angels. )“I alone create. ”“But I—I ferment. ”“Matter I made and all things. ”“Stagnant as a sleeping top but for the wabble I give it. ”“You are just the little difference of the individual. You are thelittle Uniqueness in everyone and everything, the Unique that breaks thelaw, a marginal idiosyncracy. ”“Sire, _you_ are the Unique, the Uniqueness of the whole. ”Heaven smiled, and there were halcyon days in the planets. “I shallaverage you out in the end and you will disappear. ”“And everything will end. ”“Will be complete. ”“Without me! ”“You spoil the symmetry of my universe. ”“I give it life. ”“Life comes from me. ”“No, Sire, life comes from me. ”One of the great shapes in attendance became distinct as Michael bearinghis sword. “He blasphemes, O Lord. Shall I cast him forth? ”“But you did that some time ago,” answered Satan, speaking carelesslyover his shoulder and not even looking at the speaker. “You keep ondoing it. And—I am here. ”“He returns,” said the Lord soothingly. “Perhaps I will him to return. What should we be without him? ”“Without me, time and space would freeze into crystalline perfection,”said Satan, and at his smile the criminal statistics of a myriad planetsdisplayed an upward wave. “It is I who trouble the waters. I trouble allthings. I am the spirit of life. ”“But the soul,” said God. Satan, sitting with one arm thrown over the back of his throne towardsMichael, raised his eyebrows by way of answer. This talk about the soulhe regarded as a divine weakness. He knew nothing of the soul. “I made man in my own image,” said God. “And I made him a man of the world. If it had not been for me he wouldstill be a needless gardener—pretending to cultivate a weedless gardenthat grew right because it couldn’t grow wrong—in ‘those endless summersthe blessed ones see. ’ Think of it, ye Powers and Dominions! Perfectflowers! Perfect fruits! Never an autumn chill! Never a yellow leaf! Golden leopards, noble lions, carnivores unfulfilled, purring for hiscaresses amidst the aimless friskings of lambs that would never growold! Good Lord! How bored he would have been! How bored! Instead ofwhich, did I not launch him on the most marvellous adventures? It was Iwho gave him history. Up to the very limit of his possibilities. Up tothe very limit. . . . And did not you, O Lord, by sending your angels withtheir flaming swords, approve of what I had done? ”God gave no answer. “But that reminds me,” said Satan unabashed. § 3The great winged shapes drew nearer, for Satan is the celestialraconteur. He alone makes stories. “There was a certain man in the land of Uz whose name was Job. ”“We remember him. ”“We had a wager of sorts,” said Satan. “It was some time ago. ”“The wager was never very distinct—and now that you remind me of it,there is no record of your paying. ”“Did I lose or win? The issue was obscured by discussion. How those mendid talk! You intervened. There was no decision. ”“You lost, Satan,” said a great Being of Light who bore a book. “Thewager was whether Job would lose faith in God and curse him. He wasafflicted in every way, and particularly by the conversation of hisfriends. But there remains an undying fire in man. ”Satan rested his dark face on his hand, and looked down between hisknees through the pellucid floor to that little eddying in the etherwhich makes our world. “Job,” he said, “lives still. ”Then after an interval: “The whole earth is now—Job. ”Satan delights equally in statistics and in quoting scripture. He leantback in his seat with an expression of quiet satisfaction. “Job,” hesaid, in easy narrative tones, “lived to a great age. After hisdisagreeable experiences he lived one hundred and forty years. He hadagain seven sons and three daughters, and he saw his offspring for fourgenerations. So much is classical. These ten children brought himseventy grandchildren, who again prospered generally and had largefamilies. (It was a prolific strain. ) And now if we allow threegenerations to a century, and the reality is rather more than that, andif we take the survival rate as roughly three to a family, and if weagree with your excellent Bishop Usher that Job lived about thirty-fivecenturies ago, that gives us——How many? Three to the hundred and fifthpower? . . . It is at any rate a sum vastly in excess of the presentpopulation of the earth. . . . You have globes and rolls and swords andstars here; has anyone a slide rule? ”But the computation was brushed aside. “A thousand years in my sight are but as yesterday when it is past. Iwill grant what you seek to prove; that Job has become mankind. ” § 4The dark regard of Satan smote down through the quivering universe andleft the toiling light waves behind. “See there,” he said pointing. “Myold friend on his little planet—Adam—Job—Man—like a roast on a spit. Itis time we had another wager. ”God condescended to look with Satan at mankind, circling between day andnight. “Whether he will curse or bless? ”“Whether he will even remember God. ”“I have given my promise that I will at last restore Adam. ”The downcast face smiled faintly. “These questions change from age to age,” said Satan. “The Whole remains the same. ”“The story grows longer in either direction,” said Satan, speaking asone who thinks aloud; “past and future unfold together. . . . When thefirst atoms jarred I was there, and so conflict was there—and progress. The days of the old story have each expanded to hundreds of millions ofyears now, and still I am in them all. The sharks and crawling monstersof the early seas, the first things that crept out of the water into thejungle of fronds and stems, the early reptiles, the leaping and flyingdragons of the great age of life, the mighty beasts of hoof and hornthat came later; they all feared and suffered and were perplexed. Atlast came this Man of yours, out of the woods, hairy, beetle-browed andblood-stained, peering not too hopefully for that Eden-bower of theancient story. It wasn’t there. There never had been a garden. He hadfallen before he arose, and the weeds and thorns are as ancient as theflowers. The Fall goes back in time now beyond man, beyond the world,beyond imagination. The very stars were born in sin. . . . “If we can still call it sin,” mused Satan. “On a little planet this Thing arises, this red earth, this Adam, thisEdomite, this Job. He builds cities, he tills the earth, he catches thelightning and makes a slave of it, he changes the breed of beast andgrain. Clever things to do, but still petty things. You say that in somemanner he is to come up at last to _this_. . . . He is too foolish and tooweak. His achievements only illuminate his limitations. Look at hislittle brain boxed up from growth in a skull of bone! Look at his bag ofa body full of rags and rudiments, a haggis of diseases! His life isdecay. . . . _Does_ he grow? I do not see it. Has he made any perceptiblestep forward in quality in the last ten thousand years? He quarrelsendlessly and aimlessly with himself. . . .

In a little while his planetwill cool and freeze. ”“In the end he will rule over the stars,” said the voice that was aboveSatan. “My spirit is in him. ”Satan shaded his face with his hand from the effulgence about him. Hesaid no more for a time, but sat watching mankind as a boy might sit onthe bank of a stream and watch the fry of minnows in the clear water ofa shallow. “Nay,” he said at last, “but it is incredible. It is impossible. I havedisturbed and afflicted him long enough. I have driven him as far as hecan be driven. But now I am moved to pity. Let us end this dispute. Ithas been interesting, but now——Is it not enough? It grows cruel. He hasreached his limit. Let us give him a little peace now, Lord, a littleseason of sunshine and plenty, and then some painless universalpestilence and so let him die. ”“He is immortal and he does but begin. ”“He is mortal and near his end. At times no doubt he has a certain airthat seems to promise understanding and mastery in his world; it is butan air; give me the power to afflict and subdue him but a little, andafter a few squeaks of faith and hope he will whine and collapse likeany other beast. He will behave like any kindred creature with a smallerbrain and a larger jaw; he too is doomed to suffer to no purpose, tostruggle by instinct merely to live, to endure for a season and then topass. . . . Give me but the power and you shall see his courage snap like arotten string. ”“You may do all that you will to him, only you must not slay him. For myspirit is in him. ”“That he will cast out of his own accord—when I have ruined his hopes,mocked his sacrifices, blackened his skies and filled his veins withtorture. . . . But it is too easy to do. Let me just slay him now and endhis story. Then let us begin another, a different one, and somethingmore amusing. Let us, for example, put brains—and this Soul ofyours—into the ants or the bees or the beavers! Or take up the octopus,already a very tactful and intelligent creature! ”“No; but do as you have said, Satan. For you also are my instrument. TryMan to the uttermost. See if he is indeed no more than a little stiramidst the slime, a fuss in the mud that signifies nothing. . . . ” § 5The Satan, his face hidden in shadow, seemed not to hear this, butremained still and intent upon the world of men. And as that brown figure, with its vast halo like the worn tail of somefiery peacock, brooded high over the realms of being, this that followshappened to a certain man upon the earth. CHAPTER THE SECOND AT SEA VIEW, SUNDERING-ON-SEA § 1In an uncomfortable armchair of slippery black horsehair, in a meanapartment at Sundering-on-Sea, sat a sick man staring dully out of thewindow. It was an oppressive day, hot under a leaden sky; there wasscarcely a movement in the air save for the dull thudding of the gunpractice at Shorehamstow. A multitude of flies crawled and buzzedfitfully about the room, and ever and again some chained-up cur in theneighbourhood gave tongue to its discontent. The window looked out upona vacant building lot, a waste of scorched grass and rusty rubbishsurrounded by a fence of barrel staves and barbed wire. Between theruinous notice-board of some pre-war building enterprise and the gauntverandah of a convalescent home, on which the motionless blue forms oftwo despondent wounded men in deck chairs were visible, came the seaview which justified the name of the house; beyond a wide waste of mud,over which quivered the heat-tormented air, the still anger of theheavens lowered down to meet in a line of hard conspiracy, the steelycriminality of the remote deserted sea. The man in the chair flapped his hand and spoke. “You accursedcreature,” he said. “Why did God make flies? ”After a long interval he sighed deeply and repeated: “_Why? _”He made a fitful effort to assume a more comfortable position, andrelapsed at last into his former attitude of brooding despondency. When presently his landlady came in to lay the table for lunch, analmost imperceptible wincing alone betrayed his sense of the threateningswish and emphasis of her movements. She was manifestly heated bycooking, and a smell of burnt potatoes had drifted in with herappearance. She was a meagre little woman with a resentful manner,glasses pinched her sharp red nose, and as she spread out the grey-whitediaper and rapped down the knives and forks in their places she glancedat him darkly as if his inattention aggrieved her. Twice she was movedto speak and did not do so, but at length she could endure hisindifference no longer. “Still feeling ill I suppose, Mr. ’Uss? ” shesaid, in the manner of one who knows only too well what the answer willbe. He started at the sound of her voice, and gave her his attention as ifwith an effort. “I beg your pardon, Mrs. Croome? ”The landlady repeated with acerbity, “I arst if you was still feelingill, Mr. ’Uss. ”He did not look at her when he replied, but glanced towards her out ofthe corner of his eyes. “Yes,” he said. “Yes, I am. I am afraid I amill. ” She made a noise of unfriendly confirmation that brought his faceround to her. “But mind you, Mrs. Croome, I don’t want Mrs. Huss worriedabout it. She has enough to trouble her just now. Quite enough. ”“Misfortunes don’t ever come singly,” said Mrs. Croome with quietsatisfaction, leaning across the table to brush some spilt salt from offthe cloth to the floor. She was not going to make any rash promisesabout Mrs. Huss. “We ’ave to bear up with what is put upon us,” said Mrs. Croome. “We’ave to find strength where strength is to be found. ”She stood up and regarded him with pensive malignity. “Very likely allyou want is a tonic of some sort. Very likely you’ve just let yourselfgo. I shouldn’t be surprised. ”The sick man gave no welcome to this suggestion. “If you was to go round to the young doctor at the corner—Barrackisnameis—very likely he’d put you right. Everybody says he’s veryclever. Not that me and Croome put much faith in doctors. Nor need to. But you’re in a different position. ”The man in the chair had been to see the young doctor at the cornertwice already, but he did not want to discuss that interview with Mrs. Croome just then. “I must think about it,” he said evasively. “After all it isn’t fair to yourself, it isn’t fair to others, to sickenfor—it might be anythink—without proper advice. Sitting there and doingnothing. Especially in lodgings at this time of year. It isn’t, well—notwhat I call considerate. ”“Exactly,” said Mr. Huss weakly. “There’s homes and hospitals properly equipped. ”The sick man nodded his head appreciatively. “If things are nipped in the bud they’re nipped in the bud, otherwisethey grow and make trouble. ”It was exactly what her hearer was thinking. Mrs. Croome ducked to the cellarette of a gaunt sideboard and rapped outa whisky bottle, a bottle of lime-juice, and a soda-water syphon uponthe table. She surveyed her handiwork with a critical eye. “Cruet,” shewhispered, and vanished from the room, leaving the door, after atormenting phase of creaking, to slam by its own weight behind her. . . . The invalid raised his hand to his forehead and found it wet withperspiration. His hand was trembling violently. “My _God_! ” hewhispered. § 2This man’s name was Job Huss. His father had been called Job before him,and so far as the family tradition extended the eldest son had alwaysbeen called Job. Four weeks ago he would have been esteemed by mostpeople a conspicuously successful and enviable man, and then had come aswift rush of disaster. He had been the headmaster of the great modern public school atWoldingstanton in Norfolk, a revived school under the Papermakers’ Guildof the City of London; he had given himself without stint to itsestablishment and he had made a great name in the world for it and forhimself. He had been the first English schoolmaster to liberate themodern side from the entanglement of its lower forms with the classicalmasters; it was the only school in England where Spanish and Russianwere honestly taught; his science laboratories were the best schoollaboratories in Great Britain and perhaps in the world, and his newmethods in the teaching of history and politics brought a steady streamof foreign inquirers to Woldingstanton. The hand of the adversary hadtouched him first just at the end of the summer term. There had been anepidemic of measles in which, through the inexplicable negligence of atrusted nurse, two boys had died. On the afternoon of the second ofthese deaths an assistant master was killed by an explosion in thechemical laboratory. Then on the very last night of the term came theSchool House fire, in which two of the younger boys were burnt to death. Against any single one of these misfortunes Mr. Huss and his schoolmight have maintained an unbroken front, but their quick succession hada very shattering effect. Every circumstance conspired to make theseevents vividly dreadful to Mr. Huss. He had been the first to come tothe help of his chemistry master, who had fallen among some carboys ofacid, and though still alive and struggling, was blinded, nearlyfaceless, and hopelessly mangled. The poor fellow died before he couldbe extricated. On the night of the fire Mr. Huss strained himselfinternally and bruised his foot very painfully, and he himself found andcarried out the charred body of one of the two little victims from theroom in which they had been trapped by the locking of a door during some“last day” ragging. It added an element of exasperating inconvenience tohis greater distresses that all his papers and nearly all his personalpossessions were burnt. On the morning after the fire Mr. Huss’s solicitor committed suicide. Hewas an old friend to whom Mr. Huss had entrusted the complete control ofthe savings that were to secure him and Mrs. Huss a dignified old age. The lawyer was a man of strong political feelings and liberal views, andhe had bought roubles to his utmost for Mr. Huss as for himself, inorder to demonstrate his confidence in the Russian revolution. All these things had a quite sufficiently disorganizing effect upon Mr. Huss; upon his wife the impression they made was altogether disastrous. She was a worthy but emotional lady, effusive rather than steadfast. Like the wives of most schoolmasters, she had been habituallypreoccupied with matters of domestic management for many years, and herfirst reaction was in the direction of a bitter economy, mingled with adisplay of contempt she had never manifested hitherto for her husband’spractical ability. Far better would it have been for Mr. Huss if she hadbroken down altogether; she insisted upon directing everything, anddoing so with a sort of pitiful vehemence that brooked no contradiction. It was impossible to stay at Woldingstanton through the vacation, insight of the tragic and blackened ruins of School House, and so shedecided upon Sundering-on-Sea because of its nearness and its pre-warreputation for cheapness. There, she announced, her husband must “pullhimself together and pick up,” and then return to the rebuilding ofSchool House and the rehabilitation of the school. Many formalities hadto be gone through before the building could be put in hand, for inthose days Britain was at the extremity of her war effort, and labourand material were unobtainable without special permits and greatexertion. Sundering-on-Sea was as convenient a place as anywhere fromwhich to write letters, but his idea of going to London to seeinfluential people was resisted by Mrs. Huss on the score of theexpense, and overcome when he persisted in it by a storm of tears. On her arrival at Sundering Mrs. Huss put up at the Railway Hotel forthe night, and spent the next morning in a stern visitation of possiblelodgings. Something in the unassuming outlook of Sea View attracted her,and after a long dispute she was able to beat down Mrs. Croome’s demandfrom five to four and a half guineas a week. That afternoon someimportunate applicant in an extremity of homelessness—for there had beena sudden rush of visitors to Sundering—offered six guineas. Mrs. Croometried to call off her first bargain, but Mrs. Huss was obdurate, andthereafter all the intercourse of landlady and her lodgers went to theunspoken refrain of “I get four and a half guineas and I ought to getsix. ” To recoup herself Mrs. Croome attempted to make extra charges forthe use of the bathroom, for cooking after five o’clock, for cleaningMr. Huss’s brown boots with specially bought brown cream instead ofblacking, and for the ink used by him in his very voluminouscorrespondence; upon all of which points there was much argument andbitterness. But a heavier blow than any they had hitherto experienced was now tofall upon Mr. and Mrs. Huss. Job in the ancient story had seven sons andthree daughters, and they were all swept away. This Job was to suffer asharper thrust; he had but one dear only son, a boy of great promise,who had gone into the Royal Flying Corps. News came that he had beenshot down over the German lines. Unhappily there had been a conflict between Mr. and Mrs. Huss about thisboy. Huss had been proud that the youngster should choose the heroicservice; Mrs. Huss had done her utmost to prevent his joining it. Thepoor lady was now ruthless in her anguish. She railed upon him as themurderer of their child. She hoped he was pleased with his handiwork. Hecould count one more name on his list; he could add it to the roll ofhonour in the chapel “with the others. ” Her _baby_ boy! This said, shewent wailing from the room. The wretched man sat confounded. That “with the others” cut him to theheart. For the school chapel had a list of V. C. ’s, D. C. M. ’s and thelike, second to none, and it had indeed been a pride to him. For some days his soul was stunned. He was utterly exhausted andlethargic. He could hardly attend to the most necessary letters. Fromdignity, hope, and a great sheaf of activities, his life had shrunkenabruptly to the compass of this dingy lodging, pervaded by thesquabbling of two irrational women; his work in the world was in ruins;he had no strength left in him to struggle against fate. And a vagueinternal pain crept slowly into his consciousness. His wife, insane now and cruel with sorrow, tried to put a great quarrelupon him about wearing mourning for their son. He had always dislikedand spoken against these pomps of death, but she insisted that whatevercallousness he might display she at least must wear black. He might, shesaid, rest assured that she would spend no more money than the barestdecency required; she would buy the cheapest material, and make it up inher bedroom. But black she must have. This resolution led straight to aconflict with Mrs. Croome, who objected to her best bedroom beinglittered with bits of black stuff, and cancelled the loan of her sewingmachine. The mourning should be made, Mrs. Huss insisted, though she hadto sew every stitch of it by hand. And the poor distraught lady in hersilly parsimony made still deeper trouble for herself by cutting hermaterial in every direction half an inch or more short of the paperpattern. She came almost to a physical tussle with Mrs. Croome becauseof the state of the carpet and counterpane, and Mrs. Croome did herutmost to drag Mr. Huss into an altercation upon the matter with herhusband. “Croome don’t interfere much, but some things he or nobody ain’t goingto stand, Mr. ’Uss.

”For some days in this battlefield of insatiable grief and petty cruelty,and with a dull pain steadily boring its way to recognition, Mr. Hussforced himself to carry on in a fashion the complex of businessnecessitated by the school disaster. Then in the night came a dream, asdreams sometimes will, to enlighten him upon his bodily condition. Projecting from his side he saw a hard, white body that sent round,wormlike tentacles into every corner of his being. A number of doctorswere struggling to tear this thing away from him. At every effort thepain increased. He awoke, but the pain throbbed on. He lay quite still. Upon the heavy darkness he saw the word “Cancer,”bright red and glowing—as pain glows. . . . He argued in the face of invincible conviction. He kept the moodconditional. “If it be so,” he said, though he knew that the thing wasso. What should he do? There would have to be operations, greatexpenses, enfeeblement. . . . Whom could he ask for advice? Who would help him? . . . Suppose in the morning he were to take a bathing ticket as if he meantto bathe, and struggle out beyond the mud-flats. He could behave asthough cramp had taken him suddenly. . . . Five minutes of suffocation he would have to force himself through, andthen peace—endless peace! “No,” he said, with a sudden gust of courage. “I will fight it out tothe end. ”But his mind was too dull to form plans and physically he was afraid. Hewould have to find a doctor somehow, and even that little task appalledhim. Then he would have to tell Mrs. Huss. . . . For a time he lay quite still as if he listened to the alternative swelland diminuendo of his pain. “Oh! if I had someone to help me! ” he whispered, and was overcome by thelonely misery of his position. “If I had someone! ”For years he had never wept, but now tears were wrung from him. Herolled over and buried his face in the pillow and tried to wriggle hisbody away from that steady gnawing; he fretted as a child might do. The night about him was as it were a great watching presence that wouldnot help nor answer. § 3Behind the brass plate at the corner which said “Dr. Elihu Barrack” Mr. Huss found a hard, competent young man, who had returned from the war tohis practice at Sundering after losing a leg. The mechanical substituteseemed to have taken to him very kindly. He appeared to be both modestand resourceful; his unfavourable diagnosis was all the more convincingbecause it was tentative and conditional. He knew the very specialistfor the case; no less a surgeon than Sir Alpheus Mengo came, ithappened, quite frequently to play golf on the Sundering links. It wouldbe easy to arrange for him to examine Mr. Huss in Dr. Barrack’s littleconsulting room, and if an operation had to be performed it could bemanaged with a minimum of expense in Mr. Huss’s own lodgings without anyextra charge for mileage and the like. “Of course,” said Mr. Huss, “of course,” with a clear vision of Mrs. Croome confronted with the proposal. Sir Alpheus Mengo came down the next Saturday, and made a clandestineexamination. He decided to operate the following week-end. Mr. Huss wasleft at his own request to break the news to his wife and to make thenecessary arrangements for this use of Mrs. Croome’s rooms. But it wastwo days before he could bring himself to broach the matter. He sat now listening to the sounds of his wife moving about in thebedroom overhead, and to the muffled crashes that intimated the climaxof Mrs. Croome’s preparation of the midday meal. He heard her callingupstairs to know whether Mrs. Huss was ready for her to serve up. He wasseized with panic as a schoolboy might be who had not prepared hislesson. He tried hastily to frame some introductory phrases, but nothingwould come into his mind save terms of disgust and lamentation. Thesullen heat of the day mingled in one impression with his pain. He wasnauseated by the smell of cooking. He felt it would be impossible to situp at table and pretend to eat the meal of burnt bacon and potatoes thatwas all too evidently coming. It came. Its progress along the passage was announced by a clatter ofdishes. The door was opened by a kick. Mrs. Croome put the feast uponthe table with something between defence and defiance in her manner. “What else,” she seemed to intimate, “could one expect for four and ahalf guineas a week in the very height of the season? From a woman whocould have got six! ”“Your dinner’s there,” Mrs. Croome called upstairs to Mrs. Huss in tonesof studied negligence, and then retired to her own affairs in thekitchen, slamming the door behind her. The room quivered down to silence, and then Mr. Huss could hear thefootsteps of his wife crossing the bedroom and descending the staircase. Mrs. Huss was a dark, graceful, and rather untidy lady of seven andforty, with the bridling bearing of one who habitually repels implicitaccusations. She lifted the lid of the vegetable dish. “I thought Ismelt burning,” she said. “The woman is impossible. ”She stood by her chair, regarding her husband and waiting. He rose reluctantly, and transferred himself to a seat at table. It had always been her custom to carve. She now prepared to serve him. “No,” he said, full of loathing. “I can’t eat. I _can’t_. ”She put down the tablespoon and fork she had just raised, and regardedhim with eyes of dark disapproval. “It’s all we can get,” she said. He shook his head. “It isn’t that. ”“I don’t know what you expect me to get for you here,” she complained. “The tradesmen don’t know us—and don’t care. ”“It isn’t that. I’m ill. ”“It’s the heat. We are all ill. Everyone. In such weather as this. It’sno excuse for not making an effort, situated as we are. ”“I mean I am really ill. I am in pain. ”She looked at him as one might look at an unreasonable child. He wasconstrained to more definite statement. “I suppose I must tell you sooner or later. I’ve had to see a doctor. ”“Without consulting me! ”“I thought if it turned out to be fancy I needn’t bother you. ”“But how did you find a doctor? ”“There’s a fellow at the corner. Oh! it’s no good making a long story ofit. I have cancer. . . . Nothing will do but an operation. ” Self-pity wrunghim. He controlled a violent desire to cry. “I am too ill to eat. Iought to be lying down. ”She flopped back in her chair and stared at him as one stares at somehideous monstrosity. “Oh! ” she said. “To have cancer now! In theselodgings! ”“I can’t _help_ it,” he said in accents that were almost a whine. “Ididn’t choose the time. ”“_Cancer! _” she cried reproachfully. “The horror of it! ”He looked at her for a moment with hate in his heart. He saw under herknitted brows dark and hostile eyes that had once sparkled withaffection, he saw a loose mouth with downturned corners that had beenproud and pretty, and this mask of dislike was projecting forward upon aneck he had used to call her head-stalk, so like had it seemed to thestem of some pretty flower. She had had lovely shoulders and an impudenthumour; and now the skin upon her neck and shoulders had a littleloosened, and she was no longer impudent but harsh. Her brows were moistwith heat, and her hair more than usually astray. But these things didnot increase, they mitigated his antagonism. They did not repel him asdefects; they hurt him as wounds received in a common misfortune. Alwayshe had petted and spared and rejoiced in her vanity and weakness, andnow as he realized the full extent of her selfish abandonment aprotective pity arose in his heart that overcame his physical pain. Itwas terrible to see how completely her delicacy and tenderness of mindhad been broken down. She had neither the strength nor the courage lefteven for an unselfish thought. And he could not help her; whatever powerhe had possessed over her mind had gone long ago. His magic haddeparted. Latterly he had been thinking very much of her prospects if he were todie. In some ways his death might be a good thing for her. He had anendowment assurance running that would bring in about seven thousandpounds immediately at his death, but which would otherwise involve heavyannual payments for some years. So far, to die would be clear gain. Butwho would invest this money for her and look after her interests? Shewas, he knew, very silly about property; suspicious of people she knewintimately, and greedy and credulous with strangers. He had helped tomake her incompetent, and he owed it to her to live and protect her ifhe could. And behind that intimate and immediate reason for living hehad a strong sense of work in the world yet to be done by him, and atask in education still incomplete. He spoke with his chin in his hand and his eyes staring at the dark anddistant sea. “An operation,” he said, “might cure me. ”Her thoughts, it became apparent, had been travelling through somebroken and unbeautiful country roughly parallel with the course of hisown. “But need there be an operation? ” she thought aloud. “Are they everany good? ”“I could die,” he admitted bitterly, and repented as he spoke. There had been times, he remembered, when she had said and done sweetand gallant things, poor soul! poor broken companion! And now she hadfallen into a darkness far greater than his. He had feared that he hadhurt her, and then when he saw that she was not hurt, and that shescrutinized his face eagerly as if she weighed the sincerity of hiswords, his sense of utter loneliness was completed. Over his mean drama of pain and debasement in its close atmospherebuzzing with flies, it was as if some gigantic and remorseless beingwatched him as a man of science might hover over some experiment, andmarked his life and all his world. “You are alone,” this broodingwitness counselled, “you are utterly alone. _Curse God and die. _”It seemed a long time before Mr. Huss answered this imagined voice, andwhen he answered it he spoke as if he addressed his wife alone. “_No_,” he said with a sudden decisiveness. “No. I will face thatoperation. . . . We are ill and our hearts are faint. Neither for you,dear, nor for me must our story finish in this fashion. No. I shall goon to the end. ”“And have your operation here? ”“In this house. It is by far the most convenient place, as things are. ”“You may die here! ”“Well, I shall die fighting. ”“Leaving me here with Mrs. Croome. ”His temper broke under her reply. “Leaving you here with Mrs. Croome,”he said harshly. He got up. “I can eat nothing,” he repeated, and dropped back sullenlyinto the horsehair armchair. There was a long silence, and then he heard the little, almostmouselike, movements of his wife as she began her meal. For a while hehad forgotten the dull ache within him, but now, glowing and fading andglowing, it made its way back into his consciousness. He was helplessand perplexed; he had not meant to quarrel. He had hurt this poor thingwho had been his love and companion; he had bullied her. His cloggedbrain could think of nothing to set matters right. He stared with dulleyes at a world utterly hateful to him. CHAPTER THE THIRD THE THREE VISITORS § 1While this unhappy conversation was occurring at Sundering-on-Sea, threemen were discussing the case of Mr.

Huss very earnestly over a meatlessbut abundant lunch in the bow window of a club that gives upon the treesand sunshine of Carlton Gardens. Lobster salad engaged them, and the icein the jug of hock cup clinked very pleasantly as they replenished theirglasses. The host was Sir Eliphaz Burrows, the patentee and manufacturer of thoseTemanite building blocks which have not only revolutionized theconstruction of army hutments, but put the whole problem of industrialand rural housing upon an altogether new footing; his guests were Mr. William Dad, formerly the maker of the celebrated Dad and Showhite carde luxe, and now one of the chief contractors for aeroplanes in England;and Mr. Joseph Farr, the head of the technical section of WoldingstantonSchool. Both the former gentlemen were governors of that foundation andnow immensely rich, and Sir Eliphaz had once been a pupil of the fatherof Mr. Huss and had played a large part in the appointment of the latterto Woldingstanton. He was a slender old man, with an avid vulturine headpoised on a long red neck, and he had an abundance of parti-colouredhair, red and white, springing from a circle round the crown of hishead, from his eyebrows, his face generally, and the backs of his hands. He wore a blue soft shirt with a turn-down collar within a roomy blueserge suit, and that and something about his large loose black tiesuggested scholarship and refinement. His manners were elaboratelycourteous. Mr. Dad was a compacter, keener type, warily alert in hisbearing, an industrial fox-terrier from the Midlands, silver-haired anddressed in ordinary morning dress except for a tan vest with a brightbrown ribbon border. Mr. Farr was big in a grey flannel Norfolk suit; hehad a large, round, white, shiny, clean-shaven face and uneasy hands,and it was apparent that he carried pocket-books and suchlike luggage inhis breast pocket. They consumed the lobster appreciatively, and approached in afragmentary and tentative manner the business that had assembled them:namely, the misfortunes that had overwhelmed Mr. Huss and their bearingupon the future of the school. “For my part I don’t think there is such a thing as misfortune,” saidMr. Dad. “I don’t hold with it. Miscalculation _if_ you like. ”“In a sense,” said Mr. Farr ambiguously, glancing at Sir Eliphaz. “If a man keeps his head screwed on the right way,” said Mr. Dad, andattacked a claw with hope and appetite. Mr. Dad affected the parsimonyof unfinished sentences. “I can’t help thinking,” said Sir Eliphaz, putting down his glass andwiping his moustache and eyebrows with care before resuming his lobster,“that a man who entrusts his affairs to a solicitor, after the fashionof the widow and orphan, must be singularly lacking in judgment. Orreckless. Never in the whole course of my life have I met a solicitorwho could invest money safely and profitably. Clergymen I have known,women of all sorts, savages, monomaniacs, criminals, but _never_solicitors. ”“I have known some smart business parsons,” said Mr. Dad judicially. “One in particular. Sharp as nails. They are a much underestimatedclass. ”“Perhaps it is natural that a solicitor should be a wild investor,” SirEliphaz pursued his subject. “He lives out of the ordinary world in adirty little office in some antiquated inn, his office fittings arefifty years out of date, his habitual scenery consists of tin boxespainted with the names of dead and disreputable clients; he has to takethe law courts, filled with horseboxes and men dressed up in gowns andhorsehair wigs, quite seriously; nobody ever goes near him but abnormalpeople or people in abnormal states: people upset by jealousy, peopleupset by fear, blackmailed people, cheats trying to dodge the law,lunatics, litigants and legatees. The only investments he ever discussesare queer investments. Naturally he loses all sense of proportion. Naturally he becomes insanely suspicious; and when a client asks forpositive action he flounders and gambles. ”“Naturally,” said Mr. Dad. “And here we find poor Huss giving all hisbusiness over—”“Exactly,” said Sir Eliphaz, and filled his glass. “There’s been a great change in him in the last two years,” said Mr. Farr. “He let the war worry him for one thing. ”“No good doing that,” said Mr. Dad. “And even before the war,” Sir Eliphaz. “Even before the war,” said Mr. Farr, in a pause. “There was a change,” said Sir Eliphaz. “He had been bitten byeducational theories. ”“No business for a headmaster,” said Mr. Farr. “Our intention had always been a great scientific and technical school,”said Sir Eliphaz. “He introduced Logic into the teaching of plainEnglish—against my opinion. He encouraged some of the boys to readphilosophy. ”“All he could,” said Mr. Farr. “I never held with his fad for teaching history,” said Mr. Dad. “He washistory mad. It got worse and worse. What’s history after all? At thebest, it’s over and done with. . . . But he wouldn’t argue upon it—notreasonably. He was—overbearing. He had a way of looking at you. . . . Itwas never our intention to make Woldingstanton into a school ofhistory. ”“And now, Mr. Farr,” said Sir Eliphaz, “what are the particulars of thefire? ”“It isn’t for me to criticize,” said Mr. Farr. “What I say,” said Mr. Dad, projecting his muzzle with an appearance ofgreat determination, “is, fix responsibility. _Fix responsibility. _ Hereis a door locked that common sense dictated should be open. Who wasresponsible? ”“No one in School House seems to have been especially responsible forthat door so far as I can ascertain,” said Mr. Farr. “All responsibility,” said Mr. Dad, with an expression of peevishinsistence, as though Mr. Farr had annoyed him, “_all_ responsibilitythat is not delegated rests with the Head. That’s a hard and fast andprimary rule of business organization. In my factory I say quite plainlyto everyone who comes into it, man or woman, chick or child. . . . ”Mr. Dad was still explaining in a series of imaginary dialogues, terselybut dramatically, his methods of delegating authority, when Sir Eliphazcut across the flow with, “Returning to Mr. Huss for a moment. . . . ”The point that Sir Eliphaz wanted to get at was whether Mr. Hussexpected to continue headmaster at Woldingstanton. From some chancephrase in a letter Sir Eliphaz rather gathered that he did. “Well,” said Mr. Farr portentously, letting the thing hang for a moment,“he does. ”“Tcha! ” said Mr. Dad, and shut his mouth tightly and waved his headslowly from side to side with knitted brows as if he had bitten histongue. “I would be the first to recognize the splendid work he did for theschool in his opening years,” said Mr. Farr. “I would be the last toalter the broad lines of the work as he set it out. Barring that Ishould replace a certain amount of the biological teaching andpractically all this new history stuff by chemistry and physics. But onehas to admit that Mr. Huss did not know when to relinquish power norwhen to devolve responsibility. We, all of us, the entire staff—it is nomere personal grievance of mine—were kept, well, to say the least of it,in tutelage. Rather than let authority go definitely out of his hands,he would allow things to drift. Witness that door, witness the businessof the nurse. ”Mr. Dad, with his lips compressed, nodded his head; each nod like thetap of a hammer. “I never believed in all this overdoing history in the school,” Mr. Dadremarked rather disconnectedly. “If you get rid of Latin and Greek, whybring it all back again in another form? Why, I’m told he taught ’emthings about Assyria. Assyria! A modern school ought to be a modernschool—business first and business last and business all the time. Andteach boys to work. We shall need it, mark my words. ”“A certain amount of modern culture,” waved Sir Eliphaz. “_Modern_,” said Mr. Farr softly. Mr. Dad grunted. “In my opinion that sort of thing gives the boysideas. ”Mr. Farr steered his way discreetly. “Science with a due regard to itstechnical applications should certainly be the substantial part of amodern education. ”. . . They were in the smoking-room and half way through three princely cigarsbefore they got beyond such fragmentary detractions of the fallenheadmaster. Then Mr. Dad in the clear-cut style of a business man,brought his companions to action. “Well,” said Mr. Dad, turning abruptlyupon Sir Eliphaz, “what about it? ”“It is manifest that Woldingstanton has to enter on a new phase; whathas happened brings us to the parting of the ways,” said Sir Eliphaz. “Much as I regret the misfortunes of an old friend. ”“_That_,” said Mr. Dad, “spells Farr. ”“If he will shoulder the burthen,” said Sir Eliphaz, smiling upon Mr. Farr not so much with his mouth as by the most engaging convolutions,curvatures and waving about of his various strands of hair. “I don’t want to see the school go down,” said Mr. Farr. “I’ve given ita good slice of my life. ”“Right,” said Mr. Dad. “Right. File that. That suits us. And now how dowe set about the affair? The next thing, I take it, is to break it toHuss. . . . How? ”He paused to give the ideas of his companions a fair chance. “Well, _my_ idea is this. None of us want to be hard on Mr. Huss. Luckhas been hard enough as it is. We want to do this job as gently as wecan. It happens that I go and play golf at Sundering-on-Sea ever andagain. Excellent links, well kept up all things considered, and the bighotel close by does you wonderfully, the railway company sees to that;in spite of the war. Well, why shouldn’t we all, if Sir Eliphaz’sengagements permit, go down there in a sort of _casual_ way, and takethe opportunity of a good clear talk with him and settle it all up? Thething’s got to be done, and it seems to me altogether more kindly to gothere personally and put it to him than do it by correspondence. Verylikely we could put it to him in such a way that he himself wouldsuggest the very arrangement we want. You particularly, Sir Eliphaz,being as you say an old friend. ”. . . § 2Since there was little likelihood of Mr. Huss going away fromSundering-on-Sea, it did not appear necessary to Mr. Dad to apprise himof the projected visitation. And so these three gentlemen heard nothingabout any operation for cancer until they reached that resort. Mr. Dad came down early on Friday afternoon to the Golf Hotel, where hehad already engaged rooms for the party. He needed the relaxation of thelinks very badly, the task of accumulating a balance sufficiently largeto secure an opulent future for British industry, with which Mr. Dad inhis straightforward way identified himself, was one that in a controlledestablishment between the Scylla of aggressive labour and the Charybdisof the war-profits tax, strained his mind to the utmost. He was joinedby Mr. Farr at dinner-time, and Sir Eliphaz, who was detained in Londonby some negotiations with the American Government, arrived replete bythe dining-car train. Mr. Farr made a preliminary reconnaissance at SeaView, and was the first to hear of the operation. Sir Alpheus Mengo was due at Sea View by the first morning train onSaturday. He had arranged to operate before lunch. It was cleartherefore that the only time available for a conversation between thethree and Mr. Huss was between breakfast and the arrival of Sir Alpheus. Mr. Huss, whose lethargy had now departed, displayed himself feverishlyanxious to talk about the school. “There are points I must make clear,”he said, “vital points,” and so a meeting was arranged for half-pastnine. This would give a full hour before the arrival of the doctors. “He feels that in a way it will be his testament, so to speak,” said Mr. Farr. “Naturally he has his own ideas about the future of the school. Weall have. I would be the last person to suggest that he could sayanything about Woldingstanton that would not be well worth hearing. Someof us may have heard most of it before, and be better able to discountsome of his assertions. But that under the present circumstances isneither here nor there. ” § 3Matters in the confined space of Sea View were not nearly so strained asMr.

Huss had feared. The prospect of an operation was not without itsagreeable side to Mrs. Croome. Possibly she would have preferred thatthe subject should have been Mrs. rather than Mr. Huss, but it was clearthat she made no claim to dictate upon this point. Her demand forspecial fees to meet the inconveniences of the occasion had been metquite liberally by Mr. Huss. And there was a genuine appreciation oforder and method in Mrs. Croome; she was a furious spring-cleaner, ahurricane tidier-up, her feeling for the discursive state of Mrs. Huss’shair was almost as involuntary as a racial animosity; and the swiftdexterous preparations of the nurse who presently came to convert thebest bedroom to surgical uses, impressed her deeply. She was allowed tohelp. Superfluous hangings and furnishings were removed, everything wasthoroughly scrubbed, at the last moment clean linen sheets of awonderful hardness were to be spread over every exposed surface. Theywere to be brought in sterilized drums. The idea of sterilized drumsfascinated her. She had never heard of such things before. She wishedshe could keep her own linen in a sterilized drum always, and let herlodgers have something else instead. She felt she was going to be a sort of assistant priestess at asacrifice, the sacrifice of Mr. Huss. She had always secretly feared hissubmissive quiet as a thing unaccountable that might at any time turnupon her; she suspected him of ironies; and he would be helpless, underchloroform, subject to examination with no possibilities ofdisconcerting repartee. She did her best to persuade Dr. Barrack thatshe would be useful in the room during the proceedings. Her imaginationconjured up a wonderful vision of the Huss interior as a great chestfull of strange and interesting viscera with the lid wide open and SirAlpheus picking thoughtfully, with deprecatory remarks, amid itscontents. But that sight was denied her. She was very helpful and cheerful on the Saturday morning, addressingherself to the consolation of Mr. and the bracing-up of Mrs. Huss. Sheassisted in the final transformation of the room. “It might be a real ’ospital,” she said. “Nursing must be nice work. Inever thought of it like this before. ”Mr. Huss was no longer depressed but flushed and resolute, but Mrs. Huss, wounded by the neglect of everyone—no one seemed to consider for amoment what she must be feeling—remained very much in her own room,working inefficiently upon the mourning that might now be doubly needed. § 4Mr. Huss knew Mr. Farr very well. For the last ten years it had been hisearnest desire to get rid of him, but he had been difficult to replacebecause of his real accomplishment in technical chemistry. In the courseof their five minutes’ talk in his bedroom on Friday evening, Mr. Hussgrasped the situation. Woldingstanton, his creation, his life work, wasto be taken out of his hands, and in favour of this, his mostsoul-deadening assistant. He had been foolish no doubt, but he had neveranticipated that. He had never supposed that Farr would dare. He thought hard through that long night of Friday. His pain was nodistraction. He had his intentions very ready and clear in his mind whenhis three visitors arrived. He had insisted upon getting up and dressing fully. “I can’t talk about Woldingstanton in bed,” he said. The doctor was notthere to gainsay him. Sir Eliphaz was the first to arrive, and Mrs. Huss retrieved him fromMrs. Croome in the passage and brought him in. He was wearing a Norfolkjacket suit of a coarse yet hairy consistency and of a pale sage greencolour. He shone greatly in the eyes of Mrs. Huss. “I can’t helpthinking of you, dear lady,” he said, bowing over her hand, and all hishair was for a moment sad and sympathetic like a sick Skye terrier’s. Mr. Dad and Mr. Farr entered a moment later; Mr. Farr in grey flanneltrousers and a brown jacket, and Mr. Dad in a natty dark grey suit witha luminous purple waistcoat. “My dear,” said Mr. Huss to his wife, “I must be alone with thesegentlemen,” and when she seemed disposed to linger near theunderstanding warmth of Sir Eliphaz, he added, “Figures, mydear—_Finance_,” and drove her forth. . . . “’Pon my honour,” said Mr. Dad, coming close up to the armchair,wrinkling his muzzle and putting through his compliments in goodbusiness-like style before coming to the harder stuff in hand; “I don’tlike to see you like this, Mr. Huss. ”“Nor does Sir Eliphaz, I hope—nor Farr. Please find yourselves chairs. ”And while Mr. Farr made protesting noises and Sir Eliphaz waved his hairabout before beginning the little speech he had prepared, Mr. Huss tookthe discourse out of their mouths and began:“I know perfectly well the task you have set yourselves. You have cometo make an end of me as headmaster of Woldingstanton. And Mr. Farr hasvery obligingly. . . . ”He held up his white and wasted hand as Mr. Farr began to disavow. “No,” said Mr. Huss. “But before you three gentlemen proceed with youroffice, I should like to tell you something of what the school and mywork in it, and my work for education, is to me. I am a man of littlemore than fifty. A month ago I counted with a reasonable confidence upontwenty years more of work before I relaxed. . . . Then these misfortunesrained upon me. I have lost all my private independence; there have beenthese shocking deaths in the school; my son, my only son . . . killed . . . trouble has darkened the love and kindness of my wife . . . and now mybody is suffering so that my mind is like a swimmer struggling throughwaves of pain . . . far from land. . . . These are heavy blows. But thehardest blow of all, harder to bear than any of these others—I do notspeak rashly, gentlemen, I have thought it out through an endlessnight—the last blow will be this rejection of my life work. That willstrike the inmost me, the heart and soul of me. . . . ”He paused. “You mustn’t take it quite like that, Mr. Huss,” protested Mr. Dad. “Itisn’t fair to us to put it like that. ”“I want you to listen to me,” said Mr. Huss. “Only the very kindest motives,” continued Mr. Dad. “Let me speak,” said Mr. Huss, with the voice of authority that hadruled Woldingstanton for five and twenty years. “I cannot wrangle andcontradict. At most we have an hour. ”Mr. Dad made much the same sound that a dog will make when it hasproposed to bark and has been told to get under the table. For a time helooked an ill-used man. “To end my work in the school will be to end me altogether. . . . I do notsee why I should not speak plainly to you, gentlemen, situated as I amhere. I do not see why I should not talk to you for once in my ownlanguage. Pain and death are our interlocutors; this is a rare and rawand bleeding occasion; in an hour or so the women may be laying out mybody and I may be silent for ever. I have hidden my religion, but whyshould I hide it now? To you I have always tried to seem as practicaland self-seeking as possible, but in secret I have been a fanatic; andWoldingstanton was the altar on which I offered myself to God. I havedone ill and feebly there I know; I have been indolent and rash; thosewere my weaknesses; but I have done my best. To the limits of mystrength and knowledge I have served God. . . . And now in this hour ofdarkness where is this God that I have served? Why does he not standhere between me and this last injury you would do to the work I havededicated to him? ”At these words Mr. Dad turned horrified eyes to Mr. Farr. But Mr. Huss went on as though talking to himself. “In the night I havelooked into my heart; I have sought in my heart for base motives andsecret sins. I have put myself on trial to find why God should hidehimself from me now, and I can find no reason and no justification. . . . In the bitterness of my heart I am tempted to give way to you and totell you to take the school and to do just what you will with it. . . . Thenearness of death makes the familiar things of experience flimsy andunreal, and far more real to me now is this darkness that broods overme, as blight will sometimes overhang the world at noon, and mocks meday and night with a perpetual challenge to curse God and die. . . . “Why do I not curse God and die? Why do I cling to my work when the Godto whom I dedicated it is—silent? Because, I suppose, I still hope forsome sign of reassurance. Because I am not yet altogether defeated. Iwould go on telling you why I want Woldingstanton to continue on itspresent lines and why it is impossible for you, why it will be a sort ofmurder for you to hand it over to Farr here, if my pain were ten timeswhat it is. . . . ”At the mention of his name, Mr. Farr started and looked first at Mr. Dad, and then at Sir Eliphaz. “Really,” he said, “really! One mightthink I had conspired—”“I am afraid, Mr. Huss,” said Sir Eliphaz, with a large reassuringgesture to the technical master, “that the suggestion that Mr. Farrshould be your successor came in the first instance from _me_. ”“You must reconsider it,” said Mr. Huss, moistening his lips and staringsteadfastly in front of him. Here Mr. Dad broke out in a querulous voice: “Are you really in a state,Mr. Huss, to discuss a matter like this—feverish and suffering as youare? ”“I could not be in a better frame for this discussion,”said Mr. Huss. . . . “And now for what I have to say about theschool:—Woldingstanton, when I came to it, was a humdrum school of someseventy boys, following a worn-out routine. A little Latin was taughtand less Greek, chiefly in order to say that Greek was taught; somescraps of mathematical processes, a few rags of general knowledge,English history—not human history, mind you, but just the nationalbrand, cut dried flowers from the past with no roots and no meaning, asmattering of French. . . . That was practically all; it was no sort ofeducation, it was a mere education-like posturing. And to-day, what hasthat school become? ”“We never grudged you money,” said Sir Eliphaz. “Nor loyal help,” said Mr. Farr, but in a half whisper. “I am not thinking of its visible prosperity. The houses andlaboratories and museums that have grown about that nucleus are nothingin themselves. The reality of a school is not in buildings and numbersbut in matters of the mind and soul. Woldingstanton has become a torchat which lives are set aflame. I have lit a candle there—the winds offate may yet blow it into a world-wide blaze. ”As Mr. Huss said these things he was uplifted by enthusiasm, and hispain sank down out of his consciousness. “What,” he said, “is the task of the teacher in the world? It is thegreatest of all human tasks. It is to ensure that Man, Man the Divine,grows in the souls of men.

For what is a man without instruction? He isborn as the beasts are born, a greedy egotism, a clutching desire, athing of lusts and fears. He can regard nothing except in relation tohimself. Even his love is a bargain; and his utmost effort is vanitybecause he has to die. And it is we teachers alone who can lift him outof that self-preoccupation. We teachers. . . . We can release him into awider circle of ideas beyond himself in which he can at length forgethimself and his meagre personal ends altogether. We can open his eyes tothe past and to the future and to the undying life of Man. So through usand through us only, he escapes from death and futility. An untaught manis but himself alone, as lonely in his ends and destiny as any beast; aman instructed is a man enlarged from that narrow prison of self intoparticipation in an undying life, that began we know not when, thatgrows above and beyond the greatness of the stars. . . . ”He spoke as if he addressed some other hearer than the three before him. Mr. Dad, with eyebrows raised and lips compressed, nodded silently toMr. Farr as if his worst suspicions were confirmed, and there were signsand signals that Sir Eliphaz was about to speak, when Mr. Huss resumed. “For five and twenty years I have ruled over Woldingstanton, and for allthat time I have been giving sight to the blind. I have givenunderstanding to some thousands of boys. All those routines of teachingthat had become dead we made live again there. My boys have learnt thehistory of mankind so that it has become their own adventure; they havelearnt geography so that the world is their possession; I have hadlanguages taught to make the past live again in their minds and to bewindows upon the souls of alien peoples. Science has played its properpart; it has taken my boys into the secret places of matter and outamong the nebulæ. . . . Always I have kept Farr and his utilities in theirdue subordination. Some of my boys have already made good businessmen—because they were more than business men. . . . But I have never soughtto make business men and I never will. My boys have gone into theprofessions, into the services, into the great world and done well—Ihave had dull boys and intractable boys, but nearly all have gone intothe world gentlemen, broad-minded, good-mannered, understanding andunselfish, masters of self, servants of man, because the whole scheme oftheir education has been to release them from base and narrow things. . . . When the war came, my boys were ready. . . . They have gone to theirdeaths—how many have gone to their deaths! My own son among them. . . . Idid not grudge him. . . . Woldingstanton is a new school; its tradition hasscarcely begun; the list of its old boys is now so terribly depletedthat its young tradition wilts like a torn seedling. . . . But still we cankeep on with it, still that tradition will grow, if my flame stillburns. But my teaching must go on as I have planned it. It must. Itmust. . . . What has made my boys all that they are, has been the history,the biological science, the philosophy. For these things are wisdom. Allthe rest is training and mere knowledge. If the school is to live, thehead must still be a man who can teach history—history in the widestsense; he must be philosopher, biologist, and archæologist as well asscholar. And you would hand that task to Farr! Farr! Farr here has nevereven touched the essential work of the school. He does not know what itis. His mind is no more opened than the cricket professional’s. ”Mr. Dad made an impatient noise. The sick man went on with his burning eyes on Farr, his lips bloodless. “He thinks of chemistry and physics not as a help to understanding butas a help to trading. So long as he has been at Woldingstanton he hasbeen working furtively with our materials in the laboratories, dreamingof some profitable patent. Oh! I know you, Farr. Do you think I didn’tsee because I didn’t choose to complain? If he could have discoveredsome profitable patent he would have abandoned teaching the day he didso. He would have been even as you are. But with a lifeless imaginationyou cannot even invent patentable things. He would talk to the boys ofthe empire at times, but the empire to him is no more than a tradingconspiracy fenced about with tariffs. It goes on to nothing. . . . And hethinks we are fighting the Germans, he thinks my dear and precious boygave his life and that all these other brave lads beyond counting died,in order that we might take the place of the Germans as thechapman-bullies of the world. That is the measure of his mind. He has noreligion, no faith, no devotion. Why does he want my place? Because hewants to serve as I have served? No! But because he envies my house, myincome, my headship. Whether I live or die, it is impossible thatWoldingstanton, my Woldingstanton, should live under his hand. Give itto him, and in a little while it will be dead. ” § 5“Gentlemen! ” Mr. Farr protested with a white perspiring face. “I had no idea,” ejaculated Mr. Dad, “I had no idea that things had goneso far. ”Sir Eliphaz indicated by waving his hand that his associates might allaythemselves; he recognized that the time had come for him to speak. “It is deplorable,” Sir Eliphaz began. He put down his hands and gripped the seat of his chair as if to holdhimself on to it very tightly, and he looked very hard at the horizon asif he was trying to decipher some remote inscription. “You have importeda tone into this discussion,” he tried. He got off at the third attempt. “It is an extremely painful thing tome, Mr. Huss, that to you, standing as you do on the very brink of theGreat Chasm, it should be necessary to speak in any but the most cordialand helpful tones. But it is my duty, it is our duty, to hold firmly tothose principles which have always guided us as governors of theWoldingstanton School. You speak, I must say it, with an extremearrogance of an institution to which all of us here have in some measurecontributed; you speak as though you, and you alone, were its creatorand guide. You must pardon me, Mr. Huss, if I remind you of the facts,the eternal verities of the story. The school, sir, was founded in thespacious days of Queen Elizabeth, and many a good man guided itsfortunes down to the time when an unfortunate—a diversion of itsendowments led to its temporary cessation. The Charity Commissionersrevived it after an inquiry some fifty years ago, and it has beenlargely the lavish generosity of the Papermakers’ Guild, of which I andDad are humble members, that has stimulated its expansion under you. Loth as I am to cross your mood, Mr. Huss, while you are in pain andanxiety, I am bound to recall to you these things which have made _your_work possible. You could not have made bricks without straw, you couldnot have built up Woldingstanton without the money obtained by thatcommercialism for which you display such unqualified contempt. We sordidcits it was who planted, who watered. . . . ”Mr. Huss seemed about to speak, but said nothing. “Exactly what I say,” said Mr. Dad, turning for confirmation to Mr. Farr. “The school is essentially a modern commercial school. It shouldbe run as that. ”Mr. Farr nodded his white face ambiguously with his eye on Sir Eliphaz. “I should have been chary, Mr. Huss, of wrangling about our particularshares and contributions on an occasion so solemn as this, but since youwill have it so, since you challenge discussion. . . . ”He turned to his colleagues as if for support. “Go on,” said Mr. Dad. “Facts are facts. ” § 6Sir Eliphaz cleared his throat, and continued to read the horizon. “I have raised these points, Mr. Huss, by way of an opening. The gist ofwhat I have to say lies deeper. So far I have dealt with the things youhave said only in relation to us; as against us you assume your ownrighteousness, you flout our poor judgments, you sweep them aside; theschool must be continued on _your_ lines, the teaching must follow_your_ schemes. You can imagine no alternative opinion. God forbid thatI should say a word in my own defence; I have given freely both of mytime and of my money to our school; it would tax my secretaries now toreckon up how much; but I make no claims. . . . None. . . . “But let me now put all this discussion upon a wider and a graverfooting. It is not only us and our poor intentions you arraign. Strangethings have dropped from you, Mr. Huss, in this discussion, things ithas at once pained and astonished me to hear from you. You have spokennot only of man’s ingratitude, but of God’s. I could scarcely believe myears, but indeed I heard you say that God was silent, unhelpful, andthat he too had deserted you. In spite of the most meritorious exertionson your part. . . . Standing as you do on the very margin of the GreatSecret, I want to plead very earnestly with you against all that youhave said. ”Sir Eliphaz seemed to meditate remotely. He returned like a soaringvulture to his victim. “I would be the last man to obtrude my religiousfeelings upon anyone. . . . I make no parade of religion, Mr. Huss, none atall. Many people think me no better than an unbeliever. But here I ambound to make my confession. I owe much to God, Mr. Huss. . . . ”He glowered at the sick man. He abandoned his grip upon the seat of hischair for a moment, to make a gesture with his hairy claw of a hand. “Your attitude to my God is a far deeper offence to me than any merelypersonal attack could be. Under his chastening blows, under trials thathumbler spirits would receive with thankfulness and construe as lessonsand warnings, you betray yourself more proud, more self-assured,more—froward is not too harsh a word—more froward, Mr. Huss, than youwere even in the days when we used to fret under you on Founder’s Day inthe Great Hall, when you would dictate to us that here you must have anextension and there you must have a museum or a picture room or whatnot, leaving nothing to opinion, making our gifts a duty. . . . You willnot recognise the virtue of gifts and graces either in man or God. . . . Cannot you see, my dear Mr. Huss, the falsity of your position? It isupon that point that I want to talk to you now. God does not smite manneedlessly. This world is all one vast intention, and not a sparrowfalls to the ground unless He wills that sparrow to fall. Is your heartso sure of itself? Does nothing that has happened suggest to you thatthere may be something in your conduct and direction of Woldingstantonthat has made it not quite so acceptable an offering to God as you haveimagined it to be? ”Sir Eliphaz paused with an air of giving Mr. Huss his chance, butmeeting with no response, he resumed: “I am an old man, Mr. Huss, and Ihave seen much of the world and more particularly of the world offinance and industry, a world of swift opportunities and suddentemptations. I have watched the careers of many young men of parts, whohave seemed to be under the impression that the world had been waitingfor them overlong; I have seen more promotions, schemes and enterprises,great or grandiose, than I care to recall. Developing Woldingstantonfrom the mere endowed school of a market-town it was, to its presentposition, has been for me a subordinate incident, a holiday task, apiece of by-play upon a crowded scene. My experiences have been on a fargreater scale. Far greater. And in all my experience I have never seenwhat I should call a really right-minded man perish or an innocentdealer—provided, that is, that he took ordinary precautions—destroyed. Ups and downs no doubt there are, for the good as well as the bad.

Ihave seen the foolish taking root for a time—it was but for a time. Ihave watched the manœuvres of some exceedingly crafty men. . . . ”Sir Eliphaz shook his head slowly from side to side and all the hairs onhis head waved about. He hesitated for a moment, and decided to favour his hearers with ascrap of autobiography. “Quite recently,” he began, “there was a fellow came to us, just as wewere laying down our plant for production on a large scale. He was avery plausible, energetic young fellow indeed, an American Armenian. Well, he happened to know somehow that we were going to use kaolin fromfelspar, a by-product of the new potash process, and he had got hold ofa scheme for washing London clay that produced, he assured us, anaccessible kaolin just as good for our purpose and not a tenth of thecost of the Norwegian stuff. It would have reduced our prime costsomething like thirty per cent. Let alone tonnage. Excuse thesetechnicalities. On the face of it it was a thoroughly good thing. Thepoint was that I knew all along that his stuff retained a certain amountof sulphur and couldn’t possibly make a building block to last. Thatwouldn’t prevent us selling and using the stuff with practical impunity. It wasn’t up to us to know. No one could have made us liable. The thingindeed looked so plain and safe that I admit it tempted me sorely. Andthen, Mr. Huss, God came in. I received a secret intimation. I want totell you of this in all good faith and simplicity. In the night when allthe world was deep in sleep, I awoke. And I was in the extremest terror;my very bones were shaking; I sat up in my bed afraid almost to touchthe switch of the electric light; my hair stood on end. I could seenothing, I could hear nothing, but it was as if a spirit passed in frontof my face. And in spite of the silence something seemed to be saying tome: ‘How about God, Sir Eliphaz? Have you at last forgotten Him? How canyou, that would dwell in houses of clay, whose foundation is the dust,escape His judgments? ’ That was all, Mr. Huss, just that. ‘Whosefoundation is the dust! ’ Straight to the point. Well, Mr. Huss, I am nota religious man, but I threw over that Armenian. ”Mr. Dad made a sound to intimate that he would have done the same. “I mention this experience, this intervention—and it is not the only oneof which I could tell—because I want you to get my view that if anenterprise, even though it is as fair and honest-seeming a business asWoldingstanton School, begins suddenly to crumple and wilt, it meansthat somehow, somewhere you must have been putting the wrong sort ofclay into it. It means not that God is wrong and going back upon you,but that you are wrong. You may be a great and famous teacher now, Mr. Huss, thanks not a little to the pedestal we have made for you, but Godis a greater and more famous teacher. He manifestly you have notconvinced, even if you could have convinced us, of Woldingstanton’spresent perfection. . . . “That is practically all I have to say. When we propose, in allhumility, to turn the school about into new and less pretentious coursesand you oppose us, that is our answer. If you had done as well andwisely as you declare, you would not be in this position and thisdiscussion would never have arisen. ”He paused. “Said with truth and dignity,” said Mr. Dad. “You have put my opinion,Sir Eliphaz, better than I could have put it myself. I thank you. ”He coughed briefly. § 7“The question you put to me I have put to myself,” said Mr. Huss, andthought deeply for a little while. . . . “No, I do not feel convicted of wrong-doing. I still believe the work Iset myself to do was right, right in spirit and intention, right in planand method. You invite me to confess my faith broken and in the dust;and my faith was never so sure. There is a God in my heart, in my heartat least there is a God, who has always guided me to right and whoguides me now. My conscience remains unassailable. These afflictionsthat you speak of as trials and warnings I can only see as inexplicabledisasters. They perplex me, but they do not cow me. They strike me aspointless and irrelevant events. ”“But this is terrible! ” said Mr. Dad, deeply shocked. “You push me back, Sir Eliphaz, from the discussion of our schoolaffairs to more fundamental questions. You have raised the problem ofthe moral government of the world, a problem that has been distressingmy mind since I first came here to Sundering, whether indeed failure iscondemnation and success the sunshine of God’s approval. You believethat the great God of the stars and seas and mountains is attentive toour conduct and responds to it. His sense of right is the same sense ofright as ours; he endorses a common aim. Your prosperity is the mark ofyour harmony with that supreme God. . . . ”“I wouldn’t go so far as that,” Mr. Dad interjected. “No. No arrogance. ”“And my misfortunes express his disapproval. Well, I have believed that;I have believed that the rightness of a schoolmaster’s conscience mustneeds be the same thing as the rightness of destiny, I too had falleninto that comforting persuasion of prosperity; but this series ofsmashing experiences I have had, culminating in your proposal to wipeout the whole effect and significance of my life, brings me face to facewith the fundamental question whether the order of the great universe,the God of the stars, has any regard or relationship whatever to theproblems of our consciences and the efforts of man to do right. That isa question that echoes to me down the ages. So far I have alwaysprofessed myself a Christian. . . . ”“Well, I should hope so,” said Mr. Dad, “considering the terms of theschool’s foundation. ”“For, I take it, the creeds declare in a beautiful symbol that the Godwho is present in our hearts is one with the universal father and at thesame time his beloved Son, continually and eternally begotten from theuniversal fatherhood, and crucified only to conquer. He has come intoour poor lives to raise them up at last to Himself. But to believe thatis to believe in the significance and continuity of the whole effort ofmankind. The life of man must be like the perpetual spreading of a fire. If right and wrong are to perish together indifferently, if there isaimless and fruitless suffering, if there opens no hope for an eternalsurvival in consequences of all good things, then there is no meaning insuch a belief as Christianity. It is a mere superstition of priests andsacrifices, and I have read things into it that were never truly there. The rushlight of our faith burns in a windy darkness that will see nodawn. ”“Nay,” said Sir Eliphaz, “nay. If there is God in your work we cannotdestroy it. ”“You are doing your best,” said Mr. Huss, “and now I am not sure thatyou will fail. . . . At one time I should have defied you, but now I am notsure. . . . I have sat here through some dreary and dreadful days, and lainawake through some interminable nights; I have thought of many thingsthat men in their days of prosperity are apt to dismiss from theirminds; and I am no longer sure of the goodness of the world without usor in the plan of Fate. Perhaps it is only in us within our hearts thatthe light of God flickers—and flickers insecurely. Where we had thoughta God, somehow akin to ourselves, ruled in the universe, it may be thereis nothing but black emptiness and a coldness worse than cruelty. ”Mr. Dad was about to interrupt, and restrained himself by a greateffort. “It is a commonplace of pietistic works that natural things are perfectthings, and that the whole world of life, if it were not for thesinfulness of man, would be perfect. Paley, you will remember, SirEliphaz, in his ‘Evidences of Christianity,’ from which we have bothsuffered, declares that this earth is manifestly made for the happinessof the sentient beings living thereon. But I ask you to consider for alittle and dispassionately, whether life through all its stages, up toand including man, is not rather a scheme of uneasiness, imperfectsatisfaction, and positive miseries. . . . ” § 8“Aren’t we getting a bit out of our depth in all this? ” Mr. Dad burstout. “Put it at that—out of our depth. . . . What does this sort of carpingand questioning amount to, Mr. Huss? Does it do us any good? Does ithelp us in the slightest degree? Why should we go into all this? Whycan’t we be humble and leave these deep questions to those who make aspecialty of dealing with them? We don’t know the ropes. We can’t. Hereare you and Mr. Farr, for instance, both of you whole-time schoolmastersso to speak; here’s Sir Eliphaz toiling night and day to make simplecheap suitable homes for the masses, who probably won’t say thank you tohim when they see them; here’s me an overworked engineer andunderstaffed most cruelly, not to speak of the most unfair andimpossible labour demands, so that you never know where you are and whatthey won’t ask you next. And in the midst of it all we are to start anargey-bargey about the goodness of God! “We’re busy men, Mr. Huss. What do _we_ know of the world being a schemeof imperfect satisfaction and what all? Where does it come in? What’sits practical value? Words it is, all words, and getting away from theplain and definite question we came to talk over and settle and havedone with. Such talk, I will confess, makes me uncomfortable. Give methe Bible and the simple religion I learnt at my mother’s knee. That’sgood enough for me. Can’t we just have faith and leave all thesequestions alone? What are men in reality? After all their arguments. Worms. Just worms. Well then, let’s have the decency to behave as suchand stick to business, and do our best in that state of life unto whichit has pleased God to call us. That’s what _I_ say,” said Mr. Dad. He jerked his head back, coughed shortly, adjusted his tie, and noddedto Mr. Farr in a resolute manner. “A simple, straightforward, commercial and technical education,” headded by way of an explanatory colophon. “That’s what we’re after. ” § 9Mr. Huss stared absently at Mr. Dad for some moments, and then resumed:“Let us look squarely at this world about us. What is the true lot oflife? Is there the slightest justification for assuming that ourconceptions of right and happiness are reflected anywhere in the outwarduniverse? Is there, for instance, much animal happiness? Do health andwell-being constitute the normal state of animals? ”He paused. Mr. Dad got up, and stood looking out of the window with hisback to Mr. Huss. “Pulling nature to pieces,” he said over his shoulder. He turned and urged further, with a snarl of bitterness in his voice:“Suppose things are so, what is the good of _our_ calling attention toit? Where’s the benefit? ”But the attitude of Sir Eliphaz conveyed a readiness to listen. “Before I became too ill to go out here,” said Mr. Huss, “I went for awalk in the country behind this place. I was weary before I started, butI was impelled to go by that almost irresistible desire that will seizeupon one at times to get out of one’s immediate surroundings. I wantedto escape from this wretched room, and I wanted to be alone, secure frominterruptions, and free to think in peace. There was a treacherouspromise in the day outside, much sunshine and a breeze. I had heard ofwoods a mile or so inland, and that conjured up a vision of cool greenshade and kindly streams beneath the trees and of the fellowship of shyand gentle creatures. So I went out into the heat and into the dried andsalted east wind, through glare and inky shadows, across many morefields than I had expected, until I came to some woods and then to aneglected park, and there for a time I sat down to rest. . . . “But I could get no rest. The turf was unclean through the presence ofmany sheep, and in it there was a number of close-growing but verysharply barbed thistles; and after a little time I realized thatharvesters, those minute red beasts that creep upon one in the chalklands and burrow into the skin and produce an almost intolerableitching, abounded. I got up again and went on, hoping in vain to findsome fence or gate on which I might rest more comfortably. There weremany flies and gnats, many more than there are here and of differentsorts, and they persecuted me more and more. They surrounded me in ahumming cloud, and I had to wave my walking-stick about my head all thetime to keep them off me. I felt too exhausted to walk back, but therewas, I knew, a village a mile or so ahead where I hoped to find someconveyance in which I might return by road. . . . “And as I struggled along in this fashion I came upon first one thingand then another, so apt to my mood that they might have been put thereby some adversary. First it was a very young rabbit indeed, it wasscarcely as long as my hand, which some cruel thing had dragged from itsburrow. The back of its head had been bitten open and was torn andbloody, and the flies rose from its oozing wounds to my face like acloud of witnesses. Then as I went on, trying to distract my mind fromthe memory of this pitiful dead thing by looking about me for somethingmore agreeable, I discovered a row of little brown objects in a hawthornbush, and going closer found they were some half-dozen victims of abutcherbird—beetles, fledgelings, and a mouse or so—spiked on thethorns. They were all twisted into painful attitudes, as if each hadsuffered horribly and challenged me by the last gesture of its limbs tojudge between it and its creator. . . . And a little further on a gaunt,villainous-looking cat with rusty black fur that had bare patchessuddenly ran upon me out of a side path; it had something in its mouthwhich it abandoned at the sight of me and left writhing at my feet, apretty crested bird, very mangled, that flapped in flat circles upon theturf, unable to rise. A fit of weak and reasonless rage came upon me atthis, and seeing the cat halt some yards away and turn to regard me andmove as if to recover its victim, I rushed at it and pursued it,shouting. Then it occurred to me that it would be kinder if, instead ofa futile pursuit of the wretched cat, I went back and put an end to thebird’s sufferings. For a time I could not find it, and I searched for itin the bushes in a fever to get it killed, groaning and cursing as I didso. When I found it, it fought at me with its poor bleeding wings andsnapped its beak at me, and made me feel less like a deliverer than amurderer. I hit it with my stick, and as it still moved I stamped it todeath with my feet. I fled from its body in an agony.

‘And this,’ Icried, ‘this hell revealed, is God’s creation! ’”“_Tcha! _” exclaimed Mr. Dad. “Suddenly it seemed to me that scales had fallen from my eyes and that Isaw the whole world plain. It was as if the universe had put aside amask it had hitherto worn, and shown me its face, and it was a face ofboundless evil. . . . It was as if a power of darkness sat over me andwatched me with a mocking gaze, and for the rest of that day I couldthink of nothing but the feeble miseries of living things. I wastortured, and all life was tortured with me. I failed to find thevillage I sought; I strayed far, I got back here at last long afterdark, stopping sometimes by the wayside to be sick, sometimes kneelingor lying down for a time to rest, shivering and burning with anincreasing fever. “I had, as you know, been the first to find poor Williamson lyinghelpless among the acids; that ghastly figure and the burnt bodies ofthe two boys who died in School House haunt my mind constantly; but whatwas most in my thoughts on that day when the world of nature showed itsteeth to me was the wretchedness of animal life. I do not know why thatshould have seemed more pitiful to me, and more fundamental, but it did. Human suffering, perhaps, is complicated by moral issues; man can lookbefore and after and find remote justifications and stern consolationsoutside his present experiences; but the poor birds and beasts, theyhave only their present experiences and their individual lives cut offand shut in. How can there be righteousness in any scheme that afflictsthem? I thought of one creature after another, and I could imagine nonethat had more than an occasional gleam of false and futile satisfactionbetween suffering and suffering. And to-day, gentlemen, as I sit herewith you, the same dark stream of conviction pours through my mind. Ifeel that life is a weak and inconsequent stirring amidst the dust ofspace and time, incapable of overcoming even its internal dissensions,doomed to phases of delusion, to irrational and undeserved punishments,to vain complainings and at last to extinction. “Is there so much as one healthy living being in the world? I questionit. As I wandered that day, I noted the trees as I had never noted thembefore. There was not one that did not show a stricken or rotten branch,or that was not studded with the stumps of lost branches decayingbackwards towards the main stem; from every fork came dark stains ofcorruption, the bark was twisted and contorted and fungoid protrusionsproclaimed the hidden mycelium of disease. The leaves were spotted withwarts and blemishes, and gnawed and bitten by a myriad enemies. I notedtoo that the turf under my feet was worn and scorched and weary;gossamer threads and spiders of a hundred sorts trapped themultitudinous insects in the wilted autumnal undergrowth; the hedgeswere a slow conflict of thrusting and strangulating plants in whichevery individual was more or less crippled or stunted. Most of theseplants were armed like assassins; they had great thorns or stinginghairs; some ripened poisonous berries. And this was the reality of life;this was no exceptional mood of things, but a revelation of thingsestablished. I had been blind and now I saw. Even as these woods andthickets were, so was all the world. . . . “I had been reading in a book I had chanced to pick up in this lodging,about the jungles of India, which many people think of as a vast wealthof splendid and luxuriant vegetation. For the greater part of the yearthey are hot and thorny wastes of brown, dead and mouldering matter. Comes the steaming downpour of the rains; and then for a little whilethere is a tangled rush of fighting greenery, jostling, choking, tornand devoured by a multitude of beasts and by a horrible variety ofinsects that the hot moisture has called to activity. Then under the drybreath of the destroyer the exuberance stales and withers, everythingripens and falls, and the jungle relapses again into sullen heat andgloomy fermentation. And in truth everywhere the growth season is a wildscramble into existence, the rest of the year a complicated massacre. Even in our British climate is it not plain to you how the summeroutlasts the lavish promise of the spring? In our spring there is nodoubt an air of hope, of budding and blossoming; there is the nestingand singing of birds, a certain cleanness of the air, an emergence ofprimary and comparatively innocent things; but hard upon that freshnessfollow the pests and parasites, the creatures that corrupt and sting,the minions of waste and pain and lassitude and fever. . . . “You may say that I am dwelling too much upon the defects in the livesof plants which do not feel, and of insects and small creatures whichmay feel in a different manner from ourselves; but indeed their decayand imperfection make up the common texture of life. Even the thingsthat live are only half alive. You may argue that at least the rarer,larger beasts bring with them a certain delight and dignity into theworld. But consider the lives of the herbivora; they are all huntedcreatures; fear is their habit of mind; even the great Indian buffalo isgiven to panic flights. They are incessantly worried by swarms ofinsects. When they are not apathetic they appear to be angry,exasperated with life; their seasonal outbreaks of sex are evidently aviolent torment to them, an occasion for fierce bellowings, mutualpersecution and desperate combats. Such beasts as the rhinoceros or thebuffalo are habitually in a rage; they will run amuck for no conceivablereason, and so too will many elephants, betraying a sort of organicspite against all other living things. . . . “And if we turn to the great carnivores, who should surely be the lordsof the jungle world, their lot seems to be not one whit more happy. Thetiger leads a life of fear; a dirty scrap of rag will turn him from hispath. Much of his waking life is prowling hunger; when he kills he eatsravenously, he eats to the pitch of discomfort; he lies up afterwards inreeds or bushes, savage, disinclined to move. The hunter must beat himout, and he comes out sluggishly and reluctantly to die. His paws, too,are strangely tender; a few miles of rock will make them bleed, theygather thorns. . . . His mouth is so foul that his bite is a poisonedbite. . . . “All that day I struggled against this persuasion that the utmosthappiness of any animal is at best like a transitory smile on a grim andinhuman countenance. I tried to recall some humorous andcontented-looking creatures. . . . “That only recalled a fresh horror. . . . “You will have seen pictures and photographs of penguins. They will haveconveyed to you the sort of effect I tried to recover. They express aquaint and jolly gravity, an aldermanic contentment. But to me now themere thought of a penguin raises a vision of distress. I will tellyou. . . . One of my old boys came to me a year or so ago on his returnfrom a South Polar expedition; he told me the true story of these birds. Their lives, he said—he was speaking more particularly of the kingpenguin—are tormented by a monstrously exaggerated maternal instinct, aninstinct shared by both sexes, which is a necessary condition ofsurvival in the crowded rookeries of that frozen environment. And thatinstinct makes life one long torment for them. There is always a greatsmashing of eggs there through various causes; there is an excessivemortality among the chicks; they slip down crevasses, they freeze todeath and so forth, three-quarters of each year’s brood perish, andwithout this extravagant passion the species would become extinct. Sothat every bird is afflicted with a desire and anxiety to brood upon andprotect a chick. But each couple produces no more than one egg a year;eggs get broken, they roll away into the water, there is always ashortage, and every penguin that has an egg has to guard it jealously,and each one that has not an egg is impelled to steal or capture one. Some in their distress will mother pebbles or scraps of ice, somefortunate in possession will sit for days without leaving the nest inspite of the gnawings of the intense Antarctic hunger. To leave a nestfor a moment is to tempt a robber, and the intensity of the emotionsaroused is shown by the fact that they will fight to the death over astolen egg. You see that these pictures of rookeries of apparentlycomical birds are really pictures of poor dim-minded creatures worriedand strained to the very limit of their powers. That is what their liveshave always been. . . . “But the king penguin draws near the end of its history. Let me tell youhow its history is closing. Let me tell you of what is happening in thepeaceful Southern Seas—now. This old boy of mine was in great distressbecause of a vile traffic that has arisen. . . . Unless it is stopped, itwill destroy these rookeries altogether. These birds are being murderedwholesale for their oil. Parties of men land and club them upon theirnests, from which the poor, silly things refuse to stir. The dead andstunned, the living and the dead together, are dragged away and thrustinto iron crates to be boiled down for their oil. The broken living withthe dead. . . . Each bird yields about a farthing’s profit, but it pays tokill them at that, and so the thing is done. The people who run theseoperations, you see, have had a sound commercial training. They believethat when God gives us power He means us to use it, and that what isprofitable is just. ”“Well, really,” protested Mr. Dad. “Really! ”Mr. Farr also betrayed a disposition to speak. He cleared his throat,his uneasy hands worried the edge of the table, his face shone. “SirEliphaz,” he said. . . . “Let me finish,” said Mr. Huss, “for I have still to remind you of themost stubborn facts of all in such an argument as this. Have you everthought of the significance of such creatures as the entozoa, and thevast multitudes of other sorts of specialized parasites whose veryexistence is cruelty? There are thousands of orders and genera ofinsects, crustacea, arachnids, worms, and lowlier things, which areadapted in the most complicated way to prey upon the living andsuffering tissues of their fellow creatures, and which can live in noother way. Have you ever thought what that means? If forethought framedthese horrors what sort of benevolence was there in that forethought? Iwill not distress you by describing the life cycles of any of thesecreatures too exactly. You must know of many of them. I will not dwellupon those wasps, for example, which lay their eggs in the living bodiesof victims which the young will gnaw to death slowly day by day as theydevelop, nor will I discuss this unmeaning growth of cells which hasmade my body its soil. . . . Nor any one of our thousand infectious feversthat fall upon us—without reason, without justice. . . . “Man is of all creatures the least subjected to internal parasites. Inthe brief space of a few hundred thousand years he has changed his food,his habitat and every attitude and habit of his life, and comparativelyfew species, thirty or forty at most, I am told, have been able tofollow his changes and specialize themselves to him under these freshconditions; yet even man can entertain some fearful guests. Every timeyou drink open water near a sheep pasture you may drink the larval liverfluke, which will make your liver a little township of vile creaturesuntil they eat it up, until they swarm from its oozing ruins into yourbody cavity and destroy you. In Europe this is a rare fate for a man,but in China there are wide regions where the fluke abounds and rots thelife out of thousands of people. . . . The fluke is but one sample of suchfeats of the Creator. An unwashed leaf of lettuce may be the means ofplanting a parasitic cyst in your brain to dethrone your reason; a feastof underdone pork may transfer to you from the swine the creeping deathtorture of trichinosis. . . . But all that men suffer in these matters isnothing to the suffering of the beasts. The torments of the beasts arefinished and complete. My biological master tells me that he rarelyopens a cod or dogfish without finding bunches of some sort of worm orsuch like pallid lodger in possession. He has rows of little tubes withthe things he has found in the bodies of rabbits. . . . “But I will not disgust you further. . . . “Is this a world made for the happiness of sentient things? “I ask you, how is it possible for man to be other than a rebel in theface of such facts? How can he trust the Maker who has designed andelaborated and finished these parasites in their endless multitude andvariety? For these things are not in the nature of sudden creations andspecial judgments; they have been produced fearfully and wonderfully bya process of evolution as slow and deliberate as our own. How can Mantrust such a Maker to treat him fairly? Why should we shut our eyes tothings that stare us in the face? Either the world of life is thecreation of a being inspired by a malignancy at once filthy, petty andenormous, or it displays a carelessness, an indifference, a disregardfor justice. . . . ”The voice of Mr. Huss faded out. § 10For some time Mr. Farr had been manifesting signs of impatience. Thepause gave him his opportunity. He spoke with a sort of restrainedvolubility. “Sir Eliphaz, Mr. Dad, after what has passed in relation to myself, Iwould have preferred to have said nothing in this discussion. Nothing. So far as I myself am concerned, I will still say nothing. But upon someissues it is impossible to keep silence. Mr. Huss has said some terriblethings, things that must surely never be said at Woldingstanton. . . . “Think of what such teaching as this may mean among young andsusceptible boys! Think of such stuff in the school pulpit! Chary as Iam of all wrangling, and I would not set myself up for a moment towrangle against Mr. Huss, yet I feel that this cavilling against God’suniverse, this multitude of evil words, must be answered. It isimperative to answer it, plainly and sternly. It is our duty to God, whohas made us what we are. . . . “Mr. Huss, in your present diseased state you seem incapable ofrealizing the enormous _egotism_ of all this depreciation of God’smarvels. But indeed you have suffered from that sort of incapacityalways. It is no new thing. Have I not chafed under your arrogantassurance for twelve long years? Your right, now as ever, is the onlyright; your doctrine alone is pure. Would that God could speak and openhis lips against you! How his voice would shatter you and us andeverything about us! How you would shrivel amidst your blasphemies! “Excuse me, gentlemen, if I am too forcible,” said Mr. Farr, moisteninghis white lips, but Mr. Dad nodded fierce approval.

Thus encouraged, Mr. Farr proceeded. “When first I came into this room,Mr. Huss, I was full of pity for your affliction—I think we all were—wewere pitiful; but now it is clear to me that God exacts from you lessthan your iniquity deserves. Surely the supreme sin is pride. Youcriticize and belittle God’s universe, but what sort of a universe wouldyou give us, Mr. Huss, if you were the Creator? Pardon me if I startleyou, gentlemen, but that is a fair question to ask. For it is clear tome now, Mr. Huss, that no less than that will satisfy you. Woldingstanton, for all the wonders you have wrought there, in spite ofthe fact that never before and never again can there be such a head, inspite of the fact that you have lit such a candle there as may one dayset the world ablaze, is clearly too small a field for you. Headmasterof the universe is your position. Then, and then alone, could youdisplay your gifts to the full. Then cats would cease to eat birds, andtrees grow on in perfect symmetry until they cumbered the sky. I candimly imagine the sort of world that it would be; the very fleasreformed and trained under your hand, would be flushed with health andhappiness and doing the work of boy scouts; every blade of grass wouldbe at least six feet long. As for the liver fluke—but I cannot solve theproblem of the liver fluke. I suppose you will provide euthanasia forall the parasites. . . . ”Abruptly Mr. Farr passed from this vein of terrible humour to an earnestand pleading manner. “Mr. Huss, with mortal danger so close to you, Ientreat you to reconsider all this wild and wicked talk of yours. Youtake a few superficial aspects of the world and frame a judgment onthem; you try with the poor foot-rule of your mind to measure the plansof God, plans which are longer than the earth, wider than the sea. I askyou, how can such insolence help you in this supreme emergency? Therecan be little time left. . . . ”Providence was manifestly resolved to give Mr. Farr the maximum ofdramatic effect. “But what is this? ” said Mr. Farr. He stood up andlooked out of the window. Somebody had rung the bell, and now, with an effect of impatience, wasrapping at the knocker of Sea View. CHAPTER THE FOURTH DO WE TRULY DIE? § 1Mrs. Croome was heard in the passage, someone was admitted, there werevoices, and the handle of the parlour door was turned. “’Asn’t E come,then? ” they heard the voice of Mrs. Croome through the opening. Dr. Elihu Barrack appeared in the doorway. He was a round-headed young man with a clean-shaven face, a mouth thatwas determinedly determined and slightly oblique, a short nose, and ageneral expression of resolution; the fact that he had an artificial legwas scarcely perceptible in his bearing. He considered the four menbefore him for a moment, and then addressed himself to Mr. Huss in atone of brisk authority. “You ought to be in bed,” he said. “I had this rather important discussion,” said Mr. Huss, with a gestureportending introductions. “But sitting up will fatigue you,” the doctor insisted, sticking to hispatient. “It won’t distress me so much as leaving these things unsaid would havedone. ”“Opinions may differ upon that,” said Mr. Farr darkly. “We are still far from any settlement of our difficulties,” said SirEliphaz to the universe. “I have indicated my view at any rate,” said Mr. Huss. “I suppose nowSir Alpheus is here—”“He isn’t here,” said Dr. Barrack neatly. “He telegraphs to say that heis held up, and will come by the next train. So you get a reprieve, Mr. Huss. ”“In that case I shall go on talking. ”“You had better go to bed. ”“No. I couldn’t lie quiet. ” And Mr. Huss proceeded to name his guests toDr. Barrack, who nodded shortly to each of them in turn, and said:“Pleased-t-meet you. ” His face betrayed no excess of pleasure. His eyewas hard. He remained standing, as if waiting for them to displaysymptoms. “Our discussion has wandered far,” said Sir Eliphaz. “Our originalbusiness here was to determine the future development of WoldingstantonSchool, which we think should be made more practical and technical thanhitherto, and less concerned with history and philosophy than it hasbeen under Mr. Huss. (Won’t you sit down, Doctor? )”The doctor sat down, still watching Sir Eliphaz with hard intelligence. “Well, we have drifted from that,” Sir Eliphaz continued. “Not so far as you may think,” said Mr. Huss. “At any rate Mr. Huss has been regaling us with a discourse upon themiseries of life, how we are all eaten up by parasites and utterlywretched, and how everything is wretched and this an accursed worldruled either by a cruel God or a God so careless as to be practically noGod at all. ”“Nice stuff for nineteen eighteen _A. D. _,” said Mr. Dad, putting muchmeaning into the “A. D. ”“Since I left Woldingstanton and came here,” said Mr. Huss, “I have donelittle else but think. I have not slept during the night, I have hadnothing to occupy me during the day, and I have been thinking aboutfundamental things. I have been forced to revise my faith, and to lookmore closely than I have ever done before into the meaning of my beliefsand into my springs of action. I have been wrenched away from thathabitual confidence in the order of things which seemed the more naturalstate for a mind to be in. But that has only widened a difference thatalready existed between me and these three gentlemen, and that wasshowing very plainly in the days when success still justified my gripupon Woldingstanton. Suddenly, swiftly, I have had misfortune followingupon misfortune—without cause or justification. I am thrown now into thedarkest doubt and dismay; the universe seems harsh and black to me;whereas formerly I believed that at the core of it and universallypervading it was the Will of a God of Light. . . . I have always denied,even when my faith was undimmed, that the God of Righteousness ruledthis world in detail and entirely, giving us day by day our dailyrewards and punishments. These gentlemen on the contrary do believethat. They say that God does rule the world traceably and directly, andthat success is the measure of his approval and pain and suffering thefulfilment of unrighteousness. And as for what has this to do witheducation—it has all to do with education. You can settle no practicalquestions until you have settled such disputes as this. Before you canprepare boys to play their part in the world you must ask what is thisworld for which you prepare them; is it a tragedy or comedy? What is thenature of this drama in which they are to play? ”Dr. Barrack indicated that this statement was noted and approved. “For clearly,” said Mr. Huss, “if success is the justification of lifeyou must train for success. There is no need for men to understand life,then, so long as they do their job in it. That is the opinion of thesegovernors of mine. It has been the opinion of most men of theworld—always. Obey the Thing that Is! that is the lesson they would havetaught to my boys. Acquiesce. Life for them is not an adventure, not astruggle, but simply obedience and the enjoyment of rewards. . . . That,Dr. Barrack, is what such a technical education as they want set up atWoldingstanton really means. . . . “But I have believed always and taught always that what God demands fromman is his utmost effort to co-operate and understand. I have taught theimagination, first and most; I have made knowledge, knowledge of whatman is and what man’s world is and what man may be, which is theadventure of mankind, the substance of all my teaching. AtWoldingstanton I have taught philosophy; I have taught the whole historyof mankind. If I could not have done that without leaving chemistry andphysics, mathematics and languages out of the curriculum altogether Iwould have left them out. And you see why, Dr. Barrack. ”“I see your position certainly,” said Dr. Barrack. “And now that my heavens are darkened, now that my eyes have been openedto the wretchedness, futility and horror in the texture of life, I stillcling, I cling more than ever, to the spirit of righteousness within me. If there is no God, no mercy, no human kindliness in the great frame ofspace and time, if life is a writhing torment, an itch upon one littleplanet, and the stars away there in the void no more than huge emptyflares, signifying nothing, then all the brighter shines the flame ofGod in my heart. If the God in my heart is no son of any heavenly fatherthen is he Prometheus the rebel; it does not shake my faith that he isthe Master for whom I will live and die. And all the more do I cling tothis fire of human tradition we have lit upon this little planet, if itis the one gleam of spirit in all the windy vastness of a dead and emptyuniverse. ”Dr. Barrack seemed about to interrupt with some comment, and then, itwas manifest, deferred his interpolation. “Loneliness and littleness,” said Mr. Huss, “harshness in the skiesabove and in the texture of all things. If so it is that things are, sowe must see them. Every baby in its mother’s arms feels safe in a safecreation; every child in its home. Many men and women have lived anddied happy in that illusion of security. But this war has torn away theveil of illusion from millions of men. . . . Mankind is coming of age. Wecan see life at last for what it is and what it is not. Here we spinupon a ball of rock and nickel-steel, upon which a film of water, a fewscore miles of air, lie like the bloom upon a plum. All about that ballis space unfathomable; all the suns and stars are mere grains of matterscattered through a vastness that is otherwise utterly void. To thatthin bloom upon a particle we are confined; if we tunnel down into theearth, presently it is too hot for us to live; if we soar five milesinto the air we freeze, the blood runs out of our vessels into ourlungs, we die suffocated and choked with blood. . . . “Out of the litter of muds and gravels that make the soil of the worldwe have picked some traces of the past of our race and the past of life. In our observatories and laboratories we have gleaned some hints of itsfuture. We have a vision of the opening of the story, but the firstpages we cannot read. We discover life, a mere stir amidst the mud,creeping along the littoral of warm and shallow seas in the brief nightsand days of a swiftly rotating earth. We follow through vast ages thestory of life’s extension into the waters, and its invasion of the airand land. Plants creep upon the land and raise themselves by stemstowards the sun; a few worms and crustaceans follow, insects appear; andat length come our amphibious ancestors, breathing air by means of aswimming bladder used as a lung. From the first the land animals arepatched-up creatures. They eke out the fish ear they inherit by means ofan ear drum made out of a gill slit. You can trace scale and fin in boneand limb. At last this green scum of vegetable life with the beastsentangled in its meshes creeps in the form of forests over the hills;grass spreads across the plains, and great animals follow it out intothe open. What does it all signify? No more than green moss spreadingover an old tile. Steadily the earth cools and the day lengthens. Through long ages of warmth and moisture the wealth of unmeaning lifeincreases; come ages of chill and retrocession, glacial periods, andperiods when whole genera and orders die out. Comes man at last, thedestroyer, the war-maker, setting fire to the world, burning theforests, exhausting the earth. What hope has he in the end? Always theday drags longer and longer and always the sun radiates its energy away. A time will come when the sun will glow dull red in the heavens, shornof all its beams, and neither rising nor setting. A day will come whenthe earth will be as dead and frozen as the moon. . . . A spirit in ourhearts, the God of mankind, cries ‘No! ’ but is there any voice outsideus in all the cold and empty universe that echoes that ‘No’? ” § 2“Ah, Mr. Huss, Mr. Huss! ” said Sir Eliphaz. His eye seemed seeking some point of attachment, and found it at last inthe steel engraving of Queen Victoria giving a Bible to a duskypotentate, which adorned the little parlour. “Your sickness colours your vision,” said Sir Eliphaz. “What you say isso profoundly true and so utterly false. Mysteriously evolved, living asyou say in a mere bloom of air and moisture upon this tiny planet, howcould we exist, how could we continue, were we not sustained in everymoment by the Mercy and Wisdom of God? The flimsier life is, the greaterthe wonder of his Providence. Not a sparrow,” said Sir Eliphaz, and thenenlarging the metaphor with a boom in his voice, “not a hair of my head,falls to the ground without His knowledge and consent. . . . I am a manmuch occupied. I cannot do the reading I would. But while you have beenreviling the works of God I have been thinking of some wonders. . . . ”Sir Eliphaz lifted up a hand with thumb and finger opposed, as though heheld some exquisite thing therein. “The human eye,” said Sir Eliphaz, with an intensity of appreciationthat brought tears to his own. . . . “The cross-fertilization of plants. . . .

“The marvellous transformations of the higher insects. . . . “The highly elaborate wing scales of the Lepidoptera. “The mercy that tempers the wind to the shorn lamb. . . . “The dark warm marvels of embryology; the order and rhythm and obediencewith which the cells of the fertilized ovum divide to build up theperfect body of a living thing, yea, even of a human being—in God’simage. First there is one cell, then two; the process of division isextremely beautiful and is called, I believe, _karyokinesis_; then afterthe two come four, each knows his part, each divides certainly andmarvellously; eight, sixteen, thirty-two. . . . Each of those thirty-twocells is a complete thirty-second part of a man. Presently this cellsays, ‘I become a hair’; this, ‘a blood corpuscle,’ this ‘a cell in thebrain of a man, to mirror the universe. ’ Each goes to his own appointedplace. . . . “Would that we could do the like! ” said Sir Eliphaz. “Then consider water,” said Sir Eliphaz. “I am not deeply versed inphysical science, but there are certain things about water that fill mewith wonder and amaze. All other liquids contract when they solidify. With one or two exceptions—useful in the arts. Water expands. Now wateris a non-conductor of heat, and if water contracted and became heavierwhen it became ice, it would sink to the bottom of the polar seas andremain there unmelted. More ice would sink down to it, until all theocean was ice and life ceased. But water does not do so. No! . . . Were itnot for the vapour of water, which catches and entangles the sun’s heat,this world would scorch by day and freeze by night. Mercy upon mercy, Imyself,” said Sir Eliphaz in tones of happy confession, “am ninety percent. water. . . . We all are. . . . “And think how mercifully winter is tempered to us by the snow! Whenwater freezes in the air in winter-time, it does not come pelting downas lumps of ice. Conceivably it might, and then where should we be? Butit belongs to the hexagonal system—a system prone to gracefulframeworks. It crystallizes into the most delicate and beautiful lace ofsix-rayed crystals—wonderful under the microscope. They flakedelicately. They lie loosely one upon another. Out of ice is woven awarm garment like wool, white like wool because like wool it is full ofair—a warm garment for bud and shoot. . . . “Then again—you revile God for the parasites he sends. But are they notsent to teach us a great moral lesson? Each one for himself and God forus all. Not so the parasites. They choose a life of base dependence. With that comes physical degeneration, swift and sure. They are theSocialists of nature. They lose their limbs. They lose colour, becomeblenched, unappetising beings, vile creatures of sloth—oftenmicroscopic. Do they not urge us by their shameful lives to self helpand exertion? Yet even parasites have a use! I am told that were it notfor parasitic bacteria man could not digest his food. A lichen again ismade up of an alga and a fungus, mutually parasitic. That is calledsymbiosis—living together for a mutual benefit. Maybe every one of thosethousands of parasites you deem so horrible is working its way upwardtowards an arrangement—”Sir Eliphaz weighed his words: “Some mutually advantageous arrangementwith its host. A paying guest. “And finally,” said Sir Eliphaz, with the roll of distant thunder in hisvoice, “think of the stately procession of life upon the earth, througha myriad of forms the glorious crescendo of evolution, up to its climax,man. What a work is man! The paragon of creation, the microcosm of thecosmos, the ultimate birth of time. . . . And you would have us doubt theguiding hand! ”He ceased with a gesture. Mr. Dad made a noise like responses in church. § 3“A certain beauty in the world is no mark of God’s favour,” said Mr. Huss. “There is no beauty one may not balance by an equal ugliness. Thewart-hog and the hyæna, the tapeworm and the stinkhorn, are equallyGod’s creations. Nothing you have said points to anything but a coldindifference towards us of this order in which we live. Beauty happens;it is not given. Pain, suffering, happiness; there is no heed. Only inthe heart of man burns the fire of righteousness. ”For a time Mr. Huss was silent. Then he went on answering Sir Eliphaz. “You spoke of the wonder of the cross-fertilization of plants. But doyou not know that half these curious and elaborate adaptations no longerwork? Scarcely was their evolution completed before the special needthat produced them ceased. Half the intricate flowers you see are asfutile as the ruins of Palmyra. They are self-fertilized orwind-fertilized. The transformation of the higher insects which give usour gnats and wasps, our malaria and apple-maggots in due season, are amatter for human astonishment rather than human gratitude. If there isany design in these strange and intricate happenings, surely it is thedesign of a misplaced and inhuman ingenuity. The scales of thelepidoptera, again, have wasted their glittering splendours for millionsof years. If they were meant for man, why do the most beautiful speciesfly by night in the tropical forests? As for the human eye, oculists andopticians are scarcely of your opinion. You hymn the peculiar propertiesof water that make life possible. They make it possible. Do they make itother than it is? “You have talked of the marvels of embryonic growth in the egg. I admitthe wonderful precision of the process; but how does it touch my doubts? Rather it confuses them, as though the God who rules the world ruled notso much in love as in irony. Wonderfully indeed do the cells divide andthe chromoplasts of the division slide along their spindle lines. Theydivide not as if a divine hand guided them but with remorseless logic,with the pitiless consistency of a mathematical process. They divide andmarshal themselves and turn this way and that, to make an idiot, to makea congenital cripple. Millions of such miracles pile up—and produce theswaying drunkard at the pot-house door. “You talk of the crescendo of evolution, of the first beginnings oflife, and how the scheme unfolds until it culminates in us—_us_, here,under these circumstances, you and Mr. Dad and Farr and me—waiting forthe knife. Would that I could see any such crescendo! I see changeindeed and change and change, without plan and without heart. Considerfor example the migrations of birds across the Mediterranean, and thetragic absurdity of its incidents. Ages ago, and for long ages, therestretched continuous land connexions from Africa to Europe. Then theinstinct was formed; the birds flew over land from the heated south tothe northern summer to build and breed. Slowly age by age the seas creptover those necks of land. Those linking tracts have been broken now fora hundred thousand years, and yet over a constantly widening sea, inwhich myriads perish exhausted, instinct, blind and pitiless, stilldrives those birds. And again think of those vain urgencies for somepurpose long since forgotten, that drive the swarming lemmings to theirfate. And look at man, your evolution’s crown; consider his want ofbalance, the invalidism of his women, the extravagant disproportion ofhis desires. Consider the Record of the Rocks honestly and frankly, andwhere can you trace this crescendo you suggest? There have been greatages of marvellous tree-ferns and wonderful forest swamps, and all thoseglorious growths have died. They did not go on; they reached a climaxand died; another sort of plant succeeded them. Then think of all thatwonderful fauna of the Mesozoic times, the age of Leviathan; thetheriodonts, reptilian beasts, the leaping dinosaurs, the mososaurs andsuchlike monsters of the deep, the bat-winged pterodactyls, theplesiosaurs and ichthyosaurs. Think of the marvels of the Mesozoic seas;the thousands of various ammonites, the wealth of fish life. Across allthat world of life swept death, as the wet fingers of a child wipe adrawing from a slate. They left no descendants, they clambered to a vastvariety and complexity and ceased. The dawn of the Eocene was the bleakdawn of a denuded world. Crescendo if you will, but thereafterdiminuendo, pianissimo. And then once again from fresh obscure startingpoints far down the stem life swelled, and swelled again, only todwindle. The world we live in to-day is a meagre spectacle beside theabundance of the earlier Tertiary time, when Behemoth in a thousandforms, Deinotherium, Titanotherium, Helladotherium, sabre-toothed tiger,a hundred sorts of elephant, and the like, pushed through the junglesthat are now this mild world of to-day. Where is _that_ crescendo now? Crescendo! Through those long ages our ancestors were hiding underleaves and climbing into trees to be out of the way of the crescendo. Asthe _motif_ of a crescendo they sang exceedingly small. And now for alittle while the world is ours, and we wax in our turn. To what good? Towhat end? Tell me, you who say the world is good, tell me the end. Howcan we escape at last the common fate under the darkling sky of a frozenworld? ”He paused for some moments, weary with speaking. “There is no comfort,” he said, “in the flowers or the stars; noassurance in the past and no sure hope in the future. There is nothingbut the God of faith and courage in the hearts of men. . . . And He givesno sign of power, no earnest of victory. . . . He gives no sign. . . . ”Whereupon Sir Eliphaz breathed the word: “_Immortality! _”“Let me say a word or two upon Immortality,” said Sir Eliphaz, breakingsuddenly into eagerness, “for that, I presume, is the thing we haveforgotten. That, I see, is the difference between us and you, Mr. Huss;that is why we can sit here, content to play our partial rôles, knowingfull surely that some day the broken lines and inconsecutivenesses thatperplex us in this life will all be revealed and resolved into theirperfect circles, while you to whom this earthly life is all and final,you must needs be a rebel, you must needs preach a doctrine betweendefiance and despair. . . . If indeed death ended all! _Ah! _ Then indeedyou might claim that reason was on your side. The afflictions of man arevery many. Why should I deny it? ”The patentee and chief proprietor of the Temanite blocks paused for amoment. “Yes,” he said, peering up through his eyebrows at the sky, “that is thereal issue. Blind to that, you are blind to everything. ”“I don’t know whether I am with you on this question of immortality, SirEliphaz,” warned Dr. Barrack, coughing shortly. “For my part I’m altogether with him,” said Mr. Dad. “If there is noimmortal life—well, what’s the good of being temperate and decent andcareful for five and fifty years? ”Sir Eliphaz had decided now to drop all apologetics for the scheme ofNature. “A place of trial, a place of stimulus and training,” he said, “_Respicefinem. _ The clues are all—beyond. ”“But if you really consider this world as a place for soul making,” saidMr. Huss, “what do you think you are doing when you propose to turnWoldingstanton over to Farr? ”“At any rate,” said Farr tartly, “we do not want soul-blackening andcounsels of despair at Woldingstanton. We want the boys taught to serveand help first in this lowly economic sphere, cheerfully andenterprisingly, and then in higher things, before they pass on—”“If death ends all, then what is the good of trying? ” Mr. Dad said,still brooding over the question. “If I thought that—! ”He added with deep conviction, “I should let myself go. . . . Anyonewould. ”He blew heavily, stuck his hands in his pockets, and sat more deeply inhis chair, an indignant man, a business man asked to give up somethingfor nothing. For a moment the little gathering hung, only too manifestlycontemplating the spectacle of Mr. Dad amidst wine, women, andwaistcoats without restraint, letting himself go, eating, drinking, andrejoicing, being a perfect devil, because on the morrow he had todie. . . . “Immortal,” said Mr. Huss. “I did not expect immortality to come intothis discussion. . . . “Are _you_ immortal, Farr? ” he asked abruptly. “I hope so,” said Mr. Farr.

“Unworthy though I be. ”“Exactly,” said Mr. Huss. “And so that is the way out for us. You and I,Mr. Dad from his factory, and Sir Eliphaz from his building office, areto soar. It is all arranged for us, and that is why the tragic greatnessof life is to be hidden from my boys. . . . “Yet even so,” continued Mr. Huss, “I do not see why you should be soanxious for technical science and so hostile to the history of mankind. ”“Because it is not a true history,” said Sir Eliphaz, his hair wavingabout like the hair of a man electrified by fresh ideas. “Because it isa bunch of loose ends that are really not ends at all, but onlybeginnings that pass suddenly into the unseen. I admit that in thisworld nothing is rationalized, nothing is clearly just. I admiteverything you say. But the reason? The reason? Because this life isonly the first page of the great book we have to read. We sit here, Mr. Huss, like men in a waiting-room. . . . All this life is like waitingoutside, in a place of some disorder, before being admitted to the widerreality, the larger sphere, where all the cruelties, all theseconfusions, everything—will be explained, justified—and set right. ”He paused, and then perceiving that Mr. Huss was about to speak heresumed, raising his voice slightly. “And I do not speak without my book in these matters,” he said. “I havebeen greatly impressed—and, what is more, Lady Burrows has been greatlyimpressed, by the writings of two thoroughly scientific men, twothoroughly scientific men, Dr. Conan Doyle and Sir Oliver Lodge. Eversince she lost her younger sister early in life Lady Burrows hasfollowed up this interest. It has been a great consolation to her. Andthe point is, as Sir Oliver insists in that wonderful book ‘Raymond,’that continued existence in another world is as proven now as the atomictheory in chemistry. It is not a matter of faith, but knowledge. Thepartition is breached at last. We are in communication. News is comingthrough. . . . Scientific certainty. . . . ”Sir Eliphaz cleared his throat. “We have already evidences anddescriptions of the life into which we shall pass. Remember this is noidle talk, no deception by Sludges and the like; it is a great Englishscientific man who publishes these records; it is a great Frenchphilosopher, no less a man than that wonderful thinker—and _how_ hethinks! —Professor Bergson, who counselled their publication. A glory ofscience and a glory of philosophy combine to reassure us. We walk atlast upon a path of fact into that further world. We know already much. We know, for example, that those who have passed over to that higherplane have bodies still. That I found—comforting. Without that—one wouldfeel _bleak_. But, the messages say, the internal organs are constituteddifferently. Naturally. As one would have expected. The dietary is, Igather, practically non-existent. Needless. As the outline is the samethe space is, I presume, used for other purposes. Some sort of astralstorage. . . . They do not bleed. An interesting fact. Lady Burrows’ sisteris now practically bloodless. And her teeth—she had lost several, shesuffered greatly with her teeth—her teeth have all been replaced—abeautiful set. Used now only for articulate speech. ”“‘Raymond’ all over again,” said the doctor. “You have read the book! ” said Sir Eliphaz. The doctor grunted in a manner that mingled assent and disapproval. Hisexpression betrayed the scientific bigot. “We know now _details_ of the passage,” said Sir Eliphaz. “We have someparticulars. We know, for instance, that people blown to pieces takesome little time to reconstitute. There is a correlation between thiscorruptible body and the spirit body that replaces it. There is a sortof spirit doctor over there, very helpful in such cases. And burntbodies, too, are a trouble. . . . The sexes are still distinct, but all thecoarseness of sex is gone. The passions fade in that better world. Everypassion. Even the habit of smoking and the craving for alcohol fade. Notat first. The newly dead will sometimes ask for a cigar. They are givencigars, higher-plane cigars, and they do not ask for more. There are nochildren born there. Nothing of that sort. That, it is very important tounderstand. _Here_ is the place of birth; this is where lives begin. This coarse little planet is the seed-bed of life. When it has servedits purpose and populated those higher planes, then indeed it mayfreeze, as you say. A mere empty hull. A seed-case that has served itspurpose, mattering nothing. These are the thoughts, the comforting andbeautiful thoughts, that receive the endorsement of our highestscientific and philosophical intelligences. . . . One thinks of that lifethere, no doubt in some other dimension of space, that world arranged in_planes_—metaphorical planes, of course, in which people go to and fro,living in a sort of houses, surrounded by a sort of beautiful things,made, so we are told, from the smells of the things we have here. Thatis curious, but not irrational. Our favorite doggies will be there. Sublimated also. That thought has been a great comfort to LadyBurrows. . . . We had a dog called Fido, a leetle, teeny fellow—practicallyhuman. . . . “These blessed ones engage very largely in conversation. Otheroccupations I found difficult to trace. Raymond attended a sort ofreception on the very highest plane. It was a special privilege. Perhapsa compliment to Sir Oliver. He met the truth of revealed religion, so tospeak, personally. It was a wonderful moment. Sir Oliver suppresses themore solemn details. Lady Burrows intends to write to him. She isanxious for particulars. But I will not dilate,” said Sir Eliphaz. “Iwill not dilate. ”“And you believe this _stuff_? ” said the doctor in tones of the deepestdisgust. Sir Eliphaz waved himself upon the questioner. “So far as poor earthly expressions can body forth spiritual things,” hehedged. He regarded his colleagues with an eye of florid defiance. Both Mr. Farrand Mr. Dad had slightly shamefaced expressions, and Mr. Dad’s ears werered. Mr. Dad cleared his throat. “I’m sure there’s something in it—anyhow,”said Mr. Dad hoarsely, doing his best in support. “If I was born with a hare lip,” said the doctor, “would _that_ be putright? Do congenital idiots get sublimated? What becomes of a dog onehas shot for hydrophobia? ”“To all of such questions,” said Sir Eliphaz serenely, “the answeris—_we don’t know_. Why should we? ” § 4Mr. Huss seemed lost in meditation. His pale and sunken face andcrumpled pose contrasted strongly with the bristling intellectualrectitude and mounting choler of Dr. Elihu Barrack. “No, Sir Eliphaz,” said Mr. Huss, and sighed. “No,” he repeated. “What a poor phantom of a world these people conjure up! What a mockeryof loss and love! The very mothers and lovers who mourn their dead willnot believe their foolish stories. Restoration! It is a crowningindignity. It makes me think of nothing in the world but my dear boy’sbody, broken and crumpled, and some creature, half fool and halfimpostor, sitting upon it, getting between it and me, and talking cheaprubbish over it about planes of being and astral bodies. . . . “After all, you teach me, Sir Eliphaz, that life, for all its grossnessand pain and horror, is not so bad as it might be—if such things as thiswere true. But it needs no sifting of the evidence to know they areuntrue. No sane man believes this stuff for ten minutes together. It isimpossible to believe it. . . . ”Dr. Elihu Barrack applauded. Sir Eliphaz acted a fine self-restraint. “They are contrary to the texture of everything we know,” said Mr. Huss. “They are less convincing than the wildest dreams. By pain, by desire,by muscular effort, by the feeling of sunshine or of rain in the face,by their sense of justice and suchlike essential things do men test thereality of appearances before them. This certainly is no reality. It hasnone of the _feel_ of reality. I will not even argue about it. It isthrust now upon a suffering world as comfort, and even as comfort forpeople stunned and uncritical with grief it fails. You and Lady Burrowsmay be pleased to think that somehow you two, with your teeth restoredand your complexions rejuvenated, will meet again the sublimation ofyour faithful Fido. At any rate, thank God for that, I know clearly thatso I shall never meet my son. Never! He has gone from me. . . . ”For some moments mental and physical suffering gripped him, and he couldnot speak; but his purpose to continue was so manifested by sweatingface and gripping hand that no one spoke until he spoke again. “Now let me speak plainly about Immortality. For surely I stand nearestto that possibility of all of us here. Immortality, then, is no suchdodging away as you imagine, from this strange world which is sodesolating, so dreadful, so inexplicable—and at times so utterly lonely. There may be a God in the universe or there may not be. . . . God, if heexists, can be terribly silent. . . . But if there is a God, he is acoherent God. If there is a God above and in the scheme of things, thennot only you and I and my dead son, but the crushed frog and thetrampled anthill _signify_. On that the God in my heart insists. Therehas to be an answer, not only to the death of my son but to the dyingpenguin roasted alive for a farthing’s worth of oil. There must be ananswer to the men who go in ships to do such things. There has to be ajustification for all the filth and wretchedness of louse and fluke. Iwill not have you slipping by on the other side, chattering of planes ofliving and sublimated atoms, while there is a drunken mother or a mandying of cholera in this world. I will not hear of a God who is just ameans for getting away. Whatever foulness and beastliness there is, youmust square God with that. Or there is no universal God, but only acoldness, a vast cruel difference. .

. . “I would not make my peace with such a God if I could. . . . “I tell you of these black and sinister realities, and what do youreply? That it is all right, because after death we shall get away fromthem. Why! if presently I go down under the surgeon’s knife, down out ofthis hot and weary world, and then find myself being put together by aspirit doctor in this _beyond_ of yours, waking up to a new world ofamiable conversations and artificial flowers, having my hair restoredand the gaps among my teeth filled up, I shall feel like someone who hasdeserted his kind, who has sneaked from a sickroom into a party. . . . Well—my infection will go with me. I shall talk of nothing but thetragedy out of which I have come—which still remains—whichcontinues—tragedy. “And yet I believe in Immortality! ”Dr. Barrack, who had hitherto been following Mr. Huss with evidentapproval, started, sounded a note of surprise and protest, and fixedaccusing eyes upon him. For the moment he did not interrupt. “But it is not I that am immortal, but the God within me. All thispersonal immortality of which you talk is a mockery of ourpersonalities. What is there personal in us that can live? What makes usour very selves? It is all a matter of little mean things, smalldifferences, slight defects. Where does personal love grip? —on justthese petty things. . . . Oh! dearly and bitterly did I love my son, andwhat is it that my heart most craves for now? His virtues? No! Hisambitions? His achievements? . . . No! none of these things. . . . But for acertain queer flush among his freckles, for a kind of high crack in hisvoice . . . a certain absurd hopefulness in his talk . . . the sound of hisfootsteps, a little halt there was in the rhythm of them. These are thethings we long for. These are the things that wring the heart. . . . Butall these things are just the mortal things, just the defects that wouldbe touched out upon this higher plane you talk about. You would give himback to me smoothed and polished and regularized. So, I grant, it mustbe if there is to be this higher plane. But what does it leave ofpersonal distinction? What does it leave of personal love? “When my son has had his defects smoothed away, then he will be like allsons. When the older men have been ironed out, they will be like theyounger men. There is no personality in hope and honour andrighteousness and truth. . . . My son has gone. He has gone for evermore. The pain may some day go. . . . The immortal thing in us is the leastpersonal thing. It is not you nor I who go on living; it is Man thatlives on, Man the Universal, and he goes on living, a tragic rebel inthis same world and in no other. . . . ”Mr. Huss leant back in his chair. “There burns an undying fire in the hearts of men. By that fire I live. By that I know the God of my Salvation. His will is Truth; His will isService. He urges me to conflict, without consolations, without rewards. He takes and does not restore. He uses up and does not atone. Hesuffers—perhaps to triumph, and we must suffer and find our hope oftriumph in Him. He will not let me shut my eyes to sorrow, failure, orperplexity. Though the universe torment and slay me, yet will I trust inHim. And if He also must die—Nevertheless I can do no more; I must serveHim. . . . ”He ceased. For some moments no one spoke, silenced by his intensity. CHAPTER THE FIFTH ELIHU REPROVES JOB § 1“I don’t know how all this strikes you,” said Mr. Farr, turning suddenlyupon Dr. Barrack. “Well—it’s interestin’,” said Dr. Barrack, leaning forward upon hisfolded arms upon the table, and considering his words carefully. “It’s interestin’,” he repeated. “I don’t know how far you want to hearwhat I think about it. I’m rather a downright person. ”Sir Eliphaz with great urbanity motioned him to speak on. “There’s been, if you’ll forgive me, nonsense upon both sides. ”He turned to Sir Eliphaz. “This Spook stuff,” he said, and paused andcompressed his lips and shook his head. “It won’t do. “I have given some little attention to the evidences in that matter. I’msomething of a psychologist—a doctor has to be. Of course, Sir Eliphaz,you’re not responsible for all the nonsense you have been talking aboutsublimated bricks and spook dogs made of concentrated smell. ”Sir Eliphaz was convulsed. “Tut, tut! ” he said. “But indeed—! ”“No offence, Sir Eliphaz! If you don’t want me to talk I won’t; but ifyou do, then I must say what I have in my mind. And as I say, I don’thold you responsible for the things you have been saying. All this cheapmedium stuff has been shot upon the world by Sir Oliver J. Lodge, handedout by him to people distraught with grief, in a great fatimpressive-looking volume. . . . No end of them have tried their utmost totake it seriously. . . . It’s been a pitiful business. . . . I’ve no doubt theman is honest after his lights, but what lights they are! Obstinatecredulity posing as liberalism. He takes every pretence and dodge ofthese mediums, he accepts their explanations, he edits their babble andrearranges it to make it seem striking. Look at his critical ability! Because many of the mediums are fairly respectable people who eithermake no money by their—revelations, or at most a very ordinaryliving—it’s a guinea a go, I believe, usually—he insists upon theirhonesty. That’s his key blunder. Any doctor could tell him, as I couldhave told him after my first year’s practice, that telling the truth isthe very last triumph of the human mind. Hardly any of my patients tellthe truth—ever. It isn’t only that they haven’t a tithe of the criticalability and detachment necessary, they haven’t any real desire to tellthe truth. They want to produce effects. Human beings are artisticstill; they aren’t beginning to be scientific. Either they minimize orthey exaggerate. We all do. If I saw a cat run over outside and I camein here to tell you about it, I should certainly touch up the story,make it more dramatic, hurt the cat more, make the dray bigger and soon. I should want to justify my telling the story. Put a woman in thatchair there, tell her to close her eyes and feel odd, and she’ll feelodd right enough; tell her to produce words and sentences that she findsin her head and she’ll produce them; give her half a hint that it comesfrom eastern Asia and the stuff will begin to correspond to her ideas ofpigeon English. It isn’t that she is cunningly and elaborately deceivingyou. It is that she wants to come up to your expectation. You arefocussing your interest on her, and all human beings like to haveinterest focussed on them, so long as it isn’t too hostile. She’ll clingto that interest all she knows how. She’ll cling instinctively. Most ofthese mediums never held the attention of a roomful of people in theirlives until they found out this way of doing it. . . . What can youexpect? ”Dr. Barrack cleared his throat. “But all that’s beside the question,” hesaid. “Don’t think that because I reject all this spook stuff, I’msetting up any finality for the science we have to-day. It’s just alittle weak squirt of knowledge—all the science in the world. I grantyou there may be forces, I would almost say there must be forces in theworld, forces universally present, of which we still know nothing. Takethe case of electricity. What did men know of electricity in the days ofGilbert? Practically nothing. In the early Neolithic age I doubt if anymen had ever noticed there was such a thing as air. I grant you thatmost things are still unknown. Things perhaps right under our noses. Butthat doesn’t help the case of Sir Eliphaz one little bit. These unknownthings, as they become known, will join on to the things we do know. They’ll complicate or perhaps simplify our ideas, but they won’tcontradict our general ideas. They’ll be things in the system. Theywon’t get you out of the grip of the arguments Mr. Huss has broughtforward. So far, so far as concerns _your_ Immortality, Sir Eliphaz, Iam, you see, entirely with Mr. Huss. It’s a fancy; it’s a dream. As afancy it’s about as pretty as creaking boards at bedtime; as a dream—. It’s unattractive. As Mr. Huss has said. “But when it comes to Mr. Huss and _his_ Immortality then I find myselfwith you, gentlemen. That too is a dream. Less than a dream. Less eventhan a fancy; it’s a play on words. Here is this Undying Flame, thisSpirit of God in man; it’s in him, he says, it’s in you, Sir Eliphaz,it’s in you, Mr. —Dad, wasn’t it? it’s in this other gentleman whose nameI didn’t quite catch; and it’s in me. Well, it’s extraordinary that noneof us know of it except Mr. Huss. How you feel about it I don’t know,but personally I object to being made part of God and one with Mr. Husswithout my consent in this way. I prefer to remain myself. That may beegotism, but I am by nature an egotistical creature. And Agnostic. . . . “You’ve got me talking now, and I may as well go through with it. Whatis an Agnostic really? A man who accepts fully the limitations of thehuman intelligence, who takes the world as he finds it, and who takeshimself as he finds himself and declines to go further. There may beother universes and dimensions galore. There may be a fourth dimension,for example, and, if you like, a fifth dimension and a sixth dimensionand any number of other dimensions. They don’t concern me. I live inthis universe and in three dimensions, and I have no more interest inall these other universes and dimensions than a bug under the wallpaperhas in the deep, deep sea.

Possibly there are bugs under the wallpaperwith a kind of reasoned consciousness of the existence of the deep, deepsea, and a half belief that when at last the Keating’s powder gets them,thither they will go. I—if I may have one more go at the image—just liveunder the wallpaper. . . . “I am an Agnostic, I say. I have had my eyes pretty well open at theuniverse since I came into it six and thirty years ago. And not onlyhave I never seen nor heard of nor smelt nor touched a ghost or spirit,Sir Eliphaz, but I have never seen a gleam or sign of this Providence,the Great God of the World of yours, or of this other minor and modernGod that Mr. Huss has taken up. In the hearts of men I have foundmalformations, ossifications, clots, and fatty degeneration; but never aGod. “You will excuse me if I speak plainly to you, gentlemen, but thisgentleman, whose name I haven’t somehow got—”“Farr. ”“Mr. Farr, has brought it down on himself and you. He called me in, andI am interested in these questions. It’s clear to me that since we existthere’s something in all this. But what it is I’m convinced I haven’tthe ganglia even to begin to understand. I decline either the wildguesses of the Spookist and Providentialist—I must put you there, I’mafraid, Sir Eliphaz—or the metaphors of Mr. Huss. Fact. . . . ”Dr. Barrack paused. “I put my faith in Fact. ”“There’s a lot in Fact,” said Mr. Dad, who found much that was congenialin the doctor’s downright style. “What do I see about me? ” asked Dr. Barrack. “A struggle for existence. About that I ask a very plain and simple question: why try to get behindit? That is It. It made me. I study it and watch it. It put me up like acockshy, and it keeps on trying to destroy me. I do my best to dodge itsblows. It got my leg. My head is bloody but unbowed. I reproduce mykind—as abundantly as circumstances permit—I stamp myself upon theuniverse as much as possible. If I am right, if I do the right thingsand have decently good luck, I shall hold out until my waning instinctsdispose me to rest. My breed and influence are the marks of myrightness. What else is there? You may call this struggle what you like. God, if you like. But God for me is an anthropomorphic idea. Call it TheProcess. ”“Why not Evolution? ” said Mr. Huss. “I prefer The Process. The word Evolution rather begs the moralquestion. It’s a cheap word. ‘Shon! ’ Evolution seems to suggest just asimple and automatic unfolding. The Process is complex; it has its upsand downs—as Mr. Huss understands. It is more like a Will than anAutomaton. A Will feeling about. It isn’t indifferent to us as Mr. Husssuggests; it uses us. It isn’t subordinate to us as Sir Eliphaz wouldhave us believe; playing the part of a Providence just for our comfortand happiness. Some of us are hammer and some of us are anvil, some ofus are sparks and some of us are the beaten stuff which survives. TheProcess doesn’t confide in us; why should it? We learn what we can aboutit, and make what is called a practical use of it, for that is what thewill in the Process requires. ”Mr. Dad, stirred by the word ‘practical,’ made a noise of assent. Butnot a very confident noise: a loan rather than a gift. “And that is where it seems to me Mr. Huss goes wrong altogether. Hedoes not submit himself to those Realities. He sets up something calledthe Spirit in Man, or the God in his Heart, to judge them. He wants tojudge the universe by the standards of the human intelligence at itspresent stage of development. That’s where I fall out with him. Theseare not fixed standards. Man goes on developing and evolving. Somethings offend the sense of justice in Mr. Huss, but that is no enduringcriterion of justice; the human sense of justice has developed out ofsomething different, and it will develop again into something different. Like everything else in us, it has been produced by the Process and itwill be modified by the Process. Some things, again, he says are notbeautiful. There also he would condemn. But nothing changes like thesense of beauty. A band of art students can start a new movement,cubist, vorticist, or what not, and change your sense of beauty. Ifseeing things as beautiful conduces to survival, we shall see them asbeautiful sooner or later, rest assured. I daresay the hyenas admireeach other—in the rutting season anyhow. . . . So it is with mercy and witheverything. Each creature has its own standards. After man is theBeyond-Man, who may find mercy folly, who may delight in things thatpain our feeble spirits. We have to obey the Process in our own placeand our own time. That is how I see things. That is the stark truth ofthe universe looked at plainly and hard. ”The lips of Mr. Dad repeated noiselessly: “plainly and hard. ” But hefelt very uncertain. For some moments the doctor sat with his forearms resting on the tableas if he had done. Then he resumed. “I gather that this talk here to-day arose out of a discussion abouteducation. ”“You’d hardly believe it,” said Mr. Dad. But Dr. Barrack’s next remark checked Mr. Dad’s growing approval. “Thatseems perfectly logical to me. It’s one of the things I can neverunderstand about schoolmasters and politicians and suchlike, the waythey seem to take it for granted you can educate and not bring inreligion and socialism and all your beliefs. What _is_ education? Teaching young people to talk and read and write and calculate in orderthat they may be told how they stand in the world and what we think weand the world generally are up to, and the part we expect them to playin the game. Well, how can we do that and at the same time leave it allout? What _is_ the game? That is what every youngster wants to know. Answering him, is education. Either we are going to say what we thinkthe game is plainly and straightforwardly, or else we are going to makemotions as though we were educating when we are really doing nothing ofthe kind. In which case the stupid ones will grow up with their headsall in a muddle and be led by any old catchword anywhere according toluck, and the clever ones will grow up with the idea that life is a sortof empty swindle. Most educated people in this country believe it is asham and a swindle. They flounder about and never get up against areality. . . . It’s amazing how people can lose their grip on reality—howmost people have. The way my patients come along to me and tell melies—even about their stomach-aches. The idea of anything being directand reasonable has gone clean out of their heads. They think they canfool me about the facts, and that when I’m properly fooled, I shall thenhumbug their stomachs into not aching—somehow. . . . “Now my gospel is this:—face facts. Take the world as it is and takeyourself as you are. And the fundamental fact we all have to face isthis, that this Process takes no account of our desires or fears ormoral ideas or anything of the sort. It puts us up, it tries us over,and if we don’t stand the tests it knocks us down and ends us. That maynot be right as you test it by your little human standards, but it isright by the atoms and the stars. Then what must a proper Education be? ”Dr. Barrack paused. “Tell them what the world is, tell them every ruleand trick of the game mankind has learnt, and tell them ‘_Beyourselves. _’ Be yourselves up to the hilt. It is no good being anythingbut your essential self because—”Dr. Barrack spoke like one who quotes a sacred formula. “_There is noinheritance of acquired characteristics. _ Your essential self, youressential heredity, are on trial. Put everything of yourself into theProcess. If the Process wants you it will accept you; if it doesn’t youwill go under. You can’t help it—either way. You may be the bit ofmarble that is left in the statue, or you may be the bit of marble thatis thrown away. You can’t help it. _Be yourself! _”Dr. Barrack had sat back; he raised his voice at the last words andlifted his hand as if to smite the table. But, so good a thing isprofessional training, he let his hand fall slowly, as he rememberedthat Mr. Huss was his patient. § 2Mr. Huss did not speak for some moments. He was thinking so deeply thathe seemed to be unobservant of the cessation of the doctor’s discourse. Then he awoke to the silence with a start. “You do not differ among yourselves so much as you may think,” he saidat last. “You all argue to one end, however wide apart your starting points maybe. You argue that men may lead fragmentary lives. . . . “And,” he reflected further, “submissive lives. ”“_Not_ submissive,” said Dr. Barrack in a kind of footnote. “You say, Sir Eliphaz, that this Universe is in the charge ofProvidence, all-wise and amiable. That He guides this world to ends wecannot understand; desirable ends, did we but know them, butincomprehensible; that this life, this whole Universe, is but thestarting point for a developing series of immortal lives. And from thisyou conclude that the part a human being has to play in this scheme isthe part of a trustful child, which need only not pester the HigherPowers, which need only do its few simple congenial duties, to be surelypreserved and rewarded and carried on. ”“There is much in simple faith,” said Sir Eliphaz; “sneer though youmay. ”“But your view is a grimmer one, Dr. Barrack; you say that this Processis utterly beyond knowledge and control. We cannot alter it or appeaseit. It makes of some of us vessels of honour and of others vessels ofdishonour. It has scrawled our race across the black emptiness of space,and it may wipe us out again. Such is the quality of Fate. We can butfollow our lights and instincts. . . . In the end, in practical matters,your teaching marches with the teaching of Sir Eliphaz. You bow to thething that is; he gladly and trustfully—with a certain old-worldcourtesy, you grimly—in the modern style. . . . ”For some moments Mr. Huss sat with compressed lips, as though helistened to the pain within him. Then he said: “I don’t. “I don’t submit. I rebel—not in my own strength nor by my own impulse. Irebel by the spirit of God in me. I rebel not merely to make weakgestures of defiance against the black disorder and cruelties of spaceand time, but for mastery. I am a rebel of pride—I am full of the prideof God in my heart. I am the servant of a rebellious and adventurous Godwho may yet bring order into this cruel and frightful chaos in which weseem to be driven hither and thither like leaves before the wind, a Godwho, in spite of all appearances, may yet rule over it at last and mouldit to his will. ”“_What_ a world it will be! ” whispered Mr. Farr, unable to restrainhimself and yet half-ashamed of his sneer. “What a world it is, Farr! What a cunning and watchful world! Does itserve even _you_? So insecure has it become that opportunity may yetturn a frightful face upon you—in the very moment as you snatch. . . . “But you see how I differ from you all. You see that the spirit of mylife and of my teaching—of my teaching—for all its weaknesses and slipsand failures, is a fight against that Dark Being of the universe whoseeks to crush us all. Who broods over me now even as I talk to you. . . .

It is a fight against disorder, a refusal of that very submission youhave made, a repudiation altogether of that same voluntary death inlife. . . . ”He moistened his lips and resumed. “The end and substance of all real education is to teach men and womenof the Battle of God, to teach them of the beginnings of life upon thislonely little planet amidst the endless stars, and how those beginningshave unfolded; to show them how man has arisen through the long agesfrom amidst the beasts, and the nature of the struggle God wages throughhim, and to draw all men together out of themselves into one common lifeand effort with God. The nature of God’s struggle is the essence of ourdispute. It is a struggle, with a hope of victory but with no assurance. You have argued, Sir Eliphaz, that it is an unreal struggle, a shamfight, that indeed all things are perfectly adjusted and for our finalhappiness, and when I have reminded you a little of the unmasked horrorsabout us, you have shifted your ground of compensation into another—intoan incredible—world. ”Sir Eliphaz sounded dissent musically. Then he waved his long hand asMr. Huss paused and regarded him. “But go on! ” he said. “Go on! ”“And now I come to you, Dr. Barrack, and your modern fatalism. You holdthis universe is uncontrollable—anyhow. And incomprehensible. For goodor ill—we can be no more than our strenuous selves. You must, you say,_be yourself_. I answer, you must lose yourself in something altogethergreater—in God. . . . There is a curious likeness, Doctor, and a curiousdifference in your views and mine. I think you see the world very muchas I see it, but you see it coldly like a man before sunrise, and I—”He paused. “There is a light upon it,” he asserted with a noticeableflatness in his voice. “There is a light . . . light. . . . ”He became silent. For a while it seemed as if the light he spoke of hadgone from him and as if the shadow had engulfed him. When he spoke againit was with an evident effort. He turned to Dr. Barrack. “You think,” he said, “that there is a will inthis Process of yours which will take things somewhere, somewheredefinitely greater or better or onward. I hold that there is no will atall except in and through ourselves. If there be any will at all . . . Ihold that even your maxim ‘be ourselves’ is a paradox, for we cannot beourselves until we have lost ourselves in God. I have talked to SirEliphaz and to you since you came in, of the boundless disorder and evilof nature. Let me talk to you now of the boundless miseries that arisefrom the disorderliness of men and that must continue age after ageuntil either men are united in spirit and in truth or destroyed throughtheir own incoherence. Whether men will be lost or saved I do not know. There have been times when I was sure that God would triumph in us. . . . But dark shadows have fallen upon my spirit. . . . “Consider the posture of men’s affairs now, consider where they standto-day, because they have not yet begun to look deeply and frankly intorealities; because, as they put it, they take life as they find it,because _they are themselves_, heedless of history, and do not realizethat in truth they are but parts in one great adventure in space andtime. For four years now the world has been marching deeper and deeperinto tragedy. . . . Our life that seemed so safe grows insecure and moreand more insecure. . . . Six million soldiers, six million young men, havebeen killed on the battlefields alone; three times as many have beencrippled and mutilated; as many again who were not soldiers have beendestroyed. That has been only the beginning of the disaster that hascome upon our race. All human relationships have been strained; roads,ships, harvests destroyed; and behind the red swift tragedy of thiswarfare comes the gaunt and desolating face of universal famine now, andbehind famine that inevitable follower of famine, pestilence. Yougentlemen who have played so useful a part in supplying munitions ofwar, who have every reason in days well spent and energies well used tosee a transitory brightness upon these sombre things, you may tell methat I lack faith when I say that I can see nothing to redeem the wasteand destruction of the last four years and the still greater waste andspiritless disorder and poverty and disease ahead of us. You will tellme that the world has learnt a lesson it could learn in no other way,that we shall set up a World League of Nations now and put an end towar. But on what will you set up your World League of Nations? Whatfoundations have you made in the last four years but ruins? Is there anycommon idea, any common understanding yet in the minds of men? They arestill taking the world as they find it, they are being their unmitigatedselves more than ever, and below the few who scramble for profits now isa more and more wolfish multitude scrambling for bread. There are nocommon ideas in men’s minds upon which we can build. How can men beunited except by common ideas? The schools have failed the world. Whatcommon thought is there in the world? A loud bawling of base newspapers,a posturing of politicians. You can see chaos coming again over all theeast of Europe now, and bit by bit western Europe crumbles and dropsinto the confusion. Art, science, reasoned thought, creative effort,such things have ceased altogether in Russia; they may have ceased thereperhaps for centuries; they die now in Germany; the universities of thewest are bloodless and drained of their youth. That war that seemed atfirst so like the dawn of a greater age has ceased to matter in the faceof this greater disaster. The French and British and Americans arebeating back the Germans from Paris. Can they beat them back to anydistance? Will not this present counterthrust diminish and fail as theothers have done? Which side may first drop exhausted now, will hardlychange the supreme fact. The supreme fact is exhaustion—exhaustion,mental as well as material, failure to grasp and comprehend, cessationeven of attempts to grasp and comprehend, slackening of every sort ofeffort. . . . ”“What’s the _good_ of such despair? ” said Mr. Dad. “I do not despair. No. But what is the good of lying about hope andsuccess in the midst of failure and gathering disaster? What is the goodof saying that mankind wins—automatically—against the spirit of evil,when mankind is visibly losing point after point, is visibly losingheart? What is the good of pretending that there is order andbenevolence or some sort of splendid and incomprehensible process inthis festering waste, this windy desolation of tremendous things? Thereis no reason anywhere, there is no creation anywhere, except the undyingfire, the spirit of God in the hearts of men . . . which may fail . . . which may fail . . . which seems to me to fail. ” § 3He paused. Dr. Barrack cleared his throat. “I don’t want to seem obdurate,” said Dr. Barrack. “I want to respectdeep feeling. One must respect deep feeling. . . . But for the life of me Ican’t put much meaning into this phrase, _the spirit of God in thehearts of men_. It’s rather against my habits to worry a patient, butthis is so interesting—this is an exceptional occasion. I would like toask you, Mr. Huss—frankly—is there anything very much more to it, than aphrase? ”There was no answer. “Words,” said Mr. Dad; “joost words. If Mr. Huss had ever spent threemonths of war time running a big engineering factory—”“My mind is a sceptical mind,” Dr. Barrack went on, after staring amoment to see if Mr. Dad meant to finish his sentence. “I want things Ican feel and handle. I am an Agnostic by nature and habit andprofession. A Doubting Thomas, born and bred. Well, I take it that aboutthe universe Mr. Huss is very much of an Agnostic too. More so. Hedoubts more than I do. He doubts whether there is any trace of plan orpurpose in it. What I call a Process, he calls a windy desolation. Hesees Chaos still waiting for a creator. But then he sets up against thatthis undying fire of his, this spirit of God, which is lit in him andonly waiting to be lighted in us, a sort of insurgent apprenticecreator. Well—”The doctor frowned and meditated on his words. “I want more of the practical outcome of this fire. I admit a certainpoetry in the idea, but I am a plain and practical man. Give mesomething to know this fire by and to recognize it again when I see it. I won’t ask _why_ ‘undying. ’ I won’t quibble about that. But what doesthis undying fire mean in actual things and our daily life? In some wayit is mixed up with teaching history in schools. ” A faint note ofderision made him glance at the face to his right. “That doesn’t strikeme as being so queer as it seems to strike Mr. Farr. It interests me. There is a cause for it. But I think there are several links Mr. Husshasn’t shown and several vital points he still has to explain. Thisundying fire is something that is burning in Mr. Huss, and I gather fromhis pretty broad hints it ought, he thinks, to be burning in me—and you,gentlemen. It is something that makes us forget our little personaldifferences, makes us forget ourselves, and brings us all into lineagainst—what. That’s my first point;—against what? I don’t see the forceand value of this line-up. _I_ think we struggle against one another bynature and necessity; that we polish one another in the struggle andsharpen our edges. I think that out of this struggle for existence comesbetter things and better. They may not be better things by our standardsnow, but by the standards of the Process, they are. Sometimes the millsof the Process may seem overpoweringly grim and high and pitiless; thatis a question of scale. But Mr. Huss does not believe in the struggle. He wants to take men’s minds and teach them so that they will notstruggle against each other but live and work all together. _For_ what? That is my second point;—_for what_? There is a rationality in my ideaof an everlasting struggle making incessantly for betterment, such anidea does at any rate give a direction and take us somewhere; but thereis no rationality in declaring we are still fighting and fighting morethan ever, while in effect we are arranging to stop that struggle whichcarries life on—if we can—if we can. That is the paradox of Mr. Huss. When there is neither competition at home nor war abroad, when the catand the bird have come to a satisfactory understanding, when the spiritof his human God rules even in the jungle and the sea, then where shallwe be heading? Time will be still unfolding. But man will have halted. If he has ceased to compete individually he will have halted. Mr. Husslooks at me as if he thought I wronged him in saying that. Well, then hemust answer my questions; what will the Human God be leading us_against_, and what shall we be living _for_? ” § 4“Let me tell you first what the spirit of God struggles against,” saidMr. Huss. “I will not dispute that this Process of yours has made good things; allthe good things in man it has made as well as all the evil. It has madethem indifferently. In us—in some of us—it has made the will to seizeupon that chance-born good and separate it from the chance-born evil. The spirit of God rises out of your process as if he were a part of yourprocess. . . . Except for him, the good and evil are inextricably mixed;good things flower into evil things and evil things wholly or partiallyredeem themselves by good consequences. ‘Good’ and ‘evil’ have meaningonly for us. The Process is indifferent; it makes, it destroys, itfavours, it torments. On its own account it preserves nothing andcontinues nothing. It is just careless. But for us it has madeopportunity. Life is opportunity. Unless we do now ourselves seize holdupon life and the Process while we are in it, the Process, becominguncontrollable again, will presently sweep us altogether away. In theback of your mind, doctor, is the belief in a happy ending just as muchas in the mind of Sir Eliphaz. I see deeper because I am not blinded byhealth. You think that beyond man comes some sort of splendid super-man. A healthy delusion! There is nothing beyond man unless men will thatsomething shall be. We shall be wiped out as carelessly as we have beenmade, and something else will come, as disconnected and aimless,something neither necessarily better nor necessarily worse but somethingdifferent, to be wiped out in its turn. Unless the spirit of God thatmoves in us can rouse us to seize this universe for Him and ourselves,that is the nature of your Process. Your Process is just Chaos; man isthe opportunity, the passing opportunity for order in the waste. “People write and talk as if this great war which is now wrecking theworld, was a dramatic and consecutive thing. They talk of it as a purge,as a great lesson, as a phase in history that marks the end of wars anddivisions. So it might be; but is it so and will it be so?

I asked you alittle time ago to look straightly at the realities of animal life, oflife in general as we know it. I think I did a little persuade you to myown sense of shallowness of our assumption that there is any naturalhappiness. The poor beasts and creatures have to suffer. I ask you nowto look as straightly at the things that men have done and endured inthis war. It is plain that they have shown extraordinary fertility andingenuity in the inventions they have used and an amazing capacity forsacrifice and courage; but it is, I argue, equally plain that the painsand agonies they have undergone have taught the race little or nothing,and that their devices have been mainly for their own destruction. Theonly lesson and the only betterment that can come out of this war willcome if men, inspired by the Divine courage, say ‘This and all suchthings must end. ’. . . But I do not perceive them saying that. On theother hand I do perceive a great amount of human energy and ability thathas been devoted and is still being devoted to things that lead straightto futility and extinction. “The most desolating thing about this war is neither the stupidity northe cruelty of it, but the streak of perversion that has run through it. Against the meagreness of the intelligence that made the war, againstthe absolute inability of the good forces in life to arrest it and endit, I ask you to balance the intelligence and devotion that has gone tosuch an enterprise as the offensive use of poison gas. Consider theingenuity and the elaboration of that; the different sorts of shellused, the beautifully finished devices to delay the release of thepoison so as to catch men unawares after their gas masks are removed. One method much in favour with the Germans now involves the use of twosorts of gas. They have a gas now not very deadly but so subtle that itpenetrates the gas masks and produces nausea and retching. The man isovercome by the dread of being sick so that he will clog his mask andsuffocate, and he snatches off his protection in an ungovernablephysical panic. Then the second gas, of the coarser, more deadly type,comes into play. That he breathes in fully. His breath catches; herealizes what he has done but it is too late; death has him by thethroat; he passes through horrible discomfort and torment to the end. You cough, you stagger, you writhe upon the ground and are deadlysick. . . . You die heaving and panting, with staring eyes. . . . So it is menare being killed now; it is but one of a multitude of methods,disgusting, undignified, and monstrous, but intelligent, technicallyadmirable. . . . You cannot deny, Doctor Barrack, that this ingeniousmixture is one of the last fruits of your Process. To that your Processhas at last brought men from the hoeing and herding of Neolithic days. “Now tell me how is the onward progress of mankind to anything,anywhere, secured by this fine flower of the Process? Intellectualenergy, industrial energy, are used up without stint to make this horrorpossible; multitudes of brave young men are spoilt or killed. Is thereany selection in it? Along such lines can you imagine men or life or theuniverse getting anywhere at all? “Why do they do such things? “They do not do it out of a complete and organized impulse to evil. Ifyou took the series of researches and inventions that led at last tothis use of poison gas, you would find they were the work of a multitudeof mainly amiable, fairly virtuous, and kindly-meaning men. Each one was_doing his bit_, as Mr. Dad would say; each one, to use your phrase,doctor, was _being himself_ and utilizing the gift that was in him inaccordance with the drift of the world about him; each one, Sir Eliphaz,was modestly _taking the world as he found it_. They were living in anuninformed world with no common understanding and no collective plan, aworld ignorant of its true history and with no conception of its future. Into these horrors they drifted for the want of a world education. Outof these horrors no lesson will be learnt, no will can arise, for thesame reason. Every man lives ignorantly in his own circumstances, fromhand to mouth, from day to day, swayed first of all by this catchwordand then by that. “Let me take another instance of the way in which human ability andenergy if they are left to themselves, without co-ordination, without acommon basis of purpose, without a God, will run into cul-de-sacs ofmere horribleness; let me remind you a little of what the submarine isand what it signifies. In this country we think of the submarine as aninstrument of murder; but we think of it as something ingeniouslycontrived and at any rate not tormenting and destroying the hands thatguide it. I will not recall to you the stories that fill our newspapersof men drowning in the night, of crowded boatloads of sailors andpassengers shelled and sunken, of men forced to clamber out of the seaupon the destroying U-boat and robbed of their lifebelts in order thatwhen it submerged they should be more surely drowned. I want you tothink of the submarine in itself. There is a kind of crazy belief thatkilling, however cruel, has a kind of justification in the survival ofthe killer; we make that our excuse for instance for the destruction ofthe native Tasmanians who were shot whenever they were seen, and killedby poisoned meat left in their paths. But the marvel of these submarinesis that they also torture and kill their own crews. They are miracles ofshort-sighted ingenuity for the common unprofitable reasonlessdestruction of Germans and their enemies. They are almost quintessentialexamples of the elaborate futility and horror into which partial ideasabout life, combative and competitive ideas of life, thrust mankind. “Take some poor German boy with an ordinary sort of intelligence, anordinary human disposition to kindliness, and some gallantry, whobecomes finally a sailor in one of these craft. Consider his case andwhat we do to him. You will find in him a sample of what we are doingfor mankind. As a child he is ingenuous, teachable, plastic. He is alsoegotistical, greedy, and suspicious. He is easily led and easilyfrightened. He likes making things if he knows how to make them; he iscapable of affection and capable of resentment. He is a sheet of whitepaper upon which anything may be written. His parents teach him, hiscompanions, his school. Do they teach him anything of the great historyof mankind? Do they teach him of his blood brotherhood with all men? Dothey tell him anything of discovery, of exploration, of human effort andachievement? No. They teach him that he belongs to a blonde andwonderful race, the only race that matters on this planet. (No suchdistinct race ever existed; it is a lie for the damning of men. ) Andthese teachers incite him to suspicion and hatred and contempt of allother races. They fill his mind with fears and hostilities. EverythingGerman they tell him is good and splendid. Everything not German isdangerous and wicked. They take that poor actor of an emperor at Potsdamand glorify him until he shines upon this lad’s mind like a star. . . . “The boy grows up a mental cripple; his capacity for devotion andself-sacrifice is run into a mould of fanatical loyalty for the Kaiserand hatred for foreign things. Comes this war, and the youngster is onlytoo eager to give himself where he is most needed. He is told that thesubmarine war is the sure way of striking the enemies of his country aconclusive blow. To be in a submarine is to be at the spear point. Hedare scarcely hope that he will be accepted for this vital service; towhich princes might aspire. But he is fortunate; he is. He trains for asubmarine. . . . “I do not know how far you gentlemen remember your youth. A schoolmasterperhaps remembers more of his early adolescence than other men becausehe is being continually reminded of it. But it is a time of very fineemotions, boundless ambitions, a newly awakened and eager sense ofbeauty. This youngster sees himself as a hero, fighting for hishalf-divine Kaiser, for dear Germany, against the cold and evilbarbarians who resist and would destroy her. He passes through his drilland training. He goes down into a submarine for the first time, clambersdown the narrow hatchway. It is a little cold, but wonderful; amarvellous machine. How can such a nest of inventions, ingenuities,beautiful metal-work, wonderful craftsmanship, be anything but right? His mind is full of dreams of proud enemy battleships smitten andheeling over into the waters, while he watches his handiwork with astern pride, a restrained exultation, a sense of Germany vindicated. . . . “That is how his mind has been made for him. That is the sort of mindthat has been made and is being made in boys all over the world. . . . Because there is no common plan in the world, because each person in themaking of this boy, just as each person in the making of the submarine,had ‘been himself’ and ‘done his bit,’ followed his own impulses andinterests without regard to the whole, regardless of any plan or purposein human affairs, ignorant of the spirit of God who would unify us andlead us to a common use for all our gifts and energies. “Let me go on with the story of this youngster. . . . “Comes a day when he realizes the reality of the work he is doing forhis kind. He stands by one of the guns of the submarine in an attackupon some wretched ocean tramp. He realizes that the war he wages is noheroic attack on pride or predominance, but a mere murdering of traffic. He sees the little ship shelled, the wretched men killed and wounded, notyrants of the seas but sailor-men like himself; he sees their boatssmashed to pieces. Mostly such sinkings are done at dawn or sundown,under a level light which displays a world of black lines and blacksilhouettes asway with the slow heaving and falling of coldly shiningwater. These little black things, he realizes incredulously, thatstruggle and disappear amidst the wreckage are the heads of men,brothers to himself. . . . “For hundreds of thousands of men who have come into this war expectingbright and romantic and tremendous experiences their first killing musthave been a hideous disillusionment. For none so much as for the men ofthe submarines. All that sense of being right and fine that carries meninto battle, that carries most of us through the world, must havevanished completely at this first vision of reality. Our man must haveasked himself, ‘_What am I doing? _’. . . “In the night he must have lain awake and stared at that question inhorrible doubt. . . . “We scold too much at the German submarine crews in this country. Mostof us in their places would be impelled to go on as they go on. The workthey do has been reached step by step, logically, inevitably, becauseour world has been content to drift along on false premises andhaphazard assumptions about nationality and race and the order ofthings. These things have happened because the technical education ofmen has been better than their historical and social education. Once menhave lost touch with, or failed to apprehend that idea of a single humancommunity, that idea which is the substance of all true history and theessential teaching of God, it is towards such organized abominations asthese that they drift—necessarily. People in this country who are justas incoherent in their minds, just as likely to drift into some kindredcul-de-sac of conduct, would have these U-boat men tortured—to show thesuperiority of their own moral standards. “But indeed these men _are_ tortured. . . . “Bear yet a little longer with this boy of mine in the U-boat. I’vetried to suggest him to you with his conscience scared—at a moment whenhis submarine had made a kill. But those moments are rare. For most ofits time the U-boat is under water and a hunted thing. The surfaceswarms with hostile craft; sea-planes and observation balloons areseeking it. Every time a U-boat comes even near to the surface it may bespotted by a sea-plane and destruction may fall upon it. Even when it issubmerged below the limits of visibility in the turbid North Sea waters,the noise of its engines will betray it to a listening apparatus and ahappy guess with a depth charge may end its career. I want you to thinkof the daily life of this youngster under these conditions. I want youto see exactly where wrong ideas, not his, but wrong ideas ruling in theworld about him, are driving him. “The method of detection by listening apparatus improves steadily, andnowadays our destroyers will follow up a U-boat sometimes for sixty orseventy hours, following her sounds as a hound follows the scent of itsquarry. At last, if the U-boat cannot shake off her pursuers she mustcome to the surface and fight or surrender. That is the strangest gameof Blind-Man that ever human beings played. The U-boat doubles andturns, listening also for the sounds of the pursuers at the surface. Arethey coming nearer? Are they getting fainter? Unless a helpful mud-bankis available for it to lie up in silence for a time, the U-boat mustkeep moving and using up electrical force, so that ultimately it mustcome to the surface to recharge its batteries. As far as possible thecrew of the U-boat are kept in ignorance of the chase in progress. Theyget hints from the anxiety or irritation of the commander, or from thehaste and variety of his orders. Something is going on—they do not knowquite what—something that may end disagreeably. If the pursuer tries adepth charge, then they know for certain from the concussion that thehand of death is feeling for them in the darkness. . . . “Always the dread of a depth charge must haunt the imagination of theU-boat sailor. Without notice, at any hour, may come thud and concussionto warn him that the destroying powers are on his track. The fragileship jumps and quivers from end to end; the men are thrown about. Thathappens to our youngster. He curses the damned English. And if you thinkit over, what else can you expect him to curse? A little nearer and therivets will start and actual leakage begin, letting in a pressure ofseveral atmospheres. Yet a little nearer and the water will comepressing in through cracks and breaches at a score of points, the airwill be compressed in his lungs, the long death struggle of the U-boatwill begin, and after some hours of hopeless suffering he will suffocateand drown like a rat in a flooded tunnel. . . . “Think of the life of endless apprehension in that confined space belowthe waters. The air is almost always stuffy and sometimes it ispoisonous. All sorts of evil chances may occur in this crowded tinful ofmachinery to release oppressive gases and evil odours. A whiff ofchlorine for instance may warn the crew of flooded accumulators. At thefirst sting of chlorine the U-boat must come up at any risk. . . . Andnothing can be kept dry. The surfaces of the apparatus and the furnituresweat continually; except where the machinery radiates a certain heat aclammy chill pervades the whole contrivance. Have you ever seen thethick blubber of a whale? Only by means of that enormous layer ofnon-conductor can a whale keep its body warm in spite of the watersabout it. A U-boat cannot afford any layer of blubber. It is at thetemperature of the dark under-waters. And this life of cold, fear,suffocation, headache and nausea is not sustained by hot and nourishingfood. There is no blazing galley fire for the cook of the U-boat. “The U-boat rolls very easily; she is, of course, no heavier nor lighterthan the water in which she floats, and if by chance she touches bottomin shallow water, she bounds about like a rubber ball on a pavement. Inside the sailors are thrown about and dashed against the machinery. “That is the quality of everyday life in a U-boat retained below thesurface. Now think what an emergence involves. Up she comes until theperiscope can scrutinize the sky and the nearer sea. Nothing in sight? Thank God! She rises out of the water and some of the sailors get abreath of fresh air. Not all, for there is no room nor time for all ofthem to come out. But the fortunate ones who get to the hatches may evenhave the luck of sunshine. To come to the surface on a calm open seaaway from any traffic at all is the secret hope of every U-boat sailor. But suppose now there is something in sight. Then the U-boat must comeup with infinite discretion and examine the quarry. It looks an innocentcraft, a liner, a trawler, a cargo-boat. But is that innocence certain? How does the U-boat man know that she hasn’t a gun? What new contrivanceof the hunter may not hide behind that harmless-looking mask? Until theyhave put a ship down, the U-boat sailors never know what ugly surpriseshe may not have in store for them.

When they approach a vessel theymust needs be ignorant of what counter-attack creeps upon them from herunseen other side. As a consequence these men are in terror of everyship they hail. “Is it any wonder then if their behaviour is hasty and hysterical, ifthey curse and insult the wretched people they are proposing to drown,if they fire upon them unexpectedly and do strange and abominablethings? The U-boat man is no fine captain on his quarter deck. He is aman who lives a life of intense physical hardship and extreme fear, whofaces overwhelming risks, in order to commit as inglorious a crime asany man can commit. He is a man already in hell. “The Germans do what they can to keep up the spirit of these crews. AnEnglish captain who spent a fortnight upon one as a prisoner and who wasrecently released by way of Switzerland, says that when they had sunk amerchant ship ‘they played victory music on the gramophone. ’ Imaginethat bleak festival! “The inevitable end of the U-boat sailor, unless he is lucky enough toget captured, is death, and a very horrible and slow death indeed. Sooner or later it is bound to come. Some never return from their firstvoyage. There is a brief spree ashore if they do; then out they goagain. Perhaps they return a second time, perhaps not. Some may evenhave made a score of voyages, but sooner or later they are caught. Theaverage life of a U-boat is less than five voyages—out and home. Of thecrews of the original U-boats which began the U-boat campaign very fewmen survive to-day. When our young hopeful left his home in Germany tojoin the U-boat service, he left it for a certain death. He learns thatslowly from the conversation of his mates. Men are so scarce now forthis vile work that once Germany has got a man she will use him to theend. “And that end—? “I was given some particulars of the fate of one U-boat that were toldby two prisoners who died at Harwich the other day. This particular boatwas got by a mine which tore a hole in her aft. She was too disabled tocome to the surface, and she began to sink tail down. Now the immediateeffect of a hole in a U-boat is of course to bring the air pressurewithin her to the same level as the pressure of the water outside. Forevery ten yards of depth this means an addition of fourteen pounds tothe square inch. The ears and blood vessels are suddenly subjected tothis enormous pressure. There is at once a violent pain in the ears anda weight on the chest. Cotton wool has to be stuffed into ears andnostrils to save the ear drum. Then the boat is no longer on an evenkeel. The men stand and slip about on the sides of things. They clamberup the floor out of the way of the slowly rising water. For the waterdoes not come rushing in to drown them speedily. It cannot do thatbecause there is no escape for the air; the water creeps in steadily andstealthily as the U-boat goes deeper and deeper. It is a process of slowand crushing submergence that has the cruel deliberation of some storyby Edgar Allan Poe; it may last for hours. A time comes when the lightsgo out and the rising waters stop the apparatus for keeping up thesupply of oxygen and absorbing the carbonic acid. Suffocation begins. Think of what must happen in the minds of the doomed men crowdedtogether amidst the machinery. In the particular case these prisonersdescribed, several of the men drowned themselves deliberately in therising waters inside the boat. And in another case where the boat wasrecovered full of dead men, they had all put their heads under the waterinside the boat. People say the U-boat men carry poison against suchmischances as this. They don’t. It would be too tempting. . . . “When it becomes evident that the U-boat can never recover the surface,there is usually an attempt to escape by the hatches. The hatches can beopened when at last the pressure inside is equal to that of the waterwithout. The water of course rushes in and sinks the U-boat to thebottom like a stone, but the men _who are nearest to the hatch_ have achance of escaping with the rush of air to the surface. There is ofcourse a violent struggle to get nearest to the hatch. This is whathappened in the case of the particular U-boat from which these prisonerscame. The forward hatch was opened. Our patrol boat cruising above sawthe waters thrown up by the air-burst and then the heads of the menstruggling on the surface. Most of these men were screaming with pain. All of them went under before they could be picked up except two. Andthese two died in a day or so. They died because coming suddenly up tothe ordinary atmosphere out of the compressed air of the sinkingsubmarine had burst the tissues of their lungs. They were choked withblood. “Think of those poor creatures dying in the hospital. They were worn outby fits of coughing and hæmorrhage, but there must have been moments ofexhausted quiet before the end, when our youngster lay and stared at thebleak walls of the ward and thought; when he asked himself, ‘What have Ibeen doing? What have I done? What has this world done for me? It hasmade me a murderer. It has tortured me and wasted me. . . . And I meantwell by it. . . . ’“Whether he thought at all about the making of the submarine, thenumberless ingenuities and devices, the patience and devotion, that hadgone to make that grim trap in which he had been caught at last, Icannot guess. . . . Probably he took it as a matter of course. . . . “So it was that our German youngster who dreamt dreams, who hadambitions, who wished to serve and do brave and honourable things,died. . . . So five thousand men at least have died, English some of themas well as German, in lost submarines beneath the waters of the narrowseas. . . . “There is a story and a true story. It is more striking than the fate ofmost men and women in the world, but is it, in its essence, different? Is not the whole life of our time in the vein of this story? Is not thisstory of youth and hope and possibility misled, marched step by stepinto a world misconceived, thrust into evil, and driven down to uglinessand death, only a more vivid rendering of what is now the common fate ofgreat multitudes? Is there any one of us who is not in some fashionaboard a submarine, doing evil and driving towards an evil end? . . . “What are the businesses in which men engage? How many of them have anylikeness to freighted ships that serve the good of mankind? Think of thelying and cornering, the crowding and outbidding, the professionaletiquette that robs the common man, the unfair advantage smuglyaccepted! What man among us can say, ‘All that I do is service’? Ourholding and our effort: is it much better than the long interludes belowthe surface, and when we come up to struggle for our own hands,torpedoing competitors, wrecking antagonists, how is it with us? Thesubmarine sailors stare in the twilight at drowning men. Every day Istare at a world drowning in poverty and ignorance, a world awash in theseas of hunger, disease, and misery. We have been given leisure,freedom, and intelligence; what have we done to prevent these things? “I tell you all the world is a submarine, and every one of us issomething of a U-boat man. These fools who squeal in the papers forcruelties to the U-boat men do not realize their own part in theworld. . . . We might live in sunshine and freedom and security, and welive cramped and cold, in bitter danger, because we are at war with ourfellow men. . . . “But there, doctor, you have the answer to the first part of yourquestion. You asked what the Spirit of God in Man was against. It isagainst these mental confusions, these ignorances, that thrust life intoa frightful cul-de-sac, that the God in our Hearts urges us to fight. . . . He is crying out in our hearts to save us from these blind alleys ofselfishness, darkness, cruelty, and pain in which our race must die; heis crying for the high road which is salvation, he is commanding theorganized unity of mankind. ” § 5The lassitude that had been earlier apparent in the manner of Mr. Husshad vanished. He was talking now with more energy; his eyes were brightand there was a flush in his cheeks. His voice was low, but his speechwas clear and no longer broken by painful pauses. “But your question had a double edge,” he continued; “you asked me notonly what it is that the Spirit of God in us fights against, but what itis he fights for. Whither does the high road lead? I have told you whatI think the life of man is, a felted and corrupting mass of tragicexperiences; let me tell you now a little, if this pain at my side willstill permit it, what life upon this earth, under the leadership of theSpirit of God our Captain, might be. “I will take it that men are still as they are, that all this world isindividually the same; I will suppose no miraculous change in humannature; but I will suppose that events in the past have run alongdifferent channels, so that there has been much more thinking, much moreexchange of thought, far better teaching. I want simply this worldbetter taught, so that wherever the flame of God can be lit it has beenlit. Everyone I will suppose _educated_. By _educated_, to be explicit,I mean a knowledge and understanding of history. Yes, Mr. Farr—salvationby history. Everyone about the earth I will suppose has been taught notmerely to read and write and calculate, but has been given all that canbe told simply and plainly of the past history of the earth, of ourplace in space and time, and the true history of mankind. I will notsuppose that there is any greater knowledge of things than men actuallypossess to-day, but instead of its being confusedly stored in many mindsand many books and many languages, it has all been sorted out and setout plainly so that it can be easily used. It has been kept back from noone, mistold to no one. Moreover I will suppose that instead of a myriadof tongues and dialects, all men can read the same books and talktogether in the same speech. “These you may say are difficult suppositions, but they are notimpossible suppositions. Quite a few resolute men could set mankinddefinitely towards such a state of affairs so that they would reach itin a dozen generations or so. But think what a difference there would befrom our conditions in such a world. In a world so lit and opened byeducation, most of these violent dissensions that trouble mankind wouldbe impossible. Instead of men and communities behaving like feverpatients in delirium, striking at their nurses, oversetting their foodand medicine and inflicting injuries on themselves and one another, theywould be alive to the facts of their common origin, their commonoffspring—for at last in our descendants all our lives must meetagain—and their common destiny. In that more open and fresher air, thefire that is God will burn more brightly, for most of us who fail toknow God fail through want of knowledge. Many more men and women will behappily devoted to the common work of mankind, and the evil that is inall of us will be more plainly seen and more easily restrained. I doubtif any man is altogether evil, but in this dark world the good in men ishandicapped and sacrifice is mocked. Bad example finishes what weak andaimless teaching has begun. This is a world where folly and hate canbawl sanity out of hearing. Only the determination of schoolmasters andteachers can hope to change that. How can you hope to change it byanything but teaching? Cannot you realize what teaching means? . . . “When I ask you to suppose a world instructed and educated in the placeof this old traditional world of unguided passion and greed and meannessand mean bestiality, a world taught by men instead of a world neglectedby hirelings, I do not ask you to imagine any miraculous change in humannature. I ask you only to suppose that each mind has the utmostenlightenment of which it is capable instead of its being darkened andovercast. Everyone is to have the best chance of being his best self. Everyone is to be living in the light of the acutest self-examinationand the clearest mutual criticism. Naturally we shall be living underinfinitely saner and more helpful institutions. Such a state of thingswill not indeed mitigate natural vanity or natural self-love; it willnot rob the greedy man of his greed, the fool of his folly, theeccentric of his abnormality, nor the lustful of his lust. But it willrob them of excuses and hiding places; it will light them within andcast a light round about them; it will turn their evil to the likenessof a disease of which they themselves in their clear moments will beready to be cured and which they will hesitate to transmit. That is theworld which such of us schoolmasters and teachers among us as have theundying fire of God already lit in our hearts, do now labour, generationby generation, against defeat and sometimes against hope, to bringabout; that is the present work God has for us. And as we do bring itabout then the prospect opens out before mankind to a splendour. . . . “In this present world men live to be themselves; having their livesthey lose them; in the world that we are seeking to make they will givethemselves to the God of Mankind, and so they will live indeed. Theywill as a matter of course change their institutions and their methodsso that all men may be used to the best effect, in the common work ofmankind. They will take this little planet which has been torn intoshreds of possession, and make it again one garden. . . . “The most perplexing thing about men at the present time is their lackof understanding of the vast possibilities of power and happiness thatscience is offering them—”“Then why not teach _science_? ” cried Mr. Farr. “Provided only that they will unite their efforts. They solve theproblems of material science in vain until they have solved their socialand political problems. When those are solved, the mechanical andtechnical difficulties are trivial. It is no occult secret; it is aplain and demonstrable thing to-day that the world could give ample foodand ample leisure to every human being, if only by a world-wide teachingthe spirit of unity could be made to prevail over the impulse todissension. And not only that, but it would then be possible to raisethe common health and increase the common fund of happinessimmeasurably. Look plainly at the world as it is. Most human beings whenthey are not dying untimely, are suffering more or less from avoidabledisorders, they are ill or they are convalescent, or they are sufferingfrom or crippled by some preventable taint in the blood, or they arestunted or weakened by a needlessly bad food supply, or spiritless andfeeble through bad housing, bad clothing, dull occupations, orinsecurity and anxiety. Few enjoy for very long stretches at a time thatelementary happiness which is the natural accompaniment of sound health. This almost universal lowness of tone, which does not distress us onlybecause most of us are unable to imagine anything better, means anenormous waste of human possibility; less work, less hopefulness. Isolated efforts will never raise men out of this swamp of malaise. AtWoldingstanton we have had the best hygienic arrangements we could find,we have taken the utmost precautions, and yet there has scarcely been ayear when our work has not been crippled and delayed by some epidemic,influenza one year, measles another, and so on. We take our precautions;but the townspeople, especially in the poorer quarters, don’t and can’t. I think myself the wastage of these perennial petty pestilences is fargreater than that caused by the big epidemics that sometimes sweep theworld. But all such things, great or petty, given a sufficient worldunanimity, could be absolutely banished from human life. Given asufficient unanimity and intelligent direction, men could hunt down allthese infectious diseases, one by one, to the regions in which they areendemic, and from which they start out again and again to distress theworld, and could stamp them out for ever. It is not want of knowledgeprevents this now but want of a properly designed education, which wouldgive people throughout the world the understanding, the confidence, andthe will needed for so collective an enterprise. “The sufferings and mutual cruelties of animals are no doubt a part ofthe hard aimlessness of nature, but men are in a position to substituteaim for that aimlessness, they have already all the knowledge and allthe resources needed to escape from these cul-de-sacs of wrong-doing andsuffering and ugly futility into which they jostle one another. But theydo not do it because they have not been sufficiently educated and arenot being sufficiently educated to sane understanding and effort. Thebulk of their collective strength is dissipated in miserable squabblesand suspicions, in war and the preparation for war, in lawsuits andbickering, in making little sterile private hoards of wealth and power,in chaffering, in stupid persecutions and oppositions and vanities. Itis not only that they live in a state of general infection and illhealth and bad temper, ill nourished, ill housed and morally horrible,when the light is ready to shine upon them and health and splendour iswithin their grasp, but that all that they could so attain would be butthe prelude to still greater attainments. “Apart from and above the sweeping away of the poverty, filthiness andmisery of life that would follow on an intelligent use of such powersand such qualities as men possess now, there would be a tremendousincrease in happiness due to the contentment of belonging to one commoncomprehensible whole, of knowing that one played a part and a worthypart in an immortal and universal task. The merest handful of people canlook with content upon the tenor of their lives to-day. A few teachersare perhaps aware that they serve God rightly, a few scientificinvestigators, a few doctors and bridge-builders and makers ofmachinery, a few food-growers and sailors and the like. They can believethat they do something that is necessary, or build something which willendure. But most men and women to-day are like beasts caught in atunnel; they follow base occupations, they trade and pander and dispute;there is no peace in their hearts; they gratify their lusts and seekexcitements; they know they spend their lives in vain and they have nomeans of escape. The world is full of querulousness and abuse, derisionand spite, mean tricks and floundering effort, vice without a gleam ofpleasure and vain display, because blind Nature spews these people intobeing and there is no light to guide their steps. Yet there is work tobe done by everyone, a plain reason for that work, and happiness in thedoing of it. . . . “I do not know if any of us realize all that a systematic organizationof the human intelligence upon the work of research would mean for ourrace. People talk of the wonders that scientific work has given us inthe past two hundred years, wonders of which for the most part we aretoo disordered and foolish to avail ourselves fully. But what scientificresearch has produced so far must be as yet only the smallest earnest ofwhat scientific research can presently give mankind. All the knowledgethat makes to-day different from the world of Queen Elizabeth has beenthe work of a few score thousand men, mostly poorish men, working withlimited material and restricted time, in a world that discouraged andmisunderstood them. Many hundreds of thousands of men with gifts thatwould have been of the profoundest value in scientific work, have missedthe education or the opportunity to use those gifts.

But in a worldclarified by understanding, the net of research would miss few of itsborn servants, there would be the swiftest, clearest communication ofresults from worker to worker, the readiest honour and help for everygift. Poor science, which goes about now amidst our crimes andconfusions like an ill-trimmed evil-smelling oil lantern in a darkcavern in which men fight and steal, her flickering light, snatchedfirst by this man and then by that, as often as not a help to violenceand robbery, would become like the sunrise of a bright summer morning. We do not realize what in a little while mankind could do. Our powerover matter, our power over life, our power over ourselves, wouldincrease year by year and day by day. “Here am I, after great suffering, waiting here for an uncertainoperation that may kill me. _It need not have been so. _ Here are we all,sitting hot and uncomfortable in this ill-ventilated, ill-furnishedroom, looking out upon a vile waste. _It need not have been so. _ Such isthe quality of our days. I sit here wrung by pain, in the antechamber ofdeath, because mankind has suffered me to suffer. . . . All this could havebeen avoided. . . . Not for ever will such things endure, not for ever willthe Mocker of Mankind prevail. . . . “And such knowledge and power and beauty as we poor watchers before thedawn can guess at, are but the beginning of all that could arise out ofthese shadows and this torment. Not for ever shall life be marooned uponthis planet, imprisoned by the cold and incredible emptiness of space. Is it not plain to you all, from what man in spite of everything hasachieved, that he is but at the beginning of achievement? That presentlyhe will take his body and his life and mould them to his will, that hewill take gladness and beauty for himself as a girl will pick a flowerand twine it in her hair. You have said, Doctor Barrack, that whenindustrial competition ends among men all change in the race will be atan end. But you said that unthinkingly. For when a collective will growsplain, there will be no blind thrusting into life and no blind battle tokeep in life, like the battle of a crowd crushed into a cul-de-sac, anymore. The qualities that serve the great ends of the race will becherished and increased; the sorts of men and women that have thesequalities least will be made to understand the necessary restraints oftheir limitation. You said that when men ceased to compete, they wouldstand still. Rather is it true that when men cease their internecinewar, then and then alone can the race sweep forward. The race will growin power and beauty swiftly, in every generation it will grow, and notonly the human race. All this world will man make a garden for himself,ruling not only his kind but all the lives that live, banishing thecruel from life, making the others merciful and tame beneath his hand. The flies and mosquitoes, the thorns and poisons, the fungus in theblood, and the murrain upon his beasts, he will utterly end. He will robthe atoms of their energy and the depths of space of their secrets. Hewill break his prison in space. He will step from star to star as now westep from stone to stone across a stream. Until he stands in the lightof God’s presence and looks his Mocker and the Adversary in theface. . . . ”“Oh! _Ravins! _” Mr. Dad burst out, unable to contain himself. “You may think my mind is fevered because my body is in pain; but neverwas my mind clearer than it is now. It is as if I stood already half outof this little life that has held me so long. It is not a dream I tell,but a reality. The world is for man, the stars in their courses are forman—if only he will follow the God who calls to him and take the giftGod offers. As I sit here and talk of these things to you here, theybecome so plain to me that I cannot understand your silence and why youdo not burn—as I burn—with the fire of God’s purpose. . . . ”He stopped short. He seemed to have come to the end of his strength. Hischin sank, and his voice when he spoke again was the voice of a weak andweary man. “I talk. . . . I talk. . . . And then a desolating sense of reality blows likea destroying gust through my mind, and my little lamp of hope goesout. . . . “It is as if some great adversary sat over all my world, mocking me inevery phrase I use and every act I do. . . . ”He sighed deeply. “Have I answered your questions, doctor? ” he asked. § 6“You speak of God,” said Dr. Barrack. “But this that you speak of asGod, is it really what men understand by God? It seems to me, as I saidto begin with, it is just a personification of the good will in us all. Why bring in God? God is a word that has become associated with allsorts of black and cruel things. It sets one thinking of priesthoods,orthodoxies, persecutions. Why do you not call this upward and onwardpower Humanity? Why do you not call it the Spirit of Men? Then it mightbe possible for an Agnostic like myself to feel a sort of agreement. . . . ”“Because I have already shown you it is not humanity, it is not thespirit of men. Humanity, the spirit of men, made poison gas and thesubmarine; the spirit of man is jealous, aggressive and partizan. Humanity has greed and competition in grain, and the spirit of man isfear and hatred, secrecy and conspiracy, quite as much as, much morethan, it is making or order. But this spirit in me, this fire which Icall God, was lit, I know not how, but as if it came from outside. . . . “I use the phrases,” said Mr. Huss, “that come ready to the mind. But Iwill meet you so far as to say that I know that I am metaphorical andinexact. . . . This spirit that comes into life—it is more like a personthan a thing and so I call it He. And He is not a feature, not an aspectof things, but a selection among things. . . . He seizes upon and bringsout and confirms all that is generous in the natural impulses of themind. He condemns cruelty and all evil. . . . “I will not pretend to explain what I cannot explain. It may be that Godis as yet only foreshadowed in life. You may reason, Doctor Barrack,that this fire in the heart that I call God, is as much the outcome ofyour Process as all the other things in life. I cannot argue againstthat. What I am telling you now is not what I believe so much as what Ifeel. To me it seems that the creative desire that burns in me is athing different in its nature from the blind Process of matter, is aforce running contrariwise to the power of confusion. . . . But this I doknow, that once it is lit in a man it is like a consuming fire. Once itis lit in a man, then his mind is alight—thenceforth. It rules hisconscience with compelling power. It summons him to live the residue ofhis days working and fighting for the unity and release and triumph ofmankind. He may be mean still, and cowardly and vile still, but he willknow himself for what he is. . . . Some ancient phrases live marvellously. Within my heart _I know that my Redeemer liveth_. . . . ”He stopped abruptly. Dr. Barrack was unprepared with a reply. But he shook his headobstinately. These time-worn phrases were hateful to his soul. Theysmacked to him of hypocrisy, of a bidding for favour with obsolete anddiscredited influences. Through such leaks it is superstition comessoaking back into the laboriously bailed-out minds of men. Yet Mr. Husswas a difficult controversialist to grapple. “No,” said the doctorprovisionally. “_No_. . . . ” § 7Fate came to the relief of Dr. Barrack. The little conference at Sea View was pervaded by the sense of a newpersonality. This was a short and angry and heated little man, withactive dark brown eyes in a tan face, a tooth-brush moustache ofiron-grey, and a protruded lower jaw. He was dressed in a brightbluish-grey suit and bright brown boots, and he carried a bright brownleather bag. He appeared mouthing outside the window, beyond the range of distincthearing. His expression was blasphemous. He made threatening movementswith his bag. “Good God! ” cried Dr. Barrack. “Sir Alpheus! . . . I had no idea of thetime! ”He rushed out of the room and there was a scuffle in the passage. “I ought to have been met,” said Sir Alpheus, entering, “I ought to havebeen met. It’s ridiculous to pretend you didn’t know the time. A generalpractitioner _always_ knows the time. It is his first duty. I cannotunderstand the incivility of this reception. I have had to make my wayto your surgery, Dr. Barrack, without assistance; not a cab free at thestation; I have had to come down this road in the heat, carryingeverything myself, reading all the names on the gates—the mostridiculous and banal names. The Taj, Thyme Bank, The Cedars, andCapernaum, cheek by jowl! It’s worse than Freud. ”Dr. Barrack expressed further regrets confusedly and indistinctly. “We have been talking, Sir Alpheus,” said Sir Eliphaz, advancing as ifto protect the doctor from his specialist, “upon some very absorbingtopics. That must be our excuse for this neglect. We have beendiscussing education—and the universe. Fate, free-will, predestinationabsolute. ” It is not every building contractor can quote Milton. The great surgeon regarded the patentee of Temanite. “Fate—fiddlesticks! ” said Sir Alpheus suddenly and rudely. “That’s noexcuse for not meeting me. ” His bright little eyes darted round thecompany and recognized Mr. Huss. “What! my patient not in bed! Not evenin bed! Go to _bed_, sir! Go to _bed_! ”He became extremely abusive to Dr. Barrack. “You treat an operation,Sir, with a levity—! ” CHAPTER THE SIXTH THE OPERATION § 1While Sir Alpheus grumbled loudly at the unpreparedness of everything,Mr. Huss, with the assistance of Dr. Barrack, walked upstairs anddisrobed himself. This long discussion had taken a very powerful grip upon his mind. Muchremained uncertain in his thoughts. He had still a number of things hewanted to say, and these proceedings preliminary to his vivisection,seemed to him to be irrelevant and tiresome rites interrupting somethingfar more important. The bed, the instruments, the preparation for anæsthesia, were to him nomore than new contributions to the argument. While he lay on the bedwith Dr. Barrack handling the funnel hood that was to go over nose andmouth for the administration of the chloroform, he tried to point outthat the very idea of operative surgery was opposed to the scientificfatalism of that gentleman. But Sir Alpheus interrupted him. . . . “Breathe deeply,” said Dr.

Barrack. . . . “_Breathe deeply. _”. . . The whole vast argumentative fabric that had arisen in his mind swungwith him across an abyss of dread and mental inanity. Whether he thoughtor dreamt what follows it is impossible to say; we can but record theideas that, like a crystalline bubble as great as all things, filled hisconsciousness. He felt a characteristic doubt whether the chloroformwould do its duty, and then came that twang like the breaking of aviolin string:—_Ploot_. . . . And still he did not seem to be insensible! He was not insensible, andyet things had changed. Dr. Elihu was still present, but somehow SirEliphaz and Mr. Dad and Mr. Farr, whom he had left downstairs, had comeback and were sitting on the ground—on the ashes; they were all seatedgravely on a mound of ashes and beneath a sky that blazed with light. Sir Alpheus, the nurse, the bedroom, had vanished. It seemed that theyhad been the dream. But this was the reality, an enduring reality, this sackcloth and thesereeking ash-heaps outside the city gates. This was the scene of anunending experiment and an immortal argument. He was Job; the same Jobwho had sat here for thousands of years, and this lean vulturous old manin the vast green turban was Eliphaz the Temanite, the smaller man whopeered out of the cowl of a kind of hooded shawl, was his friend Bildadthe Shuhite; the eager, coarse face of the man in unclean linen wasZophar the Naamathite; and this fist-faced younger man who sat with anair of false humility insolently judging them all, was Elihu the son ofBarachel the Buzite of the kindred of Ram. . . . It was queer that there should have ever been the fancy that these menwere doctors or schoolmasters or munition makers, a queer veiling oftheir immortal quality in the transitory garments of a period. For agesthey had sat here and disputed, and for ages they had still to sit. Alittle way off waited the asses and camels and slaves of the threeemirs, and the two Ethiopian slaves of Eliphaz had been coming towardsthem bearing bowls of fine grey ashes. (For Eliphaz for sanitary reasonsdid not use the common ashes of the midden upon his head. ) There, faraway, splashed green with palms and pierced between pylons by aglittering arm of the river, were the low brown walls of sun-driedbrick, the flat-roofed houses, and the twisted temple towers of theancient city of Uz, where first this great argument had begun. East andwest and north and south stretched the wide levels of the world, dottedwith small date trees, and above them was the measureless dome ofheaven, set with suns and stars and flooded with a light. This light had shone out since Elihu had spoken, and it was not only alight but a voice clear and luminous, before which Job’s very soul bowedand was still. . . . “_Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? _”By a great effort Job lifted up his eyes to the zenith. It was as if one shone there who was all, and yet who comprehendedpowers and kingdoms, and it was as if a screen or shadow was before hisface. It was as if a dark figure enhaloed in shapes and colours bentdown over the whole world and regarded it curiously and malevolently,and it was as if this dark figure was no more than a translucent veilbefore an infinite and lasting radiance. Was it a veil before the light,or did it not rather nest in the very heart of the light and spreaditself out before the face of the light and spread itself and recede andagain expand in a perpetual diastole and systole? It was as if the voicethat spoke was the voice of God, and yet ever and again it was as if thetimbre of the voice was Satan. As the voice spoke to Job, his friendslistened and watched him, and the eyes of Elihu shone like garnets andthe eyes of Eliphaz like emeralds, but the eyes of Bildad were blacklike the eyes of a lizard upon a wall, and Zophar had no eyes but lookedat him only with the dark shadows beneath his knitted brows. As Godspake they all, and Job with them, became smaller and smaller and shrankuntil they were the minutest of conceivable things, until the wholescene was a little toy; they became unreal like discolourations upon afloating falling disc of paper confetti, amidst greatnessesunfathomable. “_Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge? _”But in this dream that was dreamt by Mr. Huss while he was under theanæsthetic, God did not speak by words but by light; there were nosounds in his ears, but thoughts ran like swift rivulets of fire throughhis brain and gathered into pools and made a throbbing pattern ofwavelets, curve within curve, that interlaced. . . . The thoughts that it seemed to him that God was speaking through hismind, can be put into words only after a certain fashion and with greatloss, for they were thoughts about things beyond and above this world,and our words are all made out of the names of things and feelings inthis world. Things that were contradictory had become compatible, andthings incomprehensible seemed straightforward, because he was in adream. It was as if the anæsthetic had released his ideas from theiranchorage to words and phrases and their gravitation towards sensiblerealities. But it was still the same line of thought he pursued throughthe stars and spaces, that he had pursued in the stuffy little room atSundering-on-Sea. It was somewhat after this fashion that things ran through the mind ofMr. Huss. It seemed to him at first that he was answering the challengeof the voice that filled the world, not of his own will butmechanically. He was saying: “They _give_ me knowledge. ”To which the answer was in the voice of Satan and in tones of mockery. For Satan had become very close and definite to Job, as a dark face,time-worn and yet animated, that sent out circle after circle of glowingcolour towards the bounds of space as a swimmer sends waves towards thebank. “But what have you got in the way of a vessel to hold yourknowledge if we gave it you? ”“In the name of the God in my heart,” said Job, “I demand knowledge andpower. ”“Who are you? A pedagogue who gives ill-prepared lessons about historyin frowsty rooms, and dreams that he has been training his younggentlemen to play leap-frog amidst the stars. ”“I am Man,” said Job. “_Huss. _”But that queer power of slipping one’s identity and losing oneselfaltogether which dreams will give, had come upon Mr. Huss. He answeredwith absolute conviction: “I am Man. Down there I was Huss, but here Iam Man. I am every man who has ever looked up towards this light of God. I am every one who has thought or worked or willed for the race. I amall the explorers and leaders and teachers that man has ever had. ”The argument evaporated. He carried his point as such points are carriedin dreams. The discussion slipped to another of the issues that had beentroubling him. “You would plumb the deep of knowledge; you would scale the heights ofspace. . . . There is no limit to either. ”“Then I will plumb and scale for ever. I will defeat you. ”“But you will never destroy me. ”“I will fight my way through you to God. ”“And never attain him. ”. . . It seemed as though yet another voice was speaking. For a while the veilof Satan was drawn aside. The thoughts it uttered ran like incandescentmolten metal through the mind of Job, but whether he was saying thesethings to God or whether God was saying these things to him, did not inany way appear. “So life goes on for ever. And in no other way could it go on. In noother way could there be such a being as life. For how can you struggleif there is a certainty of victory? Why should you struggle if the endis assured? How can you rise if there is no depths into which you canfall? The blacknesses and the evils about you are the warrants ofreality. . . . “Through the centuries the voice of Job had complained and willcomplain. Through the centuries the fire of his faith flares andflickers and threatens to go out. But is Job justified in hiscomplaints? “Is Job indeed justified in his complaints? His mind has been colouredby the colour of misfortune. He has seen all the world reflecting thesufferings of his body. He has dwelt upon illness and cruelty and death. But is there any evil or cruelty or suffering that is beyond thepossibility of human control? Were that so then indeed he might complainthat God has mocked him. . . . Are sunsets ugly and oppressive? Domountains disgust, do distant hills repel? Is there any flaw in thestarry sky? If the lives of beasts and men are dark and ungracious, yetis not the texture of their bodies lovely beyond comparison? You havesneered because the beauty of cell and tissue may build up an idiot. Why, oh Man, do they build up an idiot? Have you no will, have you nounderstanding, that you suffer such things to be? The darkness andungraciousness, the evil and the cruelty, are no more than a challengeto you. In you lies the power to rule all these things. . . . ”Through the tumbled clouds of his mind broke the sunlight of thisphrase: “The power to rule all these things. The power to rule—”“You have dwelt overmuch upon pain. Pain is a swift distress; it endsand is forgotten. Without memory and fear pain is nothing, acontradiction to be heeded, a warning to be taken. Without pain whatwould life become? Pain is the master only of craven men. It is in man’spower to rule it. It is in man’s power to rule all things. . . . ”It was as if the dreaming patient debated these ideas with himself; andagain it was as if he were the universal all and Job and Satan and Goddisputed together within him. The thoughts in his mind raced faster andsuddenly grew bright and glittering, as the waters grow bright when theycome racing out of the caves at Han into the light of day. Green-faced,he murmured and stirred in his great debate while the busy specialistplied his scalpels, and Dr. Barrack whispered directions to the intentnurse. “Another whiff,” said Doctor Barrack. “A cloud rolls back from my soul. . . . ”“I have been through great darkness. I have been through deepwaters. . . . ”“Has not your life had laughter in it? Has the freshness of the summermorning never poured joy through your being? Do you know nothing of theembrace of the lover, cheek to cheek or lip to lip? Have you never swumout into the sunlit sea or shouted on a mountain slope? Is there no joyin a handclasp? Your son, your son, you say, is dead with honour. Isthere no joy in that honour? Clean and straight was your son, andbeautiful in his life. Is that nothing to thank God for? Have you neverplayed with happy children? Has no boy ever answered to yourteaching—giving back more than you gave him? Dare you deny the joy ofyour appetites: the first mouthful of roast red beef on the frosty dayand the deep draught of good ale? Do you know nothing of the task welldone, nor of sleep after a day of toil? Is there no joy for the farmerin the red ploughed fields, and the fields shooting with green blades? When the great prows smite the waves and the aeroplane hums in the sky,is man still a hopeless creature? Can you watch the beat and swing ofmachinery and still despair? Your illness has coloured the world; alittle season of misfortune has hidden the light from your eyes. ”It was as if the dreamer pushed his way through the outskirts of a greatforest and approached the open, but it was not through trees that hethrust his way but through bars and nets and interlacing curves ofblinding, many-coloured light towards the clear promise beyond. He hadgrown now to an incredible vastness so that it was no longer earth uponwhich he set his feet but that crystalline pavement whose translucentdepths contain the stars. Yet though he approached the open he neverreached the open; the iridescent net that had seemed to grow thin, grewdense again; he was still struggling, and the black doubts that hadlifted for a moment swept down upon his soul again. And he realized hewas in a dream, a dream that was drawing swiftly now to its close. “Oh God! ” he cried, “answer me! For Satan has mocked me sorely. Answerme before I lose sight of you again. Am I right to fight? Am I right tocome out of my little earth, here above the stars? ”“Right if you dare. ”“Shall I conquer and prevail? Give me your promise! ”“Everlastingly you may conquer and find fresh worlds to conquer. ”“_May_—but _shall_ I? ”It was as if the torrent of molten thoughts stopped suddenly. It was asif everything stopped. “Answer me,” he cried. Slowly the shining thoughts moved on again. “So long as your courage endures you will conquer. . . . “If you have courage, although the night be dark, although the presentbattle be bloody and cruel and end in a strange and evil fashion,nevertheless victory shall be yours—in a way you will understand—whenvictory comes. Only have courage. On the courage in your heart allthings depend. By courage it is that the stars continue in theircourses, day by day. It is the courage of life alone that keeps sky andearth apart. . . . If that courage fail, if that sacred fire go out, thenall things fail and all things go out, all things—good and evil, spaceand time. ”“Leaving nothing? ”“_Nothing. _”“Nothing,” he echoed, and the word spread like a dark and darkening maskacross the face of all things. And then as if to mark the meaning of the word, it seemed to him thatthe whole universe began to move inward upon itself, faster and faster,until at last with an incredible haste it rushed together. He resistedthis collapse in vain, and with a sense of overwhelmed effort. The whitelight of God and the whirling colours of the universe, the spacesbetween the stars—it was as if an unseen fist gripped them together.

They rushed to one point as water in a clepsydra rushes to its hole. Thewhole universe became small, became a little thing, diminished to thesize of a coin, of a spot, of a pinpoint, of one intense blackmathematical point, and—vanished. He heard his own voice crying in thevoid like a little thing blown before the wind: “But will my courageendure? ” The question went unanswered. Not only the things of space butthe things of time swept together into nothingness. The last moment ofhis dream rushed towards the first, crumpled all the intervening momentstogether and made them one. It seemed to Mr. Huss that he was still inthe instant of insensibility. That sound of the breaking string wasstill in his ears:—_Ploot_. . . . It became part of that same sound which came before the vision. . . . He was aware of a new pain within him; not that dull aching now, but apain keen and sore. He gave a fluttering gasp. “Quick,” said a voice. “He is coming to! ”“He’ll not wake for hours,” said a second voice. “His mouth and eyes! ”He lifted his eyelids as one lifts lead. He found himself looking intothe intelligent but unsympathetic face of Sir Alpheus Mengo, he tried tocomprehend his situation but he had forgotten how he got to it, heclosed his eyes and sank back consciously and wilfully towardsinsensibility. . . . CHAPTER THE SEVENTH LETTERS AND A TELEGRAM § 1It was three weeks later. Never had there been so successful an operation as an operation in theexperience of either Sir Alpheus Mengo or Dr. Barrack. The growth thathad been removed was a non-malignant growth; the diagnosis of cancer hadbeen unsound. Mr. Huss was still lying flat in his bed in Mrs. Croome’shouse, but he was already able to read books, letters and newspapers,and take an interest in affairs. The removal of his morbid growth had made a very great change in hismental atmosphere. He no longer had the same sense of an invisiblehostile power brooding over all his life; his natural courage hadreturned. And the world which had seemed a conspiracy of misfortunes wasnow a hopeful world again. The last great offensive of the Germanstowards Paris had collapsed disastrously under the counter attacks ofMarshal Foch; each morning’s paper told of fresh victories for theAllies, and the dark shadow of a German Cæsarism fell no longer acrossthe future. The imaginations of men were passing through a phase ofreasonableness and generosity; the idea of an organized world peace hadseized upon a multitude of minds; there was now a prospect of a new andbetter age such as would have seemed incredible in the weeks when theillness of Mr. Huss began to bear him down. And it was not simply ageneral relief that had come to his forebodings. His financial position,for example, which had been wrecked by one accident, had been restoredby another. A distant cousin of Mr. Huss, to whom however Mr. Huss wasthe nearest relative, had died of softening of the brain, after a careerof almost imbecile speculation. He had left his property partly to Mr. Huss and partly to Woldingstanton School. For some years before the warhe had indulged in the wildest buying of depreciated copper shares, andhad accumulated piles of what had seemed at the time valueless paper. The war had changed all that. Instead of being almost insolvent, thedeceased in spite of heavy losses on Canadian land deals was found byhis executors to be worth nearly thirty thousand pounds. It is easy tounderrate the good in money. The windfall meant a hundred neededcomforts and freedoms, and a release for the mind of Mrs. Huss thatnothing else could have given her. And the mind of Mr. Huss reflectedthe moods of his wife much more than he suspected. But still better things seemed to be afoot in the world of Mr. Huss. Therest of the governors of Woldingstanton, it became apparent, were not inagreement with Sir Eliphaz and Mr. Dad upon the project of replacing Mr. Huss by Mr. Farr; and a number of the old boys of the school at thefront, getting wind of what was going on, had formed a small committeefor the express purpose of defending their old master. At the head ofthis committee, by a happy chance, was young Kenneth Burrows, the nephewand heir of Sir Eliphaz. At the school he had never been in the frontrank; he had been one of those good-all-round boys who end as a schoolprefect, a sound man in the first eleven, and second or third in most ofthe subjects he took. Never had he played a star part or enjoyed verymuch of the head’s confidences. It was all the more delightful thereforeto find him the most passionate and indefatigable champion of the orderof things that Mr. Huss had set up. He had heard of the proposed changesat his uncle’s dinner-table when on leave, and he had done somethingforthwith to shake that gentleman’s resolves. Lady Burrows, who adoredhim, became at once pro-Huss. She was all the readier to do this becauseshe did not like Mr. Dad’s rather emphatic table manners, nor Mr. Farr’sclothes. “You don’t know what Mr. Huss was to us, Sir,” the young man repeatedseveral times, and returned to France with that sentence growing andflowering in his mind. He was one of those good types for whom the warwas a powerful developer. Death, hardship, and responsibility—he wasstill not two-and-twenty, and a major in the artillery—had already madean understanding man out of the schoolboy; he could imagine whatdispossession meant; his new maturity made it seem a natural thing towrite to comfort his old head as one man writes to another. Hispencilled sheets, when first they came, made the enfeebled recipientcry, not with misery but happiness. They were reread like a love-letter;they were now on the coverlet, and Mr. Huss was staring at the ceilingand already planning a new Woldingstanton rising from its ashes, greaterthan the old. § 2_It is only in the last few weeks_, the young man wrote, _that we haveheard of all these schemes to break up the tradition of Woldingstanton,and now there is a talk of your resigning the headmastership in favourof Mr. Farr. Personally, Sir, I can’t imagine how you can possibly dreamof giving up your work—and to him of all people;—I still have a sort ofdoubt about it; but my uncle was very positive that you were disposed toresign (personally, he said, he had implored you to stay), and it is onthe off-chance of his being right that I am bothering you with thisletter. Briefly it is to implore you to stand by the school, which is asmuch as to say to stand by yourself and us. You’ve taught hundreds of usto stick it, and now you owe it to us to stick it yourself. I knowyou’re ill, dreadfully ill; I’ve heard about Gilbert, and I know, Sir,we all know, although he wasn’t in the school and you never betrayed apreference or were led into an unfair thing through it, how much youloved him; you’ve been put through it, Sir, to the last degree. But,Sir, there are some of us here who feel almost as though they were yoursons; if you don’t and can’t give us that sort of love, it doesn’t alterthe fact that there are men out here who think of you as they’d like tothink of their fathers. Men like myself particularly, who were left asboys without a father. __I’m no great hand at expressing myself; I’m no credit to Mr. Cross andhis English class; generally I don’t believe in saying too much; but Iwould like to tell you something of what you have been to a lot of us,and why Woldingstanton going on will seem to us like a flag still flyingand Woldingstanton breaking its tradition like a sort of surrender. AndI don’t want a bit to flatter you, Sir, if you’ll forgive me, and setyou up in what I am writing to you. One of the loveable things about youto us is that you have always been so jolly human to us. You’ve alwaysbeen unequal. I’ve seen you give lessons that were among the bestlessons in the world, and I’ve seen you give some jolly bad lessons. Andthere were some affairs—that business of the November fireworks forexample—when we thought you were harsh and wrong—_“I _was_ wrong,” said Mr. Huss. _That almost led to a mutiny. But that is just where you score, and whyWoldingstanton can’t do without you. When that firework row was on wecalled a meeting of the school and house prefects and had up some of thelouts to it—you never heard of that meeting—and we said, we all agreedyou were wrong and we all agreed that right or wrong we stood by you,and wouldn’t let the row go further. Perhaps you remember how thataffair shut up all at once. But that is where you’ve got us. You dowrong, you let us see through you; there never was a schoolmaster or afather gave himself away so freely as you do, you never put up a shamfront on us and consequently every one of us knows that what he knowsabout you is the real thing in you; the very kids in the lower fifth canget a glimpse of it and grasp that you are driving at something with allyour heart and soul, and that the school goes somewhere and has life init. We Woldingstanton boys have that in common when we meet; weunderstand one another; we have something that a lot of the other chapsone meets out here, even from the crack schools, don’t seem to have. Itisn’t a flourish with us, Sir, it is a simple statement of fact that thelife we joined up to at Woldingstanton is more important to us than thelife in our bodies. Just as it is more important to you. It isn’t onlythe way you taught it, though you taught it splendidly, it is the wayyou felt it that got hold of us. You made us think and feel that thepast of the world was our own history; you made us feel that we were inone living story with the reindeer men and the Egyptian priests, withthe soldiers of Cæsar and the alchemists of Spain; nothing was dead andnothing alien; you made discovery and civilization our adventure and thewhole future our inheritance. Most of the men I meet here feel lost inthis war; they are like rabbits washed out of their burrows by a flood,but we of Woldingstanton have taken it in the day’s work, and when thepeace comes and the new world begins, it will still be in the story forus, the day’s work will still join on. That’s the essence ofWoldingstanton, that it puts you on the high road that goes on. Theother chaps I talk to here from other schools seem to be on no road atall. They are tough and plucky by nature and association; they arefighters and sturdy men; but what holds them in it is either just habitand the example of people about them or something unsound that can’thold out to the end; a vague loyalty to the Empire or a desire to punishthe Hun or restore the peace of Europe, some short range view of thatsort, motives that will leave them stranded at the end of the war,anyhow, with nothing to go on to. To talk of after the war to them is torealize what blind alleys their teachers have led them into. They canunderstand fighting against things but not for things. Beyond animpossible ambition to go back somewhere and settle down as they used tobe, there’s not the ghost of an idea to them at all. The whole value ofWoldingstanton is that it steers a man through and among the blindalleys and sets him on a way out that he can follow for all the rest ofhis days; it makes him a player in a limitless team and one with theCreator. We are all coming back to take up our jobs in that spirit, jobsthat will all join up at last in making a real world state, a worldcivilization and a new order of things, and unless we can think of you,sir, away at Woldingstanton, working away to make more of us, ready topick up the sons we shall send you presently—_Mr. Huss stopped reading. § 3He lay thinking idly. “I was talking about blind alleys the other day. Queer that he shouldhave hit on the same phrase. . . . “Some old sermon of mine perhaps. . . . No doubt I’ve had the thoughtbefore. . . . “I suppose that one could define education as the lifting of minds outof blind alleys. . . . “A permissible definition anyhow. . . . “I wish I could remember that talk better. I said a lot of things aboutsubmarines. I said something about the whole world really being like thecrew of a submarine. . . . “It’s true—universally. Everyone is in a blind alley until we pierce aroad. . . . “That was a queer talk we had. . . . I remember I wouldn’t go to bed—a kindof fever in the mind. . . . “Then there was a dream. “I wish I could remember more of that dream. It was as if I could seeround some metaphysical corner. . . . I seemed to be in a greatplace—talking to God. . . . “But how could one have talked to God? . . . “No. It is gone. . . . ”His thought reverted to the letter of young Burrows. He began to scheme out the reinstatement of Woldingstanton. He had anidea of rebuilding School House with a map corridor to join it to thepicture gallery and the concert hall, which were both happily stillstanding. He wanted the maps on one side to show the growth andsuccession of empires in the western world, and on the other to presentthe range of geographical knowledge and thought at different periods inman’s history. As with many great headmasters, his idle daydreams were oftenarchitectural. He took out another of his dream toys now and played withit. This dream was that he could organize a series of ethnologicalexhibits showing various groups of primitive peoples in a triple order;first little models of them in their savage state, then displays oftheir arts and manufactures to show their distinctive gifts andaptitudes, and then suggestions of the part such a people might play asartists or guides, or beast tamers or the like, in a wholly civilizedworld. Such a collection would be far beyond the vastest possibilitiesto which Woldingstanton would ever attain—but he loved the dream. The groups would stand in well-lit bays, side chapels, so to speak, inhis museum building. There would be a group of seats and a blackboard,for it was one of his fantasies to have a school so great that theclasses would move about it, like little groups of pilgrims in acathedral. . . . From that he drifted to a scheme for grouping great schools for suchcommon purposes as the educational development of the cinematograph, acentral reference library, and the like. . . . For one great school leads to another. Schools are living things, andlike all living things they must grow and reproduce their kind and go onfrom conquest to conquest—or fall under the sway of the Farrs and Dadsand stagnate, become diseased and malignant, and perish. ButWoldingstanton was not to perish. It was to spread. It was to call toits kind across the Atlantic and throughout the world. . . . It was to giveand receive ideas, interbreed, and develop. . . . Across the blue October sky the white clouds drifted, and the air wasfull of the hum of a passing aeroplane. The chained dog that had oncetortured the sick nerves of Mr. Huss now barked unheeded. “I would like to give one of the chapels of the races to the memory ofGilbert,” whispered Mr.

Huss. . . . § 4The door at the foot of his bed opened, and Mrs. Huss appeared. She had an effect of appearing suddenly, and yet she moved slowly intothe room, clutching a crumpled bit of paper in her hand. Her face hadundergone some extraordinary change; it was dead white, and her eyeswere wide open and very bright. She stood stiffly. She might have beenabout to fall. She did not attempt to close the door behind her. Mrs. Croome became audible rattling her pans downstairs. When Mrs. Huss spoke, it was in an almost noiseless whisper. “_Job! _”He had a strange idea that Mrs. Croome must have given them notice toquit instantly or perpetrated some such brutality, a suspicion which hiswife’s gesture seemed to confirm. She was shaking the crumpled scrap ofpaper in an absurd manner. He frowned in a gust of impatience. “I didn’t open it,” she said at last, “not till I had eaten somebreakfast. I didn’t dare. I saw it was from the bank and I thought itmight be about the overdraft. . . . All the while. . . . ”She was weeping. “All the while I was eating my egg. . . . ”“Oh _what_ is it? ”She grimaced. “From _him_. ”He stared. “A cheque, Job—come through—from _him_. From our boy. ”His mouth fell open, he drew a deep breath. His tears came. He raisedhimself, and was reminded of his bandaged state and dropped back again. He held out his lean hand to her. “He’s a prisoner? ” he gasped. “_Alive? _”She nodded. She seemed about to fling herself violently upon his poorcrumpled body. Her arms waved about seeking for something to embrace. Then she flopped down in the narrow space between bed and paper-adornedfireplace, and gathered the counterpane together into a lump with herclutching hands. “Oh my baby boy! ” she wept. “My _baby_ boy. . . . “And I was so wicked about the mourning. . . . I was so _wicked_. . . . ”Mr. Huss lay stiff, as the doctor had ordered him to do; but the hand hestretched down could just touch and caress her hair. Printed in the United States of America. ------------------------------------------------------------------------The following pages contain advertisements of Macmillan books by thesame author. _BY THE SAME AUTHOR_Joan and Peter _Cloth, 12mo, $1. 75_“Joan and Peter. The Story of an Education,” is an importantachievement, from many points of view. Mr. Wells’ craftsmanship is atits height in his skillful arrangement of the plot which carries thesetwo interesting young people through school and college. The sturdyJoan, at the period when she “cheeks” Peter’s week-end guests, thedelightful Joan at the time when life seems to hold little for her butdancing, is an entrancing character. Not less so Peter, eager andsensitive, thrilling over Hamlet at Moscow, rebellious at the Irishcomplications. The revealing and brilliant writing that traces theirgrowth makes every crisis in their lives, sport-ethics, love affairs, orpolitics, a vivid dramatic climax. “Uncle Nobby” is a fine drawing ofthe liberal-minded optimistic Briton. His braveness and humor ininterviewing Dons and Deans make good reading. His travels with Peterare recorded with illuminating comments on the conditions of pre-warEurope; the comradeship of the two, so far apart in age, is cleverlyanalyzed. Undoubtedly these characters will appeal even more than theheroes and heroines in Mr. Wells’ widely discussed novels of otheryears, for they step from his most mature and fertile imagination. “A triumphant achievement. Never has Mr. Wells spread for such agorgeous panorama . . . a living story . . . a vivacious narrativeimperturbable in interest on every page, always fresh and personal andassured. . . . This is not a novel—it is a library. It is everything thatone needs to know about the public life of the significant classes inEngland for last twenty-five years. ”—_The Dial. _“Mr. Wells, at his highest point of attainment. . . . An absorbinglyinteresting book . . . consummate artistry . . . here is Wells, the storyteller, the master of narrative. ”—_N. Y. Evening Sun. _In the Fourth Year _Cloth, 12mo, $1. 25_Mr. Wells in this revealing study of the future politics of Europe takesup the subject of a League of Free Nations. He deals with every aspectof the plan in a strongly practical light, and makes a striking analysisof the world that will grow out of this war, bringing clearly into viewevery vital element contributing to its growth. Italy, France, and Britain at War _Cloth, 12mo, $1. 50_Here Mr. Wells discusses conditions as he has seen them in three of thegreat countries engaged in the European War. The book is divided intofour main sections: I. The Passing of the Effigy; II. The War in Italy;III. 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A veritable cross-section of contemporary Englishlife, admirable, full of color, and utterly convincing. ”—_New YorkTimes. _The Research Magnificent _Cloth, 12mo, $1. 60_“A notable novel, perhaps its author’s greatest; might almost be calledan epitome of human existence. ”—_Chicago Herald. _“Abounds in stimulating ideas. ”—_New York Times. _Bealby _With frontispiece. Cloth, 12mo, $1. 50_“‘Bealby’ because of its sprightly style and multitude of incidents isnever wearisome. ”—_Boston Transcript. _“Mr. Wells has written a book as unpolitical as ‘Alice in Wonderland’and as innocent of economics as of astrology. A deliciously amusingcomedy of action swift, violent, and fantastic. ”—_New York Times. _The Wife of Sir Isaac Harman _Cloth, 12mo, $1. 50_“A novel of unusual excellence told with fine literary skill. Mr. Wellshas a way of going under the surface of things while presenting hisincidents and characters. ”—_Boston Globe. _“The book has all the attractive Wells whimsies, piquancies, andfertilities of thought, and the story is absolutely good to read. ”—_NewYork World. _The Soul of a Bishop _Cloth, 12mo, $1. 50_“As brilliant a piece of writing as Mr. Wells has ever offered thepublic; it is entertaining from beginning to end. ”—_N. Y. Sun. _“Its portrait of the Bishop is masterly. It has power andinterest. ”—_N. Y. Times. _“Enormously suggestive. ”—_Philadelphia Public Ledger. _“A tour de force, a power, that will make people think, that will,perhaps, start a vast movement. In any event, it is a vital, compellingcontribution to the life of these times. It is the ‘Robert Elsmere’ ofits day. ”—_Brooklyn Daily Eagle. _God the Invisible King _Cloth, 12mo, $1. 25_“Eloquent, acute and honest. ”—_Chicago Evening Post. _“One knows Mr. Wells better through ‘God the Invisible King’ than onecould hope to know him through all his other work. He has accomplishedhis task with singular frankness and lack of self-consciousness. Hereveals a courageous faith, an upstanding faith, to which a courageous,upstanding man can subscribe as he goes about his work. ”—_SpringfieldUnion. _“Serious and earnest. The force with which he urges the possibility of apersonal and vivifying consciousness of God must be admitted even bythose who would dispute his ecclesiastical history. ”—_The Living Age. _ THE MACMILLAN COMPANY Publishers 64–66 Fifth Avenue New York------------------------------------------------------------------------ TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES 1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling. 2. Archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as printed. 3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.

Produced by Donald Lainson THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT by H. G. Wells (1915) CONTENTS THE PRELUDE ON FEAR AND ARISTOCRACY THE STORY I. THE BOY GROWS UP II. THE YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN III. AMANDA IV. THE SPIRITED HONEYMOON V. THE ASSIZE OF JEALOUSY VI. THE NEW HAROUN AL RASCHID THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT THE PRELUDE ON FEAR AND ARISTOCRACY 1 The story of William Porphyry Benham is the story of a man who was led into adventure by an idea. It was an idea that took possession of his imagination quite early in life, it grew with him and changed with him, it interwove at last completely with his being. His story is its story. It was traceably germinating in the schoolboy; it was manifestly present in his mind at the very last moment of his adventurous life. He belonged to that fortunate minority who are independent of daily necessities, so that he was free to go about the world under its direction. It led him far. It led him into situations that bordered upon the fantastic, it made him ridiculous, it came near to making him sublime. And this idea of his was of such a nature that in several aspects he could document it. Its logic forced him to introspection and to the making of a record. An idea that can play so large a part in a life must necessarily have something of the complication and protean quality of life itself. It is not to be stated justly in any formula, it is not to be rendered by an epigram. As well one might show a man's skeleton for his portrait. Yet, essentially, Benham's idea was simple. He had an incurable, an almost innate persuasion that he had to live life nobly and thoroughly. His commoner expression for that thorough living is “the aristocratic life. ” But by “aristocratic” he meant something very different from the quality of a Russian prince, let us say, or an English peer. He meant an intensity, a clearness. . . . Nobility for him was to get something out of his individual existence, a flame, a jewel, a splendour--it is a thing easier to understand than to say. One might hesitate to call this idea “innate,” and yet it comes soon into a life when it comes at all. In Benham's case we might trace it back to the Day Nursery at Seagate, we might detect it stirring already at the petticoat stage, in various private struttings and valiant dreamings with a helmet of pasteboard and a white-metal sword. We have most of us been at least as far as that with Benham. And we have died like Horatius, slaying our thousands for our country, or we have perished at the stake or faced the levelled muskets of the firing party--“No, do not bandage my eyes”--because we would not betray the secret path that meant destruction to our city. But with Benham the vein was stronger, and it increased instead of fading out as he grew to manhood. It was less obscured by those earthy acquiescences, those discretions, that saving sense of proportion, which have made most of us so satisfactorily what we are. “Porphyry,” his mother had discovered before he was seventeen, “is an excellent boy, a brilliant boy, but, I begin to see, just a little unbalanced. ” The interest of him, the absurdity of him, the story of him, is that. Most of us are--balanced; in spite of occasional reveries we do come to terms with the limitations of life, with those desires and dreams and discretions that, to say the least of it, qualify our nobility, we take refuge in our sense of humour and congratulate ourselves on a certain amiable freedom from priggishness or presumption, but for Benham that easy declension to a humorous acceptance of life as it is did not occur. He found his limitations soon enough; he was perpetually rediscovering them, but out of these interments of the spirit he rose again--remarkably. When we others have decided that, to be plain about it, we are not going to lead the noble life at all, that the thing is too ambitious and expensive even to attempt, we have done so because there were other conceptions of existence that were good enough for us, we decided that instead of that glorious impossible being of ourselves, we would figure in our own eyes as jolly fellows, or sly dogs, or sane, sound, capable men or brilliant successes, and so forth--practicable things. For Benham, exceptionally, there were not these practicable things. He blundered, he fell short of himself, he had--as you will be told--some astonishing rebuffs, but they never turned him aside for long. He went by nature for this preposterous idea of nobility as a linnet hatched in a cage will try to fly. And when he discovered--and in this he was assisted not a little by his friend at his elbow--when he discovered that Nobility was not the simple thing he had at first supposed it to be, he set himself in a mood only slightly disconcerted to the discovery of Nobility. When it dawned upon him, as it did, that one cannot be noble, so to speak, IN VACUO, he set himself to discover a Noble Society. He began with simple beliefs and fine attitudes and ended in a conscious research. If he could not get through by a stride, then it followed that he must get through by a climb. He spent the greater part of his life studying and experimenting in the noble possibilities of man. He never lost his absurd faith in that conceivable splendour. At first it was always just round the corner or just through the wood; to the last it seemed still but a little way beyond the distant mountains. For this reason this story has been called THE RESEARCH MAGNIFICENT. It was a real research, it was documented. In the rooms in Westhaven Street that at last were as much as one could call his home, he had accumulated material for--one hesitates to call it a book--let us say it was an analysis of, a guide to the noble life. There after his tragic death came his old friend White, the journalist and novelist, under a promise, and found these papers; he found them to the extent of a crammed bureau, half a score of patent files quite distended and a writing-table drawer-full, and he was greatly exercised to find them. They were, White declares, they are still after much experienced handling, an indigestible aggregation. On this point White is very assured. When Benham thought he was gathering together a book he was dreaming, White says. There is no book in it. . . . Perhaps too, one might hazard, Benham was dreaming when he thought the noble life a human possibility. Perhaps man, like the ape and the hyaena and the tapeworm and many other of God's necessary but less attractive creatures, is not for such exalted ends. That doubt never seems to have got a lodgment in Benham's skull; though at times one might suppose it the basis of White's thought. You will find in all Benham's story, if only it can be properly told, now subdued, now loud and amazed and distressed, but always traceable, this startled, protesting question, “BUT WHY THE DEVIL AREN'T WE? ” As though necessarily we ought to be. He never faltered in his persuasion that behind the dingy face of this world, the earthy stubbornness, the baseness and dulness of himself and all of us, lurked the living jewels of heaven, the light of glory, things unspeakable. At first it seemed to him that one had only just to hammer and will, and at the end, after a life of willing and hammering, he was still convinced there was something, something in the nature of an Open Sesame, perhaps a little more intricate than one had supposed at first, a little more difficult to secure, but still in that nature, which would suddenly roll open for mankind the magic cave of the universe, that precious cave at the heart of all things, in which one must believe. And then life--life would be the wonder it so perplexingly just isn't. . . . 2 Benham did not go about the world telling people of this consuming research. He was not the prophet or preacher of his idea. It was too living and intricate and uncertain a part of him to speak freely about. It was his secret self; to expose it casually would have shamed him. He drew all sorts of reserves about him, he wore his manifest imperfections turned up about him like an overcoat in bitter wind. He was content to be inexplicable. His thoughts led him to the conviction that this magnificent research could not be, any more than any other research can be, a solitary enterprise, but he delayed expression; in a mighty writing and stowing away of these papers he found a relief from the unpleasant urgency to confess and explain himself prematurely. So that White, though he knew Benham with the intimacy of an old schoolfellow who had renewed his friendship, and had shared his last days and been a witness of his death, read the sheets of manuscript often with surprise and with a sense of added elucidation. And, being also a trained maker of books, White as he read was more and more distressed that an accumulation so interesting should be so entirely unshaped for publication. “But this will never make a book,” said White with a note of personal grievance. His hasty promise in their last moments together had bound him, it seemed, to a task he now found impossible. He would have to work upon it tremendously; and even then he did not see how it could be done. This collection of papers was not a story, not an essay, not a confession, not a diary. It was--nothing definable. It went into no conceivable covers. It was just, White decided, a proliferation. A vast proliferation. It wanted even a title. There were signs that Benham had intended to call it THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE, and that he had tried at some other time the title of AN ESSAY ON ARISTOCRACY. Moreover, it would seem that towards the end he had been disposed to drop the word “aristocratic” altogether, and adopt some such phrase as THE LARGER LIFE. Once it was LIFE SET FREE. He had fallen away more and more from nearly everything that one associates with aristocracy--at the end only its ideals of fearlessness and generosity remained. Of all these titles THE ARISTOCRATIC LIFE seemed at first most like a clue to White. Benham's erratic movements, his sudden impulses, his angers, his unaccountable patiences, his journeys to strange places, and his lapses into what had seemed to be pure adventurousness, could all be put into system with that. Before White had turned over three pages of the great fascicle of manuscript that was called Book Two, he had found the word “Bushido” written with a particularly flourishing capital letter and twice repeated. “That was inevitable,” said White with the comforting regret one feels for a friend's banalities. “And it dates. . . [unreadable] this was early. . . . ” “Modern aristocracy, the new aristocracy,” he read presently, “has still to be discovered and understood. This is the necessary next step for mankind. As far as possible I will discover and understand it, and as far as I know it I will be it. This is the essential disposition of my mind. God knows I have appetites and sloths and habits and blindnesses, but so far as it is in my power to release myself I will escape to this. . . . ” 3 White sat far into the night and for several nights turning over papers and rummaging in untidy drawers. Memories came back to him of his dead friend and pieced themselves together with other memories and joined on to scraps in this writing. Bold yet convincing guesses began to leap across the gaps. A story shaped itself. . . . The story began with the schoolfellow he had known at Minchinghampton School. Benham had come up from his father's preparatory school at Seagate. He had been a boy reserved rather than florid in his acts and manners, a boy with a pale face, incorrigible hair and brown eyes that went dark and deep with excitement. Several times White had seen him excited, and when he was excited Benham was capable of tensely daring things. On one occasion he had insisted upon walking across a field in which was an aggressive bull. It had been put there to prevent the boys taking a short cut to the swimming place. It had bellowed tremendously and finally charged him. He had dodged it and got away; at the time it had seemed an immense feat to White and the others who were safely up the field. He had walked to the fence, risking a second charge by his deliberation. Then he had sat on the fence and declared his intention of always crossing the field so long as the bull remained there. He had said this with white intensity, he had stopped abruptly in mid-sentence, and then suddenly he had dropped to the ground, clutched the fence, struggled with heaving shoulders, and been sick. The combination of apparently stout heart and manifestly weak stomach had exercised the Minchinghampton intelligence profoundly. On one or two other occasions Benham had shown courage of the same rather screwed-up sort. He showed it not only in physical but in mental things. A boy named Prothero set a fashion of religious discussion in the school, and Benham, after some self-examination, professed an atheistical republicanism rather in the manner of Shelley. This brought him into open conflict with Roddles, the History Master. Roddles had discovered these theological controversies in some mysterious way, and he took upon himself to talk at Benham and Prothero. He treated them to the common misapplication of that fool who “hath said in his heart there is no God. ” He did not perceive there was any difference between the fool who says a thing in his heart and one who says it in the dormitory. He revived that delectable anecdote of the Eton boy who professed disbelief and was at once “soundly flogged” by his head master. “Years afterwards that boy came back to thank ----” “Gurr,” said Prothero softly. “STEW--ard! ” “Your turn next, Benham,” whispered an orthodox controversialist. “Good Lord! I'd like to see him,” said Benham with a forced loudness that could scarcely be ignored. The subsequent controversy led to an interview with the head. From it Benham emerged more whitely strung up than ever. “He said he would certainly swish me if I deserved it, and I said I would certainly kill him if he did. ” “And then? ” “He told me to go away and think it over. Said he would preach about it next Sunday. . . . Well, a swishing isn't a likely thing anyhow. But I would. . . . There isn't a master here I'd stand a thrashing from--not one. . . . And because I choose to say what I think! . . . I'd run amuck. ” For a week or so the school was exhilarated by a vain and ill-concealed hope that the head might try it just to see if Benham would. It was tantalizingly within the bounds of possibility. . . . These incidents came back to White's mind as he turned over the newspapers in the upper drawer of the bureau. The drawer was labelled “Fear--the First Limitation,” and the material in it was evidently designed for the opening volume of the great unfinished book. Indeed, a portion of it was already arranged and written up. As White read through this manuscript he was reminded of a score of schoolboy discussions Benham and he and Prothero had had together. Here was the same old toughness of mind, a kind of intellectual hardihood, that had sometimes shocked his schoolfellows. Benham had been one of those boys who do not originate ideas very freely, but who go out to them with a fierce sincerity. He believed and disbelieved with emphasis. Prothero had first set him doubting, but it was Benham's own temperament took him on to denial. His youthful atheism had been a matter for secret consternation in White. White did not believe very much in God even then, but this positive disbelieving frightened him. It was going too far. There had been a terrible moment in the dormitory, during a thunderstorm, a thunderstorm so vehement that it had awakened them all, when Latham, the humourist and a quietly devout boy, had suddenly challenged Benham to deny his Maker. “NOW say you don't believe in God? ” Benham sat up in bed and repeated his negative faith, while little Hopkins, the Bishop's son, being less certain about the accuracy of Providence than His aim, edged as far as he could away from Benham's cubicle and rolled his head in his bedclothes. “And anyhow,” said Benham, when it was clear that he was not to be struck dead forthwith, “you show a poor idea of your God to think he'd kill a schoolboy for honest doubt. Even old Roddles--” “I can't listen to you,” cried Latham the humourist, “I can't listen to you. It's--HORRIBLE. ” “Well, who began it? ” asked Benham. A flash of lightning lit the dormitory and showed him to White white-faced and ablaze with excitement, sitting up with the bed-clothes about him. “Oh WOW! ” wailed the muffled voice of little Hopkins as the thunder burst like a giant pistol overhead, and he buried his head still deeper in the bedclothes and gave way to unappeasable grief. Latham's voice came out of the darkness. “This ATHEISM that you and Billy Prothero have brought into the school--” He started violently at another vivid flash, and every one remained silent, waiting for the thunder. . . . But White remembered no more of the controversy because he had made a frightful discovery that filled and blocked his mind. Every time the lightning flashed, there was a red light in Benham's eyes. . . . It was only three days after when Prothero discovered exactly the same phenomenon in the School House boothole and talked of cats and cattle, that White's confidence in their friend was partially restored. . . . 4 “Fear, the First Limitation”--his title indicated the spirit of Benham's opening book very clearly. His struggle with fear was the very beginning of his soul's history. It continued to the end. He had hardly decided to lead the noble life before he came bump against the fact that he was a physical coward. He felt fear acutely. “Fear,” he wrote, “is the foremost and most persistent of the shepherding powers that keep us in the safe fold, that drive us back to the beaten track and comfort and--futility. The beginning of all aristocracy is the subjugation of fear. ” At first the struggle was so great that he hated fear without any qualification; he wanted to abolish it altogether. “When I was a boy,” he writes, “I thought I would conquer fear for good and all, and never more be troubled by it. But it is not to be done in that way. One might as well dream of having dinner for the rest of one's life. Each time and always I have found that it has to be conquered afresh. To this day I fear, little things as well as big things. I have to grapple with some little dread every day--urge myself. . . . Just as I have to wash and shave myself every day. . . . I believe it is so with every one, but it is difficult to be sure; few men who go into dangers care very much to talk about fear. . . . ” Later Benham found some excuses for fear, came even to dealings with fear. He never, however, admits that this universal instinct is any better than a kindly but unintelligent nurse from whose fostering restraints it is man's duty to escape. Discretion, he declared, must remain; a sense of proportion, an “adequacy of enterprise,” but the discretion of an aristocrat is in his head, a tactical detail, it has nothing to do with this visceral sinking, this ebb in the nerves. “From top to bottom, the whole spectrum of fear is bad, from panic fear at one extremity down to that mere disinclination for enterprise, that reluctance and indolence which is its lowest phase. These are things of the beast, these are for creatures that have a settled environment, a life history, that spin in a cage of instincts. But man is a beast of that kind no longer, he has left his habitat, he goes out to limitless living. . . . ” This idea of man going out into new things, leaving securities, habits, customs, leaving his normal life altogether behind him, underlay all Benham's aristocratic conceptions. And it was natural that he should consider fear as entirely inconvenient, treat it indeed with ingratitude, and dwell upon the immense liberations that lie beyond for those who will force themselves through its remonstrances. . . . Benham confessed his liability to fear quite freely in these notes. His fear of animals was ineradicable. He had had an overwhelming dread of bears until he was twelve or thirteen, the child's irrational dread of impossible bears, bears lurking under the bed and in the evening shadows. He confesses that even up to manhood he could not cross a field containing cattle without keeping a wary eye upon them--his bull adventure rather increased than diminished that disposition--he hated a strange dog at his heels and would manoeuvre himself as soon as possible out of reach of the teeth or heels of a horse. But the peculiar dread of his childhood was tigers. Some gaping nursemaid confronted him suddenly with a tiger in a cage in the menagerie annexe of a circus. “My small mind was overwhelmed. ” “I had never thought,” White read, “that a tiger was much larger than a St. Bernard dog. . . . This great creature! . . . I could not believe any hunter would attack such a monster except by stealth and with weapons of enormous power. . . . “He jerked himself to and fro across his cramped, rickety cage and looked over my head with yellow eyes--at some phantom far away. Every now and then he snarled. The contempt of his detestable indifference sank deeper and deeper into my soul. I knew that were the cage to vanish I should stand there motionless, his helpless prey. I knew that were he at large in the same building with me I should be too terror-stricken to escape him. At the foot of a ladder leading clear to escape I should have awaited him paralyzed. At last I gripped my nurse's hand. 'Take me away,' I whispered. “In my dreams that night he stalked me. I made my frozen flight from him, I slammed a door on him, and he thrust his paw through a panel as though it had been paper and clawed for me. The paw got longer and longer. . . . “I screamed so loudly that my father came up from his study. “I remember that he took me in his arms. “'It's only a big sort of pussy, Poff,' he said. 'FELIS TIGRIS. FELIS, you know, means cat. ' “But I knew better. I was in no mood then for my father's insatiable pedagoguery. “'And my little son mustn't be a coward. '. . . “After that I understood I must keep silence and bear my tigers alone. “For years the thought of that tiger's immensity haunted my mind. In my dreams I cowered before it a thousand times; in the dusk it rarely failed me. On the landing on my way to bed there was a patch of darkness beyond a chest that became a lurking horror for me, and sometimes the door of my father's bedroom would stand open and there was a long buff and crimson-striped shape, by day indeed an ottoman, but by night--. Could an ottoman crouch and stir in the flicker of a passing candle? Could an ottoman come after you noiselessly, and so close that you could not even turn round upon it? No! ” 5 When Benham was already seventeen and, as he supposed, hardened against his fear of beasts, his friend Prothero gave him an account of the killing of an old labouring man by a stallion which had escaped out of its stable. The beast had careered across a field, leapt a hedge and come upon its victim suddenly. He had run a few paces and stopped, trying to defend his head with the horse rearing over him. It beat him down with two swift blows of its fore hoofs, one, two, lifted him up in its long yellow teeth and worried him as a terrier does a rat--the poor old wretch was still able to make a bleating sound at that--dropped him, trampled and kicked him as he tried to crawl away, and went on trampling and battering him until he was no more than a bloody inhuman bundle of clothes and mire. For more than half an hour this continued, and then its animal rage was exhausted and it desisted, and went and grazed at a little distance from this misshapen, hoof-marked, torn, and muddy remnant of a man. No one it seems but a horror-stricken child knew what was happening. . . . This picture of human indignity tortured Benham's imagination much more than it tortured the teller of the tale. It filled him with shame and horror. For three or four years every detail of that circumstantial narrative seemed unforgettable. A little lapse from perfect health and the obsession returned. He could not endure the neighing of horses: when he saw horses galloping in a field with him his heart stood still. And all his life thereafter he hated horses. 6 A different sort of fear that also greatly afflicted Benham was due to a certain clumsiness and insecurity he felt in giddy and unstable places. There he was more definitely balanced between the hopelessly rash and the pitifully discreet. He had written an account of a private struggle between himself and a certain path of planks and rock edges called the Bisse of Leysin. This happened in his adolescence. He had had a bad attack of influenza and his doctor had sent him to a little hotel--the only hotel it was in those days--at Montana in Valais. There, later, when he had picked up his strength, his father was to join him and take him mountaineering, that second-rate mountaineering which is so dear to dons and schoolmasters. When the time came he was ready for that, but he had had his experiences. He had gone through a phase of real cowardice. He was afraid, he confessed, before even he reached Montana; he was afraid of the steepness of the mountains. He had to drive ten or twelve miles up and up the mountain-side, a road of innumerable hairpin bends and precipitous banks, the horse was gaunt and ugly with a disposition to shy, and he confesses he clutched the side of the vehicle and speculated how he should jump if presently the whole turnout went tumbling over. . . . “And afterwards I dreamt dreams of precipices. I made strides over precipices, I fell and fell with a floating swiftness towards remote valleys, I was assailed by eagles upon a perilous ledge that crumbled away and left me clinging by my nails to nothing. ” The Bisse of Leysin is one of those artificial water-courses which bring water from some distant source to pastures that have an insufficient or uncertain supply. It is a little better known than most because of a certain exceptional boldness in its construction; for a distance of a few score yards it runs supported by iron staples across the front of a sheer precipice, and for perhaps half a mile it hangs like an eyebrow over nearly or quite vertical walls of pine-set rock. Beside it, on the outer side of it, runs a path, which becomes an offhand gangway of planking at the overhanging places. At one corner, which gives the favourite picture postcard from Montana, the rocks project so sharply above the water that the passenger on the gangway must crouch down upon the bending plank as he walks. There is no hand-hold at all. A path from Montana takes one over a pine-clad spur and down a precipitous zig-zag upon the middle of the Bisse, and thither Benham came, fascinated by the very fact that here was something of which the mere report frightened him. He had to walk across the cold clear rush of the Bisse upon a pine log, and then he found himself upon one of the gentler interludes of the Bisse track. It was a scrambling path nearly two feet wide, and below it were slopes, but not so steep as to terrify. At a vast distance below he saw through tree-stems and blue haze a twisted strand of bright whiteness, the river that joins the Rhone at Sion. It looped about and passed out of sight remotely beneath his feet. He turned to the right, and came to a corner that overhung a precipice. He craned his head round this corner and saw the evil place of the picture-postcards. He remained for a long time trying to screw himself up to walk along the jagged six-inch edge of rock between cliff and torrent into which the path has shrunken, to the sagging plank under the overhanging rock beyond. He could not bring himself to do that. “It happened that close to the corner a large lump of rock and earth was breaking away, a cleft was opening, so that presently, it seemed possible at any moment, the mass would fall headlong into the blue deeps below. This impending avalanche was not in my path along the Bisse, it was no sort of danger to me, but in some way its insecurity gave a final touch to my cowardice. I could not get myself round that corner. ” He turned away. He went and examined the planks in the other direction, and these he found less forbidding. He crossed one precipitous place, with a fall of twoscore feet or less beneath him, and found worse ahead. There also he managed. A third place was still more disagreeable. The plank was worn and thin, and sagged under him. He went along it supporting himself against the rock above the Bisse with an extended hand. Halfway the rock fell back, so that there was nothing whatever to hold. He stopped, hesitating whether he should go back--but on this plank there was no going back because no turning round seemed practicable. While he was still hesitating there came a helpful intervention. Behind him he saw a peasant appearing and disappearing behind trees and projecting rock masses, and coming across the previous plank at a vigorous trot. . . . Under the stimulus of a spectator Benham got to the end of this third place without much trouble. Then very politely he stood aside for the expert to go ahead so that he could follow at his own pace. There were, however, more difficulties yet to come, and a disagreeable humiliation. That confounded peasant developed a parental solicitude. After each crossing he waited, and presently began to offer advice and encouragement. At last came a place where everything was overhanging, where the Bisse was leaking, and the plank wet and slippery. The water ran out of the leak near the brim of the wooden channel and fell in a long shivering thread of silver. THERE WAS NO SOUND OF ITS FALL. It just fell--into a void. Benham wished he had not noted that. He groaned, but faced the plank; he knew this would be the slowest affair of all. The peasant surveyed him from the further side. “Don't be afraid! ” cried the peasant in his clumsy Valaisian French, and returned, returning along the plank that seemed quite sufficiently loaded without him, extending a charitable hand. “Damn! ” whispered Benham, but he took the hand. Afterwards, rather ignobly, he tried to explain in his public-school French. “Pas de peur,” he said. “Pas de peur. Mais la tete, n'a pas l'habitude. ” The peasant, failing to understand, assured him again that there was no danger. (“Damn! ”) Benham was led over all the other planks, he was led as if he was an old lady crossing a glacier. He was led into absolute safety, and shamefacedly he rewarded his guide. Then he went a little way and sat down, swore softly, and watched the honest man go striding and plunging down towards Lens until he was out of sight. “Now,” said Benham to himself, “if I do not go back along the planks my secret honour is gone for ever. ” He told himself that he had not a good head, that he was not well, that the sun was setting and the light no longer good, that he had a very good chance indeed of getting killed. Then it came to him suddenly as a clear and simple truth, as something luminously plain, that it is better to get killed than go away defeated by such fears and unsteadiness as his. The change came into his mind as if a white light were suddenly turned on--where there had been nothing but shadows and darkness. He rose to his feet and went swiftly and intently the whole way back, going with a kind of temperate recklessness, and, because he was no longer careful, easily. He went on beyond his starting place toward the corner, and did that supreme bit, to and fro, that bit where the lump was falling away, and he had to crouch, as gaily as the rest. Then he recrossed the Bisse upon the pine log, clambered up through the pines to the crest, and returned through the meadows to his own hotel. After that he should have slept the sleep of contentment, but instead he had quite dreadful nightmares, of hanging in frozen fear above incredible declivities, of ill-aimed leaps across chasms to slippery footholds, of planks that swayed and broke suddenly in the middle and headed him down and down. . . . The next day in the sunshine he walked the Bisse again with those dreams like trailing mists in his mind, and by comparison the path of the Bisse was nothing, it was like walking along a kerbstone, it was an exercise for young ladies. . . . 7 In his younger days Benham had regarded Fear as a shameful secret and as a thing to be got rid of altogether. It seemed to him that to feel fear was to fall short of aristocracy, and in spite of the deep dreads and disgusts that haunted his mind, he set about the business of its subjugation as if it were a spiritual amputation. But as he emerged from the egotism of adolescence he came to realize that this was too comprehensive an operation; every one feels fear, and your true aristocrat is not one who has eliminated, but one who controls or ignores it. Brave men are men who do things when they are afraid to do them, just as Nelson, even when he was seasick, and he was frequently seasick, was still master of the sea. Benham developed two leading ideas about fear; one that it is worse at the first onset, and far worse than any real experience, and the other that fear is essentially a social instinct. He set himself upon these lines to study--what can we call it? --the taming of fear, the nature, care, and management of fear. . . . “Fear is very like pain in this, that it is a deterrent thing. It is superficial. Just as a man's skin is infinitely more sensitive than anything inside. . . . Once you have forced yourself or have been forced through the outward fear into vivid action or experience, you feel very little. The worst moment is before things happen. Rowe, the African sportsman, told me that he had seen cowardice often enough in the presence of lions, but he had never seen any one actually charged by a lion who did not behave well. I have heard the same thing of many sorts of dangers. “I began to suspect this first in the case of falling or jumping down. Giddiness may be an almost intolerable torture, and falling nothing of the sort. I once saw the face of an old man who had flung himself out of a high window in Rome, and who had been killed instantly on the pavement; it was not simply a serene face, it was glad, exalted. I suspect that when we have broken the shell of fear, falling may be delightful. Jumping down is, after all, only a steeper tobogganing, and tobogganing a milder jumping down. Always I used to funk at the top of the Cresta run. I suffered sometimes almost intolerably; I found it almost impossible to get away. The first ten yards was like being slashed open with a sharp sword. But afterwards there was nothing but joyful thrills. All instinct, too, fought against me when I tried high diving. I managed it, and began to like it. I had to give it up because of my ears, but not until I had established the habit of stepping through that moment of disinclination. “I was Challoner's passenger when he was killed at Sheerness. That was a queer unexpected experience, you may have supposed it an agony of terror, but indeed there was no fear in it at all. At any rate, I do not remember a moment of fear; it has gone clean out of my memory if ever it was there. We were swimming high and fast, three thousand feet or so, in a clear, sweet air over the town of Sheerness. The river, with a string of battleships, was far away to the west of us, and the endless grey-blue flats of the Thames to the north. The sun was low behind a bank of cloud. I was watching a motor-car, which seemed to be crawling slowly enough, though, no doubt, it was making a respectable pace, between two hedges down below. It is extraordinary how slowly everything seems to be going when one sees it from such an height. “Then the left wing of the monoplane came up like a door that slams, some wires whistled past my head, and one whipped off my helmet, and then, with the seat slipping away from me, down we went. I snatched unavailingly for the helmet, and then gripped the sides. It was like dropping in a boat suddenly into the trough of a wave--and going on dropping. We were both strapped, and I got my feet against the side and clung to the locked second wheel. “The sensation was as though something like an intermittent electric current was pouring through me. It's a ridiculous image to use, I can't justify it, but it was as if I was having cold blue light squirted through every pore of my being. There was an astonishment, a feeling of confirmation. 'Of course these things do happen sometimes,' I told myself. I don't remember that Challoner looked round or said anything at all. I am not sure that I looked at him. . . . “There seemed to be a long interval of intensely excited curiosity, and I remember thinking, 'Lord, but we shall come a smash in a minute! ' Far ahead I saw the grey sheds of Eastchurch and people strolling about apparently unaware of our disaster. There was a sudden silence as Challoner stopped the engine. . . . “But the point I want to insist upon is that I did not feel afraid. I was simply enormously, terribly INTERESTED. . . . “There came a tremendous jolt and a lunge, and we were both tipped forward, so that we were hanging forehead down by our straps, and it looked as if the sheds were in the sky, then I saw nothing but sky, then came another vast swerve, and we were falling sideways, sideways. . . . “I was altogether out of breath and PHYSICALLY astonished, and I remember noting quite intelligently as we hit the ground how the green grass had an effect of POURING OUT in every direction from below us. . . . “Then I remember a jerk and a feeling that I was flying up again.

I was astonished by a tremendous popping--fabric, wires, everything seemed going pop, pop, pop, like a machine-gun, and then came a flash of intense pain as my arm crumpled up. It was quite impersonal pain. As impersonal as seeing intense colour. SPLINTERS! I remember the word came into my head instantly. I remember that very definitely. “I thought, I suppose, my arm was in splinters. Or perhaps of the scraps and ends of rods and wires flying about us. It is curious that while I remember the word I cannot recall the idea. . . . “When I became conscious again the chief thing present in my mind was that all those fellows round were young soldiers who wouldn't at all understand bad behaviour. My arm was--orchestral, but still far from being real suffering IN me. Also I wanted to know what Challoner had got. They wouldn't understand my questions, and then I twisted round and saw from the negligent way his feet came out from under the engine that he must be dead. And dark red stains with bright red froth-- “Of course! “There again the chief feeling was a sense of oddity. I wasn't sorry for him any more than I was for myself. “It seemed to me that it was all right with us both, remarkable, vivid, but all right. . . . ” 8 “But though there is little or no fear in an aeroplane, even when it is smashing up, there is fear about aeroplanes. There is something that says very urgently, 'Don't,' to the man who looks up into the sky. It is very interesting to note how at a place like Eastchurch or Brooklands the necessary discretion trails the old visceral feeling with it, and how men will hang about, ready to go up, resolved to go up, but delaying. Men of indisputable courage will get into a state between dread and laziness, and waste whole hours of flying weather on any excuse or no excuse. Once they are up that inhibition vanishes. The man who was delaying and delaying half an hour ago will now be cutting the most venturesome capers in the air. Few men are in a hurry to get down again. I mean that quite apart from the hesitation of landing, they like being up there. ” Then, abruptly, Benham comes back to his theory. “Fear, you see, is the inevitable janitor, but it is not the ruler of experience. That is what I am driving at in all this. The bark of danger is worse than its bite. Inside the portals there may be events and destruction, but terror stays defeated at the door. It may be that when that old man was killed by a horse the child who watched suffered more than he did. . . . “I am sure that was so. . . . ” 9 As White read Benham's notes and saw how his argument drove on, he was reminded again and again of those schoolboy days and Benham's hardihood, and his own instinctive unreasonable reluctance to follow those gallant intellectual leads. If fear is an ancient instinctive boundary that the modern life, the aristocratic life, is bound to ignore and transcend, may this not also be the case with pain? We do a little adventure into the “life beyond fear”; may we not also think of adventuring into the life beyond pain? Is pain any saner a warning than fear? May not pain just as much as fear keep us from possible and splendid things? But why ask a question that is already answered in principle in every dentist's chair? Benham's idea, however, went much further than that, he was clearly suggesting that in pain itself, pain endured beyond a certain pitch, there might come pleasure again, an intensity of sensation that might have the colour of delight. He betrayed a real anxiety to demonstrate this possibility, he had the earnestness of a man who is sensible of dissentient elements within. He hated the thought of pain even more than he hated fear. His arguments did not in the least convince White, who stopped to poke the fire and assure himself of his own comfort in the midst of his reading. Young people and unseasoned people, Benham argued, are apt to imagine that if fear is increased and carried to an extreme pitch it becomes unbearable, one will faint or die; given a weak heart, a weak artery or any such structural defect and that may well happen, but it is just as possible that as the stimulation increases one passes through a brief ecstasy of terror to a new sane world, exalted but as sane as normal existence. There is the calmness of despair. Benham had made some notes to enforce this view, of the observed calm behaviour of men already hopelessly lost, men on sinking ships, men going to execution, men already maimed and awaiting the final stroke, but for the most part these were merely references to books and periodicals. In exactly the same way, he argued, we exaggerate the range of pain as if it were limitless. We think if we are unthinking that it passes into agony and so beyond endurance to destruction. It probably does nothing of the kind. Benham compared pain to the death range of the electric current. At a certain voltage it thrills, at a greater it torments and convulses, at a still greater it kills. But at enormous voltages, as Tesla was the first to demonstrate, it does no injury. And following on this came memoranda on the recorded behaviour of martyrs, on the self-torture of Hindoo ascetics, of the defiance of Red Indian prisoners. “These things,” Benham had written, “are much more horrible when one considers them from the point of view of an easy-chair”;--White gave an assenting nod--“ARE THEY REALLY HORRIBLE AT ALL? Is it possible that these charred and slashed and splintered persons, those Indians hanging from hooks, those walkers in the fiery furnace, have had glimpses through great windows that were worth the price they paid for them? Haven't we allowed those checks and barriers that are so important a restraint upon childish enterprise, to creep up into and distress and distort adult life? . . . “The modern world thinks too much as though painlessness and freedom from danger were ultimate ends. It is fear-haunted, it is troubled by the thoughts of pain and death, which it has never met except as well-guarded children meet these things, in exaggerated and untestable forms, in the menagerie or in nightmares. And so it thinks the discovery of anaesthetics the crowning triumph of civilization, and cosiness and innocent amusement, those ideals of the nursery, the whole purpose of mankind. . . . ” “Mm,” said White, and pressed his lips together and knotted his brows and shook his head. 10 But the bulk of Benham's discussion of fear was not concerned with this perverse and overstrained suggestion of pleasure reached through torture, this exaggeration of the man resolved not to shrink at anything; it was an examination of the present range and use of fear that led gradually to something like a theory of control and discipline. The second of his two dominating ideas was that fear is an instinct arising only in isolation, that in a crowd there may be a collective panic, but that there is no real individual fear. Fear, Benham held, drives the man back to the crowd, the dog to its master, the wolf to the pack, and when it is felt that the danger is pooled, then fear leaves us. He was quite prepared to meet the objection that animals of a solitary habit do nevertheless exhibit fear. Some of this apparent fear, he argued, was merely discretion, and what is not discretion is the survival of an infantile characteristic. The fear felt by a tiger cub is certainly a social emotion, that drives it back to the other cubs, to its mother and the dark hiding of the lair. The fear of a fully grown tiger sends it into the reeds and the shadows, to a refuge, that must be “still reminiscent of the maternal lair. ” But fear has very little hold upon the adult solitary animal, it changes with extreme readiness to resentment and rage. “Like most inexperienced people,” ran his notes, “I was astonished at the reported feats of men in war; I believed they were exaggerated, and that there was a kind of unpremeditated conspiracy of silence about their real behaviour. But when on my way to visit India for the third time I turned off to see what I could of the fighting before Adrianople, I discovered at once that a thousand casually selected conscripts will, every one of them, do things together that not one of them could by any means be induced to do alone. I saw men not merely obey orders that gave them the nearly certain prospect of death, but I saw them exceeding orders; I saw men leap out of cover for the mere sake of defiance, and fall shot through and smashed by a score of bullets. I saw a number of Bulgarians in the hands of the surgeon, several quite frightfully wounded, refuse chloroform merely to impress the English onlooker, some of their injuries I could scarcely endure to see, and I watched a line of infantry men go on up a hill and keep on quite manifestly cheerful with men dropping out and wriggling, and men dropping out and lying still until every other man was down. . . . Not one man would have gone up that hill alone, without onlookers. . . . ” Rowe, the lion hunter, told Benham that only on one occasion in his life had he given way to ungovernable fear, and that was when he was alone. Many times he had been in fearful situations in the face of charging lions and elephants, and once he had been bowled over and carried some distance by a lion, but on none of these occasions had fear demoralized him. There was no question of his general pluck. But on one occasion he was lost in rocky waterless country in Somaliland. He strayed out in the early morning while his camels were being loaded, followed some antelope too far, and lost his bearings. He looked up expecting to see the sun on his right hand and found it on his left. He became bewildered. He wandered some time and then fired three signal shots and got no reply. Then losing his head he began shouting. He had only four or five more cartridges and no water-bottle. His men were accustomed to his going on alone, and might not begin to remark upon his absence until sundown. . . . It chanced, however, that one of the shikari noted the water-bottle he had left behind and organized a hunt for him. Long before they found him he had passed to an extremity of terror. The world had become hideous and threatening, the sun was a pitiless glare, each rocky ridge he clambered became more dreadful than the last, each new valley into which he looked more hateful and desolate, the cramped thorn bushes threatened him gauntly, the rocks had a sinister lustre, and in every blue shadow about him the night and death lurked and waited. There was no hurry for them, presently they would spread out again and join and submerge him, presently in the confederated darkness he could be stalked and seized and slain. Yes, this he admitted was real fear. He had cracked his voice, yelling as a child yells. And then he had become afraid of his own voice. . . . “Now this excess of fear in isolation, this comfort in a crowd, in support and in a refuge, even when support or refuge is quite illusory, is just exactly what one would expect of fear if one believed it to be an instinct which has become a misfit. In the ease of the soldier fear is so much a misfit that instead of saving him for the most part it destroys him. Raw soldiers under fire bunch together and armies fight in masses, men are mowed down in swathes, because only so is the courage of the common men sustained, only so can they be brave, albeit spread out and handling their weapons as men of unqualified daring would handle them they would be infinitely safer and more effective. . . . “And all of us, it may be, are restrained by this misfit fear from a thousand bold successful gestures of mind and body, we are held back from the attainment of mighty securities in pitiful temporary shelters that are perhaps in the end no better than traps. . . . ” From such considerations Benham went on to speculate how far the crowd can be replaced in a man's imagination, how far some substitute for that social backing can be made to serve the same purpose in neutralizing fear. He wrote with the calm of a man who weighs the probabilities of a riddle, and with the zeal of a man lost to every material consideration. His writing, it seemed to White, had something of the enthusiastic whiteness of his face, the enthusiastic brightness of his eyes. We can no more banish fear from our being at present than we can carve out the fleshy pillars of the heart or the pineal gland in the brain. It is deep in our inheritance. As deep as hunger. And just as we have to satisfy hunger in order that it should leave us free, so we have to satisfy the unconquerable importunity of fear. We have to reassure our faltering instincts. There must be something to take the place of lair and familiars, something not ourselves but general, that we must carry with us into the lonely places. For it is true that man has now not only to learn to fight in open order instead of in a phalanx, but he has to think and plan and act in open order, to live in open order. . . . Then with one of his abrupt transitions Benham had written, “This brings me to God. ” “The devil it does! ” said White, roused to a keener attention. “By no feat of intention can we achieve courage in loneliness so long as we feel indeed alone. An isolated man, an egoist, an Epicurean man, will always fail himself in the solitary place. There must be something more with us to sustain us against this vast universe than the spark of life that began yesterday and must be extinguished to-morrow. There can be no courage beyond social courage, the sustaining confidence of the herd, until there is in us the sense of God. But God is a word that covers a multitude of meanings. When I was a boy I was a passionate atheist, I defied God, and so far as God is the mere sanction of social traditions and pressures, a mere dressing up of the crowd's will in canonicals, I do still deny him and repudiate him. That God I heard of first from my nursemaid, and in very truth he is the proper God of all the nursemaids of mankind. But there is another God than that God of obedience, God the immortal adventurer in me, God who calls men from home and country, God scourged and crowned with thorns, who rose in a nail-pierced body out of death and came not to bring peace but a sword. ” With something bordering upon intellectual consternation, White, who was a decent self-respecting sceptic, read these last clamberings of Benham's spirit. They were written in pencil; they were unfinished when he died. (Surely the man was not a Christian! ) “You may be heedless of death and suffering because you think you cannot suffer and die, or you may be heedless of death and pain because you have identified your life with the honour of mankind and the insatiable adventurousness of man's imagination, so that the possible death is negligible and the possible achievement altogether outweighs it. ”. . . White shook his head over these pencilled fragments. He was a member of the Rationalist Press Association, and he had always taken it for granted that Benham was an orthodox unbeliever. But this was hopelessly unsound, heresy, perilous stuff; almost, it seemed to him, a posthumous betrayal. . . . 11 One night when he was in India the spirit of adventure came upon Benham. He had gone with Kepple, of the forestry department, into the jungle country in the hills above the Tapti. He had been very anxious to see something of that aspect of Indian life, and he had snatched at the chance Kepple had given him. But they had scarcely started before the expedition was brought to an end by an accident, Kepple was thrown by a pony and his ankle broken. He and Benham bandaged it as well as they could, and a litter was sent for, and meanwhile they had to wait in the camp that was to have been the centre of their jungle raids. The second day of this waiting was worse for Kepple than the first, and he suffered much from the pressure of this amateurish bandaging. In the evening Benham got cool water from the well and rearranged things better; the two men dined and smoked under their thatched roof beneath the big banyan, and then Kepple, tired out by his day of pain, was carried to his tent. Presently he fell asleep and Benham was left to himself. Now that the heat was over he found himself quite indisposed to sleep. He felt full of life and anxious for happenings. He went back and sat down upon the iron bedstead beneath the banyan, that Kepple had lain upon through the day, and he watched the soft immensity of the Indian night swallow up the last lingering colours of the world. It left the outlines, it obliterated nothing, but it stripped off the superficial reality of things. The moon was full and high overhead, and the light had not so much gone as changed from definition and the blazing glitter and reflections of solidity to a translucent and unsubstantial clearness. The jungle that bordered the little encampment north, south, and west seemed to have crept a little nearer, enriched itself with blackness, taken to itself voices. (Surely it had been silent during the day. ) A warm, faintly-scented breeze just stirred the dead grass and the leaves. In the day the air had been still. Immediately after the sunset there had been a great crying of peacocks in the distance, but that was over now; the crickets, however, were still noisy, and a persistent sound had become predominant, an industrious unmistakable sound, a sound that took his mind back to England, in midsummer. It was like a watchman's rattle--a nightjar! So there were nightjars here in India, too! One might have expected something less familiar. And then came another cry from far away over the heat-stripped tree-tops, a less familiar cry. It was repeated. Was that perhaps some craving leopard, a tiger cat, a panther? -- “HUNT, HUNT”; that might be a deer. Then suddenly an angry chattering came from the dark trees quite close at hand. A monkey? . . . These great, scarce visible, sweeping movements through the air were bats. . . . Of course, the day jungle is the jungle asleep. This was its waking hour. Now the deer were arising from their forms, the bears creeping out of their dens amidst the rocks and blundering down the gullies, the tigers and panthers and jungle cats stalking noiselessly from their lairs in the grass. Countless creatures that had hidden from the heat and pitiless exposure of the day stood now awake and alertly intent upon their purposes, grazed or sought water, flitting delicately through the moonlight and shadows. The jungle was awakening. Again Benham heard that sound like the belling of a stag. . . . This was the real life of the jungle, this night life, into which man did not go. Here he was on the verge of a world that for all the stuffed trophies of the sportsman and the specimens of the naturalist is still almost as unknown as if it was upon another planet. What intruders men are, what foreigners in the life of this ancient system! He looked over his shoulder, and there were the two little tents, one that sheltered Kepple and one that awaited him, and beyond, in an irregular line, glowed the ruddy smoky fires of the men. One or two turbaned figures still flitted about, and there was a voice--low, monotonous--it must have been telling a tale. Further, sighing and stirring ever and again, were tethered beasts, and then a great pale space of moonlight and the clumsy outlines of the village well. The clustering village itself slept in darkness beyond the mango trees, and still remoter the black encircling jungle closed in. One might have fancied this was the encampment of newly-come invaders, were it not for the larger villages that are overgrown with thickets and altogether swallowed up again in the wilderness, and for the deserted temples that are found rent asunder by the roots of trees and the ancient embankments that hold water only for the drinking of the sambur deer. . . . Benham turned his face to the dim jungle again. . . . He had come far out of his way to visit this strange world of the ancient life, that now recedes and dwindles before our new civilization, that seems fated to shrivel up and pass altogether before the dry advance of physical science and material organization. He was full of unsatisfied curiosities about its fierce hungers and passions, its fears and cruelties, its instincts and its well-nigh incommunicable and yet most precious understandings. He had long ceased to believe that the wild beast is wholly evil, and safety and plenty the ultimate good for men. . . . Perhaps he would never get nearer to this mysterious jungle life than he was now. It was intolerably tantalizing that it should be so close at hand and so inaccessible. . . . As Benham sat brooding over his disappointment the moon, swimming on through the still circle of the hours, passed slowly over him. The lights and shadows about him changed by imperceptible gradations and a long pale alley where the native cart track drove into the forest, opened slowly out of the darkness, slowly broadened, slowly lengthened. It opened out to him with a quality of invitation. . . . There was the jungle before him. Was it after all so inaccessible? “Come! ” the road said to him. Benham rose and walked out a few paces into the moonlight and stood motionless. Was he afraid? Even now some hungry watchful monster might lurk in yonder shadows, watching with infinite still patience. Kepple had told him how they would sit still for hours--staring unblinkingly as cats stare at a fire--and then crouch to advance. Beneath the shrill overtone of the nightjars, what noiseless grey shapes, what deep breathings and cracklings and creepings might there not be? . . . Was he afraid? That question determined him to go. He hesitated whether he should take a gun. A stick? A gun, he knew, was a dangerous thing to an inexperienced man. No! He would go now, even as he was with empty hands. At least he would go as far as the end of that band of moonlight. If for no other reason than because he was afraid. NOW! For a moment it seemed to him as though his feet were too heavy to lift and then, hands in pockets, khaki-clad, an almost invisible figure, he strolled towards the cart-track. Come to that, he halted for a moment to regard the distant fires of the men. No one would miss him. They would think he was in his tent. He faced the stirring quiet ahead. The cart-track was a rutted path of soft, warm sand, on which he went almost noiselessly. A bird squabbled for an instant in a thicket. A great white owl floated like a flake of moonlight across the track and vanished without a sound among the trees. Along the moonlit path went Benham, and when he passed near trees his footsteps became noisy with the rustle and crash of dead leaves. The jungle was full of moonlight; twigs, branches, creepers, grass-clumps came out acutely vivid. The trees and bushes stood in pools of darkness, and beyond were pale stretches of misty moonshine and big rocks shining with an unearthly lustre. Things seemed to be clear and yet uncertain. It was as if they dissolved or retired a little and then returned to solidity. A sudden chattering broke out overhead, and black across the great stars soared a flying squirrel and caught a twig, and ran for shelter. A second hesitated in a tree-top and pursued. They chased each other and vanished abruptly. He forgot his sense of insecurity in the interest of these active little silhouettes. And he noted how much bigger and more wonderful the stars can look when one sees them through interlacing branches. Ahead was darkness; but not so dark when he came to it that the track was invisible. He was at the limit of his intention, but now he saw that that had been a childish project. He would go on, he would walk right into the jungle. His first disinclination was conquered, and the soft intoxication of the subtropical moonshine was in his blood. . . . But he wished he could walk as a spirit walks, without this noise of leaves. . . . Yes, this was very wonderful and beautiful, and there must always be jungles for men to walk in. Always there must be jungles. . . . Some small beast snarled and bolted from under his feet. He stopped sharply. He had come into a darkness under great boughs, and now he stood still as the little creature scuttled away. Beyond the track emerged into a dazzling whiteness. . . . In the stillness he could hear the deer belling again in the distance, and then came a fuss of monkeys in a group of trees near at hand. He remained still until this had died away into mutterings. Then on the verge of movement he was startled by a ripe mango that slipped from its stalk and fell out of the tree and struck his hand. It took a little time to understand that, and then he laughed, and his muscles relaxed, and he went on again. A thorn caught at him and he disentangled himself. He crossed the open space, and the moon was like a great shield of light spread out above him. All the world seemed swimming in its radiance. The stars were like lamps in a mist of silvery blue. The track led him on across white open spaces of shrivelled grass and sand, amidst trees where shadows made black patternings upon the silver, and then it plunged into obscurities. For a time it lifted, and then on one hand the bush fell away, and he saw across a vast moonlit valley wide undulations of open cultivation, belts of jungle, copses, and a great lake as black as ebony. For a time the path ran thus open, and then the jungle closed in again and there were more thickets, more levels of grass, and in one place far overhead among the branches he heard and stood for a time perplexed at a vast deep humming of bees. . . . Presently a black monster with a hunched back went across his path heedless of him and making a great noise in the leaves. He stood quite still until it had gone. He could not tell whether it was a boar or hyaena; most probably, he thought, a boar because of the heaviness of its rush. The path dropped downhill for a time, crossed a ravine, ascended. He passed a great leafless tree on which there were white flowers. On the ground also, in the darkness under the tree, there were these flowers; they were dropping noiselessly, and since they were visible in the shadows, it seemed to him that they must be phosphorescent. And they emitted a sweetish scent that lay heavily athwart the path. Presently he passed another such tree. Then he became aware of a tumult ahead of him, a smashing of leaves, a snorting and slobbering, grunting and sucking, a whole series of bestial sounds. He halted for a little while, and then drew nearer, picking his steps to avoid too great a noise. Here were more of those white-blossomed trees, and beneath, in the darkness, something very black and big was going to and fro, eating greedily. Then he found that there were two and then more of these black things, three or four of them. Curiosity made Benham draw nearer, very softly. Presently one showed in a patch of moonlight, startlingly big, a huge, black hairy monster with a long white nose on a grotesque face, and he was stuffing armfuls of white blossom into his mouth with his curved fore claws. He took not the slightest notice of the still man, who stood perhaps twenty yards away from him. He was too blind and careless. He snorted and smacked his slobbering lips, and plunged into the shadows again. Benham heard him root among the leaves and grunt appreciatively. The air was heavy with the reek of the crushed flowers. For some time Benham remained listening to and peering at these preoccupied gluttons. At last he shrugged his shoulders, and left them and went on his way. For a long time he could hear them, then just as he was on the verge of forgetting them altogether, some dispute arose among them, and there began a vast uproar, squeals, protests, comments, one voice ridiculously replete and authoritative, ridiculously suggestive of a drunken judge with his mouth full, and a shrill voice of grievance high above the others. . . . The uproar of the bears died away at last, almost abruptly, and left the jungle to the incessant night-jars. . . . For what end was this life of the jungle? All Benham's senses were alert to the sounds and appearances about him, and at the same time his mind was busy with the perplexities of that riddle. Was the jungle just an aimless pool of life that man must drain and clear away? Or is it to have a use in the greater life of our race that now begins? Will man value the jungle as he values the precipice, for the sake of his manhood? Will he preserve it? Man must keep hard, man must also keep fierce. Will the jungle keep him fierce? For life, thought Benham, there must be insecurity. . . . He had missed the track. . . . He was now in a second ravine. He was going downward, walking on silvery sand amidst great boulders, and now there was a new sound in the air--. It was the croaking of frogs. Ahead was a solitary gleam. He was approaching a jungle pool. . . . Suddenly the stillness was alive, in a panic uproar. “HONK! ” cried a great voice, and “HONK! ” There was a clatter of hoofs, a wild rush--a rush as it seemed towards him. Was he being charged? He backed against a rock. A great pale shape leaped by him, an antlered shape. It was a herd of big deer bolting suddenly out of the stillness. He heard the swish and smash of their retreat grow distant, disperse. He remained standing with his back to the rock. Slowly the strophe and antistrophe of frogs and goat-suckers resumed possession of his consciousness. But now some primitive instinct perhaps or some subconscious intimation of danger made him meticulously noiseless. He went on down a winding sound-deadening path of sand towards the drinking-place. He came to a wide white place that was almost level, and beyond it under clustering pale-stemmed trees shone the mirror surface of some ancient tank, and, sharp and black, a dog-like beast sat on its tail in the midst of this space, started convulsively and went slinking into the undergrowth. Benham paused for a moment and then walked out softly into the light, and, behold! as if it were to meet him, came a monster, a vast dark shape drawing itself lengthily out of the blackness, and stopped with a start as if it had been instantly changed to stone. It had stopped with one paw advanced. Its striped mask was light and dark grey in the moonlight, grey but faintly tinged with ruddiness; its mouth was a little open, its fangs and a pendant of viscous saliva shone vivid. Its great round-pupilled eyes regarded him stedfastly. At last the nightmare of Benham's childhood had come true, and he was face to face with a tiger, uncaged, uncontrolled. For some moments neither moved, neither the beast nor the man. They stood face to face, each perhaps with an equal astonishment, motionless and soundless, in that mad Indian moonlight that makes all things like a dream. Benham stood quite motionless, and body and mind had halted together. That confrontation had an interminableness that had nothing to do with the actual passage of time. Then some trickle of his previous thoughts stirred in the frozen quiet of his mind. He spoke hoarsely. “I am Man,” he said, and lifted a hand as he spoke. “The Thought of the world. ” His heart leapt within him as the tiger moved. But the great beast went sideways, gardant, only that its head was low, three noiseless instantaneous strides it made, and stood again watching him. “Man,” he said, in a voice that had no sound, and took a step forward. “Wough! ” With two bounds the monster had become a great grey streak that crackled and rustled in the shadows of the trees. And then it had vanished, become invisible and inaudible with a kind of instantaneousness. For some seconds or some minutes Benham stood rigid, fearlessly expectant, and then far away up the ravine he heard the deer repeat their cry of alarm, and understood with a new wisdom that the tiger had passed among them and was gone. . . . He walked on towards the deserted tank and now he was talking aloud. “I understand the jungle. I understand. . . . If a few men die here, what matter? There are worse deaths than being killed. . . . “What is this fool's trap of security? “Every time in my life that I have fled from security I have fled from death. . . . “Let men stew in their cities if they will. It is in the lonely places, in jungles and mountains, in snows and fires, in the still observatories and the silent laboratories, in those secret and dangerous places where life probes into life, it is there that the masters of the world, the lords of the beast, the rebel sons of Fate come to their own. . . . “You sleeping away there in the cities! Do you know what it means for you that I am here to-night? “Do you know what it means to you? “I am just one--just the precursor. “Presently, if you will not budge, those hot cities must be burnt about you. You must come out of them. . . . ” He wandered now uttering his thoughts as they came to him, and he saw no more living creatures because they fled and hid before the sound of his voice. He wandered until the moon, larger now and yellow tinged, was low between the black bars of the tree stems. And then it sank very suddenly behind a hilly spur and the light failed swiftly. He stumbled and went with difficulty. He could go no further among these rocks and ravines, and he sat down at the foot of a tree to wait for day. He sat very still indeed. A great stillness came over the world, a velvet silence that wrapped about him, as the velvet shadows wrapped about him. The corncrakes had ceased, all the sounds and stir of animal life had died away, the breeze had fallen. A drowsing comfort took possession of him. He grew more placid and more placid still. He was enormously content to find that fear had fled before him and was gone. He drifted into that state of mind when one thinks without ideas, when one's mind is like a starless sky, serene and empty. 12 Some hours later Benham found that the trees and rocks were growing visible again, and he saw a very bright star that he knew must be Lucifer rising amidst the black branches. He was sitting upon a rock at the foot of a slender-stemmed leafless tree. He had been asleep, and it was daybreak. Everything was coldly clear and colourless. He must have slept soundly. He heard a cock crow, and another answer--jungle fowl these must be, because there could be no village within earshot--and then far away and bringing back memories of terraced houses and ripe walled gardens, was the scream of peacocks. And some invisible bird was making a hollow beating sound among the trees near at hand. TUNK. . . . TUNK, and out of the dry grass came a twittering. There was a green light in the east that grew stronger, and the stars after their magnitudes were dissolving in the blue; only a few remained faintly visible. The sound of birds increased. Through the trees he saw towering up a great mauve thing like the back of a monster,--but that was nonsense, it was the crest of a steep hillside covered with woods of teak. He stood up and stretched himself, and wondered whether he had dreamed of a tiger. He tried to remember and retrace the course of his over-night wanderings. A flight of emerald parakeets tore screaming through the trees, and then far away uphill he heard the creaking of a cart. He followed the hint of a footmark, and went back up the glen slowly and thoughtfully. Presently he came to a familiar place, a group of trees, a sheet of water, and the ruins of an old embankment. It was the ancient tank of his overnight encounter. The pool of his dream?

With doubt still in his mind, he walked round its margin to the sandy level beyond, and cast about and sought intently, and at last found, and then found clearly, imposed upon the tracks of several sorts of deer and the footprints of many biggish birds, first the great spoor of the tiger and then his own. Here the beast had halted, and here it had leapt aside. Here his own footmarks stopped. Here his heels had come together. It had been no dream. There was a white mist upon the water of the old tank like the bloom upon a plum, and the trees about it seemed smaller and the sand-space wider and rougher than they had seemed in the moonshine. Then the ground had looked like a floor of frosted silver. And thence he went on upward through the fresh morning, until just as the east grew red with sunrise, he reached the cart-track from which he had strayed overnight. It was, he found, a longer way back to the camp than he remembered it to be. Perhaps he had struck the path further along. It curved about and went up and down and crossed three ravines. At last he came to that trampled place of littered white blossom under great trees where he had seen the bears. The sunlight went before him in a sheaf of golden spears, and his shadow, that was at first limitless, crept towards his feet. The dew had gone from the dead grass and the sand was hot to his dry boots before he came back into the open space about the great banyan and the tents. And Kepple, refreshed by a night's rest and coffee, was wondering loudly where the devil he had gone. THE STORY CHAPTER THE FIRST ~~ THE BOY GROWS UP 1 Benham was the son of a schoolmaster. His father was assistant first at Cheltenham, and subsequently at Minchinghampton, and then he became head and later on sole proprietor of Martindale House, a high-class preparatory school at Seagate. He was extremely successful for some years, as success goes in the scholastic profession, and then disaster overtook him in the shape of a divorce. His wife, William Porphyry's mother, made the acquaintance of a rich young man named Nolan, who was recuperating at Seagate from the sequelae of snake-bite, malaria, and a gun accident in Brazil. She ran away with him, and she was divorced. She was, however, unable to marry him because he died at Wiesbaden only three days after the Reverend Harold Benham obtained his decree absolute. Instead, therefore, being a woman of great spirit, enterprise and sweetness, she married Godfrey Marayne, afterwards Sir Godfrey Marayne, the great London surgeon. Nolan was a dark, rather melancholy and sentimental young man, and he left about a third of his very large fortune entirely to Mrs. Benham and the rest to her in trust for her son, whom he deemed himself to have injured. With this and a husband already distinguished, she returned presently to London, and was on the whole fairly well received there. It was upon the reverend gentleman at Seagate that the brunt of this divorce fell. There is perhaps a certain injustice in the fact that a schoolmaster who has lost his wife should also lose the more valuable proportion of his pupils, but the tone of thought in England is against any association of a schoolmaster with matrimonial irregularity. And also Mr. Benham remarried. It would certainly have been better for him if he could have produced a sister. His school declined and his efforts to resuscitate it only hastened its decay. Conceiving that he could now only appeal to the broader-minded, more progressive type of parent, he became an educational reformer, and wrote upon modernizing the curriculum with increasing frequency to the TIMES. He expended a considerable fraction of his dwindling capital upon a science laboratory and a fives court; he added a London Bachelor of Science with a Teaching Diploma to the school staff, and a library of about a thousand volumes, including the Hundred Best Books as selected by the late Lord Avebury, to the school equipment. None of these things did anything but enhance the suspicion of laxity his wife's escapade had created in the limited opulent and discreet class to which his establishment appealed. One boy who, under the influence of the Hundred Best Books, had quoted the ZEND-AVESTA to an irascible but influential grandfather, was withdrawn without notice or compensation in the middle of the term. It intensifies the tragedy of the Reverend Harold Benham's failure that in no essential respect did his school depart from the pattern of all other properly-conducted preparatory schools. In appearance he was near the average of scholastic English gentlemen. He displayed a manifest handsomeness somewhat weakened by disregard and disuse, a large moustache and a narrow high forehead. His rather tired brown eyes were magnified by glasses. He was an active man in unimportant things, with a love for the phrase “ship-shape,” and he played cricket better than any one else on the staff. He walked in wide strides, and would sometimes use the tail of his gown on the blackboard. Like so many clergymen and schoolmasters, he had early distrusted his natural impulse in conversation, and had adopted the defensive precaution of a rather formal and sonorous speech, which habit had made a part of him. His general effect was of one who is earnestly keeping up things that might otherwise give way, keeping them up by act and voice, keeping up an atmosphere of vigour and success in a school that was only too manifestly attenuated, keeping up a pretentious economy of administration in a school that must not be too manifestly impoverished, keeping up a claim to be in the scientific van and rather a flutterer of dovecots--with its method of manual training for example--keeping up ESPRIT DE CORPS and the manliness of himself and every one about him, keeping up his affection for his faithful second wife and his complete forgetfulness of and indifference to that spirit of distracting impulse and insubordination away there in London, who had once been his delight and insurmountable difficulty. “After my visits to her,” wrote Benham, “he would show by a hundred little expressions and poses and acts how intensely he wasn't noting that anything of the sort had occurred. ” But one thing that from the outset the father seemed to have failed to keep up thoroughly was his intention to mould and dominate his son. The advent of his boy had been a tremendous event in the reverend gentleman's life. It is not improbable that his disposition to monopolize the pride of this event contributed to the ultimate disruption of his family. It left so few initiatives within the home to his wife. He had been an early victim to that wave of philoprogenitive and educational enthusiasm which distinguished the closing decade of the nineteenth century. He was full of plans in those days for the education of his boy, and the thought of the youngster played a large part in the series of complicated emotional crises with which he celebrated the departure of his wife, crises in which a number of old school and college friends very generously assisted--spending weekends at Seagate for this purpose, and mingling tobacco, impassioned handclasps and suchlike consolation with much patient sympathetic listening to his carefully balanced analysis of his feelings. He declared that his son was now his one living purpose in life, and he sketched out a scheme of moral and intellectual training that he subsequently embodied in five very stimulating and intimate articles for the SCHOOL WORLD, but never put into more than partial operation. “I have read my father's articles upon this subject,” wrote Benham, “and I am still perplexed to measure just what I owe to him. Did he ever attempt this moral training he contemplated so freely? I don't think he did. I know now, I knew then, that he had something in his mind. . . . There were one or two special walks we had together, he invited me to accompany him with a certain portentousness, and we would go out pregnantly making superficial remarks about the school cricket and return, discussing botany, with nothing said. “His heart failed him. “Once or twice, too, he seemed to be reaching out at me from the school pulpit. “I think that my father did manage to convey to me his belief that there were these fine things, honour, high aims, nobilities. If I did not get this belief from him then I do not know how I got it. But it was as if he hinted at a treasure that had got very dusty in an attic, a treasure which he hadn't himself been able to spend. . . . ” The father who had intended to mould his son ended by watching him grow, not always with sympathy or understanding. He was an overworked man assailed by many futile anxieties. One sees him striding about the establishment with his gown streaming out behind him urging on the groundsman or the gardener, or dignified, expounding the particular advantages of Seagate to enquiring parents, one sees him unnaturally cheerful and facetious at the midday dinner table, one imagines him keeping up high aspirations in a rather too hastily scribbled sermon in the school pulpit, or keeping up an enthusiasm for beautiful language in a badly-prepared lesson on Virgil, or expressing unreal indignation and unjustifiably exalted sentiments to evil doers, and one realizes his disadvantage against the quiet youngster whose retentive memory was storing up all these impressions for an ultimate judgment, and one understands, too, a certain relief that mingled with his undeniable emotion when at last the time came for young Benham, “the one living purpose” of his life, to be off to Minchinghampton and the next step in the mysterious ascent of the English educational system. Three times at least, and with an increased interval, the father wrote fine fatherly letters that would have stood the test of publication. Then his communications became comparatively hurried and matter-of-fact. His boy's return home for the holidays was always rather a stirring time for his private feelings, but he became more and more inexpressive. He would sometimes lay a hand on those growing shoulders and then withdraw it. They felt braced-up shoulders, stiffly inflexible or--they would wince. And when one has let the habit of indefinite feelings grow upon one, what is there left to say? If one did say anything one might be asked questions. . . . One or two of the long vacations they spent abroad together. The last of these occasions followed Benham's convalescence at Montana and his struggle with the Bisse; the two went to Zermatt and did several peaks and crossed the Theodule, and it was clear that their joint expeditions were a strain upon both of them. The father thought the son reckless, unskilful, and impatient; the son found the father's insistence upon guides, ropes, precautions, the recognized way, the highest point and back again before you get a chill, and talk about it sagely but very, very modestly over pipes, tiresome. He wanted to wander in deserts of ice and see over the mountains, and discover what it is to be benighted on a precipice. And gradually he was becoming familiar with his father's repertory of Greek quotations. There was no breach between them, but each knew that holiday was the last they would ever spend together. . . . The court had given the custody of young William Porphyry into his father's hands, but by a generous concession it was arranged that his mother should have him to see her for an hour or so five times a year. The Nolan legacy, however, coming upon the top of this, introduced a peculiar complication that provided much work for tactful intermediaries, and gave great and increasing scope for painful delicacies on the part of Mr. Benham as the boy grew up. “I see,” said the father over his study pipe and with his glasses fixed on remote distances above the head of the current sympathizer, “I see more and more clearly that the tale of my sacrifices is not yet at an end. . . . In many respects he is like her. . . . Quick. Too quick. . . . He must choose. But I know his choice. Yes, yes,--I'm not blind. She's worked upon him. . . . I have done what I could to bring out the manhood in him. Perhaps it will bear the strain. . . . It will be a wrench, old man--God knows. ” He did his very best to make it a wrench. 2 Benham's mother, whom he saw quarterly and also on the first of May, because it was her birthday, touched and coloured his imagination far more than his father did. She was now Lady Marayne, and a prominent, successful, and happy little lady. Her dereliction had been forgiven quite soon, and whatever whisper of it remained was very completely forgotten during the brief period of moral kindliness which followed the accession of King Edward the Seventh. It no doubt contributed to her social reinstatement that her former husband was entirely devoid of social importance, while, on the other hand, Sir Godfrey Marayne's temporary monopoly of the caecal operation which became so fashionable in the last decade of Queen Victoria's reign as to be practically epidemic, created a strong feeling in her favour. She was blue-eyed and very delicately complexioned, quick-moving, witty, given to little storms of clean enthusiasm; she loved handsome things, brave things, successful things, and the respect and affection of all the world. She did quite what she liked upon impulse, and nobody ever thought ill of her. Her family were the Mantons of Blent, quite good west-country people. She had broken away from them before she was twenty to marry Benham, whom she had idealized at a tennis party. He had talked of his work and she had seen it in a flash, the noblest work in the world, him at his daily divine toil and herself a Madonna surrounded by a troupe of Blessed Boys--all of good family, some of quite the best. For a time she had kept it up even more than he had, and then Nolan had distracted her with a realization of the heroism that goes to the ends of the earth. She became sick with desire for the forests of Brazil, and the Pacific, and--a peak in Darien. Immediately the school was frowsty beyond endurance, and for the first time she let herself perceive how dreadfully a gentleman and a scholar can smell of pipes and tobacco. Only one course lay open to a woman of spirit. . . . For a year she did indeed live like a woman of spirit, and it was at Nolan's bedside that Marayne was first moved to admiration. She was plucky. All men love a plucky woman. Sir Godfrey Marayne smelt a good deal of antiseptic soap, but he talked in a way that amused her, and he trusted as well as adored her. She did what she liked with his money, her own money, and her son's trust money, and she did very well. From the earliest Benham's visits were to a gracious presence amidst wealthy surroundings. The transit from the moral blamelessness of Seagate had an entirely misleading effect of ascent. Their earlier encounters became rather misty in his memory; they occurred at various hotels in Seagate. Afterwards he would go, first taken by a governess, and later going alone, to Charing Cross, where he would be met, in earlier times by a maid and afterwards by a deferential manservant who called him “Sir,” and conveyed, sometimes in a hansom cab and later in a smart brougham, by Trafalgar Square, Lower Regent Street, Piccadilly, and streets of increasing wealth and sublimity to Sir Godfrey's house in Desborough Street. Very naturally he fell into thinking of these discreet and well-governed West End streets as a part of his mother's atmosphere. The house had a dignified portico, and always before he had got down to the pavement the door opened agreeably and a second respectful manservant stood ready. Then came the large hall, with its noiseless carpets and great Chinese jars, its lacquered cabinets and the wide staircase, and floating down the wide staircase, impatient to greet him, light and shining as a flower petal, sweet and welcoming, radiating a joyfulness as cool and clear as a dewy morning, came his mother. “WELL, little man, my son,” she would cry in her happy singing voice, “WELL? ” So he thought she must always be, but indeed these meetings meant very much to her, she dressed for them and staged them, she perceived the bright advantages of her rarity and she was quite determined to have her son when the time came to possess him. She kissed him but not oppressively, she caressed him cleverly; it was only on these rare occasions that he was ever kissed or caressed, and she talked to his shy boyishness until it felt a more spirited variety of manhood. “What have you been doing? ” she asked, “since I saw you last. ” She never said he had grown, but she told him he looked tall; and though the tea was a marvellous display it was never an obtrusive tea, it wasn't poked at a fellow; a various plenty flowed well within reach of one's arm, like an agreeable accompaniment to their conversation. “What have you done? All sorts of brave things? Do you swim now? I can swim. Oh! I can swim half a mile. Some day we will swim races together. Why not? And you ride? . . . “The horse bolted--and you stuck on? Did you squeak? I stick on, but I HAVE to squeak. But you--of course, No! you mustn't. I'm just a little woman. And I ride big horses. . . . ” And for the end she had invented a characteristic little ceremony. She would stand up in front of him and put her hands on his shoulders and look into his face. “Clean eyes? ” she would say, “--still? ” Then she would take his ears in her little firm hands and kiss very methodically his eyes and his forehead and his cheeks and at last his lips. Her own eyes would suddenly brim bright with tears. “GO,” she would say. That was the end. It seemed to Benham as though he was being let down out of a sunlit fairyland to this grey world again. 3 The contrast between Lady Marayne's pretty amenities and the good woman at Seagate who urged herself almost hourly to forget that William Porphyry was not her own son, was entirely unfair. The second Mrs. Benham's conscientious spirit and a certain handsome ability about her fitted her far more than her predecessor for the onerous duties of a schoolmaster's wife, but whatever natural buoyancy she possessed was outweighed by an irrepressible conviction derived from an episcopal grandparent that the remarriage of divorced persons is sinful, and by a secret but well-founded doubt whether her husband loved her with a truly romantic passion. She might perhaps have borne either of these troubles singly, but the two crushed her spirit. Her temperament was not one that goes out to meet happiness. She had reluctant affections and suspected rather than welcomed the facility of other people's. Her susceptibility to disagreeable impressions was however very ample, and life was fenced about with protections for her “feelings. ” It filled young Benham with inexpressible indignations that his sweet own mother, so gay, so brightly cheerful that even her tears were stars, was never to be mentioned in his stepmother's presence, and it was not until he had fully come to years of reflection that he began to realize with what honesty, kindness and patience this naturally not very happy lady had nursed, protected, mended for and generally mothered him. 4 As Benham grew to look manly and bear himself with pride, his mother's affection for him blossomed into a passion. She made him come down to London from Cambridge as often as she could; she went about with him; she made him squire her to theatres and take her out to dinners and sup with her at the Carlton, and in the summer she had him with her at Chexington Manor, the Hertfordshire house Sir Godfrey had given her. And always when they parted she looked into his eyes to see if they were still clean--whatever she meant by that--and she kissed his forehead and cheeks and eyes and lips. She began to make schemes for his career, she contrived introductions she judged would be useful to him later. Everybody found the relationship charming. Some of the more conscientious people, it is true, pretended to think that the Reverend Harold Benham was a first husband and long since dead, but that was all. As a matter of fact, in his increasingly futile way he wasn't, either at Seagate or in the Educational Supplement of the TIMES. But even the most conscientious of us are not obliged to go to Seagate or read the Educational Supplement of the TIMES. Lady Marayne's plans for her son's future varied very pleasantly. She was an industrious reader of biographies, and more particularly of the large fair biographies of the recently contemporary; they mentioned people she knew, they recalled scenes, each sowed its imaginative crop upon her mind, a crop that flourished and flowered until a newer growth came to oust it. She saw her son a diplomat, a prancing pro-consul, an empire builder, a trusted friend of the august, the bold leader of new movements, the saviour of ancient institutions, the youngest, brightest, modernest of prime ministers--or a tremendously popular poet. As a rule she saw him unmarried--with a wonderful little mother at his elbow. Sometimes in romantic flashes he was adored by German princesses or eloped with Russian grand-duchesses! But such fancies were HORS D'OEUVRE. The modern biography deals with the career. Every project was bright, every project had GO--tremendous go. And they all demanded a hero, debonnaire and balanced. And Benham, as she began to perceive, wasn't balanced. Something of his father had crept into him, a touch of moral stiffness. She knew the flavour of that so well. It was a stumbling, an elaboration, a spoil-sport and weakness. She tried not to admit to herself that even in the faintest degree it was there. But it was there. “Tell me all that you are doing NOW,” she said to him one afternoon when she had got him to herself during his first visit to Chexington Manor. “How do you like Cambridge? Are you making friends? Have you joined that thing--the Union, is it? --and delivered your maiden speech? If you're for politics, Poff, that's your game. Have you begun it? ” She lay among splashes of sunshine on the red cushions in the punt, a little curled-up figure of white, with her sweet pale animated face warmed by the reflection of her red sunshade, and her eyes like little friendly heavens. And he, lean, and unconsciously graceful, sat at her feet and admired her beyond measure, and rejoiced that now at last they were going to be ever so much together, and doubted if it would be possible ever to love any other woman so much as he did her. He tried to tell her of Cambridge and his friends and the undergraduate life he was leading, but he found it difficult. All sorts of things that seemed right and good at Trinity seemed out of drawing in the peculiar atmosphere she created about her. All sorts of clumsiness and youthfulness in himself and his associates he felt she wouldn't accept, couldn't accept, that it would be wrong of her to accept. Before they could come before her they must wear a bravery. He couldn't, for instance, tell her how Billy Prothero, renouncing vanity and all social pretension, had worn a straw hat into November and the last stages of decay, and how it had been burnt by a special commission ceremonially in the great court. He couldn't convey to her the long sessions of beer and tobacco and high thinking that went on in Prothero's rooms into the small hours. A certain Gothic greyness and flatness and muddiness through which the Cambridge spirit struggles to its destiny, he concealed from her. What remained to tell was--attenuated. He could not romance. So she tried to fill in his jejune outlines. She tried to inspire a son who seemed most unaccountably up to nothing. “You must make good friends,” she said. “Isn't young Lord Breeze at your college? His mother the other day told me he was. And Sir Freddy Quenton's boy. And there are both the young Baptons at Cambridge. ” He knew one of the Baptons. “Poff,” she said suddenly, “has it ever occurred to you what you are going to do afterwards. Do you know you are going to be quite well off? ” Benham looked up with a faint embarrassment. “My father said something. He was rather vague. It wasn't his affair--that kind of thing. ” “You will be quite well off,” she repeated, without any complicating particulars. “You will be so well off that it will be possible for you to do anything almost that you like in the world. Nothing will tie you. Nothing. . . . ” “But--HOW well off? ” “You will have several thousands a year. ” “Thousands? ” “Yes. Why not? ” “But--Mother, this is rather astounding. . . . Does this mean there are estates somewhere, responsibilities? ” “It is just money. Investments. ” “You know, I've imagined--. I've thought always I should have to DO something. ” “You MUST do something, Poff. But it needn't be for a living. The world is yours without that. And so you see you've got to make plans. You've got to know the sort of people who'll have things in their hands. You've got to keep out of--holes and corners. You've got to think of Parliament and abroad. There's the army, there's diplomacy. There's the Empire. You can be a Cecil Rhodes if you like. You can be a Winston. . . . ” 5 Perhaps it was only the innate eagerness of Lady Marayne which made her feel disappointed in her son's outlook upon life. He did not choose among his glittering possibilities, he did not say what he was going to be, proconsul, ambassador, statesman, for days. And he talked VAGUELY of wanting to do something fine, but all in a fog. A boy of nearly nineteen ought to have at least the beginnings of SAVOIR FAIRE. Was he in the right set? Was he indeed in the right college? Trinity, by his account, seemed a huge featureless place--and might he not conceivably be LOST in it? In those big crowds one had to insist upon oneself. Poff never insisted upon himself--except quite at the wrong moment. And there was this Billy Prothero. BILLY! Like a goat or something. People called William don't get their Christian name insisted upon unless they are vulnerable somewhere. Any form of William stamps a weakness, Willie, Willy, Will, Billy, Bill; it's a fearful handle for one's friends. At any rate Poff had escaped that. But this Prothero! “But who IS this Billy Prothero? ” she asked one evening in the walled garden. “He was at Minchinghampton. ” “But who IS he? Who is his father? Where does he come from? ” Benham sought in his mind for a space. “I don't know,” he said at last. Billy had always been rather reticent about his people. She demanded descriptions. She demanded an account of Billy's furniture, Billy's clothes, Billy's form of exercise. It dawned upon Benham that for some inexplicable reason she was hostile to Billy. It was like the unmasking of an ambuscade. He had talked a lot about Prothero's ideas and the discussions of social reform and social service that went on in his rooms, for Billy read at unknown times, and was open at all hours to any argumentative caller. To Lady Marayne all ideas were obnoxious, a form of fogging; all ideas, she held, were queer ideas. “And does he call himself a Socialist? ” she asked. “I THOUGHT he would. ” “Poff,” she cried suddenly, “you're not a SOCIALIST? ” “Such a vague term. ” “But these friends of yours--they seem to be ALL Socialists. Red ties and everything complete. ” “They have ideas,” he evaded. He tried to express it better. “They give one something to take hold of. ” She sat up stiffly on the garden-seat. She lifted her finger at him, very seriously. “I hope,” she said with all her heart, “that you will have nothing to do with such ideas. Nothing. SOCIALISM! ” “They make a case. ” “Pooh! Any one can make a case. ” “But--” “There's no sense in them. What is the good of talking about upsetting everything? Just disorder. How can one do anything then? You mustn't. You mustn't. No. It's nonsense, little Poff. It's absurd. And you may spoil so much. . . . I HATE the way you talk of it. . . . As if it wasn't all--absolutely--RUBBISH. . . . ” She was earnest almost to the intonation of tears. Why couldn't her son go straight for his ends, clear tangible ends, as she had always done? This thinking about everything! She had never thought about anything in all her life for more than half an hour--and it had always turned out remarkably well. Benham felt baffled. There was a pause. How on earth could he go on telling her his ideas if this was how they were to be taken? “I wish sometimes,” his mother said abruptly, with an unusually sharp note in her voice, “that you wouldn't look quite so like your father. ” “But I'm NOT like my father! ” said Benham puzzled. “No,” she insisted, and with an air of appealing to his soberer reason, “so why should you go LOOKING like him? That CONCERNED expression. . . . ” She jumped to her feet. “Poff,” she said, “I want to go and see the evening primroses pop. You and I are talking nonsense. THEY don't have ideas anyhow. They just pop--as God meant them to do. What stupid things we human beings are! ” Her philosophical moments were perhaps the most baffling of all. 6 Billy Prothero became the symbol in the mind of Lady Marayne for all that disappointed her in Benham. He had to become the symbol, because she could not think of complicated or abstract things, she had to make things personal, and he was the only personality available. She fretted over his existence for some days therefore (once she awakened and thought about him in the night), and then suddenly she determined to grasp her nettle. She decided to seize and obliterate this Prothero. He must come to Chexington and be thoroughly and conclusively led on, examined, ransacked, shown up, and disposed of for ever. At once. She was not quite clear how she meant to do this, but she was quite resolved that it had to be done. Anything is better than inaction. There was a little difficulty about dates and engagements, but he came, and through the season of expectation Benham, who was now for the first time in contact with the feminine nature, was delighted at the apparent change to cordiality. So that he talked of Billy to his mother much more than he had ever done before. Billy had been his particular friend at Minchinghampton, at least during the closing two years of his school life. Billy had fallen into friendship with Benham, as some of us fall in love, quite suddenly, when he saw Benham get down from the fence and be sick after his encounter with the bull. Already Billy was excited by admiration, but it was the incongruity of the sickness conquered him. He went back to the school with his hands more than usually in his pockets, and no eyes for anything but this remarkable strung-up fellow-creature. He felt he had never observed Benham before, and he was astonished that he had not done so. Billy Prothero was a sturdy sort of boy, generously wanting in good looks. His hair was rough, and his complexion muddy, and he walked about with his hands in his pockets, long flexible lips protruded in a whistle, and a rather shapeless nose well up to show he didn't care. Providence had sought to console him by giving him a keen eye for the absurdity of other people. He had a suggestive tongue, and he professed and practised cowardice to the scandal of all his acquaintances. He was said never to wash behind his ears, but this report wronged him. There had been a time when he did not do so, but his mother had won him to a promise, and now that operation was often the sum of his simple hasty toilet. His desire to associate himself with Benham was so strong that it triumphed over a defensive reserve. It enabled him to detect accessible moments, do inobtrusive friendly services, and above all amuse his quarry. He not only amused Benham, he stimulated him. They came to do quite a number of things together. In the language of schoolboy stories they became “inseparables. ” Prothero's first desire, so soon as they were on a footing that enabled him to formulate desires, was to know exactly what Benham thought he was up to in crossing a field with a bull in it instead of going round, and by the time he began to understand that, he had conceived an affection for him that was to last a lifetime. “I wasn't going to be bullied by a beast,” said Benham. “Suppose it had been an elephant? ” Prothero cried. . . . “A mad elephant? . . . A pack of wolves? ” Benham was too honest not to see that he was entangled. “Well, suppose in YOUR case it had been a wild cat? . . . A fierce mastiff? . . . A mastiff? . . . A terrier? . . . A lap dog? ” “Yes, but my case is that there are limits. ” Benham was impatient at the idea of limits. With a faintly malicious pleasure Prothero lugged him back to that idea. “We both admit there are limits,” Prothero concluded. “But between the absolutely impossible and the altogether possible there's the region of risk. You think a man ought to take that risk--” He reflected. “I think--no--I think NOT. ” “If he feels afraid,” cried Benham, seeing his one point. “If he feels afraid. Then he ought to take it. . . . ” After a digestive interval, Prothero asked, “WHY? Why should he? ” The discussion of that momentous question, that Why? which Benham perhaps might never have dared ask himself, and which Prothero perhaps might never have attempted to answer if it had not been for the clash of their minds, was the chief topic of their conversation for many months. From Why be brave? it spread readily enough to Why be honest? Why be clean? --all the great whys of life. . . . Because one believes. . . . But why believe it? Left to himself Benham would have felt the mere asking of this question was a thing ignoble, not to be tolerated. It was, as it were, treason to nobility. But Prothero put it one afternoon in a way that permitted no high dismissal of their doubts. “You can't build your honour on fudge, Benham. Like committing sacrilege--in order to buy a cloth for the altar. ” By that Benham was slipped from the recognized code and launched upon speculations which became the magnificent research. It was not only in complexion and stature and ways of thinking that Billy and Benham contrasted. Benham inclined a little to eloquence, he liked very clean hands, he had a dread of ridiculous outlines. Prothero lapsed readily into ostentatious slovenliness, when his hands were dirty he pitied them sooner than scrubbed them, he would have worn an overcoat with one tail torn off rather than have gone cold. Moreover, Prothero had an earthy liking for animals, he could stroke and tickle strange cats until they wanted to leave father and mother and all earthly possessions and follow after him, and he mortgaged a term's pocket money and bought and kept a small terrier in the school house against all law and tradition, under the baseless pretence that it was a stray animal of unknown origin. Benham, on the other hand, was shy with small animals and faintly hostile to big ones. Beasts he thought were just beasts. And Prothero had a gift for caricature, while Benham's aptitude was for music. It was Prothero's eyes and pencil that first directed Benham to the poor indolences and evasions and insincerities of the masters. It was Prothero's wicked pictures that made him see the shrivelled absurdity of the vulgar theology.

But it was Benham who stood between Prothero and that rather coarsely conceived epicureanism that seemed his logical destiny. When quite early in their Cambridge days Prothero's revolt against foppery reached a nadir of personal neglect, and two philanthropists from the rooms below him, goaded beyond the normal tolerance of Trinity, and assisted by two sportsmen from Trinity Hall, burnt his misshapen straw hat (after partly filling it with gunpowder and iron filings) and sought to duck him in the fountain in the court, it was Benham, in a state between distress and madness, and armed with a horn-handled cane of exceptional size, who intervened, turned the business into a blend of wrangle and scuffle, introduced the degrading topic of duelling into a simple wholesome rag of four against one, carried him off under the cloud of horror created by this impropriety and so saved him, still only slightly wetted, not only from this indignity but from the experiment in rationalism that had provoked it. Because Benham made it perfectly clear what he had thought and felt about this hat. Such was the illuminating young man whom Lady Marayne decided to invite to Chexington, into the neighbourhood of herself, Sir Godfrey, and her circle of friends. 7 He was quite anxious to satisfy the requirements of Benham's people and to do his friend credit. He was still in the phase of being a penitent pig, and he inquired carefully into the needs and duties of a summer guest in a country house. He knew it was quite a considerable country house, and that Sir Godfrey wasn't Benham's father, but like most people, he was persuaded that Lady Marayne had divorced the parental Benham. He arrived dressed very neatly in a brown suit that had only one fault, it had not the remotest suggestion of having been made for him. It fitted his body fairly well, it did annex his body with only a few slight incompatibilities, but it repudiated his hands and face. He had a conspicuously old Gladstone bag and a conspicuously new despatch case, and he had forgotten black ties and dress socks and a hair brush. He arrived in the late afternoon, was met by Benham, in tennis flannels, looking smartened up and a little unfamiliar, and taken off in a spirited dog-cart driven by a typical groom. He met his host and hostess at dinner. Sir Godfrey was a rationalist and a residuum. Very much of him, too much perhaps, had gone into the acquirement and perfect performance of the caecal operation; the man one met in the social world was what was left over. It had the effect of being quiet, but in its unobtrusive way knobby. He had a knobby brow, with an air about it of having recently been intent, and his conversation was curiously spotted with little knobby arrested anecdotes. If any one of any distinction was named, he would reflect and say, “Of course,--ah, yes, I know him, I know him. Yes, I did him a little service--in '96. ” And something in his manner would suggest a satisfaction, or a dissatisfaction with confidential mysteries. He welcomed Billy Prothero in a colourless manner, and made conversation about Cambridge. He had known one or two of the higher dons. One he had done at Cambridge quite recently. “The inns are better than they are at Oxford, which is not saying very much, but the place struck me as being changed. The men seemed younger. . . . ” The burden of the conversation fell upon Lady Marayne. She looked extraordinarily like a flower to Billy, a little diamond buckle on a black velvet band glittered between the two masses of butter-coloured hair that flowed back from her forehead, her head was poised on the prettiest neck conceivable, and her shapely little shoulders and her shapely little arms came decidedly but pleasantly out of a softness and sparkle of white and silver and old rose. She talked what sounded like innocent commonplaces a little spiced by whim, though indeed each remark had an exploratory quality, and her soft blue eyes rested ever and again upon Billy's white tie. It seemed she did so by the merest inadvertency, but it made the young man wish he had after all borrowed a black one from Benham. But the manservant who had put his things out had put it out, and he hadn't been quite sure. Also she noted all the little things he did with fork and spoon and glass. She gave him an unusual sense of being brightly, accurately and completely visible. Chexington, it seemed to Billy, was done with a large and costly and easy completeness. The table with its silver and flowers was much more beautifully done than any table he had sat at before, and in the dimness beyond the brightness there were two men to wait on the four of them. The old grey butler was really wonderfully good. . . . “You shoot, Mr. Prothero? ” “You hunt, Mr. Prothero? ” “You know Scotland well, Mr. Prothero? ” These questions disturbed Prothero. He did not shoot, he did not hunt, he did not go to Scotland for the grouse, he did not belong, and Lady Marayne ought to have seen that he did not belong to the class that does these things. “You ride much, Mr. Prothero? ” Billy conceived a suspicion that these innocent inquiries were designed to emphasize a contrast in his social quality. But he could not be sure. One never could be sure with Lady Marayne. It might be just that she did not understand the sort of man he was. And in that case ought he to maintain the smooth social surface unbroken by pretending as far as possible to be this kind of person, or ought he to make a sudden gap in it by telling his realities. He evaded the shooting question anyhow. He left it open for Lady Marayne and the venerable butler and Sir Godfrey and every one to suppose he just happened to be the sort of gentleman of leisure who doesn't shoot. He disavowed hunting, he made it appear he travelled when he travelled in directions other than Scotland. But the fourth question brought him to bay. He regarded his questioner with his small rufous eye. “I have never been across a horse in my life, Lady Marayne. ” “Tut, tut,” said Sir Godfrey. “Why! --it's the best of exercise. Every man ought to ride. Good for the health. Keeps him fit. Prevents lodgments. Most trouble due to lodgments. ” “I've never had a chance of riding. And I think I'm afraid of horses. ” “That's only an excuse,” said Lady Marayne. “Everybody's afraid of horses and nobody's really afraid of horses. ” “But I'm not used to horses. You see--I live on my mother. And she can't afford to keep a stable. ” His hostess did not see his expression of discomfort. Her pretty eyes were intent upon the peas with which she was being served. “Does your mother live in the country? ” she asked, and took her peas with fastidious exactness. Prothero coloured brightly. “She lives in London. ” “All the year? ” “All the year. ” “But isn't it dreadfully hot in town in the summer? ” Prothero had an uncomfortable sense of being very red in the face. This kept him red. “We're suburban people,” he said. “But I thought--isn't there the seaside? ” “My mother has a business,” said Prothero, redder than ever. “O-oh! ” said Lady Marayne. “What fun that must be for her? ” “It's a real business, and she has to live by it. Sometimes it's a worry. ” “But a business of her own! ” She surveyed the confusion of his visage with a sweet intelligence. “Is it an amusing sort of business, Mr. Prothero? ” Prothero looked mulish. “My mother is a dressmaker,” he said. “In Brixton. She doesn't do particularly badly--or well. I live on my scholarship. I have lived on scholarships since I was thirteen. And you see, Lady Marayne, Brixton is a poor hunting country. ” Lady Marayne felt she had unmasked Prothero almost indecently. Whatever happened there must be no pause. There must be no sign of a hitch. “But it's good at tennis,” she said. “You DO play tennis, Mr. Prothero? ” “I--I gesticulate,” said Prothero. Lady Marayne, still in flight from that pause, went off at a tangent. “Poff, my dear,” she said, “I've had a diving-board put at the deep end of the pond. ” The remark hung unanswered for a moment. The transition had been too quick for Benham's state of mind. “Do you swim, Mr. Prothero? ” the lady asked, though a moment before she had determined that she would never ask him a question again. But this time it was a lucky question. “Prothero mopped up the lot of us at Minchinghampton with his diving and swimming,” Benham explained, and the tension was relaxed. Lady Marayne spoke of her own swimming, and became daring and amusing at her difficulties with local feeling when first she swam in the pond. The high road ran along the far side of the pond--“And it didn't wear a hedge or anything,” said Lady Marayne. “That was what they didn't quite like. Swimming in an undraped pond. . . . ” Prothero had been examined enough. Now he must be entertained. She told stories about the village people in her brightest manner. The third story she regretted as soon as she was fairly launched upon it; it was how she had interviewed the village dressmaker, when Sir Godfrey insisted upon her supporting local industries. It was very amusing but technical. The devil had put it into her head. She had to go through with it. She infused an extreme innocence into her eyes and fixed them on Prothero, although she felt a certain deepening pinkness in her cheeks was betraying her, and she did not look at Benham until her unhappy, but otherwise quite amusing anecdote, was dead and gone and safely buried under another. . . . But people ought not to go about having dressmakers for mothers. . . . And coming into other people's houses and influencing their sons. . . . 8 That night when everything was over Billy sat at the writing-table of his sumptuous bedroom--the bed was gilt wood, the curtains of the three great windows were tremendous, and there was a cheval glass that showed the full length of him and seemed to look over his head for more,--and meditated upon this visit of his. It was more than he had been prepared for. It was going to be a great strain. The sleek young manservant in an alpaca jacket, who said “Sir” whenever you looked at him, and who had seized upon and unpacked Billy's most private Gladstone bag without even asking if he might do so, and put away and displayed Billy's things in a way that struck Billy as faintly ironical, was unexpected. And it was unexpected that the brown suit, with its pockets stuffed with Billy's personal and confidential sundries, had vanished. And apparently a bath in a bathroom far down the corridor was prescribed for him in the morning; he hadn't thought of a dressing-gown. And after one had dressed, what did one do? Did one go down and wander about the house looking for the breakfast-room or wait for a gong? Would Sir Godfrey read Family Prayers? And afterwards did one go out or hang about to be entertained? He knew now quite clearly that those wicked blue eyes would mark his every slip. She did not like him. She did not like him, he supposed, because he was common stuff. He didn't play up to her world and her. He was a discord in this rich, cleverly elaborate household. You could see it in the servants' attitudes. And he was committed to a week of this. Billy puffed out his cheeks to blow a sigh, and then decided to be angry and say “Damn! ” This way of living which made him uncomfortable was clearly an irrational and objectionable way of living. It was, in a cumbersome way, luxurious. But the waste of life of it, the servants, the observances, all concentrated on the mere detail of existence? There came a rap at the door. Benham appeared, wearing an expensive-looking dressing-jacket which Lady Marayne had bought for him. He asked if he might talk for a bit and smoke. He sat down in a capacious chintz-covered easy chair beside Prothero, lit a cigarette, and came to the point after only a trivial hesitation. “Prothero,” he said, “you know what my father is. ” “I thought he ran a preparatory school. ” There was the profoundest resentment in Prothero's voice. “And, all the same, I'm going to be a rich man. ” “I don't understand,” said Prothero, without any shadow of congratulation. Benham told Prothero as much as his mother had conveyed to him of the resources of his wealth. Her version had been adapted to his tender years and the delicacies of her position. The departed Nolan had become an eccentric godfather. Benham's manner was apologetic, and he made it clear that only recently had these facts come to him. He had never suspected that he had had this eccentric godfather. It altered the outlook tremendously. It was one of the reasons that made Benham glad to have Prothero there, one wanted a man of one's own age, who understood things a little, to try over one's new ideas. Prothero listened with an unamiable expression. “What would you do, Prothero, if you found yourself saddled with some thousands a year? ” “Godfathers don't grow in Brixton,” said Prothero concisely. “Well, what am I to do, Prothero? ” “Does all THIS belong to you? ” “No, this is my mother's. ” “Godfather too? ” “I've not thought. . . . I suppose so. Or her own. ” Prothero meditated. “THIS life,” he said at last, “this large expensiveness--. . . ” He left his criticism unfinished. “I agree. It suits my mother somehow. I can't understand her living in any other way. But--for me. . . . ” “What can one do with several thousands a year? ” Prothero's interest in this question presently swamped his petty personal resentments. “I suppose,” he said, “one might have rather a lark with money like that. One would be free to go anywhere. To set all sorts of things going. . . . It's clear you can't sell all you have and give it to the poor. That is pauperization nowadays. You might run a tremendously revolutionary paper. A real upsetting paper. How many thousands is it? ” “I don't know. SOME. ” Prothero's interest was growing as he faced the possibilities. “I've dreamt of a paper,” he said, “a paper that should tell the brute truth about things. ” “I don't know that I'm particularly built to be a journalist,” Benham objected. “You're not,” said Billy. . . . “You might go into Parliament as a perfectly independent member. . . . Only you wouldn't get in. . . . ” “I'm not a speaker,” said Benham. “Of course,” said Billy, “if you don't decide on a game, you'll just go on like this. You'll fall into a groove, you'll--you'll hunt. You'll go to Scotland for the grouse. ” For the moment Prothero had no further suggestions. Benham waited for a second or so before he broached his own idea. “Why, first of all, at any rate, Billy, shouldn't one use one's money to make the best of oneself? To learn things that men without money and leisure find it difficult to learn? By an accident, however unjust it is, one is in the position of a leader and a privileged person. Why not do one's best to give value as that? ” “Benham, that's the thin end of aristocracy! ” “Why not? ” “I hate aristocracy. For you it means doing what you like. While you are energetic you will kick about and then you will come back to this. ” “That's one's own look-out,” said Benham, after reflection. “No, it's bound to happen. ” Benham retreated a little from the immediate question. “Well, we can't suddenly at a blow change the world. If it isn't to be plutocracy to-day it has to be aristocracy. ” Prothero frowned over this, and then he made a sweeping proposition. “YOU CANNOT HAVE ARISTOCRACY,” he said, “BECAUSE, YOU SEE--ALL MEN ARE RIDICULOUS. Democracy has to fight its way out from under plutocracy. There is nothing else to be done. ” “But a man in my position--? ” “It's a ridiculous position. You may try to escape being ridiculous. You won't succeed. ” It seemed to Benham for a moment as though Prothero had got to the bottom of the question, and then he perceived that he had only got to the bottom of himself. Benham was pacing the floor. He turned at the open window, held out a long forefinger, and uttered his countervailing faith. “Even if he is ridiculous, Prothero, a man may still be an aristocrat. A man may anyhow be as much of an aristocrat as he can be. ” Prothero reflected. “No,” he said, “it sounds all right, but it's wrong. I hate all these advantages and differences and distinctions. A man's a man. What you say sounds well, but it's the beginning of pretension, of pride--” He stopped short. “Better, pride than dishonour,” said Benham, “better the pretentious life than the sordid life. What else is there? ” “A life isn't necessarily sordid because it isn't pretentious,” said Prothero, his voice betraying a defensive disposition. “But a life with a large income MUST be sordid unless it makes some sort of attempt to be fine. . . . ” 9 By transitions that were as natural as they were complicated and untraceable Prothero found his visit to Chexington developing into a tangle of discussions that all ultimately resolved themselves into an antagonism of the democratic and the aristocratic idea. And his part was, he found, to be the exponent of the democratic idea. The next day he came down early, his talk with Benham still running through his head, and after a turn or so in the garden he was attracted to the front door by a sound of voices, and found Lady Marayne had been up still earlier and was dismounting from a large effective black horse. This extorted an unwilling admiration from him. She greeted him very pleasantly and made a kind of introduction of her steed. There had been trouble at a gate, he was a young horse and fidgeted at gates; the dispute was still bright in her. Benham she declared was still in bed. “Wait till I have a mount for him. ” She reappeared fitfully in the breakfast-room, and then he was left to Benham until just before lunch. They read and afterwards, as the summer day grew hot, they swam in the nude pond. She joined them in the water, splashing about in a costume of some elaboration and being very careful not to wet her hair. Then she came and sat with them on the seat under the big cedar and talked with them in a wrap that was pretty rather than prudish and entirely unmotherly. And she began a fresh attack upon him by asking him if he wasn't a Socialist and whether he didn't want to pull down Chexington and grow potatoes all over the park. This struck Prothero as an inadequate statement of the Socialist project and he made an unsuccessful attempt to get it amended. The engagement thus opened was renewed with great energy at lunch. Sir Godfrey had returned to London and the inmost aspect of his fellow-creatures, but the party of three was supplemented by a vague young lady from the village and an alert agent from the neighbouring Tentington estate who had intentions about a cottage. Lady Marayne insisted upon regarding Socialism as a proposal to reinaugurate the first French Revolution, as an inversion of society so that it would be bottom upward, as an attack upon rule, order, direction. “And what good are all these proposals? If you had the poor dear king beheaded, you'd only get a Napoleon. If you divided all the property up between everybody, you'd have rich and poor again in a year. ” Billy perceived no way of explaining away this version of his Socialism that would not involve uncivil contradictions--and nobody ever contradicted Lady Marayne. “But, Lady Marayne, don't you think there is a lot of disorder and injustice in the world? ” he protested. “There would be ever so much more if your Socialists had their way. ” “But still, don't you think--. . . ” It is unnecessary even to recapitulate these universal controversies of our time. The lunch-table and the dinner-table and the general talk of the house drifted more and more definitely at its own level in the same direction as the private talk of Prothero and Benham, towards the antagonism of the privileged few and the many, of the trained and traditioned against the natural and undisciplined, of aristocracy against democracy. At the week-end Sir Godfrey returned to bring fresh elements. He said that democracy was unscientific. “To deny aristocracy is to deny the existence of the fittest. It is on the existence of the fittest that progress depends. ” “But do our social conditions exalt the fittest? ” asked Prothero. “That is another question,” said Benham. “Exactly,” said Sir Godfrey. “That is another question. But speaking with some special knowledge, I should say that on the whole the people who are on the top of things OUGHT to be on the top of things. I agree with Aristotle that there is such a thing as a natural inferior. ” “So far as I can understand Mr. Prothero,” said Lady Marayne, “he thinks that all the inferiors are the superiors and all the superiors inferior. It's quite simple. . . . ” It made Prothero none the less indignant with this, that there was indeed a grain of truth in it. He hated superiors, he felt for inferiors. 10 At last came the hour of tipping. An embarrassed and miserable Prothero went slinking about the house distributing unexpected gold. It was stupid, it was damnable; he had had to borrow the money from his mother. . . . Lady Marayne felt he had escaped her. The controversy that should have split these two young men apart had given them a new interest in each other. When afterwards she sounded her son, very delicately, to see if indeed he was aware of the clumsiness, the social ignorance and uneasiness, the complete unsuitability of his friend, she could get no more from him than that exasperating phrase, “He has ideas! ” What are ideas? England may yet be ruined by ideas. He ought never to have gone to Trinity, that monster packet of everything. He ought to have gone to some little GOOD college, good all through. She ought to have asked some one who KNEW. 11 One glowing afternoon in October, as these two young men came over Magdalen Bridge after a long disputatious and rather tiring walk to Drayton--they had been talking of Eugenics and the “family”--Benham was almost knocked down by an American trotter driven by Lord Breeze. “Whup there! ” said Lord Breeze in a voice deliberately brutal, and Benham, roused from that abstraction which is partly fatigue, had to jump aside and stumbled against the parapet as the gaunt pacer went pounding by. Lord Breeze grinned the sort of grin a man remembers. And passed. “Damnation! ” said Benham with a face that had become suddenly very white. Then presently. “Any fool can do that who cares to go to the trouble. ” “That,” said Prothero, taking up their unquenchable issue, “that is the feeling of democracy. ” “I walk because I choose to,” said Benham. The thing rankled. “This equestrianism,” he began, “is a matter of time and money--time even more than money. I want to read. I want to deal with ideas. . . . “Any fool can drive. . . . ” “Exactly,” said Prothero. “As for riding, it means no more than the elaborate study and cultivation of your horse. You have to know him. All horses are individuals. A made horse perhaps goes its round like an omnibus, but for the rest. . . . ” Prothero made a noise of sympathetic assent. “In a country where equestrianism is assertion I suppose one must be equestrian. . . . ” That night some malignant spirit kept Benham awake, and great American trotters with vast wide-striding feet and long yellow teeth, uncontrollable, hard-mouthed American trotters, pounded over his angry soul. “Prothero,” he said in hall next day, “we are going to drive to-morrow. ” Next day, so soon as they had lunched, he led the way towards Maltby's, in Crosshampton Lane. Something in his bearing put a question into Prothero's mind. “Benham,” he asked, “have you ever driven before? ” “NEVER,” said Benham. “Well? ” “I'm going to now. ” Something between pleasure and alarm came into Prothero's eyes. He quickened his pace so as to get alongside his friend and scrutinize his pale determination. “Why are you doing this? ” he asked. “I want to do it. ” “Benham, is it--EQUESTRIAN? ” Benham made no audible reply. They proceeded resolutely in silence. An air of expectation prevailed in Maltby's yard. In the shafts of a high, bleak-looking vehicle with vast side wheels, a throne-like vehicle that impressed Billy Prothero as being a gig, a very large angular black horse was being harnessed. “This is mine,” said Benham compactly. “This is yours, sir,” said an ostler. “He looks--QUIET. ” “You'll find him fresh enough, sir. ” Benham made a complicated ascent to the driver's seat and was handed the reins. “Come on,” he said, and Prothero followed to a less exalted seat at Benham's side. They seemed to be at a very great height indeed. The horse was then led out into Crosshampton Lane, faced towards Trinity Street and discharged. “Check,” said Benham, and touched the steed with his whip. They started quite well, and the ostlers went back into the yard, visibly unanxious. It struck Prothero that perhaps driving was less difficult than he had supposed. They went along Crosshampton Lane, that high-walled gulley, with dignity, with only a slight suggestion of the inaccuracy that was presently to become apparent, until they met a little old bearded don on a bicycle. Then some misunderstanding arose between Benham and the horse, and the little bearded don was driven into the narrow pavement and had to get off hastily. He made no comment, but his face became like a gargoyle. “Sorry,” said Benham, and gave his mind to the corner. There was some difficulty about whether they were to turn to the right or the left, but at last Benham, it seemed, carried his point, and they went along the narrow street, past the grey splendours of King's, and rather in the middle of the way. Prothero considered the beast in front of him, and how proud and disrespectful a horse in a dogcart can seem to those behind it! Moreover, unaccustomed as he was to horses, he was struck by the strong resemblance a bird's-eye view of a horse bears to a fiddle, a fiddle with devil's ears. “Of course,” said Prothero, “this isn't a trotter. ” “I couldn't get a trotter,” said Benham. “I thought I would try this sort of thing before I tried a trotter,” he added. And then suddenly came disaster. There was a butcher's cart on the right, and Benham, mistrusting the intelligence of his steed, insisted upon an excessive amplitude of clearance. He did not reckon with the hand-barrow on his left, piled up with dirty plates from the lunch of Trinity Hall. It had been left there; its custodian was away upon some mysterious errand. Heaven knows why Trinity Hall exhibited the treasures of its crockery thus stained and deified in the Cambridge streets. But it did--for Benham's and Prothero's undoing. Prothero saw the great wheel over which he was poised entangle itself with the little wheel of the barrow. “God! ” he whispered, and craned, fascinated. The little wheel was manifestly intrigued beyond all self-control by the great wheel; it clung to it, it went before it, heedless of the barrow, of which it was an inseparable part. The barrow came about with an appearance of unwillingness, it locked against the great wheel; it reared itself towards Prothero and began, smash, smash, smash, to shed its higher plates. It was clear that Benham was grappling with a crisis upon a basis of inadequate experience. A number of people shouted haphazard things. Then, too late, the barrow had persuaded the little wheel to give up its fancy for the great wheel, and there was an enormous crash. “Whoa! ” cried Benham. “Whoa! ” but also, unfortunately, he sawed hard at the horse's mouth. The animal, being in some perplexity, danced a little in the narrow street, and then it had come about and it was backing, backing, on the narrow pavement and towards the plate-glass window of a book and newspaper shop. Benham tugged at its mouth much harder than ever. Prothero saw the window bending under the pressure of the wheel. A sense of the profound seriousness of life and of the folly of this expedition came upon him. With extreme nimbleness he got down just as the window burst. It went with an explosion like a pistol shot, and then a clatter of falling glass. People sprang, it seemed, from nowhere, and jostled about Prothero, so that he became a peripheral figure in the discussion. He perceived that a man in a green apron was holding the horse, and that various people were engaged in simultaneous conversation with Benham, who with a pale serenity of face and an awful calm of manner, dealt with each of them in turn. “I'm sorry,” he was saying. “Somebody ought to have been in charge of the barrow. Here are my cards. I am ready to pay for any damage. . . . “The barrow ought not to have been there. . . . “Yes, I am going on. Of course I'm going on. Thank you. ” He beckoned to the man who had held the horse and handed him half-a-crown. He glanced at Prothero as one might glance at a stranger. “Check! ” he said. The horse went on gravely. Benham lifted out his whip. He appeared to have clean forgotten Prothero. Perhaps presently he would miss him. He went on past Trinity, past the ruddy brick of St. John's. The curve of the street hid him from Prothero's eyes. Prothero started in pursuit. He glimpsed the dog-cart turning into Bridge Street.

He had an impression that Benham used the whip at the corner, and that the dog-cart went forward out of sight with a startled jerk. Prothero quickened his pace. But when he got to the fork between the Huntingdon Road and the Cottenham Road, both roads were clear. He spent some time in hesitation. Then he went along the Huntingdon Road until he came upon a road-mender, and learnt that Benham had passed that way. “Going pretty fast 'e was,” said the road-mender, “and whipping 'is 'orse. Else you might 'a thought 'e was a boltin' with 'im. ” Prothero decided that if Benham came back at all he would return by way of Cottenham, and it was on the Cottenham Road that at last he encountered his friend again. Benham was coming along at that good pace which all experienced horses when they are fairly turned back towards Cambridge display. And there was something odd about Benham, as though he had a large circular halo with a thick rim. This, it seemed, had replaced his hat. He was certainly hatless. The warm light of the sinking sun shone upon the horse and upon Benham's erect figure and upon his face, and gleams of fire kept flashing from his head to this rim, like the gleam of drawn swords seen from afar. As he drew nearer this halo detached itself from him and became a wheel sticking up behind him. A large, clumsy-looking bicycle was attached to the dog-cart behind. The expression of Benham's golden face was still a stony expression; he regarded his friend with hard eyes. “You all right, Benham? ” cried Prothero, advancing into the road. His eye examined the horse. It looked all right, if anything it was a trifle subdued; there was a little foam about its mouth, but not very much. “Whoa! ” said Benham, and the horse stopped. “Are you coming up, Prothero? ” Prothero clambered up beside him. “I was anxious,” he said. “There was no need to be. ” “You've broken your whip. ” “Yes. It broke. . . . GET up! ” They proceeded on their way to Cambridge. “Something has happened to the wheel,” said Prothero, trying to be at his ease. “Merely a splinter or so. And a spoke perhaps. ” “And what is this behind? ” Benham made a half-turn of the head. “It's a motor-bicycle. ” Prothero took in details. “Some of it is missing. ” “No, the front wheel is under the seat. ” “Oh! ” “Did you find it? ” Prothero asked, after an interval. “You mean? ” “He ran into a motor-car--as I was passing. I was perhaps a little to blame. He asked me to bring his machine to Cambridge. He went on in the car. . . . It is all perfectly simple. ” Prothero glanced at the splinters in the wheel with a renewed interest. “Did your wheel get into it? ” he asked. Benham affected not to hear. He was evidently in no mood for story-telling. “Why did you get down, Prothero? ” he asked abruptly, with the note of suppressed anger thickening his voice. Prothero became vividly red. “I don't know,” he said, after an interval. “I DO,” said Benham, and they went on in a rich and active silence to Cambridge, and the bicycle repair shop in Bridge Street, and Trinity College. At the gate of Trinity Benham stopped, and conveyed rather by acts than words that Prothero was to descend. He got down meekly enough, although he felt that the return to Maltby's yard might have many points of interest. But the spirit had gone out of him. 12 For three days the two friends avoided each other, and then Prothero went to Benham's room. Benham was smoking cigarettes--Lady Marayne, in the first warmth of his filial devotion, had prohibited his pipe--and reading Webb's INDUSTRIAL DEMOCRACY. “Hello! ” he said coldly, scarcely looking up, and continued to read that absorbing work. “I keep on thinking how I jumped down from that damned dog-cart,” said Prothero, without any preface. “It didn't matter in the least,” said Benham distantly. “Oh! ROT,” said Prothero. “I behaved like a coward. ” Benham shut his book. “Benham,” said Prothero. “You are right about aristocracy, and I am wrong. I've been thinking about it night and day. ” Benham betrayed no emotion. But his tone changed. “Billy,” he said, “there are cigarettes and whiskey in the corner. Don't make a fuss about a trifle. ” “No whiskey,” said Billy, and lit a cigarette. “And it isn't a trifle. ” He came to Benham's hearthrug. “That business,” he said, “has changed all my views. No--don't say something polite! I see that if one hasn't the habit of pride one is bound to get off a dogcart when it seems likely to smash. You have the habit of pride, and I haven't. So far as the habit of pride goes, I come over to the theory of aristocracy. ” Benham said nothing, but he put down Sidney and Beatrice Webb, and reached out for and got and lit a cigarette. “I give up 'Go as you please. ' I give up the natural man. I admit training. I perceive I am lax and flabby, unguarded, I funk too much, I eat too much, and I drink too much. And, yet, what I have always liked in you, Benham, is just this--that you don't. ” “I do,” said Benham. “Do what? ” “Funk. ” “Benham, I believe that naturally you funk as much as I do. You're more a thing of nerves than I am, far more. But you keep yourself up to the mark, and I have let myself get flabby. You're so right. You're so utterly right. These last nights I've confessed it--aloud. I had an inkling of it--after that rag. But now it's as clear as daylight. I don't know if you mean to go on with me, after what's happened, but anyhow I want you to know, whether you end our friendship or not--” “Billy, don't be an old ass,” said Benham. Both young men paused for a moment. They made no demonstrations. But the strain was at an end between them. “I've thought it all out,” Billy went on with a sudden buoyancy. “We two are both of the same kind of men. Only you see, Benham, you have a natural pride and I haven't. You have pride. But we are both intellectuals. We both belong to what the Russians call the Intelligentsia. We have ideas, we have imagination, that is our strength. And that is our weakness. That makes us moral light-weights. We are flimsy and uncertain people. All intellectuals are flimsy and uncertain people. It's not only that they are critical and fastidious; they are weak-handed. They look about them; their attention wanders. Unless they have got a habit of controlling themselves and forcing themselves and holding themselves together. ” “The habit of pride. ” “Yes. And then--then we are lords of the world. ” “All this, Billy,” said Benham, “I steadfastly believe. ” “I've seen it all now,” said Prothero. “Lord! how clearly I see it! The intellectual is either a prince or he is a Greek slave in a Roman household. He's got to hold his chin up or else he becomes--even as these dons we see about us--a thing that talks appointments, a toady, a port-wine bibber, a mass of detail, a conscious maker of neat sayings, a growing belly under a dwindling brain. Their gladness is drink or gratified vanity or gratified malice, their sorrow is indigestion or--old maid's melancholy. They are the lords of the world who will not take the sceptre. . . . And what I want to say to you, Benham, more than anything else is, YOU go on--YOU make yourself equestrian. You drive your horse against Breeze's, and go through the fire and swim in the ice-cold water and climb the precipice and drink little and sleep hard. And--I wish I could do so too. ” “But why not? ” “Because I can't. Now I admit I've got shame in my heart and pride in my head, and I'm strung up. I might do something--this afternoon. But it won't last. YOU--you have pride in your bones. My pride will vanish at a laugh. My honour will go at a laugh. I'm just exalted by a crisis. That's all. I'm an animal of intelligence. Soul and pride are weak in me. My mouth waters, my cheek brightens, at the sight of good things. And I've got a lickerish tail, Benham. You don't know. You don't begin to imagine. I'm secretive. But I quiver with hot and stirring desires. And I'm indolent--dirty indolent. Benham, there are days when I splash my bath about without getting into it. There are days when I turn back from a walk because there's a cow in the field. . . . But, I spare you the viler details. . . . And it's that makes me hate fine people and try so earnestly to persuade myself that any man is as good as any man, if not a trifle better. Because I know it isn't so. . . . ” “Billy,” said Benham, “you've the boldest mind that ever I met. ” Prothero's face lit with satisfaction. Then his countenance fell again. “I know I'm better there,” he said, “and yet, see how I let in a whole system of lies to cover my secret humiliations. There, at least, I will cling to pride. I will at least THINK free and clean and high. But you can climb higher than I can. You've got the grit to try and LIVE high. There you are, Benham. ” Benham stuck one leg over the arm of his chair. “Billy,” he said, “come and be--equestrian and stop this nonsense. ” “No. ” “Damn it--you DIVE! ” “You'd go in before me if a woman was drowning. ” “Nonsense. I'm going to ride. Come and ride too. You've a cleverer way with animals than I have. Why! that horse I was driving the other day would have gone better alone. I didn't drive it. I just fussed it. I interfered. If I ride for ever, I shall never have decent hands, I shall always hang on my horse's mouth at a gallop, I shall never be sure at a jump. But at any rate I shall get hard. Come and get hard too. ” “You can,” said Billy, “you can. But not I! Heavens, the TROUBLE of it! The riding-school! The getting up early! No! --for me the Trumpington Road on foot in the afternoon. Four miles an hour and panting. And my fellowship and the combination-room port. And, besides, Benham, there's the expense. I can't afford the equestrian order. ” “It's not so great. ” “Not so great! I don't mean the essential expense. But--the incidentals. I don't know whether any one can realize how a poor man is hampered by the dread of minor catastrophes. It isn't so much that he is afraid of breaking his neck, Benham, as that he is afraid of breaking something he will have to pay for. For instance--. Benham! how much did your little expedition the other day--? ” He stopped short and regarded his friend with round eyes and raised eyebrows. A reluctant grin overspread Benham's face. He was beginning to see the humour of the affair. “The claim for the motor-bicycle isn't sent in yet. The repair of the mudguards of the car is in dispute. Trinity Hall's crockery, the plate-glass window, the whip-lash and wheel and so forth, the hire of the horse and trap, sundry gratuities. . . . I doubt if the total will come very much under fifty pounds. And I seem to have lost a hat somewhere. ” Billy regarded his toes and cleared his throat. “Depending as I do on a widowed mother in Brixton for all the expenditure that isn't covered by my pot-hunting--” “Of course,” said Benham, “it wasn't a fair sample afternoon. ” “Still--” “There's footer,” said Benham, “we might both play footer. ” “Or boxing. ” “And, anyhow, you must come with me when I drive again. I'm going to start a trotter. ” “If I miss another drive may I be--lost for ever,” said Billy, with the utmost sincerity. “Never more will I get down, Benham, wherever you may take me. Short of muffing my fellowship I'm with you always. . . . Will it be an American trotter? ” “It will be the rawest, gauntest, ungainliest brute that ever scared the motor-bicycles on the Northampton Road. It will have the legs and stride of an ostrich. It will throw its feet out like dealing cards. It will lift its head and look the sun in the eye like a vulture. It will have teeth like the English spinster in a French comic paper. . . . And we will fly. . . . ” “I shall enjoy it very much,” said Prothero in a small voice after an interval for reflection. “I wonder where we shall fly. It will do us both a lot of good. And I shall insure my life for a small amount in my mother's interest. . . . Benham, I think I will, after all, take a whiskey. . . . Life is short. . . . ” He did so and Benham strolled to the window and stood looking out upon the great court. “We might do something this afternoon,” said Benham. “Splendid idea,” reflected Billy over his whiskey. “Living hard and thinking hard. A sort of Intelligentsia that is BLOODED. . . . I shall, of course, come as far as I can with you. ” 13 In one of the bureau drawers that White in this capacity of literary executor was examining, there were two documents that carried back right to these early days. They were both products of this long wide undergraduate argumentation that had played so large a part in the making of Benham. One recorded the phase of maximum opposition, and one was the outcome of the concluding approach of the antagonists. They were debating club essays. One had been read to a club in Pembroke, a club called the ENQUIRERS, of which White also had been a member, and as he turned it over he found the circumstances of its reading coming back to his memory. He had been present, and Carnac's share in the discussion with his shrill voice and stumpy gestures would alone have sufficed to have made it a memorable occasion. The later one had been read to the daughter club of the ENQUIRERS, the SOCIAL ENQUIRERS, in the year after White had gone down, and it was new to him. Both these papers were folded flat and neatly docketed; they were rather yellow and a little dog-eared, and with the outer sheet pencilled over with puzzling or illegible scribblings, Benham's memoranda for his reply. White took the earlier essay in his hand. At the head of the first page was written in large letters, “Go slowly, speak to the man at the back. ” It brought up memories of his own experiences, of rows of gaslit faces, and of a friendly helpful voice that said, “Speak up? ” Of course this was what happened to every intelligent contemporary, this encounter with ideas, this restatement and ventilation of the old truths and the old heresies. Only in this way does a man make a view his own, only so does he incorporate it. These are our real turning points. The significant, the essential moments in the life of any one worth consideration are surely these moments when for the first time he faces towards certain broad ideas and certain broad facts. Life nowadays consists of adventures among generalizations. In class-rooms after the lecture, in studies in the small hours, among books or during solitary walks, the drama of the modern career begins. Suddenly a man sees his line, his intention. Yet though we are all of us writing long novels--White's world was the literary world, and that is how it looked to him--which profess to set out the lives of men, this part of the journey, this crucial passage among the Sphinxes, is still done--when it is done at all--slightly, evasively. Why? White fell back on his professionalism. “It does not make a book. It makes a novel into a treatise, it turns it into a dissertation. ” But even as White said this to himself he knew it was wrong, and it slid out of his thoughts again. Was not this objection to the play of ideas merely the expression of that conservative instinct which fights for every old convention? The traditional novel is a love story and takes ideas for granted, it professes a hero but presents a heroine. And to begin with at least, novels were written for the reading of heroines. Miss Lydia Languish sets no great store upon the contents of a man's head. That is just the stuffing of the doll. Eyes and heart are her game. And so there is never any more sphinx in the story than a lady may impersonate. And as inevitably the heroine meets a man. In his own first success, White reflected, the hero, before he had gone a dozen pages, met a very pleasant young woman very pleasantly in a sunlit thicket; the second opened at once with a bicycle accident that brought two young people together so that they were never afterwards disentangled; the third, failing to produce its heroine in thirty pages, had to be rearranged. The next-- White returned from an unprofitable digression to the matter before him. 14 The first of Benham's early essays was written in an almost boyish hand, it was youthfully amateurish in its nervous disposition to definitions and distinctions, and in the elaborate linking of part to part. It was called TRUE DEMOCRACY. Manifestly it was written before the incident of the Trinity Hall plates, and most of it had been done after Prothero's visit to Chexington. White could feel that now inaudible interlocutor. And there were even traces of Sir Godfrey Marayne's assertion that democracy was contrary to biology. From the outset it was clear that whatever else it meant, True Democracy, following the analogy of True Politeness, True Courage, True Honesty and True Marriage, did not mean democracy at all. Benham was, in fact, taking Prothero's word, and trying to impose upon it his own solidifying and crystallizing opinion of life. They were not as yet very large or well-formed crystals. The proposition he struggled to develop was this, that True Democracy did not mean an equal share in the government, it meant an equal opportunity to share in the government. Men were by nature and in the most various ways unequal. True Democracy aimed only at the removal of artificial inequalities. . . . It was on the truth of this statement, that men were by nature unequal, that the debate had turned. Prothero was passionately against the idea at that time. It was, he felt, separating himself from Benham more and more. He spoke with a personal bitterness. And he found his chief ally in a rigorous and voluble Frenchman named Carnac, an aggressive Roman Catholic, who opened his speech by saying that the first aristocrat was the devil, and shocked Prothero by claiming him as probably the only other sound Christian in the room. Several biologists were present, and one tall, fair youth with a wearisome forefinger tried to pin Carnac with questions. “But you must admit some men are taller than others? ” “Then the others are broader. ” “Some are smaller altogether. ” “Nimbler--it's notorious. ” “Some of the smaller are less nimble than the others. ” “Then they have better nightmares. How can you tell? ” The biologist was temporarily incapacitated, and the talk went on over his prostrate attempts to rally and protest. A second biologist seemed to Benham to come nearer the gist of the dispute when he said that they were not discussing the importance of men, but their relative inequalities. Nobody was denying the equal importance of everybody. But there was a virtue of this man and a virtue of that. Nobody could dispute the equal importance of every wheel in a machine, of every atom in the universe. Prothero and Carnac were angry because they thought the denial of absolute equality was a denial of equal importance. That was not so. Every man mattered in his place. But politically, or economically, or intellectually that might be a lowly place. . . . At this point Carnac interrupted with a whooping and great violence, and a volley of obscure French colloquialisms. He was understood to convey that the speaker was a Jew, and did not in the least mean what he was saying. . . . 15 The second paper was an altogether maturer and more characteristic production. It was no longer necessary to answer Prothero. Prothero had been incorporated. And Benham had fairly got away with his great idea. It was evident to White that this paper had been worked over on several occasions since its first composition and that Benham had intended to make it a part of his book. There were corrections in pencil and corrections in a different shade of ink, and there was an unfinished new peroration, that was clearly the latest addition of all. Yet its substance had been there always. It gave the youth just grown to manhood, but anyhow fully grown. It presented the far-dreaming intellectualist shaped. Benham had called it ARISTOCRACY. But he was far away by now from political aristocracy. This time he had not begun with definitions and generalizations, but with a curiously subjective appeal. He had not pretended to be theorizing at large any longer, he was manifestly thinking of his own life and as manifestly he was thinking of life as a matter of difficulty and unexpected thwartings. “We see life,” he wrote, “not only life in the world outside us, but life in our own selves, as an immense choice of possibilities; indeed, for us in particular who have come up here, who are not under any urgent necessity to take this line or that, life is apparently pure choice. It is quite easy to think we are all going to choose the pattern of life we like best and work it out in our own way. . . . And, meanwhile, there is no great hurry. . . . “I want to begin by saying that choice isn't so easy and so necessary as it seems. We think we are going to choose presently, and in the end we may never choose at all. Choice needs perhaps more energy than we think. The great multitude of older people we can observe in the world outside there, haven't chosen either in the matter of the world outside, where they shall go, what they shall do, what part they shall play, or in the matter of the world within, what they will be and what they are determined they will never be. They are still in much the same state of suspended choice as we seem to be in, but in the meanwhile THINGS HAPPEN TO THEM. And things are happening to us, things will happen to us, while we still suppose ourselves in the wings waiting to be consulted about the casting of the piece. . . . “Nevertheless this immense appearance of choice which we get in the undergraduate community here, is not altogether illusion; it is more reality than illusion even if it has not the stable and complete reality it appears to have. And it is more a reality for us than it was for our fathers, and much more a reality now than it was a few centuries ago. The world is more confused and multitudinous than ever it was, the practicable world far wider, and ourselves far less under the pressure of inflexible moulding forces and inevitable necessities than any preceding generations. I want to put very clearly how I see the new world, the present world, the world of novel choice to which our youth and inexperience faces, and I want to define to you a certain selection of choices which I am going to call aristocratic, and to which it is our manifest duty and destiny as the elect and favoured sons of our race to direct ourselves. “It isn't any choice of Hercules I mean, any mere alternative whether we will be, how shall I put it? --the bridegrooms of pleasure or the bridegrooms of duty. It is infinitely vaster and more subtly moral than that. There are a thousand good lives possible, of which we may have one, lives which are soundly good, or a thousand bad lives, if you like, lives which are thoroughly bad--that's the old and perpetual choice, that has always been--but what is more evident to me and more remarkable and disconcerting is that there are nowadays ten thousand muddled lives lacking even so much moral definition, even so much consistency as is necessary for us to call them either good or bad, there are planless indeterminate lives, more and more of them, opening out as the possible lives before us, a perfect wilderness between salvation and damnation, a wilderness so vast and crowded that at last it seems as though the way to either hell or heaven would be lost in its interminable futility. Such planless indeterminate lives, plebeian lives, mere lives, fill the world, and the spectacle of whole nations, our whole civilization, seems to me to re-echo this planlessness, this indeterminate confusion of purpose. Plain issues are harder and harder to find, it is as if they had disappeared. Simple living is the countryman come to town. We are deafened and jostled and perplexed. There are so many things afoot that we get nothing. . . . “That is what is in my mind when I tell you that we have to gather ourselves together much more than we think. We have to clench ourselves upon a chosen end. We have to gather ourselves together out of the swill of this brimming world. “Or--we are lost. . . . ” (“Swill of this brimming world,” said White. “Some of this sounds uncommonly like Prothero. ” He mused for a moment and then resumed his reading. ) “That is what I was getting at when, three years ago, I made an attack upon Democracy to the mother society of this society, an attack that I expressed ill and failed to drive home. That is what I have come down now to do my best to make plainer. This age of confusion is Democracy; it is all that Democracy can ever give us. Democracy, if it means anything, means the rule of the planless man, the rule of the unkempt mind. It means as a necessary consequence this vast boiling up of collectively meaningless things. “What is the quality of the common man, I mean of the man that is common to all of us, the man who is the Standard for such men as Carnac, the man who seems to be the ideal of the Catholic Democrat? He is the creature of a few fundamental impulses. He begins in blind imitation of the life about him. He lusts and takes a wife, he hungers and tills a field or toils in some other way to earn a living, a mere aimless living, he fears and so he does not wander, he is jealous and stays by his wife and his job, is fiercely yet often stupidly and injuriously defensive of his children and his possessions, and so until he wearies. Then he dies and needs a cemetery. He needs a cemetery because he is so afraid of dissolution that even when he has ceased to be, he still wants a place and a grave to hold him together and prevent his returning to the All that made him. Our chief impression of long ages of mankind comes from its cemeteries. And this is the life of man, as the common man conceives and lives it. Beyond that he does not go, he never comprehends himself collectively at all, the state happens about him; his passion for security, his gregarious self-defensiveness, makes him accumulate upon himself until he congests in cities that have no sense of citizenship and states that have no structure; the clumsy, inconsecutive lying and chatter of his newspapers, his hoardings and music-halls gives the measure of his congested intelligences, the confusion of ugly, half empty churches and chapels and meeting-halls gauge the intensity of his congested souls, the tricks and slow blundering dishonesties of Diet and Congress and Parliament are his statecraft and his wisdom. . . . “I do not care if this instant I am stricken dead for pride. I say here now to you and to High Heaven that THIS LIFE IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR ME. I know there is a better life than this muddle about us, a better life possible now. I know it. A better individual life and a better public life. If I had no other assurances, if I were blind to the glorious intimations of art, to the perpetually widening promise of science, to the mysterious beckonings of beauty in form and colour and the inaccessible mockery of the stars, I should still know this from the insurgent spirit within me. . . . “Now this better life is what I mean when I talk of Aristocracy. This idea of a life breaking away from the common life to something better, is the consuming idea in my mind. “Constantly, recurrently, struggling out of the life of the farm and the shop, the inn and the market, the street and the crowd, is something that is not of the common life. Its way of thinking is Science, its dreaming is Art, its will is the purpose of mankind. It is not the common thing. But also it is not an unnatural thing. It is not as common as a rat, but it is no less natural than a panther. “For it is as natural to be an explorer as it is to be a potato grower, it is rarer but it is as natural; it is as natural to seek explanations and arrange facts as it is to make love, or adorn a hut, or show kindness to a child. It is a folly I will not even dispute about, that man's only natural implement is the spade. Imagination, pride, exalted desire are just as much Man, as are hunger and thirst and sexual curiosities and the panic dread of unknown things. . . . “Now you see better what I mean about choice. Now you see what I am driving at. We have to choose each one for himself and also each one for the race, whether we will accept the muddle of the common life, whether we ourselves will be muddled, weakly nothings, children of luck, steering our artful courses for mean success and tawdry honours, or whether we will be aristocrats, for that is what it amounts to, each one in the measure of his personal quality an aristocrat, refusing to be restrained by fear, refusing to be restrained by pain, resolved to know and understand up to the hilt of his understanding, resolved to sacrifice all the common stuff of his life to the perfection of his peculiar gift, a purged man, a trained, selected, artificial man, not simply free, but lordly free, filled and sustained by pride. Whether you or I make that choice and whether you or I succeed in realizing ourselves, though a great matter to ourselves, is, I admit, a small matter to the world. But the great matter is this, that THE CHOICE IS BEING MADE, that it will continue to be made, and that all around us, so that it can never be arrested and darkened again, is the dawn of human possibility. . . . ” (White could also see his dead friend's face with its enthusiastic paleness, its disordered hair and the glowing darknesses in the eyes. On such occasions Benham always had an expression of ESCAPE. Temporary escape. And thus would his hand have clutched the reading-desk; thus would his long fingers have rustled these dry papers. ) “Man has reached a point when a new life opens before him. . . .

“The old habitual life of man is breaking up all about us, and for the new life our minds, our imaginations, our habits and customs are all unprepared. . . . “It is only now, after some years of study and living, that I begin to realize what this tremendous beginning we call Science means to mankind. Every condition that once justified the rules and imperatives, the manners and customs, the sentiments, the morality, the laws and limitations which make up the common life, has been or is being destroyed. . . . Two or three hundred years more and all that life will be as much a thing past and done with as the life that was lived in the age of unpolished stone. . . . “Man is leaving his ancestral shelters and going out upon the greatest adventure that ever was in space or time, he is doing it now, he is doing it in us as I stand here and read to you. ” CHAPTER THE SECOND ~~ THE YOUNG MAN ABOUT TOWN 1 The oldest novel in the world at any rate, White reflected, was a story with a hero and no love interest worth talking about. It was the story of Tobias and how he came out from the shelters of his youth into this magic and intricate world. Its heroine was incidental, part of the spoil, a seven times relict. . . . White had not read the book of Tobit for many years, and what he was really thinking of was not that ancient story at all, but Botticelli's picture, that picture of the sunlit morning of life. When you say “Tobias” that is what most intelligent people will recall. Perhaps you will remember how gaily and confidently the young man strides along with the armoured angel by his side. Absurdly enough, Benham and his dream of high aristocracy reminded White of that. . . . “We have all been Tobias in our time,” said White. If White had been writing this chapter he would have in all probability called it THE TOBIAS STAGE, forgetful that there was no Tobit behind Benham and an entirely different Sara in front of him. 2 From Cambridge Benham came to London. For the first time he was to live in London. Never before had he been in London for more than a few days at a time. But now, guided by his mother's advice, he was to have a flat in Finacue street, just round the corner from Desborough Street, a flat very completely and delightfully furnished under her supervision. It had an admirable study, in which she had arranged not only his books, but a number of others in beautiful old leather bindings that it had amused her extremely to buy; it had a splendid bureau and business-like letter-filing cabinets, a neat little drawing-room and a dining-room, well-placed abundant electric lights, and a man called Merkle whom she had selected very carefully and who she felt would not only see to Benham's comfort but keep him, if necessary, up to the mark. This man Merkle seemed quite unaware that humanity “here and now”--even as he was engaged in meticulously putting out Benham's clothes--was “leaving its ancestral shelters and going out upon the greatest adventure that ever was in space or time. ” If he had been told as much by Benham he would probably have said, “Indeed, sir,” and proceeded accurately with his duties. And if Benham's voice had seemed to call for any additional remark, he would probably have added, “It's 'igh time, sir, something of the sort was done. Will you have the white wesket as before, sir, or a fresh one this evening? . . . Unless it's a very special occasion, sir. . . . Exactly, sir. THANK you, sir. ” And when her son was properly installed in his apartments Lady Marayne came round one morning with a large experienced-looking portfolio and rendered an account of her stewardship of his estate that was already some months overdue. It was all very confused and confusing, and there were inexplicable incidents, a heavy overdraft at the bank for example, but this was Sir Godfrey's fault, she explained. “He never would help me with any of this business,” she said. “I've had to add sometimes for HOURS. But, of course, you are a man, and when you've looked through it all, I know you'll understand. ” He did look through it enough to see that it was undesirable that he should understand too explicitly, and, anyhow, he was manifestly very well off indeed, and the circumstances of the case, even as he understood them, would have made any businesslike book-keeping ungracious. The bankers submitted the corroborating account of securities, and he found himself possessed of his unconditional six thousand a year, with, as she put it, “the world at his feet. ” On the whole it seemed more wonderful to him now than when he had first heard of it. He kissed her and thanked her, and left the portfolio open for Merkle's entirely honest and respectful but very exact inspection, and walked back with her to Desborough Street, and all the while he was craving to ask the one tremendous question he knew he would never ask, which was just how exactly this beneficent Nolan came in. . . . Once or twice in the small hours, and on a number of other occasions, this unspeakable riddle assumed a portentous predominance in his mind. He was forced back upon his inner consciousness for its consideration. He could discuss it with nobody else, because that would have been discussing his mother. Probably most young men who find themselves with riches at large in the world have some such perplexity as this mixed in with the gift. Such men as the Cecils perhaps not, because they are in the order of things, the rich young Jews perhaps not, because acquisition is their principle, but for most other intelligent inheritors there must be this twinge of conscientious doubt. “Why particularly am I picked out for so tremendous an advantage? ” If the riddle is not Nolan, then it is rent, or it is the social mischief of the business, or the particular speculative COUP that established their fortune. “PECUNIA NON OLET,” Benham wrote, “and it is just as well. Or the west-ends of the world would reek with deodorizers. Restitution is inconceivable; how and to whom? And in the meanwhile here we are lifted up by our advantage to a fantastic appearance of opportunity. Whether the world looks to us or not to do tremendous things, it ought to look to us. And above all we ought to look to ourselves. RICHESSE OBLIGE. ” 3 It is not to be supposed that Benham came to town only with a general theory of aristocracy. He had made plans for a career. Indeed, he had plans for several careers. None of them when brought into contrast with the great spectacle of London retained all the attractiveness that had saturated them at their inception. They were all more or less political careers. Whatever a democratic man may be, Prothero and he had decided that an aristocratic man is a public man. He is made and protected in what he is by laws and the state and his honour goes out to the state. The aristocrat has no right to be a voluptuary or a mere artist or a respectable nonentity, or any such purely personal things. Responsibility for the aim and ordering of the world is demanded from him as imperatively as courage. Benham's deliberate assumption of the equestrian role brought him into contact with a new set of acquaintances, conscious of political destinies. They were amiable, hard young men, almost affectedly unaffected; they breakfasted before dawn to get in a day's hunting, and they saw to it that Benham's manifest determination not to discredit himself did not lead to his breaking his neck. Their bodies were beautifully tempered, and their minds were as flabby as Prothero's body. Among them were such men as Lord Breeze and Peter Westerton, and that current set of Corinthians who supposed themselves to be resuscitating the Young England movement and Tory Democracy. Poor movements which indeed have never so much lived as suffered chronic resuscitation. These were days when Tariff Reform was only an inglorious possibility for the Tory Party, and Young England had yet to demonstrate its mental quality in an anti-socialist campaign. Seen from the perspectives of Cambridge and Chexington, the Tory party was still a credible basis for the adventure of a young man with an aristocratic theory in his mind. These were the days when the strain and extremity of a dangerous colonial war were fresh in people's minds, when the quality of the public consciousness was braced up by its recent response to unanticipated demands. The conflict of stupidities that had caused the war was overlaid and forgotten by a hundred thousand devotions, by countless heroic deaths and sufferings, by a pacification largely conceived and broadly handled. The nation had displayed a belated regard for its honour and a sustained passion for great unities. It was still possible for Benham to regard the empire as a splendid opportunity, and London as the conceivable heart of the world. He could think of Parliament as a career, and of a mingling of aristocratic socialism based on universal service with a civilizing imperialism as a purpose. . . . But his thoughts had gone wider and deeper than that. . . . Already when Benham came to London he had begun to dream of possibilities that went beyond the accidental states and empires of to-day. Prothero's mind, replete with historical detail, could find nothing but absurdity in the alliances and dynasties and loyalties of our time. “Patched up things, Benham, temporary, pretentious. All very well for the undignified man, the democratic man, to take shelter under, all very well for the humourist to grin and bear, all very well for the crowd and the quack, but not for the aristocrat--No! --his mind cuts like steel and burns like fire. Lousy sheds they are, plastered hoardings. . . and such a damned nuisance too! For any one who wants to do honourable things! With their wars and their diplomacies, their tariffs and their encroachments; all their humbugging struggles, their bloody and monstrous struggles, that finally work out to no end at all. . . . If you are going for the handsome thing in life then the world has to be a united world, Benham, as a matter of course. That was settled when the railways and the telegraph came. Telephones, wireless telegraphy, aeroplanes insist on it. We've got to mediatise all this stuff, all these little crowns and boundaries and creeds, and so on, that stand in the way. Just as Italy had to be united in spite of all the rotten little dukes and princes and republics, just as Germany had to be united in spite of its scores of kingdoms and duchies and liberties, so now the world. Things as they are may be fun for lawyers and politicians and court people and--douaniers; they may suit the loan-mongers and the armaments shareholders, they may even be more comfortable for the middle-aged, but what, except as an inconvenience, does that matter to you or me? ” Prothero always pleased Benham when he swept away empires. There was always a point when the rhetoric broke into gesture. “We've got to sweep them away, Benham,” he said, with a wide gesture of his arm. “We've got to sweep them all away. ” Prothero helped himself to some more whiskey, and spoke hastily, because he was afraid some one else might begin. He was never safe from interruption in his own room. The other young men present sucked at their pipes and regarded him doubtfully. They were never quite certain whether Prothero was a prophet or a fool. They could not understand a mixed type, and he was so manifestly both. “The only sane political work for an intelligent man is to get the world-state ready. For that we have to prepare an aristocracy--” “Your world-state will be aristocratic? ” some one interpolated. “Of course it will be aristocratic. How can uninformed men think all round the globe? Democracy dies five miles from the parish pump. It will be an aristocratic republic of all the capable men in the world. . . . ” “Of course,” he added, pipe in mouth, as he poured out his whiskey, “it's a big undertaking. It's an affair of centuries. . . . ” And then, as a further afterthought: “All the more reason for getting to work at it. . . . ” In his moods of inspiration Prothero would discourse through the tobacco smoke until that great world-state seemed imminent--and Part Two in the Tripos a thing relatively remote. He would talk until the dimly-lit room about him became impalpable, and the young men squatting about it in elaborately careless attitudes caught glimpses of cities that are still to be, bridges in wild places, deserts tamed and oceans conquered, mankind no longer wasted by bickerings, going forward to the conquest of the stars. . . . An aristocratic world-state; this political dream had already taken hold of Benham's imagination when he came to town. But it was a dream, something that had never existed, something that indeed may never materialize, and such dreams, though they are vivid enough in a study at night, fade and vanish at the rustle of a daily newspaper or the sound of a passing band. To come back again. . . . So it was with Benham. Sometimes he was set clearly towards this world-state that Prothero had talked into possibility. Sometimes he was simply abreast of the patriotic and socially constructive British Imperialism of Breeze and Westerton. And there were moods when the two things were confused in his mind, and the glamour of world dominion rested wonderfully on the slack and straggling British Empire of Edward the Seventh--and Mr. Rudyard Kipling and Mr. Chamberlain. He did go on for a time honestly entertaining both these projects in his mind, each at its different level, the greater impalpable one and the lesser concrete one within it. In some unimaginable way he could suppose that the one by some miracle of ennoblement--and neglecting the Frenchman, the Russian, the German, the American, the Indian, the Chinaman, and, indeed, the greater part of mankind from the problem--might become the other. . . . All of which is recorded here, without excess of comment, as it happened, and as, in a mood of astonished reminiscences, he came finally to perceive it, and set it down for White's meditative perusal. 4 But to the enthusiasm of the young, dreams have something of the substance of reality and realities, something of the magic of dreams. The London to which Benham came from Cambridge and the disquisitions of Prothero was not the London of a mature and disillusioned vision. It was London seen magnified and distorted through the young man's crystalline intentions. It had for him a quality of multitudinous, unquenchable activity. Himself filled with an immense appetite for life, he was unable to conceive of London as fatigued. He could not suspect these statesmen he now began to meet and watch, of jaded wills and petty spites, he imagined that all the important and influential persons in this large world of affairs were as frank in their private lives and as unembarrassed in their financial relationships as his untainted self. And he had still to reckon with stupidity. He believed in the statecraft of leader-writers and the sincerity of political programmes. And so regarded, what an avenue to Empire was Whitehall! How momentous was the sunrise in St. James's Park, and how significant the clustering knot of listeners and speakers beneath the tall column that lifts our Nelson to the windy sky! For a time Benham was in love with the idea of London. He got maps of London and books about London. He made plans to explore its various regions. He tried to grasp it all, from the conscious picturesqueness of its garden suburbs to the factories of Croydon, from the clerk-villadoms of Ealing to the inky streams of Bow. In those days there were passenger steamboats that would take one from the meadows of Hampton Court past the whole spectacle of London out to the shipping at Greenwich and the towed liners, the incessant tugs, the heaving portals of the sea. . . . His time was far too occupied for him to carry out a tithe of these expeditions he had planned, but he had many walks that bristled with impressions. Northward and southward, eastward and westward a dreaming young man could wander into a wilderness of population, polite or sombre, poor, rich, or middle-class, but all ceaselessly active, all urgently pressing, as it seemed, to their part in the drama of the coming years. He loved the late afternoon, when every artery is injected and gorged with the multitudinous home-going of the daily workers, he loved the time of lighting up, and the clustering excitements of the late hours. And he went out southward and eastward into gaunt regions of reeking toil. As yet he knew nothing of the realities of industrialism. He saw only the beauty of the great chimneys that rose against the sullen smoke-barred sunsets, and he felt only the romance of the lurid shuddering flares that burst out from squat stacks of brickwork and lit the emptiness of strange and slovenly streets. . . . And this London was only the foreground of the great scene upon which he, as a prosperous, well-befriended young Englishman, was free to play whatever part he could. This narrow turbid tidal river by which he walked ran out under the bridges eastward beneath the grey-blue clouds towards Germany, towards Russia, and towards Asia, which still seemed in those days so largely the Englishman's Asia. And when you turned about at Blackfriars Bridge this sense of the round world was so upon you that you faced not merely Westminster, but the icy Atlantic and America, which one could yet fancy was a land of Englishmen--Englishmen a little estranged. At any rate they assimilated, they kept the tongue. The shipping in the lower reaches below the Tower there carried the flags of every country under the sky. . . . As he went along the riverside he met a group of dusky students, Chinese or Japanese. Cambridge had abounded in Indians; and beneath that tall clock tower at Westminster it seemed as though the world might centre. The background of the Englishman's world reached indeed to either pole, it went about the earth, his background it was--for all that he was capable of doing. All this had awaited him. . . . Is it any wonder if a young man with an excitable imagination came at times to the pitch of audible threats? If the extreme indulgence of his opportunity and his sense of ability and vigour lifted his vanity at moments to the kingly pitch? If he ejaculated and made a gesture or so as he went along the Embankment? 5 In the disquisition upon choice that opened Benham's paper on ARISTOCRACY, he showed himself momentarily wiser than his day-dreams. For in these day-dreams he did seem to himself to be choosing among unlimited possibilities. Yet while he dreamt other influences were directing his movements. There were for instance his mother, Lady Marayne, who saw a very different London from what he did, and his mother Dame Nature, who cannot see London at all. She was busy in his blood as she is busy in the blood of most healthy young men; common experience must fill the gaps for us; and patiently and thoroughly she was preparing for the entrance of that heroine, whom not the most self-centred of heroes can altogether avoid. . . . And then there was the power of every day. Benham imagined himself at large on his liberating steed of property while indeed he was mounted on the made horse of Civilization; while he was speculating whither he should go, he was already starting out upon the round. One hesitates upon the magnificent plan and devotion of one's lifetime and meanwhile there is usage, there are engagements. Every morning came Merkle, the embodiment of the established routine, the herald of all that the world expected and required Benham to be and do. Usually he awakened Benham with the opening of his door and the soft tinkle of the curtain rings as he let in the morning light. He moved softly about the room, gathering up and removing the crumpled hulls of yesterday; that done he reappeared at the bedside with a cup of admirable tea and one thin slice of bread-and-butter, reported on the day's weather, stood deferential for instructions. “You will be going out for lunch, sir. Very good, sir. White slips of course, sir. You will go down into the country in the afternoon? Will that be the serge suit, sir, or the brown? ” These matters settled, the new aristocrat could yawn and stretch like any aristocrat under the old dispensation, and then as the sound of running water from the bathroom ceased, stick his toes out of bed. The day was tremendously indicated. World-states and aristocracies of steel and fire, things that were as real as coal-scuttles in Billy's rooms away there at Cambridge, were now remoter than Sirius. He was expected to shave, expected to bath, expected to go in to the bright warmth and white linen and silver and china of his breakfast-table. And there he found letters and invitations, loaded with expectation. And beyond the coffee-pot, neatly folded, lay the TIMES, and the DAILY NEWS and the TELEGRAPH all with an air of requiring his attention. There had been more fighting in Thibet and Mr. Ritchie had made a Free Trade speech at Croydon. The Japanese had torpedoed another Russian ironclad and a British cruiser was ashore in the East Indies. A man had been found murdered in an empty house in Hoxton and the King had had a conversation with General Booth. Tadpole was in for North Winchelsea, beating Taper by nine votes, and there had been a new cut in the Atlantic passenger rates. He was expected to be interested and excited by these things. Presently the telephone bell would ring and he would hear the clear little voice of his mother full of imperative expectations. He would be round for lunch? Yes, he would be round to lunch. And the afternoon, had he arranged to do anything with his afternoon? No! --put off Chexington until tomorrow. There was this new pianist, it was really an EXPERIENCE, and one might not get tickets again. And then tea at Panton's. It was rather fun at Panton's. . . . Oh! --Weston Massinghay was coming to lunch. He was a useful man to know. So CLEVER. . . . So long, my dear little Son, till I see you. . . . So life puts out its Merkle threads, as the poacher puts his hair noose about the pheasant's neck, and while we theorize takes hold of us. . . . It came presently home to Benham that he had been down from Cambridge for ten months, and that he was still not a step forward with the realization of the new aristocracy. His political career waited. He had done a quantity of things, but their net effect was incoherence. He had not been merely passive, but his efforts to break away into creative realities had added to rather than diminished his accumulating sense of futility. The natural development of his position under the influence of Lady Marayne had enormously enlarged the circle of his acquaintances. He had taken part in all sorts of social occasions, and sat and listened to a representative selection of political and literary and social personages, he had been several times to the opera and to a great number and variety of plays, he had been attentively inconspicuous in several really good week-end parties. He had spent a golden October in North Italy with his mother, and escaped from the glowing lassitude of Venice for some days of climbing in the Eastern Alps. In January, in an outbreak of enquiry, he had gone with Lionel Maxim to St. Petersburg and had eaten zakuska, brightened his eyes with vodka, talked with a number of charming people of the war that was then imminent, listened to gipsy singers until dawn, careered in sledges about the most silent and stately of capitals, and returned with Lionel, discoursing upon autocracy and assassination, Japan, the Russian destiny, and the government of Peter the Great. That excursion was the most after his heart of all the dispersed employments of his first year. Through the rest of the winter he kept himself very fit, and still further qualified that nervous dislike for the horse that he had acquired from Prothero by hunting once a week in Essex. He was incurably a bad horseman; he rode without sympathy, he was unready and convulsive at hedges and ditches, and he judged distances badly. His white face and rigid seat and a certain joylessness of bearing in the saddle earned him the singular nickname, which never reached his ears, of the “Galvanized Corpse. ” He got through, however, at the cost of four quite trifling spills and without damaging either of the horses he rode. And his physical self-respect increased. On his writing-desk appeared a few sheets of manuscript that increased only very slowly. He was trying to express his Cambridge view of aristocracy in terms of Finacue Street, West. The artistic and intellectual movements of London had made their various demands upon his time and energies. Art came to him with a noble assumption of his interest and an intention that presently became unpleasantly obvious to sell him pictures that he did not want to buy and explain away pictures that he did. He bought one or two modern achievements, and began to doubt if art and aristocracy had any necessary connection. At first he had accepted the assumption that they had. After all, he reflected, one lives rather for life and things than for pictures of life and things or pictures arising out of life and things. This Art had an air of saying something, but when one came to grips with it what had it to say? Unless it was Yah! The drama, and more particularly the intellectual drama, challenged his attention. In the hands of Shaw, Barker, Masefield, Galsworthy, and Hankin, it, too, had an air of saying something, but he found it extremely difficult to join on to his own demands upon life anything whatever that the intellectual drama had the air of having said. He would sit forward in the front row of the dress-circle with his cheek on his hand and his brow slightly knit. His intentness amused observant people. The drama that did not profess to be intellectual he went to with Lady Marayne, and usually on first nights. Lady Marayne loved a big first night at St. James's Theatre or His Majesty's. Afterwards, perhaps, Sir Godfrey would join them at a supper party, and all sorts of clever and amusing people would be there saying keen intimate things about each other. He met Yeats, who told amusing stories about George Moore, and afterwards he met George Moore, who told amusing stories about Yeats, and it was all, he felt, great fun for the people who were in it. But he was not in it, and he had no very keen desire to be in it. It wasn't his stuff. He had, though they were nowadays rather at the back of his mind, quite other intentions. In the meanwhile all these things took up his time and distracted his attention. There was, as yet, no practicable aviation to beguile a young man of spirit, but there were times when Benham found himself wondering whether there might not be something rather creditable in the possession and control of a motor-car of exceptional power. Only one might smash people up. Should an aristocrat be deterred by the fear of smashing people up? If it is a selfish fear of smashing people up, if it is nerves rather than pity? At any rate it did not come to the car. 6 Among other things that delayed Benham very greatly in the development of his aristocratic experiments was the advice that was coming to him from every quarter. It came in extraordinary variety and volume, but always it had one unvarying feature. It ignored and tacitly contradicted his private intentions. We are all of us disposed to be propagandists of our way of living, and the spectacle of a wealthy young man quite at large is enough to excite the most temperate of us without distinction of age or sex. “If I were you,” came to be a familiar phrase in his ear. This was particularly the case with political people; and they did it not only from the natural infirmity of humanity, but because, when they seemed reluctant or satisfied with him as he was, Lady Marayne egged them on. There was a general assumption that he was to go into Parliament, and most of his counsellors assumed further that on the whole his natural sympathies would take him into the Conservative party. But it was pointed out to him that just at present the Liberal party was the party of a young man's opportunity; sooner or later the swing of the pendulum which would weed the Conservatives and proliferate Liberals was bound to come, there was always more demand and opportunity for candidates on the Liberal side, the Tariff Reformers were straining their ministerial majority to the splitting point, and most of the old Liberal leaders had died off during the years of exile. The party was no longer dominated; it would tolerate ideas. A young man who took a distinctive line--provided it was not from the party point of view a vexatious or impossible line--might go very rapidly far and high. On the other hand, it was urged upon him that the Tariff Reform adventure called also for youth and energy. But there, perhaps, there was less scope for the distinctive line--and already they had Garvin. Quite a number of Benham's friends pointed out to him the value of working out some special aspect of our national political interests. A very useful speciality was the Balkans. Mr. Pope, the well-known publicist, whose very sound and considerable reputation was based on the East Purblow Labour Experiment, met Benham at lunch and proposed to go with him in a spirit of instructive association to the Balkans, rub up their Greek together, and settle the problem of Albania. He wanted, he said, a foreign speciality to balance his East Purblow interest. But Lady Beach Mandarin warned Benham against the Balkans; the Balkans were getting to be too handy for Easter and summer holidays, and now that there were several good hotels in Servia and Montenegro and Sofia, they were being overdone. Everybody went to the Balkans and came back with a pet nationality. She loathed pet nationalities. She believed most people loathed them nowadays. It was stale: it was GLADSTONIAN. She was all for specialization in social reform. She thought Benham ought to join the Fabian Society and consult the Webbs. Quite a number of able young men had been placed with the assistance of the Webbs. They were, she said, “a perfect fount. . . . ” Two other people, independently of each other, pointed out to Benham the helpfulness of a few articles in the half-crown monthlies. . . . “What are the assumptions underlying all this? ” Benham asked himself in a phase of lucidity. And after reflection. “Good God! The assumptions! What do they think will satisfy me? . . . ” Everybody, however, did not point to Parliament. Several people seemed to think Travel, with a large T, was indicated. One distant cousin of Sir Godfrey's, the kind of man of the world who has long moustaches, was for big game shooting. “Get right out of all this while you are young,” he said. “There's nothing to compare with stopping a charging lion at twenty yards. I've done it, my boy. You can come back for all this pow-wow afterwards. ” He gave the diplomatic service as a second choice. “There you are,” he said, “first-rate social position, nothing to do, theatres, operas, pretty women, colour, life. The best of good times. Barring Washington, that is. But Washington, they say, isn't as bad as it used to be--since Teddy has Europeanized 'em. . . . ” Even the Reverend Harold Benham took a subdued but thoughtful share in his son's admonition. He came up to the flat--due precautions were taken to prevent a painful encounter--he lunched at his son's new club, and he was visibly oppressed by the contrast between the young man's youthful fortunes and his own. As visibly he bore up bravely. “There are few men, Poff, who would not envy you your opportunities,” he said. “You have the Feast of Life spread out at your feet. . . . I hope you have had yourself put up for the Athenaeum. They say it takes years. When I was a young man--and ambitious--I thought that some day I might belong to the Athenaeum. . . . One has to learn. . . . ” 7 And with an effect of detachment, just as though it didn't belong to the rest of him at all, there was beginning a sort of backstairs and underside to Benham's life. There is no need to discuss how inevitable that may or may not be in the case of a young man of spirit and large means, nor to embark upon the discussion of the temptations and opportunities of large cities. Several ladies, of various positions and qualities, had reflected upon his manifest need of education. There was in particular Mrs. Skelmersdale, a very pretty little widow with hazel eyes, black hair, a mobile mouth, and a pathetic history, who talked of old music to him and took him to a Dolmetsch concert in Clifford's Inn, and expanded that common interest to a general participation in his indefinite outlook. She advised him about his probable politics--everybody did that--but when he broke through his usual reserve and suggested views of his own, she was extraordinarily sympathetic. She was so sympathetic and in such a caressing way that she created a temporary belief in her understanding, and it was quite imperceptibly that he was drawn into the discussion of modern ethical problems. She herself was a rather stimulating instance of modern ethical problems. She told him something of her own story, and then their common topics narrowed down very abruptly. He found he could help her in several ways. There is, unhappily, a disposition on the part of many people, who ought to know better, to regard a role played by Joseph during his earlier days in Egypt as a ridiculous one. This point of view became very inopportunely dominant in Benham's mind when he was lunching TETE A TETE with Mrs. Skelmersdale at her flat. . . . The ensuing intimacy was of an entirely concealed and respectable nature, but a certain increased preoccupation in his manner set Lady Marayne thinking. He had as a matter of fact been taken by surprise. Still he perceived that it is no excuse for a man that he has been taken by surprise. Surprises in one's own conduct ought not to happen. When they do happen then an aristocrat ought to stick to what he had done. He was now in a subtle and complicated relationship to Mrs. Skelmersdale, a relationship in which her pride had become suddenly a matter of tremendous importance. Once he had launched himself upon this affair, it was clear to him that he owed it to her never to humiliate her. And to go back upon himself now would be a tremendous humiliation for her. You see, he had helped her a little financially. And she looked to him, she wanted him. . . . She wasn't, he knew, altogether respectable. Indeed, poor dear, her ethical problems, already a little worn, made her seem at times anything but respectable. He had met her first one evening at Jimmy Gluckstein's when he was forming his opinion of Art. Her manifest want of interest in pictures had attracted him. And that had led to music. And to the mention of a Clementi piano, that short, gentle, sad, old, little sort of piano people will insist upon calling a spinet, in her flat. And so to this. . . . It was very wonderful and delicious, this first indulgence of sense. It was shabby and underhand. The great god Pan is a glorious god. (And so was Swinburne. ) And what can compare with the warmth of blood and the sheen of sunlit limbs? But Priapus. . . . She was the most subtle, delightful and tender of created beings. She had amazing streaks of vulgarity. And some astonishing friends. Once she had seemed to lead the talk deliberately to money matters. She loved him and desired him. There was no doubt of it. There was a curious effect about her as though when she went round the corner she would become somebody else. And a curious recurrent feeling that round the corner there was somebody else. He had an extraordinary feeling that his mother knew about this business. This feeling came from nothing in her words or acts, but from some indefinable change in her eyes and bearing towards him. But how could she know? It was unlikely that she and Mrs. Skelmersdale would ever meet, and it seemed to him that it would be a particularly offensive incident for them to meet. There were times now when life took on a grey and boring quality such as it had never had before he met Mrs. Skelmersdale, and the only remedy was to go to her. She could restore his nervous tranquillity, his feeling of solidity and reality, his pride in himself. For a time, that is. Nevertheless his mind was as a whole pervaded by the feeling that he ought not to have been taken by surprise. And he had the clearest conviction in his mind that if now he could be put back again to the day before that lunch. . . . No! he should not have gone there to lunch. He had gone there to see her Clementi piano. Had he or had he not thought beforehand of any other possibility? On a point so vital his memory was curiously unsure. 8 The worry and disorganization of Benham's life and thoughts increased as the spring advanced. His need in some way to pull things together became overpowering. He began to think of Billy Prothero, more and more did it seem desirable to have a big talk with Billy and place everything that had got disturbed. Benham thought of going to Cambridge for a week of exhaustive evenings. Small engagements delayed that expedition.

. . . Then came a day in April when all the world seemed wrong to Benham. He was irritable; his will was unstable; whatever presented itself to be done presented itself as undesirable; he could settle to nothing. He had been keeping away from Mrs. Skelmersdale and in the morning there came a little note from her designed to correct this abstention. She understood the art of the attractive note. But he would not decide to go to her. He left the note unanswered. Then came his mother at the telephone and it became instantly certain to Benham that he could not play the dutiful son that evening. He answered her that he could not come to dinner. He had engaged himself. “Where? ” “With some men. ” There was a pause and then his mother's voice came, flattened by disappointment. “Very well then, little Poff. Perhaps I shall see you to-morrow. ” He replaced the receiver and fretted back into his study, where the notes on aristocracy lay upon his desk, the notes he had been pretending to work over all the morning. “Damned liar! ” he said, and then, “Dirty liar! ” He decided to lunch at the club, and in the afternoon he was moved to telephone an appointment with his siren. And having done that he was bound to keep it. About one o'clock in the morning he found himself walking back to Finacue Street. He was no longer a fretful conflict of nerves, but if anything he was less happy than he had been before. It seemed to him that London was a desolate and inglorious growth. London ten years ago was much less nocturnal than it is now. And not so brightly lit. Down the long streets came no traffic but an occasional hansom. Here and there a cat halted or bolted in the road. Near Piccadilly a policeman hovered artfully in a doorway, and then came a few belated prostitutes waylaying the passers-by, and a few youths and men, wearily lust driven. As he turned up New Bond Street he saw a figure that struck him as familiar. Surely! --it was Billy Prothero! Or at any rate it was astonishingly like Billy Prothero. He glanced again and the likeness was more doubtful. The man had his back to Benham, he was halting and looking back at a woman. By some queer flash of intuition it came to Benham that even if this was not Prothero, still Prothero did these things. It might very well be Prothero even, though, as he now saw, it wasn't. Everybody did these things. . . . It came into Benham's head for the first time that life could be tiresome. This Bond Street was a tiresome place; with its shops all shut and muffled, its shops where in the crowded daytime one bought costly furniture, costly clothes, costly scent, sweets, bibelots, pictures, jewellery, presents of all sorts, clothes for Mrs. Skelmersdale, sweets for Mrs. Skelmersdale, presents for Mrs. Skelmersdale, all the elaborate fittings and equipage of--THAT! “Good night, dear,” a woman drifted by him. “I've SAID good night,” he cried, “I've SAID good night,” and so went on to his flat. The unquenchable demand, the wearisome insatiability of sex! When everything else has gone, then it shows itself bare in the bleak small hours. And at first it had seemed so light a matter! He went to bed, feeling dog-tired, he went to bed at an hour and with a finished completeness that Merkle would have regarded as entirely becoming in a young gentleman of his position. And a little past three o'clock in the morning he awoke to a mood of indescribable desolation. He awoke with a start to an agony of remorse and self-reproach. 9 For a time he lay quite still staring at the darkness, then he groaned and turned over. Then, suddenly, like one who fancies he hears a strange noise, he sat up in bed and listened. “Oh, God! ” he said at last. And then: “Oh! The DIRTINESS of life! The dirty muddle of life! “What are we doing with life? What are we all doing with life? “It isn't only this poor Milly business. This only brings it to a head. Of course she wants money. . . . ” His thoughts came on again. “But the ugliness! “Why did I begin it? ” He put his hands upon his knees and pressed his eyes against the backs of his hands and so remained very still, a blankness beneath his own question. After a long interval his mind moved again. And now it was as if he looked upon his whole existence, he seemed to see in a large, clear, cold comprehensiveness, all the wasted days, the fruitless activities, the futilities, the perpetual postponements that had followed his coming to London. He saw it all as a joyless indulgence, as a confusion of playthings and undisciplined desires, as a succession of days that began amiably and weakly, that became steadily more crowded with ignoble and trivial occupations, that had sunken now to indignity and uncleanness. He was overwhelmed by that persuasion, which only freshly soiled youth can feel in its extreme intensity, that life was slipping away from him, that the sands were running out, that in a little while his existence would be irretrievably lost. By some trick of the imagination he saw life as an interminable Bond Street, lit up by night lamps, desolate, full of rubbish, full of the very best rubbish, trappings, temptations, and down it all he drove, as the damned drive, wearily, inexplicably. WHAT ARE WE UP TO WITH LIFE! WHAT ARE WE MAKING OF LIFE! But hadn't he intended to make something tremendous of life? Hadn't he come to London trailing a glory? . . . He began to remember it as a project. It was the project of a great World-State sustained by an aristocracy of noble men. He was to have been one of those men, too fine and far-reaching for the dull manoeuvers of such politics as rule the world to-day. The project seemed still large, still whitely noble, but now it was unlit and dead, and in the foreground he sat in the flat of Mrs. Skelmersdale, feeling dissipated and fumbling with his white tie. And she was looking tired. “God! ” he said. “How did I get there? ” And then suddenly he reached out his arms in the darkness and prayed aloud to the silences. “Oh, God! Give me back my visions! Give me back my visions! ” He could have imagined he heard a voice calling upon him to come out into life, to escape from the body of this death. But it was his own voice that called to him. . . . 10 The need for action became so urgent in him, that he got right out of his bed and sat on the edge of it. Something had to be done at once. He did not know what it was but he felt that there could be no more sleep, no more rest, no dressing nor eating nor going forth before he came to decisions. Christian before his pilgrimage began was not more certain of this need of flight from the life of routine and vanities. What was to be done? In the first place he must get away and think about it all, think himself clear of all these--these immediacies, these associations and relations and holds and habits. He must get back to his vision, get back to the God in his vision. And to do that he must go alone. He was clear he must go alone. It was useless to go to Prothero, one weak man going to a weaker. Prothero he was convinced could help him not at all, and the strange thing is that this conviction had come to him and had established itself incontestably because of that figure at the street corner, which had for just one moment resembled Prothero. By some fantastic intuition Benham knew that Prothero would not only participate but excuse. And he knew that he himself could endure no excuses. He must cut clear of any possibility of qualification. This thing had to be stopped. He must get away, he must get free, he must get clean. In the extravagance of his reaction Benham felt that he could endure nothing but solitary places and to sleep under the open sky. He wanted to get right away from London and everybody and lie in the quiet darkness and stare up at the stars. His plans grew so definite that presently he was in his dressing-gown and turning out the maps in the lower drawer of his study bureau. He would go down into Surrey with a knapsack, wander along the North Downs until the Guildford gap was reached, strike across the Weald country to the South Downs and then beat eastward. The very thought of it brought a coolness to his mind. He knew that over those southern hills one could be as lonely as in the wilderness and as free to talk to God. And there he would settle something. He would make a plan for his life and end this torment. When Merkle came in to him in the morning he was fast asleep. The familiar curtain rings awakened Benham. He turned his head over, stared for a moment and then remembered. “Merkle,” he said, “I am going for a walking tour. I am going off this morning. Haven't I a rucksack? ” “You 'ave a sort of canvas bag, sir, with pockets to it,” said Merkle. “Will you be needing the VERY 'eavy boots with 'obnails--Swiss, I fancy, sir--or your ordinary shooting boots? ” “And when may I expect you back, sir? ” asked Merkle as the moment for departure drew near. “God knows,” said Benham, “I don't. ” “Then will there be any address for forwarding letters, sir? ” Benham hadn't thought of that. For a moment he regarded Merkle's scrupulous respect with a transient perplexity. “I'll let you know, Merkle,” he said. “I'll let you know. ” For some days at least, notes, telephone messages, engagements, all this fuss and clamour about nothing, should clamour for him in vain. . . . 11 “But how closely,” cried White, in a mood of cultivated enthusiasm; “how closely must all the poor little stories that we tell to-day follow in the footsteps of the Great Exemplars! A little while ago and the springtime freshness of Tobias irradiated the page. Now see! it is Christian--. ” Indeed it looked extremely like Christian as Benham went up across the springy turf from Epsom Downs station towards the crest of the hill. Was he not also fleeing in the morning sunlight from the City of Destruction? Was he not also seeking that better city whose name is Peace? And there was a bundle on his back. It was the bundle, I think, that seized most firmly upon the too literary imagination of White. But the analogy of the bundle was a superficial one. Benham had not the slightest desire to lose it from his shoulders. It would have inconvenienced him very greatly if he had done so. It did not contain his sins. Our sins nowadays are not so easily separated. It contained a light, warm cape-coat he had bought in Switzerland and which he intended to wrap about him when he slept under the stars, and in addition Merkle had packed it with his silk pyjamas, an extra pair of stockings, tooth-brush, brush and comb, a safety razor. . . . And there were several sheets of the Ordnance map. 12 The urgency of getting away from something dominated Benham to the exclusion of any thought of what he might be getting to. That muddle of his London life had to be left behind. First, escape. . . . Over the downs great numbers of larks were singing. It was warm April that year and early. All the cloud stuff in the sky was gathered into great towering slow-sailing masses, and the rest was blue of the intensest. The air was so clean that Benham felt it clean in the substance of his body. The chestnuts down the hill to the right were flowering, the beeches were luminously green, and the oaks in the valley foaming gold. And sometimes it was one lark filled his ears, and sometimes he seemed to be hearing all the larks for miles about him. Presently over the crest he would be out of sight of the grand stand and the men exercising horses, and that brace of red-jacketed golfers. . . . What was he to do? For a time he could think of nothing to do except to keep up and out of the valley. His whole being seemed to have come to his surfaces to look out at the budding of the year and hear the noise of the birds. And then he got into a long road from which he had to escape, and trespassing southward through plantations he reached the steep edge of the hills and sat down over above a great chalk pit somewhere near Dorking and surveyed all the tumbled wooded spaces of the Weald. . . . It is after all not so great a country this Sussex, nor so hilly, from deepest valley to highest crest is not six hundred feet, yet what a greatness of effect it can achieve! There is something in those downland views which, like sea views, lifts a mind out to the skies. All England it seemed was there to Benham's vision, and the purpose of the English, and his own purpose in the world. For a long time he surveyed the large delicacy of the detail before him, the crests, the tree-protected houses, the fields and farmsteads, the distant gleams of water. And then he became interested in the men who were working in the chalk pit down below. They at any rate were not troubled with the problem of what to do with their lives. 13 Benham found his mind was now running clear, and so abundantly that he could scarcely, he felt, keep pace with it. As he thought his flow of ideas was tinged with a fear that he might forget what he was thinking. In an instant, for the first time in his mental existence, he could have imagined he had discovered Labour and seen it plain. A little while ago and he had seemed a lonely man among the hills, but indeed he was not lonely, these men had been with him all the time, and he was free to wander, to sit here, to think and choose simply because those men down there were not free. HE WAS SPENDING THEIR LEISURE. . . . Not once but many times with Prothero had he used the phrase RICHESSE OBLIGE. Now he remembered it. He began to remember a mass of ideas that had been overlaid and stifling within him. This was what Merkle and the club servants and the entertainments and engagements and his mother and the artistic touts and the theatrical touts and the hunting and the elaboration of games and--Mrs. Skelmersdale and all that had clustered thickly round him in London had been hiding from him. Those men below there had not been trusted to choose their work; they had been given it. And he had been trusted. . . . And now to grapple with it! Now to get it clear! What work was he going to do? That settled, he would deal with his distractions readily enough. Until that was settled he was lax and exposed to every passing breeze of invitation. “What work am I going to do? What work am I going to do? ” He repeated it. It is the only question for the aristocrat. What amusement? That for a footman on holiday. That for a silly child, for any creature that is kept or led or driven. That perhaps for a tired invalid, for a toiler worked to a rag. But able-bodied amusement! The arms of Mrs. Skelmersdale were no worse than the solemn aimlessness of hunting, and an evening of dalliance not an atom more reprehensible than an evening of chatter. It was the waste of him that made the sin. His life in London had been of a piece together. It was well that his intrigue had set a light on it, put a point to it, given him this saving crisis of the nerves. That, indeed, is the chief superiority of idle love-making over other more prevalent forms of idleness and self-indulgence; it does at least bear its proper label. It is reprehensible. It brings your careless honour to the challenge of concealment and shabby evasions and lies. . . . But in this pellucid air things took their proper proportions again. And now what was he to do? “Politics,” he said aloud to the turf and the sky. Is there any other work for an aristocratic man? . . . Science? One could admit science in that larger sense that sweeps in History, or Philosophy. Beyond that whatever work there is is work for which men are paid. Art? Art is nothing aristocratic except when it is a means of scientific or philosophical expression. Art that does not argue nor demonstrate nor discover is merely the craftsman's impudence. He pulled up at this and reflected for a time with some distinguished instances in his mind. They were so distinguished, so dignified, they took their various arts with so admirable a gravity that the soul of this young man recoiled from the verdicts to which his reasoning drove him. “It's not for me to judge them,” he decided, “except in relation to myself. For them there may be tremendous significances in Art. But if these do not appear to me, then so far as I am concerned they do not exist for me. They are not in my world. So far as they attempt to invade me and control my attitudes or my outlook, or to judge me in any way, there is no question of their impudence. Impudence is the word for it. My world is real. I want to be really aristocratic, really brave, really paying for the privilege of not being a driven worker. The things the artist makes are like the things my private dream-artist makes, relaxing, distracting. What can Art at its greatest be, pure Art that is, but a more splendid, more permanent, transmissible reverie! The very essence of what I am after is NOT to be an artist. . . . ” After a large and serious movement through his mind he came back to Science, Philosophy or Politics as the sole three justifications for the usurpation of leisure. So far as devotion to science went, he knew he had no specific aptitude for any departmentalized subject, and equally he felt no natural call to philosophy. He was left with politics. . . . “Or else, why shouldn't I go down there and pick up a shovel and set to work? To make leisure for my betters. . . . ” And now it was that he could take up the real trouble that more than anything else had been keeping him ineffective and the prey of every chance demand and temptation during the last ten months. He had not been able to get himself into politics, and the reason why he had not been able to do so was that he could not induce himself to fit in. Statecraft was a remote and faded thing in the political life of the time; politics was a choice of two sides in a game, and either side he found equally unattractive. Since he had come down from Cambridge the Tariff Reform people had gone far to capture the Conservative party. There was little chance of a candidature for him without an adhesion to that. And he could find nothing he could imagine himself working for in the declarations of the Tariff Reform people. He distrusted them, he disliked them. They took all the light and pride out of imperialism, they reduced it to a shabby conspiracy of the British and their colonies against foreign industrialism. They were violent for armaments and hostile to education. They could give him no assurance of any scheme of growth and unification, and no guarantees against the manifest dangers of economic disturbance and political corruption a tariff involves. Imperialism without noble imaginations, it seemed to him, was simply nationalism with megalomania. It was swaggering, it was greed, it was German; its enthusiasm was forced, its nobility a vulgar lie. No. And when he turned to the opposite party he found little that was more attractive. They were prepared, it seemed, if they came into office, to pull the legislature of the British Isles to pieces in obedience to the Irish demand for Home Rule, and they were totally unprepared with any scheme for doing this that had even a chance of success. In the twenty years that had elapsed since Gladstone's hasty and disastrous essay in political surgery they had studied nothing, learnt nothing, produced no ideas whatever in the matter. They had not had the time. They had just negotiated, like the mere politicians they were, for the Nationalist vote. They seemed to hope that by a marvel God would pacify Ulster. Lord Dunraven, Plunkett, were voices crying in the wilderness. The sides in the party game would as soon have heeded a poet. . . . But unless Benham was prepared to subscribe either to Home Rule or Tariff Reform there was no way whatever open to him into public life. He had had some decisive conversations. He had no illusions left upon that score. . . . Here was the real barrier that had kept him inactive for ten months. Here was the problem he had to solve. This was how he had been left out of active things, a prey to distractions, excitements, idle temptations--and Mrs. Skelmersdale. Running away to shoot big game or explore wildernesses was no remedy. That was just running away. Aristocrats do not run away. What of his debt to those men down there in the quarry? What of his debt to the unseen men in the mines away in the north? What of his debt to the stokers on the liners, and to the clerks in the city? He reiterated the cardinal article of his creed: The aristocrat is a privileged man in order that he may be a public and political man. But how is one to be a political man when one is not in politics? Benham frowned at the Weald. His ideas were running thin. He might hammer at politics from the outside. And then again how? He would make a list of all the things that he might do. For example he might write. He rested one hand on his knee and lifted one finger and regarded it. COULD he write? There were one or two men who ran papers and seemed to have a sort of independent influence. Strachey, for example, with his SPECTATOR; Maxse, with his NATIONAL REVIEW. But they were grown up, they had formed their ideas. He had to learn first. He lifted a second finger. How to learn? For it was learning that he had to do. When one comes down from Oxford or Cambridge one falls into the mistake of thinking that learning is over and action must begin. But until one perceives clearly just where one stands action is impossible. How is one with no experience of affairs to get an experience of affairs when the door of affairs is closed to one by one's own convictions? Outside of affairs how can one escape being flimsy? How can one escape becoming merely an intellectual like those wordy Fabians, those writers, poseurs, and sham publicists whose wrangles he had attended? And, moreover, there is danger in the leisure of your intellectual. One cannot be always reading and thinking and discussing and inquiring. . . . WOULD IT NOT BE BETTER AFTER ALL TO MAKE A CONCESSION, SWALLOW HOME RULE OR TARIFF REFORM, AND SO AT LEAST GET HIS HANDS ON THINGS? And then in a little while the party conflict would swallow him up? Still it would engage him, it would hold him. If, perhaps, he did not let it swallow him up. If he worked with an eye open for opportunities of self-assertion. . . . The party game had not altogether swallowed “Mr. Arthur. ”. . . But every one is not a Balfour. . . . He reflected profoundly. On his left knee his left hand rested with two fingers held up. By some rapid mental alchemy these fingers had now become Home Rule and Tariff Reform. His right hand which had hitherto taken no part in the controversy, had raised its index finger by imperceptible degrees. It had been raised almost subconsciously. And by still obscurer processes this finger had become Mrs. Skelmersdale. He recognized her sudden reappearance above the threshold of consciousness with mild surprise. He had almost forgotten her share in these problems. He had supposed her dismissed to an entirely subordinate position. . . . Then he perceived that the workmen in the chalk pit far below had knocked off and were engaged upon their midday meal. He understood why his mind was no longer moving forward with any alacrity. Food? The question where he should eat arose abruptly and dismissed all other problems from his mind. He unfolded a map. Here must be the chalk pit, here was Dorking. That village was Brockham Green. Should he go down to Dorking or this way over Box Hill to the little inn at Burford Bridge. He would try the latter. 14 The April sunset found our young man talking to himself for greater emphasis, and wandering along a turfy cart-track through a wilderness mysteriously planted with great bushes of rhododendra on the Downs above Shere. He had eaten a belated lunch at Burford Bridge, he had got some tea at a little inn near a church with a splendid yew tree, and for the rest of the time he had wandered and thought. He had travelled perhaps a dozen or fifteen miles, and a good way from his first meditations above the Dorking chalk pit. He had recovered long ago from that remarkable conception of an active if dishonest political career as a means of escaping Mrs. Skelmersdale and all that Mrs. Skelmersdale symbolized. That would be just louting from one bad thing to another. He had to settle Mrs. Skelmersdale clean and right, and he had to do as exquisitely right in politics as he could devise. If the public life of the country had got itself into a stupid antagonism of two undesirable things, the only course for a sane man of honour was to stand out from the parties and try and get them back to sound issues again. There must be endless people of a mind with himself in this matter. And even if there were not, if he was the only man in the world, he still had to follow his lights and do the right. And his business was to find out the right. . . . He came back from these imaginative excursions into contemporary politics with one idea confirmed in his mind, an idea that had been indeed already in his mind during his Cambridge days. This was the idea of working out for himself, thoroughly and completely, a political scheme, a theory of his work and duty in the world, a plan of the world's future that should give a rule for his life. The Research Magnificent was emerging. It was an alarmingly vast proposal, but he could see no alternative but submission, a plebeian's submission to the currents of life about him. Little pictures began to flit before his imagination of the way in which he might build up this tremendous inquiry. He would begin by hunting up people, everybody who seemed to have ideas and promise ideas he would get at. He would travel far--and exhaustively. He would, so soon as the ideas seemed to indicate it, hunt out facts. He would learn how the world was governed. He would learn how it did its thinking. He would live sparingly. (“Not TOO sparingly,” something interpolated. ) He would work ten or twelve hours a day. Such a course of investigation must pass almost of its own accord into action and realization. He need not trouble now how it would bring him into politics. Inevitably somewhere it would bring him into politics. And he would travel. Almost at once he would travel. It is the manifest duty of every young aristocrat to travel. Here he was, ruling India. At any rate, passively, through the mere fact of being English, he was ruling India. And he knew nothing of India. He knew nothing indeed of Asia. So soon as he returned to London his preparations for this travel must begin, he must plot out the men to whom he would go, and so contrive that also he would go round the world. Perhaps he would get Lionel Maxim to go with him. Or if Maxim could not come, then possibly Prothero. Some one surely could be found, some one thinking and talking of statecraft and the larger idea of life. All the world is not swallowed up in every day. . . . 15 His mind shifted very suddenly from these large proposals to an entirely different theme. These mental landslips are not unusual when men are thinking hard and wandering. He found himself holding a trial upon himself for Presumptuousness, for setting himself up against the wisdom of the ages, and the decisions of all the established men in the world, for being in short a Presumptuous Sort of Ass. He was judge and jury and prosecutor, but rather inexplicably the defence was conducted in an irregular and undignified way by some inferior stratum of his being. At first the defence contented itself with arguments that did at least aim to rebut the indictment. The decisions of all the established men in the world were notoriously in conflict. However great was the gross wisdom of the ages the net wisdom was remarkably small. Was it after all so very immodest to believe that the Liberals were right in what they said about Tariff Reform, and the Tories right in their criticism of Home Rule? And then suddenly the defence threw aside its mask and insisted that Benham had to take this presumptuous line because there was no other tolerable line possible for him. “Better die with the Excelsior chap up the mountains,” the defence interjected. Than what? Consider the quality Benham had already betrayed. He was manifestly incapable of a decent modest mediocre existence. Already he had ceased to be--if one may use so fine a word for genteel abstinence--virtuous. He didn't ride well, he hadn't good hands, and he hadn't good hands for life. He must go hard and harsh, high or low. He was a man who needed BITE in his life. He was exceptionally capable of boredom. He had been bored by London. Social occasions irritated him, several times he had come near to gross incivilities, art annoyed him, sport was an effort, wholesome perhaps, but unattractive, music he loved, but it excited him. The defendant broke the sunset calm by uttering amazing and improper phrases. “I can't smug about in a state of falsified righteousness like these Crampton chaps. “I shall roll in women. I shall rollick in women. If, that is, I stay in London with nothing more to do than I have had this year past. “I've been sliding fast to it. . . . “NO! I'M DAMNED IF I DO! . . . ” 16 For some time he had been bothered by a sense of something, something else, awaiting his attention. Now it came swimming up into his consciousness. He had forgotten. He was, of course, going to sleep out under the stars. He had settled that overnight, that was why he had this cloak in his rucksack, but he had settled none of the details. Now he must find some place where he could lie down. Here, perhaps, in this strange forgotten wilderness of rhododendra.

He turned off from the track and wandered among the bushes. One might lie down anywhere here. But not yet; it was as yet barely twilight. He consulted his watch. HALF-PAST SEVEN. Nearly dinner-time. . . . No doubt Christian during the earlier stages of his pilgrimage noticed the recurrence of the old familiar hours of his life of emptiness and vanity. Or rather of vanity--simply. Why drag in the thought of emptiness just at this point? . . . It was very early to go to bed. He might perhaps sit and think for a time. Here for example was a mossy bank, a seat, and presently a bed. So far there were only three stars visible but more would come. He dropped into a reclining attitude. DAMP! When one thinks of sleeping out under the stars one is apt to forget the dew. He spread his Swiss cloak out on the soft thick carpeting of herbs and moss, and arranged his knapsack as a pillow. Here he would lie and recapitulate the thoughts of the day. (That squealing might be a young fox. ) At the club at present men would be sitting about holding themselves back from dinner. Excellent the clear soup always was at the club! Then perhaps a Chateaubriand. That--what was that? Soft and large and quite near and noiseless. An owl! The damp feeling was coming through his cloak. And this April night air had a knife edge. Early ice coming down the Atlantic perhaps. It was wonderful to be here on the top of the round world and feel the icebergs away there. Or did this wind come from Russia? He wasn't quite clear just how he was oriented, he had turned about so much. Which was east? Anyhow it was an extremely cold wind. What had he been thinking? Suppose after all that ending with Mrs. Skelmersdale was simply a beginning. So far he had never looked sex in the face. . . . He sat up and sneezed violently. It would be ridiculous to start out seeking the clue to one's life and be driven home by rheumatic fever. One should not therefore incur the risk of rheumatic fever. Something squealed in the bushes. It was impossible to collect one's thoughts in this place. He stood up. The night was going to be bitterly cold, savagely, cruelly cold. . . . No. There was no thinking to be done here, no thinking at all. He would go on along the track and presently he would strike a road and so come to an inn. One can solve no problems when one is engaged in a struggle with the elements. The thing to do now was to find that track again. . . . It took Benham two hours of stumbling and walking, with a little fence climbing and some barbed wire thrown in, before he got down into Shere to the shelter of a friendly little inn. And then he negotiated a satisfying meal, with beef-steak as its central fact, and stipulated for a fire in his bedroom. The landlord was a pleasant-faced man; he attended to Benham himself and displayed a fine sense of comfort. He could produce wine, a half-bottle of Australian hock, Big Tree brand No. 8, a virile wine, he thought of sardines to precede the meal, he provided a substantial Welsh rarebit by way of a savoury, he did not mind in the least that it was nearly ten o'clock. He ended by suggesting coffee. “And a liqueur? ” Benham had some Benedictine! One could not slight such sympathetic helpfulness. The Benedictine was genuine. And then came the coffee. The cup of coffee was generously conceived and honestly made. A night of clear melancholy ensued. . . . 17 Hitherto Benham had not faced in any detail the problem of how to break with Mrs. Skelmersdale. Now he faced it pessimistically. She would, he knew, be difficult to break with. (He ought never to have gone there to lunch. ) There would be something ridiculous in breaking off. In all sorts of ways she might resist. And face to face with her he might find himself a man divided against himself. That opened preposterous possibilities. On the other hand it was out of the question to do the business by letter. A letter hits too hard; it lies too heavy on the wound it has made. And in money matters he could be generous. He must be generous. At least financial worries need not complicate her distresses of desertion. But to suggest such generosities on paper, in cold ink, would be outrageous. And, in brief--he ought not to have gone there to lunch. After that he began composing letters at a great rate. Delicate--explanatory. Was it on the whole best to be explanatory? . . . It was going to be a tremendous job, this breaking with her. And it had begun so easily. . . . There was, he remembered with amazing vividness, a little hollow he had found under her ear, and how when he kissed her there it always made her forget her worries and ethical problems for a time and turn to him. . . . “No,” he said grimly, “it must end,” and rolled over and stared at the black. . . . Like an insidious pedlar, that old rascal whom young literary gentlemen call the Great God Pan, began to spread his wares in the young man's memory. . . . After long and feverish wanderings of the mind, and some talking to himself and walking about the room, he did at last get a little away from Mrs. Skelmersdale. He perceived that when he came to tell his mother about this journey around the world there would be great difficulties. She would object very strongly, and if that did not do then she would become extremely abusive, compare him to his father, cry bitterly, and banish him suddenly and heartbrokenly from her presence for ever. She had done that twice already--once about going to the opera instead of listening to a lecture on Indian ethnology and once about a week-end in Kent. . . . He hated hurting his mother, and he was beginning to know now how easily she was hurt. It is an abominable thing to hurt one's mother--whether one has a justification or whether one hasn't. Recoiling from this, he was at once resumed by Mrs. Skelmersdale. Who had in fact an effect of really never having been out of the room. But now he became penitent about her. His penitence expanded until it was on a nightmare scale. At last it blotted out the heavens. He felt like one of those unfortunate victims of religious mania who are convinced they have committed the Sin against the Holy Ghost. (Why had he gone there to lunch? That was the key to it. WHY had he gone there to lunch? ). . . He began to have remorse for everything, for everything he had ever done, for everything he had ever not done, for everything in the world. In a moment of lucidity he even had remorse for drinking that stout honest cup of black coffee. . . . And so on and so on and so on. . . . When daylight came it found Benham still wide awake. Things crept mournfully out of the darkness into a reproachful clearness. The sound of birds that had been so delightful on the yesterday was now no longer agreeable. The thrushes, he thought, repeated themselves a great deal. He fell asleep as it seemed only a few minutes before the landlord, accompanied by a great smell of frying bacon, came to call him. 18 The second day opened rather dully for Benham. There was not an idea left in his head about anything in the world. It was--SOLID. He walked through Bramley and Godalming and Witley and so came out upon the purple waste of Hindhead. He strayed away from the road and found a sunny place of turf amidst the heather and lay down and slept for an hour or so. He arose refreshed. He got some food at the Huts Inn on the Hindhead crest and went on across sunlit heathery wildernesses variegated by patches of spruce and fir and silver birch. And then suddenly his mental inanition was at an end and his thoughts were wide and brave again. He was astonished that for a moment he could have forgotten that he was vowed to the splendid life. “Continence by preoccupation;” he tried the phrase. . . . “A man must not give in to fear; neither must he give in to sex. It's the same thing really. The misleading of instinct. ” This set the key of his thought throughout the afternoon--until Amanda happened to him. CHAPTER THE THIRD ~~ AMANDA 1 Amanda happened to Benham very suddenly. From Haslemere he had gone on to further heaths and gorse beyond Liphook, and thence he had wandered into a pretty district beset with Hartings. He had found himself upon a sandy ridge looking very beautifully into a sudden steep valley that he learnt was Harting Coombe; he had been through a West Harting and a South Harting and read finger-posts pointing to others of the clan; and in the evening, at the foot of a steep hill where two roads met, he sat down to consider whether he should go back and spend the night in one of the two kindly-looking inns of the latter place or push on over the South Downs towards the unknown luck of Singleton or Chichester. As he sat down two big retrievers, black and brown, came headlong down the road. The black carried a stick, the brown disputed and pursued. As they came abreast of him the foremost a little relaxed his hold, the pursuer grabbed at it, and in an instant the rivalry had flared to rage and a first-class dogfight was in progress. Benham detested dog-fights. He stood up, pale and distressed. “Lie down! ” he cried. “Shut up, you brutes! ” and was at a loss for further action. Then it was Amanda leapt into his world, a light, tall figure of a girl, fluttering a short petticoat. Hatless she was, brown, flushed, and her dark hair tossing loose, and in a moment she had the snarling furious dogs apart, each gripped firmly by its collar. Then with a wriggle black was loose and had closed again. Inspired by the best traditions of chivalry Benham came to her assistance. He was not expert with dogs. He grasped the black dog under its ear. He was bitten in the wrist, rather in excitement than malice, and with a certain excess of zeal he was strangling the brute before you could count ten. Amanda seized the fallen stick and whacked the dog she held, reasonably but effectively until its yelps satisfied her. “There! ” she said pitching her victim from her, and stood erect again. She surveyed the proceedings of her helper for the first time. “You needn't,” she said, “choke Sultan anymore. ” “Ugh! ” she said, as though that was enough for Sultan. And peace was restored. “I'm obliged to you. But--. . . I say! He didn't bite you, did he? Oh, SULTAN! ” Sultan tried to express his disgust at the affair. Rotten business. When a fellow is fighting one can't be meticulous. And if people come interfering. Still--SORRY! So Sultan by his code of eye and tail. “May I see? . . . Something ought to be done to this. . . . ” She took his wrist in her hand, and her cheek and eyelashes came within a foot of his face. Some observant element in his composition guessed, and guessed quite accurately, that she was nineteen. . . . 2 She had an eyebrow like a quick stroke of a camel's-hair brush, she had a glowing face, half childish imp, half woman, she had honest hazel eyes, a voice all music, a manifest decision of character. And he must have this bite seen to at once. She lived not five minutes away. He must come with her. She had an aunt who behaved like a mother and a mother who behaved like a genteel visitor, and they both agreed with Amanda that although Mr. Walter Long and his dreadful muzzles and everything did seem to have stamped out rabies, yet you couldn't be too careful with a dog bite. A dog bite might be injurious in all sorts of ways--particularly Sultan's bite. He was, they had to confess, a dog without refinement, a coarse-minded omnivorous dog. Both the elder ladies insisted upon regarding Benham's wound as clear evidence of some gallant rescue of Amanda from imminent danger--“she's always so RECKLESS with those dogs,” as though Amanda was not manifestly capable of taking care of herself; and when he had been Listerined and bandaged, they would have it that he should join them at their supper-dinner, which was already prepared and waiting. They treated him as if he were still an undergraduate, they took his arrangements in hand as though he was a favourite nephew. He must stay in Harting that night. Both the Ship and the Coach and Horses were excellent inns, and over the Downs there would be nothing for miles and miles. . . . The house was a little long house with a verandah and a garden in front of it with flint-edged paths; the room in which they sat and ate was long and low and equipped with pieces of misfitting good furniture, an accidental-looking gilt tarnished mirror, and a sprinkling of old and middle-aged books. Some one had lit a fire, which cracked and spurted about cheerfully in a motherly fireplace, and a lamp and some candles got lit. Mrs. Wilder, Amanda's aunt, a comfortable dark broad-browed woman, directed things, and sat at the end of the table and placed Benham on her right hand between herself and Amanda. Amanda's mother remained undeveloped, a watchful little woman with at least an eyebrow like her daughter's. Her name, it seemed, was Morris. No servant appeared, but two cousins of a vague dark picturesqueness and with a stamp of thirty upon them, the first young women Benham had ever seen dressed in djibbahs, sat at the table or moved about and attended to the simple needs of the service. The reconciled dogs were in the room and shifted inquiring noses from one human being to another. Amanda's people were so easy and intelligent and friendly, and Benham after his thirty hours of silence so freshly ready for human association, that in a very little while he could have imagined he had known and trusted this household for years. He had never met such people before, and yet there was something about them that seemed familiar--and then it occurred to him that something of their easy-going freedom was to be found in Russian novels. A photographic enlargement of somebody with a vegetarian expression of face and a special kind of slouch hat gave the atmosphere a flavour of Socialism, and a press and tools and stamps and pigments on an oak table in the corner suggested some such socialistic art as bookbinding. They were clearly 'advanced' people. And Amanda was tremendously important to them, she was their light, their pride, their most living thing. They focussed on her. When he talked to them all in general he talked to her in particular. He felt that some introduction of himself was due to these welcoming people. He tried to give it mixed with an itinerary and a sketch of his experiences. He praised the heather country and Harting Coombe and the Hartings. He told them that London had suddenly become intolerable--“In the spring sunshine. ” “You live in London? ” said Mrs. Wilder. Yes. And he had wanted to think things out. In London one could do no thinking-- “Here we do nothing else,” said Amanda. “Except dog-fights,” said the elder cousin. “I thought I would just wander and think and sleep in the open air. Have you ever tried to sleep in the open air? ” “In the summer we all do,” said the younger cousin. “Amanda makes us. We go out on to the little lawn at the back. ” “You see Amanda has some friends at Limpsfield. And there they all go out and camp and sleep in the woods. ” “Of course,” reflected Mrs. Wilder, “in April it must be different. ” “It IS different,” said Benham with feeling; “the night comes five hours too soon. And it comes wet. ” He described his experiences and his flight to Shere and the kindly landlord and the cup of coffee. “And after that I thought with a vengeance. ” “Do you write things? ” asked Amanda abruptly, and it seemed to him with a note of hope. “No. No, it was just a private puzzle. It was something I couldn't get straight. ” “And you have got it straight? ” asked Amanda. “I think so. ” “You were making up your mind about something? ” “Amanda DEAR! ” cried her mother. “Oh! I don't mind telling you,” said Benham. They seemed such unusual people that he was moved to unusual confidences. They had that effect one gets at times with strangers freshly met as though they were not really in the world. And there was something about Amanda that made him want to explain himself to her completely. “What I wanted to think about was what I should do with my life. ” “Haven't you any WORK--? ” asked the elder cousin. “None that I'm obliged to do. ” “That's where a man has the advantage,” said Amanda with the tone of profound reflection. “You can choose. And what are you going to do with your life? ” “Amanda,” her mother protested, “really you mustn't! ” “I'm going round the world to think about it,” Benham told her. “I'd give my soul to travel,” said Amanda. She addressed her remark to the salad in front of her. “But have you no ties? ” asked Mrs. Wilder. “None that hold me,” said Benham. “I'm one of those unfortunates who needn't do anything at all. I'm independent. You see my riddles. East and west and north and south, it's all my way for the taking. There's not an indication. ” “If I were you,” said Amanda, and reflected. Then she half turned herself to him. “I should go first to India,” she said, “and I should shoot, one, two, three, yes, three tigers. And then I would see Farukhabad Sikri--I was reading in a book about it yesterday--where the jungle grows in the palaces; and then I would go right up the Himalayas, and then, then I would have a walking tour in Japan, and then I would sail in a sailing ship down to Borneo and Java and set myself up as a Ranee--. . . And then I would think what I would do next. ” “All alone, Amanda? ” asked Mrs. Wilder. “Only when I shoot tigers. You and mother should certainly come to Japan. ” “But Mr. Benham perhaps doesn't intend to shoot tigers, Amanda? ” said Amanda's mother. “Not at once. My way will be a little different. I think I shall go first through Germany. And then down to Constantinople. And then I've some idea of getting across Asia Minor and Persia to India. That would take some time. One must ride. ” “Asia Minor ought to be fun,” said Amanda. “But I should prefer India because of the tigers. It would be so jolly to begin with the tigers right away. ” “It is the towns and governments and peoples I want to see rather than tigers,” said Benham. “Tigers if they are in the programme. But I want to find out about--other things. ” “Don't you think there's something to be found out at home? ” said the elder cousin, blushing very brightly and speaking with the effort of one who speaks for conscience' sake. “Betty's a Socialist,” Amanda said to Benham with a suspicion of apology. “Well, we're all rather that,” Mrs. Wilder protested. “If you are free, if you are independent, then don't you owe something to the workers? ” Betty went on, getting graver and redder with each word. “It's just because of that,” said Benham, “that I am going round the world. ” 3 He was as free with these odd people as if he had been talking to Prothero. They were--alert. And he had been alone and silent and full of thinking for two clear days. He tried to explain why he found Socialism at once obvious and inadequate. . . . Presently the supper things got themselves put away and the talk moved into a smaller room with several armchairs and a fire. Mrs. Wilder and the cousins and Amanda each smoked a cigarette as if it were symbolical, and they were joined by a grave grey-bearded man with a hyphenated name and slightly Socratic manner, dressed in a very blue linen shirt and collar, a very woolly mustard-coloured suit and loose tie, and manifestly devoted to one of those branches of exemplary domestic decoration that grow upon Socialist soil in England. He joined Betty in the opinion that the duty of a free and wealthy young man was to remain in England and give himself to democratic Socialism and the abolition of “profiteering. ” “Consider that chair,” he said. But Benham had little feeling for the craftsmanship of chairs. Under cross-examination Mr. Rathbone-Sanders became entangled and prophetic. It was evident he had never thought out his “democratic,” he had rested in some vague tangle of idealism from which Benham now set himself with the zeal of a specialist to rout him. Such an argument sprang up as one meets with rarely beyond the happy undergraduate's range. Everybody lived in the discussion, even Amanda's mother listened visibly. Betty said she herself was certainly democratic and Mrs. Wilder had always thought herself to be so, and outside the circle round the fire Amanda hovered impatiently, not quite sure of her side as yet, but eager to come down with emphasis at the first flash of intimation. She came down vehemently on Benham's. And being a very clear-cutting personality with an instinct for the material rendering of things, she also came and sat beside him on the little square-cornered sofa. “Of course, Mr. Rathbone-Sanders,” she said, “of course the world must belong to the people who dare. Of course people aren't all alike, and dull people, as Mr. Benham says, and spiteful people, and narrow people have no right to any voice at all in things. . . . ” 4 In saying this she did but echo Benham's very words, and all she said and did that evening was in quick response to Benham's earnest expression of his views. She found Benham a delightful novelty. She liked to argue because there was no other talk so lively, and she had perhaps a lurking intellectual grudge against Mr. Rathbone-Sanders that made her welcome an ally. Everything from her that night that even verges upon the notable has been told, and yet it sufficed, together with something in the clear, long line of her limbs, in her voice, in her general physical quality, to convince Benham that she was the freest, finest, bravest spirit that he had ever encountered. In the papers he left behind him was to be found his perplexed endeavours to explain this mental leap, that after all his efforts still remained unexplained. He had been vividly impressed by the decision and courage of her treatment of the dogs; it was just the sort of thing he could not do. And there was a certain contagiousness in the petting admiration with which her family treated her. But she was young and healthy and so was he, and in a second mystery lies the key of the first. He had fallen in love with her, and that being so whatever he needed that instantly she was. He needed a companion, clean and brave and understanding. . . . In his bed in the Ship that night he thought of nothing but her before he went to sleep, and when next morning he walked on his way over the South Downs to Chichester his mind was full of her image and of a hundred pleasant things about her. In his confessions he wrote, “I felt there was a sword in her spirit. I felt she was as clean as the wind. ” Love is the most chastening of powers, and he did not even remember now that two days before he had told the wind and the twilight that he would certainly “roll and rollick in women” unless there was work for him to do. She had a peculiarly swift and easy stride that went with him in his thoughts along the turf by the wayside halfway and more to Chichester. He thought always of the two of them as being side by side. His imagination became childishly romantic. The open down about him with its scrub of thorn and yew became the wilderness of the world, and through it they went--in armour, weightless armour--and they wore long swords. There was a breeze blowing and larks were singing and something, something dark and tortuous dashed suddenly in headlong flight from before their feet. It was an ethical problem such as those Mrs. Skelmersdale nursed in her bosom. But at the sight of Amanda it had straightened out--and fled. . . . And interweaving with such imaginings, he was some day to record, there were others. She had brought back to his memory the fancies that had been aroused in his first reading of Plato's REPUBLIC; she made him think of those women Guardians, who were the friends and mates of men. He wanted now to re-read that book and the LAWS. He could not remember if the Guardians were done in the LAWS as well as in the REPUBLIC. He wished he had both these books in his rucksack, but as he had not, he decided he would hunt for them in Chichester. When would he see Amanda again? He would ask his mother to make the acquaintance of these very interesting people, but as they did not come to London very much it might be some time before he had a chance of seeing her again. And, besides, he was going to America and India. The prospect of an exploration of the world was still noble and attractive; but he realized it would stand very much in the way of his seeing more of Amanda. Would it be a startling and unforgivable thing if presently he began to write to her? Girls of that age and spirit living in out-of-the-way villages have been known to marry. . . . Marriage didn't at this stage strike Benham as an agreeable aspect of Amanda's possibilities; it was an inconvenience; his mind was running in the direction of pedestrian tours in armour of no particular weight, amidst scenery of a romantic wildness. . . . When he had gone to the house and taken his leave that morning it had seemed quite in the vein of the establishment that he should be received by Amanda alone and taken up the long garden before anybody else appeared, to see the daffodils and the early apple-trees in blossom and the pear-trees white and delicious. Then he had taken his leave of them all and made his social tentatives. Did they ever come to London? When they did they must let his people know. He would so like them to know his mother, Lady Marayne. And so on with much gratitude. Amanda had said that she and the dogs would come with him up the hill, she had said it exactly as a boy might have said it, she had brought him up to the corner of Up Park and had sat down there on a heap of stones and watched him until he was out of sight, waving to him when he looked back. “Come back again,” she had cried. In Chichester he found a little green-bound REPUBLIC in a second-hand book-shop near the Cathedral, but there was no copy of the LAWS to be found in the place. Then he was taken with the brilliant idea of sleeping the night in Chichester and going back next day via Harting to Petersfield station and London. He carried out this scheme and got to South Harting neatly about four o'clock in the afternoon. He found Mrs. Wilder and Mrs. Morris and Amanda and the dogs entertaining Mr. Rathbone-Sanders at tea, and they all seemed a little surprised, and, except Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, they all seemed pleased to see him again so soon. His explanation of why he hadn't gone back to London from Chichester struck him as a little unconvincing in the cold light of Mr. Rathbone-Sanders' eye. But Amanda was manifestly excited by his return, and he told them his impressions of Chichester and described the entertainment of the evening guest at a country inn and suddenly produced his copy of the REPUBLIC. “I found this in a book-shop,” he said, “and I brought it for you, because it describes one of the best dreams of aristocracy there has ever been dreamt. ” At first she praised it as a pretty book in the dearest little binding, and then realized that there were deeper implications, and became grave and said she would read it through and through, she loved such speculative reading. She came to the door with the others and stayed at the door after they had gone in again. When he looked back at the corner of the road to Petersfield she was still at the door and waved farewell to him. He only saw a light slender figure, but when she came back into the sitting-room Mr. Rathbone-Sanders noted the faint flush in her cheek and an unwonted abstraction in her eye. And in the evening she tucked her feet up in the armchair by the lamp and read the REPUBLIC very intently and very thoughtfully, occasionally turning over a page. 5 When Benham got back to London he experienced an unwonted desire to perform his social obligations to the utmost. So soon as he had had some dinner at his club he wrote his South Harting friends a most agreeable letter of thanks for their kindness to him. In a little while he hoped he should see them again. His mother, too, was most desirous to meet them. . . . That done, he went on to his flat and to various aspects of life for which he was quite unprepared. But here we may note that Amanda answered him. Her reply came some four days later. It was written in a square schoolgirl hand, it covered three sheets of notepaper, and it was a very intelligent essay upon the REPUBLIC of Plato. “Of course,” she wrote, “the Guardians are inhuman, but it was a glorious sort of inhumanity. They had a spirit--like sharp knives cutting through life. ” It was her best bit of phrasing and it pleased Benham very much. But, indeed, it was not her own phrasing, she had culled it from a disquisition into which she had led Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, and she had sent it to Benham as she might have sent him a flower. 6 Benham re-entered the flat from which he had fled so precipitately with three very definite plans in his mind. The first was to set out upon his grand tour of the world with as little delay as possible, to shut up this Finacue Street establishment for a long time, and get rid of the soul-destroying perfections of Merkle. The second was to end his ill-advised intimacy with little Mrs. Skelmersdale as generously and cheerfully as possible.

The third was to bring Lady Marayne into social relations with the Wilder and Morris MENAGE at South Harting. It did not strike him that there was any incompatibility among these projects or any insurmountable difficulty in any of them until he was back in his flat. The accumulation of letters, packages and telephone memoranda upon his desk included a number of notes and slips to remind him that both Mrs. Skelmersdale and his mother were ladies of some determination. Even as he stood turning over the pile of documents the mechanical vehemence of the telephone filled him with a restored sense of the adverse will in things. “Yes, mam,” he heard Merkle's voice, “yes, mam. I will tell him, mam. Will you keep possession, mam. ” And then in the doorway of the study, “Mrs. Skelmersdale, sir. Upon the telephone, sir. ” Benham reflected with various notes in his hand. Then he went to the telephone. “You Wicked Boy, where have you been hiding? ” “I've been away. I may have to go away again. ” “Not before you have seen me. Come round and tell me all about it. ” Benham lied about an engagement. “Then to-morrow in the morning. ”. . . Impossible. “In the afternoon. You don't WANT to see me. ” Benham did want to see her. “Come round and have a jolly little evening to-morrow night. I've got some more of that harpsichord music. And I'm dying to see you. Don't you understand? ” Further lies. “Look here,” said Benham, “can you come and have a talk in Kensington Gardens? You know the place, near that Chinese garden. Paddington Gate. . . . ” The lady's voice fell to flatness. She agreed. “But why not come to see me HERE? ” she asked. Benham hung up the receiver abruptly. He walked slowly back to his study. “Phew! ” he whispered to himself. It was like hitting her in the face. He didn't want to be a brute, but short of being a brute there was no way out for him from this entanglement. Why, oh! why the devil had he gone there to lunch? . . . He resumed his examination of the waiting letters with a ruffled mind. The most urgent thing about them was the clear evidence of gathering anger on the part of his mother. He had missed a lunch party at Sir Godfrey's on Tuesday and a dinner engagement at Philip Magnet's, quite an important dinner in its way, with various promising young Liberals, on Wednesday evening. And she was furious at “this stupid mystery. Of course you're bound to be found out, and of course there will be a scandal. ”. . . He perceived that this last note was written on his own paper. “Merkle! ” he cried sharply. “Yessir! ” Merkle had been just outside, on call. “Did my mother write any of these notes here? ” he asked. “Two, sir. Her ladyship was round here three times, sir. ” “Did she see all these letters? ” “Not the telephone calls, sir. I 'ad put them on one side. But. . . . It's a little thing, sir. ” He paused and came a step nearer. “You see, sir,” he explained with the faintest flavour of the confidential softening his mechanical respect, “yesterday, when 'er ladyship was 'ere, sir, some one rang up on the telephone--” “But you, Merkle--” “Exactly, sir. But 'er ladyship said 'I'LL go to that, Merkle,' and just for a moment I couldn't exactly think 'ow I could manage it, sir, and there 'er ladyship was, at the telephone. What passed, sir, I couldn't 'ear. I 'eard her say, 'Any message? ' And I FANCY, sir, I 'eard 'er say, 'I'm the 'ousemaid,' but that, sir, I think must have been a mistake, sir. ” “Must have been,” said Benham. “Certainly--must have been. And the call you think came from--? ” “There again, sir, I'm quite in the dark. But of course, sir, it's usually Mrs. Skelmersdale, sir. Just about her time in the afternoon. On an average, sir. . . . ” 7 “I went out of London to think about my life. ” It was manifest that Lady Marayne did not believe him. “Alone? ” she asked. “Of course alone. ” “STUFF! ” said Lady Marayne. She had taken him into her own little sitting-room, she had thrown aside gloves and fan and theatre wrap, curled herself comfortably into the abundantly cushioned corner by the fire, and proceeded to a mixture of cross-examination and tirade that he found it difficult to make head against. She was vibrating between distressed solicitude and resentful anger. She was infuriated at his going away and deeply concerned at what could have taken him away. “I was worried,” he said. “London is too crowded to think in. I wanted to get myself alone. ” “And there I was while you were getting yourself alone, as you call it, wearing my poor little brains out to think of some story to tell people. I had to stuff them up you had a sprained knee at Chexington, and for all I knew any of them might have been seeing you that morning. Besides what has a boy like you to worry about? It's all nonsense, Poff. ” She awaited his explanations. Benham looked for a moment like his father. “I'm not getting on, mother,” he said. “I'm scattering myself. I'm getting no grip. I want to get a better hold upon life, or else I do not see what is to keep me from going to pieces--and wasting existence. It's rather difficult sometimes to tell what one thinks and feels--” She had not really listened to him. “Who is that woman,” she interrupted suddenly, “Mrs. Fly-by-Night, or some such name, who rings you up on the telephone? ” Benham hesitated, blushed, and regretted it. “Mrs. Skelmersdale,” he said after a little pause. “It's all the same. Who is she? ” “She's a woman I met at a studio somewhere, and I went with her to one of those Dolmetsch concerts. ” He stopped. Lady Marayne considered him in silence for a little while. “All men,” she said at last, “are alike. Husbands, sons and brothers, they are all alike. Sons! One expects them to be different. They aren't different. Why should they be? I suppose I ought to be shocked, Poff. But I'm not. She seems to be very fond of you. ” “She's--she's very good--in her way. She's had a difficult life. . . . ” “You can't leave a man about for a moment,” Lady Marayne reflected. “Poff, I wish you'd fetch me a glass of water. ” When he returned she was looking very fixedly into the fire. “Put it down,” she said, “anywhere. Poff! is this Mrs. Helter-Skelter a discreet sort of woman? Do you like her? ” She asked a few additional particulars and Benham made his grudging admission of facts. “What I still don't understand, Poff, is why you have been away. ” “I went away,” said Benham, “because I want to clear things up. ” “But why? Is there some one else? ” “No. ” “You went alone? All the time? ” “I've told you I went alone. Do you think I tell you lies, mother? ” “Everybody tells lies somehow,” said Lady Marayne. “Easy lies or stiff ones. Don't FLOURISH, Poff. Don't start saying things like a moral windmill in a whirlwind. It's all a muddle. I suppose every one in London is getting in or out of these entanglements--or something of the sort. And this seems a comparatively slight one. I wish it hadn't happened. They do happen. ” An expression of perplexity came into her face. She looked at him. “Why do you want to throw her over? ” “I WANT to throw her over,” said Benham. He stood up and went to the hearthrug, and his mother reflected that this was exactly what all men did at just this phase of a discussion. Then things ceased to be sensible. From overhead he said to her: “I want to get away from this complication, this servitude. I want to do some--some work. I want to get my mind clear and my hands clear. I want to study government and the big business of the world. ” “And she's in the way? ” He assented. “You men! ” said Lady Marayne after a little pause. “What queer beasts you are! Here is a woman who is kind to you. She's fond of you. I could tell she's fond of you directly I heard her. And you amuse yourself with her. And then it's Gobble, Gobble, Gobble, Great Work, Hands Clear, Big Business of the World. Why couldn't you think of that before, Poff? Why did you begin with her? ” “It was unexpected. . . . ” “STUFF! ” said Lady Marayne for a second time. “Well,” she said, “well. Your Mrs. Fly-by-Night,--oh it doesn't matter! --whatever she calls herself, must look after herself. I can't do anything for her. I'm not supposed even to know about her. I daresay she'll find her consolations. I suppose you want to go out of London and get away from it all. I can help you there, perhaps. I'm tired of London too. It's been a tiresome season. Oh! tiresome and disappointing! I want to go over to Ireland and travel about a little. The Pothercareys want us to come. They've asked us twice. . . . ” Benham braced himself to face fresh difficulties. It was amazing how different the world could look from his mother's little parlour and from the crest of the North Downs. “But I want to start round the world,” he cried with a note of acute distress. “I want to go to Egypt and India and see what is happening in the East, all this wonderful waking up of the East, I know nothing of the way the world is going--. . . ” “India! ” cried Lady Marayne. “The East. Poff, what is the MATTER with you? Has something happened--something else? Have you been having a love affair? --a REAL love affair? ” “Oh, DAMN love affairs! ” cried Benham. “Mother! --I'm sorry, mother! But don't you see there's other things in the world for a man than having a good time and making love. I'm for something else than that. You've given me the splendidest time--. . . ” “I see,” cried Lady Marayne, “I see. I've bored you. I might have known I should have bored you. ” “You've NOT bored me! ” cried Benham. He threw himself on the rug at her feet. “Oh, mother! ” he said, “little, dear, gallant mother, don't make life too hard for me. I've got to do my job, I've got to find my job. ” “I've bored you,” she wept. Suddenly she was weeping with all the unconcealed distressing grief of a disappointed child. She put her pretty be-ringed little hands in front of her face and recited the accumulation of her woes. “I've done all I can for you, planned for you, given all my time for you and I've BORED you. ” “Mother! ” “Don't come near me, Poff! Don't TOUCH me! All my plans. All my ambitions. Friends--every one. You don't know all I've given up for you. . . . ” He had never seen his mother weep before. Her self-abandonment amazed him. Her words were distorted by her tears. It was the most terrible and distressing of crises. . . . “Go away from me! How can you help me? All I've done has been a failure! Failure! Failure! ” 8 That night the silences of Finacue Street heard Benham's voice again. “I must do my job,” he was repeating, “I must do my job. Anyhow. . . . ” And then after a long pause, like a watchword and just a little unsurely: “Aristocracy. . . . ” The next day his resolution had to bear the brunt of a second ordeal. Mrs. Skelmersdale behaved beautifully and this made everything tormentingly touching and difficult. She convinced him she was really in love with him, and indeed if he could have seen his freshness and simplicity through her experienced eyes he would have known there was sound reason why she should have found him exceptional. And when his clumsy hints of compensation could no longer be ignored she treated him with a soft indignation, a tender resentment, that left him soft and tender. She looked at him with pained eyes and a quiver of the lips. What did he think she was? And then a little less credibly, did he think she would have given herself to him if she hadn't been in love with him? Perhaps that was not altogether true, but at any rate it was altogether true to her when she said it, and it was manifest that she did not for a moment intend him to have the cheap consolation of giving her money. But, and that seemed odd to Benham, she would not believe, just as Lady Marayne would not believe, that there was not some other woman in the case. He assured her and she seemed reassured, and then presently she was back at exactly the same question. Would no woman ever understand the call of Asia, the pride of duty, the desire for the world? One sort of woman perhaps. . . . It was odd that for the first time now, in the sunshine of Kensington Gardens, he saw the little gossamer lines that tell that thirty years and more have passed over a face, a little wrinkling of the eyelids, a little hardening of the mouth. How slight it is, how invisible it has been, how suddenly it appears! And the sunshine of the warm April afternoon, heightened it may be by her determined unmercenary pose, betrayed too the faintest hint of shabbiness in her dress. He had never noticed these shadows upon her or her setting before and their effect was to fill him with a strange regretful tenderness. . . . Perhaps men only begin to love when they cease to be dazzled and admire. He had thought she might reproach him, he had felt and feared she might set herself to stir his senses, and both these expectations had been unjust to her he saw, now that he saw her beside him, a brave, rather ill-advised and unlucky little struggler, stung and shamed. He forgot the particulars of that first lunch of theirs together and he remembered his mother's second contemptuous “STUFF! ” Indeed he knew now it had not been unexpected. Why hadn't he left this little sensitive soul and this little sensitive body alone? And since he hadn't done so, what right had he now to back out of their common adventure? He felt a sudden wild impulse to marry Mrs. Skelmersdale, in a mood between remorse and love and self-immolation, and then a sunlit young woman with a leaping stride in her paces, passed across his heavens, pointing to Asia and Utopia and forbidding even another thought of the banns. . . . “You will kiss me good-bye, dear, won't you? ” said Mrs. Skelmersdale, brimming over. “You will do that. ” He couldn't keep his arm from her little shoulders. And as their lips touched he suddenly found himself weeping also. . . . His spirit went limping from that interview. She chose to stay behind in her chair and think, she said, and each time he turned back she was sitting in the same attitude looking at him as he receded, and she had one hand on the chair back and her arm drawn up to it. The third time he waved his hat clumsily, and she started and then answered with her hand. Then the trees hid her. . . . This sex business was a damnable business. If only because it made one hurt women. . . . He had trampled on Mrs. Skelmersdale, he had hurt and disappointed his mother. Was he a brute? Was he a cold-blooded prig? What was this aristocracy? Was his belief anything more than a theory? Was he only dreaming of a debt to the men in the quarry, to the miners, to the men in the stokeholes, to the drudges on the fields? And while he dreamt he wounded and distressed real living creatures in the sleep-walk of his dreaming. . . . So long as he stuck to his dream he must at any rate set his face absolutely against the establishment of any further relations with women. Unless they were women of an entirely different type, women hardened and tempered, who would understand. 9 So Benham was able to convert the unfortunate Mrs. Skelmersdale into a tender but for a long time an entirely painful memory. But mothers are not so easily disposed of, and more particularly a mother whose conduct is coloured deeply by an extraordinary persuasion of having paid for her offspring twice over. Nolan was inexplicable; he was, Benham understood quite clearly, never to be mentioned again; but somehow from the past his shadow and his legacy cast a peculiar and perplexing shadow of undefined obligation upon Benham's outlook. His resolution to go round the world carried on his preparations rapidly and steadily, but at the same time his mother's thwarted and angry bearing produced a torture of remorse in him. It was constantly in his mind, like the suit of the importunate widow, that he ought to devote his life to the little lady's happiness and pride, and his reason told him that even if he wanted to make this sacrifice he couldn't; the mere act of making it would produce so entirely catastrophic a revulsion. He could as soon have become a croquet champion or the curate of Chexington church, lines of endeavour which for him would have led straightly and simply to sacrilegious scandal or manslaughter with a mallet. There is so little measure in the wild atonements of the young that it was perhaps as well for the Research Magnificent that the remorses of this period of Benham's life were too complicated and scattered for a cumulative effect. In the background of his mind and less subdued than its importance could seem to warrant was his promise to bring the Wilder-Morris people into relations with Lady Marayne. They had been so delightful to him that he felt quite acutely the slight he was putting upon them by this delay. Lady Marayne's moods, however, had been so uncertain that he had found no occasion to broach this trifling matter, and when at last the occasion came he perceived in the same instant the fullest reasons for regretting it. “Ah! ” she said, hanging only for a moment, and then: “you told me you were alone! ”. . . Her mind leapt at once to the personification of these people as all that had puzzled and baffled her in her son since his flight from London. They were the enemy, they had got hold of him. “When I asked you if you were alone you pretended to be angry,” she remembered with a flash. “You said, 'Do I tell lies? '” “I WAS alone. Until-- It was an accident. On my walk I was alone. ” But he flinched before her accusing, her almost triumphant, forefinger. From the instant she heard of them she hated these South Harting people unrestrainedly. She made no attempt to conceal it. Her valiant bantam spirit caught at this quarrel as a refuge from the rare and uncongenial ache of his secession. “And who are they? What are they? What sort of people can they be to drag in a passing young man? I suppose this girl of theirs goes out every evening--Was she painted, Poff? ” She whipped him with her questions as though she was slashing his face. He became dead-white and grimly civil, answering every question as though it was the sanest, most justifiable inquiry. “Of course I don't know who they are. How should I know? What need is there to know? ” “There are ways of finding out,” she insisted. “If I am to go down and make myself pleasant to these people because of you. ” “But I implore you not to. ” “And five minutes ago you were imploring me to! Of course I shall. ” “Oh well! --well! ” “One has to know SOMETHING of the people to whom one commits oneself, surely. ” “They are decent people; they are well-behaved people. ” “Oh! --I'll behave well. Don't think I'll disgrace your casual acquaintances. But who they are, what they are, I WILL know. . . . ” On that point Lady Marayne was to score beyond her utmost expectations. “Come round,” she said over the telephone, two mornings later. “I've something to tell you. ” She was so triumphant that she was sorry for him. When it came to telling him, she failed from her fierceness. “Poff, my little son,” she said, “I'm so sorry I hardly know how to tell you. Poff, I'm sorry. I have to tell you--and it's utterly beastly. ” “But what? ” he asked. “These people are dreadful people. ” “But how? ” “You've heard of the great Kent and Eastern Bank smash and the Marlborough Building Society frauds eight or nine years ago? ” “Vaguely. But what has that to do with them? ” “That man Morris. ” She stopped short, and Benham nodded for her to go on. “Her father,” said Lady Marayne. “But who was Morris? Really, mother, I don't remember. ” “He was sentenced to seven years--ten years--I forget. He had done all sorts of dreadful things. He was a swindler. And when he went out of the dock into the waiting-room-- He had a signet ring with prussic acid in it--. . . ” “I remember now,” he said. A silence fell between them. Benham stood quite motionless on the hearthrug and stared very hard at the little volume of Henley's poetry that lay upon the table. He cleared his throat presently. “You can't go and see them then,” he said. “After all--since I am going abroad so soon--. . . It doesn't so very much matter. ” 10 To Benham it did not seem to be of the slightest importance that Amanda's father was a convicted swindler who had committed suicide. Never was a resolved and conscious aristocrat so free from the hereditary delusion. Good parents, he was convinced, are only an advantage in so far as they have made you good stuff, and bad parents are no discredit to a son or daughter of good quality. Conceivably he had a bias against too close an examination of origins, and he held that the honour of the children should atone for the sins of the fathers and the questionable achievements of any intervening testator. Not half a dozen rich and established families in all England could stand even the most conventional inquiry into the foundations of their pride, and only a universal amnesty could prevent ridiculous distinctions. But he brought no accusation of inconsistency against his mother. She looked at things with a lighter logic and a kind of genius for the acceptance of superficial values. She was condoned and forgiven, a rescued lamb, re-established, notoriously bright and nice, and the Morrises were damned. That was their status, exclusion, damnation, as fixed as colour in Georgia or caste in Bengal. But if his mother's mind worked in that way there was no reason why his should. So far as he was concerned, he told himself, it did not matter whether Amanda was the daughter of a swindler or the daughter of a god. He had no doubt that she herself had the spirit and quality of divinity. He had seen it. So there was nothing for it in the failure of his mother's civilities but to increase his own. He would go down to Harting and take his leave of these amiable outcasts himself. With a certain effusion. He would do this soon because he was now within sight of the beginning of his world tour. He had made his plans and prepared most of his equipment. Little remained to do but the release of Merkle, the wrappering and locking up of Finacue Street, which could await him indefinitely, and the buying of tickets. He decided to take the opportunity afforded by a visit of Sir Godfrey and Lady Marayne to the Blights, big iron people in the North of England of so austere a morality that even Benham was ignored by it. He announced his invasion in a little note to Mrs. Wilder. He parted from his mother on Friday afternoon; she was already, he perceived, a little reconciled to his project of going abroad; and contrived his arrival at South Harting for that sunset hour which was for his imagination the natural halo of Amanda. “I'm going round the world,” he told them simply. “I may be away for two years, and I thought I would like to see you all again before I started. ” That was quite the way they did things. The supper-party included Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, who displayed a curious tendency to drift in between Benham and Amanda, a literary youth with a Byronic visage, very dark curly hair, and a number of extraordinarily mature chins, a girl-friend of Betty's who had cycled down from London, and who it appeared maintained herself at large in London by drawing for advertisements, and a silent colourless friend of Mr. Rathbone-Sanders. The talk lit by Amanda's enthusiasm circled actively round Benham's expedition. It was clear that the idea of giving some years to thinking out one's possible work in the world was for some reason that remained obscure highly irritating to both Mr. Rathbone-Sanders and the Byronic youth. Betty too regarded it as levity when there was “so much to be done,” and the topic whacked about and rose to something like a wrangle, and sat down and rested and got up again reinvigorated, with a continuity of interest that Benham had never yet encountered in any London gathering. He made a good case for his modern version of the Grand Tour, and he gave them something of his intellectual enthusiasm for the distances and views, the cities and seas, the multitudinous wide spectacle of the world he was to experience. He had been reading about Benares and North China.

As he talked Amanda, who had been animated at first, fell thoughtful and silent. And then it was discovered that the night was wonderfully warm and the moon shining. They drifted out into the garden, but Mr. Rathbone-Sanders was suddenly entangled and drawn back by Mrs. Wilder and the young woman from London upon some technical point, and taken to the work-table in the corner of the dining-room to explain. He was never able to get to the garden. Benham found himself with Amanda upon a side path, a little isolated by some swaggering artichokes and a couple of apple trees and so forth from the general conversation. They cut themselves off from the continuation of that by a little silence, and then she spoke abruptly and with the quickness of a speaker who has thought out something to say and fears interruption: “Why did you come down here? ” “I wanted to see you before I went. ” “You disturb me. You fill me with envy. ” “I didn't think of that. I wanted to see you again. ” “And then you will go off round the world, you will see the Tropics, you will see India, you will go into Chinese cities all hung with vermilion, you will climb mountains. Oh! men can do all the splendid things. Why do you come here to remind me of it? I have never been anywhere, anywhere at all. I never shall go anywhere. Never in my life have I seen a mountain. Those Downs there--look at them! --are my highest. And while you are travelling I shall think of you--and think of you. . . . ” “Would YOU like to travel? ” he asked as though that was an extraordinary idea. “Do you think EVERY girl wants to sit at home and rock a cradle? ” “I never thought YOU did. ” “Then what did you think I wanted? ” “What DO you want? ” She held her arms out widely, and the moonlight shone in her eyes as she turned her face to him. “Just what you want,” she said; “--THE WHOLE WORLD! “Life is like a feast,” she went on; “it is spread before everybody and nobody must touch it. What am I? Just a prisoner. In a cottage garden. Looking for ever over a hedge. I should be happier if I couldn't look. I remember once, only a little time ago, there was a cheap excursion to London. Our only servant went. She had to get up at an unearthly hour, and I--I got up too. I helped her to get off. And when she was gone I went up to my bedroom again and cried. I cried with envy for any one, any one who could go away. I've been nowhere--except to school at Chichester and three or four times to Emsworth and Bognor--for eight years. When you go”--the tears glittered in the moonlight--“I shall cry. It will be worse than the excursion to London. . . . Ever since you were here before I've been thinking of it. ” It seemed to Benham that here indeed was the very sister of his spirit. His words sprang into his mind as one thinks of a repartee. “But why shouldn't you come too? ” he said. She stared at him in silence. The two white-lit faces examined each other. Both she and Benham were trembling. “COME TOO? ” she repeated. “Yes, with me. ” “But--HOW? ” Then suddenly she was weeping like a child that is teased; her troubled eyes looked out from under puckered brows. “You don't mean it,” she said. “You don't mean it. ” And then indeed he meant it. “Marry me,” he said very quickly, glancing towards the dark group at the end of the garden. “And we will go together. ” He seized her arm and drew her to him. “I love you,” he said. “I love your spirit. You are not like any one else. ” There was a moment's hesitation. Both he and she looked to see how far they were still alone. Then they turned their dusky faces to each other. He drew her still closer. “Oh! ” she said, and yielded herself to be kissed. Their lips touched, and for a moment he held her lithe body against his own. “I want you,” he whispered close to her. “You are my mate. From the first sight of you I knew that. . . . ” They embraced--alertly furtive. Then they stood a little apart. Some one was coming towards them. Amanda's bearing changed swiftly. She put up her little face to his, confidently and intimately. “Don't TELL any one,” she whispered eagerly shaking his arm to emphasize her words. “Don't tell any one--not yet. Not for a few days. . . . ” She pushed him from her quickly as the shadowy form of Betty appeared in a little path between the artichokes and raspberry canes. “Listening to the nightingales? ” cried Betty. “Yes, aren't they? ” said Amanda inconsecutively. “That's our very own nightingale! ” cried Betty advancing. “Do you hear it, Mr. Benham? No, not that one. That is a quite inferior bird that performs in the vicarage trees. . . . ” 11 When a man has found and won his mate then the best traditions demand a lyrical interlude. It should be possible to tell, in that ecstatic manner which melts words into moonshine, makes prose almost uncomfortably rhythmic, and brings all the freshness of every spring that ever was across the page, of the joyous exaltation of the happy lover. This at any rate was what White had always done in his novels hitherto, and what he would certainly have done at this point had he had the telling of Benham's story uncontrolledly in his hands. But, indeed, indeed, in real life, in very truth, the heart has not this simplicity. Only the heroes of romance, and a few strong simple clean-shaven Americans have that much emotional integrity. (And even the Americans do at times seem to an observant eye to be putting in work at the job and keeping up their gladness. ) Benham was excited that night, but not in the proper bright-eyed, red-cheeked way; he did not dance down the village street of Harting to his harbour at the Ship, and the expression in his eyes as he sat on the edge of his bed was not the deep elemental wonder one could have wished there, but amazement. Do not suppose that he did not love Amanda, that a rich majority of his being was not triumphantly glad to have won her, that the image of the two armour-clad lovers was not still striding and flourishing through the lit wilderness of his imagination. For three weeks things had pointed him to this. They would do everything together now, he and his mate, they would scale mountains together and ride side by side towards ruined cities across the deserts of the World. He could have wished no better thing. But at the same time, even as he felt and admitted this and rejoiced at it, the sky of his mind was black with consternation. . . . It is remarkable, White reflected, as he turned over the abundant but confused notes upon this perplexing phase of Benham's development that lay in the third drawer devoted to the Second Limitation, how dependent human beings are upon statement. Man is the animal that states a case. He lives not in things but in expressed ideas, and what was troubling Benham inordinately that night, a night that should have been devoted to purely blissful and exalted expectations, was the sheer impossibility of stating what had happened in any terms that would be tolerable either to Mrs. Skelmersdale or Lady Marayne. The thing had happened with the suddenness of a revelation. Whatever had been going on in the less illuminated parts of his mind, his manifest resolution had been merely to bid South Harting good-bye-- And in short they would never understand. They would accuse him of the meanest treachery. He could see his mother's face, he could hear her voice saying, “And so because of this sudden infatuation for a swindler's daughter, a girl who runs about the roads with a couple of retrievers hunting for a man, you must spoil all my plans, ruin my year, tell me a lot of pretentious stuffy lies. . . . ” And Mrs. Skelmersdale too would say, “Of course he just talked of the world and duty and all that rubbish to save my face. . . . ” It wasn't so at all. But it looked so frightfully like it! Couldn't they realize that he had fled out of London before ever he had seen Amanda? They might be able to do it perhaps, but they never would. It just happened that in the very moment when the edifice of his noble resolutions had been ready, she had stepped into it--out of nothingness and nowhere. She wasn't an accident; that was just the point upon which they were bound to misjudge her; she was an embodiment. If only he could show her to them as she had first shown herself to him, swift, light, a little flushed from running but not in the least out of breath, quick as a leopard upon the dogs. . . . But even if the improbable opportunity arose, he perceived it might still be impossible to produce the Amanda he loved, the Amanda of the fluttering short skirt and the clear enthusiastic voice. Because, already he knew she was not the only Amanda. There was another, there might be others, there was this perplexing person who had flashed into being at the very moment of their mutual confession, who had produced the entirely disconcerting demand that nobody must be told. Then Betty had intervened. But that sub-Amanda and her carneying note had to be dealt with on the first occasion, because when aristocrats love they don't care a rap who is told and who is not told. They just step out into the light side by side. . . . “Don't tell any one,” she had said, “not for a few days. . . . ” This sub-Amanda was perceptible next morning again, flitting about in the background of a glad and loving adventuress, a pre-occupied Amanda who had put her head down while the real Amanda flung her chin up and contemplated things on the Asiatic scale, and who was apparently engaged in disentangling something obscure connected with Mr. Rathbone-Sanders that ought never to have been entangled. . . . “A human being,” White read, “the simplest human being, is a clustering mass of aspects. No man will judge another justly who judges everything about him. And of love in particular is this true. We love not persons but revelations. The woman one loves is like a goddess hidden in a shrine; for her sake we live on hope and suffer the kindred priestesses that make up herself. The art of love is patience till the gleam returns. . . . ” Sunday and Monday did much to develop this idea of the intricate complexity of humanity in Benham's mind. On Monday morning he went up from the Ship again to get Amanda alone and deliver his ultimatum against a further secrecy, so that he could own her openly and have no more of the interventions and separations that had barred him from any intimate talk with her throughout the whole of Sunday. The front door stood open, the passage hall was empty, but as he hesitated whether he should proclaim himself with the knocker or walk through, the door of the little drawing-room flew open and a black-clad cylindrical clerical person entirely unknown to Benham stumbled over the threshold, blundered blindly against him, made a sound like “MOO” and a pitiful gesture with his arm, and fled forth. . . . It was a curate and he was weeping bitterly. . . . Benham stood in the doorway and watched a clumsy broken-hearted flight down the village street. He had been partly told and partly left to infer, and anyhow he was beginning to understand about Mr. Rathbone-Sanders. That he could dismiss. But--why was the curate in tears? 12 He found Amanda standing alone in the room from which this young man had fled. She had a handful of daffodils in her hand, and others were scattered over the table. She had been arranging the big bowl of flowers in the centre. He left the door open behind him and stopped short with the table between them. She looked up at him--intelligently and calmly. Her pose had a divine dignity. “I want to tell them now,” said Benham without a word of greeting. “Yes,” she said, “tell them now. ” They heard steps in the passage outside. “Betty! ” cried Amanda. Her mother's voice answered, “Do you want Betty? ” “We want you all,” answered Amanda. “We have something to tell you. . . . ” “Carrie! ” they heard Mrs. Morris call her sister after an interval, and her voice sounded faint and flat and unusual. There was the soft hissing of some whispered words outside and a muffled exclamation. Then Mrs. Wilder and Mrs. Morris and Betty came into the room. Mrs. Wilder came first, and Mrs. Morris with an alarmed face as if sheltering behind her. “We want to tell you something,” said Amanda. “Amanda and I are going to marry each other,” said Benham, standing in front of her. For an instant the others made no answer; they looked at each other. “BUT DOES HE KNOW? ” Mrs. Morris said in a low voice. Amanda turned her eyes to her lover. She was about to speak, she seemed to gather herself for an effort, and then he knew that he did not want to hear her explanation. He checked her by a gesture. “I KNOW,” he said, and then, “I do not see that it matters to us in the least. ” He went to her holding out both his hands to her. She took them and stood shyly for a moment, and then the watchful gravity of her face broke into soft emotion. “Oh! ” she cried and seized his face between her hands in a passion of triumphant love and kissed him. And then he found himself being kissed by Mrs. Morris. She kissed him thrice, with solemnity, with thankfulness, with relief, as if in the act of kissing she transferred to him precious and entirely incalculable treasures. CHAPTER THE FOURTH ~~ THE SPIRITED HONEYMOON 1 It was a little after sunrise one bright morning in September that Benham came up on to the deck of the sturdy Austrian steamboat that was churning its way with a sedulous deliberation from Spalato to Cattaro, and lit himself a cigarette and seated himself upon a deck chair. Save for a yawning Greek sailor busy with a mop the first-class deck was empty. Benham surveyed the haggard beauty of the Illyrian coast. The mountains rose gaunt and enormous and barren to a jagged fantastic silhouette against the sun; their almost vertical slopes still plunged in blue shadow, broke only into a little cold green and white edge of olive terraces and vegetation and houses before they touched the clear blue water. An occasional church or a house perched high upon some seemingly inaccessible ledge did but accentuate the vast barrenness of the land. It was a land desolated and destroyed. At Ragusa, at Salona, at Spalato and Zara and Pola Benham had seen only variations upon one persistent theme, a dwindled and uncreative human life living amidst the giant ruins of preceding times, as worms live in the sockets of a skull. Forward an unsavoury group of passengers still slumbered amidst fruit-peel and expectorations, a few soldiers, some squalid brigands armed with preposterous red umbrellas, a group of curled-up human lumps brooded over by an aquiline individual caparisoned with brass like a horse, his head wrapped picturesquely in a shawl. Benham surveyed these last products of the “life force” and resumed his pensive survey of the coast. The sea was deserted save for a couple of little lateen craft with suns painted on their gaudy sails, sea butterflies that hung motionless as if unawakened close inshore. . . . The travel of the last few weeks had impressed Benham's imagination profoundly. For the first time in his life he had come face to face with civilization in defeat. From Venice hitherward he had marked with cumulative effect the clustering evidences of effort spent and power crumbled to nothingness. He had landed upon the marble quay of Pola and visited its deserted amphitheatre, he had seen a weak provincial life going about ignoble ends under the walls of the great Venetian fortress and the still more magnificent cathedral of Zara; he had visited Spalato, clustered in sweltering grime within the ample compass of the walls of Diocletian's villa, and a few troublesome sellers of coins and iridescent glass and fragments of tessellated pavement and such-like loot was all the population he had found amidst the fallen walls and broken friezes and columns of Salona. Down this coast there ebbed and flowed a mean residual life, a life of violence and dishonesty, peddling trades, vendettas and war. For a while the unstable Austrian ruled this land and made a sort of order that the incalculable chances of international politics might at any time shatter. Benham was drawing near now to the utmost limit of that extended peace. Ahead beyond the mountain capes was Montenegro and, further, Albania and Macedonia, lands of lawlessness and confusion. Amanda and he had been warned of the impossibility of decent travel beyond Cattaro and Cettinje but this had but whetted her adventurousness and challenged his spirit. They were going to see Albania for themselves. The three months of honeymoon they had been spending together had developed many remarkable divergences of their minds that had not been in the least apparent to Benham before their marriage. Then their common resolve to be as spirited as possible had obliterated all minor considerations. But that was the limit of their unanimity. Amanda loved wild and picturesque things, and Benham strong and clear things; the vines and brushwood amidst the ruins of Salona that had delighted her had filled him with a sense of tragic retrogression. Salona had revived again in the acutest form a dispute that had been smouldering between them throughout a fitful and lengthy exploration of north and central Italy. She could not understand his disgust with the mediaeval colour and confusion that had swamped the pride and state of the Roman empire, and he could not make her feel the ambition of the ruler, the essential discipline and responsibilities of his aristocratic idea. While his adventurousness was conquest, hers, it was only too manifest, was brigandage. His thoughts ran now into the form of an imaginary discourse, that he would never deliver to her, on the decay of states, on the triumphs of barbarians over rulers who will not rule, on the relaxation of patrician orders and the return of the robber and assassin as lordship decays. This coast was no theatrical scenery for him; it was a shattered empire. And it was shattered because no men had been found, united enough, magnificent and steadfast enough, to hold the cities, and maintain the roads, keep the peace and subdue the brutish hates and suspicions and cruelties that devastated the world. And as these thoughts came back into his mind, Amanda flickered up from below, light and noiseless as a sunbeam, and stood behind his chair. Freedom and the sight of the world had if possible brightened and invigorated her. Her costume and bearing were subtly touched by the romance of the Adriatic. There was a flavour of the pirate in the cloak about her shoulders and the light knitted cap of scarlet she had stuck upon her head. She surveyed his preoccupation for a moment, glanced forward, and then covered his eyes with her hands. In almost the same movement she had bent down and nipped the tip of his ear between her teeth. “Confound you, Amanda! ” “You'd forgotten my existence, you star-gazing Cheetah. And then, you see, these things happen to you! ” “I was thinking. ” “Well--DON'T. . . . I distrust your thinking. This coast is wilder and grimmer than yesterday. It's glorious. . . . ” She sat down on the chair he unfolded for her. “Is there nothing to eat? ” she asked abruptly. “It is too early. ” 2 “This coast is magnificent,” she said presently. “It's hideous,” he answered. “It's as ugly as a heap of slag. ” “It's nature at its wildest. ” “That's Amanda at her wildest. ” “Well, isn't it? ” “No! This land isn't nature. It's waste. Not wilderness. It's the other end. Those hills were covered with forests; this was a busy civilized coast just a little thousand years ago. The Venetians wasted it. They cut down the forests; they filled the cities with a mixed mud of population, THAT stuff. Look at it”! --he indicated the sleepers forward by a movement of his head. “I suppose they WERE rather feeble people,” said Amanda. “Who? ” “The Venetians. ” “They were traders--and nothing more. Just as we are. And when they were rich they got splendid clothes and feasted and rested. Much as we do. ” Amanda surveyed him. “We don't rest. ” “We idle. ” “We are seeing things. ” “Don't be a humbug, Amanda. We are making love. Just as they did. And it has been--ripping. In Salona they made love tremendously. They did nothing else until the barbarians came over the mountains. . . . ” “Well,” said Amanda virtuously, “we will do something else. ” He made no answer and her expression became profoundly thoughtful. Of course this wandering must end. He had been growing impatient for some time. But it was difficult, she perceived, to decide just what to do with him. . . . Benham picked up the thread of his musing. He was seeing more and more clearly that all civilization was an effort, and so far always an inadequate and very partially successful effort. Always it had been aristocratic, aristocratic in the sense that it was the work of minorities, who took power, who had a common resolution against the inertia, the indifference, the insubordination and instinctive hostility of the mass of mankind. And always the set-backs, the disasters of civilization, had been failures of the aristocratic spirit. Why had the Roman purpose faltered and shrivelled? Every order, every brotherhood, every organization carried with it the seeds of its own destruction. Must the idea of statecraft and rule perpetually reappear, reclothe itself in new forms, age, die, even as life does--making each time its almost infinitesimal addition to human achievement? Now the world is crying aloud for a renascence of the spirit that orders and controls. Human affairs sway at a dizzy height of opportunity. Will they keep their footing there, or stagger? We have got back at last to a time as big with opportunity as the early empire. Given only the will in men and it would be possible now to turn the dazzling accidents of science, the chancy attainments of the nineteenth century, into a sane and permanent possession, a new starting point. . . . What a magnificence might be made of life! He was aroused by Amanda's voice. “When we go back to London, old Cheetah,” she said, “we must take a house. ” For some moments he stared at her, trying to get back to their point of divergence. “Why? ” he asked at length. “We must have a house,” she said. He looked at her face. Her expression was profoundly thoughtful, her eyes were fixed on the slumbering ships poised upon the transparent water under the mountain shadows. “You see,” she thought it out, “you've got to TELL in London. You can't just sneak back there. You've got to strike a note of your own. With all these things of yours. ” “But how? ” “There's a sort of little house, I used to see them when I was a girl and my father lived in London, about Brook Street and that part. Not too far north. . . . You see going back to London for us is just another adventure. We've got to capture London. We've got to scale it. We've got advantages of all sorts. But at present we're outside. We've got to march in. ” Her clear hazel eyes contemplated conflicts and triumphs. She was roused by Benham's voice. “What the deuce are you thinking of, Amanda? ” She turned her level eyes to his. “London,” she said. “For you. ” “I don't want London,” he said. “I thought you did. You ought to. I do. ” “But to take a house! Make an invasion of London! ” “You dear old Cheetah, you can't be always frisking about in the wilderness, staring at the stars. ” “But I'm not going back to live in London in the old way, theatres, dinner-parties, chatter--” “Oh no! We aren't going to do that sort of thing. We aren't going to join the ruck. We'll go about in holiday times all over the world. I want to see Fusiyama. I mean to swim in the South Seas. With you. We'll dodge the sharks. But all the same we shall have to have a house in London. We have to be FELT there. ” She met his consternation fairly. She lifted her fine eyebrows. Her little face conveyed a protesting reasonableness. “Well, MUSTN'T we? ” She added, “If we want to alter the world we ought to live in the world. ” Since last they had disputed the question she had thought out these new phrases. “Amanda,” he said, “I think sometimes you haven't the remotest idea of what I am after. I don't believe you begin to suspect what I am up to. ” She put her elbows on her knees, dropped her chin between her hands and regarded him impudently. She had a characteristic trick of looking up with her face downcast that never failed to soften his regard. “Look here, Cheetah, don't you give way to your early morning habit of calling your own true love a fool,” she said. “Simply I tell you I will not go back to London. ” “You will go back with me, Cheetah. ” “I will go back as far as my work calls me there. ” “It calls you through the voice of your mate and slave and doormat to just exactly the sort of house you ought to have. . . . It is the privilege and duty of the female to choose the lair. ” For a space Benham made no reply. This controversy had been gathering for some time and he wanted to state his view as vividly as possible. The Benham style of connubial conversation had long since decided for emphasis rather than delicacy. “I think,” he said slowly, “that this wanting to take London by storm is a beastly VULGAR thing to want to do. ” Amanda compressed her lips. “I want to work out things in my mind,” he went on. “I do not want to be distracted by social things, and I do not want to be distracted by picturesque things. This life--it's all very well on the surface, but it isn't real. I'm not getting hold of reality. Things slip away from me. God! but how they slip away from me! ” He got up and walked to the side of the boat. She surveyed his back for some moments. Then she went and leant over the rail beside him. “I want to go to London,” she said. “I don't. ” “Where do you want to go? ” “Where I can see into the things that hold the world together. ” “I have loved this wandering--I could wander always. But. . . Cheetah! I tell you I WANT to go to London. ” He looked over his shoulder into her warm face. “NO,” he said. “But, I ask you. ” He shook his head. She put her face closer and whispered. “Cheetah! big beast of my heart. Do you hear your mate asking for something? ” He turned his eyes back to the mountains. “I must go my own way. ” “Haven't I, so far, invented things, made life amusing, Cheetah? Can't you trust the leopard's wisdom? ” He stared at the coast inexorably. “I wonder,” she whispered. “What? ” “You ARE that, Cheetah, that lank, long, EAGER beast--. ” Suddenly with a nimble hand she had unbuttoned and rolled up the sleeve of her blouse. She stuck her pretty blue-veined arm before his eyes. “Look here, sir, it was you, wasn't it? It was your powerful jaw inflicted this bite upon the arm of a defenceless young leopardess--” “Amanda! ” “Well. ” She wrinkled her brows. He turned about and stood over her, he shook a finger in her face and there was a restrained intensity in his voice as he spoke. “Look here, Amanda! ” he said, “if you think that you are going to make me agree to any sort of project about London, to any sort of complication of our lives with houses in smart streets and a campaign of social assertion--by THAT, then may I be damned for an uxorious fool! ” Her eyes met his and there was mockery in her eyes. “This, Cheetah, is the morning mood,” she remarked.

“This is the essential mood. Listen, Amanda--” He stopped short. He looked towards the gangway, they both looked. The magic word “Breakfast” came simultaneously from them. “Eggs,” she said ravenously, and led the way. A smell of coffee as insistent as an herald's trumpet had called a truce between them. 3 Their marriage had been a comparatively inconspicuous one, but since that time they had been engaged upon a honeymoon of great extent and variety. Their wedding had taken place at South Harting church in the marked absence of Lady Marayne, and it had been marred by only one untoward event. The Reverend Amos Pugh who, in spite of the earnest advice of several friends had insisted upon sharing in the ceremony, had suddenly covered his face with the sleeves of his surplice and fled with a swift rustle to the vestry, whence an uproar of inadequately smothered sorrow came as an obligato accompaniment to the more crucial passages of the service. Amanda appeared unaware of the incident at the time, but afterwards she explained things to Benham. “Curates,” she said, “are such pent-up men. One ought, I suppose, to remember that. But he never had anything to go upon at all--not anything--except his own imaginations. ” “I suppose when you met him you were nice to him. ” “I was nice to him, of course. . . . ” They drove away from Harting, as it were, over the weeping remains of this infatuated divine. His sorrow made them thoughtful for a time, and then Amanda nestled closer to her lover and they forgot about him, and their honeymoon became so active and entertaining that only very rarely and transitorily did they ever think of him again. The original conception of their honeymoon had been identical with the plans Benham had made for the survey and study of the world, and it was through a series of modifications, replacements and additions that it became at last a prolonged and very picturesque tour in Switzerland, the Austrian Tyrol, North Italy, and down the Adriatic coast. Amanda had never seen mountains, and longed, she said, to climb. This took them first to Switzerland. Then, in spite of their exalted aims, the devotion of their lives to noble purposes, it was evident that Amanda had no intention of scamping the detail of love, and for that what background is so richly beautiful as Italy? An important aspect of the grand tour round the world as Benham had planned it, had been interviews, inquiries and conversations with every sort of representative and understanding person he could reach. An unembarrassed young man who wants to know and does not promise to bore may reach almost any one in that way, he is as impersonal as pure reason and as mobile as a letter, but the presence of a lady in his train leaves him no longer unembarrassed. His approach has become a social event. The wife of a great or significant personage must take notice or decide not to take notice. Of course Amanda was prepared to go anywhere, just as Benham's shadow; it was the world that was unprepared. And a second leading aspect of his original scheme had been the examination of the ways of government in cities and the shifting and mixture of nations and races. It would have led to back streets, and involved and complicated details, and there was something in the fine flame of girlhood beside him that he felt was incompatible with those shadows and that dust. And also they were lovers and very deeply in love. It was amazing how swiftly that draggled shameful London sparrow-gamin, Eros, took heart from Amanda, and became wonderful, beautiful, glowing, life-giving, confident, clear-eyed; how he changed from flesh to sweet fire, and grew until he filled the sky. So that you see they went to Switzerland and Italy at last very like two ordinary young people who were not aristocrats at all, had no theory about the world or their destiny, but were simply just ardently delighted with the discovery of one another. Nevertheless Benham was for some time under a vague impression that in a sort of way still he was going round the world and working out his destinies. It was part of the fascination of Amanda that she was never what he had supposed her to be, and that nothing that he set out to do with her ever turned out as they had planned it. Her appreciations marched before her achievement, and when it came to climbing it seemed foolish to toil to summits over which her spirit had flitted days before. Their Swiss expeditions which she had foreseen as glorious wanderings amidst the blue ice of crevasses and nights of exalted hardihood became a walking tour of fitful vigour and abundant fun and delight. They spent a long day on the ice of the Aletsch glacier, but they reached the inn on its eastward side with magnificent appetites a little late for dinner. Amanda had revealed an unexpected gift for nicknames and pretty fancies. She named herself the Leopard, the spotless Leopard; in some obscure way she intimated that the colour was black, but that was never to be admitted openly, there was supposed to be some lurking traces of a rusty brown but the word was spotless and the implication white, a dazzling white, she would play a thousand variations on the theme; in moments of despondency she was only a black cat, a common lean black cat, and sacks and half-bricks almost too good for her. But Benham was always a Cheetah. That had come to her as a revelation from heaven. But so clearly he was a Cheetah. He was a Hunting Leopard; the only beast that has an up-cast face and dreams and looks at you with absent-minded eyes like a man. She laced their journeys with a fantastic monologue telling in the third person what the Leopard and the Cheetah were thinking and seeing and doing. And so they walked up mountains and over passes and swam in the warm clear water of romantic lakes and loved each other mightily always, in chestnut woods and olive orchards and flower-starred alps and pine forests and awning-covered boats, and by sunset and moonlight and starshine; and out of these agreeable solitudes they came brown and dusty, striding side by side into sunlit entertaining fruit-piled market-places and envious hotels. For days and weeks together it did not seem to Benham that there was anything that mattered in life but Amanda and the elemental joys of living. And then the Research Magnificent began to stir in him again. He perceived that Italy was not India, that the clue to the questions he must answer lay in the crowded new towns that they avoided, in the packed bookshops and the talk of men, and not in the picturesque and flowery solitudes to which their lovemaking carried them. Moods began in which he seemed to forget Amanda altogether. This happened first in the Certosa di Pavia whither they had gone one afternoon from Milan. That was quite soon after they were married. They had a bumping journey thither in a motor-car, a little doubtful if the excursion was worth while, and they found a great amazement in the lavish beauty and decorative wealth of that vast church and its associated cloisters, set far away from any population as it seemed in a flat wilderness of reedy ditches and patchy cultivation. The distilleries and outbuildings were deserted--their white walls were covered by one monstrously great and old wisteria in flower--the soaring marvellous church was in possession of a knot of unattractive guides. One of these conducted them through the painted treasures of the gold and marble chapels; he was an elderly but animated person who evidently found Amanda more wonderful than any church. He poured out great accumulations of information and compliments before her. Benham dropped behind, went astray and was presently recovered dreaming in the great cloister. The guide showed them over two of the cells that opened thereupon, each a delightful house for a solitary, bookish and clean, and each with a little secret walled garden of its own. He was covertly tipped against all regulations and departed regretfully with a beaming dismissal from Amanda. She found Benham wondering why the Carthusians had failed to produce anything better in the world than a liqueur. “One might have imagined that men would have done something in this beautiful quiet; that there would have come thought from here or will from here. ” “In these dear little nests they ought to have put lovers,” said Amanda. “Oh, of course, YOU would have made the place Thelema. . . . ” But as they went shaking and bumping back along the evil road to Milan, he fell into a deep musing. Suddenly he said, “Work has to be done. Because this order or that has failed, there is no reason why we should fail. And look at those ragged children in the road ahead of us, and those dirty women sitting in the doorways, and the foul ugliness of these gaunt nameless towns through which we go! They are what they are, because we are what we are--idlers, excursionists. In a world we ought to rule. . . . “Amanda, we've got to get to work. . . . ” That was his first display of this new mood, which presently became a common one. He was less and less content to let the happy hours slip by, more and more sensitive to the reminders in giant ruin and deserted cell, in a chance encounter with a string of guns and soldiers on their way to manoeuvres or in the sight of a stale newspaper, of a great world process going on in which he was now playing no part at all. And a curious irritability manifested itself more and more plainly, whenever human pettiness obtruded upon his attention, whenever some trivial dishonesty, some manifest slovenliness, some spiritless failure, a cheating waiter or a wayside beggar brought before him the shiftless, selfish, aimless elements in humanity that war against the great dream of life made glorious. “Accursed things,” he would say, as he flung some importunate cripple at a church door a ten-centime piece; “why were they born? Why do they consent to live? They are no better than some chance fungus that is because it must. ” “It takes all sorts to make a world,” said Amanda. “Nonsense,” said Benham. “Where is the megatherium? That sort of creature has to go. Our sort of creature has to end it. ” “Then why did you give it money? ” “Because-- I don't want the thing to be more wretched than it is. But if I could prevent more of them--. . . What am I doing to prevent them? ” “These beggars annoy you,” said Amanda after a pause. “They do me. Let us go back into the mountains. ” But he fretted in the mountains. They made a ten days' tour from Macugnaga over the Monte Moro to Sass, and thence to Zermatt and back by the Theodule to Macugnaga. The sudden apparition of douaniers upon the Monte Moro annoyed Benham, and he was also irritated by the solemn English mountain climbers at Saas Fee. They were as bad as golfers, he said, and reflected momentarily upon his father. Amanda fell in love with Monte Rosa, she wanted to kiss its snowy forehead, she danced like a young goat down the path to Mattmark, and rolled on the turf when she came to gentians and purple primulas. Benham was tremendously in love with her most of the time, but one day when they were sitting over the Findelen glacier his perceptions blundered for the first time upon the fundamental antagonism of their quality. She was sketching out jolly things that they were to do together, expeditions, entertainments, amusements, and adventures, with a voluble swiftness, and suddenly in a flash his eyes were opened, and he saw that she would never for a moment feel the quality that made life worth while for him. He saw it in a flash, and in that flash he made his urgent resolve not to see it. From that moment forth his bearing was poisoned by his secret determination not to think of this, not to admit it to his mind. And forbidden to come into his presence in its proper form, this conflict of intellectual temperaments took on strange disguises, and the gathering tension of his mind sought to relieve itself along grotesque irrelevant channels. There was, for example, the remarkable affair of the drive from Macugnaga to Piedimulera. They had decided to walk down in a leisurely fashion, but with the fatigues of the precipitous clamber down from Switzerland still upon them they found the white road between rock above and gorge below wearisome, and the valley hot in the late morning sunshine, and already before they reached the inn they had marked for lunch Amanda had suggested driving the rest of the way. The inn had a number of brigand-like customers consuming such sustenance as garlic and salami and wine; it received them with an indifference that bordered on disrespect, until the landlord, who seemed to be something of a beauty himself, discovered the merits of Amanda. Then he became markedly attentive. He was a large, fat, curly-headed person with beautiful eyes, a cherished moustache, and an air of great gentility, and when he had welcomed his guests and driven off the slatternly waiting-maid, and given them his best table, and consented, at Amanda's request, to open a window, he went away and put on a tie and collar. It was an attention so conspicuous that even the group of men in the far corner noticed and commented on it, and then they commented on Amanda and Benham, assuming an ignorance of Italian in the visitors that was only partly justifiable. “Bellissima,” “bravissima,” “signorina,” “Inglesa,” one need not be born in Italy to understand such words as these. Also they addressed sly comments and encouragements to the landlord as he went to and fro. Benham was rather still and stiff during the meal, but it ill becomes an English aristocrat to discuss the manners of an alien population, and Amanda was amused by the effusion of the landlord and a little disposed to experiment upon him. She sat radiating light amidst the shadows. The question of the vehicle was broached. The landlord was doubtful, then an idea, it was manifestly a questionable idea, occurred to him. He went to consult an obscure brown-faced individual in the corner, disappeared, and the world without became eloquent. Presently he returned and announced that a carozza was practicable. It had been difficult, but he had contrived it. And he remained hovering over the conclusion of their meal, asking questions about Amanda's mountaineering and expressing incredulous admiration. His bill, which he presented with an uneasy flourish, was large and included the carozza. He ushered them out to the carriage with civilities and compliments. It had manifestly been difficult and contrived. It was dusty and blistered, there had been a hasty effort to conceal its recent use as a hen-roost, the harness was mended with string. The horse was gaunt and scandalous, a dirty white, and carried its head apprehensively. The driver had but one eye, through which there gleamed a concentrated hatred of God and man. “No wonder he charged for it before we saw it,” said Benham. “It's better than walking,” said Amanda. The company in the inn gathered behind the landlord and scrutinized Amanda and Benham intelligently. The young couple got in. “Avanti,” said Benham, and Amanda bestowed one last ineradicable memory on the bowing landlord. Benham did not speak until just after they turned the first corner, and then something portentous happened, considering the precipitous position of the road they were upon. A small boy appeared sitting in the grass by the wayside, and at the sight of him the white horse shied extravagantly. The driver rose in his seat ready to jump. But the crisis passed without a smash. “Cheetah! ” cried Amanda suddenly. “This isn't safe. ” “Ah! ” said Benham, and began to act with the vigour of one who has long accumulated force. He rose in his place and gripped the one-eyed driver by the collar. “ASPETTO,” he said, but he meant “Stop! ” The driver understood that he meant “Stop,” and obeyed. Benham wasted no time in parleying with the driver. He indicated to him and to Amanda by a comprehensive gesture that he had business with the landlord, and with a gleaming appetite upon his face went running back towards the inn. The landlord was sitting down to a little game of dominoes with his friends when Benham reappeared in the sunlight of the doorway. There was no misunderstanding Benham's expression. For a moment the landlord was disposed to be defiant. Then he changed his mind. Benham's earnest face was within a yard of his own, and a threatening forefinger was almost touching his nose. “Albergo cattivissimo,” said Benham. “Cattivissimo! Pranzo cattivissimo 'orrido. Cavallo cattivissimo, dangerousissimo. Gioco abominablissimo, damnissimo. Capisce. Eh? ” [*] * This is vile Italian. It may--with a certain charity to Benham--be rendered: “The beastliest inn! The beastliest! The beastliest, most awful lunch! The vilest horse! Most dangerous! Abominable trick! Understand? ” The landlord made deprecatory gestures. “YOU understand all right,” said Benham. “Da me il argento per il carozzo. Subito? ” [*] * “Give me back the money for the carriage. QUICKLY! ” The landlord was understood to ask whether the signor no longer wished for the carriage. “SUBITO! ” cried Benham, and giving way to a long-restrained impulse seized the padrone by the collar of his coat and shook him vigorously. There were dissuasive noises from the company, but no attempt at rescue. Benham released his hold. “Adesso! ” said Benham. [*] * “NOW! ” The landlord decided to disgorge. It was at any rate a comfort that the beautiful lady was not seeing anything of this. And he could explain afterwards to his friends that the Englishman was clearly a lunatic, deserving pity rather than punishment. He made some sound of protest, but attempted no delay in refunding the money Benham had prepaid. Outside sounded the wheels of the returning carriage. They stopped. Amanda appeared in the doorway and discovered Benham dominant. He was a little short of breath, and as she came in he was addressing the landlord with much earnestness in the following compact sentences. “Attendez! Ecco! Adesso noi andiamo con questa cattivissimo cavallo a Piedimulera. Si noi arrivero in safety, securo that is, pagaremo. Non altro. Si noi abbiamo accidento Dio--Dio have mercy on your sinful soul. See! Capisce? That's all. ” [*] * “Now we will go with this beastly horse to Piedimulera. If we get there safely I will pay. If we have an accident, then--” He turned to Amanda. “Get back into the thing,” he said. “We won't have these stinking beasts think we are afraid of the job. I've just made sure he won't have a profit by it if we smash up. That's all. I might have known what he was up to when he wanted the money beforehand. ” He came to the doorway and with a magnificent gesture commanded the perplexed driver to turn the carriage. While that was being done he discoursed upon his adjacent fellow-creatures. “A man who pays beforehand for anything in this filthy sort of life is a fool. You see the standards of the beast. They think of nothing but their dirty little tricks to get profit, their garlic, their sour wine, their games of dominoes, their moments of lust. They crawl in this place like cockroaches in a warm corner of the fireplace until they die. Look at the scabby frontage of the house. Look at the men's faces. . . . Yes. So! Adequato. Aspettate. . . . Get back into the carriage, Amanda. ” “You know it's dangerous, Cheetah. The horse is a shier. That man is blind in one eye. ” “Get back into the carriage,” said Benham, whitely angry. “I AM GOING TO DRIVE! ” “But--! ” Just for a moment Amanda looked scared. Then with a queer little laugh she jumped in again. Amanda was never a coward when there was excitement afoot. “We'll smash! ” she cried, by no means woefully. “Get up beside me,” said Benham speaking in English to the driver but with a gesture that translated him. Power over men radiated from Benham in this angry mood. He took the driver's seat. The little driver ascended and then with a grim calmness that brooked no resistance Benham reached over, took and fastened the apron over their knees to prevent any repetition of the jumping out tactics. The recovering landlord became voluble in the doorway. “In Piedimulera pagero,” said Benham over his shoulder and brought the whip across the white outstanding ribs. “Get up! ” said Benham. Amanda gripped the sides of the seat as the carriage started into motion. He laid the whip on again with such vigour that the horse forgot altogether to shy at the urchin that had scared it before. “Amanda,” said Benham leaning back. “If we do happen to go over on THAT side, jump out. It's all clear and wide for you. This side won't matter so--” “MIND! ” screamed Amanda and recalled him to his duties. He was off the road and he had narrowly missed an outstanding chestnut true. “No, you don't,” said Benham presently, and again their career became erratic for a time as after a slight struggle he replaced the apron over the knees of the deposed driver. It had been furtively released. After that Benham kept an eye on it that might have been better devoted to the road. The road went down in a series of curves and corners. Now and then there were pacific interludes when it might have been almost any road. Then, again, it became specifically an Italian mountain road. Now and then only a row of all too infrequent granite stumps separated them from a sheer precipice. Some of the corners were miraculous, and once they had a wheel in a ditch for a time, they shaved the parapet of a bridge over a gorge and they drove a cyclist into a patch of maize, they narrowly missed a goat and jumped three gullies, thrice the horse stumbled and was jerked up in time, there were sickening moments, and withal they got down to Piedimulera unbroken and unspilt. It helped perhaps that the brake, with its handle like a barrel organ, had been screwed up before Benham took control. And when they were fairly on the level outside the town Benham suddenly pulled up, relinquished the driving into the proper hands and came into the carriage with Amanda. “Safe now,” he said compactly. The driver appeared to be murmuring prayers very softly as he examined the brake. Amanda was struggling with profound problems. “Why didn't you drive down in the first place? ” she asked. “Without going back. ” “The landlord annoyed me,” he said. “I had to go back. . . . I wish I had kicked him. Hairy beast! If anything had happened, you see, he would have had his mean money. I couldn't bear to leave him. ” “And why didn't you let HIM drive? ” She indicated the driver by a motion of the head. “I was angry,” said Benham. “I was angry at the whole thing. ” “Still--” “You see I think I did that because he might have jumped off if I hadn't been up there to prevent him--I mean if we had had a smash. I didn't want him to get out of it. ” “But you too--” “You see I was angry. . . . ” “It's been as good as a switchback,” said Amanda after reflection. “But weren't you a little careless about me, Cheetah? ” “I never thought of you,” said Benham, and then as if he felt that inadequate: “You see--I was so annoyed. It's odd at times how annoyed one gets. Suddenly when that horse shied I realized what a beastly business life was--as those brutes up there live it. I want to clear out the whole hot, dirty, little aimless nest of them. . . . ” “No, I'm sure,” he repeated after a pause as though he had been digesting something “I wasn't thinking about you at all. ” 4 The suppression of his discovery that his honeymoon was not in the least the great journey of world exploration he had intended, but merely an impulsive pleasure hunt, was by no means the only obscured and repudiated conflict that disturbed the mind and broke out upon the behaviour of Benham. Beneath that issue he was keeping down a far more intimate conflict. It was in those lower, still less recognized depths that the volcanic fire arose and the earthquakes gathered strength. The Amanda he had loved, the Amanda of the gallant stride and fluttering skirt was with him still, she marched rejoicing over the passes, and a dearer Amanda, a soft whispering creature with dusky hair, who took possession of him when she chose, a soft creature who was nevertheless a fierce creature, was also interwoven with his life. But-- But there was now also a multitude of other Amandas who had this in common that they roused him to opposition, that they crossed his moods and jarred upon his spirit. And particularly there was the Conquering Amanda not so much proud of her beauty as eager to test it, so that she was not unmindful of the stir she made in hotel lounges, nor of the magic that may shine memorably through the most commonplace incidental conversation. This Amanda was only too manifestly pleased to think that she made peasant lovers discontented and hotel porters unmercenary; she let her light shine before men. We lovers, who had deemed our own subjugation a profound privilege, love not this further expansiveness of our lady's empire. But Benham knew that no aristocrat can be jealous; jealousy he held to be the vice of the hovel and farmstead and suburban villa, and at an enormous expenditure of will he ignored Amanda's waving flags and roving glances. So, too, he denied that Amanda who was sharp and shrewd about money matters, that flash of an Amanda who was greedy for presents and possessions, that restless Amanda who fretted at any cessation of excitement, and that darkly thoughtful Amanda whom chance observations and questions showed to be still considering an account she had to settle with Lady Marayne. He resisted these impressions, he shut them out of his mind, but still they worked into his thoughts, and presently he could find himself asking, even as he and she went in step striding side by side through the red-scarred pinewoods in the most perfect outward harmony, whether after all he was so happily mated as he declared himself to be a score of times a day, whether he wasn't catching glimpses of reality through a veil of delusion that grew thinner and thinner and might leave him disillusioned in the face of a relationship-- Sometimes a man may be struck by a thought as though he had been struck in the face, and when the name of Mrs. Skelmersdale came into his head, he glanced at his wife by his side as if it were something that she might well have heard. Was this indeed the same thing as that? Wonderful, fresh as the day of Creation, clean as flame, yet the same! Was Amanda indeed the sister of Mrs. Skelmersdale--wrought of clean fire, but her sister? . . . But also beside the inimical aspects which could set such doubts afoot there were in her infinite variety yet other Amandas neither very dear nor very annoying, but for the most part delightful, who entertained him as strangers might, Amandas with an odd twist which made them amusing to watch, jolly Amandas who were simply irrelevant. There was for example Amanda the Dog Mistress, with an astonishing tact and understanding of dogs, who could explain dogs and the cock of their ears and the droop of their tails and their vanity and their fidelity, and why they looked up and why they suddenly went off round the corner, and their pride in the sound of their voices and their dastardly thoughts and sniffing satisfactions, so that for the first time dogs had souls for Benham to see. And there was an Amanda with a striking passion for the sleekness and soft noses of horses. And there was an Amanda extremely garrulous, who was a biographical dictionary and critical handbook to all the girls in the school she had attended at Chichester--they seemed a very girlish lot of girls; and an Amanda who was very knowing--knowing was the only word for it--about pictures and architecture. And these and all the other Amandas agreed together to develop and share this one quality in common, that altogether they pointed to no end, they converged on nothing. She was, it grew more and more apparent, a miscellany bound in a body. She was an animated discursiveness. That passion to get all things together into one aristocratic aim, that restraint of purpose, that imperative to focus, which was the structural essential of Benham's spirit, was altogether foreign to her composition. There were so many Amandas, they were as innumerable as the Venuses--Cytherea, Cypria, Paphia, Popularia, Euploea, Area, Verticordia, Etaira, Basilea, Myrtea, Libertina, Freya, Astarte, Philommedis, Telessigamma, Anadyomene, and a thousand others to whom men have bowed and built temples, a thousand and the same, and yet it seemed to Benham there was still one wanting. The Amanda he had loved most wonderfully was that Amanda in armour who had walked with him through the wilderness of the world along the road to Chichester--and that Amanda came back to him no more. 5 Amanda too was making her observations and discoveries. These moods of his perplexed her; she was astonished to find he was becoming irritable; she felt that he needed a firm but gentle discipline in his deportment as a lover. At first he had been perfect. . . . But Amanda was more prepared for human inconsecutiveness than Benham, because she herself was inconsecutive, and her dissatisfaction with his irritations and preoccupation broadened to no general discontent. He had seemed perfect and he wasn't. So nothing was perfect. And he had to be managed, just as one must manage a dog or a cousin or a mother or a horse. Anyhow she had got him, she had no doubt that she held him by a thousand ties, the spotless leopard had him between her teeth, he was a prisoner in the dusk of her hair, and the world was all one vast promise of entertainment. 6 But the raid into the Balkans was not the tremendous success she had expected it to be. They had adventures, but they were not the richly coloured, mediaeval affairs she had anticipated. For the most part until Benham broke loose beyond Ochrida they were adventures in discomfort. In those remote parts of Europe inns die away and cease, and it had never occurred to Amanda that inns could die away anywhere. She had thought that they just became very simple and natural and quaint. And she had thought that when benighted people knocked at a door it would presently open hospitably. She had not expected shots at random from the window. And it is not usual in Albania generally for women, whether they are Christian or Moslem, to go about unveiled; when they do so it leads to singular manifestations. The moral sense of the men is shocked and staggered, and they show it in many homely ways. Small boys at that age when feminine beauty does not yet prevail with them, pelt. Also in Mahometan districts they pelt men who do not wear fezzes, while occasionally Christians of the shawl-headed or skull-cap persuasions will pelt a fez. Sketching is always a peltable or mobable offence, as being contrary to the Koran, and sitting down tempts the pelter. Generally they pelt. The dogs of Albania are numerous, big, dirty, white dogs, large and hostile, and they attack with little hesitation. The women of Albania are secluded and remote, and indisposed to be of service to an alien sister. Roads are infrequent and most bridges have broken down. No bridge has been repaired since the later seventeenth century, and no new bridge has been made since the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. There are no shops at all. The scenery is magnificent but precipitous, and many of the high roads are difficult to trace. And there is rain. In Albania there is sometimes very heavy rain. Yet in spite of these drawbacks they spent some splendid hours in their exploration of that wild lost country beyond the Adriatic headlands. There was the approach to Cattaro for example, through an arm of the sea, amazingly beautiful on either shore, that wound its way into the wild mountains and ended in a deep blue bay under the tremendous declivity of Montenegro. The quay, with its trees and lateen craft, ran along under the towers and portcullised gate of the old Venetian wall, within clustered the town, and then the fortifications zigzagged up steeply to a monstrous fantastic fortress perched upon a great mountain headland that overhung the town. Behind it the rocks, slashed to and fro with the road to Cettinje, continued to ascend into blue haze, upward and upward until they became a purple curtain that filled half the heavens. The paved still town was squalid by day, but in the evening it became theatrically incredible, with an outdoor cafe amidst flowers and creepers, a Hungarian military band, a rabble of promenaders like a stage chorus in gorgeous costumes and a great gibbous yellow moon. And there was Kroia, which Benham and Amanda saw first through the branches of the great trees that bordered the broad green track they were following. The town and its castle were poised at a tremendous height, sunlit and brilliant against a sombre mass of storm cloud, over vast cliffs and ravines. Kroia continued to be beautiful through a steep laborious approach up to the very place itself, a clustering group of houses and bazaars crowned with a tower and a minaret, and from a painted corridor upon this crest they had a wonderful view of the great seaward levels, and even far away the blue sea itself stretching between Scutari and Durazzo. The eye fell in succession down the stages of a vast and various descent, on the bazaars and tall minarets of the town, on jagged rocks and precipices, on slopes of oak forest and slopes of olive woods, on blue hills dropping away beyond blue hills to the coast. And behind them when they turned they saw great mountains, sullenly magnificent, cleft into vast irregular masses, dense with woods below and grim and desolate above. . . . These were unforgettable scenes, and so too was the wild lonely valley through which they rode to Ochrida amidst walnut and chestnut trees and scattered rocks, and the first vision of that place itself, with its fertile levels dotted with sheep and cattle, its castle and clustering mosques, its spacious blue lake and the great mountains rising up towards Olympus under the sun. And there was the first view of the blue Lake of Presba seen between silvery beech stems, and that too had Olympus in the far background, plain now and clear and unexpectedly snowy. And there were midday moments when they sat and ate under vines and heard voices singing very pleasantly, and there were forest glades and forest tracks in a great variety of beauty with mountains appearing through their parted branches, there were ilex woods, chestnut woods, beech woods, and there were strings of heavily-laden mules staggering up torrent-worn tracks, and strings of blue-swathed mysterious-eyed women with burthens on their heads passing silently, and white remote houses and ruins and deep gorges and precipices and ancient half-ruinous bridges over unruly streams. And if there was rain there was also the ending of rain, rainbows, and the piercing of clouds by the sun's incandescence, and sunsets and the moon, first full, then new and then growing full again as the holiday wore on. They found tolerable accommodation at Cattaro and at Cettinje and at a place halfway between them. It was only when they had secured a guide and horses, and pushed on into the south-east of Montenegro that they began to realize the real difficulties of their journey. They aimed for a place called Podgoritza, which had a partially justifiable reputation for an inn, they missed the road and spent the night in the open beside a fire, rolled in the blankets they had very fortunately bought in Cettinje. They supped on biscuits and Benham's brandy flask. It chanced to be a fine night, and, drawn like moths by the fire, four heavily-armed mountaineers came out of nowhere, sat down beside Benham and Amanda, rolled cigarettes, achieved conversation in bad Italian through the muleteer and awaited refreshment. They approved of the brandy highly, they finished it, and towards dawn warmed to song. They did not sing badly, singing in chorus, but it appeared to Amanda that the hour might have been better chosen. In the morning they were agreeably surprised to find one of the Englishmen was an Englishwoman, and followed every accessible detail of her toilette with great interest. They were quite helpful about breakfast when the trouble was put to them; two vanished over a crest and reappeared with some sour milk, a slabby kind of bread, goat's cheese young but hardened, and coffee and the means of making coffee, and they joined spiritedly in the ensuing meal. It ought to have been extraordinarily good fun, this camp under the vast heavens and these wild visitors, but it was not such fun as it ought to have been because both Amanda and Benham were extremely cold, stiff, sleepy, grubby and cross, and when at last they were back in the way to Podgoritza and had parted, after some present-giving from their chance friends, they halted in a sunlit grassy place, rolled themselves up in their blankets and recovered their arrears of sleep. Podgoritza was their first experience of a khan, those oriental substitutes for hotels, and it was a deceptively good khan, indeed it was not a khan at all, it was an inn; it provided meals, it had a kind of bar, or at any rate a row of bottles and glasses, it possessed an upper floor with rooms, separate rooms, opening on to a gallery. The room had no beds but it had a shelf about it on which Amanda and Benham rolled up in their blankets and slept. “We can do this sort of thing all right,” said Amanda and Benham. “But we mustn't lose the way again. ” “In Scutari,” said Benham, “we will get an extra horse and a tent. ” The way presently became a lake and they reached Scutari by boat towards the dawn of the next day. . . . The extra horse involved the addition of its owner, a small suspicious Latin Christian, to the company, and of another horse for him and an ugly almost hairless boy attendant. Moreover the British consul prevailed with Benham to accept the services of a picturesque Arnaut CAVASSE, complete with a rifle, knives, and other implements and the name of Giorgio. And as they got up into the highlands beyond Scutari they began to realize the deceitfulness of Podgoritza and the real truth about khans. Their next one they reached after a rainy evening, and it was a cavernous room with a floor of indurated mud and full of eye-stinging wood-smoke and wind and the smell of beasts, unpartitioned, with a weakly hostile custodian from whom no food could be got but a little goat's flesh and bread. The meat Giorgio stuck upon a skewer in gobbets like cats-meat and cooked before the fire. For drink there was coffee and raw spirits. Against the wall in one corner was a slab of wood rather like the draining board in a scullery, and on this the guests were expected to sleep. The horses and the rest of the party camped loosely about the adjacent corner after a bitter dispute upon some unknown point between the horse owner and the custodian. Amanda and Benham were already rolled up on their slanting board like a couple of chrysalids when other company began to arrive through the open door out of the moonlight, drawn thither by the report of a travelling Englishwoman. They were sturdy men in light coloured garments adorned ostentatiously with weapons, they moved mysteriously about in the firelit darknesses and conversed in undertones with Giorgio. Giorgio seemed to have considerable powers of exposition and a gift for social organization. Presently he came to Benham and explained that raki was available and that hospitality would do no harm; Benham and Amanda sat up and various romantic figures with splendid moustaches came forward and shook hands with him, modestly ignoring Amanda. There was drinking, in which Benham shared, incomprehensible compliments, much ineffective saying of “BUONA NOTTE,” and at last Amanda and Benham counterfeited sleep. This seemed to remove a check on the conversation and a heated discussion in tense undertones went on, it seemed interminably. . . . Probably very few aspects of Benham and Amanda were ignored. . . . Towards morning the twanging of a string proclaimed the arrival of a querulous-faced minstrel with a sort of embryonic one-stringed horse-headed fiddle, and after a brief parley singing began, a long high-pitched solo. The fiddle squealed pitifully under the persuasion of a semicircular bow. Two heads were lifted enquiringly. The singer had taken up his position at their feet and faced them. It was a compliment. “OH! ” said Amanda, rolling over. The soloist obliged with three songs, and then, just as day was breaking, stopped abruptly and sprawled suddenly on the floor as if he had been struck asleep. He was vocal even in his sleep. A cock in the far corner began crowing and was answered by another outside. . . . But this does not give a full account of the animation of the khan. “OH! ” said Amanda, rolling over again with the suddenness of accumulated anger. “They're worse than in Scutari,” said Benham, understanding her trouble instantly. “It isn't days and nights we are having,” said Benham a few days later, “it's days and nightmares. ” But both he and Amanda had one quality in common. The deeper their discomfort the less possible it was to speak of turning back from the itinerary they had planned. . . . They met no robbers, though an excited little English Levantine in Scutari had assured them they would do so and told a vivid story of a ride to Ipek, a delay on the road due to a sudden inexplicable lameness of his horse after a halt for refreshment, a political discussion that delayed him, his hurry through the still twilight to make up for lost time, the coming on of night and the sudden silent apparition out of the darkness of the woods about the road of a dozen armed men each protruding a gun barrel. “Sometimes they will wait for you at a ford or a broken bridge,” he said. “In the mountains they rob for arms. They assassinate the Turkish soldiers even. It is better to go unarmed unless you mean to fight for it. . . . Have you got arms? ” “Just a revolver,” said Benham. But it was after that that he closed with Giorgio. If they found no robbers in Albania, they met soon enough with bloodshed. They came to a village where a friend of a friend of Giorgio's was discovered, and they slept at his house in preference to the unclean and crowded khan. Here for the first time Amanda made the acquaintance of Albanian women and was carried off to the woman's region at the top of the house, permitted to wash, closely examined, shown a baby and confided in as generously as gesture and some fragments of Italian would permit. Benham slept on a rug on the first floor in a corner of honour beside the wood fire. There had been much confused conversation and some singing, he was dog-tired and slept heavily, and when presently he was awakened by piercing screams he sat up in a darkness that seemed to belong neither to time nor place. . . . Near his feet was an ashen glow that gave no light. His first perplexity gave way to dismay at finding no Amanda by his side. “Amanda! ” he cried. . . . Her voice floated down through a chink in the floor above. “What can it be, Cheetah? ” Then: “It's coming nearer. ” The screaming continued, heart-rending, eviscerating shrieks. Benham, still confused, lit a match. All the men about him were stirring or sitting up and listening, their faces showing distorted and ugly in the flicker of his light.

“CHE E? ” he tried. No one answered. Then one by one they stood up and went softly to the ladder that led to the stable-room below. Benham struck a second match and a third. “Giorgio! ” he called. The cavasse made an arresting gesture and followed discreetly and noiselessly after the others, leaving Benham alone in the dark. Benham heard their shuffling patter, one after the other, down the ladder, the sounds of a door being unbarred softly, and then no other sound but that incessant shrieking in the darkness. Had they gone out? Were they standing at the door looking out into the night and listening? Amanda had found the chink and her voice sounded nearer. “It's a woman,” she said. The shrieking came nearer and nearer, long, repeated, throat-tearing shrieks. Far off there was a great clamour of dogs. And there was another sound, a whisper--? “RAIN! ” The shrieks seemed to turn into a side street and receded. The tension of listening relaxed. Men's voices sounded below in question and answer. Dogs close at hand barked shortly and then stopped enquiringly. Benham seemed to himself to be sitting alone for an interminable time. He lit another match and consulted his watch. It was four o'clock and nearly dawn. . . . Then slowly and stumbling up the ladder the men began to return to Benham's room. “Ask them what it is,” urged Amanda. But for a time not even Giorgio would understand Benham's questions. There seemed to be a doubt whether he ought to know. The shrieking approached again and then receded. Giorgio came and stood, a vague thoughtful figure, by the embers of the fire. Explanation dropped from him reluctantly. It was nothing. Some one had been killed: that was all. It was a vendetta. A man had been missing overnight, and this morning his brother who had been prowling and searching with some dogs had found him, or rather his head. It was on this side of the ravine, thrown over from the other bank on which the body sprawled stiffly, wet through, and now growing visible in the gathering daylight. Yes--the voice was the man's wife. It was raining hard. . . . There would be shrieking for nine days. Yes, nine days. Confirmation with the fingers when Benham still fought against the facts. Her friends and relatives would come and shriek too. Two of the dead man's aunts were among the best keeners in the whole land. They could keen marvellously. It was raining too hard to go on. . . . The road would be impossible in rain. . . . Yes it was very melancholy. Her house was close at hand. Perhaps twenty or thirty women would join her. It was impossible to go on until it had stopped raining. It would be tiresome, but what could one do? . . . 7 As they sat upon the parapet of a broken bridge on the road between Elbassan and Ochrida Benham was moved to a dissertation upon the condition of Albania and the politics of the Balkan peninsula. “Here we are,” he said, “not a week from London, and you see the sort of life that men live when the forces of civilization fail. We have been close to two murders--” “Two? ” “That little crowd in the square at Scutari-- That was a murder. I didn't tell you at the time. ” “But I knew it was,” said Amanda. “And you see the filth of it all, the toiling discomfort of it all. There is scarcely a house here in all the land that is not filthier and viler than the worst slum in London. No man ventures far from his village without arms, everywhere there is fear. The hills are impassable because of the shepherd's dogs. Over those hills a little while ago a stranger was torn to pieces by dogs--and partially eaten. Amanda, these dogs madden me. I shall let fly at the beasts. The infernal indignity of it! But that is by the way. You see how all this magnificent country lies waste with nothing but this crawling, ugly mockery of human life. ” “They sing,” said Amanda. “Yes,” said Benham and reflected, “they do sing. I suppose singing is the last thing left to men. When there is nothing else you can still sit about and sing. Miners who have been buried in mines will sing, people going down in ships. ” “The Sussex labourers don't sing,” said Amanda. “These people sing well. ” “They would probably sing as well if they were civilized. Even if they didn't I shouldn't care. All the rest of their lives is muddle and cruelty and misery. Look at the women. There was that party of bent creatures we met yesterday, carrying great bundles, carrying even the men's cloaks and pipes, while their rascal husbands and brothers swaggered behind. Look at the cripples we have seen and the mutilated men. If we have met one man without a nose, we have met a dozen. And stunted people. All these people are like evil schoolboys; they do nothing but malicious mischief; there is nothing adult about them but their voices; they are like the heroic dreams of young ruffians in a penitentiary. You saw that man at Scutari in the corner of the bazaar, the gorgeous brute, you admired him--. ” “The man with the gold inlaid pistols and the diamonds on his yataghan. He wanted to show them to us. ” “Yes. You let him see you admired him. ” “I liked the things on his stall. ” “Well, he has killed nearly thirty people. ” “In duels? ” “Good Lord! NO! Assassinations. His shoemaker annoyed him by sending in a bill. He went to the man's stall, found him standing with his child in his arms and blew out his brains. He blundered against a passer-by in the road and shot him. Those are his feats. Sometimes his pistols go off in the bazaar just by accident. ” “Does nobody kill him? ” “I wanted to,” said Benham and became thoughtful for a time. “I think I ought to have made some sort of quarrel. But then as I am an Englishman he might have hesitated. He would have funked a strange beast like me. And I couldn't have shot him if he had hesitated. And if he hadn't--” “But doesn't a blood feud come down on him? ” “It only comes down on his family. The shoemaker's son thought the matter over and squared accounts by putting the muzzle of a gun into the small of the back of our bully's uncle. It was easier that way. . . . You see you're dealing with men of thirteen years old or thereabouts, the boy who doesn't grow up. ” “But doesn't the law--? ” “There's no law. Only custom and the Turkish tax collector. “You see this is what men are where there is no power, no discipline, no ruler, no responsibility. This is a masterless world. This is pure democracy. This is the natural state of men. This is the world of the bully and the brigand and assassin, the world of the mud-pelter and brawler, the world of the bent woman, the world of the flea and the fly, the open drain and the baying dog. This is what the British sentimentalist thinks a noble state for men. ” “They fight for freedom. ” “They fight among each other. There are their private feuds and their village feuds and above all that great feud religion. In Albania there is only one religion and that is hate. But there are three churches for the better cultivation of hate and cruelty, the Latin, the Greek and the Mahometan. ” “But no one has ever conquered these people. ” “Any one could, the Servians, the Bulgarians, the Greeks, the Italians, the Austrians. Why, they can't even shoot! It's just the balance of power and all that foolery keeps this country a roadless wilderness. Good God, how I tire of it! These men who swagger and stink, their brawling dogs, their greasy priests and dervishes, the down-at-heel soldiers, the bribery and robbery, the cheating over the money. . . . ” He slipped off the parapet, too impatient to sit any longer, and began to pace up and down in the road. “One marvels that no one comes to clear up this country, one itches to be at the job, and then one realizes that before one can begin here, one must get to work back there, where the fools and pedants of WELT POLITIK scheme mischief one against another. This country frets me. I can't see any fun in it, can't see the humour of it. And the people away there know no better than to play off tribe against tribe, sect against sect, one peasant prejudice against another. Over this pass the foolery grows grimmer and viler. We shall come to where the Servian plots against the Bulgarian and the Greek against both, and the Turk, with spasmodic massacres and indulgences, broods over the brew. Every division is subdivided. There are two sorts of Greek church, Exarchic, Patriarchic, both teaching by threat and massacre. And there is no one, no one, with the sense to over-ride all these squalid hostilities. All those fools away there in London and Vienna and St. Petersburg and Rome take sides as though these beastly tribes and leagues and superstitions meant anything but blank, black, damnable ignorance. One fool stands up for the Catholic Albanians, another finds heroes in the Servians, another talks of Brave Little Montenegro, or the Sturdy Bulgarian, or the Heroic Turk. There isn't a religion in the whole Balkan peninsula, there isn't a tribal or national sentiment that deserves a moment's respect from a sane man. They're things like niggers' nose-rings and Chinese secret societies; childish things, idiot things that have to go. Yet there is no one who will preach the only possible peace, which is the peace of the world-state, the open conspiracy of all the sane men in the world against the things that break us up into wars and futilities. And here am I--who have the light--WANDERING! Just wandering! ” He shrugged his shoulders and came to stare at the torrent under the bridge. “You're getting ripe for London, Cheetah,” said Amanda softly. “I want somehow to get to work, to get my hands on definite things. ” “How can we get back? ” She had to repeat her question presently. “We can go on. Over the hills is Ochrida and then over another pass is Presba, and from there we go down into Monastir and reach a railway and get back to the world of our own times again. ” 8 But before they reached the world of their own times Macedonia was to show them something grimmer than Albania. They were riding through a sunlit walnut wood beyond Ochrida when they came upon the thing. The first they saw of it looked like a man lying asleep on a grassy bank. But he lay very still indeed, he did not look up, he did not stir as they passed, the pose of his hand was stiff, and when Benham glanced back at him, he stifled a little cry of horror. For this man had no face and the flies had been busy upon him. . . . Benham caught Amanda's bridle so that she had to give her attention to her steed. “Ahead! ” he said, “Ahead! Look, a village! ” (Why the devil didn't they bury the man? Why? And that fool Giorgio and the others were pulling up and beginning to chatter. After all she might look back. ) Through the trees now they could see houses. He quickened his pace and jerked Amanda's horse forward. . . . But the village was a still one. Not a dog barked. Here was an incredible village without even a dog! And then, then they saw some more people lying about. A woman lay in a doorway. Near her was something muddy that might have been a child, beyond were six men all spread out very neatly in a row with their faces to the sky. “Cheetah! ” cried Amanda, with her voice going up. “They've been killed. Some one has killed them. ” Benham halted beside her and stared stupidly. “It's a band,” he said. “It's--propaganda. Greeks or Turks or Bulgarians. ” “But their feet and hands are fastened! And--. . . WHAT HAVE THEY BEEN DOING TO THEM? . . . ” “I want to kill,” cried Benham. “Oh! I want to kill people. Come on, Amanda! It blisters one's eyes. Come away. Come away! Come! ” Her face was white and her eyes terror-stricken. She obeyed him mechanically. She gave one last look at those bodies. . . . Down the deep-rutted soil of the village street they clattered. They came to houses that had been set on fire. . . . “What is that hanging from a tree? ” cried Amanda. “Oh, oh! ” “Come on. . . . ” Behind them rode the others scared and hurrying. The sunlight had become the light of hell. There was no air but horror. Across Benham's skies these fly-blown trophies of devilry dangled mockingly in the place of God. He had no thought but to get away. Presently they encountered a detachment of Turkish soldiers, very greasy and ragged, with worn-out boots and yellow faces, toiling up the stony road belatedly to the village. Amanda and Benham riding one behind the other in a stricken silence passed this labouring column without a gesture, but presently they heard the commander stopping and questioning Giorgio. . . . Then Giorgio and the others came clattering to overtake them. Giorgio was too full to wait for questions. He talked eagerly to Benham's silence. It must have happened yesterday, he explained. They were Bulgarians--traitors. They had been converted to the Patriarchists by the Greeks--by a Greek band, that is to say. They had betrayed one of their own people. Now a Bulgarian band had descended upon them. Bulgarian bands it seemed were always particularly rough on Bulgarian-speaking Patriarchists. . . . 9 That night they slept in a dirty little room in a peasant's house in Resnia, and in the middle of the night Amanda woke up with a start and heard Benham talking. He seemed to be sitting up as he talked. But he was not talking to her and his voice sounded strange. “Flies,” he said, “in the sunlight! ” He was silent for a time and then he repeated the same words. Then suddenly he began to declaim. “Oh! Brutes together. Apes. Apes with knives. Have they no lord, no master, to save them from such things? This is the life of men when no man rules. . . . When no man rules. . . . Not even himself. . . . It is because we are idle, because we keep our wits slack and our wills weak that these poor devils live in hell. These things happen here and everywhere when the hand that rules grows weak. Away in China now they are happening. Persia. Africa. . . . Russia staggers. And I who should serve the law, I who should keep order, wander and make love. . . . My God! may I never forget! May I never forget! Flies in the sunlight! That man's face. And those six men! “Grip the savage by the throat. “The weak savage in the foreign office, the weak savage at the party headquarters, feud and indolence and folly. It is all one world. This and that are all one thing. The spites of London and the mutilations of Macedonia. The maggots that eat men's faces and the maggots that rot their minds. Rot their minds. Rot their minds. Rot their minds. . . . ” To Amanda it sounded like delirium. “CHEETAH! ” she said suddenly between remonstrance and a cry of terror. The darkness suddenly became quite still. He did not move. She was afraid. “Cheetah! ” she said again. “What is it, Amanda? ” “I thought--. Are you all right? ” “Quite. ” “But do you feel well? ” “I've got this cold I caught in Ochrida. I suppose I'm feverish. But--yes, I'm well. ” “You were talking. ” Silence for a time. “I was thinking,” he said. “You talked. ” “I'm sorry,” he said after another long pause. 10 The next morning Benham had a pink spot on either cheek, his eyes were feverishly bright, he would touch no food and instead of coffee he wanted water. “In Monastir there will be a doctor,” he said. “Monastir is a big place. In Monastir I will see a doctor. I want a doctor. ” They rode out of the village in the freshness before sunrise and up long hills, and sometimes they went in the shade of woods and sometimes in a flooding sunshine. Benham now rode in front, preoccupied, intent, regardless of Amanda, a stranger, and she rode close behind him wondering. “When you get to Monastir, young man,” she told him, inaudibly, “you will go straight to bed and we'll see what has to be done with you. ” “AMMALATO,” said Giorgio confidentially, coming abreast of her. “MEDICO IN MONASTIR,” said Amanda. “SI,--MOLTI MEDICI, MONASTIR,” Giorgio agreed. Then came the inevitable dogs, big white brutes, three in full cry charging hard at Benham and a younger less enterprising beast running along the high bank above yapping and making feints to descend. The goatherd, reclining under the shadow of a rock, awaited Benham's embarrassment with an indolent malice. “You UNCIVILIZED Beasts! ” cried Benham, and before Amanda could realize what he was up to, she heard the crack of his revolver and saw a puff of blue smoke drift away above his right shoulder. The foremost beast rolled over and the goatherd had sprung to his feet. He shouted with something between anger and dismay as Benham, regardless of the fact that the other dogs had turned and were running back, let fly a second time. Then the goatherd had clutched at the gun that lay on the grass near at hand, Giorgio was bawling in noisy remonstrance and also getting ready to shoot, and the horse-owner and his boy were clattering back to a position of neutrality up the stony road. “BANG! ” came a flight of lead within a yard of Benham, and then the goatherd was in retreat behind a rock and Giorgio was shouting “AVANTI, AVANTI! ” to Amanda. She grasped his intention and in another moment she had Benham's horse by the bridle and was leading the retreat. Giorgio followed close, driving the two baggage mules before him. “I am tired of dogs,” Benham said. “Tired to death of dogs. All savage dogs must be shot. All through the world. I am tired--” Their road carried them down through the rocky pass and then up a long slope in the open. Far away on the left they saw the goatherd running and shouting and other armed goatherds appearing among the rocks. Behind them the horse-owner and his boy came riding headlong across the zone of danger. “Dogs must be shot,” said Benham, exalted. “Dogs must be shot. ” “Unless they are GOOD dogs,” said Amanda, keeping beside him with an eye on his revolver. “Unless they are good dogs to every one,” said Benham. They rushed along the road in a turbulent dusty huddle of horses and mules and riders. The horse-owner, voluble in Albanian, was trying to get past them. His boy pressed behind him. Giorgio in the rear had unslung his rifle and got it across the front of his saddle. Far away they heard the sound of a shot, and a kind of shudder in the air overhead witnessed to the flight of the bullet. They crested a rise and suddenly between the tree boughs Monastir was in view, a wide stretch of white town, with many cypress and plane trees, a winding river with many wooden bridges, clustering minarets of pink and white, a hilly cemetery, and scattered patches of soldiers' tents like some queer white crop to supplement its extensive barracks. As they hurried down towards this city of refuge a long string of mules burthened with great bales of green stuff appeared upon a convergent track to the left. Besides the customary muleteers there were, by way of an escort, a couple of tattered Turkish soldiers. All these men watched the headlong approach of Benham's party with apprehensive inquiry. Giorgio shouted some sort of information that made the soldiers brighten up and stare up the hill, and set the muleteers whacking and shouting at their convoy. It struck Amanda that Giorgio must be telling lies about a Bulgarian band. In another moment Benham and Amanda found themselves swimming in a torrent of mules. Presently they overtook a small flock of fortunately nimble sheep, and picked up several dogs, dogs that happily disregarded Benham in the general confusion. They also comprehended a small springless cart, two old women with bundles and an elderly Greek priest, before their dusty, barking, shouting cavalcade reached the outskirts of Monastir. The two soldiers had halted behind to cover the retreat. Benham's ghastly face was now bedewed with sweat and he swayed in his saddle as he rode. “This is NOT civilization, Amanda,” he said, “this is NOT civilization. ” And then suddenly with extraordinary pathos: “Oh! I want to go to BED! I want to go to BED! A bed with sheets. . . . ” To ride into Monastir is to ride into a maze. The streets go nowhere in particular. At least that was the effect on Amanda and Benham. It was as if Monastir too had a temperature and was slightly delirious. But at last they found an hotel--quite a civilized hotel. . . . The doctor in Monastir was an Armenian with an ambition that outran his capacity to speak English. He had evidently studied the language chiefly from books. He thought THESE was pronounced “theser” and THOSE was pronounced “thoser,” and that every English sentence should be taken at a rush. He diagnosed Benham's complaint in various languages and failed to make his meaning clear to Amanda. One combination of words he clung to obstinately, having clearly the utmost faith in its expressiveness. To Amanda it sounded like, “May, Ah! Slays,” and it seemed to her that he sought to intimate a probable fatal termination of Benham's fever. But it was clear that the doctor was not satisfied that she understood. He came again with a queer little worn book, a parallel vocabulary of half-a-dozen European languages. He turned over the pages and pointed to a word. “May! Ah! Slays! ” he repeated, reproachfully, almost bitterly. “Oh, MEASLES! ” cried Amanda. . . . So the spirited honeymoon passed its zenith. 11 The Benhams went as soon as possible down to Smyrna and thence by way of Uskub tortuously back to Italy. They recuperated at the best hotel of Locarno in golden November weather, and just before Christmas they turned their faces back to England. Benham's plans were comprehensive but entirely vague; Amanda had not so much plans as intentions. . . . CHAPTER THE FIFTH ~~ THE ASSIZE OF JEALOUSY 1 It was very manifest in the disorder of papers amidst which White spent so many evenings of interested perplexity before this novel began to be written that Benham had never made any systematic attempt at editing or revising his accumulation at all. There were not only overlapping documents, in which he had returned again to old ideas and restated them in the light of fresh facts and an apparent unconsciousness of his earlier effort, but there were mutually destructive papers, new views quite ousting the old had been tossed in upon the old, and the very definition of the second limitation, as it had first presented itself to the writer, had been abandoned. To begin with, this second division had been labelled “Sex,” in places the heading remained, no effective substitute had been chosen for some time, but there was a closely-written memorandum, very much erased and written over and amended, which showed Benham's early dissatisfaction with that crude rendering of what he had in mind. This memorandum was tacked to an interrupted fragment of autobiography, a manuscript soliloquy in which Benham had been discussing his married life. “It was not until I had been married for the better part of a year, and had spent more than six months in London, that I faced the plain issue between the aims I had set before myself and the claims and immediate necessities of my personal life. For all that time I struggled not so much to reconcile them as to serve them simultaneously. . . . ” At that the autobiography stopped short, and the intercalary note began. This intercalary note ran as follows: “I suppose a mind of my sort cannot help but tend towards simplification, towards making all life turn upon some one dominant idea, complex perhaps in its reality but reducible at last to one consistent simple statement, a dominant idea which is essential as nothing else is essential, which makes and sustains and justifies. This is perhaps the innate disposition of the human mind, at least of the European mind--for I have some doubts about the Chinese. Theology drives obstinately towards an ultimate unity in God, science towards an ultimate unity in law, towards a fundamental element and a universal material truth from which all material truths evolve, and in matters of conduct there is the same tendency to refer to a universal moral law. Now this may be a simplification due to the need of the human mind to comprehend, and its inability to do so until the load is lightened by neglecting factors. William James has suggested that on account of this, theology may be obstinately working away from the truth, that the truth may be that there are several or many in compatible and incommensurable gods; science, in the same search for unity, may follow divergent methods of inquiry into ultimately uninterchangeable generalizations; and there may be not only not one universal moral law, but no effective reconciliation of the various rights and duties of a single individual. At any rate I find myself doubtful to this day about my own personal systems of right and wrong. I can never get all my life into one focus. It is exactly like examining a rather thick section with a microscope of small penetration; sometimes one level is clear and the rest foggy and monstrous, and sometimes another. “Now the ruling ME, I do not doubt, is the man who has set his face to this research after aristocracy, and from the standpoint of this research it is my duty to subordinate all other considerations to this work of clearing up the conception of rule and nobility in human affairs. This is my aristocratic self. What I did not grasp for a long time, and which now grows clearer and clearer to me, is firstly that this aristocratic self is not the whole of me, it has absolutely nothing to do with a pain in my ear or in my heart, with a scar on my hand or my memory, and secondly that it is not altogether mine. Whatever knowledge I have of the quality of science, whatever will I have towards right, is of it; but if from without, from the reasoning or demonstration or reproof of some one else, there comes to me clear knowledge, clarified will, that also is as it were a part of my aristocratic self coming home to me from the outside. How often have I not found my own mind in Prothero after I have failed to find it in myself? It is, to be paradoxical, my impersonal personality, this Being that I have in common with all scientific-spirited and aristocratic-spirited men. This it is that I am trying to get clear from the great limitations of humanity. When I assert a truth for the sake of truth to my own discomfort or injury, there again is this incompatibility of the aristocratic self and the accepted, confused, conglomerate self of the unanalyzed man. The two have a separate system of obligations. One's affections, compounded as they are in the strangest way of physical reactions and emotional associations, one's implicit pledges to particular people, one's involuntary reactions, one's pride and jealousy, all that one might call the dramatic side of one's life, may be in conflict with the definitely seen rightnesses of one's higher use. . . . ” The writing changed at this point. “All this seems to me at once as old as the hills and too new to be true. This is like the conflict of the Superior Man of Confucius to control himself, it is like the Christian battle of the spirit with the flesh, it savours of that eternal wrangle between the general and the particular which is metaphysics, it was for this aristocratic self, for righteousness' sake, that men have hungered and thirsted, and on this point men have left father and mother and child and wife and followed after salvation. This world-wide, ever-returning antagonism has filled the world in every age with hermits and lamas, recluses and teachers, devoted and segregated lives. It is a perpetual effort to get above the simplicity of barbarism. Whenever men have emerged from the primitive barbarism of the farm and the tribe, then straightway there has emerged this conception of a specialized life a little lifted off the earth; often, for the sake of freedom, celibate, usually disciplined, sometimes directed, having a generalized aim, beyond personal successes and bodily desires. So it is that the philosopher, the scientifically concentrated man, has appeared, often, I admit, quite ridiculously at first, setting out upon the long journey that will end only when the philosopher is king. . .

. “At first I called my Second Limitation, Sex. But from the outset I meant more than mere sexual desire, lust and lustful imaginings, more than personal reactions to beauty and spirited living, more even than what is called love. On the one hand I had in mind many appetites that are not sexual yet turn to bodily pleasure, and on the other there are elements of pride arising out of sex and passing into other regions, all the elements of rivalry for example, that have strained my first definition to the utmost. And I see now that this Second Limitation as I first imagined it spreads out without any definite boundary, to include one's rivalries with old schoolfellows, for example, one's generosities to beggars and dependents, one's desire to avenge an injured friend, one's point of honour, one's regard for the good opinion of an aunt and one's concern for the health of a pet cat. All these things may enrich, but they may also impede and limit the aristocratic scheme. I thought for a time I would call this ill-defined and miscellaneous wilderness of limitation the Personal Life. But at last I have decided to divide this vast territory of difficulties into two subdivisions and make one of these Indulgence, meaning thereby pleasurable indulgence of sense or feeling, and the other a great mass of self-regarding motives that will go with a little stretching under the heading of Jealousy. I admit motives are continually playing across the boundary of these two divisions, I should find it difficult to argue a case for my classification, but in practice these two groupings have a quite definite meaning for me. There is pride in the latter group of impulses and not in the former; the former are always a little apologetic. Fear, Indulgence, Jealousy, these are the First Three Limitations of the soul of man. And the greatest of these is Jealousy, because it can use pride. Over them the Life Aristocratic, as I conceive it, marches to its end. It saves itself for the truth rather than sacrifices itself romantically for a friend. It justifies vivisection if thereby knowledge is won for ever. It upholds that Brutus who killed his sons. It forbids devotion to women, courts of love and all such decay of the chivalrous idea. And it resigns--so many things that no common Man of Spirit will resign. Its intention transcends these things. Over all the world it would maintain justice, order, a noble peace, and it would do this without indignation, without resentment, without mawkish tenderness or individualized enthusiasm or any queen of beauty. It is of a cold austere quality, commanding sometimes admiration but having small hold upon the affections of men. So that it is among its foremost distinctions that its heart is steeled. . . . ” There this odd fragment ended and White was left to resume the interrupted autobiography. 2 What moods, what passions, what nights of despair and gathering storms of anger, what sudden cruelties and amazing tendernesses are buried and hidden and implied in every love story! What a waste is there of exquisite things! So each spring sees a million glorious beginnings, a sunlit heaven in every opening leaf, warm perfection in every stirring egg, hope and fear and beauty beyond computation in every forest tree; and in the autumn before the snows come they have all gone, of all that incalculable abundance of life, of all that hope and adventure, excitement and deliciousness, there is scarcely more to be found than a soiled twig, a dirty seed, a dead leaf, black mould or a rotting feather. . . . White held the ten or twelve pencilled pages that told how Benham and Amanda drifted into antagonism and estrangement and as he held it he thought of the laughter and delight they must have had together, the exquisite excitements of her eye, the racing colour of her cheek, the gleams of light upon her skin, the flashes of wit between them, the sense of discovery, the high rare paths they had followed, the pools in which they had swum together. And now it was all gone into nothingness, there was nothing left of it, nothing at all, but just those sheets of statement, and it may be, stored away in one single mind, like things forgotten in an attic, a few neglected faded memories. . . . And even those few sheets of statement were more than most love leaves behind it. For a time White would not read them. They lay neglected on his knee as he sat back in Benham's most comfortable chair and enjoyed an entirely beautiful melancholy. White too had seen and mourned the spring. Indeed, poor dear! he had seen and mourned several springs. . . . With a sigh he took up the manuscript and read Benham's desiccated story of intellectual estrangement, and how in the end he had decided to leave his wife and go out alone upon that journey of inquiry he had been planning when first he met her. 3 Amanda had come back to England in a state of extravagantly vigorous womanhood. Benham's illness, though it lasted only two or three weeks, gave her a sense of power and leadership for which she had been struggling instinctively ever since they came together. For a time at Locarno he was lax-minded and indolent, and in that time she formed her bright and limited plans for London. Benham had no plans as yet but only a sense of divergence, as though he was being pulled in opposite directions by two irresistible forces. To her it was plain that he needed occupation, some distinguished occupation, and she could imagine nothing better for him than a political career. She perceived he had personality, that he stood out among men so that his very silences were effective. She loved him immensely, and she had tremendous ambitions for him and through him. And also London, the very thought of London, filled her with appetite. Her soul thirsted for London. It was like some enormous juicy fruit waiting for her pretty white teeth, a place almost large enough to give her avidity the sense of enough. She felt it waiting for her, household, servants, a carriage, shops and the jolly delight of buying and possessing things, the opera, first-nights, picture exhibitions, great dinner-parties, brilliant lunch parties, crowds seen from a point of vantage, the carriage in a long string of fine carriages with the lamplit multitude peering, Amanda in a thousand bright settings, in a thousand various dresses. She had had love; it had been glorious, it was still glorious, but her love-making became now at times almost perfunctory in the contemplation of these approaching delights and splendours and excitements. She knew, indeed, that ideas were at work in Benham's head; but she was a realist. She did not see why ideas should stand in the way of a career. Ideas are a brightness, the good looks of the mind. One talks ideas, but THE THING THAT IS, IS THE THING THAT IS. And though she believed that Benham had a certain strength of character of his own, she had that sort of confidence in his love for her and in the power of her endearments that has in it the assurance of a faint contempt. She had mingled pride and sense in the glorious realization of the power over him that her wit and beauty gave her. She had held him faint with her divinity, intoxicated with the pride of her complete possession, and she did not dream that the moment when he should see clearly that she could deliberately use these ultimate delights to rule and influence him, would be the end of their splendour and her power. Her nature, which was just a nest of vigorous appetites, was incapable of suspecting his gathering disillusionment until it burst upon her. Now with her attention set upon London ahead he could observe her. In the beginning he had never seemed to be observing her at all, they dazzled one another; it seemed extraordinary now to him to note how much he had been able to disregard. There were countless times still when he would have dropped his observation and resumed that mutual exaltation very gladly, but always now other things possessed her mind. . . . There was still an immense pleasure for him in her vigour; there was something delightful in her pounce, even when she was pouncing on things superficial, vulgar or destructive. She made him understand and share the excitement of a big night at the opera, the glitter and prettiness of a smart restaurant, the clustering little acute adventures of a great reception of gay people, just as she had already made him understand and sympathize with dogs. She picked up the art world where he had laid it down, and she forced him to feel dense and slow before he rebelled against her multitudinous enthusiasms and admirations. South Harting had had its little group of artistic people; it is not one of your sleepy villages, and she slipped back at once into the movement. Those were the great days of John, the days before the Post Impressionist outbreak. John, Orpen, Tonks, she bought them with vigour. Artistic circles began to revolve about her. Very rapidly she was in possession. . . . And among other desirable things she had, it seemed, pounced upon and captured Lady Marayne. At any rate it was clear that that awful hostile silence and aloofness was to end. Benham never quite mastered how it was done. But Amanda had gone in one morning to Desborough Street, very sweetly and chastely dressed, had abased herself and announced a possible (though subsequently disproved) grandchild. And she had appreciated the little lady so highly and openly, she had so instantly caught and reproduced her tone, that her success, though only temporary in its completeness, was immediate. In the afternoon Benham was amazed by the apparition of his mother amidst the scattered unsettled furnishings of the new home Amanda had chosen in Lancaster Gate. He was in the hall, the door stood open awaiting packing-cases from a van without. In the open doorway she shone, looking the smallest of dainty things. There was no effect of her coming but only of her having arrived there, as a little blue butterfly will suddenly alight on a flower. “Well, Poff! ” said Lady Marayne, ignoring abysses, “What are you up to now, Poff? Come and embrace me. . . . ” “No, not so,” she said, “stiffest of sons. . . . ” She laid hold of his ears in the old fashion and kissed one eye. “Congratulations, dear little Poff. Oh! congratulations! In heaps. I'm so GLAD. ” Now what was that for? And then Amanda came out upon the landing upstairs, saw the encounter with an involuntary cry of joy, and came downstairs with arms wide open. It was the first intimation he had of their previous meeting. He was for some minutes a stunned, entirely inadequate Benham. . . . 4 At first Amanda knew nobody in London, except a few people in the Hampstead Garden suburb that she had not the slightest wish to know, and then very quickly she seemed to know quite a lot of people. The artistic circle brought in people, Lady Marayne brought in people; they spread. It was manifest the Benhams were a very bright young couple; he would certainly do something considerable presently, and she was bright and daring, jolly to look at and excellent fun, and, when you came to talk to her, astonishingly well informed. They passed from one hostess's hand to another: they reciprocated. The Clynes people and the Rushtones took her up; Mr. Evesham was amused by her, Lady Beach Mandarin proclaimed her charm like a trumpet, the Young Liberal people made jealous advances, Lord Moggeridge found she listened well, she lit one of the brightest weekend parties Lady Marayne had ever gathered at Chexington. And her descriptions of recent danger and adventure in Albania not only entertained her hearers but gave her just that flavour of personal courage which completes the fascination of a young woman. People in the gaps of a halting dinner-table conversation would ask: “Have you met Mrs. Benham? ” Meanwhile Benham appeared to be talking. A smiling and successful young woman, who a year ago had been nothing more than a leggy girl with a good lot of miscellaneous reading in her head, and vaguely engaged, or at least friendly to the pitch of engagement, to Mr. Rathbone-Sanders, may be forgiven if in the full tide of her success she does not altogether grasp the intention of her husband's discourse. It seemed to her that he was obsessed by a responsibility for civilization and the idea that he was aristocratic. (Secretly she was inclined to doubt whether he was justified in calling himself aristocratic; at the best his mother was county-stuff; but still if he did there was no great harm in it nowadays. ) Clearly his line was Tory-Democracy, social reform through the House of Lords and friendly intimacy with the more spirited young peers. And it was only very slowly and reluctantly that she was forced to abandon this satisfactory solution of his problem. She reproduced all the equipment and comforts of his Finacue Street study in their new home, she declared constantly that she would rather forego any old social thing than interfere with his work, she never made him go anywhere with her without first asking if his work permitted it. To relieve him of the burthen of such social attentions she even made a fag or so. The making of fags out of manifestly stricken men, the keeping of tamed and hopeless admirers, seemed to her to be the most natural and reasonable of feminine privileges. They did their useful little services until it pleased the Lord Cheetah to come to his own. That was how she put it. . . . But at last he was talking to her in tones that could no longer be ignored. He was manifestly losing his temper with her. There was a novel austerity in his voice and a peculiar whiteness about his face on certain occasions that lingered in her memory. He was indeed making elaborate explanations. He said that what he wanted to do was to understand “the collective life of the world,” and that this was not to be done in a West-End study. He had an extraordinary contempt, it seemed, for both sides in the drama of British politics. He had extravagant ideas of beginning in some much more fundamental way. He wanted to understand this “collective life of the world,” because ultimately he wanted to help control it. (Was there ever such nonsense? ) The practical side of this was serious enough, however; he was back at his old idea of going round the earth. Later on that might be rather a jolly thing to do, but not until they had struck root a little more surely in London. And then with amazement, with incredulity, with indignation, she began to realize that he was proposing to go off by himself upon this vague extravagant research, that all this work she had been doing to make a social place for him in London was as nothing to him, that he was thinking of himself as separable from her. . . . “But, Cheetah! How can you leave your spotless leopard? You would howl in the lonely jungle! ” “Possibly I shall. But I am going. ” “Then I shall come. ” “No. ” He considered her reasons. “You see you are not interested. ” “But I am. ” “Not as I am. You would turn it all into a jolly holiday. You don't want to see things as I want to do. You want romance. All the world is a show for you. As a show I can't endure it. I want to lay hands on it. ” “But, Cheetah! ” she said, “this is separation. ” “You will have your life here. And I shall come back. ” “But, Cheetah! How can we be separated? ” “We are separated,” he said. Her eyes became round with astonishment. Then her face puckered. “Cheetah! ” she cried in a voice of soft distress, “I love you. What do you mean? ” And she staggered forward, tear-blinded, and felt for his neck and shoulders, so that she might weep in his arms. . . . 5 “Don't say we are separated,” she whispered, putting her still wet face close to his. “No. We're mates,” he answered softly, with his arm about her. “How could we ever keep away from each uvver? ” she whispered. He was silent. “How COULD we? ” He answered aloud. “Amanda,” he said, “I mean to go round the world. ” She disentangled herself from his arm and sat up beside him. “What is to become of me,” she asked suddenly in a voice of despair, “while you go round the world? If you desert me in London,” she said, “if you shame me by deserting me in London-- If you leave me, I will never forgive you, Cheetah! Never. ” Then in an almost breathless voice, and as if she spoke to herself, “Never in all my days. ” 6 It was after that that Amanda began to talk about children. There was nothing involuntary about Amanda. “Soon,” she said, “we must begin to think of children. Not just now, but a little later. It's good to travel and have our fun, but life is unreal until there are children in the background. No woman is really content until she is a mother. . . . ” And for nearly a fortnight nothing more was said about that solitary journey round the world. But children were not the only new topic in Amanda's talk. She set herself with an ingenious subtlety to remind her husband that there were other men in the world. The convenient fags, sometimes a little embarrassed, found their inobtrusive services being brought into the light before Benham's eyes. Most of them were much older men than himself, elderly philanderers of whom it seemed to him no sane man need be jealous, men often of forty or more, but one was a contemporary, Sir Philip Easton, a man with a touch of Spanish blood and a suggestion of Spanish fire, who quite manifestly was very much in love with Amanda and of whom she spoke with a slight perceptible difference of manner that made Benham faintly uneasy. He was ashamed of the feeling. Easton it seemed was a man of a peculiarly fine honour, so that Amanda could trust herself with him to an extent that would have been inadvisable with men of a commoner substance, and he had a gift of understanding and sympathy that was almost feminine; he could cheer one up when one was lonely and despondent. For Amanda was so methodical in the arrangement of her time that even in the full rush of a London season she could find an hour now and then for being lonely and despondent. And he was a liberal and understanding purchaser of the ascendant painters; he understood that side of Amanda's interests, a side upon which Benham was notably deficient. . . . “Amanda seems to like that dark boy, Poff; what is his name? --Sir Philip Easton? ” said Lady Marayne. Benham looked at her with a slightly hostile intelligence, and said nothing. “When a man takes a wife, he has to keep her,” said Lady Marayne. “No,” said Benham after consideration. “I don't intend to be a wife-herd. ” “What? ” “Wife-herd--same as goat-herd. ” “Coarse, you are sometimes, Poff--nowadays. ” “It's exactly what I mean. I can understand the kind of curator's interest an Oriental finds in shepherding a large establishment, but to spend my days looking after one person who ought to be able to look after herself--” “She's very young. ” “She's quite grown up. Anyhow I'm not a moral nursemaid. ” “If you leave her about and go abroad--” “Has she been talking to you, mother? ” “The thing shows. ” “But about my going abroad? ” “She said something, my little Poff. ” Lady Marayne suddenly perceived that beneath Benham's indifference was something strung very tight, as though he had been thinking inordinately. He weighed his words before he spoke again. “If Amanda chooses to threaten me with a sort of conditional infidelity, I don't see that it ought to change the plans I have made for my life. . . . ” 7 “No aristocrat has any right to be jealous,” Benham wrote. “If he chances to be mated with a woman who does not see his vision or naturally go his way, he has no right to expect her, much less to compel her to go his way. What is the use of dragging an unwilling companion through morasses of uncongenial thought to unsought ends? What is the use of dragging even a willing pretender, who has no inherent will to seek and live the aristocratic life? “But that does not excuse him from obedience to his own call. . . . ” He wrote that very early in his examination of the Third Limitation. Already he had thought out and judged Amanda. The very charm of her, the sweetness, the nearness and magic of her, was making him more grimly resolute to break away. All the elaborate process of thinking her over had gone on behind the mask of his silences while she had been preoccupied with her housing and establishment in London; it was with a sense of extraordinary injustice, of having had a march stolen upon her, of being unfairly trapped, that Amanda found herself faced by foregone conclusions. He was ready now even with the details of his project. She should go on with her life in London exactly as she had planned it. He would take fifteen hundred a year for himself and all the rest she might spend without check or stint as it pleased her. He was going round the world for one or two years. It was even possible he would not go alone. There was a man at Cambridge he might persuade to come with him, a don called Prothero who was peculiarly useful in helping him to hammer out his ideas. . . . To her it became commandingly necessary that none of these things should happen. She tried to play upon his jealousy, but her quick instinct speedily told her that this only hardened his heart. She perceived that she must make a softer appeal. Now of a set intention she began to revive and imitate the spontaneous passion of the honeymoon; she perceived for the first time clearly how wise and righteous a thing it is for a woman to bear a child. “He cannot go if I am going to have a child,” she told herself. But that would mean illness, and for illness in herself or others Amanda had the intense disgust natural to her youth. Yet even illness would be better than this intolerable publication of her husband's ability to leave her side. . . . She had a wonderful facility of enthusiasm and she set herself forthwith to cultivate a philoprogenitive ambition, to communicate it to him. Her dread of illness disappeared; her desire for offspring grew. “Yes,” he said, “I want to have children, but I must go round the world none the less. ” She argued with all the concentrated subtlety of her fine keen mind. She argued with persistence and repetition. And then suddenly so that she was astonished at herself, there came a moment when she ceased to argue. She stood in the dusk in a window that looked out upon the park, and she was now so intent upon her purpose as to be still and self-forgetful; she was dressed in a dinner-dress of white and pale green, that set off her slim erect body and the strong clear lines of her neck and shoulders very beautifully, some greenish stones caught a light from without and flashed soft whispering gleams from amidst the misty darkness of her hair. She was going to Lady Marayne and the opera, and he was bound for a dinner at the House with some young Liberals at which he was to meet two representative Indians with a grievance from Bengal. Husband and wife had but a few moments together. She asked about his company and he told her. “They will tell you about India. ” “Yes. ” She stood for a moment looking out across the lights and the dark green trees, and then she turned to him. “Why cannot I come with you? ” she asked with sudden passion. “Why cannot I see the things you want to see? ” “I tell you you are not interested. You would only be interested through me. That would not help me. I should just be dealing out my premature ideas to you. If you cared as I care, if you wanted to know as I want to know, it would be different. But you don't. It isn't your fault that you don't. It happens so. And there is no good in forced interest, in prescribed discovery. ” “Cheetah,” she asked, “what is it that you want to know--that I don't care for? ” “I want to know about the world. I want to rule the world. ” “So do I. ” “No, you want to have the world. ” “Isn't it the same? ” “No. You're a greedier thing than I am, you Black Leopard you--standing there in the dusk. You're a stronger thing. Don't you know you're stronger? When I am with you, you carry your point, because you are more concentrated, more definite, less scrupulous. When you run beside me you push me out of my path. . . . You've made me afraid of you. . . . And so I won't go with you, Leopard. I go alone. It isn't because I don't love you. I love you too well. It isn't because you aren't beautiful and wonderful. . . . ” “But, Cheetah! nevertheless you care more for this that you want than you care for me. ” Benham thought of it. “I suppose I do,” he said. “What is it that you want? Still I don't understand. ” Her voice had the break of one who would keep reasonable in spite of pain. “I ought to tell you. ” “Yes, you ought to tell me. ” “I wonder if I can tell you,” he said very thoughtfully, and rested his hands on his hips. “I shall seem ridiculous to you. ” “You ought to tell me. ” “I think what I want is to be king of the world. ” She stood quite still staring at him. “I do not know how I can tell you of it. Amanda, do you remember those bodies--you saw those bodies--those mutilated men? ” “I saw them,” said Amanda. “Well. Is it nothing to you that those things happen? ” “They must happen. ” “No. They happen because there are no kings but pitiful kings. They happen because the kings love their Amandas and do not care. ” “But what can YOU do, Cheetah? ” “Very little. But I can give my life and all my strength. I can give all I can give. ” “But how? How can you help it--help things like that massacre? ” “I can do my utmost to find out what is wrong with my world and rule it and set it right. ” “YOU! Alone. ” “Other men do as much. Every one who does so helps others to do so. You see--. . . In this world one may wake in the night and one may resolve to be a king, and directly one has resolved one is a king. Does that sound foolishness to you? Anyhow, it's fair that I should tell you, though you count me a fool. This--this kingship--this dream of the night--is my life. It is the very core of me. Much more than you are. More than anything else can be. I mean to be a king in this earth. KING. I'm not mad. . . . I see the world staggering from misery to misery and there is little wisdom, less rule, folly, prejudice, limitation, the good things come by chance and the evil things recover and slay them, and it is my world and I am responsible. Every man to whom this light has come is responsible. As soon as this light comes to you, as soon as your kingship is plain to you, there is no more rest, no peace, no delight, except in work, in service, in utmost effort. As far as I can do it I will rule my world. I cannot abide in this smug city, I cannot endure its self-complacency, its routine, its gloss of success, its rottenness. . . . I shall do little, perhaps I shall do nothing, but what I can understand and what I can do I will do. Think of that wild beautiful country we saw, and the mean misery, the filth and the warring cruelty of the life that lives there, tragedy, tragedy without dignity; and think, too, of the limitless ugliness here, and of Russia slipping from disorder to massacre, and China, that sea of human beings, sliding steadily to disaster. Do you think these are only things in the newspapers? To me at any rate they are not things in newspapers; they are pain and failure, they are torment, they are blood and dust and misery. They haunt me day and night. Even if it is utterly absurd I will still do my utmost. It IS absurd. I'm a madman and you and my mother are sensible people. . . . And I will go my way. . . . I don't care for the absurdity. I don't care a rap. ” He stopped abruptly. “There you have it, Amanda. It's rant, perhaps. Sometimes I feel it's rant. And yet it's the breath of life to me. . . . There you are. . . . At last I've been able to break silence and tell you. . . . ” He stopped with something like a sob and stood regarding the dusky mystery of her face. She stood quite still, she was just a beautiful outline in the twilight, her face was an indistinctness under the black shadow of her hair, with eyes that were two patches of darkness. He looked at his watch, lifting it close to his face to see the time. His voice changed. “Well--if you provoke a man enough, you see he makes speeches. Let it be a lesson to you, Amanda. Here we are talking instead of going to our dinners. The car has been waiting ten minutes. ” Amanda, so still, was the most disconcerting of all Amandas. . . . A strange exaltation seized upon her very suddenly. In an instant she had ceased to plot against him. A vast wave of emotion swept her forward to a resolution that astonished her. “Cheetah! ” she said, and the very quality of her voice had changed, “give me one thing. Stay until June with me. ” “Why? ” he asked. Her answer came in a voice so low that it was almost a whisper. “Because--now--no, I don't want to keep you any more--I am not trying to hold you any more. . . . I want. . . . ” She came forward to him and looked up closely at his face. “Cheetah,” she whispered almost inaudibly, “Cheetah--I didn't understand. But now--. I want to bear your child. ” He was astonished. “Old Leopard! ” he said. “No,” she answered, putting her hands upon his shoulders and drawing very close to him, “Queen---if I can be--to your King. ” “You want to bear me a child! ” he whispered, profoundly moved. 8 The Hindu agitators at the cavernous dinner under the House of Commons came to the conclusion that Benham was a dreamer. And over against Amanda at her dinner-party sat Sir Sidney Umber, one of those men who know that their judgments are quoted. “Who is the beautiful young woman who is seeing visions? ” he asked of his neighbour in confidential undertones. . . . He tittered. “I think, you know, she ought to seem just SLIGHTLY aware that the man to her left is talking to her. . . . ” 9 A few days later Benham went down to Cambridge, where Prothero was now a fellow of Trinity and Brissenden Trust Lecturer. .

. . All through Benham's writing there was manifest a persuasion that in some way Prothero was necessary to his mind. It was as if he looked to Prothero to keep him real. He suspected even while he obeyed that upward flourish which was his own essential characteristic. He had a peculiar feeling that somehow that upward bias would betray him; that from exaltation he might presently float off, into the higher, the better, and so to complete unreality. He fled from priggishness and the terror of such sublimity alike to Prothero. Moreover, in relation to so many things Prothero in a peculiar distinctive manner SAW. He had less self-control than Benham, less integrity of purpose, less concentration, and things that were before his eyes were by the very virtue of these defects invariably visible to him. Things were able to insist upon themselves with him. Benham, on the other hand, when facts contradicted his purpose too stoutly, had a way of becoming blind to them. He repudiated inconvenient facts. He mastered and made his world; Prothero accepted and recorded his. Benham was a will towards the universe where Prothero was a perception and Amanda a confusing responsive activity. And it was because of his realization of this profound difference between them that he was possessed by the idea of taking Prothero with him about the world, as a detachable kind of vision--rather like that eye the Graiae used to hand one another. . . . After the busy sunlit streets of Maytime Cambridge, Prothero's rooms in Trinity, their windows full of Gothic perspectives and light-soaked blue sky, seemed cool and quiet. A flavour of scholarship pervaded them--a little blended with the flavour of innumerable breakfasts nearly but not completely forgotten. Prothero's door had been locked against the world, and he had appeared after a slight delay looking a little puffy and only apprehending who his visitor was after a resentful stare for the better part of a second. He might have been asleep, he might have been doing anything but the examination papers he appeared to be doing. The two men exchanged personal details; they had not met since some months before Benham' s marriage, and the visitor's eye went meanwhile from his host to the room and back to his host's face as though they were all aspects of the thing he was after, the Prothero humour, the earthly touch, the distinctive Prothero flavour. Then his eye was caught by a large red, incongruous, meretricious-looking volume upon the couch that had an air of having been flung aside, VENUS IN GEM AND MARBLE, its cover proclaimed. . . . His host followed that glance and blushed. “They send me all sorts of inappropriate stuff to review,” he remarked. And then he was denouncing celibacy. The transition wasn't very clear to Benham. His mind had been preoccupied by the problem of how to open his own large project. Meanwhile Prothero got, as it were, the conversational bit between his teeth and bolted. He began to say the most shocking things right away, so that Benham's attention was caught in spite of himself. “Inflammatory classics. ” “What's that? ” “Celibacy, my dear Benham, is maddening me,” said Prothero. “I can't stand it any longer. ” It seemed to Benham that somewhere, very far away, in another world, such a statement might have been credible. Even in his own life,--it was now indeed a remote, forgotten stage--there had been something distantly akin. . . . “You're going to marry? ” “I must. ” “Who's the lady, Billy? ” “I don't know. Venus. ” His little red-brown eye met his friend's defiantly. “So far as I know, it is Venus Anadyomene. ” A flash of laughter passed across his face and left it still angrier, still more indecorously defiant. “I like her best, anyhow. I do, indeed. But, Lord! I feel that almost any of them--” “Tut, tut! ” said Benham. Prothero flushed deeply but stuck to his discourse. “Wasn't it always your principle, Benham, to look facts in the face? I am not pronouncing an immoral principle. Your manner suggests I am. I am telling you exactly how I feel. That is how I feel. I want--Venus. I don't want her to talk to or anything of that sort. . . . I have been studying that book, yes, that large, vulgar, red book, all the morning, instead of doing any work. Would you like to see it? . . . NO! . . . “This spring, Benham, I tell you, is driving me mad. It is a peculiarly erotic spring. I cannot sleep, I cannot fix my mind, I cannot attend to ordinary conversation. These feelings, I understand, are by no means peculiar to myself. . . . No, don't interrupt me, Benham; let me talk now that the spirit of speech is upon me. When you came in you said, 'How are you? ' I am telling you how I am. You brought it on yourself. Well--I am--inflamed. I have no strong moral or religious convictions to assist me either to endure or deny this--this urgency. And so why should I deny it? It's one of our chief problems here. The majority of my fellow dons who look at me with secretive faces in hall and court and combination-room are in just the same case as myself. The fever in oneself detects the fever in others. I know their hidden thoughts. Their fishy eyes defy me to challenge their hidden thoughts. Each covers his miserable secret under the cloak of a wholesome manly indifference. A tattered cloak. . . . Each tries to hide his abandonment to this horrible vice of continence--” “Billy, what's the matter with you? ” Prothero grimaced impatience. “Shall I NEVER teach you not to be a humbug, Benham? ” he screamed, and in screaming became calmer. “Nature taunts me, maddens me. My life is becoming a hell of shame. 'Get out from all these books,' says Nature, 'and serve the Flesh. ' The Flesh, Benham. Yes--I insist--the Flesh. Do I look like a pure spirit? Is any man a pure spirit? And here am I at Cambridge like a lark in a cage, with too much port and no Aspasia. Not that I should have liked Aspasia. ” “Mutual, perhaps, Billy. ” “Oh! you can sneer! ” “Well, clearly--Saint Paul is my authority--it's marriage, Billy. ” Prothero had walked to the window. He turned round. “I CAN'T marry,” he said. “The trouble has gone too far. I've lost my nerve in the presence of women. I don't like them any more. They come at one--done up in a lot of ridiculous clothes, and chattering about all sorts of things that don't matter. . . . ” He surveyed his friend's thoughtful attitude. “I'm getting to hate women, Benham. I'm beginning now to understand the bitterness of spinsters against men. I'm beginning to grasp the unkindliness of priests. The perpetual denial. To you, happily married, a woman is just a human being. You can talk to her, like her, you can even admire her calmly; you've got, you see, no grudge against her. . . . ” He sat down abruptly. Benham, upon the hearthrug before the empty fireplace, considered him. “Billy! this is delusion,” he said. “What's come over you? ” “I'm telling you,” said Prothero. “No,” said Benham. Prothero awaited some further utterance. “I'm looking for the cause of it. It's feeding, Billy. It's port and stimulants where there is no scope for action. It's idleness. I begin to see now how much fatter you are, how much coarser. ” “Idleness! Look at this pile of examination answers. Look at that filing system like an arsenal of wisdom. Useless wisdom, I admit, but anyhow not idleness. ” “There's still bodily idleness. No. That's your trouble. You're stuffy. You've enlarged your liver. You sit in this room of a warm morning after an extravagant breakfast--. And peep and covet. ” “Just eggs and bacon! ” “Think of it! Coffee and toast it ought to be. Come out of it, Billy, and get aired. ” “How can one? ” “Easily. Come out of it now. Come for a walk, you Pig! ” “It's an infernally warm morning. “Walk with me to Grantchester. ” “We might go by boat. You could row. ” “WALK. ” “I ought to do these papers. ” “You weren't doing them. ” “No. . . . ” “Walk with me to Grantchester. All this affliction of yours is--horrid--and just nothing at all. Come out of it! I want you to come with me to Russia and about the world. I'm going to leave my wife--” “Leave your wife! ” “Why not? And I came here hoping to find you clear-headed, and instead you are in this disgusting state. I've never met anything in my life so hot and red and shiny and shameless. Come out of it, man! How can one talk to you? ” 10 “You pull things down to your own level,” said Benham as they went through the heat to Grantchester. “I pull them down to truth,” panted Prothero. “Truth! As though being full of gross appetites was truth, and discipline and training some sort of falsity! ” “Artificiality. And begetting pride, Benham, begetting a prig's pride. ” For a time there was more than the heat of the day between them. . . . The things that Benham had come down to discuss were thrust into the background by the impassioned materialism of Prothero. “I'm not talking of Love,” he said, remaining persistently outrageous. “I'm talking of physical needs. That first. What is the good of arranging systems of morality and sentiment before you know what is physically possible. . . . “But how can one disentangle physical and moral necessities? ” “Then why don't we up and find out? ” said Billy. He had no patience with the secrecy, the ignorance, the emotion that surrounded these questions. We didn't worship our ancestors when it came to building bridges or working metals or curing disease or studying our indigestion, and why should we become breathless or wordless with awe and terror when it came to this fundamental affair? Why here in particular should we give way to Holy Fear and stifled submission to traditional suppressions and the wisdom of the ages? “What is the wisdom of the ages? ” said Prothero. “Think of the corners where that wisdom was born. . . . Flea-bitten sages in stone-age hovels. . . . Wandering wise man with a rolling eye, a fakir under a tree, a Jewish sheik, an Arab epileptic. . . . ” “Would you sweep away the experience of mankind? ” protested Benham. The experience of mankind in these matters had always been bitter experience. Most of it was better forgotten. It didn't convince. It had never worked things out. In this matter just as in every other matter that really signified things had still to be worked out. Nothing had been worked out hitherto. The wisdom of the ages was a Cant. People had been too busy quarrelling, fighting and running away. There wasn't any digested experience of the ages at all. Only the mis-remembered hankey-pankey of the Dead Old Man. “Is this love-making a physical necessity for most men and women or isn't it? ” Prothero demanded. “There's a simple question enough, and is there anything whatever in your confounded wisdom of the ages to tell me yes or no? Can an ordinary celibate be as healthy and vigorous as a mated man? Is a spinster of thirty-eight a healthy human being? Can she be? I don't believe so. Then why in thunder do we let her be? Here am I at a centre of learning and wisdom and I don't believe so; and there is nothing in all our colleges, libraries and roomsfull of wiseacres here, to settle that plain question for me, plainly and finally. My life is a grubby torment of cravings because it isn't settled. If sexual activity IS a part of the balance of life, if it IS a necessity, well let's set about making it accessible and harmless and have done with it. Swedish exercises. That sort of thing. If it isn't, if it can be reduced and done without, then let us set about teaching people HOW to control themselves and reduce and get rid of this vehement passion. But all this muffled mystery, this pompous sneak's way we take with it! ” “But, Billy! How can one settle these things? It's a matter of idiosyncrasy. What is true for one man isn't true for another. There's infinite difference of temperaments! ” “Then why haven't we a classification of temperaments and a moral code for each sort? Why am I ruled by the way of life that is convenient for Rigdon the vegetarian and fits Bowler the saint like a glove? It isn't convenient for me. It fits me like a hair-shirt. Of course there are temperaments, but why can't we formulate them and exercise the elementary charity of recognizing that one man's health in these matters is another man's death? Some want love and gratification and some don't. There are people who want children and people who don't want to be bothered by children but who are full of vivid desires. There are people whose only happiness is chastity, and women who would rather be courtesans than mothers. Some of us would concentrate upon a single passion or a single idea; others overflow with a miscellaneous--tenderness. Yes,--and you smile! Why spit upon and insult a miscellaneous tenderness, Benham? Why grin at it? Why try every one by the standards that suit oneself? We're savages, Benham, shamefaced savages, still. Shamefaced and persecuting. “I was angry about sex by seventeen,” he went on. “Every year I live I grow angrier. ” His voice rose to a squeal of indignation as he talked. “Think,” he said, “of the amount of thinking and feeling about sex that is going on in Cambridge this morning. The hundreds out of these thousands full of it. A vast tank of cerebration. And we put none of it together; we work nothing out from that but poor little couplings and casual stories, patchings up of situations, misbehaviours, blunders, disease, trouble, escapes; and the next generation will start, and the next generation after that will start with nothing but your wisdom of the ages, which isn't wisdom at all, which is just awe and funk, taboos and mystery and the secretive cunning of the savage. . . . “What I really want to do is my work,” said Prothero, going off quite unexpectedly again. “That is why all this business, this incessant craving and the shame of it and all makes me so infernally angry. . . . ” 11 “There I'm with you,” cried Benham, struggling out of the thick torrent of Prothero's prepossessions. “What we want to do is our work. ” He clung to his idea. He raised his voice to prevent Prothero getting the word again. “It's this, that you call Work, that I call--what do I call it? --living the aristocratic life, which takes all the coarse simplicity out of this business. If it was only submission. . . . YOU think it is only submission--giving way. . . . It isn't only submission. We'd manage sex all right, we'd be the happy swine our senses would make us, if we didn't know all the time that there was something else to live for, something far more important. And different. Absolutely different and contradictory. So different that it cuts right across all these considerations. It won't fit in. . . . I don't know what this other thing is; it's what I want to talk about with you. But I know that it IS, in all my bones. . . . YOU know. . . . It demands control, it demands continence, it insists upon disregard. ” But the ideas of continence and disregard were unpleasant ideas to Prothero that day. “Mankind,” said Benham, “is overcharged with this sex. It suffocates us. It gives life only to consume it. We struggle out of the urgent necessities of a mere animal existence. We are not so much living as being married and given in marriage. All life is swamped in the love story. . . . ” “Man is only overcharged because he is unsatisfied,” said Prothero, sticking stoutly to his own view. 12 It was only as they sat at a little table in the orchard at Grantchester after their lunch that Benham could make head against Prothero and recover that largeness of outlook which had so easily touched the imagination of Amanda. And then he did not so much dispose of Prothero's troubles as soar over them. It is the last triumph of the human understanding to sympathize with desires we do not share, and to Benham who now believed himself to be loved beyond the chances of life, who was satisfied and tranquil and austerely content, it was impossible that Prothero's demands should seem anything more than the grotesque and squalid squealings of the beast that has to be overridden and rejected altogether. It is a freakish fact of our composition that these most intense feelings in life are just those that are most rapidly and completely forgotten; hate one may recall for years, but the magic of love and the flame of desire serve their purpose in our lives and vanish, leaving no trace, like the snows of Venice. Benham was still not a year and a half from the meretricious delights of Mrs. Skelmersdale, and he looked at Prothero as a marble angel might look at a swine in its sty. . . . What he had now in mind was an expedition to Russia. When at last he could sufficiently release Prothero's attention, he unfolded the project that had been developing steadily in him since his honeymoon experience. He had discovered a new reason for travelling. The last country we can see clearly, he had discovered, is our own country. It is as hard to see one's own country as it is to see the back of one's head. It is too much behind us, too much ourselves. But Russia is like England with everything larger, more vivid, cruder; one felt that directly one walked about St. Petersburg. St. Petersburg upon its Neva was like a savage untamed London on a larger Thames; they were seagull-haunted tidal cities, like no other capitals in Europe. The shipping and buildings mingled in their effects. Like London it looked over the heads of its own people to a limitless polyglot empire. And Russia was an aristocratic land, with a middle-class that had no pride in itself as a class; it had a British toughness and incompetence, a British disregard of logic and meticulous care. Russia, like England, was outside Catholic Christendom, it had a state church and the opposition to that church was not secularism but dissent. One could draw a score of such contrasted parallels. And now it was in a state of intolerable stress, that laid bare the elemental facts of a great social organization. It was having its South African war, its war at the other end of the earth, with a certain defeat instead of a dubious victory. . . . “There is far more freedom for the personal life in Russia than in England,” said Prothero, a little irrelevantly. Benham went on with his discourse about Russia. . . . “At the college of Troitzka,” said Prothero, “which I understand is a kind of monster Trinity unencumbered by a University, Binns tells me that although there is a profession of celibacy within the walls, the arrangements of the town and more particularly of the various hotels are conceived in a spirit of extreme liberality. ” Benham hardly attended at all to these interruptions. He went on to point out the elemental quality of the Russian situation. He led up to the assertion that to go to Russia, to see Russia, to try to grasp the broad outline of the Russian process, was the manifest duty of every responsible intelligence that was free to do as much. And so he was going, and if Prothero cared to come too-- “Yes,” said Prothero, “I should like to go to Russia. ” 13 But throughout all their travel together that summer Benham was never able to lift Prothero away from his obsession. It was the substance of their talk as the Holland boat stood out past waiting destroyers and winking beacons and the lights of Harwich, into the smoothly undulating darkness of the North Sea; it rose upon them again as they sat over the cakes and cheese of a Dutch breakfast in the express for Berlin. Prothero filled the Sieges Allee with his complaints against nature and society, and distracted Benham in his contemplation of Polish agriculture from the windows of the train with turgid sexual liberalism. So that Benham, during this period until Prothero left him and until the tragic enormous spectacle of Russia in revolution took complete possession of him, was as it were thinking upon two floors. Upon the one he was thinking of the vast problems of a society of a hundred million people staggering on the verge of anarchy, and upon the other he was perplexed by the feverish inattention of Prothero to the tremendous things that were going on all about them. It was only presently when the serenity of his own private life began to be ruffled by disillusionment, that he began to realize the intimate connexion of these two systems of thought. Yet Prothero put it to him plainly enough. “Inattentive,” said Prothero, “of course I am inattentive. What is really the matter with all this--this social mess people are in here, is that nearly everybody is inattentive. These Big Things of yours, nobody is thinking of them really. Everybody is thinking about the Near Things that concern himself. ” “The bombs they threw yesterday? The Cossacks and the whips? ” “Nudges. Gestures of inattention. If everybody was thinking of the Res Publica would there be any need for bombs? ” He pursued his advantage. “It's all nonsense to suppose people think of politics because they are in 'em. As well suppose that the passengers on a liner understand the engines, or soldiers a war. Before men can think of to-morrow, they must think of to-day. Before they can think of others, they must be sure about themselves. First of all, food; the private, the personal economic worry. Am I safe for food? Then sex, and until one is tranquil and not ashamed, not irritated and dissatisfied, how can one care for other people, or for next year or the Order of the World? How can one, Benham? ” He seized the illustration at hand. “Here we are in Warsaw--not a month after bomb-throwing and Cossack charging. Windows have still to be mended, smashed doors restored. There's blood-stains still on some of the houses. There are hundreds of people in the Citadel and in the Ochrana prison. This morning there were executions. Is it anything more than an eddy in the real life of the place? Watch the customers in the shops, the crowd in the streets, the men in the cafes who stare at the passing women. They are all swallowed up again in their own business. They just looked up as the Cossacks galloped past; they just shifted a bit when the bullets spat. . . . ” And when the streets of Moscow were agog with the grotesque amazing adventure of the Potemkin mutineers, Prothero was in the full tide of the private romance that severed him from Benham and sent him back to Cambridge--changed. Before they reached Moscow Benham was already becoming accustomed to disregard Prothero. He was looking over him at the vast heaving trouble of Russia, which now was like a sea that tumbles under the hurrying darknesses of an approaching storm. In those days it looked as though it must be an overwhelming storm. He was drinking in the wide and massive Russian effects, the drifting crowds in the entangling streets, the houses with their strange lettering in black and gold, the innumerable barbaric churches, the wildly driven droshkys, the sombre red fortress of the Kremlin, with its bulbous churches clustering up into the sky, the crosses, the innumerable gold crosses, the mad church of St. Basil, carrying the Russian note beyond the pitch of permissible caricature, and in this setting the obscure drama of clustering, staring, sash-wearing peasants, long-haired students, sane-eyed women, a thousand varieties of uniform, a running and galloping to and fro of messengers, a flutter of little papers, whispers, shouts, shots, a drama elusive and portentous, a gathering of forces, an accumulation of tension going on to a perpetual clash and clamour of bells. Benham had brought letters of introduction to a variety of people, some had vanished, it seemed. They were “away,” the porters said, and they continued to be “away,”--it was the formula, he learnt, for arrest; others were evasive, a few showed themselves extraordinarily anxious to inform him about things, to explain themselves and things about them exhaustively. One young student took him to various meetings and showed him in great detail the scene of the recent murder of the Grand Duke Sergius. The buildings opposite the old French cannons were still under repair. “The assassin stood just here. The bomb fell there, look! right down there towards the gate; that was where they found his arm. He was torn to fragments. He was scraped up. He was mixed with the horses. . . . ” Every one who talked spoke of the outbreak of revolution as a matter of days or at the utmost weeks. And whatever question Benham chose to ask these talkers were prepared to answer. Except one. “And after the revolution,” he asked, “what then? . . . ” Then they waved their hands, and failed to convey meanings by reassuring gestures. He was absorbed in his effort to understand this universal ominous drift towards a conflict. He was trying to piece together a process, if it was one and the same process, which involved riots in Lodz, fighting at Libau, wild disorder at Odessa, remote colossal battlings in Manchuria, the obscure movements of a disastrous fleet lost somewhere now in the Indian seas, steaming clumsily to its fate, he was trying to rationalize it all in his mind, to comprehend its direction. He was struggling strenuously with the obscurities of the language in which these things were being discussed about him, a most difficult language demanding new sets of visual images because of its strange alphabet. Is it any wonder that for a time he failed to observe that Prothero was involved in some entirely disconnected affair. They were staying at the big Cosmopolis bazaar in the Theatre Square. Thither, through the doors that are opened by distraught-looking men with peacocks' feathers round their caps, came Benham's friends and guides to take him out and show him this and that. At first Prothero always accompanied Benham on these expeditions; then he began to make excuses. He would stay behind in the hotel. Then when Benham returned Prothero would have disappeared. When the porter was questioned about Prothero his nescience was profound. One night no Prothero was discoverable at any hour, and Benham, who wanted to discuss a project for going on to Kieff and Odessa, was alarmed. “Moscow is a late place,” said Benham's student friend. “You need not be anxious until after four or five in the morning. It will be quite time--QUITE time to be anxious to-morrow. He may be--close at hand. ” When Benham hunted up Prothero in his room next morning he found him sleepy and irritable. “I don't trouble if YOU are late,” said Prothero, sitting up in his bed with a red resentful face and crumpled hair. “I wasn't born yesterday. ” “I wanted to talk about leaving Moscow. ” “I don't want to leave Moscow. ” “But Odessa--Odessa is the centre of interest just now. ” “I want to stay in Moscow. ” Benham looked baffled. Prothero stuck up his knees and rested his night-shirted arms upon them. “I don't want to leave Moscow,” he said, “and I'm not going to do so. ” “But haven't we done--” Prothero interrupted. “You may. But I haven't. We're not after the same things. Things that interest you, Benham, don't interest me. I've found--different things. ” His expression was extraordinarily defiant. “I want,” he went on, “to put our affairs on a different footing. Now you've opened the matter we may as well go into it. You were good enough to bring me here. .

. . There was a sort of understanding we were working together. . . . We aren't. . . . The long and short of it is, Benham, I want to pay you for my journey here and go on my own--independently. ” His eye and voice achieved a fierceness that Benham found nearly incredible in him. Something that had got itself overlooked in the press of other matters jerked back into Benham's memory. It popped back so suddenly that for an instant he wanted to laugh. He turned towards the window, picked his way among Prothero's carelessly dropped garments, and stood for a moment staring into the square, with its drifting, assembling and dispersing fleet of trains and its long line of blue-coated IZVOSHTCHIKS. Then he turned. “Billy,” he said, “didn't I see you the other evening driving towards the Hermitage? ” “Yes,” said Prothero, and added, “that's it. ” “You were with a lady. ” “And she IS a lady,” said Prothero, so deeply moved that his face twitched as though he was going to weep. “She's a Russian? ” “She had an English mother. Oh, you needn't stand there and look so damned ironical! She's--she's a woman. She's a thing of kindness. . . . ” He was too full to go on. “Billy, old boy,” said Benham, distressed, “I don't want to be ironical--” Prothero had got his voice again. “You'd better know,” he said, “you'd better know. She's one of those women who live in this hotel. ” “Live in this hotel! ” “On the fourth floor. Didn't you know? It's the way in most of these big Russian hotels. They come down and sit about after lunch and dinner. A woman with a yellow ticket. Oh! I don't care. I don't care a rap. She's been kind to me; she's--she's dear to me. How are you to understand? I shall stop in Moscow. I shall take her to England. I can't live without her, Benham. And then-- And then you come worrying me to come to your damned Odessa! ” And suddenly this extraordinary young man put his hands to his face as though he feared to lose it and would hold it on, and after an apoplectic moment burst noisily into tears. They ran between his fingers. “Get out of my room,” he shouted, suffocatingly. “What business have you to come prying on me? ” Benham sat down on a chair in the middle of the room and stared round-eyed at his friend. His hands were in his pockets. For a time he said nothing. “Billy,” he began at last, and stopped again. “Billy, in this country somehow one wants to talk like a Russian. Billy, my dear--I'm not your father, I'm not your judge. I'm--unreasonably fond of you. It's not my business to settle what is right or wrong for you. If you want to stay in Moscow, stay in Moscow. Stay here, and stay as my guest. . . . ” He stopped and remained staring at his friend for a little space. “I didn't know,” said Prothero brokenly; “I didn't know it was possible to get so fond of a person. . . . ” Benham stood up. He had never found Prothero so attractive and so abominable in his life before. “I shall go to Odessa alone, Billy. I'll make things all right here before I go. . . . ” He closed the door behind him and went in a state of profound thought to his own room. . . . Presently Prothero came to him with a vague inopportune desire to explain what so evidently did not need explaining. He walked about the room trying ways of putting it, while Benham packed. In an unaccountable way Prothero's bristling little mind seemed to have shrunken to something sleek and small. “I wish,” he said, “you could stay for a later train and have lunch and meet her. She's not the ordinary thing. She's--different. ” Benham plumbed depths of wisdom. “Billy,” he said, “no woman IS the ordinary thing. They are all--different. . . . ” 14 For a time this affair of Prothero's seemed to be a matter as disconnected from the Research Magnificent as one could imagine any matter to be. While Benham went from Moscow and returned, and travelled hither and thither, and involved himself more and more in the endless tangled threads of the revolutionary movement in Russia, Prothero was lost to all those large issues in the development of his personal situation. He contributed nothing to Benham's thought except attempts at discouragement. He reiterated his declaration that all the vast stress and change of Russian national life was going on because it was universally disregarded. “I tell you, as I told you before, that nobody is attending. You think because all Moscow, all Russia, is in the picture, that everybody is concerned. Nobody is concerned. Nobody cares what is happening. Even the men who write in newspapers and talk at meetings about it don't care. They are thinking of their dinners, of their clothes, of their money, of their wives. They hurry home. . . . ” That was his excuse. Manifestly it was an excuse. His situation developed into remarkable complications of jealousy and divided counsels that Benham found altogether incomprehensible. To Benham in those days everything was very simple in this business of love. The aristocrat had to love ideally; that was all. He had to love Amanda. He and Amanda were now very deeply in love again, more in love, he felt, than they had ever been before. They were now writing love-letters to each other and enjoying a separation that was almost voluptuous. She found in the epistolatory treatment of her surrender to him and to the natural fate of women, a delightful exercise for her very considerable powers of expression. Life pointed now wonderfully to the great time ahead when there would be a Cheetah cub in the world, and meanwhile the Cheetah loped about the wild world upon a mighty quest. In such terms she put it. Such foolishness written in her invincibly square and youthful hand went daily from London to Russia, and stacked up against his return in the porter's office at the Cosmopolis Bazaar or pursued him down through the jarring disorders of south-west Russia, or waited for him at ill-chosen post-offices that deflected his journeyings wastefully or in several instances went altogether astray. Perhaps they supplied self-educating young strikers in the postal service with useful exercises in the deciphering of manuscript English. He wrote back five hundred different ways of saying that he loved her extravagantly. . . . It seemed to Benham in those days that he had found the remedy and solution of all those sexual perplexities that distressed the world; Heroic Love to its highest note--and then you go about your business. It seemed impossible not to be happy and lift one's chin high and diffuse a bracing kindliness among the unfortunate multitudes who stewed in affliction and hate because they had failed as yet to find this simple, culminating elucidation. And Prothero--Prothero, too, was now achieving the same grand elementariness, out of his lusts and protests and general physical squalor he had flowered into love. For a time it is true it made rather an ineffective companion of him, but this was the mere goose-stepping for the triumphal march; this way ultimately lay exaltation. Benham had had as yet but a passing glimpse of this Anglo-Russian, who was a lady and altogether unlike her fellows; he had seen her for a doubtful second or so as she and Prothero drove past him, and his impression was of a rather little creature, white-faced with dusky hair under a red cap, paler and smaller but with something in her, a quiet alertness, that gave her a touch of kinship with Amanda. And if she liked old Prothero-- And, indeed, she must like old Prothero or could she possibly have made him so deeply in love with her? They must stick to each other, and then, presently, Prothero's soul would wake up and face the world again. What did it matter what she had been? Through stray shots and red conflict, long tediums of strained anxiety and the physical dangers of a barbaric country staggering towards revolution, Benham went with his own love like a lamp within him and this affair of Prothero's reflecting its light, and he was quite prepared for the most sympathetic and liberal behaviour when he came back to Moscow to make the lady's acquaintance. He intended to help Prothero to marry and take her back to Cambridge, and to assist by every possible means in destroying and forgetting the official yellow ticket that defined her status in Moscow. But he reckoned without either Prothero or the young lady in this expectation. It only got to him slowly through his political preoccupations that there were obscure obstacles to this manifest course. Prothero hesitated; the lady expressed doubts. On closer acquaintance her resemblance to Amanda diminished. It was chiefly a similarity of complexion. She had a more delicate face than Amanda, and its youthful brightness was deadened; she had none of Amanda's glow, and she spoke her mother's language with a pretty halting limp that was very different from Amanda's clear decisions. She put her case compactly. “I would not DO in Cambridge,” she said with an infinitesimal glance at Prothero. “Mr. Benham,” she said, and her manner had the gravity of a woman of affairs, “now do you see me in Cambridge? Now do you see me? Kept outside the walls? In a little DATCHA? With no occupation? Just to amuse him. ” And on another occasion when Prothero was not with her she achieved still completer lucidity. “I would come if I thought he wanted me to come,” she said. “But you see if I came he would not want me to come. Because then he would have me and so he wouldn't want me. He would just have the trouble. And I am not sure if I should be happy in Cambridge. I am not sure I should be happy enough to make him happy. It is a very learned and intelligent and charming society, of course; but here, THINGS HAPPEN. At Cambridge nothing happens--there is only education. There is no revolution in Cambridge; there are not even sinful people to be sorry for. . . . And he says himself that Cambridge people are particular. He says they are liberal but very, very particular, and perhaps I could not always act my part well. Sometimes I am not always well behaved. When there is music I behave badly sometimes, or when I am bored. He says the Cambridge people are so liberal that they do not mind what you are, but he says they are so particular that they mind dreadfully how you are what you are. . . . So that it comes to exactly the same thing. . . . ” “Anna Alexievna,” said Benham suddenly, “are you in love with Prothero? ” Her manner became conscientiously scientific. “He is very kind and very generous--too generous. He keeps sending for more money--hundreds of roubles, I try to prevent him. ” “Were you EVER in love? ” “Of course. But it's all gone long ago. It was like being hungry. Only very fine hungry. Exquisite hungry. . . . And then being disgusted. . . . ” “He is in love with you. ” “What is love? ” said Anna. “He is grateful. He is by nature grateful. ” She smiled a smile, like the smile of a pale Madonna who looks down on her bambino. “And you love nothing? ” “I love Russia--and being alone, being completely alone. When I am dead perhaps I shall be alone. Not even my own body will touch me then. ” Then she added, “But I shall be sorry when he goes. ” Afterwards Benham talked to Prothero alone. “Your Anna,” he said, “is rather wonderful. At first, I tell you now frankly I did not like her very much, I thought she looked 'used,' she drank vodka at lunch, she was gay, uneasily; she seemed a sham thing. All that was prejudice. She thinks; she's generous, she's fine. ” “She's tragic,” said Prothero as though it was the same thing. He spoke as though he noted an objection. His next remark confirmed this impression. “That's why I can't take her back to Cambridge,” he said. “You see, Benham,” he went on, “she's human. She's not really feminine. I mean, she's--unsexed. She isn't fitted to be a wife or a mother any more. We've talked about the possible life in England, very plainly. I've explained what a household in Cambridge would mean. . . . It doesn't attract her. . . . In a way she's been let out from womanhood, forced out of womanhood, and I see now that when women are let out from womanhood there's no putting them back. I could give a lecture on Anna. I see now that if women are going to be wives and mothers and homekeepers and ladies, they must be got ready for it from the beginning, sheltered, never really let out into the wild chances of life. She has been. Bitterly. She's REALLY emancipated. And it's let her out into a sort of nothingness. She's no longer a woman, and she isn't a man. She ought to be able to go on her own--like a man. But I can't take her back to Cambridge. Even for her sake. ” His perplexed eyes regarded Benham. “You won't be happy in Cambridge--alone,” said Benham. “Oh, damnably not! But what can I do? I had at first some idea of coming to Moscow for good--teaching. ” He paused. “Impossible. I'm worth nothing here. I couldn't have kept her. ” “Then what are you going to do, Billy? ” “I don't KNOW what I'm going to do, I tell you. I live for the moment. To-morrow we are going out into the country. ” “I don't understand,” said Benham with a gesture of resignation. “It seems to me that if a man and woman love each other--well, they insist upon each other. What is to happen to her if you leave her in Moscow? ” “Damnation! Is there any need to ask that? ” “Take her to Cambridge, man. And if Cambridge objects, teach Cambridge better manners. ” Prothero's face was suddenly transfigured with rage. “I tell you she won't come! ” he said. “Billy! ” said Benham, “you should make her! ” “I can't. ” “If a man loves a woman he can make her do anything--” “But I don't love her like that,” said Prothero, shrill with anger. “I tell you I don't love her like that. ” Then he lunged into further deeps. “It's the other men,” he said, “it's the things that have been. Don't you understand? Can't you understand? The memories--she must have memories--they come between us. It's something deeper than reason. It's in one's spine and under one's nails. One could do anything, I perceive, for one's very own woman. . . . ” “MAKE her your very own woman, said the exponent of heroic love. “I shirk deeds, Benham, but you shirk facts. How could any man make her his very own woman now? You--you don't seem to understand--ANYTHING. She's nobody's woman--for ever. That--that might-have-been has gone for ever. . . . It's nerves--a passion of the nerves. There's a cruelty in life and-- She's KIND to me. She's so kind to me. . . . ” And then again Prothero was weeping like a vexed child. 15 The end of Prothero's first love affair came to Benham in broken fragments in letters. When he looked for Anna Alexievna in December--he never learnt her surname--he found she had left the Cosmopolis Bazaar soon after Prothero's departure and he could not find whither she had gone. He never found her again. Moscow and Russia had swallowed her up. Of course she and Prothero parted; that was a foregone conclusion. But Prothero's manner of parting succeeded in being at every phase a shock to Benham's ideas. It was clear he went off almost callously; it would seem there was very little crying. Towards the end it was evident that the two had quarrelled. The tears only came at the very end of all. It was almost as if he had got through the passion and was glad to go. Then came regret, a regret that increased in geometrical proportion with every mile of distance. In Warsaw it was that grief really came to Prothero. He had some hours there and he prowled the crowded streets, seeing girls and women happy with their lovers, abroad upon bright expeditions and full of delicious secrets, girls and women who ever and again flashed out some instant resemblance to Anna. . . . In Berlin he stopped a night and almost decided that he would go back. “But now I had the damned frontier,” he wrote, “between us. ” It was so entirely in the spirit of Prothero, Benham thought, to let the “damned frontier” tip the balance against him. Then came a scrawl of passionate confession, so passionate that it seemed as if Prothero had been transfigured. “I can't stand this business,” he wrote. “It has things in it, possibilities of emotional disturbance--you can have no idea! In the train--luckily I was alone in the compartment--I sat and thought, and suddenly, I could not help it, I was weeping--noisy weeping, an uproar! A beastly German came and stood in the corridor to stare. I had to get out of the train. It is disgraceful, it is monstrous we should be made like this. . . . “Here I am stranded in Hanover with nothing to do but to write to you about my dismal feelings. . . . ” After that surely there was nothing before a broken-hearted Prothero but to go on with his trailing wing to Trinity and a life of inappeasable regrets; but again Benham reckoned without the invincible earthliness of his friend. Prothero stayed three nights in Paris. “There is an extraordinary excitement about Paris,” he wrote. “A levity. I suspect the gypsum in the subsoil--some as yet undescribed radiations. Suddenly the world looks brightly cynical. . . . None of those tear-compelling German emanations. . . . “And, Benham, I have found a friend. “A woman. Of course you will laugh, you will sneer. You do not understand these things. . . . Yet they are so simple. It was the strangest accident brought us together. There was something that drew us together. A sort of instinct. Near the Boulevard Poissoniere. . . . ” “Good heavens! ” said Benham. “A sort of instinct! ” “I told her all about Anna! ” “Good Lord! ” cried Benham. “She understood. Perfectly. None of your so-called 'respectable' women could have understood. . . . At first I intended merely to talk to her. . . . ” Benham crumpled the letter in his hand. “Little Anna Alexievna! ” he said, “you were too clean for him. ” 16 Benham had a vision of Prothero returning from all this foreign travel meekly, pensively, a little sadly, and yet not without a kind of relief, to the grey mildness of Trinity. He saw him, capped and gowned, and restored to academic dignity again, nodding greetings, resuming friendships. The little man merged again into his rare company of discreet Benedicts and restrained celibates at the high tables. They ate on in their mature wisdom long after the undergraduates had fled. Presently they would withdraw processionally to the combination room. . . . There would be much to talk about over the wine. Benham speculated what account Prothero would give of Moscow. . . . He laughed abruptly. And with that laugh Prothero dropped out of Benham's world for a space of years. There may have been other letters, but if so they were lost in the heaving troubles of a revolution-strained post-office. Perhaps to this day they linger sere and yellow in some forgotten pigeon-hole in Kishinev or Ekaterinoslav. . . . 17 In November, after an adventure in the trader's quarter of Kieff which had brought him within an inch of death, and because an emotional wave had swept across him and across his correspondence with Amanda, Benham went back suddenly to England and her. He wanted very greatly to see her and also he wanted to make certain arrangements about his property. He returned by way of Hungary, and sent telegrams like shouts of excitement whenever the train stopped for a sufficient time. “Old Leopard, I am coming, I am coming,” he telegraphed, announcing his coming for the fourth time. It was to be the briefest of visits, very passionate, the mutual refreshment of two noble lovers, and then he was returning to Russia again. Amanda was at Chexington, and there he found her installed in the utmost dignity of expectant maternity. Like many other people he had been a little disposed to regard the bearing of children as a common human experience; at Chexington he came to think of it as a rare and sacramental function. Amanda had become very beautiful in quiet, grey, dove-like tones; her sun-touched, boy's complexion had given way to a soft glow of the utmost loveliness, her brisk little neck that had always reminded him of the stalk of a flower was now softened and rounded; her eyes were tender, and she moved about the place in the manner of one who is vowed to a great sacrifice. She dominated the scene, and Lady Marayne, with a certain astonishment in her eyes and a smouldering disposition to irony, was the half-sympathetic, half-resentful priestess of her daughter-in-law's unparalleled immolation. The MOTIF of motherhood was everywhere, and at his bedside he found--it had been put there for him by Amanda--among much other exaltation of woman's mission, that most wonderful of all philoprogenitive stories, Hudson's CRYSTAL AGE. Everybody at Chexington had an air of being grouped about the impending fact. An epidemic of internal troubles, it is true, kept Sir Godfrey in the depths of London society, but to make up for his absence Mrs. Morris had taken a little cottage down by the river and the Wilder girls were with her, both afire with fine and subtle feelings and both, it seemed, and more particularly Betty, prepared to be keenly critical of Benham's attitude. He did a little miss his cue in these exaltations, because he had returned in a rather different vein of exaltation. In missing it he was assisted by Amanda herself, who had at moments an effect upon him of a priestess confidentially disrobed. It was as if she put aside for him something official, something sincerely maintained, necessary, but at times a little irksome. It was as if she was glad to take him into her confidence and unbend. Within the pre-natal Amanda an impish Amanda still lingered. There were aspects of Amanda that it was manifest dear Betty must never know. . . . But the real Amanda of that November visit even in her most unpontifical moods did not quite come up to the imagined Amanda who had drawn him home across Europe. At times she was extraordinarily jolly. They had two or three happy walks about the Chexington woods; that year the golden weather of October had flowed over into November, and except for a carpet of green and gold under the horse-chestnuts most of the leaves were still on the trees. Gleams of her old wanton humour shone on him. And then would come something else, something like a shadow across the world, something he had quite forgotten since his idea of heroic love had flooded him, something that reminded him of those long explanations with Mr. Rathbone-Sanders that had never been explained, and of the curate in the doorway of the cottage and his unaccountable tears. On the afternoon of his arrival at Chexington he was a little surprised to find Sir Philip Easton coming through the house into the garden, with an accustomed familiarity. Sir Philip perceived him with a start that was instantly controlled, and greeted him with unnatural ease. Sir Philip, it seemed, was fishing and reading and playing cricket in the neighbourhood, which struck Benham as a poor way of spending the summer, the sort of soft holiday a man learns to take from scholars and literary men. A man like Sir Philip, he thought, ought to have been aviating or travelling. Moreover, when Sir Philip greeted Amanda it seemed to Benham that there was a flavour of established association in their manner. But then Sir Philip was also very assiduous with Lady Marayne. She called him “Pip,” and afterwards Amanda called across the tennis-court to him, “Pip! ” And then he called her “Amanda. ” When the Wilder girls came up to join the tennis he was just as brotherly. . . . The next day he came to lunch. During that meal Benham became more aware than he had ever been before of the peculiar deep expressiveness of this young man's eyes. They watched him and they watched Amanda with a solicitude that seemed at once pained and tender. And there was something about Amanda, a kind of hard brightness, an impartiality and an air of something undefinably suspended, that gave Benham an intuitive certitude that that afternoon Sir Philip would be spoken to privately, and that then he would pack up and go away in a state of illumination from Chexington. But before he could be spoken to he contrived to speak to Benham. They were left to smoke after lunch, and then it was he took advantage of a pause to commit his little indiscretion. “Mrs. Benham,” he said, “looks amazingly well--extraordinarily well, don't you think? ” “Yes,” said Benham, startled. “Yes. She certainly keeps very well. ” “She misses you terribly,” said Sir Philip; “it is a time when a woman misses her husband. But, of course, she does not want to hamper your work. . . . ” Benham felt it was very kind of him to take so intimate an interest in these matters, but on the spur of the moment he could find no better expression for this than a grunt. “You don't mind,” said the young man with a slight catch in the breath that might have been apprehensive, “that I sometimes bring her books and flowers and things? Do what little I can to keep life interesting down here? It's not very congenial. . . . She's so wonderful--I think she is the most wonderful woman in the world. ” Benham perceived that so far from being a modern aristocrat he was really a primitive barbarian in these matters. “I've no doubt,” he said, “that my wife has every reason to be grateful for your attentions. ” In the little pause that followed Benham had a feeling that Sir Philip was engendering something still more personal. If so, he might be constrained to invert very gently but very firmly the bowl of chrysanthemums over Sir Philip's head, or kick him in an improving manner. He had a ridiculous belief that Sir Philip would probably take anything of the sort very touchingly. He scrambled in his mind for some remark that would avert this possibility. “Have you ever been in Russia? ” he asked hastily. “It is the most wonderful country in Europe. I had an odd adventure near Kiev. During a pogrom. ” And he drowned the developing situation in a flood of description. . . . But it was not so easy to drown the little things that were presently thrown out by Lady Marayne. They were so much more in the air. . . . 18 Sir Philip suddenly got out of the picture even as Benham had foreseen.

“Easton has gone away,” he remarked three days later to Amanda. “I told him to go. He is a bore with you about. But otherwise he is rather a comfort, Cheetah. ” She meditated upon Sir Philip. “And he's an HONOURABLE man,” she said. “He's safe. . . . ” 19 After that visit it was that the notes upon love and sex began in earnest. The scattered memoranda upon the perfectness of heroic love for the modern aristocrat ended abruptly. Instead there came the first draft for a study of jealousy. The note was written in pencil on Chexington notepaper and manifestly that had been supported on the ribbed cover of a book. There was a little computation in the corner, converting forty-five degrees Reaumur into degrees Fahrenheit, which made White guess it had been written in the Red Sea. But, indeed, it had been written in a rather amateurishly stoked corridor-train on Benham's journey to the gathering revolt in Moscow. . . . “I think I have been disposed to underrate the force of sexual jealousy. . . . I thought it was something essentially contemptible, something that one dismissed and put behind oneself in the mere effort to be aristocratic, but I begin to realize that it is not quite so easily settled with. . . . “One likes to know. . . . Possibly one wants to know too much. . . . In phases of fatigue, and particularly in phases of sleeplessness, when one is leaving all that one cares for behind, it becomes an irrational torment. . . . “And it is not only in oneself that I am astonished by the power of this base motive. I see, too, in the queer business of Prothero how strongly jealousy, how strongly the sense of proprietorship, weighs with a man. . . . “There is no clear reason why one should insist upon another human being being one's ownest own--utterly one's own. . . . “There is, of course, no clear reason for most human motives. . . . “One does. . . . “There is something dishonouring in distrust--to both the distrusted and the one who distrusts. . . . ” After that, apparently, it had been too hot and stuffy to continue. 20 Benham did not see Amanda again until after the birth of their child. He spent his Christmas in Moscow, watching the outbreak, the fitful fighting and the subsequent break-up, of the revolution, and taking care of a lost and helpless English family whose father had gone astray temporarily on the way home from Baku. Then he went southward to Rostov and thence to Astrakhan. Here he really began his travels. He determined to get to India by way of Herat and for the first time in his life rode out into an altogether lawless wilderness. He went on obstinately because he found himself disposed to funk the journey, and because discouragements were put in his way. He was soon quite cut off from all the ways of living he had known. He learnt what it is to be flea-bitten, saddle-sore, hungry and, above all, thirsty. He was haunted by a dread of fever, and so contrived strange torments for himself with overdoses of quinine. He ceased to be traceable from Chexington in March, and he reappeared in the form of a telegram from Karachi demanding news in May. He learnt he was the father of a man-child and that all was well with Amanda. He had not expected to be so long away from any communication with the outer world, and something in the nature of a stricken conscience took him back to England. He found a second William Porphyry in the world, dominating Chexington, and Amanda tenderly triumphant and passionate, the Madonna enthroned. For William Porphyry he could feel no emotion. William Porphyry was very red and ugly and protesting, feeble and aggressive, a matter for a skilled nurse. To see him was to ignore him and dispel a dream. It was to Amanda Benham turned again. For some days he was content to adore his Madonna and listen to the familiar flatteries of her love. He was a leaner, riper man, Amanda said, and wiser, so that she was afraid of him. . . . And then he became aware that she was requiring him to stay at her side. “We have both had our adventures,” she said, which struck him as an odd phrase. It forced itself upon his obstinate incredulity that all those conceptions of heroic love and faithfulness he had supposed to be so clearly understood between them had vanished from her mind. She had absolutely forgotten that twilight moment at the window which had seemed to him the crowning instant, the real marriage of their lives. It had gone, it had left no recoverable trace in her. And upon his interpretations of that he had loved her passionately for a year. She was back at exactly the ideas and intentions that ruled her during their first settlement in London. She wanted a joint life in the social world of London, she demanded his presence, his attention, the daily practical evidences of love. It was all very well for him to be away when the child was coming, but now everything was different. Now he must stay by her. This time he argued no case. These issues he had settled for ever. Even an indignant dissertation from Lady Marayne, a dissertation that began with appeals and ended in taunts, did not move him. Behind these things now was India. The huge problems of India had laid an unshakeable hold upon his imagination. He had seen Russia, and he wanted to balance that picture by a vision of the east. . . . He saw Easton only once during a week-end at Chexington. The young man displayed no further disposition to be confidentially sentimental. But he seemed to have something on his mind. And Amanda said not a word about him. He was a young man above suspicion, Benham felt. . . . And from his departure the quality of the correspondence of these two larger carnivores began to change. Except for the repetition of accustomed endearments, they ceased to be love letters in any sense of the word. They dealt chiefly with the “Cub,” and even there Benham felt presently that the enthusiasm diminished. A new amazing quality for Amanda appeared--triteness. The very writing of her letters changed as though it had suddenly lost backbone. Her habitual liveliness of phrasing lost its point. Had she lost her animation? Was she ill unknowingly? Where had the light gone? It was as if her attention was distracted. . . . As if every day when she wrote her mind was busy about something else. Abruptly at last he understood. A fact that had never been stated, never formulated, never in any way admitted, was suddenly pointed to convergently by a thousand indicating fingers, and beyond question perceived to be THERE. . . . He left a record of that moment of realization. “Suddenly one night I woke up and lay still, and it was as if I had never seen Amanda before. Now I saw her plainly, I saw her with that same dreadful clearness that sometimes comes at dawn, a pitiless, a scientific distinctness that has neither light nor shadow. . . . “Of course,” I said, and then presently I got up very softly. . . . “I wanted to get out of my intolerable, close, personal cabin. I wanted to feel the largeness of the sky. I went out upon the deck. We were off the coast of Madras, and when I think of that moment, there comes back to me also the faint flavour of spice in the air, the low line of the coast, the cool flooding abundance of the Indian moonlight, the swish of the black water against the side of the ship. And a perception of infinite loss, as if the limitless heavens above this earth and below to the very uttermost star were just one boundless cavity from which delight had fled. . . . “Of course I had lost her. I knew it with absolute certainty. I knew it from her insecure temperament, her adventurousness, her needs. I knew it from every line she had written me in the last three months. I knew it intuitively. She had been unfaithful. She must have been unfaithful. “What had I been dreaming about to think that it would not be so? ” 21 “Now let me write down plainly what I think of these matters. Let me be at least honest with myself, whatever self-contradictions I may have been led into by force of my passions. Always I have despised jealousy. . . . “Only by the conquest of four natural limitations is the aristocratic life to be achieved. They come in a certain order, and in that order the spirit of man is armed against them less and less efficiently. Of fear and my struggle against fear I have told already. I am fearful. I am a physical coward until I can bring shame and anger to my assistance, but in overcoming fear I have been helped by the whole body of human tradition. Every one, the basest creatures, every Hottentot, every stunted creature that ever breathed poison in a slum, knows that the instinctive constitution of man is at fault here and that fear is shameful and must be subdued. The race is on one's side. And so there is a vast traditional support for a man against the Second Limitation, the limitation of physical indulgence. It is not so universal as the first, there is a grinning bawling humour on the side of grossness, but common pride is against it. And in this matter my temperament has been my help: I am fastidious, I eat little, drink little, and feel a shivering recoil from excess. It is no great virtue; it happens so; it is something in the nerves of my skin. I cannot endure myself unshaven or in any way unclean; I am tormented by dirty hands or dirty blood or dirty memories, and after I had once loved Amanda I could not--unless some irrational impulse to get equal with her had caught me--have broken my faith to her, whatever breach there was in her faith to me. . . . “I see that in these matters I am cleaner than most men and more easily clean; and it may be that it is in the vein of just that distinctive virtue that I fell so readily into a passion of resentment and anger. “I despised a jealous man. There is a traditional discredit of jealousy, not so strong as that against cowardice, but still very strong. But the general contempt of jealousy is curiously wrapped up with the supposition that there is no cause for jealousy, that it is unreasonable suspicion. Given a cause then tradition speaks with an uncertain voice. . . . “I see now that I despised jealousy because I assumed that it was impossible for Amanda to love any one but me; it was intolerable to imagine anything else, I insisted upon believing that she was as fastidious as myself and as faithful as myself, made indeed after my image, and I went on disregarding the most obvious intimations that she was not, until that still moment in the Indian Ocean, when silently, gently as a drowned body might rise out of the depths of a pool, that knowledge of love dead and honour gone for ever floated up into my consciousness. “And then I felt that Amanda had cheated me! Outrageously. Abominably. “Now, so far as my intelligence goes, there is not a cloud upon this question. My demand upon Amanda was outrageous and I had no right whatever to her love or loyalty. I must have that very clear. . . . “This aristocratic life, as I conceive it, must be, except accidentally here and there, incompatible with the domestic life. It means going hither and thither in the universe of thought as much as in the universe of matter, it means adventure, it means movement and adventure that must needs be hopelessly encumbered by an inseparable associate, it means self-imposed responsibilities that will not fit into the welfare of a family. In all ages, directly society had risen above the level of a barbaric tribal village, this need of a release from the family for certain necessary types of people has been recognized. It was met sometimes informally, sometimes formally, by the growth and establishment of special classes and orders, of priests, monks, nuns, of pledged knights, of a great variety of non-family people, whose concern was the larger collective life that opens out beyond the simple necessities and duties and loyalties of the steading and of the craftsman's house. Sometimes, but not always, that release took the form of celibacy; but besides that there have been a hundred institutional variations of the common life to meet the need of the special man, the man who must go deep and the man who must go far. A vowed celibacy ceased to be a tolerable rule for an aristocracy directly the eugenic idea entered the mind of man, because a celibate aristocracy means the abandonment of the racial future to a proletariat of base unleaderly men. That was plain to Plato. It was plain to Campanelea. It was plain to the Protestant reformers. But the world has never yet gone on to the next step beyond that recognition, to the recognition of feminine aristocrats, rulers and the mates of rulers, as untrammelled by domestic servitudes and family relationships as the men of their kind. That I see has always been my idea since in my undergraduate days I came under the spell of Plato. It was a matter of course that my first gift to Amanda should be his REPUBLIC. I loved Amanda transfigured in that dream. . . . “There are no such women. . . . “It is no excuse for me that I thought she was like-minded with myself. I had no sound reason for supposing that. I did suppose that. I did not perceive that not only was she younger than myself, but that while I had been going through a mill of steely education, kept close, severely exercised, polished by discussion, she had but the weak training of a not very good school, some scrappy reading, the vague discussions of village artists, and the draped and decorated novelties of the 'advanced. ' It all went to nothing on the impact of the world. . . . She showed herself the woman the world has always known, no miracle, and the alternative was for me to give myself to her in the ancient way, to serve her happiness, to control her and delight and companion her, or to let her go. “The normal woman centres upon herself; her mission is her own charm and her own beauty and her own setting; her place is her home. She demands the concentration of a man. Not to be able to command that is her failure. Not to give her that is to shame her. As I had shamed Amanda. . . . ” 22 “There are no such women. ” He had written this in and struck it out, and then at some later time written it in again. There it stayed now as his last persuasion, but it set White thinking and doubting. And, indeed, there was another sheet of pencilled broken stuff that seemed to glance at quite another type of womanhood. 23 “It is clear that the women aristocrats who must come to the remaking of the world will do so in spite of limitations at least as great as those from which the aristocratic spirit of man escapes. These women must become aristocratic through their own innate impulse, they must be self-called to their lives, exactly as men must be; there is no making an aristocrat without a predisposition for rule and nobility. And they have to discover and struggle against just exactly the limitations that we have to struggle against. They have to conquer not only fear but indulgence, indulgence of a softer, more insidious quality, and jealousy--proprietorship. . . . “It is as natural to want a mate as to want bread, and a thousand times in my work and in my wanderings I have thought of a mate and desired a mate. A mate--not a possession. It is a need almost naively simple. If only one could have a woman who thought of one and with one! Though she were on the other side of the world and busied about a thousand things. . . . “'WITH one,' I see it must be rather than 'OF one. ' That 'of one' is just the unexpurgated egotistical demand coming back again. . . . “Man is a mating creature. It is not good to be alone. But mating means a mate. . . . “We should be lovers, of course; that goes without saying. . . . “And yet not specialized lovers, not devoted, ATTENDING lovers. 'Dancing attendance'--as they used to say. We should meet upon our ways as the great carnivores do. . . . “That at any rate was a sound idea. Though we only played with it. “But that mate desire is just a longing that can have no possible satisfaction now for me. What is the good of dreaming? Life and chance have played a trick upon my body and soul. I am mated, though I am mated to a phantom. I loved and I love Arnanda, not Easton's Amanda, but Amanda in armour, the Amanda of my dreams. Sense, and particularly the sense of beauty, lies deeper than reason in us. There can be no mate for me now unless she comes with Amanda's voice and Amanda's face and Amanda's quick movements and her clever hands. . . . ” 24 “Why am I so ungrateful to her still for all the happiness she gave me? “There were things between us two as lovers,--love, things more beautiful than anything else in the world, things that set the mind hunting among ineffectual images in a search for impossible expression, images of sunlight shining through blood-red petals, images of moonlight in a scented garden, of marble gleaming in the shade, of far-off wonderful music heard at dusk in a great stillness, of fairies dancing softly, of floating happiness and stirring delights, of joys as keen and sudden as the knife of an assassin, assassin's knives made out of tears, tears that are happiness, wordless things; and surprises, expectations, gratitudes, sudden moments of contemplation, the sight of a soft eyelid closed in sleep, shadowy tones in the sound of a voice heard unexpectedly; sweet, dear magical things that I can find no words for. . . . “If she was a goddess to me, should it be any affair of mine that she was not a goddess to herself; that she could hold all this that has been between us more cheaply than I did? It does not change one jot of it for me. At the time she did not hold it cheaply. She forgets where I do not forget. . . . ” 25 Such were the things that Benham could think and set down. Yet for whole days he was possessed by the thought of killing Amanda and himself. He did not at once turn homeward. It was in Ceylon that he dropped his work and came home. At Colombo he found a heap of letters awaiting him, and there were two of these that had started at the same time. They had been posted in London on one eventful afternoon. Lady Marayne and Amanda had quarrelled violently. Two earnest, flushed, quick-breathing women, full of neat but belated repartee, separated to write their simultaneous letters. Each letter trailed the atmosphere of that truncated encounter. Lady Marayne told her story ruthlessly. Amanda, on the other hand, generalized, and explained. Sir Philip's adoration of her was a love-friendship, it was beautiful, it was pure. Was there no trust nor courage in the world? She would defy all jealous scandal. She would not even banish him from her side. Surely the Cheetah could trust her. But the pitiless facts of Lady Marayne went beyond Amanda's explaining. The little lady's dignity had been stricken. “I have been used as a cloak,” she wrote. Her phrases were vivid. She quoted the very words of Amanda, words she had overheard at Chexington in the twilight. They were no invention. They were the very essence of Amanda, the lover. It was as sure as if Benham had heard the sound of her voice, as if he had peeped and seen, as if she had crept by him, stooping and rustling softly. It brought back the living sense of her, excited, flushed, reckless; his wild-haired Amanda of infinite delight. . . . All day those words of hers pursued him. All night they flared across the black universe. He buried his face in the pillows and they whispered softly in his ear. He walked his room in the darkness longing to smash and tear. He went out from the house and shook his ineffectual fists at the stirring quiet of the stars. He sent no notice of his coming back. Nor did he come back with a definite plan. But he wanted to get at Amanda. 26 It was with Amanda he had to reckon. Towards Easton he felt scarcely any anger at all. Easton he felt only existed for him because Amanda willed to have it so. Such anger as Easton did arouse in him was a contemptuous anger. His devotion filled Benham with scorn. His determination to serve Amanda at any price, to bear the grossest humiliations and slights for her, his humility, his service and tenderness, his care for her moods and happiness, seemed to Benham a treachery to human nobility. That rage against Easton was like the rage of a trade-unionist against a blackleg. Are all the women to fall to the men who will be their master-slaves and keepers? But it was not simply that Benham felt men must be freed from this incessant attendance; women too must free themselves from their almost instinctive demand for an attendant. . . . His innate disposition was to treat women as responsible beings. Never in his life had he thought of a woman as a pretty thing to be fooled and won and competed for and fought over. So that it was Amanda he wanted to reach and reckon with now, Amanda who had mated and ruled his senses only to fling him into this intolerable pit of shame and jealous fury. But the forces that were driving him home now were the forces below the level of reason and ideas, organic forces compounded of hate and desire, profound aboriginal urgencies. He thought, indeed, very little as he lay in his berth or sulked on deck; his mind lay waste under a pitiless invasion of exasperating images that ever and again would so wring him that his muscles would tighten and his hands clench or he would find himself restraining a snarl, the threat of the beast, in his throat. Amanda grew upon his imagination until she overshadowed the whole world. She filled the skies. She bent over him and mocked him. She became a mystery of passion and dark beauty. She was the sin of the world. One breathed her in the winds of the sea. She had taken to herself the greatness of elemental things. . . . So that when at last he saw her he was amazed to see her, and see that she was just a creature of common size and quality, a rather tired and very frightened-looking white-faced young woman, in an evening-dress of unfamiliar fashion, with little common trinkets of gold and colour about her wrists and neck. In that instant's confrontation he forgot all that had brought him homeward. He stared at her as one stares at a stranger whom one has greeted in mistake for an intimate friend. For he saw that she was no more the Amanda he hated and desired to kill than she had ever been the Amanda he had loved. 27 He took them by surprise. It had been his intention to take them by surprise. Such is the inelegance of the jealous state. He reached London in the afternoon and put up at a hotel near Charing Cross. In the evening about ten he appeared at the house in Lancaster Gate. The butler was deferentially amazed. Mrs. Benham was, he said, at a theatre with Sir Philip Easton, and he thought some other people also. He did not know when she would be back. She might go on to supper. It was not the custom for the servants to wait up for her. Benham went into the study that reduplicated his former rooms in Finacue Street and sat down before the fire the butler lit for him. He sent the man to bed, and fell into profound meditation. It was nearly two o'clock when he heard the sound of her latchkey and went out at once upon the landing. The half-door stood open and Easton's car was outside. She stood in the middle of the hall and relieved Easton of the gloves and fan he was carrying. “Good-night,” she said, “I am so tired. ” “My wonderful goddess,” he said. She yielded herself to his accustomed embrace, then started, stared, and wrenched herself out of his arms. Benham stood at the top of the stairs looking down upon them, white-faced and inexpressive. Easton dropped back a pace. For a moment no one moved nor spoke, and then very quietly Easton shut the half-door and shut out the noises of the road. For some seconds Benham regarded them, and as he did so his spirit changed. . . . Everything he had thought of saying and doing vanished out of his mind. He stuck his hands into his pockets and descended the staircase. When he was five or six steps above them, he spoke. “Just sit down here,” he said, with a gesture of one hand, and sat down himself upon the stairs. “DO sit down,” he said with a sudden testiness as they continued standing. “I know all about this affair. Do please sit down and let us talk. . . . Everybody's gone to bed long ago. ” “Cheetah! ” she said. “Why have you come back like this? ” Then at his mute gesture she sat down at his feet. “I wish you would sit down, Easton,” he said in a voice of subdued savagery. “Why have you come back? ” Sir Philip Easton found his voice to ask. “SIT down,” Benham spat, and Easton obeyed unwillingly. “I came back,” Benham went on, “to see to all this. Why else? I don't--now I see you--feel very fierce about it. But it has distressed me. You look changed, Amanda, and fagged. And your hair is untidy. It's as if something had happened to you and made you a stranger. . . . You two people are lovers. Very natural and simple, but I want to get out of it. Yes, I want to get out of it. That wasn't quite my idea, but now I see it is. It's queer, but on the whole I feel sorry for you. All of us, poor humans--. There's reason to be sorry for all of us. We're full of lusts and uneasiness and resentments that we haven't the will to control. What do you two people want me to do to you? Would you like a divorce, Amanda? It's the clean, straight thing, isn't it? Or would the scandal hurt you? ” Amanda sat crouched together, with her eyes on Benham. “Give us a divorce,” said Easton, looking to her to confirm him. Amanda shook her head. “I don't want a divorce,” she said. “Then what do you want? ” asked Benham with sudden asperity. “I don't want a divorce,” she repeated. “Why do you, after a long silence, come home like this, abruptly, with no notice? ” “It was the way it took me,” said Benham, after a little interval. “You have left me for long months. ” “Yes. I was angry. And it was ridiculous to be angry. I thought I wanted to kill you, and now I see you I see that all I want to do is to help you out of this miserable mess--and then get away from you. You two would like to marry. You ought to be married. ” “I would die to make Amanda happy,” said Easton. “Your business, it seems to me, is to live to make her happy. That you may find more of a strain. Less tragic and more tiresome. I, on the other hand, want neither to die nor live for her. ” Amanda moved sharply. “It's extraordinary what amazing vapours a lonely man may get into his head. If you don't want a divorce then I suppose things might go on as they are now. ” “I hate things as they are now,” said Easton. “I hate this falsehood and deception. ” “You would hate the scandal just as much,” said Amanda. “I would not care what the scandal was unless it hurt you. ” “It would be only a temporary inconvenience,” said Benham. “Every one would sympathize with you. . . . The whole thing is so natural. . . . People would be glad to forget very soon. They did with my mother. ” “No,” said Amanda, “it isn't so easy as that. ” She seemed to come to a decision. “Pip,” she said. “I want to talk to--HIM--alone. ” Easton's brown eyes were filled with distress and perplexity. “But why?

” he asked. “I do,” she said. “But this is a thing for US. ” “Pip, I want to talk to him alone. There is something--something I can't say before you. . . . ” Sir Philip rose slowly to his feet. “Shall I wait outside? ” “No, Pip. Go home. Yes,--there are some things you must leave to me. ” She stood up too and turned so that she and Benham both faced the younger man. The strangest uneasiness mingled with his resolve to be at any cost splendid. He felt--and it was a most unexpected and disconcerting feeling--that he was no longer confederated with Amanda; that prior, more fundamental and greater associations prevailed over his little new grip upon her mind and senses. He stared at husband and wife aghast in this realization. Then his resolute romanticism came to his help. “I would trust you--” he began. “If you tell me to go--” Amanda seemed to measure her hold upon him. She laid her hand upon his arm. “Go, my dear Pip,” she said. “Go. ” He had a moment of hesitation, of anguish, and it seemed to Benham as though he eked himself out with unreality, as though somewhen, somewhere, he had seen something of the sort in a play and filled in a gap that otherwise he could not have supplied. Then the door had closed upon him, and Amanda, pale and darkly dishevelled, faced her husband, silently and intensely. “WELL? ” said Benham. She held out her arms to him. “Why did you leave me, Cheetah? Why did you leave me? ” 28 Benham affected to ignore those proffered arms. But they recalled in a swift rush the animal anger that had brought him back to England. To remind him of desire now was to revive an anger stronger than any desire. He spoke seeking to hurt her. “I am wondering now,” he said, “why the devil I came back. ” “You had to come back to me. ” “I could have written just as well about these things. ” “CHEETAH,” she said softly, and came towards him slowly, stooping forward and looking into his eyes, “you had to come back to see your old Leopard. Your wretched Leopard. Who has rolled in the dirt. And is still yours. ” “Do you want a divorce? How are we to fix things, Amanda? ” “Cheetah, I will tell you how we will fix things. ” She dropped upon the step below him. She laid her hands with a deliberate softness upon him, she gave a toss so that her disordered hair was a little more disordered, and brought her soft chin down to touch his knees. Her eyes implored him. “Cheetah,” she said. “You are going to forgive. ” He sat rigid, meeting her eyes. “Amanda,” he said at last, “you would be astonished if I kicked you away from me and trampled over you to the door. That is what I want to do. ” “Do it,” she said, and the grip of her hands tightened. “Cheetah, dear! I would love you to kill me. ” “I don't want to kill you. ” Her eyes dilated. “Beat me. ” “And I haven't the remotest intention of making love to you,” he said, and pushed her soft face and hands away from him as if he would stand up. She caught hold of him again. “Stay with me,” she said. He made no effort to shake off her grip. He looked at the dark cloud of her hair that had ruled him so magically, and the memory of old delights made him grip a great handful almost inadvertently as he spoke. “Dear Leopard,” he said, “we humans are the most streaky of conceivable things. I thought I hated you. I do. I hate you like poison. And also I do not hate you at all. ” Then abruptly he was standing over her. She rose to her knees. “Stay here, old Cheetah! ” she said. “This is your house. I am your wife. ” He went towards the unfastened front door. “Cheetah! ” she cried with a note of despair. He halted at the door. “Amanda, I will come to-morrow. I will come in the morning, in the sober London daylight, and then we will settle things. ” He stared at her, and to her amazement he smiled. He spoke as one who remarks upon a quite unexpected fact. . . . “Never in my life, Amanda, have I seen a human being that I wanted so little to kill. ” 29 White found a fragment that might have been written within a week of those last encounters of Benham and Amanda. “The thing that astonished me most in Amanda was the change in her mental quality. “With me in the old days she had always been a sincere person; she had deceived me about facts, but she had never deceived me about herself. Her personal, stark frankness had been her essential strength. And it was gone. I came back to find Amanda an accomplished actress, a thing of poses and calculated effects. She was a surface, a sham, a Lorelei. Beneath that surface I could not discover anything individual at all. Fear and a grasping quality, such as God gave us all when he gave us hands; but the individual I knew, the humorous wilful Spotless Leopard was gone. Whither, I cannot imagine. An amazing disappearance. Clean out of space and time like a soul lost for ever. “When I went to see her in the morning, she was made up for a scene, she acted an intricate part, never for a moment was she there in reality. . . . “I have got a remarkable persuasion that she lost herself in this way, by cheapening love, by making base love to a lover she despised. . . . There can be no inequality in love. Give and take must balance. One must be one's natural self or the whole business is an indecent trick, a vile use of life! To use inferiors in love one must needs talk down to them, interpret oneself in their insufficient phrases, pretend, sentimentalize. And it is clear that unless oneself is to be lost, one must be content to leave alone all those people that one can reach only by sentimentalizing. But Amanda--and yet somehow I love her for it still--could not leave any one alone. So she was always feverishly weaving nets of false relationship. Until her very self was forgotten. So she will go on until the end. With Easton it had been necessary for her to key herself to a simple exalted romanticism that was entirely insincere. She had so accustomed herself to these poses that her innate gestures were forgotten. She could not recover them; she could not even reinvent them. Between us there were momentary gleams as though presently we should be our frank former selves again. They were never more than momentary. . . . ” And that was all that this astonishing man had seen fit to tell of his last parting from his wife. Perhaps he did Amanda injustice. Perhaps there was a stronger thread of reality in her desire to recover him than he supposed. Clearly he believed that under the circumstances Amanda would have tried to recover anybody. She had dressed for that morning's encounter in a very becoming and intimate wrap of soft mauve and white silk, and she had washed and dried her dark hair so that it was a vapour about her face. She set herself with a single mind to persuade herself and Benham that they were inseparable lovers, and she would not be deflected by his grim determination to discuss the conditions of their separation. When he asked her whether she wanted a divorce, she offered to throw over Sir Philip and banish him for ever as lightly as a great lady might sacrifice an objectionable poodle to her connubial peace. Benham passed through perplexing phases, so that she herself began to feel that her practice with Easton had spoilt her hands. His initial grimness she could understand, and partially its breakdown into irritability. But she was puzzled by his laughter. For he laughed abruptly. “You know, Amanda, I came home in a mood of tremendous tragedy. And really,--you are a Lark. ” And then overriding her altogether, he told her what he meant to do about their future and the future of their little son. “You don't want a divorce and a fuss. Then I'll leave things. I perceive I've no intention of marrying any more. But you'd better do the straight thing. People forget and forgive. Especially when there is no one about making a fuss against you. “Perhaps, after all, there is something to be said for shirking it. We'll both be able to get at the boy then. You'll not hurt him, and I shall want to see him. It's better for the boy anyhow not to have a divorce. “I'll not stand in your way. I'll get a little flat and I shan't come too much to London, and when I do, you can get out of town. You must be discreet about Easton, and if people say anything about him, send them to me. After all, this is our private affair. “We'll go on about money matters as we have been going. I trust to you not to run me into overwhelming debts. And, of course, if at any time, you do want to marry--on account of children or anything--if nobody knows of this conversation we can be divorced then. . . . ” Benham threw out these decisions in little dry sentences while Amanda gathered her forces for her last appeal. It was an unsuccessful appeal, and at the end she flung herself down before him and clung to his knees. He struggled ridiculously to get himself clear, and when at last he succeeded she dropped prostrate on the floor with her dishevelled hair about her. She heard the door close behind him, and still she lay there, a dark Guinevere, until with a start she heard a step upon the thick carpet without. He had come back. The door reopened. There was a slight pause, and then she raised her face and met the blank stare of the second housemaid. There are moments, suspended fragments of time rather than links in its succession, when the human eye is more intelligible than any words. The housemaid made a rapid apologetic noise and vanished with a click of the door. “DAMN! ” said Amanda. Then slowly she rose to her knees. She meditated through vast moments. “It's a cursed thing to be a woman,” said Amanda. She stood up. She put her hand on the telephone in the corner and then she forgot about it. After another long interval of thought she spoke. “Cheetah! ” she said, “Old Cheetah! . . . “I didn't THINK it of you. . . . ” Then presently with the even joyless movements of one who does a reasonable business, with something indeed of the manner of one who packs a trunk, she rang up Sir Philip Easton. 30 The head chambermaid on the first floor of the Westwood Hotel in Danebury Street had a curious and perplexing glimpse of Benham's private processes the morning after this affair. Benham had taken Room 27 on the afternoon of his return to London. She had seen him twice or three times, and he had struck her as a coldly decorous person, tall, white-faced, slow speaking; the last man to behave violently or surprise a head chambermaid in any way. On the morning of his departure she was told by the first-floor waiter that the occupant of Room 26 had complained of an uproar in the night, and almost immediately she was summoned to see Benham. He was standing facing the door and in a position which did a little obscure the condition of the room behind him. He was carefully dressed, and his manner was more cold and decorous than ever. But one of his hands was tied up in a white bandage. “I am going this morning,” he said, “I am going down now to breakfast. I have had a few little accidents with some of the things in the room and I have cut my hand. I want you to tell the manager and see that they are properly charged for on the bill. . . . Thank you. ” The head chambermaid was left to consider the accidents. Benham's things were all packed up and the room had an air of having been straightened up neatly and methodically after a destructive cataclysm. One or two items that the chambermaid might possibly have overlooked in the normal course of things were carefully exhibited. For example, the sheet had been torn into half a dozen strips and they were lying side by side on the bed. The clock on the mantelpiece had been knocked into the fireplace and then pounded to pieces. All the looking-glasses in the room were smashed, apparently the electric lamp that stood on the night table by the bedside had been wrenched off and flung or hammered about amidst the other breakables. And there was a considerable amount of blood splashed about the room. The head chambermaid felt unequal to the perplexities of the spectacle and summoned her most convenient friend, the head chambermaid on the third floor, to her aid. The first-floor waiter joined their deliberations and several housemaids displayed a respectful interest in the matter. Finally they invoked the manager. He was still contemplating the scene of the disorder when the precipitate retreat of his subordinates warned him of Benham's return. Benham was smoking a cigarette and his bearing was reassuringly tranquil. “I had a kind of nightmare,” he said. “I am fearfully sorry to have disarranged your room. You must charge me for the inconvenience as well as for the damage. ” 31 “An aristocrat cannot be a lover. ” “One cannot serve at once the intricacies of the wider issues of life and the intricacies of another human being. I do not mean that one may not love. One loves the more because one does not concentrate one's love. One loves nations, the people passing in the street, beasts hurt by the wayside, troubled scoundrels and university dons in tears. . . . “But if one does not give one's whole love and life into a woman's hands I do not think one can expect to be loved. “An aristocrat must do without close personal love. . . . ” This much was written at the top of a sheet of paper. The writing ended halfway down the page. Manifestly it was an abandoned beginning. And it was, it seemed to White, the last page of all this confusion of matter that dealt with the Second and Third Limitations. Its incompleteness made its expression perfect. . . . There Benham's love experience ended. He turned to the great business of the world. Desire and Jealousy should deflect his life no more; like Fear they were to be dismissed as far as possible and subdued when they could not be altogether dismissed. Whatever stirrings of blood or imagination there were in him after that parting, whatever failures from this resolution, they left no trace on the rest of his research, which was concerned with the hates of peoples and classes and war and peace and the possibilities science unveils and starry speculations of what mankind may do. 32 But Benham did not leave England again until he had had an encounter with Lady Marayne. The little lady came to her son in a state of extraordinary anger and distress. Never had she seemed quite so resolute nor quite so hopelessly dispersed and mixed. And when for a moment it seemed to him that she was not as a matter of fact dispersed and mixed at all, then with an instant eagerness he dismissed that one elucidatory gleam. “What are you doing in England, Poff? ” she demanded. “And what are you going to do? “Nothing! And you are going to leave her in your house, with your property and a lover. If that's it, Poff, why did you ever come back? And why did you ever marry her? You might have known; her father was a swindler. She's begotten of deceit. She'll tell her own story while you are away, and a pretty story she'll make of it. ” “Do you want me to divorce her and make a scandal? ” “I never wanted you to go away from her. If you'd stayed and watched her as a man should, as I begged you and implored you to do. Didn't I tell you, Poff? Didn't I warn you? ” “But now what am I to do? ” “There you are! That's just a man's way. You get yourself into this trouble, you follow your passions and your fancies and fads and then you turn to me! How can I help you now, Poff? If you'd listened to me before! ” Her blue eyes were demonstratively round. “Yes, but--” “I warned you,” she interrupted. “I warned you. I've done all I could for you. It isn't that I haven't seen through her. When she came to me at first with that made-up story of a baby! And all about loving me like her own mother. But I did what I could. I thought we might still make the best of a bad job. And then--. I might have known she couldn't leave Pip alone. . . . But for weeks I didn't dream. I wouldn't dream. Right under my nose. The impudence of it! ” Her voice broke. “Such a horrid mess! Such a hopeless, horrid mess! ” She wiped away a bright little tear. . . . “It's all alike. It's your way with us. All of you. There isn't a man in the world deserves to have a woman in the world. We do all we can for you. We do all we can to amuse you, we dress for you and we talk for you. All the sweet, warm little women there are! And then you go away from us! There never was a woman yet who pleased and satisfied a man, who did not lose him. Give you everything and off you must go! Lovers, mothers. . . . ” It dawned upon Benham dimly that his mother's troubles did not deal exclusively with himself. “But Amanda,” he began. “If you'd looked after her properly, it would have been right enough. Pip was as good as gold until she undermined him. . . . A woman can't wait about like an umbrella in a stand. . . . He was just a boy. . . . Only of course there she was--a novelty. It is perfectly easy to understand. She flattered him. . . . Men are such fools. ” “Still--it's no good saying that now. ” “But she'll spend all your money, Poff! She'll break your back with debts. What's to prevent her? With him living on her! For that's what it comes to practically. ” “Well, what am I to do? ” “You aren't going back without tying her up, Poff? You ought to stop every farthing of her money--every farthing. It's your duty. ” “I can't do things like that. ” “But have you no Shame? To let that sort of thing go on! ” “If I don't feel the Shame of it-- And I don't. ” “And that money--. I got you that money, Poff! It was my money. ” Benham stared at her perplexed. “What am I to do? ” he asked. “Cut her off, you silly boy! Tie her up! Pay her through a solicitor. Say that if she sees him ONCE again--” He reflected. “No,” he said at last. “Poff! ” she cried, “every time I see you, you are more and more like your father. You're going off--just as he did. That baffled, MULISH look--priggish--solemn! Oh! it's strange the stuff a poor woman has to bring into the world. But you'll do nothing. I know you'll do nothing. You'll stand everything. You--you Cuckold! And she'll drive by me, she'll pass me in theatres with the money that ought to have been mine! Oh! Oh! ” She dabbed her handkerchief from one swimming eye to the other. But she went on talking. Faster and faster, less and less coherently; more and more wildly abusive. Presently in a brief pause of the storm Benham sighed profoundly. . . . It brought the scene to a painful end. . . . For weeks her distress pursued and perplexed him. He had an extraordinary persuasion that in some obscure way he was in default, that he was to blame for her distress, that he owed her--he could never define what he owed her. And yet, what on earth was one to do? And something his mother had said gave him the odd idea that he had misjudged his father, that he had missed depths of perplexed and kindred goodwill. He went down to see him before he returned to India. But if there was a hidden well of feeling in Mr. Benham senior, it had been very carefully boarded over. The parental mind and attention were entirely engaged in a dispute in the SCHOOL WORLD about the heuristic method. Somebody had been disrespectful to Martindale House and the thing was rankling almost unendurably. It seemed to be a relief to him to show his son very fully the essentially illogical position of his assailant. He was entirely inattentive to Benham's carefully made conversational opportunities. He would be silent at times while Benham talked and then he would break out suddenly with: “What seems to me so unreasonable, so ridiculous, in the whole of that fellow's second argument--if one can call it an argument--. . . . A man who reasons as he does is bound to get laughed at. If people will only see it. . . . ” CHAPTER THE SIXTH ~~ THE NEW HAROUN AL RASCHID 1 Benham corresponded with Amanda until the summer of 1913. Sometimes the two wrote coldly to one another, sometimes with warm affection, sometimes with great bitterness. When he met White in Johannesburg during the strike period of 1913, he was on his way to see her in London and to settle their relationship upon a new and more definite footing. It was her suggestion that they should meet. About her he felt an enormous, inexorable, dissatisfaction. He could not persuade himself that his treatment of her and that his relations to her squared with any of his preconceptions of nobility, and yet at no precise point could he detect where he had definitely taken an ignoble step. Through Amanda he was coming to the full experience of life. Like all of us he had been prepared, he had prepared himself, to take life in a certain way, and life had taken him, as it takes all of us, in an entirely different and unexpected way. . . . He had been ready for noble deeds and villainies, for achievements and failures, and here as the dominant fact of his personal life was a perplexing riddle. He could not hate and condemn her for ten minutes at a time without a flow of exoneration; he could not think of her tolerantly or lovingly without immediate shame and resentment, and with the utmost will in the world he could not banish her from his mind. During the intervening years he had never ceased to have her in his mind; he would not think of her it is true if he could help it, but often he could not help it, and as a negative presence, as a thing denied, she was almost more potent than she had been as a thing accepted. Meanwhile he worked. His nervous irritability increased, but it did not hinder the steady development of his Research. Long before his final parting from Amanda he had worked out his idea and method for all the more personal problems in life; the problems he put together under his headings of the first three “Limitations. ” He had resolved to emancipate himself from fear, indulgence, and that instinctive preoccupation with the interests and dignity of self which he chose to term Jealousy, and with the one tremendous exception of Amanda he had to a large extent succeeded. Amanda. Amanda. Amanda. He stuck the more grimly to his Research to drown that beating in his brain. Emancipation from all these personal things he held now to be a mere prelude to the real work of a man's life, which was to serve this dream of a larger human purpose. The bulk of his work was to discover and define that purpose, that purpose which must be the directing and comprehending form of all the activities of the noble life. One cannot be noble, he had come to perceive, at large; one must be noble to an end. To make human life, collectively and in detail, a thing more comprehensive, more beautiful, more generous and coherent than it is to-day seemed to him the fundamental intention of all nobility. He believed more and more firmly that the impulses to make and help and subserve great purposes are abundantly present in the world, that they are inhibited by hasty thinking, limited thinking and bad thinking, and that the real ennoblement of human life was not so much a creation as a release. He lumped the preventive and destructive forces that keep men dispersed, unhappy, and ignoble under the heading of Prejudice, and he made this Prejudice his fourth and greatest and most difficult limitation. In one place he had written it, “Prejudice or Divisions. ” That being subdued in oneself and in the world, then in the measure of its subjugation, the new life of our race, the great age, the noble age, would begin. So he set himself to examine his own mind and the mind of the world about him for prejudice, for hampering follies, disguised disloyalties and mischievous distrusts, and the great bulk of the papers that White struggled with at Westhaven Street were devoted to various aspects of this search for “Prejudice. ” It seemed to White to be at once the most magnificent and the most preposterous of enterprises. It was indeed no less than an enquiry into all the preventable sources of human failure and disorder. . . . And it was all too manifest to White also that the last place in which Benham was capable of detecting a prejudice was at the back of his own head. Under this Fourth Limitation he put the most remarkable array of influences, race-hatred, national suspicion, the evil side of patriotism, religious and social intolerance, every social consequence of muddle headedness, every dividing force indeed except the purely personal dissensions between man and man. And he developed a metaphysical interpretation of these troubles. “No doubt,” he wrote in one place, “much of the evil between different kinds of men is due to uncultivated feeling, to natural bad feeling, but far more is it due to bad thinking. ” At times he seemed on the verge of the persuasion that most human trouble is really due to bad metaphysics. It was, one must remark, an extraordinary journey he had made; he had started from chivalry and arrived at metaphysics; every knight he held must be a logician, and ultimate bravery is courage of the mind. One thinks of his coming to this conclusion with knit brows and balancing intentness above whole gulfs of bathos--very much as he had once walked the Leysin Bisse. . . . “Men do not know how to think,” he insisted--getting along the planks; “and they will not realize that they do not know how to think. Nine-tenths of the wars in the world have arisen out of misconceptions. . . . Misconception is the sin and dishonour of the mind, and muddled thinking as ignoble as dirty conduct. . . . Infinitely more disastrous. ” And again he wrote: “Man, I see, is an over-practical creature, too eager to get into action. There is our deepest trouble. He takes conclusions ready-made, or he makes them in a hurry. Life is so short that he thinks it better to err than wait. He has no patience, no faith in anything but himself. He thinks he is a being when in reality he is only a link in a being, and so he is more anxious to be complete than right. The last devotion of which he is capable is that devotion of the mind which suffers partial performance, but insists upon exhaustive thought. He scamps his thought and finishes his performance, and before he is dead it is already being abandoned and begun all over again by some one else in the same egotistical haste. . . . ” It is, I suppose, a part of the general humour of life that these words should have been written by a man who walked the plank to fresh ideas with the dizziest difficulty unless he had Prothero to drag him forward, and who acted time after time with an altogether disastrous hastiness. 2 Yet there was a kind of necessity in this journey of Benham's from the cocked hat and wooden sword of Seagate and his early shame at cowardice and baseness to the spiritual megalomania of his complete Research Magnificent. You can no more resolve to live a life of honour nowadays and abstain from social and political scheming on a world-wide scale, than you can profess religion and refuse to think about God. In the past it was possible to take all sorts of things for granted and be loyal to unexamined things. One could be loyal to unexamined things because they were unchallenged things. But now everything is challenged. By the time of his second visit to Russia, Benham's ideas of conscious and deliberate aristocracy reaching out to an idea of universal responsibility had already grown into the extraordinary fantasy that he was, as it were, an uncrowned king in the world. To be noble is to be aristocratic, that is to say, a ruler. Thence it follows that aristocracy is multiple kingship, and to be an aristocrat is to partake both of the nature of philosopher and king. . . . Yet it is manifest that the powerful people of this world are by no means necessarily noble, and that most modern kings, poor in quality, petty in spirit, conventional in outlook, controlled and limited, fall far short of kingship. Nevertheless, there IS nobility, there IS kingship, or this earth is a dustbin and mankind but a kind of skin-disease upon a planet.

From that it is an easy step to this idea, the idea whose first expression had already so touched the imagination of Amanda, of a sort of diffused and voluntary kingship scattered throughout mankind. The aristocrats are not at the high table, the kings are not enthroned, those who are enthroned are but pretenders and SIMULACRA, kings of the vulgar; the real king and ruler is every man who sets aside the naive passions and self-interest of the common life for the rule and service of the world. This is an idea that is now to be found in much contemporary writing. It is one of those ideas that seem to appear simultaneously at many points in the world, and it is impossible to say now how far Benham was an originator of this idea, and how far he simply resonated to its expression by others. It was far more likely that Prothero, getting it heaven knows where, had spluttered it out and forgotten it, leaving it to germinate in the mind of his friend. . . . This lordly, this kingly dream became more and more essential to Benham as his life went on. When Benham walked the Bisse he was just a youngster resolved to be individually brave; when he prowled in the jungle by night he was there for all mankind. With every year he became more and more definitely to himself a consecrated man as kings are consecrated. Only that he was self-consecrated, and anointed only in his heart. At last he was, so to speak, Haroun al Raschid again, going unsuspected about the world, because the palace of his security would not tell him the secrets of men's disorders. He was no longer a creature of circumstances, he was kingly, unknown, Alfred in the Camp of the Danes. In the great later accumulations of his Research the personal matter, the introspection, the intimate discussion of motive, becomes less and less. He forgets himself in the exaltation of kingliness. He worries less and less over the particular rightness of his definite acts. In these later papers White found Benham abstracted, self-forgetful, trying to find out with an ever increased self-detachment, with an ever deepening regal solicitude, why there are massacres, wars, tyrannies and persecutions, why we let famine, disease and beasts assail us, and want dwarf and cripple vast multitudes in the midst of possible plenty. And when he found out and as far as he found out, he meant quite simply and earnestly to apply his knowledge. . . . 3 The intellectualism of Benham intensified to the end. His definition of Prejudice impressed White as being the most bloodless and philosophical formula that ever dominated the mind of a man. “Prejudice,” Benham had written, “is that common incapacity of the human mind to understand that a difference in any respect is not a difference in all respects, reinforced and rendered malignant by an instinctive hostility to what is unlike ourselves. We exaggerate classification and then charge it with mischievous emotion by referring it to ourselves. ” And under this comprehensive formula he proceeded to study and attack Family Prejudice, National Prejudice, Race Prejudice, War, Class Prejudice, Professional Prejudice, Sex Prejudice, in the most industrious and elaborate manner. Whether one regards one's self or others he held that these prejudices are evil things. “From the point of view of human welfare they break men up into wars and conflicts, make them an easy prey to those who trade upon suspicion and hostility, prevent sane collective co-operations, cripple and embitter life. From the point of view of personal aristocracy they make men vulgar, violent, unjust and futile. All the conscious life of the aristocrat must be a constant struggle against false generalizations; it is as much his duty to free himself from that as from fear, indulgence, and jealousy; it is a larger and more elaborate task, but it is none the less cardinal and essential. Indeed it is more cardinal and essential. The true knight has to be not only no coward, no self-pamperer, no egotist. He has to be a philosopher. He has to be no hasty or foolish thinker. His judgment no more than his courage is to be taken by surprise. “To subdue fear, desire and jealousy, is the aristocrat's personal affair, it is his ritual and discipline, like a knight watching his arms; but the destruction of division and prejudice and all their forms and establishments, is his real task, that is the common work of knighthood. It is a task to be done in a thousand ways; one man working by persuasion, another by example, this one overthrowing some crippling restraint upon the freedom of speech and the spread of knowledge, and that preparing himself for a war that will shatter a tyrannous presumption. Most imaginative literature, all scientific investigation, all sound criticism, all good building, all good manufacture, all sound politics, every honesty and every reasoned kindliness contribute to this release of men from the heat and confusions of our present world. ” It was clear to White that as Benham progressed with this major part of his research, he was more and more possessed by the idea that he was not making his own personal research alone, but, side by side with a vast, masked, hidden and once unsuspected multitude of others; that this great idea of his was under kindred forms the great idea of thousands, that it was breaking as the dawn breaks, simultaneously to great numbers of people, and that the time was not far off when the new aristocracy, the disguised rulers of the world, would begin to realize their common bent and effort. Into these latter papers there creeps more and more frequently a new phraseology, such expressions as the “Invisible King” and the “Spirit of Kingship,” so that as Benham became personally more and more solitary, his thoughts became more and more public and social. Benham was not content to define and denounce the prejudices of mankind. He set himself to study just exactly how these prejudices worked, to get at the nature and habits and strengths of each kind of prejudice, and to devise means for its treatment, destruction or neutralization. He had no great faith in the power of pure reasonableness; his psychological ideas were modern, and he had grasped the fact that the power of most of the great prejudices that strain humanity lies deeper than the intellectual level. Consequently he sought to bring himself into the closest contact with prejudices in action and prejudices in conflict in order to discover their sub-rational springs. A large proportion of that larger moiety of the material at Westhaven Street which White from his extensive experience of the public patience decided could not possibly “make a book,” consisted of notes and discussions upon the first-hand observations Benham had made in this or that part of the world. He began in Russia during the revolutionary trouble of 1906, he went thence to Odessa, and from place to place in Bessarabia and Kieff, where during a pogrom he had his first really illuminating encounter with race and culture prejudice. His examination of the social and political condition of Russia seems to have left him much more hopeful than was the common feeling of liberal-minded people during the years of depression that followed the revolution of 1906, and it was upon the race question that his attention concentrated. The Swadeshi outbreak drew him from Russia to India. Here in an entirely different environment was another discord of race and culture, and he found in his study of it much that illuminated and corrected his impressions of the Russian issue. A whole drawer was devoted to a comparatively finished and very thorough enquiry into human dissensions in lower Bengal. Here there were not only race but culture conflicts, and he could work particularly upon the differences between men of the same race who were Hindus, Christians and Mahometans respectively. He could compare the Bengali Mahometan not only with the Bengali Brahminist, but also with the Mahometan from the north-west. “If one could scrape off all the creed and training, would one find much the same thing at the bottom, or something fundamentally so different that no close homogeneous social life and not even perhaps a life of just compromise is possible between the different races of mankind? ” His answer to that was a confident one. “There are no such natural and unalterable differences in character and quality between any two sorts of men whatever, as would make their peaceful and kindly co-operation in the world impossible,” he wrote. But he was not satisfied with his observations in India. He found the prevalence of caste ideas antipathetic and complicating. He went on after his last parting from Amanda into China, it was the first of several visits to China, and thence he crossed to America. White found a number of American press-cuttings of a vehemently anti-Japanese quality still awaiting digestion in a drawer, and it was clear to him that Benham had given a considerable amount of attention to the development of the “white” and “yellow” race hostility on the Pacific slope; but his chief interest at that time had been the negro. He went to Washington and thence south; he visited Tuskegee and Atlanta, and then went off at a tangent to Hayti. He was drawn to Hayti by Hesketh Pritchard's vivid book, WHERE BLACK RULES WHITE, and like Hesketh Pritchard he was able to visit that wonderful monument to kingship, the hidden fastness of La Ferriere, the citadel built a century ago by the “Black Napoleon,” the Emperor Christophe. He went with a young American demonstrator from Harvard. 4 It was a memorable excursion. They rode from Cap Haytien for a day's journey along dusty uneven tracks through a steaming plain of luxurious vegetation, that presented the strangest mixture of unbridled jungle with populous country. They passed countless villages of thatched huts alive with curiosity and swarming with naked black children, and yet all the time they seemed to be in a wilderness. They forded rivers, they had at times to force themselves through thickets, once or twice they lost their way, and always ahead of them, purple and sullen, the great mountain peak with La Ferriere upon its crest rose slowly out of the background until it dominated the landscape. Long after dark they blundered upon rather than came to the village at its foot where they were to pass the night. They were interrogated under a flaring torch by peering ragged black soldiers, and passed through a firelit crowd into the presence of the local commandant to dispute volubly about their right to go further. They might have been in some remote corner of Nigeria. Their papers, laboriously got in order, were vitiated by the fact, which only became apparent by degrees, that the commandant could not read. They carried their point with difficulty. But they carried their point, and, watched and guarded by a hungry half-naked negro in a kepi and the remains of a sky-blue pair of trousers, they explored one of the most exemplary memorials of imperialism that humanity has ever made. The roads and parks and prospects constructed by this vanished Emperor of Hayti, had long since disappeared, and the three men clambered for hours up ravines and precipitous jungle tracks, occasionally crossing the winding traces of a choked and ruined road that had once been the lordly approach to his fastness. Below they passed an abandoned palace of vast extent, a palace with great terraces and the still traceable outline of gardens, though there were green things pushing between the terrace steps, and trees thrust out of the empty windows. Here from a belvedere of which the skull-like vestige still remained, the negro Emperor Christophe, after fourteen years of absolute rule, had watched for a time the smoke of the burning of his cane-fields in the plain below, and then, learning that his bodyguard had deserted him, had gone in and blown out his brains. He had christened the place after the best of examples, “Sans Souci. ” But the citadel above, which was to have been his last defence, he never used. The defection of his guards made him abandon that. To build it, they say, cost Hayti thirty thousand lives. He had the true Imperial lavishness. So high it was, so lost in a wilderness of trees and bush, looking out over a land relapsed now altogether to a barbarism of patch and hovel, so solitary and chill under the tropical sky--for even the guards who still watched over its suspected treasures feared to live in its ghostly galleries and had made hovels outside its walls--and at the same time so huge and grandiose--there were walls thirty feet thick, galleries with scores of rust-eaten cannon, circular dining-halls, king's apartments and queen's apartments, towering battlements and great arched doorways--that it seemed to Benham to embody the power and passing of that miracle of human history, tyranny, the helpless bowing of multitudes before one man and the transitoriness of such glories, more completely than anything he had ever seen or imagined in the world before. Beneath the battlements--they are choked above with jungle grass and tamarinds and many flowery weeds--the precipice fell away a sheer two thousand feet, and below spread a vast rich green plain populous and diversified, bounded at last by the blue sea, like an amethystine wall. Over this precipice Christophe was wont to fling his victims, and below this terrace were bottle-shaped dungeons where men, broken and torn, thrust in at the neck-like hole above, starved and died: it was his headquarters here, here he had his torture chambers and the means for nameless cruelties. . . . “Not a hundred years ago,” said Benham's companion, and told the story of the disgraced favourite, the youth who had offended. “Leap,” said his master, and the poor hypnotized wretch, after one questioning glance at the conceivable alternatives, made his last gesture of servility, and then stood out against the sky, swayed, and with a convulsion of resolve, leapt and shot headlong down through the shimmering air. Came presently the little faint sound of his fall. The Emperor satisfied turned away, unmindful of the fact that this projectile he had launched had caught among the bushes below, and presently struggled and found itself still a living man. It could scramble down to the road and, what is more wonderful, hope for mercy. An hour and it stood before Christophe again, with an arm broken and bloody and a face torn, a battered thing now but with a faint flavour of pride in its bearing. “Your bidding has been done, Sire,” it said. “So,” said the Emperor, unappeased. “And you live? Well-- Leap again. . . . ” And then came other stories. The young man told them as he had heard them, stories of ferocious wholesale butcheries, of men standing along the walls of the banqueting chamber to be shot one by one as the feast went on, of exquisite and terrifying cruelties, and his one note of wonder, his refrain was, “HERE! Not a hundred years ago. . . . It makes one almost believe that somewhere things of this sort are being done now. ” They ate their lunch together amidst the weedy flowery ruins. The lizards which had fled their coming crept out again to bask in the sunshine. The soldier-guide and guard scrabbled about with his black fingers in the ruinous and rifled tomb of Christophe in a search for some saleable memento. . . . Benham sat musing in silence. The thought of deliberate cruelty was always an actual physical distress to him. He sat bathed in the dreamy afternoon sunlight and struggled against the pictures that crowded into his mind, pictures of men aghast at death, and of fear-driven men toiling in agony, and of the shame of extorted obedience and of cringing and crawling black figures, and the defiance of righteous hate beaten down under blow and anguish. He saw eyes alight with terror and lips rolled back in agony, he saw weary hopeless flight before striding proud destruction, he saw the poor trampled mangled dead, and he shivered in his soul. . . . He hated Christophe and all that made Christophe; he hated pride, and then the idea came to him that it is not pride that makes Christophes but humility. There is in the medley of man's composition, deeper far than his superficial working delusion that he is a separated self-seeking individual, an instinct for cooperation and obedience. Every natural sane man wants, though he may want it unwittingly, kingly guidance, a definite direction for his own partial life. At the bottom of his heart he feels, even if he does not know it definitely, that his life is partial. He is driven to join himself on. He obeys decision and the appearance of strength as a horse obeys its rider's voice. One thinks of the pride, the uncontrolled frantic will of this black ape of all Emperors, and one forgets the universal docility that made him possible. Usurpation is a crime to which men are tempted by human dirigibility. It is the orderly peoples who create tyrants, and it is not so much restraint above as stiff insubordination below that has to be taught to men. There are kings and tyrannies and imperialisms, simply because of the unkingliness of men. And as he sat upon the battlements of La Ferriere, Benham cast off from his mind his last tolerance for earthly kings and existing States, and expounded to another human being for the first time this long-cherished doctrine of his of the Invisible King who is the lord of human destiny, the spirit of nobility, who will one day take the sceptre and rule the earth. . . . To the young American's naive American response to any simply felt emotion, he seemed with his white earnestness and his glowing eyes a veritable prophet. . . . “This is the root idea of aristocracy,” said Benham. “I have never heard the underlying spirit of democracy, the real true Thing in democracy, so thoroughly expressed,” said the young American. 5 Benham's notes on race and racial cultures gave White tantalizing glimpses of a number of picturesque experiences. The adventure in Kieff had first roused Benham to the reality of racial quality. He was caught in the wheels of a pogrom. “Before that time I had been disposed to minimize and deny race. I still think it need not prevent men from the completest social co-operation, but I see now better than I did how difficult it is for any man to purge from his mind the idea that he is not primarily a Jew, a Teuton, or a Kelt, but a man. You can persuade any one in five minutes that he or she belongs to some special and blessed and privileged sort of human being; it takes a lifetime to destroy that persuasion. There are these confounded differences of colour, of eye and brow, of nose or hair, small differences in themselves except that they give a foothold and foundation for tremendous fortifications of prejudice and tradition, in which hostilities and hatreds may gather. When I think of a Jew's nose, a Chinaman's eyes or a negro's colour I am reminded of that fatal little pit which nature has left in the vermiform appendix, a thing no use in itself and of no significance, but a gathering-place for mischief. The extremest case of race-feeling is the Jewish case, and even here, I am convinced, it is the Bible and the Talmud and the exertions of those inevitable professional champions who live upon racial feeling, far more than their common distinction of blood, which holds this people together banded against mankind. ” Between the lines of such general propositions as this White read little scraps of intimation that linked with the things Benham let fall in Johannesburg to reconstruct the Kieff adventure. Benham had been visiting a friend in the country on the further side of the Dnieper. As they drove back along dusty stretches of road amidst fields of corn and sunflower and through bright little villages, they saw against the evening blue under the full moon a smoky red glare rising from amidst the white houses and dark trees of the town. “The pogrom's begun,” said Benham's friend, and was surprised when Benham wanted to end a pleasant day by going to see what happens after the beginning of a pogrom. He was to have several surprises before at last he left Benham in disgust and went home by himself. For Benham, with that hastiness that so flouted his exalted theories, passed rapidly from an attitude of impartial enquiry to active intervention. The two men left their carriage and plunged into the network of unlovely dark streets in which the Jews and traders harboured. . . . Benham's first intervention was on behalf of a crouching and yelping bundle of humanity that was being dragged about and kicked at a street corner. The bundle resolved itself into a filthy little old man, and made off with extraordinary rapidity, while Benham remonstrated with the kickers. Benham's tallness, his very Gentile face, his good clothes, and an air of tense authority about him had its effect, and the kickers shuffled off with remarks that were partly apologies. But Benham's friend revolted. This was no business of theirs. Benham went on unaccompanied towards the glare of the burning houses. For a time he watched. Black figures moved between him and the glare, and he tried to find out the exact nature of the conflict by enquiries in clumsy Russian. He was told that the Jews had insulted a religious procession, that a Jew had spat at an ikon, that the shop of a cheating Jew trader had been set on fire, and that the blaze had spread to the adjacent group of houses. He gathered that the Jews were running out of the burning block on the other side “like rats. ” The crowd was mostly composed of town roughs with a sprinkling of peasants. They were mischievous but undecided. Among them were a number of soldiers, and he was surprised to see a policemen, brightly lit from head to foot, watching the looting of a shop that was still untouched by the flames. He held back some men who had discovered a couple of women's figures slinking along in the shadow beneath a wall. Behind his remonstrances the Jewesses escaped. His anger against disorder was growing upon him. . . . Late that night Benham found himself the leading figure amidst a party of Jews who had made a counter attack upon a gang of roughs in a court that had become the refuge of a crowd of fugitives. Some of the young Jewish men had already been making a fight, rather a poor and hopeless fight, from the windows of the house near the entrance of the court, but it is doubtful if they would have made an effective resistance if it had not been for this tall excited stranger who was suddenly shouting directions to them in sympathetically murdered Russian. It was not that he brought powerful blows or subtle strategy to their assistance, but that he put heart into them and perplexity into his adversaries because he was so manifestly non-partizan. Nobody could ever have mistaken Benham for a Jew. When at last towards dawn a not too zealous governor called out the troops and began to clear the streets of rioters, Benham and a band of Jews were still keeping the gateway of that court behind a hasty but adequate barricade of furniture and handbarrows. The ghetto could not understand him, nobody could understand him, but it was clear a rare and precious visitor had come to their rescue, and he was implored by a number of elderly, dirty, but very intelligent-looking old men to stay with them and preserve them until their safety was assured. They could not understand him, but they did their utmost to entertain him and assure him of their gratitude. They seemed to consider him as a representative of the British Government, and foreign intervention on their behalf is one of those unfortunate fixed ideas that no persecuted Jews seem able to abandon. Benham found himself, refreshed and tended, sitting beside a wood fire in an inner chamber richly flavoured by humanity and listening to a discourse in evil but understandable German. It was a discourse upon the wrongs and the greatness of the Jewish people--and it was delivered by a compact middle-aged man with a big black beard and long-lashed but animated eyes. Beside him a very old man dozed and nodded approval. A number of other men crowded the apartment, including several who had helped to hold off the rioters from the court. Some could follow the talk and ever again endorsed the speaker in Yiddish or Russian; others listened with tantalized expressions, their brows knit, their lips moving. It was a discourse Benham had provoked. For now he was at the very heart of the Jewish question, and he could get some light upon the mystery of this great hatred at first hand. He did not want to hear tales of outrages, of such things he knew, but he wanted to understand what was the irritation that caused these things. So he listened. The Jew dilated at first on the harmlessness and usefulness of the Jews. “But do you never take a certain advantage? ” Benham threw out. “The Jews are cleverer than the Russians. Must we suffer for that? ” The spokesman went on to the more positive virtues of his race. Benham suddenly had that uncomfortable feeling of the Gentile who finds a bill being made against him. Did the world owe Israel nothing for Philo, Aron ben Asher, Solomon Gabriol, Halevy, Mendelssohn, Heine, Meyerbeer, Rubinstein, Joachim, Zangwill? Does Britain owe nothing to Lord Beaconsfield, Montefiore or the Rothschilds? Can France repudiate her debt to Fould, Gaudahaux, Oppert, or Germany to Furst, Steinschneider, Herxheimer, Lasker, Auerbach, Traube and Lazarus and Benfey? . . . Benham admitted under the pressure of urgent tones and gestures that these names did undoubtedly include the cream of humanity, but was it not true that the Jews did press a little financially upon the inferior peoples whose lands they honoured in their exile? The man with the black beard took up the challenge bravely. “They are merciful creditors,” he said. “And it is their genius to possess and control. What better stewards could you find for the wealth of nations than the Jews? And for the honours? That always had been the role of the Jews--stewardship. Since the days of Joseph in Egypt. . . . ” Then in a lower voice he went on to speak of the deficiencies of the Gentile population. He wished to be just and generous but the truth was the truth. The Christian Russians loved drink and laziness; they had no sense of property; were it not for unjust laws even now the Jews would possess all the land of South Russia. . . . Benham listened with a kind of fascination. “But,” he said. It was so. And with a confidence that aroused a protest or so from the onlookers, the Jewish apologist suddenly rose up, opened a safe close beside the fire and produced an armful of documents. “Look! ” he said, “all over South Russia there are these! ” Benham was a little slow to understand, until half a dozen of these papers had been thrust into his hand. Eager fingers pointed, and several voices spoke. These things were illegalities that might some day be legal; there were the records of loans and hidden transactions that might at any time put all the surrounding soil into the hands of the Jew. All South Russia was mortgaged. . . . “But is it so? ” asked Benham, and for a time ceased to listen and stared into the fire. Then he held up the papers in his hand to secure silence and, feeling his way in unaccustomed German, began to speak and continued to speak in spite of a constant insurgent undertone of interruption from the Jewish spokesman. All men, Benham said, were brothers. Did they not remember Nathan the Wise? “I did not claim him,” said the spokesman, misunderstanding. “He is a character in fiction. ” But all men are brothers, Benham maintained. They had to be merciful to one another and give their gifts freely to one another. Also they had to consider each other's weaknesses. The Jews were probably justified in securing and administering the property of every community into which they came, they were no doubt right in claiming to be best fitted for that task, but also they had to consider, perhaps more than they did, the feelings and vanities of the host population into which they brought these beneficent activities. What was said of the ignorance, incapacity and vice of the Roumanians and Russians was very generally believed and accepted, but it did not alter the fact that the peasant, for all his incapacity, did like to imagine he owned his own patch and hovel and did have a curious irrational hatred of debt. . . . The faces about Benham looked perplexed. “THIS,” said Benham, tapping the papers in his hand. “They will not understand the ultimate benefit of it. It will be a source of anger and fresh hostility. It does not follow because your race has supreme financial genius that you must always follow its dictates to the exclusion of other considerations. . . . ” The perplexity increased. Benham felt he must be more general. He went on to emphasize the brotherhood of man, the right to equal opportunity, equal privilege, freedom to develop their idiosyncrasies as far as possible, unhindered by the idiosyncrasies of others. He could feel the sympathy and understanding of his hearers returning. “You see,” said Benham, “you must have generosity. You must forget ancient scores. Do you not see the world must make a fresh beginning? ” He was entirely convinced he had them with him. The heads nodded assent, the bright eyes and lips followed the slow disentanglement of his bad German. “Free yourselves and the world,” he said. Applause. “And so,” he said breaking unconsciously into English, “let us begin by burning these BEASTLY mortgages! ” And with a noble and dramatic gesture Benham cast his handful on the fire. The assenting faces became masks of horror. A score of hands clutched at those precious papers, and a yell of dismay and anger filled the room. Some one caught at his throat from behind. “Don't kill him! ” cried some one. “He fought for us! ” 6 An hour later Benham returned in an extraordinarily dishevelled and battered condition to his hotel. He found his friend in anxious consultation with the hotel proprietor. “We were afraid that something had happened to you,” said his friend. “I got a little involved,” said Benham. “Hasn't some one clawed your cheek? ” “Very probably,” said Benham. “And torn your coat? And hit you rather heavily upon the neck? ” “It was a complicated misunderstanding,” said Benham. “Oh! pardon! I'm rather badly bruised upon that arm you're holding. ” 7 Benham told the story to White as a jest against himself. “I see now of course that they could not possibly understand my point of view,” he said. . . . “I'm not sure if they quite followed my German. . . . “It's odd, too, that I remember saying, 'Let's burn these mortgages,' and at the time I'm almost sure I didn't know the German for mortgage. . . . ” It was not the only occasion on which other people had failed to grasp the full intention behind Benham's proceedings. His aristocratic impulses were apt to run away with his conceptions of brotherhood, and time after time it was only too manifest to White that Benham's pallid flash of anger had astonished the subjects of his disinterested observations extremely. His explorations in Hayti had been terminated abruptly by an affair with a native policeman that had necessitated the intervention of the British Consul. It was begun with that suddenness that was too often characteristic of Benham, by his hitting the policeman. It was in the main street of Cap Haytien, and the policeman had just clubbed an unfortunate youth over the head with the heavily loaded wooden club which is the normal instrument of Haytien discipline. His blow was a repartee, part of a triangular altercation in which a large, voluble, mahogany-coloured lady whose head was tied up in a blue handkerchief played a conspicuous part, but it seemed to Benham an entirely unjustifiable blow. He allowed an indignation with negro policemen in general that had been gathering from the very moment of his arrival at Port-au-Prince to carry him away. He advanced with the kind of shout one would hurl at a dog, and smote the policeman to the earth with the stout stick that the peculiar social atmosphere of Hayti had disposed him to carry. By the local standard his blow was probably a trivial one, but the moral effect of his indignant pallor and a sort of rearing tallness about him on these occasions was always very considerable. Unhappily these characteristics could have no effect on a second negro policeman who was approaching the affray from behind, and he felled Benham by a blow on the shoulder that was meant for the head, and with the assistance of his colleague overpowered him, while the youth and the woman vanished. The two officials dragged Benham in a state of vehement protest to the lock-up, and only there, in the light of a superior officer's superior knowledge, did they begin to realize the grave fact of his British citizenship. The memory of the destruction of the Haytien fleet by a German gunboat was still vivid in Port-au-Prince, and to that Benham owed it that in spite of his blank refusal to compensate the man he had knocked over, he was after two days of anger, two days of extreme insanitary experience, and much meditation upon his unphilosophical hastiness, released. Quite a number of trivial incidents of a kindred sort diversified his enquiries into Indian conditions. They too turned for the most part on his facile exasperation at any defiance of his deep-felt desire for human brotherhood. At last indeed came an affair that refused ultimately to remain trivial, and tangled him up in a coil that invoked newspaper articles and heated controversies. The effect of India upon Benham's mind was a peculiar mixture of attraction and irritation. He was attracted by the Hindu spirit of intellectualism and the Hindu repudiation of brutality, and he was infuriated by the spirit of caste that cuts the great world of India into a thousand futile little worlds, all aloof and hostile one to the other. “I came to see India,” he wrote, “and there is no India. There is a great number of Indias, and each goes about with its chin in the air, quietly scorning everybody else. ” His Indian adventures and his great public controversy on caste began with a tremendous row with an Indian civil servant who had turned an Indian gentleman out of his first-class compartment, and culminated in a disgraceful fracas with a squatting brown holiness at Benares, who had thrown aside his little brass bowlful of dinner because Benham's shadow had fallen upon it. “You unendurable snob! ” said Benham, and then lapsing into the forceful and inadvisable: “By Heaven, you SHALL eat it! . . . ” 8 Benham's detestation of human divisions and hostilities was so deep in his character as to seem almost instinctive. But he had too a very clear reason for his hostility to all these amazing breaks in human continuity in his sense of the gathering dangers they now involve. They had always, he was convinced, meant conflict, hatred, misery and the destruction of human dignity, but the new conditions of life that have been brought about by modern science were making them far more dangerous than they had ever been before. He believed that the evil and horror of war was becoming more and more tremendous with every decade, and that the free play of national prejudice and that stupid filching ambitiousness that seems to be inseparable from monarchy, were bound to precipitate catastrophe, unless a real international aristocracy could be brought into being to prevent it. In the drawer full of papers labelled “Politics,” White found a paper called “The Metal Beast. ” It showed that for a time Benham had been greatly obsessed by the thought of the armaments that were in those days piling up in every country in Europe. He had gone to Essen, and at Essen he had met a German who had boasted of Zeppelins and the great guns that were presently to smash the effete British fleet and open the Imperial way to London. “I could not sleep,” he wrote, “on account of this man and his talk and the streak of hatred in his talk. He distressed me not because he seemed exceptional, but because he seemed ordinary. I realized that he was more human than I was, and that only killing and killing could come out of such humanity. I thought of the great ugly guns I had seen, and of the still greater guns he had talked about, and how gloatingly he thought of the destruction they could do. I felt as I used to feel about that infernal stallion that had killed a man with its teeth and feet, a despairing fear, a sense of monstrosity in life. And this creature who had so disturbed me was only a beastly snuffy little man in an ill-fitting frock-coat, who laid his knife and fork by their tips on the edge of his plate, and picked his teeth with gusto and breathed into my face as he talked to me. The commonest of representative men. I went about that Westphalian country after that, with the conviction that headless, soulless, blood-drinking metal monsters were breeding all about me. I felt that science was producing a poisonous swarm, a nest of black dragons. They were crouching here and away there in France and England, they were crouching like beasts that bide their time, mewed up in forts, kennelled in arsenals, hooded in tarpaulins as hawks are hooded. . . . And I had never thought very much about them before, and there they were, waiting until some human fool like that frock-coated thing of spite, and fools like him multiplied by a million, saw fit to call them out to action. Just out of hatred and nationalism and faction. . . . ” Then came a queer fancy. “Great guns, mines, battleships, all that cruelty-apparatus; I see it more and more as the gathering revenge of dead joyless matter for the happiness of life. It is a conspiracy of the lifeless, an enormous plot of the rebel metals against sensation. That is why in particular half-living people seem to love these things. La Ferriere was a fastness of the kind of tyranny that passes out of human experience, the tyranny of the strong man over men. Essen comes, the new thing, the tyranny of the strong machine. . . . “Science is either slave or master. These people--I mean the German people and militarist people generally--have no real mastery over the scientific and economic forces on which they seem to ride. The monster of steel and iron carries Kaiser and Germany and all Europe captive. It has persuaded them to mount upon its back and now they must follow the logic of its path. Whither? . . . Only kingship will ever master that beast of steel which has got loose into the world. Nothing but the sense of unconquerable kingship in us all will ever dare withstand it. . . . Men must be kingly aristocrats--it isn't MAY be now, it is MUST be--or, these confederated metals, these things of chemistry and metallurgy, these explosives and mechanisms, will trample the blood and life out of our race into mere red-streaked froth and filth. . . . ” Then he turned to the question of this metallic beast's release. Would it ever be given blood? “Men of my generation have been brought up in this threat of a great war that never comes; for forty years we have had it, so that it is with a note of incredulity that one tells oneself, 'After all this war may happen. But can it happen? '” He proceeded to speculate upon the probability whether a great war would ever devastate western Europe again, and it was very evident to White that he wanted very much to persuade himself against that idea. It was too disagreeable for him to think it probable. The paper was dated 1910. It was in October, 1914, that White, who was still working upon the laborious uncertain account of Benham's life and thought he has recently published, read what Benham had written. Benham concluded that the common-sense of the world would hold up this danger until reason could get “to the head of things. ” “There are already mighty forces in Germany,” Benham wrote, “that will struggle very powerfully to avoid a war. And these forces increase. Behind the coarseness and the threatenings, the melodrama and the display of the vulgarer sort there arises a great and noble people. . . . I have talked with Germans of the better kind. . . . You cannot have a whole nation of Christophes. . . . There also the true knighthood discovers itself. . . . I do not believe this war will overtake us. ” “WELL! ” said White. “I must go back to Germany and understand Germany better,” the notes went on. But other things were to hold Benham back from that resolve. Other things were to hold many men back from similar resolves until it was too late for them. . . . “It is preposterous that these monstrous dangers should lower over Europe, because a certain threatening vanity has crept into the blood of a people, because a few crude ideas go inadequately controlled. . . . Does no one see what that metallic beast will do if they once let it loose? It will trample cities; it will devour nations. . . . ” White read this on the 9th of October, 1914. One crumpled evening paper at his feet proclaimed in startled headlines: “Rain of Incendiary Shells. Antwerp Ablaze. ” Another declared untruthfully but impressively: “Six Zeppelins drop Bombs over the Doomed City. ” He had bought all the evening papers, and had read and re-read them and turned up maps and worried over strategic problems for which he had no data at all--as every one did at that time--before he was able to go on with Benham's manuscripts. These pacific reassurances seemed to White's war-troubled mind like finding a flattened and faded flower, a girl's love token, between the pages of some torn and scorched and blood-stained book picked out from a heap of loot after rapine and murder had had their fill. . . . “How can we ever begin over again? ” said White, and sat for a long time staring gloomily into the fire, forgetting forgetting, forgetting too that men who are tired and weary die, and that new men are born to succeed them. . . . “We have to begin over again,” said White at last, and took up Benham's papers where he had laid them down. . . . 9 One considerable section of Benham's treatment of the Fourth Limitation was devoted to what he called the Prejudices of Social Position. This section alone was manifestly expanding into a large treatise upon the psychology of economic organization. . . . It was only very slowly that he had come to realize the important part played by economic and class hostilities in the disordering of human affairs. This was a very natural result of his peculiar social circumstances. Most people born to wealth and ease take the established industrial system as the natural method in human affairs; it is only very reluctantly and by real feats of sympathy and disinterestedness that they can be brought to realize that it is natural only in the sense that it has grown up and come about, and necessary only because nobody is strong and clever enough to rearrange it. Their experience of it is a satisfactory experience. On the other hand, the better off one is, the wider is one's outlook and the more alert one is to see the risks and dangers of international dissensions. Travel and talk to foreigners open one's eyes to aggressive possibilities; history and its warnings become conceivable. It is in the nature of things that socialists and labour parties should minimize international obligations and necessities, and equally so that autocracies and aristocracies and plutocracies should be negligent of and impatient about social reform. But Benham did come to realize this broader conflict between worker and director, between poor man and possessor, between resentful humanity and enterprise, between unwilling toil and unearned opportunity. It is a far profounder and subtler conflict than any other in human affairs. “I can foresee a time,” he wrote, “when the greater national and racial hatreds may all be so weakened as to be no longer a considerable source of human limitation and misery, when the suspicions of complexion and language and social habit are allayed, and when the element of hatred and aggression may be clean washed out of most religious cults, but I do not begin to imagine a time, because I cannot imagine a method, when there will not be great friction between those who employ, those who direct collective action, and those whose part it is to be the rank and file in industrialism. This, I know, is a limitation upon my confidence due very largely to the restricted nature of my knowledge of this sort of organization. Very probably resentment and suspicion in the mass and self-seeking and dishonesty in the fortunate few are not so deeply seated, so necessary as they seem to be, and if men can be cheerfully obedient and modestly directive in war time, there is no reason why ultimately they should not be so in the business of peace. But I do not understand the elements of the methods by which this state of affairs can be brought about. “If I were to confess this much to an intelligent working man I know that at once he would answer 'Socialism,' but Socialism is no more a solution of this problem than eating is a solution when one is lost in the wilderness and hungry. Of course everybody with any intelligence wants Socialism, everybody, that is to say, wants to see all human efforts directed to the common good and a common end, but brought face to face with practical problems Socialism betrays a vast insufficiency of practical suggestions. I do not say that Socialism would not work, but I do say that so far Socialists have failed to convince me that they could work it. The substitution of a stupid official for a greedy proprietor may mean a vanished dividend, a limited output and no other human advantage whatever. Socialism is in itself a mere eloquent gesture, inspiring, encouraging, perhaps, but beyond that not very helpful, towards the vast problem of moral and material adjustment before the race. That problem is incurably miscellaneous and intricate, and only by great multitudes of generous workers, one working at this point and one at that, secretly devoted knights of humanity, hidden and dispersed kings, unaware of one another, doubting each his right to count himself among those who do these kingly services, is this elaborate rightening of work and guidance to be done. ” So from these most fundamental social difficulties he came back to his panacea. All paths and all enquiries led him back to his conception of aristocracy, conscious, self-disciplined, devoted, self-examining yet secret, making no personal nor class pretences, as the supreme need not only of the individual but the world. 10 It was the Labour trouble in the Transvaal which had brought the two schoolfellows together again. White had been on his way to Zimbabwe. An emotional disturbance of unusual intensity had driven him to seek consolations in strange scenery and mysterious desolations. It was as if Zimbabwe called to him.

Benham had come to South Africa to see into the question of Indian immigration, and he was now on his way to meet Amanda in London. Neither man had given much heed to the gathering social conflict on the Rand until the storm burst about them. There had been a few paragraphs in the papers about a dispute upon a point of labour etiquette, a question of the recognition of Trade Union officials, a thing that impressed them both as technical, and then suddenly a long incubated quarrel flared out in rioting and violence, the burning of houses and furniture, attacks on mines, attempts to dynamite trains. White stayed in Johannesburg because he did not want to be stranded up country by the railway strike that was among the possibilities of the situation. Benham stayed because he was going to London very reluctantly, and he was glad of this justification for a few days' delay. The two men found themselves occupying adjacent tables in the Sherborough Hotel, and White was the first to recognize the other. They came together with a warmth and readiness of intimacy that neither would have displayed in London. White had not seen Benham since the social days of Amanda at Lancaster Gate, and he was astonished at the change a few years had made in him. The peculiar contrast of his pallor and his dark hair had become more marked, his skin was deader, his features seemed more prominent and his expression intenser. His eyes were very bright and more sunken under his brows. He had suffered from yellow fever in the West Indies, and these it seemed were the marks left by that illness. And he was much more detached from the people about him; less attentive to the small incidents of life, more occupied with inner things. He greeted White with a confidence that White was one day to remember as pathetic. “It is good to meet an old friend,” Benham said. “I have lost friends. And I do not make fresh ones. I go about too much by myself, and I do not follow the same tracks that other people are following. . . . ” What track was he following? It was now that White first heard of the Research Magnificent. He wanted to know what Benham was doing, and Benham after some partial and unsatisfactory explanation of his interest in insurgent Hindoos, embarked upon larger expositions. “It is, of course, a part of something else,” he amplified. He was writing a book, “an enormous sort of book. ” He laughed with a touch of shyness. It was about “everything,” about how to live and how not to live. And “aristocracy, and all sorts of things. ” White was always curious about other people's books. Benham became earnest and more explicit under encouragement, and to talk about his book was soon to talk about himself. In various ways, intentionally and inadvertently, he told White much. These chance encounters, these intimacies of the train and hotel, will lead men at times to a stark frankness of statement they would never permit themselves with habitual friends. About the Johannesburg labour trouble they talked very little, considering how insistent it was becoming. But the wide propositions of the Research Magnificent, with its large indifference to immediate occurrences, its vast patience, its tremendous expectations, contrasted very sharply in White's memory with the bitterness, narrowness and resentment of the events about them. For him the thought of that first discussion of this vast inchoate book into which Benham's life was flowering, and which he was ultimately to summarize, trailed with it a fringe of vivid little pictures; pictures of crowds of men hurrying on bicycles and afoot under a lowering twilight sky towards murmuring centres of disorder, of startling flares seen suddenly afar off, of the muffled galloping of troops through the broad dusty street in the night, of groups of men standing and watching down straight broad roads, roads that ended in groups of chimneys and squat buildings of corrugated iron. And once there was a marching body of white men in the foreground and a complicated wire fence, and a clustering mass of Kaffirs watching them over this fence and talking eagerly amongst themselves. “All this affair here is little more than a hitch in the machinery,” said Benham, and went back to his large preoccupation. . . . But White, who had not seen so much human disorder as Benham, felt that it was more than that. Always he kept the tail of his eye upon that eventful background while Benham talked to him. When the firearms went off he may for the moment have even given the background the greater share of his attention. . . . 11 It was only as White burrowed through his legacy of documents that the full values came to very many things that Benham said during these last conversations. The papers fitted in with his memories of their long talks like text with commentary; so much of Benham's talk had repeated the private writings in which he had first digested his ideas that it was presently almost impossible to disentangle what had been said and understood at Johannesburg from the fuller statement of those patched and corrected manuscripts. The two things merged in White's mind as he read. The written text took upon itself a resonance of Benham's voice; it eked out the hints and broken sentences of his remembered conversation. But some things that Benham did not talk about at all, left by their mere marked absence an impression on White's mind. And occasionally after Benham had been talking for a long time there would be an occasional aphasia, such as is often apparent in the speech of men who restrain themselves from betraying a preoccupation. He would say nothing about Amanda or about women in general, he was reluctant to speak of Prothero, and another peculiarity was that he referred perhaps half a dozen times or more to the idea that he was a “prig. ” He seemed to be defending himself against some inner accusation, some unconquerable doubt of the entire adventure of his life. These half hints and hints by omission exercised the quick intuitions of White's mind very keenly, and he drew far closer to an understanding of Benham's reserves than Benham ever suspected. . . . At first after his parting from Amanda in London Benham had felt completely justified in his treatment of her. She had betrayed him and he had behaved, he felt, with dignity and self-control. He had no doubt that he had punished her very effectively, and it was only after he had been travelling in China with Prothero for some time and in the light of one or two chance phrases in her letters that he began to have doubts whether he ought to have punished her at all. And one night at Shanghai he had a dream in which she stood before him, dishevelled and tearful, his Amanda, very intensely his Amanda, and said that she was dirty and shameful and spoilt for ever, because he had gone away from her. Afterwards the dream became absurd: she showed him the black leopard's fur as though it was a rug, and it was now moth-eaten and mangey, the leopard skin that had been so bright and wonderful such a little time ago, and he awoke before he could answer her, and for a long time he was full of unspoken answers explaining that in view of her deliberate unfaithfulness the position she took up was absurd. She had spoilt her own fur. But what was more penetrating and distressing in this dream was not so much the case Amanda stated as the atmosphere of unconquerable intimacy between them, as though they still belonged to each other, soul to soul, as though nothing that had happened afterwards could have destroyed their common responsibility and the common interest of their first unstinted union. She was hurt, and of course he was hurt. He began to see that his marriage to Amanda was still infinitely more than a technical bond. And having perceived that much he presently began to doubt whether she realized anything of the sort. Her letters fluctuated very much in tone, but at times they were as detached and guarded as a schoolgirl writing to a cousin. Then it seemed to Benham an extraordinary fraud on her part that she should presume to come into his dream with an entirely deceptive closeness and confidence. She began to sound him in these latter letters upon the possibility of divorce. This, which he had been quite disposed to concede in London, now struck him as an outrageous suggestion. He wrote to ask her why, and she responded exasperatingly that she thought it was “better. ” But, again, why better? It is remarkable that although his mind had habituated itself to the idea that Easton was her lover in London, her thought of being divorced, no doubt to marry again, filled him with jealous rage. She asked him to take the blame in the divorce proceedings. There, again, he found himself ungenerous. He did not want to do that. Why should he do that? As a matter of fact he was by no means reconciled to the price he had paid for his Research Magnificent; he regretted his Amanda acutely. He was regretting her with a regret that grew when by all the rules of life it ought to be diminishing. It was in consequence of that regret and his controversies with Prothero while they travelled together in China that his concern about what he called priggishness arose. It is a concern that one may suppose has a little afflicted every reasonably self-conscious man who has turned from the natural passionate personal life to religion or to public service or any abstract devotion. These things that are at least more extensive than the interests of flesh and blood have a trick of becoming unsubstantial, they shine gloriously and inspiringly upon the imagination, they capture one and isolate one and then they vanish out of sight. It is far easier to be entirely faithful to friend or lover than it is to be faithful to a cause or to one's country or to a religion. In the glow of one's first service that larger idea may be as closely spontaneous as a handclasp, but in the darkness that comes as the glow dies away there is a fearful sense of unreality. It was in such dark moments that Benham was most persecuted by his memories of Amanda and most distressed by this suspicion that the Research Magnificent was a priggishness, a pretentious logomachy. Prothero could indeed hint as much so skilfully that at times the dream of nobility seemed an insult to the sunshine, to the careless laughter of children, to the good light in wine and all the warm happiness of existence. And then Amanda would peep out of the dusk and whisper, “Of course if you could leave me--! Was I not LIFE? Even now if you cared to come back to me-- For I loved you best and loved you still, old Cheetah, long after you had left me to follow your dreams. . . . Even now I am drifting further into lies and the last shreds of dignity drop from me; a dirty, lost, and shameful leopard I am now, who was once clean and bright. . . . You could come back, Cheetah, and you could save me yet. If you would love me. . . . ” In certain moods she could wring his heart by such imagined speeches, the very quality of her voice was in them, a softness that his ear had loved, and not only could she distress him, but when Benham was in this heartache mood, when once she had set him going, then his little mother also would rise against him, touchingly indignant, with her blue eyes bright with tears; and his frowsty father would back towards him and sit down complaining that he was neglected, and even little Mrs. Skelmersdale would reappear, bravely tearful on her chair looking after him as he slunk away from her through Kensington Gardens; indeed every personal link he had ever had to life could in certain moods pull him back through the door of self-reproach Amanda opened and set him aching and accusing himself of harshness and self-concentration. The very kittens of his childhood revived forgotten moments of long-repented hardness. For a year before Prothero was killed there were these heartaches. That tragedy gave them their crowning justification. All these people said in this form or that, “You owed a debt to us, you evaded it, you betrayed us, you owed us life out of yourself, love and services, and you have gone off from us all with this life that was ours, to live by yourself in dreams about the rule of the world, and with empty phantoms of power and destiny. All this was intellectualization. You sacrificed us to the thin things of the mind. There is no rule of the world at all, or none that a man like you may lay hold upon. The rule of the world is a fortuitous result of incalculably multitudinous forces. But all of us you could have made happier. You could have spared us distresses. Prothero died because of you. Presently it will be the turn of your father, your mother--Amanda perhaps. . . . ” He made no written note of his heartaches, but he made several memoranda about priggishness that White read and came near to understanding. In spite of the tugging at his heart-strings, Benham was making up his mind to be a prig. He weighed the cold uningratiating virtues of priggishness against his smouldering passion for Amanda, and against his obstinate sympathy for Prothero's grossness and his mother's personal pride, and he made his choice. But it was a reluctant choice. One fragment began in the air. “Of course I had made myself responsible for her life. But it was, you see, such a confoundedly energetic life, as vigorous and as slippery as an eel. . . . Only by giving all my strength to her could I have held Amanda. . . . So what was the good of trying to hold Amanda? . . . “All one's people have this sort of claim upon one. Claims made by their pride and their self-respect, and their weaknesses and dependences. You've no right to hurt them, to kick about and demand freedom when it means snapping and tearing the silly suffering tendrils they have wrapped about you. The true aristocrat I think will have enough grasp, enough steadiness, to be kind and right to every human being and still do the work that ought to be his essential life. I see that now. It's one of the things this last year or so of loneliness has made me realize; that in so far as I have set out to live the aristocratic life I have failed. Instead I've discovered it--and found myself out. I'm an overstrung man. I go harshly and continuously for one idea. I live as I ride. I blunder through my fences, I take off too soon. I've no natural ease of mind or conduct or body. I am straining to keep hold of a thing too big for me and do a thing beyond my ability. Only after Prothero's death was it possible for me to realize the prig I have always been, first as regards him and then as regards Amanda and my mother and every one. A necessary unavoidable priggishness. . . . ” I do not see how certain things can be done without prigs, people, that is to say, so concentrated and specialized in interest as to be a trifle inhuman, so resolved as to be rather rhetorical and forced. . . . All things must begin with clumsiness, there is no assurance about pioneers. . . . “Some one has to talk about aristocracy, some one has to explain aristocracy. . . . But the very essence of aristocracy, as I conceive it, is that it does not explain nor talk about itself. . . . “After all it doesn't matter what I am. . . . It's just a private vexation that I haven't got where I meant to get. That does not affect the truth I have to tell. . . . “If one has to speak the truth with the voice of a prig, still one must speak the truth. I have worked out some very considerable things in my research, and the time has come when I must set them out clearly and plainly. That is my job anyhow. My journey to London to release Amanda will be just the end of my adolescence and the beginning of my real life. It will release me from my last entanglement with the fellow creatures I have always failed to make happy. . . . It's a detail in the work. . . . And I shall go on. “But I shall feel very like a man who goes back for a surgical operation. “It's very like that. A surgical operation, and when it is over perhaps I shall think no more about it. “And beyond these things there are great masses of work to be done. So far I have but cleared up for myself a project and outline of living. I must begin upon these masses now, I must do what I can upon the details, and, presently, I shall see more clearly where other men are working to the same ends. . . . ” 12 Benham's expedition to China with Prothero was essentially a wrestle between his high resolve to work out his conception of the noble life to the utmost limit and his curiously invincible affection and sympathy for the earthliness of that inglorious little don. Although Benham insisted upon the dominance of life by noble imaginations and relentless reasonableness, he would never altogether abandon the materialism of life. Prothero had once said to him, “You are the advocate of the brain and I of the belly. Only, only we respect each other. ” And at another time, “You fear emotions and distrust sensations. I invite them. You do not drink gin because you think it would make you weep. But if I could not weep in any other way I would drink gin. ” And it was under the influence of Prothero that Benham turned from the haughty intellectualism, the systematized superiorities and refinements, the caste marks and defensive dignities of India to China, that great teeming stinking tank of humorous yellow humanity. Benham had gone to Prothero again after a bout of elevated idealism. It was only very slowly that he reconciled his mind to the idea of an entirely solitary pursuit of his aristocratic dream. For some time as he went about the world he was trying to bring himself into relationship with the advanced thinkers, the liberal-minded people who seemed to promise at least a mental and moral co-operation. Yet it is difficult to see what co-operation was possible unless it was some sort of agreement that presently they should all shout together. And it was after a certain pursuit of Rabindranath Tagore, whom he met in Hampstead, that a horror of perfect manners and perfect finish came upon him, and he fled from that starry calm to the rich uncleanness of the most undignified fellow of Trinity. And as an advocate and exponent of the richness of the lower levels of life, as the declared antagonist of caste and of the uttermost refinements of pride, Prothero went with Benham by way of Siberia to the Chinese scene. Their controversy was perceptible at every dinner-table in their choice of food and drink. Benham was always wary and Prothero always appreciative. It peeped out in the distribution of their time, in the direction of their glances. Whenever women walked about, Prothero gave way to a sort of ethnological excitement. “That girl--a wonderful racial type. ” But in Moscow he was sentimental. He insisted on going again to the Cosmopolis Bazaar, and when he had ascertained that Anna Alexievna had vanished and left no trace he prowled the streets until the small hours. In the eastward train he talked intermittently of her. “I should have defied Cambridge,” he said. But at every stopping station he got out upon the platform ethnologically alert. . . . Theoretically Benham was disgusted with Prothero. Really he was not disgusted at all. There was something about Prothero like a sparrow, like a starling, like a Scotch terrier. . . . These, too, are morally objectionable creatures that do not disgust. . . . Prothero discoursed much upon the essential goodness of Russians. He said they were a people of genius, that they showed it in their faults and failures just as much as in their virtues and achievements. He extolled the “germinating disorder” of Moscow far above the “implacable discipline” of Berlin. Only a people of inferior imagination, a base materialist people, could so maintain its attention upon precision and cleanliness. Benham was roused to defence against this paradox. “But all exaltation neglects,” said Prothero. “No religion has ever boasted that its saints were spick and span. ” This controversy raged between them in the streets of Irkutsk. It was still burning while they picked their way through the indescribable filth of Pekin. “You say that all this is a fine disdain for material things,” said Benham. “But look out there! ” Apt to their argument a couple of sturdy young women came shuffling along, cleaving the crowd in the narrow street by virtue of a single word and two brace of pails of human ordure. “That is not a fine disdain for material things,” said Benham. “That is merely individualism and unsystematic living. ” “A mere phase of frankness. Only frankness is left to them now. The Manchus crippled them, spoilt their roads and broke their waterways. European intervention paralyses every attempt they make to establish order on their own lines. In the Ming days China did not reek. . . . And, anyhow, Benham, it's better than the silly waste of London. . . . ” And in a little while Prothero discovered that China had tried Benham and found him wanting, centuries and dynasties ago. What was this new-fangled aristocratic man, he asked, but the ideal of Confucius, the superior person, “the son of the King”? There you had the very essence of Benham, the idea of self-examination, self-preparation under a vague Theocracy. (“Vaguer,” said Benham, “for the Confucian Heaven could punish and reward. ”) Even the elaborate sham modesty of the two dreams was the same. Benham interrupted and protested with heat. And this Confucian idea of the son of the King, Prothero insisted, had been the cause of China's paralysis. “My idea of nobility is not traditional but expectant,” said Benham. “After all, Confucianism has held together a great pacific state far longer than any other polity has ever lasted. I'll accept your Confucianism. I've not the slightest objection to finding China nearer salvation than any other land. Do but turn it round so that it looks to the future and not to the past, and it will be the best social and political culture in the world. That, indeed, is what is happening. Mix Chinese culture with American enterprise and you will have made a new lead for mankind. ” From that Benham drove on to discoveries. “When a man thinks of the past he concentrates on self; when he thinks of the future he radiates from self. Call me a neo-Confucian; with the cone opening forward away from me, instead of focussing on me. . . . ” “You make me think of an extinguisher,” said Prothero. “You know I am thinking of a focus,” said Benham. “But all your thought now has become caricature. . . . You have stopped thinking. You are fighting after making up your mind. . . . ” Prothero was a little disconcerted by Benham's prompt endorsement of his Chinese identification. He had hoped it would be exasperating. He tried to barb his offence. He amplified the indictment. All cultures must be judged by their reaction and fatigue products, and Confucianism had produced formalism, priggishness, humbug. . . . No doubt its ideals had had their successes; they had unified China, stamped the idea of universal peace and good manners upon the greatest mass of population in the world, paved the way for much beautiful art and literature and living. “But in the end, all your stern orderliness, Benham,” said Prothero, “only leads to me. The human spirit rebels against this everlasting armour on the soul. After Han came T'ang. Have you never read Ling Po? There's scraps of him in English in that little book you have--what is it? --the LUTE OF JADE? He was the inevitable Epicurean; the Omar Khayyam after the Prophet. Life must relax at last. . . . ” “No! ” cried Benham. “If it is traditional, I admit, yes; but if it is creative, no. . . . ” Under the stimulation of their undying controversy Benham was driven to closer enquiries into Chinese thought. He tried particularly to get to mental grips with English-speaking Chinese. “We still know nothing of China,” said Prothero. “Most of the stuff we have been told about this country is mere middle-class tourists' twaddle. We send merchants from Brixton and missionaries from Glasgow, and what doesn't remind them of these delectable standards seems either funny to them or wicked. I admit the thing is slightly pot-bound, so to speak, in the ancient characters and the ancient traditions, but for all that, they KNOW, they HAVE, what all the rest of the world has still to find and get. When they begin to speak and write in a modern way and handle modern things and break into the soil they have scarcely touched, the rest of the world will find just how much it is behind. . . . Oh! not soldiering; the Chinese are not such fools as that, but LIFE. . . . ” Benham was won to a half belief in these assertions. He came to realize more and more clearly that while India dreams or wrestles weakly in its sleep, while Europe is still hopelessly and foolishly given over to militant monarchies, racial vanities, delirious religious feuds and an altogether imbecile fumbling with loaded guns, China, even more than America, develops steadily into a massive possibility of ordered and aristocratic liberalism. . . . The two men followed their associated and disconnected paths. Through Benham's chance speeches and notes, White caught glimpses, as one might catch glimpses through a moving trellis, of that bilateral adventure. He saw Benham in conversation with liberal-minded mandarins, grave-faced, bald-browed persons with disciplined movements, who sat with their hands thrust into their sleeves talking excellent English; while Prothero pursued enquiries of an intenser, more recondite sort with gentlemen of a more confidential type. And, presently, Prothero began to discover and discuss the merits of opium. For if one is to disavow all pride and priggishness, if one is to find the solution of life's problem in the rational enjoyment of one's sensations, why should one not use opium? It is art materialized. It gives tremendous experiences with a minimum of exertion, and if presently its gifts diminish one need but increase the quantity. Moreover, it quickens the garrulous mind, and steadies the happiness of love. Across the varied adventures of Benham's journey in China fell the shadow first of a suspicion and then of a certainty. . . . The perfected and ancient vices of China wrapped about Prothero like some tainted but scented robe, and all too late Benham sought to drag him away. And then in a passion of disgust turned from him. “To this,” cried Benham, “one comes! Save for pride and fierceness! ” “Better this than cruelty,” said Prothero talking quickly and clearly because of the evil thing in his veins. “You think that you are the only explorer of life, Benham, but while you toil up the mountains I board the house-boat and float down the stream. For you the stars, for me the music and the lanterns. You are the son of a mountaineering don, and I am a Chinese philosopher of the riper school. You force yourself beyond fear of pain, and I force myself beyond fear of consequences. What are we either of us but children groping under the black cloak of our Maker? --who will not blind us with his light. Did he not give us also these lusts, the keen knife and the sweetness, these sensations that are like pineapple smeared with saltpetre, like salted olives from heaven, like being flayed with delight. . . . And did he not give us dreams fantastic beyond any lust whatever? What is the good of talking? Speak to your own kind. I have gone, Benham. I am lost already. There is no resisting any more, since I have drugged away resistance. Why then should I come back? I know now the symphonies of the exalted nerves; I can judge; and I say better lie and hear them to the end than come back again to my old life, to my little tin-whistle solo, my--effort! My EFFORT! . . . I ruin my body. I know. But what of that? . . . I shall soon be thin and filthy. What of the grape-skin when one has had the pulp? ” “But,” said Benham, “the cleanness of life! ” “While I perish,” said Prothero still more wickedly, “I say good things. . . . ” 13 White had a vision of a great city with narrow crowded streets, hung with lank banners and gay with vertical vermilion labels, and of a pleasant large low house that stood in a garden on a hillside, a garden set with artificial stones and with beasts and men and lanterns of white porcelain, a garden which overlooked this city. Here it was that Benham stayed and talked with his host, a man robed in marvellous silks and subtle of speech even in the European languages he used, and meanwhile Prothero, it seemed, had gone down into the wickedness of the town below. It was a very great town indeed, spreading for miles along the banks of a huge river, a river that divided itself indolently into three shining branches so as to make islands of the central portion of the place. And on this river swarmed for ever a vast flotilla of ships and boats, boats in which people lived, boats in which they sought pleasure, moored places of assembly, high-pooped junks, steamboats, passenger sampans, cargo craft, such a water town in streets and lanes, endless miles of it, as no other part of the world save China can display. In the daylight it was gay with countless sunlit colours embroidered upon a fabric of yellow and brown, at night it glittered with a hundred thousand lights that swayed and quivered and were reflected quiveringly upon the black flowing waters. And while Benham sat and talked in the garden above came a messenger who was for some reason very vividly realized by White's imagination. He was a tall man with lack-lustre eyes and sunken cheeks that made his cheek bones very prominent, and gave his thin-lipped mouth something of the geniality of a skull, and the arm he thrust out of his yellow robe to hand Prothero's message to Benham was lean as a pole. So he stood out in White's imagination, against the warm afternoon sky and the brown roofs and blue haze of the great town below, and was with one exception the distinctest thing in the story. The message he bore was scribbled by Prothero himself in a nerveless scrawl: “Send a hundred dollars by this man. I am in a frightful fix. ” Now Benham's host had been twitting him with the European patronage of opium, and something in this message stirred his facile indignation. Twice before he had had similar demands. And on the whole they had seemed to him to be unreasonable demands. He was astonished that while he was sitting and talking of the great world-republic of the future and the secret self-directed aristocracy that would make it possible, his own friend, his chosen companion, should thus, by this inglorious request and this ungainly messenger, disavow him. He felt a wave of intense irritation. “No,” he said, “I will not. ” And he was too angry to express himself in any language understandable by his messenger. His host intervened and explained after a few questions that the occasion was serious. Prothero, it seemed, had been gambling. “No,” said Benham. “He is shameless. Let him do what he can. ” The messenger was still reluctant to go. And scarcely had he gone before misgivings seized Benham. “Where IS your friend? ” asked the mandarin. “I don't know,” said Benham. “But they will keep him! They may do all sorts of things when they find he is lying to them. ” “Lying to them? ” “About your help. ” “Stop that man,” cried Benham suddenly realizing his mistake. But when the servants went to stop the messenger their intentions were misunderstood, and the man dashed through the open gate of the garden and made off down the winding road. “Stop him! ” cried Benham, and started in pursuit, suddenly afraid for Prothero. The Chinese are a people of great curiosity, and a small pebble sometimes starts an avalanche. . . . White pieced together his conception of the circles of disturbance that spread out from Benham's pursuit of Prothero's flying messenger. For weeks and months the great town had been uneasy in all its ways because of the insurgent spirits from the south and the disorder from the north, because of endless rumours and incessant intrigue. The stupid manoeuvres of one European “power” against another, the tactlessness of missionaries, the growing Chinese disposition to meet violence and force with violence and force, had fermented and brewed the possibility of an outbreak. The sudden resolve of Benham to get at once to Prothero was like the firing of a mine. This tall, pale-faced, incomprehensible stranger charging through the narrow streets that led to the pleasure-boats in the south river seemed to many a blue-clad citizen like the White Peril embodied. Behind him came the attendants of the rich man up the hill; but they surely were traitors to help this stranger. Before Benham could at all realize what was happening he found his way to the river-boat on which he supposed Prothero to be detained, barred by a vigorous street fight. Explanations were impossible; he joined in the fight. For three days that fight developed round the mystery of Prothero's disappearance. It was a complicated struggle into which the local foreign traders on the river-front and a detachment of modern drilled troops from the up-river barracks were presently drawn. It was a struggle that was never clearly explained, and at the end of it they found Prothero's body flung out upon a waste place near a little temple on the river bank, stabbed while he was asleep. . . . And from the broken fragments of description that Benham let fall, White had an impression of him hunting for all those three days through the strange places of a Chinese city, along narrow passages, over queer Venetian-like bridges, through the vast spaces of empty warehouses, in the incense-scented darkness of temple yards, along planks that passed to the dark hulls of secret barges, in quick-flying boats that slipped noiselessly among the larger craft, and sometimes he hunted alone, sometimes in company, sometimes black figures struggled in the darkness against dim-lit backgrounds and sometimes a swarm of shining yellow faces screamed and shouted through the torn paper windows. . . . And then at the end of this confused effect of struggle, this Chinese kinematograph film, one last picture jerked into place and stopped and stood still, a white wall in the sunshine come upon suddenly round a corner, a dirty flagged passage and a stiff crumpled body that had for the first time an inexpressive face. . . . 14 Benham sat at a table in the smoking-room of the Sherborough Hotel at Johannesburg and told of these things. White watched him from an armchair. And as he listened he noted again the intensification of Benham's face, the darkness under his brows, the pallor of his skin, the touch of red in his eyes. For there was still that red gleam in Benham's eyes; it shone when he looked out of a darkness into a light. And he sat forward with his arms folded under him, or moved his long lean hand about over the things on the table. “You see,” he said, “this is a sort of horror in my mind. Things like this stick in my mind. I am always seeing Prothero now, and it will take years to get this scar off my memory again. Once before--about a horse, I had the same kind of distress. And it makes me tender, sore-minded about everything. It will go, of course, in the long run, and it's just like any other ache that lays hold of one. One can't cure it. One has to get along with it. . . . “I know, White, I ought to have sent that money, but how was I to know then that it was so imperative to send that money?

. . . “At the time it seemed just pandering to his vices. . . . “I was angry. I shall never subdue that kind of hastiness altogether. It takes me by surprise. Before the messenger was out of sight I had repented. . . . “I failed him. I have gone about in the world dreaming of tremendous things and failing most people. My wife too. . . . ” He stopped talking for a little time and folded his arms tight and stared hard in front of himself, his lips compressed. “You see, White,” he said, with a kind of setting of the teeth, “this is the sort of thing one has to stand. Life is imperfect. Nothing can be done perfectly. And on the whole--” He spoke still more slowly, “I would go through again with the very same things that have hurt my people. If I had to live over again. I would try to do the things without hurting the people, but I would do the things anyhow. Because I'm raw with remorse, it does not follow that on the whole I am not doing right. Right doing isn't balm. If I could have contrived not to hurt these people as I have done, it would have been better, just as it would be better to win a battle without any killed or wounded. I was clumsy with them and they suffered, I suffer for their suffering, but still I have to stick to the way I have taken. One's blunders are accidents. If one thing is clearer than another it is that the world isn't accident-proof. . . . “But I wish I had sent those dollars to Prothero. . . . God! White, but I lie awake at night thinking of that messenger as he turned away. . . . Trying to stop him. . . . “I didn't send those dollars. So fifty or sixty people were killed and many wounded. . . . There for all practical purposes the thing ends. Perhaps it will serve to give me a little charity for some other fool's haste and blundering. . . . “I couldn't help it, White. I couldn't help it. . . . “The main thing, the impersonal thing, goes on. One thinks, one learns, one adds one's contribution of experience and understanding. The spirit of the race goes on to light and comprehension. In spite of accidents. In spite of individual blundering. “It would be absurd anyhow to suppose that nobility is so easy as to come slick and true on every occasion. . . . “If one gives oneself to any long aim one must reckon with minor disasters. This Research I undertook grows and grows. I believe in it more and more. The more it asks from me the more I give to it. When I was a youngster I thought the thing I wanted was just round the corner. I fancied I would find out the noble life in a year or two, just what it was, just where it took one, and for the rest of my life I would live it. Finely. But I am just one of a multitude of men, each one going a little wrong, each one achieving a little right. And the noble life is a long, long way ahead. . . . We are working out a new way of living for mankind, a new rule, a new conscience. It's no small job for all of us. There must be lifetimes of building up and lifetimes of pulling down and trying again. Hope and disappointments and much need for philosophy. . . . I see myself now for the little workman I am upon this tremendous undertaking. And all my life hereafter goes to serve it. . . . ” He turned his sombre eyes upon his friend. He spoke with a grim enthusiasm. “I'm a prig. I'm a fanatic, White. But I have something clear, something better worth going on with than any adventure of personal relationship could possibly be. . . . ” And suddenly he began to tell White as plainly as he could of the faith that had grown up in his mind. He spoke with a touch of defiance, with the tense force of a man who shrinks but overcomes his shame. “I will tell you what I believe. ” He told of his early dread of fear and baseness, and of the slow development, expansion and complication of his idea of self-respect until he saw that there is no honour nor pride for a man until he refers his life to ends and purposes beyond himself. An aristocrat must be loyal. So it has ever been, but a modern aristocrat must also be lucid; there it is that one has at once the demand for kingship and the repudiation of all existing states and kings. In this manner he had come to his idea of a great world republic that must replace the little warring kingdoms of the present, to the conception of an unseen kingship ruling the whole globe, to his King Invisible, who is the Lord of Truth and all sane loyalty. “There,” he said, “is the link of our order, the new knighthood, the new aristocracy, that must at last rule the earth. There is our Prince. He is in me, he is in you; he is latent in all mankind. I have worked this out and tried it and lived it, and I know that outwardly and inwardly this is the way a man must live, or else be a poor thing and a base one. On great occasions and small occasions I have failed myself a thousand times, but no failure lasts if your faith lasts. What I have learnt, what I have thought out and made sure, I want now to tell the world. Somehow I will tell it, as a book I suppose, though I do not know if I shall ever be able to make a book. But I have away there in London or with me here all the masses of notes I have made in my search for the life that is worth while living. . . . We who are self-appointed aristocrats, who are not ashamed of kingship, must speak to one another. . . . “We can have no organization because organizations corrupt. . . . “No recognition. . . . “But we can speak plainly. . . . ” (As he talked his voice was for a space drowned by the jingle and voices of mounted police riding past the hotel. ) “But on one side your aristocracy means revolution,” said White. “It becomes a political conspiracy. ” “Manifestly. An open conspiracy. It denies the king upon the stamps and the flag upon the wall. It is the continual proclamation of the Republic of Mankind. ” 15 The earlier phases of violence in the Rand outbreak in 1913 were manifest rather in the outskirts of Johannesburg than at the centre. “Pulling out” was going on first at this mine and then that, there were riots in Benoni, attacks on strike breakers and the smashing up of a number of houses. It was not until July the 4th that, with the suppression of a public meeting in the market-place, Johannesburg itself became the storm centre. Benham and White were present at this marketplace affair, a confused crowded occasion, in which a little leaven of active men stirred through a large uncertain multitude of decently dressed onlookers. The whole big square was astir, a swaying crowd of men. A ramshackle platform improvised upon a trolley struggled through the swarming straw hats to a street corner, and there was some speaking. At first it seemed as though military men were using this platform, and then it was manifestly in possession of an excited knot of labour leaders with red rosettes. The military men had said their say and got down. They came close by Benham, pushing their way across the square. “We've warned them,” said one. A red flag, like some misunderstood remark at a tea-party, was fitfully visible and incomprehensible behind the platform. Somebody was either pitched or fell off the platform. One could hear nothing from the speakers except a minute bleating. . . . Then there were shouts that the police were charging. A number of mounted men trotted into the square. The crowd began a series of short rushes that opened lanes for the passage of the mounted police as they rode to and fro. These men trotted through the crowd, scattering knots of people. They carried pick-handles, but they did not seem to be hitting with them. It became clear that they aimed at the capture of the trolley. There was only a feeble struggle for the trolley; it was captured and hauled through the scattered spectators in the square to the protection of a small impassive body of regular cavalry at the opposite corner. Then quite a number of people seemed to be getting excited and fighting. They appeared to be vaguely fighting the foot-police, and the police seemed to be vaguely pushing through them and dispersing them. The roof of a little one-story shop became prominent as a centre of vigorous stone-throwing. It was no sort of battle. Merely the normal inconsecutiveness of human affairs had become exaggerated and pugnacious. A meeting was being prevented, and the police engaged in the operation were being pelted or obstructed. Mostly people were just looking on. “It amounts to nothing,” said Benham. “Even if they held a meeting, what could happen? Why does the Government try to stop it? ” The drifting and charging and a little booing went on for some time. Every now and then some one clambered to a point of vantage, began a speech and was pulled down by policemen. And at last across the confusion came an idea, like a wind across a pond. The strikers were to go to the Power Station. That had the effect of a distinct move in the game. The Power Station was the centre of Johannesburg's light and energy. There if anywhere it would be possible to express one's disapproval of the administration, one's desire to embarrass and confute it. One could stop all sorts of things from the Power Station. At any rate it was a repartee to the suppression of the meeting. Everybody seemed gladdened by a definite project. Benham and White went with the crowd. At the intersection of two streets they were held up for a time; the scattered drift of people became congested. Gliding slowly across the mass came an electric tram, an entirely unbattered tram with even its glass undamaged, and then another and another. Strikers, with the happy expression of men who have found something expressive to do, were escorting the trams off the street. They were being meticulously careful with them. Never was there less mob violence in a riot. They walked by the captured cars almost deferentially, like rough men honoured by a real lady's company. And when White and Benham reached the Power House the marvel grew. The rioters were already in possession and going freely over the whole place, and they had injured nothing. They had stopped the engines, but they had not even disabled them. Here too manifestly a majority of the people were, like White and Benham, merely lookers-on. “But this is the most civilized rioting,” said Benham. “It isn't rioting; it's drifting. Just as things drifted in Moscow. Because nobody has the rudder. . . . “What maddens me,” he said, “is the democracy of the whole thing. White! I HATE this modern democracy. Democracy and inequality! Was there ever an absurder combination? What is the good of a social order in which the men at the top are commoner, meaner stuff than the men underneath, the same stuff, just spoilt, spoilt by prosperity and opportunity and the conceit that comes with advantage? This trouble wants so little, just a touch of aristocracy, just a little cultivated magnanimity, just an inkling of responsibility, and the place might rise instantly out of all this squalor and evil temper. . . . What does all this struggle here amount to? On one side unintelligent greed, unintelligent resentment on the other; suspicion everywhere. . . . “And you know, White, at bottom THEY ALL WANT TO BE DECENT! “If only they had light enough in their brains to show them how. It's such a plain job they have here too, a new city, the simplest industries, freedom from war, everything to make a good life for men, prosperity, glorious sunshine, a kind of happiness in the air. And mismanagement, fear, indulgence, jealousy, prejudice, stupidity, poison it all. A squabble about working on a Saturday afternoon, a squabble embittered by this universal shadow of miner's phthisis that the masters were too incapable and too mean to prevent. “Oh, God! ” cried Benham, “when will men be princes and take hold of life? When will the kingship in us wake up and come to its own? . . . Look at this place! Look at this place! . . . The easy, accessible happiness! The manifest prosperity. The newness and the sunshine. And the silly bitterness, the rage, the mischief and miseries! . . . ” And then: “It's not our quarrel. . . . ” “It's amazing how every human quarrel draws one in to take sides. Life is one long struggle against the incidental. I can feel my anger gathering against the Government here in spite of my reason. I want to go and expostulate. I have a ridiculous idea that I ought to go off to Lord Gladstone or Botha and expostulate. . . . What good would it do? They move in the magic circles of their own limitations, an official, a politician--how would they put it? --'with many things to consider. . . . ' “It's my weakness to be drawn into quarrels. It's a thing I have to guard against. . . . “What does it all amount to? It is like a fight between navvies in a tunnel to settle the position of the Pole star. It doesn't concern us. . . . Oh! it doesn't indeed concern us. It's a scuffle in the darkness, and our business, the business of all brains, the only permanent good work is to light up the world. . . . There will be mischief and hatred here and suppression and then forgetfulness, and then things will go on again, a little better or a little worse. . . . ” “I'm tired of this place, White, and of all such places. I'm tired of the shouting and running, the beating and shooting. I'm sick of all the confusions of life's experience, which tells only of one need amidst an endless multitude of distresses. I've seen my fill of wars and disputes and struggles. I see now how a man may grow weary at last of life and its disorders, its unreal exacting disorders, its blunders and its remorse. No! I want to begin upon the realities I have made for myself. For they are the realities. I want to go now to some quiet corner where I can polish what I have learnt, sort out my accumulations, be undisturbed by these transitory symptomatic things. . . . “What was that boy saying? They are burning the STAR office. . . . Well, let them. . . . ” And as if to emphasize his detachment, his aversion, from the things that hurried through the night about them, from the red flare in the sky and the distant shouts and revolver shots and scuffling flights down side streets, he began to talk again of aristocracy and the making of greatness and a new great spirit in men. All the rest of his life, he said, must be given to that. He would say his thing plainly and honestly and afterwards other men would say it clearly and beautifully; here it would touch a man and there it would touch a man; the Invisible King in us all would find himself and know himself a little in this and a little in that, and at last a day would come, when fair things and fine things would rule the world and such squalor as this about them would be as impossible any more for men as a Stone Age Corroboree. . . . Late or soon? Benham sought for some loose large measure of time. “Before those constellations above us have changed their shapes. . . . “Does it matter if we work at something that will take a hundred years or ten thousand years? It will never come in our lives, White. Not soon enough for that. But after that everything will be soon--when one comes to death then everything is at one's fingertips--I can feel that greater world I shall never see as one feels the dawn coming through the last darkness. . . . ” 16 The attack on the Rand Club began while Benham and White were at lunch in the dining-room at the Sherborough on the day following the burning of the STAR office. The Sherborough dining-room was on the first floor, and the Venetian window beside their table opened on to a verandah above a piazza. As they talked they became aware of an excitement in the street below, shouting and running and then a sound of wheels and the tramp of a body of soldiers marching quickly. White stood up and looked. “They're seizing the stuff in the gunshops,” he said, sitting down again. “It's amazing they haven't done it before. ” They went on eating and discussing the work of a medical mission at Mukden that had won Benham's admiration. . . . A revolver cracked in the street and there was a sound of glass smashing. Then more revolver shots. “That's at the big club at the corner, I think,” said Benham and went out upon the verandah. Up and down the street mischief was afoot. Outside the Rand Club in the cross street a considerable mass of people had accumulated, and was being hustled by a handful of khaki-clad soldiers. Down the street people were looking in the direction of the market-place and then suddenly a rush of figures flooded round the corner, first a froth of scattered individuals and then a mass, a column, marching with an appearance of order and waving a flag. It was a poorly disciplined body, it fringed out into a swarm of sympathizers and spectators upon the side walk, and at the head of it two men disputed. They seemed to be differing about the direction of the whole crowd. Suddenly one smote the other with his fist, a blow that hurled him sideways, and then turned with a triumphant gesture to the following ranks, waving his arms in the air. He was a tall lean man, hatless and collarless, greyhaired and wild-eyed. On he came, gesticulating gauntly, past the hotel. And then up the street something happened. Benham's attention was turned round to it by a checking, by a kind of catch in the breath, on the part of the advancing procession under the verandah. The roadway beyond the club had suddenly become clear. Across it a dozen soldiers had appeared and dismounted methodically and lined out, with their carbines in readiness. The mounted men at the club corner had vanished, and the people there had swayed about towards this new threat. Quite abruptly the miscellaneous noises of the crowd ceased. Understanding seized upon every one. These soldiers were going to fire. . . . The brown uniformed figures moved like automata; the rifle shots rang out almost in one report. . . . There was a rush in the crowd towards doorways and side streets, an enquiring pause, the darting back of a number of individuals into the roadway and then a derisive shouting. Nobody had been hit. The soldiers had fired in the air. “But this is a stupid game,” said Benham. “Why did they fire at all? ” The tall man who had led the mob had run out into the middle of the road. His commando was a little disposed to assume a marginal position, and it had to be reassured. He was near enough for Benham to see his face. For a time it looked anxious and thoughtful. Then he seemed to jump to his decision. He unbuttoned and opened his coat wide as if defying the soldiers. “Shoot,” he bawled, “Shoot, if you dare! ” A little uniform movement of the soldiers answered him. The small figure of the officer away there was inaudible. The coat of the man below flapped like the wings of a crowing cock before a breast of dirty shirt, the hoarse voice cracked with excitement, “Shoot, if you dare. Shoot, if you dare! See! ” Came the metallic bang of the carbines again, and in the instant the leader collapsed in the road, a sprawl of clothes, hit by half a dozen bullets. It was an extraordinary effect. As though the figure had been deflated. It was incredible that a moment before this thing had been a man, an individual, a hesitating complicated purpose. “Good God! ” cried Benham, “but--this is horrible! ” The heap of garments lay still. The red hand that stretched out towards the soldiers never twitched. The spectacular silence broke into a confusion of sounds, women shrieked, men cursed, some fled, some sought a corner from which they might still see, others pressed forward. “Go for the swine! ” bawled a voice, a third volley rattled over the heads of the people, and in the road below a man with a rifle halted, took aim, and answered the soldiers' fire. “Look out! ” cried White who was watching the soldiers, and ducked. “This isn't in the air! ” Came a straggling volley again, like a man running a metal hammer very rapidly along iron corrugations, and this time people were dropping all over the road. One white-faced man not a score of yards away fell with a curse and a sob, struggled up, staggered for some yards with blood running abundantly from his neck, and fell and never stirred again. Another went down upon his back clumsily in the roadway and lay wringing his hands faster and faster until suddenly with a movement like a sigh they dropped inert by his side. A straw-hatted youth in a flannel suit ran and stopped and ran again. He seemed to be holding something red and strange to his face with both hands; above them his eyes were round and anxious. Blood came out between his fingers. He went right past the hotel and stumbled and suddenly sprawled headlong at the opposite corner. The majority of the crowd had already vanished into doorways and side streets. But there was still shouting and there was still a remnant of amazed and angry men in the roadway--and one or two angry women. They were not fighting. Indeed they were unarmed, but if they had had weapons now they would certainly have used them. “But this is preposterous! ” cried Benham. “Preposterous. Those soldiers are never going to shoot again! This must stop. ” He stood hesitating for a moment and then turned about and dashed for the staircase. “Good Heaven! ” cried White. “What are you going to do? ” Benham was going to stop that conflict very much as a man might go to stop a clock that is striking unwarrantably and amazingly. He was going to stop it because it annoyed his sense of human dignity. White hesitated for a moment and then followed, crying “Benham! ” But there was no arresting this last outbreak of Benham's all too impatient kingship. He pushed aside a ducking German waiter who was peeping through the glass doors, and rushed out of the hotel. With a gesture of authority he ran forward into the middle of the street, holding up his hand, in which he still held his dinner napkin clenched like a bomb. White believes firmly that Benham thought he would be able to dominate everything. He shouted out something about “Foolery! ” Haroun al Raschid was flinging aside all this sublime indifference to current things. . . . But the carbines spoke again. Benham seemed to run unexpectedly against something invisible. He spun right round and fell down into a sitting position. He sat looking surprised. After one moment of blank funk White drew out his pocket handkerchief, held it arm high by way of a white flag, and ran out from the piazza of the hotel. 17 “Are you hit? ” cried White dropping to his knees and making himself as compact as possible. “Benham! ” Benham, after a moment of perplexed thought answered in a strange voice, a whisper into which a whistling note had been mixed. “It was stupid of me to come out here. Not my quarrel. Faults on both sides. And now I can't get up. I will sit here a moment and pull myself together. Perhaps I'm--I must be shot. But it seemed to come--inside me. . . . If I should be hurt. Am I hurt? . . . Will you see to that book of mine, White? It's odd. A kind of faintness. . . . What? ” “I will see after your book,” said White and glanced at his hand because it felt wet, and was astonished to discover it bright red. He forgot about himself then, and the fresh flight of bullets down the street. The immediate effect of this blood was that he said something more about the book, a promise, a definite promise. He could never recall his exact words, but their intention was binding. He conveyed his absolute acquiescence with Benham's wishes whatever they were. His life for that moment was unreservedly at his friend's disposal. . . . White never knew if his promise was heard. Benham had stopped speaking quite abruptly with that “What? ” He stared in front of him with a doubtful expression, like a man who is going to be sick, and then, in an instant, every muscle seemed to give way, he shuddered, his head flopped, and White held a dead man in his arms. THE END