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Title: The Tragic Bride


Author: Francis Brett Young



Release Date: June 21, 2008  [eBook #25867]

Language: English

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THE TRAGIC BRIDE

by

FRANCIS BRETT YOUNG







London: Martin Secker
1920

      *      *      *      *      *

WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR

NOVELS

  THE YOUNG PHYSICIAN
  THE CRESCENT MOON
  THE IRON AGE
  THE DARK TOWER
  DEEP SEA
  UNDERGROWTH (with E. BRETT YOUNG)

POETRY

  FIVE DEGREES SOUTH
  POEMS, 1916-1918

BELLES LETTRES
  ROBERT BRIDGES: A CRITICAL STUDY
  MARCHING ON TANGA

      *      *      *      *      *



TO

THE COUNTESS OF

PEMBROKE AND MONTGOMERY




PROLOGUE

I never met Gabrielle Hewish.  I suppose I should really call her by that
name, for her marriage took the colour out of it as surely as if she had
entered a nunnery, and adopted the frigid and sisterly label of some
female saint.  Nobody had ever heard of her husband before she married
him, and nobody ever heard of Gabrielle afterwards, except those who were
acquainted with the story of Arthur Payne, as I was, and, perhaps, a
coroner's jury in Devonshire, a county where juries are more than usually
slow of apprehension.  In these days you will not even find the name of
Hewish in Debrett, for Gabrielle was the baronet's only child, and when
Sir Jocelyn died, in the early days of his daughter's married life, the
family, which for the last half century had been putting out no more than
a few feeble and not astonishingly brilliant leaves on its one living
branch, withered altogether, as well it might in the thin Irish soil
where it had stubbornly held its own since the days of Queen Elizabeth.
After all, baronetcies are cheap enough in Ireland, and one more or less
could make very little difference to the amenities of County Galway,
where Roscarna, for all I know, may have been absorbed and parcelled out
by the Congested Districts Board ten years ago.  Even in clubs and places
where they gossip, I doubt if the Hewishes of Roscarna are remembered,
for modern memories are short, and in Gabrielle's day the illustrated
Sunday newspapers had not contrived to specialise in the smiles of
well-connected young Irishwomen.

Of course the Payne episode--I'm not sure it should not rather be called
the Payne miracle--had always lain stored somewhere in my literary attic;
its theme was too exciting for a man who deals in such lumber to have
forgotten; but that admirable woman, Mrs. Payne, had whetted my curiosity
to such an extent that I weakly promised her secrecy before she told it
to me.  "I can't resist telling you," she said, "because it wouldn't be
fair of me to deprive you: it's far too much in your line."  She even
flattered me: "You'd do it awfully well too, you know; but I have a sort
of sentimental regard for her--not admiration, or anything of that kind,
but an indefinite feeling that _noblesse oblige_.  In her own
extraordinary way she did us a good turn, and however carefully you
wrapped it up she might recognise her portrait and feel embarrassed.
It's she that I'm thinking of, not Arthur.  Arthur was too young at the
time to realize what was happening, and if he saw your picture of two
women desperately fighting over the soul or body of a boy of seventeen
who resembled himself I doubt if he'd tumble to the portrait.  He's a
dear transparently honest person like his father.  Still, I don't want to
hurt her, and so, if you want the story, you must gloat over it in
private, and cherish it as an unwritten masterpiece.  Probably if you
_did_ write it, it wouldn't be a masterpiece at all.  Console yourself
with that."

She told me her story--for of course I gave her the promise that she
demanded--in a midge-infested corner of the garden at Overton, while
Arthur, the unconscious subject of it, was playing tennis with the
clergyman's daughter whom he married a year later.  I think Mrs. Payne
knew that this affair was coming off, and offered me the tale as a
combination of oral confession and Nunc Dimittis, watching the boy while
she told it to me with a sort of hungry maternal satisfaction, as
somebody whom she had not only brought into the world but for whose
salvation she was responsible.  No doubt she had put up a hard fight for
him and had every reason to be satisfied, though Gabrielle shared the
honours of the mother's triumph in her own defeat.  We sat there talking
until all the birds were silent, but a single blackbird that made a noise
in the shrubbery like that of two pebbles knocked sharply together; until
the young people on the tennis court could no longer see to play, and the
tall Californian poppies at the back of the herbaceous border that was
her special pride shone like moon-flowers in the dusk.

"When I think of all that ... that summer," she said with a sigh, "I'm so
thankful ... so thankful."  And then Arthur came back with his sweater
over his arm, swinging his racket, and she went straight up to him and
kissed him with the sort of modesty that you would have expected in a
young girl rather than a middle-aged widow.

"You dear thing, Mater," he said, kissing her forehead in return.

This is the land of digression into which memories of Overton lead one.
My only excuse is that part of the story, and indeed its emotional climax
belongs to Overton, to that smoothly ordered country house with its huge
sentinel elms and its peculiar atmosphere of leisure and peace.  No doubt
Mrs. Payne was aware of this when she kissed her son.  From the lawn
where we were sitting she could see the yew-parlour and the cypress hedge
in the shadow of which she had stood on the tremendous evening about
which she had been telling me.  We walked back to the terrace, and on the
way she gave me a shy smile, half triumph, half apology.  She never
mentioned the episode again and though the story fermented in my brain,
maturing, as I hoped, like a choice vintage, and has emerged from time to
time when my mind has been free from other work, I have kept my promise
and have neither repeated it nor written it till this day.

Now, at last, I find myself absolved.  Arthur Payne, I believe, is
happily married to the fresh young person with whom he was playing
tennis.  Soon after their marriage they emigrated to the backs of Canada,
or was it New Zealand: somewhere at any rate beyond the reach of colonial
editions.  Overton is now in the possession of a Midland soap-boiler.
Mrs. Payne, having fulfilled her main function in life and fearing
English winters, has retired to a small villa at Mustapha Superieur, near
Algiers, where, though she live for ever she is not likely to read this
book.  And Gabrielle, the beautiful Gabrielle, is dead.

The news came as a shock to me.  For the moment I, who had never even set
eyes on her, suffered the pain of an almost personal bereavement; I was
moved, as poets are moved by the vanishing of something beautiful from
the earth.  Was she then so beautiful?  I don't know.  But I like to
persuade myself that she was a fiery, elemental creature of a rare and
pathetic brilliance ... for the sake of her story, no doubt.  But, for
the moment, when old Colonel Hoylake, who always began his _Times_ by
quotations from the obituary column--he had survived the age when births
or marriages are interesting--suddenly brought out the word Hewish:
Gabrielle Hewish, I was startled out of the state of pleasant lethargy
into which a day's fishing on the Dulas and the Matthews' beer had
plunged me, and became suddenly wide awake.  I had the feeling that some
bright thing had fallen: a kingfisher, a dragonfly.  "Hewish," he
murmured again.  "Gabrielle Hewish ...  Well, well."

"You know the family?"

"Yes, I knew her father, poor feller," he said.

Now I was full of eagerness.  It had come over me all at once that this
obituary notice was, for me, a happy release.  It meant that, for a month
or two, all through the mesmeric hours that I should spend up to my knees
in the swift Dulas, alone with the dippers and the ring-ousels and the
plaintive sand-pipers, I should be able to explore, to my own content,
this forbidden treasure, searching in the dark soul of Marmaduke
Considine and the tender heart of Gabrielle; threading the lanes that
spread in a net about the schoolhouse at Lapton Huish; brooding over the
deceptive peace of Overton Manor; recalling the scene in the yew-parlour,
the atmosphere, terrifically charged with emotion, of the day when Mrs.
Payne took her courage in her hands and fought like a maternal tigress
for Arthur's soul.  My heart beat faster as I led the old fisherman on
with "Yes?"

He laid aside _The Times_ and lit one of the long Trichinopoly cheroots
that he smoked perpetually, settling himself back in the comfortable
hotel chair.

"Hewish," he said.  "Sir Jocelyn Hewish.  That was the father's name.
Lived at a place called Roscarna in the west of Ireland.  He was an
extraordinarily good fisherman: tied his own flies.  I have some
sea-trout flies in my book that he tied thirty years ago ... a kind of
blue teal that he'd invented.  Of course they had a fine string of
white-trout lakes--many a good fish I've had there--but the remarkable
thing about Roscarna was this.  Right in front of the house at the bottom
of the sunk fence, there ran a stretch of river,--about three hundred
yards of it, clear deep slides with a level muddy bottom.  One winter old
Sir Jocelyn took it into his head to clean up this bit of water, and when
they came to scrape the bottom they found under the mud that the whole
bed of the stream was paved with marble slabs like a swimming bath ...
Connemara marble.  They went on with the job because it looked so well,
all this green, veined stuff shining through the clear water.  So they
scoured the bottom and fixed up a banderbast for keeping the mud from
coming downstream from above, and having made a sort of stewpond, put in
four or five hundred yearling brownies.  You'd never believe how those
fish grew.  In a couple of years the water was full of three and four
pounders, lovely fish with a small head and pink flesh like a salmon.
Quite a curious thing!  And you'll never guess the reason.  No sooner had
they cleared away the mud than the place swarmed with freshwater shrimps.
The yearlings throve on them like a smolt when it goes down to the sea.
That was the remarkable thing about Roscarna...."

I knew, of course, that it wasn't.  The remarkable thing about Roscarna,
to anyone with a ha'porth of imagination, was Gabrielle Hewish.  Luckily
that admirable gossip Hoylake had another interest in life besides
fishing stories, and one that served my purpose,--genealogy.  It is an
interest not uncommon with old soldiers--that is why they often write
such incredibly dull memoirs--and after allowing him a number of sporting
digressions in the direction of a Lochanillaun pike and the altogether
admirable blackgame shooting at Roscarna, which, he assured me, was
better than anything in the west except Lord Dudley's shoot on the
Corrib, I played him tactfully into the deeper water that interested me
and, by the end of the week, had succeeded in drawing from him a good
deal of irrelevant family history and, what is more to the point, a
fairly consecutive account of the last of the Hewishes, Sir Jocelyn and
his amazing daughter.

As he told it to me in the parlour of the fishing inn beside the Dulas, I
began to realise that accidentally, and at the moment when I needed it
most, I had stumbled on a fountain of curious knowledge.  If I had missed
meeting him, my story, fascinating as it was, would have been incomplete.
It armed me with a whole new theory of Gabrielle, suggesting causes, or,
if you like, preparations for the extraordinary episode that followed.
It showed me that I had been flattering myself that I knew all about it
when, as a matter of fact, I had only got hold of one--and the wrong--end
of the stick.  I fished the Dulas for a fortnight, hypnotised, pondering
on the whole curious business, not only when the bright water rippled by
me, but when old Hoylake told me stories of mahseer and tiger fish and
barracuda that he had missed, when I was walking through the pinewoods
under the mountain, when I was eating, and, I verily believe, when I was
asleep.  I had thought before that my friend Mrs. Payne was the heroine
of the story.  Now I am not sure that Gabrielle does not share the
honours.




I

And, first of all, I dreamed of Roscarna.  Partly for the sheer pleasure
of reconstructing a shadowy countryside that I remembered, partly because
Roscarna, the house in which the Hewish family had run to seed in its
latter generations, was very much to the point.  Twenty miles from
Galway--and Irish miles, at that--it stands at the foot of the mountains
on the edge of the tract that is called Joyce's Country, a district
famous for inbreeding and idiocy where everyone was called Joyce,
excepting, of course, the Hewishes of Roscarna, who were aliens,
Elizabethan adventurers from the county of Devon, cousins of the Earls of
Halberton, who had planted themselves upon the richest of the Joyces'
lands in the early seventeenth century and built their house in the
English fashion of the time.

I imagine that it was the founder of the house who paved his river bed
with marble slabs, smoothing the stickles into a long clear slide.
Labour, no doubt, was cheap or forced, and the Elizabethan fancy lavish.
In the mouth of the valley, where it opens on the lake, they planted a
girdle of dark woods growing so near to the new house that the Hewishes,
walking in their gardens, could almost fancy themselves in England and
lose sight of the mountain slopes that swept up into the crags behind
them.  The house stood with its back to the hills and all western
barrenness, looking over a level, terraced sward, past a river that had
been tamed to the smoothness of a chalk stream, to homely woodlands of
beech and elm that might well have been haunted by nightingales if only
there had been nightingales in Ireland.  There were no nightingales in
Devon, so that the first Hewish was under no necessity of importing them
to complete his picture.  But he had his gravelled walks, his poets'
avenue of yews, that grew kindly, his sundials with their graceful and
melancholy admonitions, his box-hedges and white peacocks, and the fancy
of some Hewish unknown had blossomed at last in a Palladian bridge of
freestone, spanning the quiet river.

Roscarna, in fact, was a bold experiment, destined from the first to
fail.  Never, in all its history, could it have become the living thing
that its founders dreamed, any more than the Protestant Church that they
built in the village of Clonderriff could be the home of a living faith;
for though they turned their backs upon the mountains of Joyce's Country,
the mountains were always there, and the house itself, which should have
glowed with the warmth of red brick, or one of those soft building-stones
that mellow as they weather, seemed always cold and desolate, being made
of a hard, cold, Connaught rock, that made the Palladian bridge look like
the fanciful toy that it was, and grew bleaker, bluer, colder, as the
years went by.

I think of it as one thinks of the villas that Roman colonists built
above the marches of Wales, built obstinately on the Roman plan that the
climate of Italy had dictated to their fathers, with open atrium and
terraces protected from the sun.  "What's good enough for Rome," they
said, "is surely good enough for Siluria," and, shivering, showed the
latest official visitor a landscape that might have been transported
bodily from the Sabine Hills ... if only there were more sun!  "But we
_do_ miss the lizards and the cicalas," they would say with a sigh.  No
doubt the most enthusiastic built themselves Palladian ... I mean
Etruscan bridges and marble stew-ponds for mullet, until, in the end, the
immense inertia of the surrounding country asserted itself and the
natural desires of mankind led to a mingling of British blood with
theirs, till the Roman of the first century became the Briton of the
third.

The parallel is as near as it may be, for though the first Hewish was an
Englishman, his great-great-grandson was Irish, and the only thing that
was left to remind him of his ancestry was the house of Roscarna, the
sullen Connaught stone fixed in an alien design, and the huge belt of
timber through which the gorse and heather were slowly creeping down from
the mountain and settling in the valley bottom that they had once
inhabited.  But the foreign woods that trailed along the shore of the
lake were admirable for black-cock.

The transformation was very gradual.  The first Hewishes, no doubt, kept
in touch with their English cousins.  London was their metropolis, and to
London, in the fashions of their remote province, they would return with
amusing tales of Irish savagery that made them good company in an
eighteenth century coffee-house.  Little by little they found their
English interests waning, and the social centre shifting westwards.
Dublin became their city, and to a stately house in Merrion Square the
family coach migrated in the season, until, at last, it seemed hardly
worth while to cross the dreariness of the central plain, and a
town-house in Galway seemed the zenith of urbanity.  Galway, indeed, had
risen on a wave of prosperity.  In the streets above the Claddagh,
merchants who had grown rich in the Spanish trade were building solid
houses with carved lintels and windows of stained glass.  The Hewishes
invested money in these new ventures.  In Galway a Hewish of Roscarna was
somebody: there the family was taken for granted and, following the way
of least resistance, the Hewishes settled down into the state of
provincial notabilities.

Notabilities as long as the Spanish money lasted--then notorieties.  For,
as Roscarna, the symbol of a tradition, decayed, the men of the Hewish
family developed a curious recklessness in living.

It was as though the original vigour of the tree planted in a foreign
soil had been enough to keep it fighting and flourishing for a couple of
hundred years and then had suddenly failed, dying, as a tree will, from
above downwards.

For the first half of the nineteenth century a series of dissolute
Hewishes--they never bred in great numbers--lived wildly upon the edge of
Connemara, drinking and fighting and gaming and wenching while the roof
of Roscarna grew leaky and the long stables were turned into pigsties,
and soft mud silted over the marble bottom below the Palladian bridge.
If they had lived in England the estate would have vanished field by
field until nothing but the house was left; but the outer land at
Roscarna was of no marketable value, and when Sir Jocelyn succeeded to
the property in the year 1870, he found himself master of many worthless
acres and a ruined house that he was powerless to repair.  It was no
wonder that he went to the dogs like his father before him, for the
passage of every generation had made recovery more difficult.  Of course
he should really have become a soldier; but soldiering in those days was
an expensive calling.  As a baronet--even as an Irish baronet--a good
deal would have been expected of him, far more than the dwindling means
of Roscarna could possibly supply, and since every career seemed closed
to him but one of provincial dissipation he is scarcely to be blamed for
having followed it.

When Colonel Hoylake knew him he was a middle-aged man and a reformed
character, and the fact that he ever came to be either is enough to show
that the original Hewish strain was still strong enough to put up some
sort of fight.  He cannot have been without his share of original virtue,
but by his own account, his youth, hopeless and therefore abandoned, must
have been pretty lurid.  Of course he drank.  His father must have taught
him to do that as a matter of habit.  He was equally at home with the
ancient sherries, a few bins of which remained in the Roscarna cellars to
remind him of the Spanish trading days, or with the liquid fire that the
Joyces distilled in the mountains under the name of potheen.

Of course he gambled.  He was sufficiently Irish for that: and his gaming
passion soon made Roscarna a sort of savage Monte Carlo, to which the
more dissolute younger sons of the surrounding gentry foregathered:
Blakes and O'fflahertys, and Kilkellys, and all the rest of them.

In the middle of the stables, at the back of the house, stood a huge
deserted pigsty surrounded by a stone wall, and this place became under
Jocelyn's regime, a cockpit, in which desperate birds were pitted against
one another, fighting fiercely until they dropped.  Even in his later
days according to Hoylake, he was not ashamed of these exploits.  The
gamblers invented for themselves new refinements of sport or cruelty.
Spider-racing.  I do not suppose that anyone living to-day knows what
spider-racing is.  This was the manner of it.  At night, when the big
black-bellied spiders that haunted the lofts came out to spread their
nets, stable-boys were sent with candles to collect them in tins, and
next morning, when the gamblers assembled in the pigsty at Roscarna a
piece of sheet iron, fired to a dull red heat would be placed in the
centre.  On this hot surface the long-legged insects were thrown.
Naturally they must run or be shrivelled with heat.  And the one that ran
the furthest was counted the winner.  Betting on these unfortunate
creatures Jocelyn and his friends spent many happy forenoons, and Jocelyn
was counted as good a judge of a spider as any man in Galway.  In his
dealings with women he was relatively decent, relapsing, at an early age
into a relation irregular, but so domestic as to be respectable, with a
woman named Brigit Joyce who kept house for him and cooked potatoes and
distilled potheen as well as any female in the district.  I do not know
if they had many children.  If they did, it is probable that these found
their vocation in collecting spiders in the stables, or even drifted back
into the hill community from which their mother had come.

Through all his dissipations Sir Jocelyn preserved one characteristic, an
unerring instinct for field-sports that no amount of drinking could
impair.  He could hit a flying bird with a stone, was a deadly shot for
snipe or mallard, rode like a centaur, and fished with the instinct of a
heron.  It is probable that his consciousness of this faculty was at the
bottom of his startling recovery.  Possibly he was frightened to find a
little of his skill failing.  I only know that at the age of forty-eight,
he pulled himself up short.  His eyes, seeing clearly for the first time
in his life, became aware of the appalling ruin into which Roscarna had
fallen.  He became sober for six days out of the seven, setting aside the
Sabbath for the worship of Bacchus, and during the remainder he devoted
himself seriously, steadily to the reclamation of his estate.  He
repaired the roof of the house with new blue slates, cleared the attics
of owls and the chimneys of jackdaws; he dredged the river and discovered
the marble bottom, netted the pike and put down yearling trout.
Gradually he restored Roscarna to its old position as a first-class
sporting property; and so, having fought his way back, step by step, into
the company of decent men, he married a wife.

Hardly the wife one would have expected from a Hewish, it is true.  Her
name was Parker, her father was a shop-keeper in Baggot Street, Dublin,
and how Hewish met her God only knows.  She was a sober, plain-sailing
Englishwoman, a Protestant, with a religious bias that may have made the
reformation of a dissolute baronet attractive to her.  She had a little
money, to which she stuck like glue, and an abundance of common-sense.
It speaks well for the latter that she appreciated, from the first, the
value of Biddy Joyce in the kitchen, and kept her there, boiling
potatoes, although she knew that she had been her husband's mistress.
Firmly, but certainly, she ordered Jocelyn's life, realising, with him,
that Roscarna was worth saving, subsidising, with a careful hand, his
attempts to restore the woods and waters, interesting herself in the
housing of his tenants, and renewing the connection of Roscarna with the
parish church of Clonderriff, of which the Hewishes were patrons.  It was
she who appointed Marmaduke Considine to the vacant living.

For ten years she lived soberly with Sir Jocelyn at Roscarna, hoping
ardently that a son might be born to them who should carry on the family
name and succeed to the fruits of her economies.  In the eleventh year of
their married life it seemed that her hopes were to be realised.  Even
Jocelyn, the new Jocelyn, appreciated the importance of the event.  He
and Biddy Joyce, now an old and shrivelled woman, but one unrivalled in
maternal experience, nursed Lady Hewish as though the whole of their
future happiness depended on it.  Every Sunday young Mr. Considine dined
at Roscarna with the family, and spent the evening in religious
discussions with her ladyship.  Every month the doctor rode over from
Galway to feel her pulse.  On a dark winter evening in the year eighteen
eighty-three the child was born--a girl.  They christened her Gabrielle,
and a week later Lady Hewish died.




II

Her death knocked poor Sir Jocelyn to pieces.  Not altogether because
he had loved her, but because he had made the habit of depending on her
and happened to be a creature of habits ... good or bad.  So, having
been bereft of that of matrimony, he returned, for a time to that of
drinking, leaving the child in the spiritual charge of Mr. Considine, a
gentleman of small domestic experience, and the physical care of Biddy
Joyce, a mother of many.  For the time being Jocelyn was far too busy
to bother his head about her, and Biddy dragged her up in the kitchen
of Roscarna where she had suckled her half-brothers before her, Mr.
Considine exercising a general supervision, pending the day when her
soul should be fit for salvation and ghostly admonition.

In the early stages of Jocelyn's relapse the Parkers of Baggot Street
descended on Roscarna in force: a proceeding that Lady Hewish had
discountenanced in her lifetime.  Neither Jocelyn nor Biddy invited
them to stay, and they returned to Dublin scandalised, with the report
of Gabrielle, a very small baby of eighteen months with coal black eyes
and hair, playing like a kitten with the foot of a dead rabbit on the
kitchen floor.  "Only to think what poor Laura would have felt!" they
sighed, not realising that such a train of thought was in the nature of
things unprofitable.

So Gabrielle grew, and so, in a few years, Jocelyn, with a tremendous
effort pulled himself together, returning, as though refreshed, to his
sporting pursuits, the woods, the lake and the river.  He even found a
new hobby: the breeding of Cocker spaniels, and worked up an interest
in the development of his daughter that ran easily with that of
training his puppies.  He took a great delight in teasing small
animals, and treated Gabrielle and the cockers on much the same lines,
with the result that the puppies were usually a little cowed and
puzzled when he teased them, but Gabrielle bit his hand.  This pleased
him; for he set great store by animal spirits in any form, and he
carried his fingers bandaged in the hunting-field for several weeks in
order that he might tell the story of his daughter's prowess.  Jocelyn
was growing rather childish in his old age.

There were really three periods in Gabrielle's early life.  The first,
before her father began to take notice of her, was spent altogether in
the company of Biddy, who embraced her in her general devotion to
children.  Biddy called herself a Catholic, and for this reason
secretly feared and hated the supervision of young Mr. Considine, a
priest of the Church of Ireland; but at heart she was as pagan as the
top of Slievegullion, and along with her favourite Christian oaths (in
one of which St.  Anthony of Padua was disguised as Saint Antonio
Perrier), and her whispered "Aves," she taught Gabrielle enough pagan
mythology and folklore to set her head spinning whenever she found
herself alone in the woods or the fields.

If ever she strayed into the forbidden lanes beyond the lodge-gates at
Roscarna she lived in fear of seeing the dead-coach come round the
corner: a tall coach, painted black and drawn by coal-black horses and
on the box two men, black-coated with black faces, who might jump from
the coach and catch her up and throw her inside it.  You could never
know when the dead-coach was coming, for its wheels were bound with old
black rags, so that they made no noise on the stones.  Then, in the
fields where corn was growing one might come across the "limrechaun,"
with consequences untold but terrible.  And, above all things, she was
never to pick up an old comb in the road, for as like as not the comb
would be the property of the banshee, a little old woman with long
nails and hairy arms.  When Gabrielle asked what would happen if she
picked up the banshee's comb, Biddy told her that the banshee would
come crying to her window at night, and that if this ever happened, she
must get a pair of red hot tongs and hold the comb in the window for
the banshee to take.  This seemed to Gabrielle an unnecessary
complication; but Biddy told her that if she didn't follow it in every
particular the banshee would scratch the hand off her.  Faced with the
possibility of this disaster, and not knowing how she could possibly
get hold of a pair of red hot tongs in the middle of the night,
Gabrielle decided that if ever she saw a comb in the road, she would
not bring it home with her.  And this was a wise decision, for the
heads of the children in Joyce's Country were not above suspicion.
Indeed most of the terrors with which Biddy inspired her were based on
principles that were ethically sound and combined romantic colour with
practical utility.

When she was six her father began to take her out with him at the time
when he exercised the puppies.  She and the puppies would run about
together and by the same word be called to heel.  She found that she
could do most of the things that they did.  Once, on a summer day when
two of them had conscientiously frightened a water-rat out of its hole
on the margin of the lake, Gabrielle, who was far ahead of her father
and hot with running, plunged in after them.  She got her mouth full of
water, and thought she was drowning, and Jocelyn, frightened for her
life, ran in after her and rescued her with the water up to his neck.
"Now that you're here," he said, "you'd better learn to swim."  And he
made her, then and there, bringing her back to Biddy Joyce like a small
drowned cat, with her black hair clinging close to her head.  It was a
great achievement, and since Biddy could not, for the moment, produce
any mythological terror in the nature of a Loreley better than a pike
that preyed on swimmers, Gabrielle would often go down to the lake
secretly in the middle of a summer morning, and strip off her clothes
and float on her back in the sunshine.  She must have looked a strange
little thing with her long white legs, her smooth black hair, her deep
violet eyes, and her red lips; for she had this amazing combination of
features that you will sometimes find in the far West.  She did not get
them from her mother or from Jocelyn, both of whom were blond Saxons.
I suppose they came to her through the blood of some Irishwoman whom a
dead Hewish had married perhaps a hundred years before.

While Biddy Joyce instructed her in oaths and legend, and her father
taught her to ride, to swim, to shoot and to fish, her moral and
literal education were entrusted to Mr. Considine.  Physically Mr.
Considine was of a type that does not change much with the passage of
time.  When first he came to Roscarna, a couple of years before
Gabrielle was born, he was a young man of twenty.  How he came to be
chosen for the cure of Clonderriff I do not know, unless he were in
some way connected with the Parker family.  He was a Wiltshireman,
tall, sandy-haired, with a long face and a square jaw to which he gave
an air of determination by constantly gritting his teeth.  Gabrielle,
as imitative as a starling, began to mimic this habit of his until one
day he found himself staring at her, as at a mirror, and told her to
stop.  She had meant no harm; she didn't even know that she was doing
it, but he treated the offence quite seriously.

It was his nature to treat everything seriously, including his mission
among the heathen or, what was worse, the Catholic Joyces.  He taught
her the alphabet and the Lord's Prayer, and the collect for the week,
and simple fractions and the capes and headlands of England (the capes
and headlands of Ireland didn't matter) and the verb "to have" in
French, together with long lists of the kings of Israel and Judah.
Gabrielle was very quick to learn.  From the first her memory was a
pleasant surprise to her--sometimes a surprise to Mr. Considine, as
when she offered to give him the Kings of Judah backwards, a proceeding
that struck him as not only revolutionary but irreverent, and tinged
with a flavour of the Black Mass.

Gabrielle always knew when she had annoyed or embarrassed him, not
because he reproved her in any way--to have shown heat in words would
have been against his principles--but because he did show heat in his
neck, where a faint flush would spread upwards to his ears above the
band of his clerical collar.  When she was thoroughly bored Gabrielle
would sometimes try this experiment, just in the same way as she made
the snapdragons put out their tongues.

Jocelyn liked Considine and trusted him, partly, no doubt, because he
happened to be an Englishman--the only one in this wilderness of
Joyces--and partly because he was something of a sportsman: a little
too serious and determined for his sport to appear natural, but for all
that a good shot over dogs, and a very accurate, if not instinctive
fisherman.  In his boyhood, in Wiltshire, he had learned the technique
of the dry fly, and his successes with trout in gin-clear water made
Jocelyn respect him.

Considine's friendship with Jocelyn must be put to his credit.  If he
had been a prig he would either have turned up his nose at his patron's
morals or condoned them with a sense of self-sacrifice and forbearance.
He didn't do either.  He just took Jocelyn for what he was worth,
realising the shabby trick that heredity had played him; and his
attitude toward Gabrielle was much the same.  He knew that he couldn't
and didn't want to keep pace with her enthusiasms any more than he
could keep pace with the baronet's potations.  He had been born on a
bleak downland, and some of its characteristics had got into the thin,
cold humour that was his blood.  He was incapable of the generous
passions of the people of Roscarna; but I think he was a good man, for
all that.  Even Mrs. Payne, who had reason to be irritated by his
coldness, acknowledged this.  And he was as conscientious in his
education of Gabrielle as in the care of his parish.

The child matured very quickly.  Physically I mean.  That is the way in
the west.  Of course she was a great tom-boy, tall for her years, very
frank in her speech and totally unconscious of her sex, as free and
virginal as the young Artemis.  The world of books to which Mr.
Considine introduced her in her school-hours was wholly forgotten
outside them.  In the woods and on the mountains she throve as a
magnificent young animal, moving with an ease and grace and freedom
that civilised woman has lost.  Her clothes were of Connemara homespun,
but to a body such as hers, clothes did not matter.  She went barefoot
like the girls of Joyce's Country, and her ankles were as clean cut as
the cannon of a thoroughbred.  She wore her black hair in a thick plait
that fell below her waist.  She had no friends but Biddy, her father
and Considine, except a few men, contemporaries of Jocelyn, who joked
with her in the hunting field.  She knew no women; for ladies did not
call at Roscarna, and the county could never forgive her mother's
origins in Baggott Street.  All her life was uncomplicated and
miraculously happy.

This Arcadian state of affairs might well have gone on for ever, if
Jocelyn, feeling that he would like to give her a great treat and,
perhaps, becoming proudly conscious of her beauty, had not determined,
in the August of her sixteenth year, to take her to Dublin for the
Horse Show week.  She thrilled to the idea, not because she was anxious
to meet her own species but because she loved horses.  They travelled
up by train from Galway through the vast monotonies of the Bog of
Allen, and put up at Maple's Hotel in Kildare Street, within five
minutes' walk of her maternal grandmother's shop.  In those days no
Irish gentleman would have dreamed of dining in a public room, and they
took their meals sedately in a private apartment.

Gabrielle had never set foot in a city before.  The smooth pavements,
the high buildings and the shop windows of Grafton Street excited her.
Everything in Dublin wore an air magnificent and spacious.  Even the
ducks on the pond in the middle of Stephen's Green were exotic, and
like no other ducks that she had known.  But she could not enjoy her
excitement to the full, for the feminine instinct in her realised from
the first that her clothes were different from those of the people
about her; and this disappointed her, for they were her best, made by
the urbane fingers of Monoghan, the tailor at Oughterard.

When she walked down Grafton Street she fancied that people stared at
her.  It never struck her as possible that they were staring at her
vivid and unusual beauty.  It struck her as funny that her father did
not seem to be aware of the discrepancy in her dress.  He wasn't in the
least.  He had taken his daughter for granted.  In his unconscious
arrogance he imagined that the distinction of being a Hewish of
Roscarna was sufficient in itself to make her independant of externals,
and, as he proposed no alterations she trusted his judgment and they
went to the Horse Show together in their ill-cut tweeds.

Gabrielle was entranced by the jumping.  Whenever a horse topped the
fences she straightened her back automatically as though she had been
riding herself.  With such splendid animals as those she felt that she
could have made a better job of it.  For the moment she forgot all
about her questionable clothes; but when, later in the day, she was
taken by her father to be presented to the Halbertons, the family of
the Devonshire peer with whom the Hewishes were connected, she became
immediately and horribly conscious of Lady Halberton's magnificence and
the elegance of her daughters.  It shocked and thrilled her to see that
the elder Halberton girl powdered her nose.  She wondered what it must
feel like to have one's hands encased in skin-tight gloves, and how
these English people managed to speak with such an elegant tiredness.
It seemed to her inevitable that Lady Halberton must be ashamed of her
cousins, and she was relieved, but a little frightened, to hear this
great lady invite her father and her to dinner at the Shelbourne on the
following night.  After all, she reflected, there must be something in
the name of Hewish.  She wondered how on earth she could make her
father understand that she couldn't very well go to dinner in the dress
that she was wearing, the only one that she possessed.




III

It is extraordinary to think how forty-eight hours had turned this
amazing, sexless creature into a woman.  The problem of a dinner-dress
was solved for her almost at once by Jocelyn himself.  As soon as they
were safely back at Maple's he asked her if she really wanted to dine
with the Halbertons at the Shelbourne, and when she said, "Of course!"
he produced a five pound note from the pigskin case that he carried in
his coat-tail, and turned her loose in Grafton Street.  An hour later
she returned, breathless with excitement, carrying the dress that she
had bought, a frock of white muslin, high at the neck and
hand-embroidered with a pattern of shamrock.  Life was becoming a
matter of great excitement.

The maid at Maple's dressed her in the evening, a blowsy young woman
from Carlow who called her 'my darlin,' and told her that she had a
beautiful head of hair.  Biddy had never told her that her hair was
beautiful, and Gabrielle herself had always considered it something of
a nuisance.  In the hotel bedroom a cunning combination of mirrors
showed her the thick plait hanging down her back.  She had never seen
her own back before.  Looking at it she shrugged her shoulders to see
what they looked like.

Of course she was ready dressed long before she need have been.  She
went down into the hall of the hotel and waited for her father.  She
hoped, and was almost sure, that she looked lovely.  While she stood
there, looking into a huge oval mirror, an old gentleman of much the
same cut as her father came in and stared at her as though she were
some new and curious animal.  She turned and smiled at him.  She would
have smiled at anyone on that evening.  He did not give her a smile in
return.  He only went red in his bald scalp and cleared his throat,
hobbling up to his room and wondering what the devil Maple's was coming
to.

A moment later Jocelyn arrived, very stately in the evening dress of
the seventies.  His face looked brown and hard and weathered, like a
filbert, against his white spread of shirt-front.  His eyes twinkled,
his temples were flushed, and the twisted cord of an artery could be
seen pulsating across each of them: all three being symptoms of the
bottle of Pommery on which he had dressed.  When he saw Gabrielle he
said "Ha--very good, very good," and she, in an access of enthusiasm,
kissed him and smelt his vinous breath.

It was no more than a stone's throw from their hotel to the Shelbourne,
Jocelyn remembering his long-forgotten manners stepped aside
courteously when they crossed the road as if he were escorting a real
lady.  Gabrielle couldn't understand this at all; she would have liked
to jog along with him arm in arm.  The magnificence of the Shelbourne
with its uniformed porters overpowered Gabrielle, and when she reached
the Halbertons' private room, she, who had often been reproved for
talking the heads off Biddy and Mr. Considine, was dumb.  Jocelyn,
however, pouring gin and bitters on his Pommery, did talking enough for
both of them.  He was in excellent form.  His talk flowed steadily and
Gabrielle, drifting as it were, into an eddy, was left at liberty to
examine her cousins and their company.

Lord Halberton and Jocelyn Hewish had very little in common.  The peer
she noticed wore an air of great fragility, as though he had been
sprinkled with powder to preserve him.  His movements were all minute
and precise.  He walked with short steps; and when he smiled, as
Jocelyn, already in the story-telling stage, compelled him to do, his
lips twitched apart for a moment and then closed again as if he were
afraid that any expression more violent might make his teeth fall out.
Gabrielle decided that he must be very old, so old that he was only
kept alive by these precautions.  She had noticed, too, when she shook
hands with him that the flesh of his fingers was limp, and that the
joints were stiff like those of a dead man.

Lady Halberton, who, at the Horse Show had struck her as an ancient and
withered woman, now appeared middle-aged, scintillating in a scheme of
black and silver.  Her dress and her toupet were black, relieved by
silver sequins and a silver mounted tiara.  High lights in keeping with
the scheme were supplied by other jewels on her fingers, her glittering
filbert nails and a diamond pendant that sparkled on the white and bony
ridge of her breastbone.  The Halberton daughters, whose accents
Gabrielle had been imitating in her bedroom when she lay awake with
excitement the night before, were inclined to be friendly with her; but
as all their conversation had to do with a world of which Gabrielle
knew nothing, they did not get very far.  Both of them were over thirty
and unmarried.  From time to time, taking new courage, each in turn
would make a pounce on Gabrielle with some question that led nowhere,
and then flutter off again.  The fact that she obviously puzzled them
amused Gabrielle, and she soon regained the confidence that the sight
of the hall porters had shaken.  From time to time Lady Halberton would
turn on her a smile full of glittering teeth, and twice, apropos of
nothing, Gabrielle heard her say: "Sweet child!  You must really let
her come and stay with us at Halberton, Sir Jocelyn," though the
baronet did not seem to hear what she said.

They dined _en famille_.  Lord Halberton ate as gingerly as he smiled,
probably for the same reason.  The party had been squared by the
addition of two young men, one of them a soldier from the Curragh,
named Fortescue, and the other a naval sub-lieutenant, named Radway.
He and Gabrielle, as the least important persons, found themselves in
each other's company, while Captain Fortescue dished up the kind of
small talk to which they were accustomed to the two Halberton girls,
Lady Halberton continuously sparkling at Sir Jocelyn and her husband
presiding over the whole function with set lips like a cataleptic.

It was Radway who saved Gabrielle from throttling herself with the
flower of a French artichoke, a vegetable with which she was
unacquainted, and in a burst of gratitude she confided to him the fact
that this was her first dinner party.  From this they slipped into an
easy intimacy; easy for her because she was so thankful to find someone
to whom she could babble, and for him because she was so utterly
unguarded.  It had been unusual for him to meet a girl of birth or
breeding who was not preoccupied with matrimonial possibilities; and
this creature was as frank as she was beautiful.

Radway had never been in Ireland before.  The cruiser on which he
served was visiting Kingstown, and at the Horse Show he had run across
the Halbertons whom he had met when he was stationed in their own
county at Devonport.  Beyond them he didn't know a soul in the country,
and the soft western brogue of Gabrielle fascinated him.  He encouraged
her to talk, and she was quite willing to do so, telling of Roscarna
and the hills and the river, of her lessons with Mr. Considine, of her
secret bathes in the lake and other things as intimate which would have
persuaded him that she was an exceedingly fast young woman if he had
not been already convinced that she was nothing but a child.

It gave her a great happiness to talk about Roscarna in this alien
land.  And Radway was glad to listen if only for the pleasure of
hearing her voice.

Radway was a straight-forward young man, twenty-four or five years of
age.  That he was eminently presentable one deduces from the fact that
the Halbertons condescended to entertain him, though Lady Halberton, as
the years went by, was known to make social sacrifices for the sake of
the dear girls.  I do not think it is profitable to seek for much
subtlety in Radway.  It is better to accept him as the clean sturdy
type of youth that Dartmouth turns afloat every year.  Physically he
was fair (Arthur Payne also was fair), with a straight mouth, excellent
teeth, and blue, humorous eyes.

There is nothing younger for its age than a naval sub-lieutenant.  In
the traditional simplicity of seamen there is more than a tradition;
for the inhabitants of a ship are a small island community in which
grown men live and accept a glorified version of life at a public
school until they reach the flag-list, or are shot out into the world
on a pension that is inadequate for its enjoyment.  The one subject on
which the wardroom claims to be authoritative is that of women; and
Radway was already as well acquainted with the Irish aspects of the
sport as with the Japanese.  In daring, as in physical perfection, the
wardroom of the _Pennant_ considered that the daughters of the Irish
squirearchy took some beating; and Radway had heard, no doubt, stories
of many wayward and passionate episodes with which the hospitality of
Irish country houses had been enlivened.  Gabrielle was the first of
the kind that he had met, her frankness, her beauty, and her sudden,
enchanting intimacy seemed to tell him that he was in luck's way and on
the edge of an adventure.  It was not the part of a sailor to miss
opportunities of experience.  He couldn't guess, poor devil, what the
end would be, but naval tradition favoured the taking of all possible
risks, and he determined to let the affair develop as rapidly as
possible.

The dulness of the rest of the party isolated them.  To all intents and
purposes they were alone.  The difference between this girl and all the
others that he had met was that she withheld nothing, she didn't hedge,
or try to protect herself with any assumption of feminine mystery.  It
puzzled Radway.  He wondered, in his innocence, if he had succeeded in
making a swift, bewildering conquest.  Of course he hadn't done
anything of the sort, but the speculation disarmed him, and by the end
of the evening he was thoroughly bowled over.

So was Sir Jocelyn--but in another way.  All the time that she had been
talking to Radway Gabrielle had kept her eye on him.  She knew that
things were reaching a point of danger when she saw his eyes fill with
tears as he told the sympathetic Lady Halberton of the loss of his
wife.  The achievement of sentiment in Jocelyn marked a fairly high
degree of intoxication.  In the middle of her description of the
Roscarna black-game shooting Gabrielle stopped dead.  Radway wondered
what on earth had happened to her.

It was a difficult moment, for she hadn't the least idea of its
conventional solution.  She only knew that somehow she must rescue her
father before he became impossible.  She supposed that, in the ordinary
way, it was his duty and not hers to bring the visit to an end, but she
knew that as long as there was whiskey in the decanter he wouldn't
dream of going.  So she left Radway in the middle of her sentence,
walked straight up to Lady Halberton and said, "Good-night," with a
staggering abruptness, and before he knew what had happened Lord
Halberton was handing Jocelyn his hat.

It took Radway more than a minute to recover from this cold douche; but
he was too far gone to let the possibility of romantic developments
slip, and before the Hewishes left, he contrived to let Gabrielle know
that he wanted to meet her again.  "Outside the gates of Trinity
College to-morrow at four o'clock," he whispered.  She said nothing.
He wondered, for one moment, whether she was deeper than he had
imagined.  Then she looked him full in the eyes and nodded.  It gave
him a thrill of delight.  He found himself listening in a dream to Lady
Halberton's reminiscences of the Admiral's garden party, at which they
had met, and a maternal appreciation of the accomplishments of her
elder daughter, Lady Barbara.




IV

Gabrielle piloted Jocelyn, who was still in a good humour, to his
bedroom door.  Then she went to bed herself and slept as well as ever.
Jocelyn, alone in his room, called for another bottle of whiskey and
made a night of it.  To be exact he made three days of it--four less
than might reasonably have been expected.  For Gabrielle to have taken
him back to Roscarna was out of the question: and so she went on
quietly living at Maple's, and absorbing the strangeness of Dublin
while he finished it out.  The servants of the hotel were very kind to
her; and the waiter who attended to Jocelyn's desires brought her night
and morning bulletins of her father's condition that were tinged with a
kind of melancholy admiration.  "A wonderful gentleman for his age," he
said.  "There's many a young man would envy the likes of him.  Sure,
he'd drink the cross off an ass's back, so he would!"

Of course she met Radway.  They met, as he had arranged, at Trinity
College gates, and went for a long walk along the blazing quays of the
Liffey.  It was an unusual promenade for the month of August, but
neither of them knew Dublin.

He found her difficult.  The affair did not develop along the lines
that he had intended, and as his time was limited, this made him
anxious.  With Gabrielle the anticipation was always so much more
wonderful than the event.  It thrilled him strangely to see her
approaching when they met: this tall slim girl with her splendid
freedom of gait, her black hair, her pallor, her red lips.  When he saw
her coming he would think of all the passionate things that he wanted
to say to her; but as soon as they started on their walk together she
made the saying of them impossible--she was so obviously and vividly
interested in other and unsentimental things.

Her interest in the commonplace and (to his mind) unromantic irritated
him; but an instinct of good manners, that was not the least of his
charm, compelled him to humour her.  Once she sat for a whole hour in a
dark cellar that smelt of tallow where a couple of men were engaged in
making those enormous candles that people in Ireland light on Christmas
Day; and once Radway was forced to follow her into the forecastle of a
Breton schooner reeking of garlic, where she practised the French that
Considine had taught her.

Later in the afternoon he took her to tea at Mitchell's, where she
consumed the first ice of her life, and was so pleased with the
sensation that she demanded a second; all of which was disappointing
for Radway, who wanted to arouse her appetite for romance rather than
ices.  It seemed as if his nuances of love-making, the indirect methods
of approach that modern girls expected, were wasted on her.  In the
evening he took her out to Howth, relying on the influence of time and
place to help him in methods more primitive.  It was incredible to him
that she shouldn't--or perhaps wouldn't--realise what he was driving
at.  Apparently she didn't understand the first conventions of the
game, and when her obtuseness forced him to a sudden and passionate
declaration she laughed at him.

This damping experience, so unusual in the traditions of the wardroom,
took the wind out of his sails.  He decided that she had been making a
fool of him and that he had been wasting his time.  With a desperate
attempt at preserving his dignity he took her back to Maple's,
conscious all the time, of her tantalising beauty.  He had planned a
formal goodbye; but when he told her that his ship was sailing on the
next day, she said, quite simply and with an unusual tenderness in her
eyes that she was sorry.  "If only you meant what you say..." he said,
clutching at a straw.  "Of course I mean it," she said.  "I shall be
very lonely without you.  You're the first friend I've ever had.  I
wish some day," she added, "you could come to Roscarna."

He told her that it was not at all unlikely that the _Pennant_ would
some day put into Galway, and she warmed at once to the idea.  "How
splendid!" she said.  "I shall expect you.  Don't forget to bring a gun
with you."

They walked up and down Kildare Street making plans of what they might
do.  "But in a week you'll have forgotten all about it," she said.
"Nobody ever comes to Roscarna."

"Do you think that I could possibly forget you?" he protested.

This time she did not laugh at him.  "No... I don't think you will,"
she said, and then, after an awkward silence, "Please don't take any
notice of what I said this evening.  I don't really understand that
sort of thing."  Then they said good-bye.  It was a queer
unsatisfactory ending for him, but her last words had reassured him.
Thinking it over in the train on the way to Kingstown he decided that
she had been honestly and quite naturally amused at the conventional
phrases of a modern lover, and the realisation of this only made her
more unusual and more desirable.  It would be a strange experience to
meet her in her proper setting, and if the _Pennant_ should give him
the opportunity he determined not to miss it.  Next morning the ship
left Kingstown for Bermuda.

It was not in Radway's nature to take these things lightly.  At a
distance the memory of Gabrielle gained a good deal by imagination.  It
seemed to him that she was far too precious to lose, and the fact that
she was a cousin of the exclusive Halbertons settled any social
scruples that might have worried him.  He forgot his repulse at Howth
in the memory of the sweeter moment when they had parted.  After all
there was no hurry.  She was only a child, as her behaviour had shown
him so often.  At the same time he was anxious that she should not
forget him, and for this reason he wrote her a number of letters from
Bermuda, from Jamaica and Barbadoes and other ports on the Atlantic
station.  They were not love letters in any sense of the word; but they
served to keep him in her mind, and, few as they were, made an immense
breach in the zone of isolation that surrounded Roscarna.

They were the first letters of any kind that Gabrielle had received.
The postman from Oughterard did not visit Roscarna twenty times in the
year, and since his arrival was something of an event, entailing a meal
and endless gossip with Biddy Joyce, Sir Jocelyn soon became aware of
his daughter's correspondence.  He questioned her about it, and she,
without the least demur, handed him Radway's letters.  He sniffed at
them.  If that was all the fellow had to say it struck him as a waste
of time and paper.  Who was he, anyhow?  Gabrielle explained that he
had dined with them at the Halbertons, and Jocelyn, who naturally had
no recollection of the event, was satisfied with these credentials.  "I
asked him to come and shoot here," said Gabrielle.  Jocelyn stared at
her with wrinkled eyes.  "The devil you did!" said he.

Radway's letters had exactly the effect on her that he had intended.
They were an excitement, and she read them over and over again till she
almost knew them by heart.  They were the first outside interest that
had ever entered her life.  With Considine's help she looked up the
ports at which they were posted on a big map in the library and
thinking of their romantic names and the wonders that they suggested,
she also thought a good deal of the writer.

So it was, almost unconsciously, that Radway began to fill a
considerable place in her thoughts.  His impression had fallen on an
extraordinarily virginal mind that the thought of love-making had never
disturbed.  Physically, she hadn't responded to him in the least; but
the long silences of Roscarna and particularly those of the following
winter, when Slieveannilaun loomed above the woods like an immense and
snowy ghost, and the lake was frozen until the cold spell broke and
snow-broth swirled desolately under the Palladian bridge, gave her time
for reflection in which her fancy began to dwell on the problems of
ideal love.  In this dead season the letters of Radway were more than
ever an excitement.  They stirred her imagination with pictures of
burning seas and lurid tropical sunsets, and with this pageantry the
memory of him would invade the dank gloom of the library where she and
Considine pursued the acquisition of knowledge.

It was inevitable that she should have found some outlet of the kind,
for in the curious circumstances of her upbringing she had missed that
sentimental stage which is the measles of puberty.  She had never
trembled with adoration of a schoolmistress and Considine was an
unthinkable substitute.  In Dublin she had learned for the first time
that she was beautiful, and that her country clothes did not show her
at her best.  This, together with Radway's attentions, had revealed to
her the fact that she was a woman, and therefore made to love and be
loved.

She loved Roscarna passionately, but in this neither Roscarna nor its
inhabitants could help her.  Under the most romantic circumstances in
the world she could find no romance.  Her new-born instinct revealed
itself in a curious, almost maternal devotion to her father and the
current litter of puppies.  Jocelyn found its expression unusual but
not unpleasant: the attentions of this charming daughter flattered him;
and the puppies liked it, too, licking her face when she smothered them
with motherly caresses.  But these things were not enough for her, and
it came as a great relief when she discovered another outlet in the
contents of the library bookshelves.

She became a greedy student of romance.  The Hewishes had never been
great readers, but in the early nineteenth century one of them had felt
it becoming to his position as a country gentleman to buy books.  The
romantic education of Gabrielle was accomplished, as became an
Irishwoman, in the school of Maria Edgeworth.  _Castle Rackrent_
ravished her.  She thrilled to the elegancies of _Belinda_ and to the
Irish atmosphere of _Ormond_.  From these she plunged backwards into
the romantic mysteries of Mrs. Radcliffe, living, for a time, in
surroundings that might well have been imitated from the wintry
Roscarna.  She read indiscriminately, and, in her eagerness of
imagination, became the heroine of fiction incarnate and the beloved of
every dashing young gentleman in print that she encountered.

Jocelyn was inclined to laugh at her, but Biddy, who considered that
all books except the breviary, which she possessed but could not read,
were inventions of the devil, disapproved.  "Sure and you'll be after
rotting your poor brain with all that rubbidge," she said, rising to a
more vehement protest when, in the middle of the night, she discovered
Gabrielle fallen asleep with an open copy of _Don Juan_ beside her
pillow and a spent candle flaring within an inch of the lace
bed-curtains.  Gabrielle smiled when Biddy woke her with a stream of
fluent abuse, for she had been dreaming that she herself was Haidee and
her Aegean island lay somewhere in the Gulf of Mexico.

She lost a little of her gaiety, and irritated the serious Considine by
her dreaminess at the time when she was supposed to be acquiring useful
knowledge.  He complained to Jocelyn, and Jocelyn, who hated being
worried about his daughter, was at last induced, after consultation
with Biddy Joyce, to send into Galway for the doctor.  It pleased him
to have the laugh of Considine when the doctor pronounced her sound in
wind and limb--as well he might, for both were of the best.

Gabrielle couldn't understand what all the fuss was about.  She was
happy in her new world--just as happy as she had been in the old
one--with the difference that she was possibly now more sensitive to
the beauty that surrounded her.  In the time of her childhood she had
lived purely for the moment; sufficient unto each day had been its
particular physical joys; now she knew that the future held more for
her, that the life which she had taken for granted would not go on for
ever.  Strange things must happen, possibly things more strange than
the adventures that she had found among books.  She was now seventeen.
In her heart she felt an intuition that something must happen soon.
She waited for it to come with a kind of hushed excitement.

At the beginning of May she received a letter from Radway in which he
told her that the _Pennant_ was leaving the West Indies.  Taking it for
granted that he would keep his promise of coming to Roscarna she was
distressed to think that the shooting season was over.  She had always
remembered the long grey shape of the _Pennant_ that he had shewn her,
lying off Kingstown on the evening of their visit to Howth.  From
Roscarna itself the sea was not visible, but from the knees of
Slieveannilaun, a mile or so behind the house, she knew that she could
overlook, not only the shining Corrib, which is an inland sea, but all
the scattered lakelets of Iar Connaught, the creeks, the islands, and
beyond, the open sea.  Lying in the heather, hearing nothing but the
liquid whinny of the curlews that had lately forsaken the tidal waters
for the mountains, she would watch the foam that fringed the islands,
unconscious of the sea's sound and tumult, half expecting that a
miracle would happen and that someday she would see the three-funnelled
_Pennant_ steaming over the white sea into Galway Bay.




V

But the spring passed, and the summer wore on, and Gabrielle heard no
more of him.  It was a summer of terrific heat; the flanks of the
mountains were parched and slippery even in that moist countryside, and
it would have taken more than a dream to make her climb Slievannilaun.
She lived the life that an animal leads in summer, cooling her limbs in
the lake, and only stirring abroad in the early morning or the dusk.
The weather told on Biddy, who lived in the kitchen where a fire burned
all the year round, on Considine, who walked up to Roscarna for
Gabrielle's lessons in the morning sun, and on Jocelyn, who seemed to
feel it more than either of them.  Indeed, if they had noticed Jocelyn,
they would have had some cause for anxiety; but Jocelyn never talked
about his health, even to Biddy, though he himself perceived, with some
irritation, that he was growing old.  Secretly he fought against it,
driving himself to youthful exertions with an artificial and desperate
energy that deceived them, but he slept badly at night, and could not
keep himself awake in the daytime.  Even Gabrielle remarked that he was
losing his memory for names, and got snubbed for her trouble.  She
found it was better to leave him alone, and put his irritability down
to the excessive heat.

In the blue evening, when flocks of starlings were already beginning to
sweep the sky above the reedbeds of the lake, and white owls fluttered
out like enormous moths, Gabrielle would walk out for a breath of cool
air over the baked crevasses of the bog, or more often down their only
road; a track that flattered the dignity of Roscarna at the lodge gates
but degenerated as it approached Clonderriff.

In the full glare of daylight Clonderriff, for all Mr. Considine's
labours, was a sordid collection of cabins, whitened without, but full
of peat-smoke and the odours of cattle within.  The cabins stood on the
brow of a hill.  In winter they seemed to crouch beneath a sweeping
wind--and the grass thatchings would have been whirled away if they had
not been kept in position by ropes that were weighted with stones.  The
small irregular plots in which the villagers grew their potatoes were
bounded by dry walls through crevices of which the wind whistled
shrilly, and scattered with boulders too deeply imbedded to be worth
the labour of moving, and the walls and boulders were alike covered
with an ashen lichen that made them look as if they were crusted over
with bitter salt that the wind had carried in from sea.  Between the
garden plots lay a wilderness of common land, on which lean cattle
grazed or routed among heaps of decaying garbage: in winter a
desolation, in summer a purgatory of flies.  But with the coming of
evening and a softer air Clonderriff became transformed.  One saw no
longer the sordid details, only the long and level lines of the bog,
the white-washed cabins shining milky as elder-blossom in moonlight,
their windows bloomed with candlelight.  In every cranny of the garden
walls the crickets began their tingling chorus, but every other living
thing in the village seemed at rest.

Often, when she felt lonely, Gabrielle would walk down the road to
Clonderriff, not because she found it beautiful, as it surely was, but
for the sake of its homeliness and the contrast of its gentle life to
the moribund atmosphere of Roscarna.  She loved the pale cabins, each a
cradle of mysterious life; she loved the sound of placid cattle feeding
in the darkness, and above all she loved the sound of human voices when
the men sprawled by the roadside telling old stories, and the tall,
barefooted women stood above them very slim in their folded shawls.
Sometimes as she passed quietly along the road, she would become
conscious, without hearing, of human presences, and see a pair of
lovers sitting on the end of a stone wall with their lips together, and
then she would return to Roscarna full of wonder and excitement.

One night in August the impulse seized her to put on the white dress
that she had worn in Dublin.  When dinner was over she left Jocelyn
snoring over his port and walked as though she were dreaming down the
Clonderriff road.  The air was full of pale grass-moths.  Her heart
fluttered within her: she couldn't think why.  She herself was like a
white, fluttering moth.  She came quickly to the outskirts of the
village.  The cabins were asleep.  In none of them could as much as a
candlelight be seen.  It was strange that the village should be deader
than Roscarna, and she felt as though a sudden and deeper darkness had
descended on her.  A little frightened she decided that she would go
through to the end of the village and pay a visit to Considine: not
because she wanted to see him in the least, but because she loved
shocking him, and nothing surely could shock him more at this time of
night than the moth-like apparition that she presented.  She even felt
a wayward curiosity to know what he did with himself at night.  For
several years there had been whispers of a theological thesis that he
was writing for his doctor's degree.  She imagined him, with a reading
lamp and red eyes, up to his ears in the minor prophets.  It would be
fun to see what he thought of her.

She hurried on through the silent village, but when she came to an
isolated cabin at the end of it she heard a sound that explained the
desolation of the rest; a noise of terrible and unearthly wailing.  In
the darkness of this curious night it seemed to her a very awful thing.
She guessed that somebody had died in the last cabin, and that a wake
was being held.  For a moment she hesitated, and then, as curiosity got
the better of her horror, she came gradually nearer.

The women were keening somewhere at the back of the house, but the
front windows blazed with the light of many candles, and the door of
the cabin was wide open.  Inside its narrow compass a crowd of
villagers, twenty or thirty of both sexes, was gathered.  Gabrielle,
clutching at the wall, drew nearer and looked inside.

The room was full of bottles, a thicket of empty bottles stood on the
table, the press, and in the corner by the fireplace.  The floor was
strewn with the figures of men and women who had drunk until they
dropped.  Those who were still awake, and reasonably sober, were
playing a kind of round game, passing from hand to hand a stick, the
end of which had been lighted in the fire.  As it passed from one to
another the holder said the words: "If Jack dies and dies in my hand a
forfeit I'll give."  The game was quite exciting, and Gabrielle found
herself wondering in whose hand the glowing stick would go out; but
while she watched it her eyes became accustomed to the light of the
room and fell at last upon a spectacle of cold horror.  The coffin in
which the dead man was to be buried had been reared up on one end
against the further wall, and within it the body stood erect, held in
this position by a cross-work of ropes.  It was that of an old man with
grey untidy hair.  He stood there bound, with his eyes closed, his head
lolling forward, and his mouth open.  She couldn't stand it.  She
wanted to cry out, but her voice would not come, and so she simply
turned and ran blindly along the dark road towards Oughterard.

She ran till she was out of breath and stood against a wall panting and
trembling.  She hated the darkness, for it seemed vaguely threatening.
The thin music of the crickets made it feel as if it were charged with
some electric fluid in which the silence grew more awfully intense.  It
came to her, with a sudden shock, that if she were to return to
Roscarna she must pass that dreadful spectacle again, and alone.  The
only thing that she could possibly do to save herself from this
calamity, was to go on to Considine's house and beg him to take her
home again.  She didn't want to do this, for she felt in her bones that
he would laugh at her.

She stood in the shadow of a white-thorn, and though she had now ceased
from her storm of trembling, her body gave a shudder from time to time,
like a tree that frees its storm-entangled branches when the wind has
fallen.  She heard a slow step mounting the road.  She prayed that the
new-comer might be Considine, for then her frightened condition would
spare her explanations.  The steps came nearer.  Out of the darkness a
shadowy form approached her.  It seemed to her that it was that of a
man of superhuman size--one of the giants who, Biddy had told her, lay
buried in the long barrows on the edge of the bog.  But this was
nonsense.  She planned what words she would say to him.  Abreast of her
he stopped, and stared at her white dress.  Then suddenly he cried,
"Gabrielle!" in a voice that she remembered well.  It was Radway's.  In
a moment she found herself crying, beyond control, in his arms.  She
clove to him, sobbing desperately, and he kissed her, her eyes, that
she tried to shield from him, her neck, her lips.  It was an amazing
moment in the darkness.

Then she stopped crying and began to laugh unnaturally.  In this way
she blurted out the story of her fright, and he, still clasping her,
listened until she was calm.

"But what are you doing here?  How did it all happen?" she said.  She
did not know what she was saying for happiness.

Little by little he told her.  The _Pennant_ had put in to Devonport
for repairs a week before.  He had been granted a month's leave, and
his first thought had been Roscarna.  After a couple of days at his own
home he had crossed to Ireland, arriving late in the afternoon at
Oughterard, where he found a room at an hotel.  In Dublin he had armed
himself with an Ordnance map, and looking at this, it had seemed to him
that it would be easy enough to walk to Roscarna in the evening and let
her know that he had arrived.  Time was so short that he could not bear
to miss a moment of her.  So he had set out from Oughterard along the
road to Clonderriff, hoping to reach Roscarna in daylight and to return
with the rising moon.  He had reckoned without Irish miles and Irish
roads, and forgotten that a sailor who has been long afloat is out of
walking trim.  He had made poor progress, and nothing but the distant
light of the cabin on the top of the hill in which the wake was being
held had prevented him from giving up his attempt to see her.  And then
this astounding miracle had happened, and he had found her crying in
his arms ... surely a lover's luck!

"And now you'll be coming with me to Roscarna," she said.

She was so happy.  She passed the cabin of the wake without a shudder.
They walked as lovers, arm in arm, and soon a yellow moon, in its third
quarter, rose, making Clonderriff beautiful, and flinging their moving
shadows upon the pale stones at the roadside.  As they breasted the
hill, an arm of Corrib burned above the black like a band of sunset
cloud, rather than moonlit water.  Its beauty overwhelmed them.  They
clung to each other and kissed again.  He told her that she was just as
he had seen her first in her white dress, just as he had always
imagined her in his days at sea, only more beautiful.  She was so pale
in the moonlight, and her lips so happy.  She was glad that an inspired
caprice had made her put on her white dress.

He asked her whether it was very far to Roscarna.  "If you could miss
the way," he said, "we might go on wandering for ever in the moonlight.
There never could be another night like this."

But they had come already to the dark belt of woodland that the first
Hewishes had planted, a darkness unvisited by moonlight, where their
feet rustled a carpet of dead leaves, and shy, nocturnal creatures made
another rustling beside them.  At the edge of the wood a bird flew out
of a thorn tree.  "It's a brown owl," cried Radway; but when its wings
caught the moonlight they saw the band of white.  "It's a magpie," she
said.  "One for sorrow ..." and smiled.

Roscarna stood before them, the ghost of a great house with many solemn
windows for eyes.  It looked blank, uninhabited, lifeless.  Between the
house and the river moonlight smoothed the lawns.  The moon made that
cold stone phantom imponderable, a grey mirage.  Radway could not
believe, for a moment, that it was real; but the sense of Gabrielle's
cold cheek against his lips, her fingers twined in his, and her soft,
unhurried breathing recalled him, telling him that he was a lover,
awake and alive.

They crossed the bridge and entered the house by the front doors.  The
latch clanged to, echoing, and Biddy Joyce appeared in a red petticoat.
Gabrielle introduced Radway, and Biddy was not scandalized, being used
to the freedoms of Irish hospitality.  Jocelyn had been in bed for half
an hour or more, she said, and as the state in which he had retired was
problematical they thought it better not to disturb him.  They gave
Radway supper in the dining-room, Gabrielle sitting opposite to him
with her chin in the cup of her hands and her face white with
candle-light.

In the meantime Biddy had prepared a guest-room for him, a sombre
chamber with long windows, so sealed by neglect that they could not be
opened, in which a broken pane served for ventilator.  In the middle of
it stood a bed, painted and gilt, in the manner of the seventeenth
century, with panels of crimson brocade, threadbare but still
beautiful, although the pattern of their ornament had faded long since.
Gabrielle lighted him to his room, stepping softly along the uncarpeted
passage.  At the door they surrendered themselves to a passionate
good-night.




VI

Radway stayed at Roscarna for three days.  Irish ways are easy, and
Jocelyn did not appear surprised to see his daughter's correspondent at
the breakfast-table.  He measured Radway shrewdly with his screwed-up
eyes and decided that he was a sportsman, which, together with the
Halbertons' introduction, was good enough for him.  He only regretted
that he could not do the sporting honours of the place for their
visitor.  There was a certain giddiness, he said, that troubled him at
unexpected moments and made him disinclined to go too far afield; but
he placed his rods and the contents of the gun-room at Radway's
disposal and pressed him to stay as long as the place amused him.

Jocelyn, as host, was very much the country gentleman, picking up the
thread of courtly hospitality at the point where it had been broken so
many years ago, almost without any effort.  It is probable that he had
begun to realise that things were not well with him, and that since
Gabrielle might soon be left alone in the world, it would be wiser to
welcome a possible husband for her.  Certainly he did his best for
Radway, and Radway, no doubt, found him delightful, for Jocelyn had
grown milder as he aged and had never been without a good deal of
personal charm.  On the other hand, it is not unlikely that Radway told
him of his intentions with regard to Gabrielle, even though nothing so
definite as an engagement was announced.  At any rate, the guest
settled down happily at Roscarna, and the morning after his arrival the
luggage cart was sent in to his hotel at Oughterard to bring back his
traps and gun-case.

Of course Gabrielle took possession of him.  The terms of their new
relation had been fixed miraculously and finally by the character of
their moonlit meeting at Clonderriff.  No formal words were spoken, but
they knew that they were lovers, having arrived at this heavenly state
after a whole year of waste.  On Gabrielle's side there were never any
doubts or questionings.  She was his altogether.  She wanted him to
know all that could be known of her, and since she felt that so much of
her was the product of Roscarna, it was necessary that he should know
Roscarna first.

With the spells of moonshine withdrawn he knew it for the wan,
neglected ruin that it was, but her romantic passion for its stones
helped to maintain the first atmosphere of illusion.  She showed him,
with a beautiful emotion, the room in which she had been born, the
lofts in which she had played with the stableboys in her childhood, her
alder-screened bathing place by the lake, the library where her
romantic education had been begun.

Here, by the most likely chance, they encountered Considine.  He had
walked up, as usual, in the morning to read Dante with her.  He came
through the house unannounced and entered the library where the lovers
were bending with their heads close together over the map on which
Gabrielle had followed the course of Radway's West Indian voyages, and,
being engrossed in these tender reminiscences, they did not see him.
He stood in the doorway, gazing, uncertain as to what he should say or
do.  In his seventeen years at Clonderriff he had got out of the way of
dealing with social problems.

At last Gabrielle looked up, saw him, and blushed.  She hastened to
introduce Radway: "The friend I met in Dublin" ... as if there had been
only one.

By this time Considine had recovered himself.  He shook hands with
Radway heartily and talked to him about the shooting.  In those few
moments it was the man and not the parson who appeared, and Radway,
frankly, took him at his own valuation and liked him.

"Quite a good sort, your padre," he said to Gabrielle afterwards, and
she was glad that he was pleased.  For herself it had never occurred to
her to consider whether he was good or bad.  To her he had never been
anything more than a figure: Mr. Considine: but it pleased her that
anything associated with her should give her lover pleasure.  Considine
was sufficiently tactful not to mention Dante, and Gabrielle solved his
difficulty by asking him for a short holiday during Radway's stay.  He
coughed and said he would be delighted, and since he did not offer to
go they left him in the library.

From the first he must have seen how things were.  At the best he was a
lonely man, and this must have seemed the last aggravation of his
loneliness.  I do not suppose he considered that he was in love with
Gabrielle, but he was undoubtedly attached to her, for he was not an
old man nor vowed to celibacy, and it had been his leisurely delight to
watch her beauty unfolding.  Leisurely ... because he was slow in
everything, slow in his speech, slow to anger, and slow to love--which
does not imply that he was without intelligence or feeling or sex.  It
would not be fair to dismiss the feelings of Considine as unimportant;
but it would be even less fair to sentimentalize them, for the least
thing that can be said of him is that he was not sentimental himself.
When they left him he tried to persuade himself that he was not jealous
by settling down to the composition of his weekly sermon; but he did
not risk any further disturbance of mind by seeing them together again.

The sunny season held.  The river water was so low as to be unfishable,
but in the string of lakelets below Loughannilaun Radway landed half a
dozen sea-trout with Gabrielle, who knew the stones in every pool, as
ghillie.  In the divine relaxation of their love-making they were not
inclined for strenuous exercise; but when evening fell, and the sky
cooled, they would wander abroad together by the lake and through the
woodlands or lie dreaming, side by side, in the deep heather.

During the days of Radway's visit, Jocelyn felt an obligation to appear
presentable, and every evening, when dinner was over, Radway would
smoke a cigar in his company, listening to his stories of old Galway
days and sportsmen long since dead.  As Jocelyn's memory for immediate
things had faded he seemed to remember his early days more clearly,
and, like many Irishmen, he was an amusing talker.  Gabrielle would sit
on a low stool between them in the white dress that Radway loved.  It
made the solitude for which they were both waiting seem more precious
to see her thus at a distance, pale and fragile and miraculous against
the sombre background of the Roscarna oak.  Then Jocelyn would begin to
yawn, and fidget for the nightcap of hot whiskey that Biddy prepared
for him, and at last discreetly vanish.  And so the most precious of
their moments began.

Of these one can say nothing.  Naturally enough, in later years, when
she made Mrs. Payne her confidante, Gabrielle did not speak of them.
And even if she had done so Mrs. Payne was too surely a woman of
feeling ever to have betrayed her confidence.  Under that wasting moon
they loved, and I know nothing, but that it must have been strange for
the empty shell of Roscarna, that tragic theatre, to reawaken to such a
vivid and youthful passion.  The world was theirs, and nobody heeded
them, unless it were Biddy Joyce, a creature whose whole life was
coloured by shadowy premonitions.

Gabrielle could not bear that he should leave her, but Radway's plans
for the immediate future had been made without reckoning for anything
as momentous as this love-affair.  He was pledged, in four days, to
visit an aunt in North Wales, and though he could not undertake to
disappoint the old lady, he consoled Gabrielle by showing her how short
and how convenient the passage to Holyhead was.  To her, England seemed
a country as remote as Canada, but he promised her that he would return
within a week, and suggested that this would be a good opportunity of
speaking of their engagement to Jocelyn.  "But I wish you were not
going," she said.  "I feel as if I shall lose you."

They had determined to devote the last day of his stay to visiting the
top of Slieveannilaun, where there were plenty of grouse.  The plan
gave them an excuse for a day of the most absolute solitude and the
shooting that she had promised him long ago in Dublin.  Biddy would cut
sandwiches for them and Gabrielle would carry them in a game-bag slung
over her shoulders.

At dawn a mist of sea-fog overspread the country-side, and Radway,
gazing through the open window, saw the fine stuff driven down the
valley in sheets against the darkness of the woods; but by the time
that they had finished breakfast the sun had broken through, soaring
magnificently in the moist air and promising a greater heat than ever.
Jocelyn, on the stone terrace, watched them depart.  "I wish I were
going with you," he said with a twinkle, "but it's a job for young
people.  Collar-work all the way, and you'll find the grass on the
mountain as slippery as ice."  They left him, laughing.  He liked
Radway.  Gabrielle might easily do worse.  At the edge of the wood she
turned and waved her handkerchief; but Jocelyn was tossing biscuits to
his favourite spaniel Moira and did not see.

They climbed Slieveannilaun happily, for they were young and full of
vigour.  Gabrielle was quieter and more serious than usual, under the
shadow of his going.  He killed two and a half brace of grouse.  It
pleased her to see the ease and precision with which his gun came up.

Near the place where they lunched they saw three fox cubs running with
their mother, a sight that filled Gabrielle with delight.  On a stone
near by them a small mouse-coloured bird, a meadow pipit, made a noise,
_tick-tick_, like the ferrule of a walking-stick on stone.  From this
exalted station they could no longer see Roscarna, for the house and
the woods were lost in the immense trough beneath them.  They only saw
the Corrib and the lakes of Iar Connaught and, beyond, an immense bow
of sea.

"I hate the sea," she said.  "It will take you away from me."

"You can't hate it more than I do," he said laughing.  "All sailors
hate the sea.  But somehow, I don't think I was ever born to be
drowned."

The sunshine made them sleepy and they lay down in the heather.  He lay
there with his head on her breast and slept.  But Gabrielle did not
sleep.  She watched him lazily and with a strange content.

When he woke the sun was beginning to sink.  They walked back along the
ridge in a state that was curiously light-hearted.  She seemed to be
able to forget for the first time the fact that he was to leave her
next day.  The evening was cool and fresh and the air of the mountain
as clear as spring water.  When they came to the descent he insisted on
carrying the bag that held the game.  There was a little quarrel and a
reconciliation of kisses.  They set off together once more hand in
hand.  Halfway down the mountain, on a patch of shining grass, he
slipped, and the weight of the game-bag overbalanced him.  Gabrielle
laughed as he fell, but her laugh was lost in the report of the gun.
How the accident happened no one can say, but Radway had blown his
brains out.




VII

The inquest at Roscarna was Biddy Joyce's affair.  It was the next best
thing to a wake, and she took the opportunity of having a dhrop
stirrun'--as she put it.  The sergeant of the constabulary, an erect
Ulsterman with mutton-chop whiskers, had spread a wide net for his
jury.  They came from Joyce's Country, from Iar Connaught, from islands
of the Corrib, like dusty pilgrims.  Biddy housed them in the stables,
where they slept it off for a couple of nights.  Jocelyn himself
entertained the coroner.  He seemed particularly anxious that nothing
in the way of scandal should appear, though he really had no cause for
anxiety, since a man who takes the risk of scrambling down a
mountain-side with his gun loaded, supplies an obvious explanation for
disaster.

Naturally it was Gabrielle who suffered most.  From the first she had
behaved extraordinarily well.  Nobody had seen the poor child's first
agony of passionate grief; but she had pulled herself together quickly,
leaving Radway's body where it lay, and had hurried down to Roscarna
where she found Jocelyn dosing [Transcriber's note: dozing?] on the
terrace.  She had been tight-lipped and pale and awfully quiet, showing
no emotion but an unprofitable desire for speed when she led the
stable-hands up the mountain to the place where she had left her lover.

She did not cry at all until the work was done.  Then, in the rough
arms of Biddy, she collapsed pretty thoroughly.  Biddy put her to bed,
but she would not stay there.  Later in the day she was found wandering
along the passages to the room where Radway had slept.  She told Biddy
that she only wanted to be left alone; and in that room she stayed
until the time came when she had to give her evidence.  In the court
she did not turn a hair, though Biddy stood ready with a battery of
traditional restoratives in case she faltered.

Jocelyn had a very thin time of it.  The strain made him more shaky
than usual, and when telegrams began to flutter in from Radway's
relatives a few days later--Radway had left no address and so they had
been forced to wire to the Halbertons--he threw up the sponge
altogether.  His weakness was Considine's opportunity.  Considine
undertook the whole management of the Radways' visit, received them,
conducted them to the room in which their son's remains were lying and
did his best to explain to them what he had been doing in this
outlandish place.  I suppose that this kind of solemn condolence is
part of a parson's ordinary duties, but it must be admitted that
Considine performed it well.  He impressed the Radways as being solid
and dependable and a gentleman.  His capability and discretion made
them feel that Roscarna was not so disreputable and outlandish after
all.  He scarcely mentioned Gabrielle, except as the only witness of
the accident, and the Radway family returned to England with their
son's body, satisfied that he had gone to Roscarna for the grouse
shooting on the invitation of people who, in spite of their
questionable appearance, were actually connected with the Halbertons,
and thankful that no element of intrigue or passion had any part in the
tragedy.

On their return they wrote Considine a long letter in which they
thanked him for his courtesy and regretted that their son's last
moments had not been rejoiced by his ghostly ministrations.  As a
little thank-offering (not for their son's death, but for Considine's
kindness) they proposed the erection of a stained glass window in his
church, a proposal that Considine gladly accepted.

It was not until the Radways had disappeared and Roscarna began to
recoil into its old routine of life, that Gabrielle collapsed.  The
blow to her imagination had been heavier than anyone dreamed, so
staggering, in its first impact, that for a time she had been numbed.
In a week or two, with returning consciousness, her sufferings began to
be felt.  She could not sleep at night, and when she did sleep she
dreamed perpetually of one thing, the endless, precarious descent of a
slippery mountain-side in the company of Radway.  The dream always
ended in the same way, with a fall, a laugh, a shattering report, and a
flash of light which meant that she was awake.

In her disordered eyes the woods of Roscarna, the river, and the lake
took on a melancholy tinge.  Though this aspect of them was new to her,
it is hardly strange that she should have seen them thus, for the
beauty of Roscarna is really of an elegiac kind, an autumnal beauty of
desertion and of decay.  As for Slieveannilaun, she dared not look at
it.

Jocelyn tried hard to cheer her up.  With an effort he whipped up
enough energy to take her out with his dogs and his gun, until her look
of horror made him suspect that the sound of a gunshot was a nightmare
to her, as indeed it was, reminding her of many dreams and one
unforgettable reality.  She did her best to hide this from him, for she
saw that he was really trying to be kind.

Considine also tried to interest her in new things and to distract her
mind.  His methods were tactful.  He knew perfectly well that the
official manner of condolence that had gone down so well with the
Radways wouldn't do for her.  He just treated her as the child that he
knew her to be, trying to induce her to join in a game of pretending
that nothing had happened.  Gabrielle realised his humane attempt from
the first and even, for a time, tried to play up to him, but the affair
ended disastrously in a flood of bitter, uncontrollable tears for which
neither the parson nor the man could offer any remedy.  It seemed to
him that this was a woman's job, and so he and Jocelyn met in solemn
consultation with Biddy Joyce.

At this point an easy solution seemed to offer itself in an invitation
from the Halbertons.  They had heard all the details of the affair from
Radway's people and wrote inviting Gabrielle to stay with them in Devon
for a month.  The two men prepared the bait most carefully, but when
their plan was disclosed to her, Gabrielle rejected it with an unusual
degree of passion, imploring them to leave her alone ... only to leave
her alone.

They resigned her to the care of Biddy, who had always considered it
her proper function and privilege to deal with the affair.  She set
about it clumsily but with confidence, tempting Gabrielle to eat with
carefully prepared surprises, obviously humouring her in everything she
did.  From the very first she had viewed the Radway affair with
suspicion, and now she found it difficult not to say, 'I told you so,'
though, as a matter of fact, she had done nothing of the sort.

Altogether her methods were too transparent to be successful; and since
her own robust habit of body made it difficult for her to divine any
subtler cause for Gabrielle's condition, she leapt at once to the
physical explanation suggested to her by her own experience of the
consequences of love-making in Joyce's country.  She watched Gabrielle
with a keen and matronly eye, collecting her evidence from day to day
after the anxious manner of mothers.  When she had dwelt upon the
problem for a couple of months she prepared the results of her
scrutinies and offered them in a complete and alarming dossier to
Jocelyn.  In her opinion--and on this subject at least her opinion was
of value--there could be no doubt as to Gabrielle's condition.

To Biddy Joyce this seemed the most natural thing in the world, but to
Jocelyn the announcement came as a tremendous surprise.  He knew well
enough that this sort of accident was an everyday affair, in effect the
usual prelude to matrimony, among the peasantry of Connaught; but that
such an ugly circumstance should intrude itself into the Hewish
family--in the case of one of its female members--seemed a monstrous
calamity.  He was in no condition to stand another shock, and  Biddy's
pronouncement  completely knocked him over.  In a case of this kind it
was idle to doubt her authority.  He only wondered how he could make
the best of a desperate job.

Distasteful as the business was to him, he decided to tackle Gabrielle
herself.  It was a very strange interview.  On Jocelyn's part there
were no recriminations.  He was growing gentle in his old age, and in
any case he regarded Gabrielle as the victim of a tragedy.  All that he
wanted to do was to get at the truth, and than this nothing could have
been harder, for in Gabrielle he found not only an amazing
ignorance--or if you prefer the word, innocence--but a flaming,
passionate determination to keep silence on the subject of her
intimacies with Radway.  To her the story was sacred, and far too
precious to be bruised by the examination of any living soul.

It is probable that Jocelyn tackled the matter with the utmost
delicacy.  Fundamentally, he had the instincts of a gentleman, and, as
Gabrielle knew, he loved her; but on this one subject no amount of
entreaties or tenderness could make her speak.  In the end, when he
could get nothing out of her, he compelled himself to tell her of
Biddy's suspicions.  It seemed to him that this might force her into a
full confession of her relations with her lover.  It did nothing of the
sort.  She simply stood clutching a tall oak chair and looking straight
out of the window over the dark woods.  Then she said: "Does Biddy
really think I am going to have a baby?"  And Jocelyn nodded his head.
Then she said nothing more.  She simply went out of the room like a
sleep-walker, leaving poor Jocelyn overwhelmed with misery by a silence
that he interpreted as an admission of guilt.  For him, at any rate,
the matter was settled and the acuteness of Biddy Joyce finally
established.

And there one must leave it.  Gabrielle herself accepted the verdict
without question, but whether from her own secret knowledge or out of
an innocence that is almost incredible but not, in her case,
impossible, I cannot say.  Naturally enough, in that other strange
interview with Mrs. Payne, she did not go into details, and as far as
we are concerned the truth will never be known.  Not that it really
matters.  The only thing that concerns us is the effect upon her
fortunes of this real or imaginary catastrophe.  All that we can say is
that when she walked out of the Roscarna dining-room after her hour
with Jocelyn she was subtly and curiously changed.

From that moment she became, in fact, a person hypnotised, possessed by
the contemplation of her approaching motherhood.  She was no longer
restless or tearful.  She began to sleep again, and her sleep was no
longer troubled by that recurrent dream.  A strange calm descended on
her, the calm of a Madonna thrilled by an angelic annunciation--a
hallucinated calm that made her remote and independent, utterly unmoved
by the commotion into which the household of Roscarna had been thrown.

Her acceptance of the situation crumpled up Jocelyn entirely.  He could
not for a moment see any way out of the difficulty.  As usual he fell
back on Biddy, who brought her practical knowledge to his rescue.
Biddy was emphatic.  In the circumstances there was only one thing to
be done.  Gabrielle must be married--somehow--anyhow--and the sooner
the better.  It was the sort of thing that happened every day of the
week and the resources of civilisation had never been able to find
another solution.  Jocelyn shook his head.  It was all very well to
talk about marriage, but where, in the neighbourhood, could a
bridegroom be found at such short notice?  Biddy's suggestion of half a
dozen available Joyces failed to satisfy him.  However suitable the
Joyces might be for casual relations the idea of marriage with one of
them was unthinkable.  After all, whatever she had done, Gabrielle was
a Hewish and the heiress, whatever that might mean, of the Roscarna
mortgages.  Biddy, impatient of his obstinacy, gave him up.

With feelings of sore humiliation he consulted Considine.  It was a
hard confession for Jocelyn and the awkwardness of Considine did not
make it easier.  It seemed as if the two of them were up against a
stone wall.  Considine blushing and monosyllabic, begged for time to
consider what might be done; and the fact that he did not seem to be
utterly hopeless cheered Jocelyn considerably.  Gabrielle, in the
meantime, continued rapt and passive.

In a week the result of Considine's deliberations emerged, and, in a
fortnight, Gabrielle, only daughter of Sir Jocelyn Hewish, Baronet, of
Roscarna, County Galway, was married to the Rev. Marmaduke Considine at
the church of Clonderriff.  The _Irish Times_ described the wedding as
quiet.




VIII

It is a curious task to enquire into the motives of Considine.  Without
doubt he felt under some obligation to the family of Hewish, and
particularly to that dead lady Gabrielle's mother, and it is
conceivable that he had known enough of Jocelyn during their eighteen
years' acquaintance to have separated his good points from his
weakness, and even to respect him.  But the conditions of his
dependence on the Roscarna family can hardly be said to have included
the fathering of its errors, and no degree of respect for Jocelyn could
have made him think it his duty to marry the daughter.  Was it,
perhaps, a sense of religious duty that compelled him?  It is difficult
to think of marriage with a creature of Gabrielle's physical
attractions as a mortification of the flesh; and though the ceremony of
marriage is supposed to save the reputation of a person in Gabrielle's
position, there was no religious dogma which decreed that marriage with
a clergyman could save her soul.

Then was it a matter of sheer Quixotism!  That vice, indeed, might
conceivably have smouldered in the mind of this queer stick of a man, a
lonely fellow cherishing in solitude exaggerated ideals of womankind
and quick to rise to a point of honour.  Even this will not do.  There
is nothing in the rest of Considine's history that suggests the
sentimentalist.  For a parson he was decidedly a man of the world, with
a good business head, a sense of proportion, and a keen, if deliberate
humour.  In matters of sentiment I should imagine him reliable.

Only one other cause for his conduct suggests itself, and that I
believe to be the true explanation.  He married Gabrielle Hewish
because he wanted to do so; because he loved her.  And that is not
difficult to imagine since he had known her intimately ever since she
was born, had helped and witnessed the whole awakening of her
intelligence; had found in her company his principal diversion; had
watched her growing beauty, and seen its final perfection.  He knew her
so well, body and mind, that, whatever might have happened, he could
not help believing in her complete innocence--so well that he could
afford to disregard conventional prejudices in looking at her
misfortune.

It is even possible that he may have dreamed of marrying her before the
misfortune came, waiting, in his leisurely way, for the suitable
moment.  At Roscarna he had no great cause to fear any rival in love;
and since an ugly providence had obligingly removed the intruder
Radway, there was no reason why he should not benefit by Radway's
death.  Considine was a man of forty, full of vigour and not too old
for passion.  The prospect of a fruitful marriage was doubtless part of
the programme which he had mapped out for himself.  Nor must it be
forgotten that he was a poor man and Gabrielle her father's only
daughter.

With Gabrielle herself the problem is more difficult still.  It is not
easy to imagine her submitting to the embraces of her tutor, however
deep and ardent his affection may have been, within a few months of the
catastrophe that had overwhelmed her first love.  We may take it for
certain that she did not then, nor at any time, love Considine.  It is
impossible that she should have thought of him in the character of a
lover, though I have little doubt but that she would have preferred him
to any of the swarm of Joyces whom Biddy was ready to produce.

Perhaps she was offered the alternative,--I cannot tell.  It is certain
that Jocelyn and Biddy told her, in different ways, that marriage was a
necessity to her virtue, and since she was compelled by threats and
blandishments and entreaties to make a virtue of necessity, she chose,
no doubt the course that was least distasteful to her.  One cannot even
be certain, in the light of after events, that she understood the
meaning of marriage, or anything about it save that it was the only
thing that could make an honest woman of her.  She was so young, so
lonely, so numbed and overwhelmed by her misfortune.  I do not suppose
that she minded very much what they did with her as long as they left
her at last in peace.  That she was impressed by the serious persuasion
of Biddy Joyce goes without saying, for there was no other woman by
whom she could set her standard of conduct.  No doubt the distress of
Jocelyn, who was now something of a pathetic figure, moved her too.  It
must have given her pleasure of a sort to see the way in which he was
relieved by her acceptance of the Considine plan--if anything so
passive can be called an acceptance.  The shame of the moment had so
broken him that his sudden recovery of spirits must have been
affecting.  It must have seemed to her that she had saved her father's
life.

When once the matter was settled Jocelyn became almost light-hearted,
trying by little tokens of affection and an attitude that was almost
jocular, to pretend that nothing had happened and that the marriage was
no more than the happy conclusion of a normal courtship.  On the eve of
the wedding he gave her the contents of her mother's jewel-box, which
included some beautiful ornaments of early Celtic work.  He kissed her
and fondled her and hoped she would be happy, but she could not smile.
He dressed elaborately for the ceremony, and when he had left her
behind with Considine, feasted solemnly at Roscarna until Biddy and the
coachman carried him upstairs.  Never in the history of Roscarna was
such a tragic bride.

The married couple settled down at Clonderriff in the small grey house
that Considine inhabited.  In his bachelor days it had been a
comfortless place, but Jocelyn had seen to it that it was furnished
with some of the lumber of Roscarna: the presses were filled with fine
Hewish linen and the plate engraved with the Hewish crest.

Jocelyn had hoped, in the beginning, that Considine would forsake his
village and come to live at Roscarna.  He himself, he said, needed no
more in his old age than a couple of rooms; his daughter and his
son-in-law might take a wing to themselves and do what they liked with
it.  He had counted a good deal on the attraction to Considine of the
Roscarna library.  His offer was refused.  Considine already had his
plans cut and dried.  Quite apart from the fact that his parochial
duties tied him to Clonderriff, he had decided that it would be better
for Gabrielle to be separated from all her old associations.  Like
everything else he undertook, whether it were catching a trout or
reclaiming a drunkard, the plan was carefully reasoned.  Gabrielle was
embarking on a new life that would, presumably, always be that of a
country parson's wife.  He had caught her young--it was unfortunate, of
course, that he hadn't caught her three months younger--but in any case
she was still young enough to be plastic and amenable to marital
influence.  It seemed to him that he had a good chance of moulding her
into the shape that would suit his purpose, and it was obvious that the
process would be easier if she were isolated from the free and easy
manners of Roscarna which had--so very nearly--proved her ruin, and
particularly those of Biddy Joyce, who was not only a Catholic, but the
possessor of an unvarnishable past in which his father-in-law had a
share.

Considine's decision was final, and Jocelyn perforce submitted to it.
Indeed, Jocelyn was far too feeble in these days to pit himself against
Considine's more vigorous personality, even if he had not recognised
the fact that he was in Considine's debt; so he went on living at
Roscarna, wholly dependent on Biddy for his creature comforts, and on
the dogs for his amusement.  It was a mild and placid sunset.

Meanwhile Gabrielle, innocent of all domestic accomplishments,
struggled with the complications of her husband's housekeeping, and
Considine returned, like a giant refreshed, to the composition of his
doctor's thesis.

The estate of matrimony suited Considine.  In the soft clean climate of
Galway a man ages slowly, and this marriage renewed his youth.  It made
him full of new energies and enthusiasms, and revealed a boyish aspect
in his character that seemed to Gabrielle a little grotesque, or even
frightening.  He wanted to express himself boisterously, flagrantly,
and the proceeding was extraordinary in the case of a man who had
always been so self-contained.  Lacking any other outlet for these
ebullitions he threw himself energetically into his theological
writings and worked off his surplus physical steam in the management of
the Roscarna estate, for which Jocelyn was gradually becoming more and
more unfitted.  In this, as in most things that he undertook, Considine
showed himself efficient, and Jocelyn began to congratulate himself on
the fact that he had secured a son-in-law with a genuine passion for
the land that meant so much to him.

During all this time Gabrielle remained the same indefinitely tragic
figure.  There was nothing physically repulsive in Considine, but even
if there had been, I do not suppose that she would have felt it
acutely.  She had become passive.  The abruptness of the first tragedy
had numbed her so completely that nothing less than another emotional
catastrophe could awaken her to consciousness.

In this expectant hallucinated state she passed through the early
months of her married life, faithfully performing her domestic duties,
sad, yet almost complacent in her sadness.  Autumn swept over the
countryside.  Mists rising from the Corrib at dawn lapped the feet of
the hills on which Clonderriff stood, mingling, at last, with the
melancholy vapour of white fog rolling in from sea.  Leaves began to
fall in the parsonage garden, and the lawn was frosted at daybreak with
cold dew.  The hint of chilliness in the air only stimulated Considine
to fresh energies, sending him out on long tramps with his gun.  He
seemed to think it strange that Gabrielle, in her new state, should
hate the sight, and above all, the sound of firearms.  He tried to joke
her out of it--he would never treat her as anything but a child--but to
her it was not a subject on which jokes could be made.

Biddy was a frequent and puzzled visitor at Clonderriff, puzzled, and a
little disappointed because her physiological prophecies did not seem
to be approaching fulfilment.  By the time that Gabrielle had been
married a couple of months it became questionable whether there had
been any social necessity for the hurried ceremony; but though she had
her own doubts on the subject, Biddy was far too cunning to give this
away to her own discredit, and when Jocelyn or Considine consulted her
as to how these matters were proceeding, she armed herself with
inscrutable feminine mystery trusting to luck and assuring them it was
only a question of time.  After all, probabilities were on her side,
and no doubt it came as a great relief to her when, in due course, the
doctor from Galway confirmed her diagnosis.  With this vindication of
her judgment she became more and more attentive to Gabrielle, walking
over two or three times a week to Clonderriff and instructing her in
the traditional duties of motherhood as they are taught in the west.

All through the days of autumn Gabrielle sat at her window looking over
the misty lawn and making the clothes for her baby.  It is not
surprising, under the circumstances, that Considine did not show any
symptoms of paternal pride.  This, it must be confessed, was the most
unpleasant condition of his bargain.  Still, he had undertaken it
deliberately, and meant to go through with it like a man.  He looked
forward to the time when it should be over and done with.  Then they
would be able to make a new start; Gabrielle would be wholly his, and
Radway, he confidently expected, forgotten.

In the meantime, having, in the flush of marriage completed his
theological thesis and sent it off to the university from which he
expected a doctor's degree, he determined to enjoy the sporting
possibilities of Roscarna to the full.  His shooting took him far
afield, and he saw very little of Gabrielle in the daytime.  He kept
away deliberately, for her condition made her strange and irritable at
times, and he did not consider that devotion to her in a difficulty for
which he had not been responsible was part of his contract.  Later, no
doubt, his turn would come.  For the present, moreover, he felt that he
could not quite trust himself, and the fear that his suppressed
grudging might make him lose control of his temper made him anxious to
avoid the risk.  Gabrielle was thankful for this.  She never felt
unkindly towards him, and yet she was glad when she could feel sure of
not seeing him for a time.  In the dusk he would return, too drugged
with air and exercise to take much notice of her, and for this also she
was thankful.

One evening in February, when Gabrielle was sitting in a dream over her
turf fire, Considine came home from a day's blackcock shooting in the
woods on the edge of the lake.  She did not hear him coming, for the
garden path was now deep in fallen leaves.  As he turned to open the
house door Considine saw a small shadow moving under the garden hedge.
He thought it was a rabbit, and quickly, without considering, he
slipped a cartridge into his gun, aimed at it, and fired.  The sound of
a shattering report at close quarters broke Gabrielle's dream,
recalling an old horror.  She jumped to her feet and cried out.
Considine, hearing her cry, dropped his gun and ran into the house.  He
found her standing with her hands pressed to her eyes and trembling
violently.  She did not see him when he called her name, and then,
still shaken like a poplar in a storm, she turned on him with eyes full
of hate and let loose on him a flood of language such as she must have
learned from the Roscarna stable-boys, words that she couldn't possibly
have spoken if she were sane.  He apologised for his carelessness and
tried to soothe her, and when she had stopped abusing him and broken
down into desolate tears he picked her up in his arms, carried her to
their bedroom, and sent a messenger riding to Roscarna for Biddy Joyce.

She lay on the bed quivering, and Considine, white and harassed, stayed
beside her.  He did not dare to leave her alone, even though she would
not look at him.  By the time that Biddy arrived in a fluster,
Gabrielle's child had been prematurely born.  There was never any
question of independent life.  The case remained in Biddy's hands, and
whether the child were Radway's or Considine's, nobody in the world but
Biddy Joyce and Gabrielle ever knew.  There is no doubt that Biddy
would have committed herself to any lie rather than lose her reputation
as an authority, for Biddy was a Joyce.  Personally I cherish the
passionate belief that no man but Considine was the father.




IX

It is certain that Considine secretly regarded the death of Gabrielle's
child with thankfulness.  It had brought their equivocal relation to an
end, and now that the matter was cleared up there was no reason why their
married life should not be as plain-sailing as he desired.  This was the
beginning.

As for Gabrielle, she recovered slowly.  The emotional storm that had
been the cause of her accident had affected her more deeply than the
illness itself, which Biddy, as might be expected, mismanaged.  The
wintry season was at its loneliest when she came downstairs again, very
pale and transparent, and began to settle down into the ways of the
house.  Even so the storm had cleared the air, and when she began to
recover her strength she also recovered some of her spirit.  Looking
backward she realised the depths in which she had been struggling and
determined, rather grimly, that whatever happened she would never descend
to them again.  She was naturally a healthy and a happy creature, and now
that her troubles were over she meant to enjoy life.

Considine rejoiced at her recovery.  It must not be forgotten that
Considine was genuinely in love with her, that he found her physically
exquisite, and had always delighted in her swift mind.  And even if
Gabrielle could not give him in return an ideal passion, she did not, in
the very least, dislike him.  She had always looked upon him as a good
friend.  Before their marriage, ever since her earliest childhood they
had spent many happy hours together.  As a tutor he had been able to
interest her, and apart from the fact that he was now her husband and
could offer her tenderness and admiration as well, there was no reason
why her life should be very different from what it had been.  The only
thing that she loved of which he had deprived her was Roscarna.  At
first, she had felt that more than anything; but when she recovered from
her illness and was able for the first time to accompany Considine on his
visits to the estate, it seemed to her that her passion for Roscarna had
faded.  Perhaps also she was now a little frightened by its associations,
and felt that it would be safer for her to cut herself entirely free from
everything that reminded her of the old era.  When she visited the house
to see her father she would look wistfully, almost fearfully, at her old
haunts; the path to the lake, the woods that she never entered now, and,
above them, the cloudy vastness of Slieveannilaun.  She used to go there
once a week, and Considine, as a matter of course, went with her.

By the beginning of the spring her reason for these visits ceased.
Jocelyn, who had been ailing for a year or more, suddenly died.

I suppose it was the kind of death that he might have expected.  It was
now two years since he had been able to take the keen physical delight in
country life that had been his chief apology for his early excesses.
Even before the blow of Radway's accident and Gabrielle's marriage had
fallen upon him his arteries had been ageing, and though he was barely
sixty years of age a man is as old as his arteries.  The end came swiftly
with a left-sided cerebral haemorrhage that robbed him of his speech and
paralysed the right side of his body, not in the middle of any unusual
exertion, but when he was sitting quietly over the fire after dinner.
Biddy found him there when she brought him in his nightcap, huddled up on
the floor where he had fallen.  She had expected something of the kind
for long enough.  No one in the world knew Jocelyn as well as she did.

She guessed that nothing could be done, and waited for the morning before
she sent for Considine or the doctor.  In the afternoon when Gabrielle
and Considine visited him Jocelyn was almost good-humoured, laughing
sardonically and screwing up one of his bird-like eyes while, from the
other, tears escaped.  He passed from laughter to tears quite easily.  It
was very horrible to see one side of his childish grey-whiskered face
puckered up with crying and the other limp and blank.  He finished by
making cheerful signs to them that he was sure he would be better in a
week.  Of course he wasn't.  Within five days his poor brain was smitten
with two more tremendous blows.  The third stroke killed him, coming in
the night.  It was Biddy who kissed his face and put Peter's pence upon
his eyes and folded his arms on his breast.  If any woman in the world
had a right to perform this melancholy function for Jocelyn it was she.
He was hers, and when he died she was alone with him, which was as it
should have been.

Even when he was dead, Biddy had not finished with him.  For many years
he had trusted her with the key of the cellar, and this privilege allowed
her to arrange a wake exceeding in magnificence anything in the memory of
Joyce's Country.  They kept it up for three days, the scattered Joyces
foregathering from outlandish corners of Mayo and Connemara.  Naturally
she didn't tell Considine.  He himself discovered the darkened
dining-room at Roscarna strewn with human debris and lit with fifty
candles.  The candles were popish and the drinkers were pagan, so he
turned on Biddy and told her more or less what he thought of her.  He
pointed with disgust to a couple of drinkers who lay snoring on a sofa
under the window.  "All the riff-raff of the country!" he said.  Biddy
flared up.  "Riff-raff, is it?  Sure it's his own sons and mine who do be
after paying respect to their own father, and him lying dead!"

But Considine was not to be beaten.  He had known for many years that
Biddy was a kindly humbug.  He knew that if he didn't now get rid of her
Roscarna would become nothing more than a warren in which her innumerable
relatives might swarm.  He purged Roscarna of Joyces, Biddy included.  He
buried Jocelyn decently according to the ritual of the Church of Ireland,
and proceeded to put his wife's estate in order as soon as her father's
remains were disposed of.

There was more work in it than he had bargained for.  Even the small
immediate courtesies and formalities took time; the announcements in the
papers and short obituary notices; letters, discreetly composed,
announcing the melancholy event to Lord and Lady Halberton; an official
search for Jocelyn's last will; a formal application for probate.

When these things were finished, Considine's real work had only begun.
He had to readjust the whole financial fabric of Roscarna, to find out
what money was owed or owing, to decide how much of Gabrielle's paper
inheritance was tangible.  He unearthed the firm of Dublin solicitors in
whose hands the business of the estate had been allowed to drift for the
last twenty years.  They seemed to him a pack of shifty rogues.  He was
not used to dealing with lawyers, and what he took for cunning was
nothing more than the traditional gesture of the profession.  It was
unthinkable that a firm of such ancient establishment should show any
traces of haste in a matter of business.  When Considine began to hurry
them up they simply offered to surrender the business.  No doubt they
knew far better than Considine that there wasn't much in it.  He imagined
that they were bluffing and took them at their word, with the result that
there fell upon Clonderriff a snowstorm of documents--leases and
mortgages and conveyances and post-obits--all the documentary debris of a
crumbled estate, from the Elizabethan charter on which the first Hewish
had founded Roscarna to the illiterate IOU's of Jocelyn's spider-racing
days.  Considine, up to his neck in it, called on Gabrielle to help in
the ordering of her affairs.  At Clonderriff they had not room enough for
this accumulation of papers, so they set aside the library at Roscarna
for the purpose, sorting and indexing the Hewish dossier as long as the
daylight lasted.  Considine worked steadily through them as though he
were dealing with a mathematical calculation.  To Gabrielle, on the other
hand, there was something mysterious in her occupation; fingering these
papers that other fingers had touched she communed with the dead--not
with her father, who could scarcely write his own name, but with the
ancient stately Hewishes who had built Roscarna and grown rich on the
Spanish trade.  Sitting at the long table with Considine, a pile of
papers before her, her attention would wander, and while her eyes watched
the west wind blowing along the woods she would feel that she was not
herself but another Hewish woman staring out of the library windows on a
rough day in March a hundred years ago.  And in this dream she would be
lost until the light died on the woods in a stormy sunset, and Considine
began to collect the papers in sheaves and lock them in the press.

By the time that spring appeared, Considine doing his best to put the
affairs of Roscarna in order, had realised the hopeless disorder in which
they were involved.  In the whole of Jocelyn's tenure of the estate the
only stable period had been that of his bourgeois marriage.  In youth he
had been wildly profligate, in old age negligent, in neither caring for
anything beyond his immediate needs.  His tenants owed him thousands of
pounds that he had never attempted to recover, for he had found it easier
to borrow money on mortgage than exact it in rent.  As a result of
Jocelyn's finance Considine found that Gabrielle's only hope of saving
anything from the ruined fortune lay in the sacrifice of Roscarna itself.
The property, hopelessly degenerated as an agricultural estate, had still
some value as a fishing or shooting box, and there was a chance that some
wealthy Englishman might buy it for that purpose.  For a moment the idea
of selling Roscarna hurt her, but after a little thought she consented to
the sale.  Considine advertised the opportunity in the English sporting
papers, but the only reply that came to him was a long and anxious letter
from Lord Halberton, who had been shocked to see the Irish branch of his
family reduced to selling their house and lands.  His lordship offered to
come over in person and give Considine the benefit of his opinion.
Considine wrote very fully in reply, enclosing a balance-sheet that made
Lord Halberton sit up and rub his eyes.  The business-like tone of
Considine's letter struck him very favourably; that sort of thing was so
rare in a parson.  As a matter of fact he had already heard from the
Radways how tactfully Considine had managed the difficult situation of
their son's death.

It struck him that Considine was too good a man to be wasted in the wilds
of Ireland where the cause of tradition and aristocracy needed no
bolstering.  A fellow who could wind up an estate as entangled as
Roscarna would be useful in the sphere of the Halberton territorial
influence.  He talked the matter over with his wife, and in the end wrote
to Considine at some length, concurring in his wise determination to get
rid of Roscarna.

"_If you sell Roscarna_," he wrote, "_it will scarcely be fitting for
your wife to remain in the district occupying a small house in
Clonderriff.  My lady and I both consider that this proceeding would be
incompatible with Gabrielle's dignity.  As luck will have it the living
of Lapton Huish (that is the way in which your wife's name is spelt in
England) will shortly be vacant.  I have persuaded Dr. Harrow, the
present incumbent, who is over ninety and not very active, that it would
be well for him to make way for a younger man.  The living is not
generously endowed, but it has the advantage of being on the edge of my
estates, and I have great pleasure in offering it to you.  There is no
reason why it should not lead to further advancement_."

The receipt of this letter made Considine tremulous with pleasure.  His
original settlement in Ireland had been the result of a romantic
inclination to play the missionary in a godless Catholic country.  When
first he came to Clonderriff he hadn't for a moment realised that the
huge inertia of the west would get hold of him and enchain him; but with
the passage of time this was what had happened.  He knew now that he
could not, of his own will, escape; and at the very moment when Jocelyn's
death had created a general upheaval and made the situation in
Clonderriff restless, Lord Halberton's offer gave him the chance not only
of returning to his own country, but of making up for lost time.  He
jumped at it, and Gabrielle, who could not bear the idea of seeing her
own Roscarna in the occupation of strangers, gladly consented.  I do not
suppose it would have made much difference to Considine if she had
objected.




X

At Lapton Huish, in the following autumn, Mrs. Payne found them.  The
details of what had happened in the interval are not very clear, but
the effect of the change upon Gabrielle must have been considerable,
for the Mrs. Considine who appeared to Mrs. Payne does not seem to have
had much in common with the dazed, hysterical child we left at
Roscarna.  I doubt if it was the experience of her marital relations
with Considine that made her grow up; from the first she had tacitly
disregarded them.  I suppose the change was simply the result of living
in a more civilised and populous country, for South Devon was both, in
comparison with her lost Roscarna.

The Halbertons had been very kind to them.  How much of their kindness
sprang from original virtue, and how much from anxiety that the least
connection of the family should be worthy of their reflected lustre, it
is difficult to say.  No doubt it pleased them to be generous on a
feudal scale, particularly since Gabrielle, with her striking beauty
and sharp wits, showed possibilities of doing them credit.  As soon as
the aged Dr. Harrow had been bundled out, the establishment of the
Considines became a game as entertaining to Lady Halberton in the
sphere of religious culture, as chemical experiments were to her
husband in that of root-crops--with the delightful difference that
human souls ran away with much less money than mangolds.

While the Rectory at Lapton was having its roof repaired, its walls
painted, and the fungus that grew in the cupboards of old Canon
Harrow's bedroom removed, the Considines were housed at Halberton and
instructed in the family tradition.  In the case of Dr. Considine--his
honeymoon activities had pulled off the degree in divinity--this was
easy, for he had spent his childhood on a feudal estate in Wiltshire
and his politics were therefore identical with Lord Halberton's.  With
Gabrielle, whom Lady Halberton took in hand, the process was more
difficult.  She couldn't, at first, quite catch the Halberton air, but,
being an admirable mimic, she soon tumbled into it.  The clothes with
which Lady Halberton supplied her helped her to realise the character
that she was expected to assume.  Sometimes she felt so pleased with
her performance that she was tempted to overdo it and suddenly found
herself presenting a caricature of Halberton manners that was so acute
as to be cruel.  And sometimes, when she felt that she couldn't keep it
up, she would suddenly drop the whole pretence and relapse into the
insinuating brogue of Biddy Joyce; an amazing trick that she employed
with scandalous effect in later years.  But although she occasionally
laughed at it, Gabrielle found the ease and luxury of Halberton House
very much to her taste.  She lost her thin and anxious expression and
became a great favourite, not only with Lady Halberton, but also with
the old gentleman and Lady Barbara, the elder daughter, who was still
unmarried and likely to remain so.

After six weeks at Halberton the Considines moved into the Rectory at
Lapton, a square, solid building, endowed with luxuriant creepers and
protected on the side that faced the prevailing wind and the roadway,
with a covering of hung slates.  On the three other sides lay a garden
which had been too much for Canon Harrow and his gardener Hannaford.
Both of them had been old and withered, and the tremendous vitality of
the green things that grew in that rich red soil had overcome all their
efforts at repression so that the house had been besieged and choked
with vegetation and mildewed with the dampness of rain and sap.  It was
all very lush and generous and cool, no doubt, in summer; but when the
rain that drove in from the Channel glistened on the hung slates and
dripped incessantly from myriads of shining leaves, the Rector of
Lapton Huish might as well have been living in a tropical swamp.  To
the north of them, the huge masses of Dartmoor stole the air, so that
their life seemed to be lost in a windless eddy, and in the deep
valleys with which the country was scored the air lay dead for many
months at a time.  Gabrielle, accustomed to the free spaces of
Connemara, felt the change depressing, though she would not admit it;
indeed, she had far too many things to think about to have time for
speculating on her own health.

First of all the callers.  At Roscarna the reputation of Jocelyn and,
above all, his relations with Biddy Joyce, had saved the Hewishes from
these formalities; and the great distances that separated the houses of
gentlefolk in the west of Ireland would have made hospitality a more
spontaneous and less formal affair in any case.  In Devon, as Gabrielle
soon discovered, calling was a ritual complicated by innumerable shades
of social finesse.  Lady Halberton had already coached her in the list
of people whom she must know, people she could safely know at a
distance, and people whom it was her duty to discourage.  As soon as
she was settled in at Lapton the county descended on her and she was
overwhelmed with visitors from all three classes.

If she had been a stranger the Devonshire people would probably have
watched her with a preconceived suspicion and dislike for a couple of
years, but even her questionable qualities of youth and spontaneity
could not dispose of the fact that she had been born a Hewish and had
lately visited at Halberton House.  In that mild climate people remain
alive, or, if you prefer it, asleep, longer than in any other part of
England, and the visitors who came flocking to Lapton were, for the
most part, in a stage of decrepit or suspended life.  They drove
through the steep and narrow lanes in all sorts of ancient vehicles, in
jingles, victorias, barouches and enormous family drags.  Their
coachmen, older and more withered than themselves, wore mid-Victorian
whiskers, and shiny cockades on their hats.  In Gabrielle's
drawing-room the visitors sat on the extreme edges of their chairs.
They spoke with a faded propriety, dropped their final "g's," and
specialised in the abbreviation "ain't."  They stayed for a quarter of
an hour exactly by the French clock on the mantelpiece, contriving, in
this calculated period, to make it quite clear that they were on terms
of intimacy with the Halbertons, and they invariably finished by
inviting the Considines to lunch.

In this way Gabrielle became familiar with a number of dining-rooms
furnished in mahogany and horsehair and hung with opulent studies of
still life in oils and engravings after Mr. Frith.  The meal was
usually served by the whiskered coachman, who wore, for the occasion, a
waistcoat decorated with dark blue and yellow stripes, and there was
always cake for lunch.  After the port, which generally made her feel
sleepy, Considine would be taken off to see the stables, and Gabrielle
conducted to a walled garden, heavy with the scent of ripening fruit,
where there was no shade but that of huge apple trees, frosted with
American blight, that reminded her, in their passive mellowness, of the
people who owned them.  Nothing more violent than archery, in its old
and placid variety, ever invaded the lives of these county families.
If it had not been for the headaches with which their society always
afflicted her, Gabrielle would have been tempted time after time to
scandalise them, but the example of Considine, who was always frigidly
at ease, restrained her, and so she allowed herself to be lulled to
sleep, recovering slowly as they drove back through the green lanes to
Lapton.

Her symptoms of boredom were taken, in this society, for evidence of
her good breeding, and since she was too tired to be scandalous,
Gabrielle became a social success.  Her success is important, not
because it changed her in any way, but because it paved the way for the
development by which she became acquainted with Mrs. Payne, and the
most intriguing episode of her life began.

It was notorious that Considine's parochial labours occupied very
little of his time.  The parish was small and scattered, Lapton Huish
itself being a mere hamlet, and the neighbouring farmers so soaked in
respectable tradition and isolated from opportunities of vice that
their souls lay in no great danger of damnation.  The activities of
Considine were practically limited to his Sunday services, but though
the softness of the climate might eventually have transformed him into
a likeness of the ancient automaton who had preceded him, it was not in
his nature to take things easily.  He came of a vigorous stock.  The
clear, thin air of the Wiltshire downland that his ancestors had
breathed makes for energy of temperament.  At Roscarna he had given
vent to this in the education of Gabrielle, the acquisition of his
doctor's degree, and the management of his father-in-law's estate.  His
capacity for management, of which he had shown evidence in his
winding-up of the Roscarna affairs, appealed to Lord Halberton, and it
was not long before he proposed a series of improvements to the Lapton
property that took his patron's fancy.  In Considine's ideas there was
not only imagination, but money, and Halberton was getting rather tired
of his own expensive agricultural experiments.

The big house of the parish, Lapton Manor, had lain for several years
unoccupied, for no other reason apparently but that it was isolated and
out of date.  To Lord Halberton it represented at least a thousand
pounds a year in waste.  When Considine had been at Lapton Huish for a
little more than six months this deserted mansion suggested itself to
him as an outlet for his energies.  He told Gabrielle nothing of
this--he was not in the habit of discussing business matters with
Gabrielle--but he rode over to Halberton House one day with an
elaborate and practical paper scheme.  He proposed, in effect, to
vacate the Rectory, and take over Lapton Manor as it stood.

The idea had been suggested to him at first by one of the consequences
of Gabrielle's social success.  The wife of a neighbouring baronet had
fallen in love with her--the fact that her husband had followed suit
made things easier.  This woman was the mother of two sons, of whom the
elder, the heir to the title, was delicate.  She did not wish to
separate the boys, and realising that it was impossible to send them
together to an ordinary preparatory school, the notion had come to her
of asking the Considines if they would take them into their house at
Lapton.  Doctor Considine, no doubt, would find time to equip them with
a good classical education, while Gabrielle could supply the feminine
influence which was so essential to real refinement.  She was not only
tired of tutors--their equivocal social status was so tiresome!--but
sufficiently Spartan to feel that her sons would be better away from
home for a little while.  Away, but not too far away.  Gabrielle had
thought it would be rather fun to have a couple of boys, even dull boys
like the Traceys, in the house.  She had told Considine that she would
like the arrangement if only the Rectory were bigger.  As it was they
couldn't possibly entertain the proposal.

This set Considine thinking, and from his deliberations emerged the
much more ambitious scheme of taking over Lapton Manor, and equipping
it as a special school for the education of really expensive boys.  He
decided that he would not take a greater number than he could educate
by himself.  His pupils must all be well-connected or wealthy.  He
would teach them not only the things with which a public school might
reasonably be expected to equip them, but the whole duty of a landed
proprietor.  The neglected Manor lands, already a drag on the Halberton
property, should be his example.  His pupils should see it recover
gradually with their own eyes.  The fees they paid should go to its
development, and provide at the end of three or four years' work the
satisfaction of a model and profitable estate.

All Considine's heart was in the plan.  He loved teaching, and he loved
the land.  He had a natural aptitude for both, and the opportunity of
developing them seemed too good to be missed.  Lord Halberton agreed.
A lease was signed in which Considine, paying a nominal rent for Lapton
Manor, undertook to restore the lands and house to the condition from
which they had fallen.  Both landlord and tenant were delighted with
their bargain.  In six weeks the Rectory had been vacated and relet to
an old lady from the north of England who wanted to die in Devonshire,
and the Considines had moved to the Manor, under the benignant eyes of
Lady Halberton.  In another fortnight the first pupils, the Tracey
boys, arrived, and Considine was advertising in _The Morning Post_ and
_The Times_ for three at fees that even Lord Halberton considered
outrageous.  "There's plenty of money in the country," said Considine.
With the insight of genius he added to his advertisement, "Special care
is given to backward or difficult pupils."




XI

When Mrs. Payne had the good luck to stumble on Considine's
advertisement--for, in spite of the strange complications that ensued
for the Considines the occasion was certainly fortunate for her--that
remarkable person was at her wits' ends.  If she had not been a woman
of resource and character as well as a devoted mother I think she would
have given up the problem of Arthur as a bad job long before this; but
it was literally the only thing that really mattered to her in life,
and if she had abandoned the struggle I do not know what would have
become of her.

By ordinary canons Mrs. Payne could not be considered an attractive
woman.  The only striking features in her plain, and rather
expressionless face were her eyes, which were of a soft and
extraordinarily beautiful grey.  She had large hands and feet, no
figure to speak of, and she dressed abominably.  She possessed in fact,
all the virtues and none of the graces, and was, in this respect at any
rate, the diametrical opposite of her son.  Her appearance suggested
that life had given her a tremendous battering, a condition that would
have been pitiful if it were not that she also gave the impression of
having doggedly survived it; and for this reason one could not help
admiring her.

Her husband had been a business man of exceptional brilliance, of a
brilliance, indeed, that was almost pathological, and may have
accounted in part for the curious mentality of Arthur.  In a short, but
incredibly active life, he had amassed a fortune that was considerable,
even in the midlands where fortunes are made.  I do not know what he
manufactured, but his business was conducted in Gloucester, and the
Overton estate, which he acquired shortly before his death, lay under
the shadow of Cotswold, between its escarpment and the isolated hill of
Bredon, within twenty miles of that city.  Mr. Payne had died of acute
pneumonia in a sharp struggle that was in keeping with his strenuous
mode of life.  Seven months after his death his only child, Arthur, was
born.

In the care of her son, and the control of the fortune to which he
would later succeed, Mrs. Payne, who was blessed with an equal vocation
for motherhood and finance, became happily absorbed.  Everything
promised well.  The business in Gloucester realised more than she could
have expected, and she settled down in the placid surroundings of
Overton with no care in the world but Arthur's future.

He was a singularly beautiful child, fair-haired, with a skin that even
in manhood was dazzlingly white, and eyes that were as arresting as his
mother's: a creature of immense vitality, who shook off the usual
diseases of childhood without difficulty, and developed an early and
almost abnormal physical perfection.  He was not, it is true,
particularly intelligent.  He did not begin to talk until he was over
three years old; but this slowness of development was only in keeping
with his mother's physical type, and his early childhood was a period
of sheer delight to her in which no shadow of the imminent trouble
appeared.

By the time that he had reached his seventh year, Mrs. Payne was
beginning to be worried about him.  His bodily health was still
magnificent, but there was a strain in his character that worried her.
It appeared that it was impossible for him to tell the truth.
Haphazard lying is no uncommon thing in children, proceeding, as it
sometimes does, from an excess of imagination and an anxiety to appear
startling;  but imagination was scarcely Arthur's strong point, and his
lies were not haphazard, but deliberately planned.

To a woman of Mrs. Payne's uncompromising truthfulness this habit
appeared as a most serious failing.  She could not leave it to chance,
in a vague hope that Arthur would "grow out of it."  She tackled it,
heroically and directly, by earnest persuasion, and later, by
punishments.  By one method and another she determined to appeal to his
moral sense, but after a couple of years of hopeless struggling she was
driven to the conclusion that this, exactly, was what he lacked.  It
seemed that he had been born without one.

The thing was impossible to her, for his father had been a man of
exceptional probity and, without self-flattery, she knew that she
herself was the most transparently honest person on earth.  As the boy
grew older his opportunities for showing this fatal deficiency
increased.  Whatever she said or did, and however sweetly he accepted
her persuasions and punishments, it became evident that she, at any
rate, was incapable of keeping his hands from picking and stealing and
his tongue from evil speaking, lying, and slandering.  The condition
was the more amazing in the face of his great natural charms.  All her
friends and visitors at Overton found the boy delightful; his physical
beauty remained as wonderful as ever; on the surface he was a normal
and exceptionally attractive child; but in her heart she realised
bitterly that he was a completely a-moral being.

In nothing was this more apparent than in his behaviour towards
animals.  Overton, lying as it did in the midst of a green countryside,
was a natural sanctuary for all wild creatures, in which Arthur, from
his earliest years, had always shown a peculiar interest.  As a child,
he would spend many hours with the keeper, developing an instinct for
wood-craft that seemed to be the strongest in his composition.  He knew
all the birds of the estate, their habits, their calls, their refuges.
Once in the shadow of the woods, he himself was a wild animal, a
creature of faunish activity and grace.  Mrs. Payne always encouraged
this passion of his as a natural and admirable thing, until, one day,
the keeper, who was no more humane than the majority of keepers, came
to her with a shocking story of Arthur's cruelty: an enormity that it
would have taken the mind of a devil, rather than a man, to imagine.
When she taxed the boy with it he only laughed.  She thrashed the
matter out; she pointed out to him that he had done a devilish thing;
but in the end she had to give it up, for it became clear to her that
he was trying as hard as he could to see her point of view but
couldn't, simply because it wasn't in him.  She began to realise slowly
and reluctantly that it was no good for her to appeal to something that
didn't exist.  The boy had been born with a body a little above the
normal, and a mind a little below the average, but nature had cruelly
denied him the possession of a soul, and neither her prayers nor her
devotion could give him what he congenitally lacked.

She wondered whether the isolation of his life at Overton had anything
to do with it, whether contact with other children of his own age would
reduce him to the normal.  She took the risk, and sent him at the age
of twelve, to a preparatory school in Cheltenham.  Before the first
term was half over they sent for her and asked her to remove him.  The
head master confessed that the case was beyond him.  On the surface the
boy was one of the most charming in the whole school, but his heart was
an abyss of the most appalling blackness.  Mrs. Payne entreated him to
tell her the worst.  He hedged, said that it wasn't just one thing that
was wrong, but everything--everything.  She asked him if he had ever
known a case that resembled Arthur's.  No, he thanked Heaven that he
hadn't.  Could he advise her what to do?  Lamely he suggested a tutor,
and then, as an afterthought, a mental specialist.

The word sent a chill into Mrs. Payne's heart.  The idea that this
bright, delightful child, the idol of her hopes, was the victim of some
obscure form of moral insanity frightened her.  But she was a woman of
courage and determined to know the worst.  She took him to a specialist
in London.

Arthur thoroughly enjoyed this desolating trip.  The specialist talked
vaguely, leaving her nothing but the faintest gleam of hope.  There
were more things in heaven and earth, he said, than were dreamed of in
the philosophy of the most distinguished alienists.  He talked
indefinitely of internal secretions.  It was possible, he said--and
underlined the word--possible, just barely possible, that in a year or
two--to put it bluntly, at the time of puberty--the boy's disposition
might suddenly and unaccountably change.  He implored her not to count
on it, and assured her that, for the present, medical science could do
no more.  If, by any chance, his prophecy should be fulfilled, he
begged Mrs. Payne to let him know.  The case, if she would pardon the
use of this objectionable word, was one of the greatest professional
interest.

She took Arthur back to Overton and waited desperately.  Tutor
succeeded tutor.  Each of them found Arthur charming and impossible.
For herself she saw no change in him that was not physical.  By this
time she had abandoned any idea of finding him a profession.  At the
same time, she was anxious to make him capable of managing the Overton
estate, and though she dared not send him to one of the ordinary
agricultural colleges for fear of a repetition, on a larger scale, of
the Cheltenham disaster, she thought that it might be possible to find
a capable land-agent who would give him some kind of training and put
up with his idiosyncrasy for the sake of a substantial fee.

While searching for a suitable instructor she happened to see
Considine's advertisement.  The fact that he gave the name of a great
landowner, Lord Halberton, as a reference, convinced her that the
opportunity was genuine, and the prospectus promised instruction in all
the subjects that would be most useful to Arthur.  The fact that only a
small number of pupils was to be taken, and that the place should be
regarded as a friendly country-house rather than as a school, attracted
her; but the part of the advertisement that finally persuaded her to a
faint glimmer of hope was Considine's artfully worded final paragraph:
"Special care is given to backward or difficult pupils."

Like all sufferers from incurable diseases she was only too ready to
place confidence in any person who laid claim to special knowledge.
She began to wonder if Considine was such a specialist.  She wrote to
him, looking for a miracle to save her from her afflictions.

Considine replied formally.  He did not jump at the idea of taking
Arthur, a fact which convinced her that education at Lapton Manor was
something of a privilege, and this made her disregard the fact that the
privilege was expensive.  Still, his note was direct and business-like.
He made it clear that if he were willing to take backward or difficult
boys he expected to be paid a little more for his trouble, but the
confident tone in which he wrote suggested that he was a man who knew
his business.

He did know his business.  Considine was a clear-headed and capable
person with a degree of confidence in himself that went a long way
towards assuring his success.  He proposed, finally, that it would be
more satisfactory for both of them if Mrs. Payne were to visit him at
Lapton and see the place and its owners for herself.  Then they could
talk the matter over, and define the peculiar difficulties of Arthur's
case.  More and more impressed, she accepted the proposal.  Considine
met her train at Totnes with a dogcart and drove her to Lapton Manor.




XII

In that part of the world the early autumn is the most lovely season of
the year.  The country in its variety and sudden violences of shape and
colour seemed to her sensationally lovely after the mild beauty of her
own midland landscape, dominated and restrained by the level skylines
of Cotswold.  Considine, who spoke very little as he drove, but was a
stylish whip, told her the names of the villages through which they
passed, names that were as soft and sleepy as Lapton Huish itself.  He
showed her his church, with a flicker of pride, and the hung slates of
the Rectory wall through a gap in the green.  Then they passed into the
open drive of Lapton Manor.

He explained to her that the estate had been neglected and was now the
subject of an experiment; but it seemed to her that the level fields
through which the drive extended had already come under the influence
of his orderly mind.  To everything that Considine undertook there
clung an atmosphere of formal precision that suggested nothing so much
as the eighteenth century.  The Manor, suddenly sweeping into view from
behind a plantation of ilex, confirmed this impression.  It was such a
house as Considine must inevitably have chosen, a solid Georgian
structure, square and sombre, with a pillared portico in front shading
the entrance and its flanking windows.  The window panes of the upper
storey blazed in the setting sun.

In the hall Gabrielle Considine awaited them.  She was dressed in
black--probably she was still in mourning for Jocelyn--with a white
muslin collar such as a widow might have worn.  To Mrs. Payne, by an
unconscious personal contrast, she seemed very tall and graceful and
exceedingly well-bred.  No doubt Considine had prepared the way for
this impression.  On the drive up he had spoken several times of Lord
Halberton, "my wife's cousin."  Mrs. Considine's voice was very soft,
with the least hint of Irish in it, an inflection rather than a brogue.
Her hands, her neck and her face were very white.  Possibly her skin
seemed whiter because of the blackness of her hair and of her dress and
the beautiful shape of her pale hands.  Curiously enough, the chief
impression she made on Mrs. Payne was not the obvious one of youth; and
this shows that Gabrielle, outwardly, at any rate, had changed
enormously in the last year.  Mrs. Payne did not know then, and
certainly would never have guessed, that the lady of the house was
under twenty years of age.  She only saw a creature full of grace, of
dignity, and of quietness, and she knew that Considine was proud of
these qualities that his wife displayed.  There was nothing to suggest
that the pair were not completely happy in their marriage.

After dinner they proceeded to business.  They sat together in the
drawing-room, Mrs. Considine busy with her embroidery at a small table
apart, while her husband, capably judicial, begged Mrs. Payne to tell
him the peculiar features of Arthur's case.  She found Considine
sympathetic, and the telling so easy that she was able to express
herself naturally in the most embarrassing part of her story.
Considine helped her with small encouragements.  Gabrielle said
nothing, bending over her work while she listened.  Indeed, she had
scarcely spoken a dozen words since Mrs. Payne's arrival.  When she
came to the episode of Arthur's expulsion from the school at
Cheltenham, Considine made an uneasy gesture suggesting that his wife
should retire, and Gabrielle quietly rose.

Mrs. Payne begged her to stay.  "It is much better that you should both
know everything," she said.  "I want you to realise things at their
worst.  It is much better that you should know exactly where we stand."

She wondered afterwards why Considine had suggested that Gabrielle
should go.  At first she had taken it for granted that he was merely
considering her own maternal feelings in an unpleasant confession.  It
was not until she thought the matter out quietly at Overton that she
decided that his action was really in keeping with the rest of his
attitude towards his wife; that he did, in fact, regard her as a small
child who should be repressed and denied an active interest in his
affairs.  Gabrielle's quietness had puzzled her.  Perhaps this was its
explanation.

For the time the story absorbed her and she thought no more of
Gabrielle.  Considine was such an excellent listener, sitting there
with his long fingers knotted and his eyes fixed on her, that she found
herself subject to the same sort of mesmeric influence as had overcome
Lord Halberton.  He inspired her with a curious confidence, and she
began to hope, almost passionately, that he would undertake the care of
Arthur.  Before she had finished her narrative she was assailed with a
fear that he wouldn't--he seemed to be weighing the matter so carefully
in his mind--and burst out with an abrupt: "But you _will_ take him,
won't you?"

Considine smiled.  "I shall be delighted," he said.

Her thankfulness, at the end of so much strain, almost bowled her over.

"You make me feel more settled about him already," she said.  "I'm
almost certain that he will be happy here.  I feel that I'm so lucky to
have heard of you.  You and your wife," she added, for all the time
that she had been speaking, she had been conscious of the silent
interest of Gabrielle.  When it came to a question of terms there was
nothing indefinite about Considine.  The fees that he suggested were
enormous, but Mrs. Payne's faith in him was by this time so secure that
she would gladly have paid anything.  All through the rest of her visit
this slow and steady confidence increased.  From the bedroom in which
she slept she could see the wide expanse of the home fields.  It seemed
to her that the quiet of Lapton was deeper and mellower and more
intense than any she had ever known.  It was saturated with the sense
of ancient, stable, sane tradition.  It breathed an atmosphere in which
nothing violent or strange or abnormal could ever flourish.  She felt
that, in contrast with their restless modern Cotswold home, its intense
normality must surely have some subtle reassuring effect upon her son.
Gazing over those yellow fields in the early morning she felt a more
settled happiness than she had ever known since her husband's death.

So, full of hope, she returned to Overton and announced the
arrangements she had made to Arthur.  He took to them gladly.  He was
tired of the unnatural indolence of Overton, and in any case he would
have welcomed a change.  In everything but his fatal abnormality he was
an ordinary healthy boy, and the prospect of going into a new county,
and learning something of estate management, a subject in which he was
really interested, appealed to him.  She described the drive from the
station, the house, and the general conditions in detail.  Her
enthusiasm for Considine rather put him off.

"I hope he isn't quite such a paragon as you make out," he said, "or
he'll have no use for me."

Gabrielle appeared as a rather shadowy figure in his mother's
background.  "Oh, there's a wife, is there?" he said.  "That's rather a
pity."  She smiled, for this was typical of his attitude towards women.

Even though she smiled at it her heart was full of thankfulness, for,
as he had grown older, she had lived in an indefinite terror of what
might happen when Arthur did begin to notice women.  It was quite bad
enough that he should be without a conscience in matters of truth and
property; if he were to be found without conscience in matters of sex
there was no end to the complications with which she might have to
deal.  She always remembered the specialist's prophecy that the period
of puberty might be marked by a complete change for the better in his
dangerous temperament, but she was secretly haunted by a fear that this
critical age might, by an equal chance, reveal some new abnormality or
even aggravate the old.  Arthur was now nearly seventeen, and
physically, at any rate, mature.  For the present she lived in a state
of exaggerated hopes and fears.

The amazing part of the whole business was that Arthur didn't realise
it.  He looked upon the anxiety which Mrs. Payne found it so difficult
to conceal as feminine weakness.  He wished to goodness that she
wouldn't fuss over him, being convinced that he himself was an
ordinary, plain-sailing person who had submitted for long enough to an
unreasonable degree of pampering.  He didn't see any reason why he
shouldn't be treated like any other boy of his age, and felt that he
had already been cheated of many of the rights of youth.  One of the
principal reasons why he welcomed the Lapton plan was that it would
free him from the constant tug of apron-strings, and allow him to mix
freely with creatures of his own age and sex.

He went off to Lapton in the highest spirits, determined to have a good
time, rejoicing in the prospect of freedom in a way that made his
mother feel that she had been something of an oppressor.  She could not
resist the temptation of seeing the last of him, and so they travelled
down together.  This time she stayed a couple of days at Lapton.  It
was part of Considine's plan to let parents see as much of the place as
they wanted, if only to convince them that they were getting their
money's worth.

Everything that Mrs. Payne saw reassured her.  The routine of the house
seemed to be reasonable and healthy.  The mornings were devoted to
lessons in the library.  After lunch the pupils went out over the
fields or into the woods where Considine instructed them in details of
farming and forestry.  Their work was not merely theoretical.  They had
to learn to use their hands as well as their brains, to plough a
furrow, or bank a hedge, or dig a pit for mangolds.  Considine kept
them busy, and at the same time made them useful to himself.  They used
to come in at tea-time flushed with exercise and pleasantly fatigued.
The late afternoon and evening were their own.  They played tennis or
racquets, or read books in the library, a long room with many tall
windows that had been set aside for their instruction and leisure.

Mrs. Payne rejoiced to find that their life at Lapton was so full.  In
the absence of any idleness that was not well-earned she saw the
highest wisdom of Considine's system; for it seemed to her that her
anxiety for Arthur had probably done him an injustice in depriving him
of a natural outlet for his energies.  At Lapton he could scarcely find
time for wickedness.

In this way her admiration for Considine increased.  She only regretted
that she had not been able in the past to secure a tutor of his capable
and energetic type.  Reviewing the series of languid and futile young
men whom the very best agencies had sent her, she came to the
conclusion that no man of Considine's type could ever have been forced
to accept a tutor's employment.  Even in the choice of his pupils she
saw signs of his discrimination.  In addition to the two Traceys, whose
delightful manners were undeniable, he had secured two other boys: one
the younger son of an East Anglian peer, and the other a boy whose
father was a colonel in the Indian army.  The paragraph in Considine's
advertisement that had first attracted her had made her wonder if his
school might not develop into a collection of oddities, but all the
pupils that she saw were not only the sons of gentlemen but obviously
normal.  She felt that their influence, seconding the control of
Considine, must surely have a stabilising effect upon Arthur, and was
content.

During the two days of her visit she still found Gabrielle a little
puzzling.  She couldn't quite believe that her extreme quietness and
reserve were nothing more than simplicity.  Knowing nothing of her
origins she did not realise that Gabrielle was actually shy of her, and
that this, and nothing else, explained her air of mystery.  On the last
night, however, feeling that after all Gabrielle was the only woman in
the house in whom she could confide, she overcame her own diffidence,
and told her the whole story over again from a personal and feminine
point of view.  Gabrielle listened very quietly.

"I'm so anxious that I felt bound to tell you, just in the hope that
you'd be interested," said Mrs. Payne.  "One woman feels that it takes
another woman to understand her.  If you had children of your own,
you'd understand quite easily what I mean."

"I think I do understand," said Gabrielle.

"There are little things about which I should be ashamed to worry your
husband.  I wonder if it would be asking too much of you to hope that
you would sometimes write to me, and tell me how he is?  Naturally I
can't expect you to take a special interest in Arthur, more than in
others----"  She found it difficult to say more.

"Of course I will write to you if you want me to," said Gabrielle.

Mrs. Payne, impulsively, kissed her.




XIII

Gabrielle fulfilled her promise.  All through the first term, while
autumn hardened into winter, at Lapton a season of sad sunlight, she
kept Mrs. Payne posted in the chronicle of Arthur's progress, and these
dutiful letters comforted his mother in her unusual loneliness at
Overton.  They were not particularly interesting letters, and they
never brought to her any announcement of the long-awaited miracle, but
they gave her the assurance that some other woman had her eye on him,
and this, for some strange reason that may have been explained by
Arthur's dependence on her through her long widowhood, comforted her.

In the beginning Gabrielle interested herself in Arthur simply for the
sake of Mrs. Payne; she had been touched by the mother's anxiety and
found her, perhaps, a little pathetic; but in a little time she began
to be interested in Arthur for himself.

In the ordinary way she did not see a great deal of her husband's
pupils.  Nominally, of course, she was the female head of the
household, but Considine, aware of her limited domestic experience, and
her ignorance of English customs, had secured a housekeeper from his
own home in Wiltshire, a Mrs. Bemerton, who also filled the office of
matron.  As might be expected in a woman of Considine's choice, Mrs.
Bemerton was capable and, as luck would have it, she was also kindly.
All the domestic arrangements at Lapton ran smoothly under her
direction.  She was reasonably popular with the boys and mothered them.
She even found time to mother Gabrielle--respectfully, for she had come
from a county that is staunchly feudal, and was aware of her mistress's
august connections.

It was fortunate for Gabrielle in her relations with the boys that she
had so little to do with their domestic management.  The fact that she
only saw them in their moments of recreation saved her from being
regarded as an ogress, her only suspicious circumstance being the fact
that she was married to Considine.  Before the winter came she had
played games with them, and since she had so much of the tomboy in her,
had made herself acceptable as a sportswoman and a good sort.  By the
time that Arthur Payne arrived the days were drawing in, and she saw
very little of them, except in the evenings, after dinner, when she and
Considine would join them in a game of snooker in the billiard-room, or
take a hand of whist, old-fashioned whist, in the library.

It was here that she first became personally aware of Arthur's
disability.  For several weeks she had been getting used to him as a
normal being, attractive because he was so undeniably handsome and
well-developed, more than usually attractive to her, perhaps, because
she was dark and he was fair.  She had noticed his eyes, so like the
beautiful eyes of Mrs. Payne, his splendid teeth, and the charming
ingenuousness of his manner.  Subtly influenced by these physical
features, and taking him for granted, she had almost forgotten the
curious history that Mrs. Payne had confided to her, and it came as a
shock to her playing cards against him one evening, to realise suddenly
that he was cheating.

Her first impulse was one of indignation; but as she was not quite sure
of herself she said nothing, waiting to see if she could possibly have
been mistaken.  In a few moments he cheated again, this time beyond any
possible doubt.  She flushed with vexation.  It seemed to her an
enormous thing.  She was just on the point of throwing down her cards
when Mrs. Payne's story came back to her.  Instead of dislike she felt
a sudden wave of pity and wonder.  She had wanted, on the spur of the
moment, to give him away; but she realised that this would only
discredit him with the other boys and probably lay him open to a sort
of persecution.  If he wasn't really responsible, that would be a pity;
and so she held her tongue.

All the same she couldn't go on playing cards with him.  She knew that
if she did she would be bound to continue on the look-out, and be
shocked by a series of these ugly incidents.  She asked Considine if he
would read to them, and he consented readily.  He liked reading aloud,
partly because he was, not unreasonably, vain of his speaking voice and
partly because the practice was part of his theory of education.  At
that time he was reading Stevenson, an author who was supposed to
combine a flawless literary style with the soundest moral precepts and
an attitude towards life that encouraged the manly virtues peculiar to
Englishmen.  Gabrielle enjoyed his reading thoroughly, for she had so
much of the boy in herself, and was quite unacquainted with any
Victorian literature.  He read _Catriona_ slowly, and with gusto.
Gabrielle from her corner watched Arthur Payne, sprawling on a sofa at
the edge of the lamp-light.  He was really a remarkably handsome young
animal with his fair hair tangled and his hands clasped on his knees.
She could see his eyes in the gloom.  They seemed to burn with
eagerness while he listened, as though his imagination were on fire
within.  She forgot that Considine was reading and went on watching the
boy.  It seemed to her incredible that it was he whom she had detected
in such a deliberate dishonour half an hour before.  It was melancholy.
She felt most awfully sorry for him.  She wished, above all things,
that she could help him.  People said that he was beyond help.  In the
end he became conscious of her scrutiny and smiled across at her.  And
this broke the spell of reflection.  She heard Considine's voice:

_'I will take up the defence of your reputation,' she said.  'You may
leave it in my hands.'  And with that she withdrew out of the library._
"That's the end of chapter nineteen."

He closed the book, putting a marker in it methodically, as was his
wont.  Gabrielle thanked him.  She smiled to herself, for it seemed to
her that the words of Miss Grant with which he had recalled her from
her abstraction had a curious and prophetic meaning for herself.  She
was thankful, for a moment, that she hadn't thoughtlessly given
Arthur's reputation away to his comrades.  She felt herself thrilled by
a new and curious interest.  She determined, as a part of her duty to
his mother, to speak to Arthur himself about what she had observed.

She caught him in the passage just as the boys were going to bed, and
drew him aside into the drawing-room.  The room was quite dark.

"Arthur, I want to speak to you," she said.

He laughed.  "What's the matter?"

"When we were playing cards to-night you cheated."

For a moment there was silence.  Then he laughed again--not an uneasy,
shameful laugh, but one of sheer amusement.  It shocked her.  At last
he said:

"Did you see it?  Then why didn't you make a fuss about it?"

She was thankful, at any rate, that he had not lied to her.  That was
what she had fearfully expected.

"I didn't want to give you away to the others."

"Why not?  It wouldn't have been any news to them.  They know that I
cheat already.  That's why they're up against me.  But that doesn't
worry me."

"I don't understand you.  It seemed to me a horrible thing to do.
Can't you see that?"

"No, I can't.  Perhaps I'm different.  When I play I play to win."

"But that's the whole point.  If you don't stick to the rules of the
game there's no credit in winning, is there?"

He was silent for a moment.  Then, with an effort of the most
courageous honesty, he said: "Well, it feels the same to me.  I like
winning--anyhow."

She hesitated for a moment.

"It makes it so that--so that we can't respect you," she said.

"Now I suppose you'll go and tell Dr. Considine.  Just my luck."

"Indeed, and I shan't do anything of the sort.  It's between us two,"
she replied.

He was silent.

"Well, it does no good talking about it," he said mournfully.  "I'm
made differently, that's all.  Do you want anything else?"

She didn't, and he left her in the dark.

This small incident and the conversation that followed opened her eyes
to the reality of the problem.  She didn't indeed tell Considine what
had happened, but she did talk to him once or twice about the history
of Arthur Payne.  He did not tell her much, for it was part of his plan
that his wife should not be mixed up in the business of the school.
These things, in his opinion, lay entirely outside a woman's province.
Her place was in the drawing-room and her position that of a hostess
or, providentially, that of a mother.  For the present there were no
signs of her fulfilling the latter.

In spite of Considine's discouragement her interest in Arthur was now
fully aroused, and more eagerly for the very reason of the limits which
her husband had set to her activities.  Life at Lapton Manor to a
person of Gabrielle's essential vitality was dull.  The nature of the
surrounding country with its near horizons and lack of physical breadth
or freedom imprisoned her spirit.  Even Roscarna in its decay had been
more vital than this sad, smug Georgian manor-house set in its circle
of low hills.  Over there, in winter, there had been rough Atlantic
weather, and a breath of ice from the snowy summits of Slieveannilaun
or the mountains of Maamturk.  Here, even in their more frequent
sunshine, the air lay dead, ebbing like a sluggish river, from Dartmoor
to the sea.  In winter the county families went to sleep like dormice,
so that no strange-calling conveyances passed the lodge-gates at
Lapton, and the life of Gabrielle was like that of those sad roses that
lingered on the south wall beneath her bedroom window in a state that
was neither life nor death.  If she had shared Considine's interest in
his profession things might have been different.  No doubt she would
have thrown herself into it with enthusiasm; but her enthusiasm was of
a very different nature from the steady flame that burned in Considine.
No doubt he knew this, and felt that her sharing would be disturbing by
its violence.  In the ordinary course of events I suppose he expected
that she would have another child, but as this interest was denied her,
she was thrown more and more upon her own resources.

Her promise to Mrs. Payne gave her a reasonable excuse for her growing
interest in Arthur.  She had never returned to the card-playing
incident; but as time went on a number of others equally distressing
presented themselves.  Having constituted herself his special
protectress and the saviour of his reputation she tackled each of them
with courage.  In every case she found herself baffled by the fact that
arguments which seemed to her unanswerable made no appeal to him, not
because he wasn't anxious to see things with her eyes, but because they
came within the area of a kind of blind-spot in his brain.  She soon
found that she couldn't appeal on moral grounds to an a-moral
intelligence.  She would have appealed on grounds material, but it
seemed to be ironically decreed that material and moral grounds should
be rarely at one.  Sweet persuasion was equally useless.  And indeed,
how could she expect to succeed by her influence where maternal love
had failed so signally?  Even so, she would not own herself beaten.  It
was tantalising; for the more she saw of Arthur the better she liked
him, and in these days she was seeing a good deal of him.

The opportunity arose from Arthur's trouble.  He had told her the truth
when he said his fellow-pupils at Lapton were already aware of his lack
of honour in games.  Nothing is less easily forgiven by boys, and when
the others discovered that he cheated and lied, not so much by accident
as on principle, they began to treat him as an outcast from their
decent society.  The Traceys went so far as to report his failing to
Considine.  An unpleasant _contretemps_, but one that Considine had
expected.  He explained to them that Payne was not entirely to blame,
and that his constitution was not normal.  He advised them to take the
weakness for granted.  Even when he did this he knew that such
distinctions were unlikely to be acceptable to a boyish code of honour.
On the other hand the special fees that Mrs. Payne was paying him were
essential to the development of his plans.  As a compromise he decided
to keep Arthur apart from the others in their amusements in the most
natural way he could devise.  Practically for want of a better solution
he handed him over to the care of Gabrielle.

Arthur resented this.  He was fond of games and of sport.  He liked
winning and he liked killing; he thought it humiliating to his manly
dignity to be relegated to Gabrielle's society.  He wrote bitterly to
his mother about it, using the contemptuous nickname that the boys had
invented for Mrs. Considine.

"_I think old Considine,_" he wrote, "_must be thinking of turning me
into a nursemaid.  I'm always being told off to help Gaby in the garden
or take her for drives in the pony-cart.  Not much fun taking a woman
shopping!_"

But Gabrielle was glad of it.  The new plan supplied her with the first
prolonged companionship of a person of her own age--there were less
than three years between them--that she had known.  Little by little
Arthur accepted it, and they became great friends.

It was a curious relation, for though it must have been simple on his
side, on hers it was full of complication.  To begin with his society
was a great relief from her loneliness.  Again, she had already, for
want of another enthusiasm, conceived an acute interest in his curious
temperament, and her eagerness to get to the bottom of it, and, if
possible, to find a cure, was now fanned by something that resembled a
maternal passion.  They spent the greater part of his spare time
together, and often, at hours when he would normally have been working
with Considine, she would ask for him to take her driving into Totnes
or Dartmouth, their two market towns.  In the evenings they would walk
out together in search of air along the lip of the basin in which
Lapton Manor lay.

On one of these evening walks a strange thing happened.  They had
climbed the hills and had sat for a few minutes on the summit watching
the sun go down behind the level ridges that lead inward from the
Start.  While they were sitting there in silence, Arthur suddenly
slipped away over the brim of a little hollow full of bracken on the
edge of the wood.  A moment later Gabrielle heard him laughing, and
walked over quietly to see what he was doing.  She saw him crouched,
quite unconscious of her presence, among the ferns at the bottom of the
hollow.  He had caught a baby rabbit, and now he was torturing the
small terrified creature, its beady eyes set with fear, just as a cat
plays with a mouse.  He was watching it intently: letting it escape to
the verge of freedom and then catching it and throwing it violently
back.  For a second it would lie motionless with terror and then make
another feeble attempt at escape.  She watched this display of animal
cruelty with horror, and yet she could not speak, for she wanted to see
what he would do next.  At last the rabbit refused to keep up the
heartless game any longer.  It simply lay and trembled.  Arthur prodded
it with his foot, but it would not move.  This appeared to incense him.
He took a flying kick at the poor beast and killed it.  It lay for a
moment twitching, its muzzle covered in blood.  A little thing no
bigger than a kitten two months old----

Gabrielle ran to him flaming with anger.  She picked up the mutilated
rabbit and hugged it to her breast.

"Why did you do that?  You beast, you devil!" she cried.

She could have flown at him in her anger.  Arthur only laughed.  He
stood there laughing, staring straight at her with his wide honest eyes.

"It's dead.  It's all right," he said.

Her fingers were all dabbled with the blood of the rabbit that twitched
no longer.  She could do nothing.  She dropped the carcase with a
pitiful gesture of despair and burst into bitter tears.

She sat sobbing on the edge of the hollow.  She could not see him, but
presently she heard his voice, curiously shaken with emotion, at her
side.

"I say, Mrs. Considine," he said.  "Don't--please don't--I simply can't
stand it."

"Oh, get away--leave me alone," she sobbed.  "I can't bear you to be
near me.  It was so little.  So happy----"

He wouldn't go.  He spoke again, and his voice was quite changed--she
had never heard a note of feeling in it before.  "I can't bear it.
You--I can't bear that you should suffer.  I swear I won't do a thing
like that again--not if it hurts you.  On my honour I won't."

"Yes, you will.  I suppose you can't help it.  It's awful.  You haven't
a soul.  You aren't human."

His voice choked as he replied.  "I swear it--I do really.  I could do
anything for you, Mrs. Considine.  I feel that I could.  For God's sake
try me!"

She compelled herself, still sobbing, to look at him.  She saw that his
face was tortured, and his eyes full of tears.  But she could say no
more, and they walked home in silence.




XIV

This distressing picture troubled Gabrielle for several days, and yet,
beneath her remembrance of anger and disgust, she could not help
feeling a curious excitement when she reflected that, for the first
time since she had known him, Arthur had shown her signs of pity and
tenderness.  For a little while they lived under its shadow though
neither of them spoke of it again.  Arthur, in particular, was awkward;
but whether he were ashamed of his cruelty, or merely of the effect
that it had produced on her, she could not say.  Although she found it
difficult to believe in the first explanation she was deeply touched,
and perhaps a little flattered, by the possibility of the second.
Certainly his attitude toward her had changed.  In everything that he
said or did, he now seemed pathetically anxious to please her, and even
this was encouraging.  She didn't tell Considine what had happened.
She knew very well that he would consider the incident trivial and, in
a few words, shatter her illusion of its significance.  And this fear
proved that she was not so very sure that it was significant herself.

The curious atmosphere that now developed between them revealed itself
more particularly in the letters which they were both of them writing
to Mrs. Payne at Overton.  Arthur's had never been very fluent, but
Gabrielle had found an outlet for herself in this correspondence.  In
his early letters from Lapton Arthur had rarely mentioned Gabrielle;
whenever he had done so it had been half contemptuously, as though the
feeling of repression which emanates from the best of schoolmasters had
attached itself to the schoolmaster's wife.  At the same time Gabrielle
had been brief, but extremely natural.  With the card-playing incident
a new situation had developed.  Arthur, as we have seen, had been
inclined to turn up his nose at Gabrielle's society when it was thrust
upon him by Considine, while Gabrielle had given signs of a more
maternal care.  In the later stages of this period Gabrielle, being
taken as a matter of course, had practically dropped out of Arthur's
letters.  The episode of the rabbit changed all this, for while Arthur
now began to expand in a naive enthusiasm, Gabrielle's attempts at
writing about him fell altogether flat.  Judging by her letters Mrs.
Payne might reasonably have supposed that she had grown thoroughly sick
of the boy.

The real cause of her reticence was not so easily fathomable.  I
suppose it was her instinctive method of withdrawing a subject that was
secretly precious to her from the knowledge of the one person in the
world who might reasonably assert a right to share it.  If she had
analysed it, no doubt she would have proved that her interest in Arthur
was more intimate than she had ever confessed.  But she didn't analyse
it.  Neither, for that matter, did Mrs. Payne.  Looking backward, a
year later, that good woman realised what a psychological howler she
had made.  At the time she was merely thankful that Arthur was happy in
the society of a woman whom she liked and trusted--to whom, indeed, she
had more or less confided him--and sorry that at the very moment when
her influence might have counted, Gabrielle appeared to be losing
interest in the boy.  It cheered her to think that Arthur was
expressing any admiration so human and, to be frank, so unlike himself.
She was even more cheered when she received Considine's report on him
at the beginning of the Christmas holidays.  "_There have been one or
two unpleasant incidents,_" wrote the tactful Considine, "_but during
the latter part of the term I must say that your boy's conduct has been
practically unexceptionable.  I think it is only right to tell you that
I have great hopes of him._"  At the same time Gabrielle was silent.

Of course Considine didn't really know as much about it as she did.  He
had seen the broad effects of Arthur's adoration--for that is what it
was now becoming--but he knew nothing of the struggles that had gone to
their making.  During the latter part of the term his conduct had not
been by any means "unexceptionable"; but it was part of Gabrielle's
queer policy of secrecy to hide any lapse on Arthur's part from her
husband.  She tackled them alone, forcing herself, against her own
compassionate instincts, to play upon Arthur's feelings.  She had now
discovered that where appeals to general morality, or even to reason,
were bound to fail, the least sign of suffering on her part could
reduce Arthur to a miserable and perfectly genuine repentance.  Such
was the end of all their struggles; and there were many; for she would
not let the least sign of his old weakness pass.  At times she felt
that she was cruel, but she allowed herself to be harrowed, finding,
perhaps, in the pain that she inflicted on both of them, something that
was flattering both to her conscience and to her self-esteem.

During all this time there was nothing approaching intimacy between
them.  To him, however he might adore her, she was always Mrs.
Considine.  In all their relations they preserved the convention that
she was a creature of another world and of another age.  No doubt his
childishness made the illusion easy to him.  With her there must surely
have been moments of emotion when she realised that the barrier was
artificial.  It is impossible to say how soon the first of these
moments came.

Certainly when he returned to Overton for the holidays with Considine's
encouraging report, she felt terribly lonely.  For the last two months
she had concerned herself so passionately with the discovery--one might
almost say the creation--of his soul, that his departure left her not
only with a physical blank, but with a spiritual anxiety.  She wondered
all the time what was happening to him; whether in her absence he was
keeping it up or drifting into a state of tragic relapse.  On the
evening before he left she had made him promise to write to her, but
his boyish letters were wholly unsatisfactory.  She believed that he
was telling her the truth in them, and yet he told her so little.  She
even wished that she had kept up the habit of writing to Mrs. Payne;
for the least sidelight on the condition of affairs at Overton would
have been grateful to her.  She did write to Mrs. Payne, but destroyed
the letter, feeling that a sudden revival of her custom when Arthur was
no longer at Lapton would seem merely ridiculous.

The Christmas holidays were a dreary time for her.  Deserted by all
youth the Manor House slipped back into its ancient and melancholy
peace.  Winter descended on them.  She had been told that the climate
of South Devon resembled that of Connemara, but this was not the kind
of winter that she had known before.  Snow never fell, as it used to
fall on her own mountains, turning Slieveannilaun into a great ghost,
and bringing the distant peaks of the Twelve Pins incredibly nearer.
Perhaps snow fell on Dartmoor; but from Lapton Dartmoor could not be
seen.  In those deep valleys it could only be felt as a reservoir of
chilly moisture, or a barrier confining cold, dank air.  Instead of
snowing it rained incessantly.  The soft lanes became impassable with
mud, turning Lapton into a peninsula, if not an island.

At the New Year they went on a visit to Halberton House.  During their
stay there Lady Barbara conceived a sudden and violent passion for
Gabrielle, that culminated in Gabrielle being taken solemnly to her
cousin's virginal bedroom and hearing the story of an old unhappy
love-affair.  All the time that she listened to Lady Barbara's
plaintive voice Gabrielle was wondering what had happened at Overton,
and whether Arthur was keeping to the solemn undertaking that he had
given her.  She wondered if it were possible that regard for his
mother's feelings might now be filling the place of her own influence;
if Mrs. Payne were arrogantly taking to herself the credit for the
miracle which Lapton had seen so laboriously begun.  She hoped, knowing
that it was wicked of her to do so, that this had not happened.  She
felt that the change in Arthur was hers and hers only.  She found
herself forced to confess that she was jealous of Mrs. Payne....

"And then," said Lady Barbara, "just when I was certain, positively
certain that he cared for me--after that morning in church, you
know--his mother broke her leg huntin' in Leicestershire.  The wire
came in with the mornin' letters, and the first thing I knew of his
goin' was seein' the luggage cart with his hat-box in the drive.  Then,
poor dear, he met this widow at a dance at Belvoir.  I begged mother to
let me go and stay with the Pagets at Somerby, but she said it would be
undignified.  He was killed in the Chitral a year later.  I felt I must
tell you, dear, because I can't help feelin' a little envious of your
happy marriage.  Dr. Considine is such a man ... and I always feel it's
so safe marryin' a clergyman."

The idea of envying her marriage with Considine was so ridiculous that
Gabrielle couldn't repress an inexcusable smile, but Lady Barbara cut
short her blushing apology.  "I don't begrudge you your happiness, my
dear," she said.

Seeing Lady Barbara sitting opposite to her with her thin arms sticking
straight out of a camisole, and two plaits of hair pathetically
trailing one on either side of her narrow forehead, Gabrielle was
suddenly overwhelmed with the consciousness of her own youth--not only
that, but her amazing difference in temperament from these people of
her own blood.  Retiring from her cousin's chaste kisses to her own
room, she stood for a long while in front of her mirror, tinglingly
aware of her freshness and beauty and vitality.  Considine, emerging
from his dressing-room, found her there.

"Vanity, vanity!" he said, taking her in his arms and kissing her.
Gabrielle suddenly thought how glad she would be to hand him over to
the admiring Lady Barbara.  She remembered the chill kiss of her
cousin, and then the kiss of Considine.  Neither of them, she decided,
was a real kiss.

The new term began on the twenty-fifth of January.  Gabrielle had
awaited it with a subdued excitement.  When the day came, she compelled
herself to appear more placid than usual.  It was a sunny morning of
the kind that often gives a feeling of spring to the Devon winter, a
morning full of promise.  Considine had suggested that she should drive
into Totnes and do some shopping before meeting the train from the
Midlands, but she would not do so.  All morning she made herself busy
in the house, and later in the day, hearing the wheels of the wagonette
on the drive, she slipped out into the garden to visit a border where
the crocus spears were pushing through the soil.  She could not explain
her own sudden shyness.  She was tremulous, tremulous with life.  There
was a smell of spring in the air.  Arthur came out to find her in the
garden.  His eyes glowed with the pleasure of seeing her again, but she
would not look at him.

"Well," she said, "what happened?"

"Oh, it was all right," he said.  "I think it was all right.  I'm
almost sure of it.  I always thought of you, you see.  Imagined what
you'd think of me."  He didn't say that he had considered what his
mother would think.  She was suddenly, jealously, thankful.

With his return she regained her content, feeling no longer the weight
of winter.  He spoke no more regretfully of his exclusion from the
sports of the other pupils and they settled down once again into their
happy routine of walks and drives.  In a little while the crocuses
burst into flame in the borders, and in the hedges the wild arums began
to unfold.

One Friday afternoon in the middle of March she asked Considine to let
Arthur drive her into Dartmouth.  The day was so mild that they chose
the high-road that skirts the edge of Start Bay.  There was a feeling
of holiday in the air, for the sea beneath them was of a pale and
shimmering blue like a stone blazing with imprisoned light or a
butterfly's wing.  On the road they met a long procession of carriers'
vans heaped high with shopping baskets, and the happy faces of country
people stared at them from under the hoods.  The road shone white,
having been scoured with rain, and all the hedgerows smelt of green
things growing, with now and then a waft of the white violet.  The sky
was so clear that they could see the smoke of many liners, hull down,
making the Start.  When they reached the crest of the hill above
Dartmouth a man-of-war appeared, a three-funnelled cruiser, steaming
fast towards the land.  She was so fleet and strong that she seemed to
share in the exhilaration of the day.  They dropped down slowly into
Dartmouth and lost sight of her.

Gabrielle had a great deal of shopping to do, and Arthur drove her from
one shop to another, waiting outside in the pony-trap while she made
her purchases.  Then they had tea together in a restaurant on the quay.
They had never been more happy together.  When they came out of the
tea-shop on to the pavement they found themselves entangled in a group
of sailors, liberty-men who had been disembarked from the cruiser that
now lay anchored in the mouth of the Dart.  They came along the
footpath laughing, pleased to be ashore.  Arthur and Gabrielle stood
aside to let them pass, and as they did so Gabrielle saw the name
_H.M.S. Pennant_ upon their cap-ribbons.  She became suddenly pale and
silent.  The light had faded from the day.  She begged Arthur to drive
her home as quickly as he could.

Arthur was puzzled by her strangeness.  He could not understand why she
did not speak to him.  They drove on in silence through the dusk.  So
they came to the point at which the coast road turns inward towards
Lapton Huish, a lonely spot where the cliffs break away into low hills,
and the highroad runs between a ridge of shingle on one side and on the
other two reedy meres.  The night was windless, and they heard no sound
but a faint shivering of reed-beds, and the plash and withdrawal of
languid waves lapping the miles of fine shingle with a faint hiss like
that of grain falling on to a mound.

On the bridge that spanned the channel connecting the two meres
Gabrielle asked him to stop.  He did so, wondering, and she climbed out
of the trap, and leaned upon the coping, looking out over the water.
He couldn't think what to make of her.  He did not know how dear is
mystery to the heart of a woman.  He stood by, awkwardly looking at
her.  At last she said slowly, "I hate the sea....  I hate it.  But I
love lake-water," which didn't lead much further.  But he knew that she
was for some reason unhappy, and found this difficult to bear.  He came
near to her, leaning over the bridge at her side.

"I wish you'd tell me what's the matter," he said.  "It's all very well
your helping me, but it's a bit one-sided if I can't do anything for
you."

She gazed at his shadowy face in the darkness, and then gently put her
hand on his.  She felt a kind of shudder go through him as he clasped
it.




XV

After that night it is difficult to believe that Gabrielle any longer
deceived herself, though I do not suppose that Arthur realised the true
meaning of their relation.  The significant feature in it is that he
was gradually and almost imperceptibly becoming a normal human being.
Gabrielle had begun by developing in him a substitute for a conscience;
for since he had begun to consider everything that he said or did in
the light of its probable effect upon his idol, it had become a habit
with him to follow a definite code of conduct, and the saying that
habit is second nature finds an example in his extraordinary case.

It is fascinating, but I believe profitless, to speculate on the subtle
hereditary influences that underlay their attraction for each other.
One can imagine that their state presented an example of the way in
which people of abnormal instincts tend to drift together: Arthur, the
a-moral prodigy, and Gabrielle, the last offshoot of the decayed house
of Hewish, daughter of the definitely degenerate Sir Jocelyn.  But I do
not think that there was anything abnormal or decadent in Gabrielle's
composition.  Her nature was gay and uncomplicated, in singular
contrast to her involved and sombre fate.  One is forced to the
conclusion that the Payne miracle was the result of nothing more
uncommon than the natural birth of a tender passion between two young
people of opposite sexes, whom chance had isolated and thrown into each
other's company.  The specialist who had vaguely suggested to Mrs.
Payne the hope that manhood might work a change in Arthur had been
nearer the mark than he himself supposed, for though the physical state
effected nothing in itself, its first consequence, the growth of an
ideal love, became his soul's salvation.

Of all that happened during the Easter term we can know nothing, save
that it was spring, that they were supremely happy, and that Considine
was blind ... blind, that is, to everything in the case but the results
of Arthur's infatuation.  These, indeed, were so obvious that he could
not very well miss them.  The boy's essential childishness, the thing
that had added an aspect of horror to his habits of stealth and
cruelty, gradually disappeared.  He began to grow up.  I mean that his
mind grew up, for he had already shown a premature physical
development.  Practically the space of a single term had changed him
from a child into a man.  Considine, seeing this, innocently flattered
himself upon the admirable results of his educational system.  A
country life, with plenty of exercise in the open air, and an
unconventional but logical type of literary education that was his own
invention.  Result: "_Mens sana in corpore sano_."  Arthur was a show
case, and seemed to make possible the acquisition of a long series of
"difficult" pupils at enormous and suitable fees.

When once the boy got going, the rate of his mental development made it
difficult for Considine to keep pace with him.  His mind, that had once
been slow, worked with a sort of feverish activity, as though he were
subconsciously aware that he had whole years of leeway to make up.  The
other pupils, who had always taken Arthur's comparative dulness for
granted, and looked down upon him for it, noticed the change, and found
that if they were not careful he would outstrip them.  At the same time
they began to discover that he was a thoroughly good fellow and to
wonder how on earth they had been so mistaken in him before.  From
being something of an outcast he now became a favourite, asserting, for
the first time, the full advantage of his physical maturity.

Considine was quick to take advantage of the change.  He had always
been tempted by the idea of examination successes, and although he
realised the disadvantage with which Arthur, in his renaissance, was
starting, he saw no reason why the boy should not eventually do him
credit in some public competition.  There should be no difficulty for
example, in getting him into Sandhurst ... or, perhaps, Woolwich, as
his new aptitude for mathematics suggested.  He wrote at length to Mrs.
Payne, discussing these possibilities.  This was his quiet and
considered way of revealing to her his success.

Mrs. Payne, whose glimpses of the new Arthur in the Christmas holidays
had buoyed her with hopes in which she dared not place too much faith,
replied to his letter in a fever of excitement.  Was it really possible
to think of such a career?  Was there now no fear that if Arthur went
to Woolwich or Sandhurst something terrible might happen?  Of course,
seeing what he had done already, she was prepared to trust Dr.
Considine's judgment in everything; but in any case, if the future that
he suggested were remotely possible, she would very much rather that
Arthur should not go into the army.  One of their neighbours had lately
been killed in the Boer War.

Her letter paved the way for Considine's triumph.  He wrote and told
her that he thought he could now safely say that there was nothing at
all abnormal about her son.  He did not wish to take undue credit for
the revolutionary change in Arthur's disposition, but could not help
feeling that the boy was a credit to the Lapton regime.  Seeing that
Arthur was her only son he could quite understand her objection to his
adopting the hazardous calling of a soldier.  As an alternative he now
suggested the Civil Service.  Arthur's money--if he might descend to
such a practical consideration--would be extremely useful to him if he
served under the Foreign Office.  Of course he could not promise
success, but under the new conditions he thought it worth while trying
to prepare Arthur for one of the examinations.  Mrs. Payne consented.
She only hoped that Considine had not been deceived.

Arthur did not object to the process of cramming that he now underwent
at Considine's hands.  His newly-awakened thirst for knowledge was not
easily quenched.  Considine, taking his education as a serious
proposition for the first time, naturally considered that the many
hours that Arthur spent with Gabrielle were waste.  He also felt that
since he was now acceptable to them as a sportsman, Arthur should take
his place again with the other boys.  He had not calculated the effect
of his decision on Gabrielle or on Arthur himself.  That it could have
any effect at all upon her had never entered his mind.

Gabrielle painfully decided that she would say nothing, but Arthur
found himself torn between two interests.  Even during the growth of
his devotion to Gabrielle he had always felt a sneaking suspicion that
his constant enjoyment of her society was a little derogatory to his
manly dignity.  He knew that his big limbs were made for more active
pursuits than walking over a hillside at a woman's pace, or driving a
pony-cart into Dartmouth.  At the same time he saw that he could not
now desert her without a feeling of shame in addition to that of love.

"What shall I do about it?" he said to her.

"You must do what you think right."  The sentence would have had no
meaning less than six months before.

"It isn't that exactly, I suppose I must do what Dr. Considine orders."

"Very well....  You must do what he orders."

"I shall never see you, Mrs. Considine!"  She was still Mrs. Considine
to him.  For answer she only took his hand and smiled.

From that time he followed obediently his master's plans.  Considine
kept him busy, and the walks and drives that he had taken with
Gabrielle almost ceased.  At first, making a deliberate sacrifice, she
had wondered if she would lose him; but she need never have feared
this.  The moments in which they met were stolen and therefore sweet.
She still remained the confidante of all his emotions and thoughts, and
since the time in which these confidences could be given to her was now
so short, each moment of it burned with a new intensity.  They met by
calculated chances and in strange places; and their meetings were
lovers' meetings, even if they never spoke of love.

If the holidays at Christmas had been a desolation to Gabrielle, her
parting from Arthur next Easter was clouded by a sense of more positive
want.  It was the season of lovers, days of bright sunshine, evenings
of a surpassing tenderness.  She went to the station with him in the
pony-cart alone.  She sat like a statue in the trap while the train
puffed its way slowly up the gradient and its noise died away in a
rhythmical rumble.  When she awoke to the fact that he had gone she
felt a sudden impulse to do something desperate, if only she could
think of anything desperate to do.  She felt that she would like to
shock Considine and the Halbertons and the whole county, to be, for one
moment, outrageous and unrestrained.  But she couldn't do anything of
the kind; her wild spark of energy seemed so pathetically small and
feeble against the vast inertia of that dreamy countryside.  Even if
she were to cry out at the top of her voice she couldn't assert her
identity; those huge passive folds of green country wouldn't believe
her.  They wouldn't accept the fact that she was Gabrielle Hewish, now
called Considine.  To them she was just the wife of a country parson
dawdling through the leafy lanes in a pony-trap.  She lashed the pony
into a canter, but felt no better for it.  The animal settled down
again into his shamble.  No power on earth could make him keep on
cantering over the hills of the South Hams, and he knew it.

Arrived at Lapton she handed over the pony to a groom and set off
walking violently across country, hoping in this way to cool the heat
of her blood.  She felt that she would like to go on walking till she
dropped, but as soon as her limbs began to tire she knew that this
would not bring her content.  She hurried back to the Manor a few
minutes late for dinner.  Considine, to whom unpunctuality was the
eighth deadly sin, was pacing up and down the hall, his hands behind
his back, with the impatience of an animal prowling in a cage.

"Ah, here you are at last!" he said.

They went in to dinner, but she could not eat.  Considine's appetite
was as regular as everything else in his time-table.  He ate heartily
and methodically.  She found it difficult to sit still and watch him
eating.

"What's the matter with you?" he said at last.

"I don't know.  I'm restless to-day."

"Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't rest now that the house is
empty again.  The holidays come as a great relief in a place like this.
And the Spring Term is always the most trying."

He watched her narrowly, then and for several days afterwards.  When he
became solicitous about her health she always knew that he was
wondering if at last she was going to fulfil his desire for a child of
his own.  On these occasions he overwhelmed her with attentions.

Meanwhile Arthur, in the best of spirits, had arrived at Overton.  Mrs.
Payne awaited him in a state of tremulous emotion.  Now, for the first
time, she was to see her son made whole.  Her elation was not without
misgiving, for the news of the miracle was almost too good to be true;
she couldn't help feeling that the Considines had judged him with a
scrutiny more superficial than her own, and though it was not for her
to dispute the intellectual blossoming that had raised such hopes in
his master, she couldn't be sure about the deeper, moral change until
she had seen for herself.  Certainly his appearance on the station
platform gave her a sudden thrill of pleasure.  Her boy had become a
man; his body had gained in solidity and balance, and his upper lip was
fledged with a fair down.  He took her in his arms and kissed her with
a serious manliness that was new to her, and made her heart leap with
pride.  His voice, too, had deepened.  It was soft and low and
uncannily like his father's.  Time after time she was struck by little
tricks of gesture and expression that were familiar to her, but had
never appeared in him before.  He was indeed a stranger, yet a hundred
times more lovable than the son she had known.

A couple of days convinced her that the change was not merely something
added, but vital and elemental.  He showed it in a multitude of small
things--in his consideration for the servants, in his attentions to
herself, in the serious interest that he showed in matters that had not
touched him before, in affairs, in books, in newspaper politics.  Even
so she had been flattered too often by transient improvements to be
convinced.  Deliberately and fearfully she tested him, but never found
him wanting.  Then her joy and thankfulness were too deep for words.

And yet the position was not without its awkwardness.  She knew that
Arthur was kinder, more human, and--if that were possible to her--more
lovable, but, in spite of these things, she could not help feeling that
there was something in this new and delightful nature that was foreign
to herself ... foreign, and even, subtly, hostile.  It seemed to her
that in some peculiar way he was on the defensive.  Up to a certain
point she could enter freely into his confidence, but after that point
she knew in her heart that there was something that he denied her.
Now, more than ever in her life, she wanted to feel that he was wholly
hers; and now, if she were to confess the truth, he seemed less hers
than he had ever been before.  At times, indeed, when their intimacy
should have been at its best, she felt that she had lost him
altogether, and that his mind was hundreds of miles away from her, as
indeed it was.  She consoled herself by supposing that his life was now
so crowded with new interests and dreams of future adventure that he
could be forgiven if their wonder enthralled and overwhelmed him.  It
was indeed a wonderful thing if this son of hers, at the age of
seventeen, should see life with the eyes of a child new-born into the
world.  She envied him this ecstasy, even though its real explanation
was far simpler than that which she imagined.  When he walked in
silence with her through the fields, or sat dreaming under the cedar on
the lawn when evening came, it is possible that Arthur had sight of the
new heaven and new earth that she imagined, for his eyes were lover's
eyes.  But this she never guessed.




XVI

In the last week of the holidays, if only Mrs.  Payne had been more
acute, she might have surprised his secret.  Walking the lowest of
their meadows on the side of Bredon Hill, they came suddenly upon a
southern slope already powdered with the flowers of cowslips.  This
cloth of gold was the chief glory of their spring, blooming mile on
mile of meadowland, and drenching the air with a faint perfume.  Mrs.
Payne stooped to pick some, for the scent provoked so many memories,
and to her it was one of the sensations that returned year by year with
amazing freshness--that and the spice of pinks in early summer or the
green odour of phlox.  "Smell them, they smell like wine," she said,
giving her bunch to Arthur.

"Mrs.  Considine told me that there are no cowslips in their part of
Devon," he said.  And then, after a moment of hesitation, he went down
on his knees and began to pick the flowers.  The hue of their smooth
stalks was pale as the first apple-leaves, springing straight and
slender each above its leafy mat.

"Why are you picking so many?  They're more beautiful as they are."

"If they haven't any I'd like to send her some?"

He went on picking cowslips till the light faded from the fields.  Next
morning he packed them carefully, and posted them, with a letter, to
Lapton.  She thought it very charming and thoughtful of him to send
Mrs. Considine the flowers.  It merely struck her as typical of his new
nature, and she thought it rather shabby of Gabrielle, when, after
three days of waiting, she had not acknowledged the gift.  Altogether
she felt that Mrs.  Considine had been rather a broken reed as far as
Arthur was concerned.  In the beginning she had taken to her, and
expected quite a lot of her.  Arthur, too, seemed disturbed that she
did not reply.  Day after day he waited for a letter from Lapton with
eagerness.  There was no reason why he shouldn't have been anxious to
know that his present had not gone astray.  She had not seen the note
that Arthur posted with his flowers.

With no more than the vaguest mistrust--for she still felt that in some
way she had fallen short of full possession, Mrs.  Payne saw him return
to Lapton for the summer term.  During the early weeks Arthur scarcely
ever wrote to her, and when she protested mildly, his reply seemed to
her evasive.  It was a dutiful reply, and though she couldn't help
admitting that in Arthur the recognition of any duty was a new thing,
the suspicion that for some obscure reason she was losing him,
persisted.  She was not in the ordinary way a woman of acute
intuitions, but her whole mind had been so wrapped up in that son of
hers that she was sensitive to the smallest changes of tone, and she
knew that while he was writing her letters his head had been full of
other things.  At the same time she had sense enough to see that with
his recovery Arthur's life had become crowded with so many new
interests that she couldn't reasonably expect the old degree of
absorption in herself.  This was the price of his recovery, and she
determined to pay it without grudging.

She settled down into this state of patience and resignation.  She even
prepared to deny herself her usual privilege of a visit to Lapton in
term-time, feeling that it would be unfair of her to interrupt the
progress of Considine's remarkable system.  In the meantime she kept in
touch with Arthur through her jealous care of the things that he had
left behind, in the arrangement of his books, in the mending of his
clothes, and in the preparation of an upstairs room that he had begun
to turn into a study for his holiday reading.  On these inanimate
traces of him she lavished a peculiar tenderness, for their presence
had the effect of making her feel less lonely.

One day she took up to his new study a number of note-books that he had
used during the Easter holidays.  When he had sat out under the cedar
in the evenings she had often noticed him writing with a pencil though
she had never thought to enquire what he was doing.  Now, with a chance
curiosity, she happened to open one of these books and examine what he
had written.  She saw at once that they were verses, and laughed at the
idea.  But when she had read one or two of his poems she laughed no
longer.  She realised at once that they were love-poems, feeble and
amateurish in their expression, but daringly sensual and passionate in
their content.  They made the good woman blush--her husband had never
been so direct in his days of courtship--but to her blushes succeeded a
moment of fierce maternal alarm.  It was impossible, she thought, that
anyone innocent of a violent sexual passion could have conceived the
ideas that the verses contained.  They were fully as physical, and
nearly as direct, as the love-songs of Herrick.  She was not only
shocked, but frightened, for her long years of widowhood had isolated
her from all feelings of the kind that Arthur expressed so glibly.  She
read the poems over again and again.  She could not sleep at night for
thinking of them.  In the end she became convinced that the thing which
she had feared most had come to pass; that even if the coming of
manhood had brought to Arthur the birth of a moral sense in matters of
ordinary social intercourse, the gain had been neutralised by the
release of a new instinct that was powerful enough to wreck the rest.
The boy was obviously and violently in love--not with any shadowy
dreamed ideal, but actually with a woman of definite physical
attributes.  It was almost possible to reconstruct a picture from the
poems.  A skin of ivory, grey eyes, hair that was like night, red lips,
pale hands, all rather commonplace, but, none the less, damningly
definite.

It is curious that the image of Gabrielle never suggested itself to
her.  Perhaps it was the fact that Arthur, for some unaccountable
reason, probably because he usually saw them in a half-light, had made
her violet eyes--an unmistakable feature--grey.  As the matter stood
Mrs. Payne was convinced that he had become entangled, and intimately
entangled, with some dangerous and designing woman.  It was her plain
duty to save him.  The only thing that restrained her from immediate
action was the fear that any big emotional disturbance might undo the
work that Considine had already accomplished.  She didn't in the least
connect the passion with the reformation, and yet she wondered if
interference with the one might somehow prejudice the other.  It was a
harrowing dilemma.

In the end, with her accustomed courage, she decided to face the risk.
At any rate no harm need be done by her taking Considine into her
confidence.  She encouraged herself with a pathetic trust in his
stability and wisdom in all matters that affected Arthur.  Without even
the warning of a telegram she made her decision, ordered the carriage
for the station and set off for Lapton.

She arrived there late on a Saturday night to the astonishment of the
Considines, who had disposed of the boys for the evening, and were
sitting together in the library.  Considine, who prided himself on
never being surprised by an emergency, welcomed her as if there were
nothing unusual in her visit, and Gabrielle, a little nervous, went off
to see the housekeeper, and arrange about a room for the visitor.  At
the door Mrs. Payne stopped her.  "If you don't mind," she said, "I
should be glad if you wouldn't let Arthur know that I'm here."

Considine was quick to agree: "Certainly not, if you wish it."

Gabrielle left them and he prepared to hear her story.  She was very
agitated, and found it difficult to express herself.  For a little
time, in spite of Considine's encouragements, she beat about the bush.
She felt that her revelation would amount to a criticism of Considine's
management.

At last, realising that she was getting no further, she produced her
documents and handed them to him.

Considine examined them slowly and judicially without a flicker of
emotion.  It seemed to Mrs. Payne a very solemn moment, full of awful
possibilities.  She waited breathlessly for his verdict.

"Well?" he said at last, putting the papers aside.

"Arthur wrote them."

"Yes....  I recognised his writing."

"He is in love with some woman."

"Presumably ... yes.  But I'm not so sure of that."

"What do you mean?"  She gasped at the prospect of relief.

He explained to her at length.  It was a very common thing for boys of
Arthur's age, he said, to write verse.

"Verses of that kind?"

Yes... even verses of that kind.  To be perfectly candid he himself,
when a boy in his teens, had done very much the same sort of thing.  It
was true perhaps that the verses which he had written had not been
quite so ... perhaps frank was the best word.  On the other hand his
own development had followed more normal lines.  He hadn't, in the
manner of Arthur, burst suddenly into blossom.  All boys wrote verses.
Often they wrote verses of an amatory character, not particularly
because they happened to be in love, but because the bulk of English
lyrical poetry, to which they went for their models, was, regrettably,
of an amatory character.  At this stage in a boy's development, even in
the development of the greatest poets (and Arthur, he noticed in
passing, did not show any signs of amazing genius) the verses were
usually imitative.  It rather looked as if he had been reading Herrick,
or possibly the Shakespeare sonnets ... the dark lady, you know.
Seriously, he didn't think there was anything to worry about.  He
folded the papers and handed them back to her.

For once in a way Considine didn't satisfy her.  There were other
things, she said.  Things that she hadn't attached any value to at the
time when they happened, but which now seemed significant.  When she
came to think of it Arthur's whole behaviour during the holidays had
been that of a youth who was in love.  With all deference to Dr.
Considine she felt that she couldn't pass the matter over.  It was her
plain duty to enquire into it, and find, if possible, a more obvious
reason for this strange and sudden outburst.

Considine agreed that no harm could be done by a little quiet
investigation.  At the same time he couldn't possibly see what
opportunities Arthur could have had for falling in love at Lapton.

"We're very isolated here," he said.  "The Manor is a kingdom in
itself.  It seems to me that circumstances would force him to invent an
ideal for the want of any living model."

She shook her head.  There was no isolation, she said, into which love
could not enter; and this, in the face of classical precedent,
Considine was forced to admit.  Could she, then, make any suggestions?

Mrs. Payne said, "Servants," and blushed.

Considine also blushed, but with irritation.  The suggestion brought
the matter uncomfortably near home.

"I think you can put that out of your mind," he said.  "I'll admit that
I did not consider this point when I engaged them, but I do not think
you'll find any one peculiarly attractive among them."

"They're women," said Mrs. Payne obstinately.

It seemed to her that Considine's incredulity was forcing them both
into a blind alley.

"If you don't mind," she said, "I think it would be better for me to
talk the matter over with your wife.  A woman, if you'll allow me to
say so, is much more acutely sensitive to ... this kind of thing."

Again Considine blushed.  The prospect of engaging Gabrielle in the
matter was altogether against his principles.  He had always made it a
rule that her essential femininity should not be compromised by any
contact with the business of the school.  He did not even like her to
take an intimate share in the management of the house.  After all she
was a Hewish and a cousin of the august Halbertons.  That was why he
had employed Mrs. Bemerton as housekeeper.

"I shall be obliged," he said, "if you don't mention a matter that may
possibly become unsavoury, to Mrs. Considine.  She knows nothing of the
servants, and I prefer her to take no part in the affairs of my pupils."

Altogether the good woman felt that she had been snubbed for her pains.
She had expected a great deal from Considine, and even more from
Gabrielle.  Still, if Considine objected to his wife being consulted,
she was prepared to accept his decision.  The only course that remained
open to her was to make enquiries for herself, and determine, by
observation, what women were possibly available for the disposal of
Arthur's affections.

"Very well," she said with a sigh.  "If you don't wish me to speak to
your wife, of course I won't."

"If you'll pardon my saying so, I think you're unduly anxious.  After
all, the most obvious thing is to ask Arthur himself.  Why not do that?"

She hesitated and then spoke the truth.

"I'm afraid he'd tell me a lie.  I don't want him to do that ... now.
I'd much rather find out for myself.  I wish I could believe you.  I do
indeed."

She paused for a moment and then said, almost as if she were speaking
to herself, "There's no place where there aren't opportunities.
Farmer's daughters ... village girls.  There are more women in the
world than there are men."

He couldn't help smiling at the mathematical accuracy of her remark,
but once more he shook his head.

"At any rate," she said, returning to the practical aspect of the case,
"I suppose you've no objection to my staying here for a day or two, and
keeping my eyes open.  Failing anything else I will speak to Arthur
about it."

"Please consider the house your own," said Considine, who had now
recovered his usual politeness.

"Thank you," she said.  "You're very kind.  But you know how grateful I
am to you already."

Mrs. Considine returned, and a little later showed her to her room.  In
the candle-light of the passage Mrs. Payne was assailed by an
overwhelming desire to break her promise and disclose her troubles to
Gabrielle.  She felt that her quest was so lonely.  Gabrielle seemed to
her sympathetic and she knew that it would be a great relief to her to
discuss the affair with another woman.  As they paused at her bedroom
door, her old attraction towards Mrs. Considine that had once
culminated in an impulsive kiss took hold of her again.  She wanted,
for some obscure reason, to kiss Gabrielle once more.  Perhaps there
was something in the attraction of her opposite physical type that
accounted for this impulse as well as for Arthur's infatuation.  For
the present she suppressed her inclination.  After all Considine had
acted fairly enough with her, and she felt that she could not fail him
in a point of honour.

Alone in her room she read over Arthur's poems again.  Now that she was
so near to him they impressed her less with a sense of fear and anxiety
than with one of pity and of love.  He was her child, and therefore to
be protected and caressed.  She found it difficult not to leave her
room in the night, and grope her way along the creaking corridors to
the room in which she knew he was sleeping.  She wanted to kiss him and
hold him in her arms.  She placed the poems on the table at her bedside
and blew out the candle.  It was unfortunate for her bewilderment that
Arthur had not left in his notebook the rough copy of the verses that
he had sent to Gabrielle with the box of cowslips, the verses to which
she had not dared to reply.

Next morning at breakfast Arthur and his mother met.  All through the
holidays she had been indefinitely conscious of an awkwardness between
them; now, with so much guilty knowledge in her mind, the relation
became definitely embarrassing.  She wondered if he felt it as deeply
as she did.  Certainly he showed no sign of any emotion but surprise at
her visit.

"But if you came last night, why on earth didn't you come along to my
room?" he said.  "And why are you so mysterious?  What's it all about?"

She put him off as well as she could.  "I wanted to see you, that was
all," she said.  "I thought you would be pleased by the surprise," and
then: "You don't seem very pleased."

"Of course I'm pleased," he said, blushing.  "But I don't understand
it."

Whatever he said she knew in her heart that she wasn't wanted.  It was
a bitter thing to realise, but it made her more than ever certain that
there was a secret to be disclosed.

After breakfast the Sunday morning routine of a country house began.
She and Arthur walked together over the fields to church.  The whole
country breathed a lazy atmosphere of early summer.  Its beauty and its
placidity mocked her.  Before them went the Considines.  He wore a long
cassock that swept the grass, as they went, while Gabrielle walked in
silence at his side.  Never once in their journey did she look back.
It struck Mrs. Payne for the first time how young she was, how very
much younger and more supple than her husband.  And yet they seemed to
be happy.

The service was the usual slow ceremony of a village church, Considine
moving with the dignity of his vestments from the lectern and the altar
to the organ seat which he also occupied.  Arthur, standing or kneeling
at his mother's side, appeared to be properly engrossed in the service.
Singing the psalms beside him she became aware how much of a man he was
now, for his voice, that had been cracking for several years, had now
sunk to a deep and sonorous bass.

It was not until Considine ascended the pulpit and began to preach,
that Mrs. Payne became conscious of anything extraordinary.  At first
she was held by the sermon, which was unusually well constructed, but
in the middle of it she became aware that Arthur was not listening.  He
sat straight in the pew beside her as though he were intent on the
preacher, but all the time his eyes were wandering to the other side of
the aisle.  Mrs. Payne tried to follow their direction.  Here,
presumably, was a fairly representative collection of the female
inhabitants of the village.  Here she might expect to find the farmer's
daughter, or, in the last emergency, the housemaid, on whom his
affections were centred.  She heard no more of Considine, only watching
Arthur's eyes, and watching, she soon discovered that these were for
Mrs. Considine and her alone.  She could not deny the fact that
Gabrielle, with her fine pale profile set against a pillar of grey
sandstone, was a creature of amazing beauty.  She herself was
fascinated by this vision of refinement and grace to such a degree that
she almost shared in Arthur's rapture.

For a little while she could not be sure of it, for this was the last
possibility that had entered her mind: but at last it seemed that
Gabrielle became conscious of the gaze that she could not see.
Suddenly, without the least warning, she turned her head in Arthur's
direction.  Their eyes met.  She blushed faintly, and, at the same
moment, became aware of Mrs. Payne.  The blush deepened, spreading into
the ivory whiteness of her neck; and Mrs. Payne had no need to look at
her any longer, for she knew.

Her mind leapt quickly to the whole situation.  In the light of this
evidence she recalled a hundred things that had not even puzzled her
before.  She saw the reason for the strange fate that had overtaken
their correspondence, she divined the secret of Gabrielle's sudden
reticence, and the break in Arthur's frank enthusiasms.  She knew that
she had made a triumphant discovery, but in her elation realised that
it would be wiser to go gently.  This was a secret that could not be
blurted out without disaster.  The situation needed careful handling.

Once in possession of certain knowledge it was no longer difficult for
her to interpret Arthur's moods.  In the afternoon when they sat out
under the trees on the lawn, she stumbled on a strange corroboration.
She had fallen into a doze in a lounge chair at his side, and when she
awoke she saw that he was reading poetry.  He seemed to be reading one
poem over and over again, and a sudden curiosity made her ask what he
was reading.  "Tennyson," he said, and closed the book.  But he had
left a long grass for marker between the pages, and when they moved
towards the house at tea-time she picked up the book and opened it.
Her eyes fell upon a significant stanza from "Maud."

  She came to the village church,
  And sat by a pillar alone;
  An angel watching an urn
  Wept over her, carved in stone:
  And once, but once, she lifted her eyes,
  And suddenly, sweetly, strangely blushed,
  To find they were met by my own ...


Mrs. Payne's heart beat faster as she read the verse.  Later in the
day, to test him, she asked him what he had been reading.  She half
expected him to tell her a lie, but, strangely enough, it was the truth
that he gave her.

"What do you like about 'Maud'?" she said.

"I like it all," he replied.  "It's the kind of thing that anyone might
feel."  He hesitated.  "And there's one part of it in particular----"

She waited, with her heart in her mouth.

"What is that?" she said.

"Oh, right at the beginning.  I don't suppose it would mean much to
you.  I can't remember it exactly, but it starts like this:

  I hate the dreadful hollow behind the little wood,
  Its lips in the field above are dabbled with blood-red heath,
  The red-ribbed ledges drip with a silent horror of blood ...

I can't remember any more..."

"But why should that appeal to you?" she asked, disappointed.

"I don't know.  It reminds me of something that happened to me once."

She did not feel that it would be profitable to press him further on
this uninteresting point.




XVII

All that afternoon and evening Mrs. Payne watched them.  The role of
detective was unnatural to her, and once or twice she couldn't help
feeling that it was unworthy, and that she herself was an ogress, they
were so young and so unsuspicious.  She had an impression not that they
were deliberately hiding anything from her, but that the understanding
between them somehow tacitly excluded her from their intimacy.  She
felt out of it at Lapton, hovering impotently on the edge of the magic
circle that their passion had created.  The strangest thing of all
about this amazing relation of theirs was its air of innocence.  She
was so keenly aware of this, and felt herself so likely to fall a
victim to the idea's persuasions, that she had to make an unusual
effort, to remain awake and alive to her plain duty, and to the fact
that this simple and natural love affair was a crime against society, a
disaster that might wreck not only Considine's home, but all Arthur's
future.

She could not make up her mind what to do, and this unsettled her, for
in the ordinary way she was a woman of determination who acted first
and afterwards considered the propriety of her actions.  Her first
impulse was to go straight to Considine and say, "I told you so."  This
course presented her with the opportunity of an easy triumph, and was
in keeping with her downright traditions; but in this case she was not
in the least anxious to make a personal score.  She saw that if she
told Considine she would be firing the train to an explosion that might
end in nothing but useless wreckage.  Considine, for instance,
admittedly touchy on the subject of Gabrielle, might refuse to believe
her and show her the door.  Arthur would be forced to leave Lapton; and
she thought too highly of Considine's influence on him to run the risk
of a relapse.  On the other hand Considine might believe her, and put
the very worst construction on what she told him.  She saw the
possibility of Arthur's being landed in the Divorce Court, which was
unthinkable.  She abandoned the idea of approaching Considine at all.

The next course that suggested itself was that of tackling Arthur; but
the atmosphere of mistrust, if not of actual hostility, that at present
involved their relations made her think twice about this.  She could
not dare to treat Arthur as a normal person, for she knew that his hold
on normality was recent and precarious, and feared that a violent or
passionate scene might undo in a moment all the developments that had
been accomplished in the last six months.  Even if they escaped this
catastrophe it was possible that she might offend him so deeply as to
lose him.

There remained Gabrielle, and though she knew that she was old enough
to speak to Gabrielle with the authority of a mother, she felt that
this would be impossible at Lapton.  It was a curious attitude that she
found difficult to explain, but it seemed to her that to tackle Mrs.
Considine in her husband's house was dangerous, that it would give to
Gabrielle an unreasonable but inevitable advantage.  At Lapton Mrs.
Payne felt she was a stranger, insecure of her ground, and therefore in
an inferior position; and this struck her more forcibly when she
reflected that, though she was confident of the rightness of her
conclusions, the actual evidence that she possessed was extremely
small.  She admitted to herself that it would be difficult to carry her
point on the strength of looks and blushes, and was thankful that she
had not been betrayed by her instincts into hasty action.

Lying sleepless on her bed that night with her eyes open in the dark
she evolved a new plan that would not only give her the advantage of
choosing the site of the coming struggle, but would eliminate the
uncertain element of Considine and probably provide her with evidence
to strengthen her charge.  This change of plan involved a duplicity
against which her straightforward nature rebelled, but with Arthur's
future at stake she would have stopped at nothing.  After breakfast on
the Monday morning she went to Considine in his study, thanked him for
his kind consideration, and confessed that she had been needlessly
alarmed.  Considine gracefully accepted this confession and the implied
apology, assuring her once more that there was really nothing to worry
about.  Then, very carefully she made another suggestion.  It was usual
at Lapton for the pupils to go home for a long week-end at half term.
She wondered if Mrs. Considine would like to come back to Overton with
Arthur?  The rest and change would do her good, and it would be
interesting for Gabrielle, who had seen so little of England, to visit
Cotswold.  Mrs. Payne promised to take great care of her.  She gave her
invitation in a way that suggested that it was an attempt to make
amends for her suspicions.  It conveyed at the same time an implicit
confidence and an anxiety to please.

Considine tumbled headlong into her trap.  He thanked her for her
invitation, saying that he had no objection, but that Gabrielle, of
course, must decide for herself.  His tone made it clear that such a
visit must be regarded as a condescension.  The Halbertons, he said,
had been begging Gabrielle for a long time to spend a week with them,
but she was devoted to Lapton.

"At any rate I may ask her?" said Mrs. Payne.

"Certainly, certainly--you'll find her in the garden."

Mrs. Payne was in some doubt as to what Gabrielle's answer would be.

She moved to the proposal obliquely, feeling like a conspirator, and
one so unused to conspiracy that her manner was bound to betray her.
They began by talking about the gardens at Overton, the beauty of
Cotswold stone, the essential difference of her country from that in
which Lapton lay.

"You can't know England," she said, "until you've seen the Vale of
Evesham."

She didn't care twopence ha'penny for the Vale of Evesham--she was just
talking for time.  Gabrielle listened to her very quietly, and Mrs.
Payne took her silence for evidence that she was playing her hand
badly.  This flustered her.  She became conscious of the fact that
nature had built her too roughly for diplomacy.  Not daring to hedge
any longer she blurted out her invitation, and Gabrielle, instantly
delighted, accepted, transforming herself, in Mrs. Payne's mind from a
subtle designing creature into something very like a victim.  So, for
one moment she appeared; but in the next Mrs. Payne felt nothing but
exultation at the successful beginning of her plan.

"Arthur has told me that there are nightingales at Overton," said
Gabrielle dreamily.  "I wonder if I shall hear one?  There are no
nightingales in Ireland or in this part of England."  And although Mrs.
Payne could hardly accept an interest in ornithology for explanation of
her readiness to come to Overton, she was quick to promise that
nightingales should be in full song at the next weekend.

Thus having laid her plans, she resisted, though with difficulty, all
her impulses to continue her search for evidence.  It was hard to do
so, for all through the evening Gabrielle and Arthur were together in
her presence, and she found it impossible not to watch them out of the
corner of her eye or strain her ears to catch what they were saying;
but she realised that the least slip at this stage might ruin her
chances of success, and devoted her attention or as much of it as she
could muster, to Considine.  Next morning, with a sense of successful
strategy, she returned to Overton by an early train.

The rest of the week was for her a period of acute suspense.  For
Gabrielle and Arthur it was one of delightful anticipation.  On Friday
at midday Considine drove them to Totnes station, the scene of their
last parting, and set them on their journey.  They watched him standing
serious on the platform as the train went out, and when they lost sight
of his tall figure at a curve in the line, it seemed to them as though
the last possible shadow had been lifted from them.  In the first part
of their journey a soft rain hid the shapes of the country through
which they passed, so soft that they could keep the windows open, and
yet so dense as to give them a feeling of delicious loneliness, for
they could see nothing but the grassed embankments starred with
primroses.  All through the Devon valleys and over the turf moors of
Somerset this weather held.  It was not until they had changed at
Bristol and crept under the escarpment of the lower Cotswolds that the
air cleared.

At a junction below the southern end of Bredon they emerged in an air
that this vast sheeting of fine moisture had washed into a state of
brilliant clarity.  The evening through which they drove to Overton was
full of birdsong and sweet with the smell of young and tender green.
There was not a breath of wind, but the sky was cool, and into it the
old trees lifted their branches with an air of youth and vernal
strength.  When the road climbed, scattered woodlands stretched beneath
them in clear and comely contours.  A hovering kestrel hung poised like
a spider swinging from a thread.  She swooped, and her chestnut back
was lit into flame.  The great elms that gird the village of Overton
received them.  Arthur touched up the horse as they swung past the
church and a row of cottages with long trim gardens.

Mrs. Payne, who was working on the herbaceous border in front of the
house, heard the grating of the carriage wheels on the gravel of the
drive.  She took off her gardening gloves and came to meet them.
Arthur jumped down from the carriage and kissed his mother.  Gabrielle,
also approaching her, put up her face to be kissed, and Mrs. Payne, who
could not very well refuse her, felt that the kiss was a kind of
betrayal.  She wished, in her instinctive honesty, that it could have
been avoided.

It was a bad beginning, and gave her a hint of the kind of emotional
conflict that she had let herself in for when she assumed the role of
detective.  What made it a hundred times worse was the fact that she
really liked kissing Gabrielle, for her kindly heart warmed to the girl
again as it had warmed when first they met.  "I'm sentimental," she
thought, "for heaven's sake let us get it over!"

Gabrielle, however, was quite unconscious of the struggle that divided
Mrs. Payne's breast.  She was a child launched on a holiday with the
friend of her choice in the most delightful season of the year.  She
didn't scent any hostility in the atmosphere of Overton; and this was
strange in a person who moved through life by the aid of intuitions
rather than reasons.  She felt contented at Overton, just as she had
felt contented at Roscarna.  She was more at home there than she could
ever have been at Lapton or Clonderriff; her mind was as sensitive to
sky changes as the surface of a lonely lake.  Mrs. Payne had given her
an airy bedroom facing west, and while the maid unpacked her things
Gabrielle stood at the window looking out over meadows, golden in the
low sun.  Beneath her lay the lawns, smooth and kempt and of a rich, an
almost Irish green, on which the black shadows of cedar branches were
spread.  A tall hedge of privet divided the lawns from the vegetable
garden in which a man was working methodically.  She saw the pattern of
paths and hedges from above as though they were lines in a picture.  In
the middle of the lawn stood a square of clipped yew trees, making a
hollow chamber of the kind that formal gardeners call a yew-parlour,
with a stone sundial in the middle of it.  "What a jolly place for
children to play in," she thought.  A blackbird broke into a whistle in
the privet hedge and brought her heart to her mouth.  Could any
nightingale sing sweeter?

"I think that is all, madam," said the maid demurely.  Gabrielle smiled
at her and thanked her, and the girl smiled back.  Like everything else
in Mrs. Payne's admirably managed house she was fresh and clean,
homelier than the frigid servants at Halberton House, happier--that was
the only word--than Gabrielle's own servants at Lapton.  Yes,
happier----

When she came downstairs Arthur was waiting for her.

"I thought you were never coming," he said.  Their time was short and
he was anxious to show her all the altars of his childhood.  They met
Mrs. Payne in the hall.  She smiled at them with encouragement, for it
was part of her settled plan to let them have their own way and so
tempt them into a naturalness that might betray them.  She, too, had
the feeling that she was fighting against time.

Arthur was full of enthusiasms.  They went together to the stables,
where he introduced her to Hollis, the coachman standing in his
shirtsleeves in a saddle-room that smelt of harness-polish.  He stood
in front of a cracked mirror brushing his hair, hissing softly, as
though he were grooming a horse, and round his waist was a red-striped
belt of the webbing out of which a horse's belly-band is made.

"Well, Mr. Arthur, you're looking up finely, sir," he said, touching
his forelock.  Even the stables exhaled the same atmosphere of pleasant
leisure as the house.

"I want you to get a side-saddle ready for Brunette to-morrow, Hollis,"
said Arthur.  "Mrs. Considine and I are going for a ride over the hill."

At the end of the stables they encountered a pair of golden retrievers.
For a moment they stared at Arthur, and then, suddenly recognising him,
made for him together, jumping up with their paws on his shoulders and
licking him with their pale tongues.

"What beauties," Gabrielle cried.

"Yes, they come from Banbury," he said.  "I'll get you a pup next term
if you'd like one."

Their evening was crowded with such small wonders.  "I can't show you
half the things I want to," he said.  "It's ridiculous that you should
only be here for three days."  He would have gone on for ever, and she
had to warn him when the clock in the stables struck seven that they
had only just time to dress for dinner.  On the way upstairs he showed
her his new study, with the bookshelves that he had bought in the last
holidays.

"I do all my writing here," he said, and then suddenly but shyly
emboldened: "it was here that I wrote to you when I sent you the
cowslips."

He had never dared to mention the incident before.

"You didn't answer me," he went on.  "Why didn't you answer me?  I wish
you'd tell me."

"Arthur--I couldn't--you know that I couldn't."

A panic seized her and she went blushing to her room.

She was still flushed with excitement or pleasure when she came down to
dinner.  Mrs. Payne, in a matronly dress of black, sat at the head of
the table with Arthur and Gabrielle on either side of her facing each
other.  The arrangement struck her as a triumph of strategy.  From this
central position she could see them both and intercept any such glances
as had passed between them in the church at Lapton.  In this she was
disappointed, for there was nothing to be seen in the behaviour of
either but a transparent happiness.  "They only want encouragement,"
she thought, and settled down deliberately to put them at their ease, a
proceeding that was quite unnecessary for the last feeling that could
have entered either of their minds was that of guilt.

So the evening passed, in the utmost propriety.  No look, no sign, no
symptom of unusual tenderness appeared.  It even seemed that Gabrielle
was particularly anxious to make the conversation general.  "Oh, you're
artful!" thought Mrs. Payne, "but I'll have you yet."  They talked of
Lapton, of Considine and of the Traceys.  Only once did Mrs. Payne
surprise a single suspicious circumstance.

"I showed Mrs. Considine the dogs, mother," he said.  "She's fallen in
love with Boris."

"Yes, his eyes are like amber," said Gabrielle.

"So I thought I'd like to write to Banbury to-morrow and get her a
puppy."

"Certainly, dear," said Mrs. Payne suavely.  Bedtime came.  Gabrielle
and Arthur shook hands in the most ordinary fashion.  Mrs. Payne,
seeing Gabrielle to her door and submitting, once again, to an
uncomfortable kiss, felt that her triumphant plan had already shown
itself to be a failure.  She went along the passage to her own room
with a sense of bewilderment and defeat.  She could not sleep for
thinking.  She wondered, desperately, if when all other methods had
failed, as she now expected they would, she could possibly approach
their secret from another angle, laying aside her watchful inactivity
and becoming in defiance of all her principles an "agent provocateuse."
If it came to the worst she might be forced to do this, for very little
time was left to her.  If she remained static she would be powerless.
Next day, she reflected, they had planned a ride over the flat top of
Bredon Hill.  She could not go with them; she could not even watch
them; yet who knew what shames might be perpetrated in that secrecy as
they rode through the green lanes of the larch plantations?  Never was
a better solitude made for lovers.  Her imaginings left her tantalised
and thwarted, for she was sure now, more than ever, that there was a
secret to be surprised.

She lay there sleepless in the dark till the stable clock slowly struck
twelve.  Then she sighed to herself and decided that she must try to
sleep.




XVIII

Lying thus, upon the verge of slumber, Mrs. Payne became aware of a
sound of light steps in the corridor outside her room.  She opened her
eyes and lay with tense muscles listening.  The sound was unmistakable,
and the steps came from the direction of Arthur's room, the only one on
that side of hers that was occupied.  The steps came nearer.  Passing
her bedroom door they became tiptoe and cautious, as though the walker,
whoever he might be, was anxious not to arouse her attention.  The
sound passed and grew fainter down the length of the corridor, and she
knew then that the very worst had happened, for Gabrielle's room lay at
the end of the passage.  Many things she had dreaded, but not this last
enormity.

She crept out of bed, neglecting in her anxiety to put on a
dressing-gown, and went softly to the door.  She wondered how she could
open it without making a noise, and if, when she had opened it, she
could hear at such a distance.

Very carefully with her hot hand she turned the door handle and opened
a small chink that fortunately allowed her to look along the passage
towards Gabrielle's room.  Through a window halfway down the corridor
moonlight cut across it, throwing on the floor the distorted shadow of
an Etruscan vase.  She remembered that Arthur's father had bought it in
Italy on their honeymoon, yet, while this thought went through her
mind, her ears were strained to listen.  She could do no more, for the
further end of the passage was plunged by this insulating flood of
moonlight into inscrutable darkness.

It was so quiet that she felt that she had missed him; he had already
entered her room; but while she considered the awful indignity of
surprising him there, the sound of a light tapping on the door's panel
relieved her.  She thanked God that she was still in time.

The knock was repeated and evidently answered, for now she heard him
speak in a whisper.  He called her Mrs. Considine--it was ridiculous!
"Are you awake?" she heard.  "The nightingale--yes, the nightingale.
We could go down into the garden under the trees.  If you're game.  How
splendid of you! ...  Yes, I'll wait below ....  Outside, under your
window."

Before Mrs. Payne could pull herself together she heard his steps
returning.  She closed the door fearfully.  He came along the passage
and stopped for a moment just outside her room.  There was nothing
between them but an oak door, so thin, she felt, that he must surely
hear her anxious breath.  She dared not breathe, but in a moment he
passed by.

Why had he stopped outside her door?  What curious filial instinct had
made him think of her at that moment?  Had he thought kindly, or only
perhaps suspiciously, wondering if she were safely asleep?  She
couldn't tell.  Her mind was too full of disturbing emotions to allow
her to think.  One thing emerged foremost from her confusion, a feeling
of devout thankfulness that her first fears had not been justified, and
as the dread of definite and paralysing defeat lifted from her mind,
she realised with a sudden exultation that chance had given her the
very opportunity for which she had been waiting and scheming.  If she
went carefully she might see them together, alone and unsuspecting, and
know for certain by their behaviour how far matters had gone.

She dared not switch on the light or strike a match for fear that her
windows might become conspicuous.  Very gently she released one of the
blinds, admitting the light of the luminous sky.  She dressed
hurriedly, catching sight of her figure in the long pier glass as she
pulled on her stockings.  For the moment it struck her as faintly
ludicrous to see this middle-aged woman in a long white nightdress
behaving like a creature in a detective story.  It was extravagant.
People of her age and figure and general sobriety didn't do this sort
of thing in real life.  But the seriousness of her mission recalled
her, and while she had been considering the picturesque aspects of the
case she found that she had actually, unconsciously dressed ... and
only just in time, for now she heard the lighter step of Gabrielle in
the passage.

The sound gave her a sudden flush of anger.  She wanted, there and
then, to open her door and ask Gabrielle where she was going.  It was
tantalising to let the thing go on and hold her hand.  She clutched on
to the foot of the bed to save herself from doing anything so rash.
Gabrielle's steps passed, and the house was quiet again.  The most
difficult moment had come.  "I hope to goodness none of the servants
are awake," she thought...

Reaching the top of the staircase she heard them whispering in the
hall.  It seemed that they were going out brazenly by the front door,
and since it seemed to her that to follow them closely would be
dangerous she herself hastened round to the back staircase and let
herself out of the house by a side door set in an angle of the building
that sheltered her.

An eastward drift of cloud came over, hiding the moon, and she was glad
of this, for the crude moonlight had put her to shame by its
brilliance.  She wondered to see the clouds moving so fast, for in the
garden not a tree stirred but one aspen that made a sound as of gentle
rain.  She heard the grating of their feet on the drive, and then, by
the sudden cessation of this sound, guessed that they had stepped on to
the lawn.  Arthur's low voice came to her clearly.  "He's stopped
singing, but I think he'll sing again," and from Gabrielle a whispered
"Yes."

Mrs. Payne could scarcely be certain of the words she heard: she knew
that she ought in some way to get nearer to them, but the expanse of
dewy turf by which they were surrounded made it impossible for her to
approach without being seen.  Very cautiously she cut across to the
left and into the shelter of the privet hedge, along which she stole
until she reached their level.

They stood together in the middle of the lawn without speaking.  At
last Gabrielle shivered.  Arthur noticed it quickly.  "I hope you're
not cold," he said.

"No, I'm not cold--only--only we're so exposed out here.  If we could
get a little more into the shadow I should feel more comfortable----"

"That's easily managed," he said laughing.  "We can go over by the
sundial.  It's called a yew-parlour, I think.  It might have been made
for us."

So they passed into its shade.  Mrs. Payne noticed eagerly that his
hand was not on her arm.  The yew hedge that now sheltered them
concealed her also from their sight, and, greatly relieved, she crept
along her cover of privet into the shadow of a mulberry tree where, by
stooping a little, she could watch them unperceived.

"What a wonderful night," Gabrielle whispered.

"I never knew such a night," he said.  "It feels a bit like that
evening when we stood leaning over the bridge by the lake."

"Don't," she said.  "I want to forget it.  Can you smell the dew?"

"Yes, and the scent of may coming over from the meadows."

"We call it whitethorn in Ireland."

There was a long pause, then he spoke again.

"I think you look sad to-night," he said.  "Are you sorry that you
came?"

"No, no--of course not.  It's the moonlight that makes me paler than
usual.  But I'm always pale.  You shouldn't look at me so closely,
Arthur."

"I love to look at you.  It isn't always that I get the chance.  I just
wanted to be certain that you weren't anxious.  You don't think that we
oughtn't to have come here?"

"No, why shouldn't we?" she said, turning her face away.

Then suddenly, in the edge of the copse beyond the nearest field, the
nightingale began.  The song was so beautiful in the stillness of the
night that even Mrs. Payne, who had other things to think of, felt its
influence.  It was a strange, unearthly moment.

"You hear it?" Arthur whispered; but Gabrielle did not answer; she laid
her hand on his sleeve and Arthur trembled at her touch.  So they stood
listening, close together, while Arthur took the hand that held him.
She smiled and turned her eyes towards him but they could not look at
each other for long.  She surrendered herself to his arms and they
kissed.

Mrs. Payne saw their faces close together in the dusk and their shadowy
bodies entwined.  She could bear it no longer, but turned and groped
her way back along the privet hedge to the door from which she had
first come.  She did not know where she was going or how she went until
she found that she had reached her own bedroom again.  There, in her
dressing-gown, she threw herself on the bed and fell into a fit of
violent sobbing.  She lay there shaken by sobs like a disconsolate
child.  Over in the coppice the nightingale sang exultantly as if he
knew of the wonder that his song had revealed to the lovers who
listened to him with their lips together.




XIX

It seemed to Mrs. Payne an endless time before she heard the steps of
Gabrielle returning.  She thanked heaven when she knew that she was
coming back alone.  The bedroom door closed and the sound pulled her
together.  It suggested to her that the time had now come when something
must be done, and though it would have been much pleasanter to let the
matter stand over until the morning, she knew that nothing could be
gained by waiting, since all of the three people concerned were at that
moment awake, and the crisis of the affair had been reached.

The reasons that had dissuaded her from tackling Arthur himself when
first her suspicions were aroused still held.  She regarded a scene with
him as dangerous, for she could not be certain that a big emotional
disturbance would not throw him back into his old nature, quite apart
from the fact that it would wound her motherly heart.  Against Gabrielle,
on the other hand, she knew that she could steel herself.  Gabrielle was
a woman, a woman younger than herself, and, what was more, a visitor in
her house.  She was satisfied that she could tell Gabrielle what she
thought of her, and, in a single interview bring this most uncomfortable
and dangerous state of affairs to an end.

She got out of bed again and dressed methodically.  This time she wasn't
going to put up with any condition that detracted from her dignity.  So,
having done her hair afresh and satisfied herself that all traces of her
breakdown had disappeared, she set out with a high degree of confidence
to Gabrielle's room.  There was no light in it, but while she stood at
the door she heard Gabrielle softly singing to herself inside.  Singing!
...  Mrs. Payne hardened her heart and knocked at the door.  The singing
stopped.  There was no other sound.  Then she knocked again.  She heard a
soft rustle as Gabrielle stepped to the door.  The door opened, and
Gabrielle, in her nightdress and bare feet, stood before her.  She stared
at Mrs. Payne.  Who could guess that she knew the reason of her visit?
She only said: "Oh ... it's you!  I wondered...."

"May I come in?" said Mrs. Payne in a hard voice.  As a matter of fact
nothing could have stopped her going in.

"Of course," said Gabrielle.  "Do...."  She shivered slightly.

"You'd better put on a dressing-gown," said Mrs. Payne firmly.  "I want
to talk to you."

Gabrielle obeyed her, like a small child, slipped an embroidered kimono
over her shoulders and stood facing Mrs. Payne.  She looked her straight
in the eyes, and said in a low voice: "Well, what is it?"

"We won't pretend," said Mrs. Payne.  "You know quite well what it is."

"Yes ... I suppose you mean Arthur."

"And you."

"You saw us go out to-night ... heard us?"

"Yes."

Gabrielle made a gesture of impatience.  "Well, why shouldn't we?  It was
the nightingale.  Why shouldn't we listen to a nightingale?  I'd never
heard one."

"I followed you into the garden."

"That was a mean thing to do!"

"Perhaps it was.  No ... I'd a right to do it.  I saw everything that
happened."

"When we kissed each other?"

Mrs. Payne nodded.  Gabrielle looked at her challengingly.  "It was the
first time," she said.  There was a pause and then she burst out
passionately.  "I love him ... we love each other.  You can't stop us!"

"It's got to be stopped," said Mrs. Payne.

Gabrielle turned away and perched herself on the end of the bed.  She
appeared to be thinking, and when next she spoke it was almost dreamily.

"It was the first time.  We didn't know before to-night."

There was nothing dreamy about Mrs. Payne's reply.  She believed that
Gabrielle was acting a part, and had no patience with her.

"That's rubbish," she said.  "I don't believe it."

Gabrielle jumped to her feet and faced her again, blazing with pride and
anger and amazingly beautiful.

"You don't believe me?  How dare you?  I've told you that we didn't know.
I don't tell lies.  You're insulting me...."

She was so passionate that Mrs. Payne was almost convinced.  She softened
for a moment.  "After all, you _ought_ to have known," she said.  "You're
a married woman."

"Married ..."  Gabrielle repeated.  "Yes ... but I didn't know.  I've
told you I didn't.  That's enough."

"Well, if you didn't know, I _did_," said Mrs. Payne with a laugh.

"How?  Tell me how?"

"It wasn't difficult to see."

"I can't imagine it.  But I know nothing of love.  Only once..." and
Gabrielle relapsed into her dream, standing with her hand on the bedpost
gazing towards the window.  After a second she turned again quickly.
"Then, if you knew, was that why you invited me here?"

Mrs. Payne said: "Yes----"

"Why didn't you tell me instead of doing that?"

"I wanted to make certain."

"Why didn't you tell my husband?"

"For your sake.  I wanted to save you."

"No, you didn't...  You weren't thinking of me.  You were thinking of
Arthur."

This was perfectly true, but Mrs. Payne had not gone through hell to
discuss fine points of that kind.  She had left her room in very much the
same frame of mind as she would have adopted in approaching the dismissal
of a servant.  She had expected to be met with passionate denials, had
prepared herself, indeed, for a stormy "scene"; instead of which
Gabrielle appeared to be curious rather than disturbed about her
discovery, and a great deal more interested in the psychological than in
the practical aspects of the case.  If she had offered any violent
opposition to Mrs. Payne, Mrs. Payne could have given her violence in
return.  But she didn't.  The mood of exaltation into which their
love-making had lifted her made her regard this woman with something
nearer to pity than dislike.  Her attitude implied that to consider the
practical aspect of the affair would be in the nature of a condescension.
Mrs. Payne naturally resented this, but in any case Gabrielle had taken
the wind out of her sails.  They were drifting--rather unpleasantly--away
from the object of her visit.  She pulled herself--and then Gabrielle--up
short.

"You can't pretend not to realise the seriousness of your position," she
said.  "You're a married woman.  If you persist in this madness you'll
ruin your whole life.  I'll be candid with you.  What happens to you
doesn't matter to me; but what happens to Arthur does.  Can't you see the
end of it?"

"No ... it's only begun...."

"Then I'll tell you the end.  Your husband will divorce you."

"Then I shall be free?  And why not?  We don't love each other.  Why
should we go on living together?  The thought of him makes me shudder ...
now."

"That is your affair.  I'm afraid I can't help you in it.  But Arthur is
mine.  I'm not going to see him dragged into this ... impossibility.  No
... we can't discuss it like this.  You may be as innocent as you pretend
to be--though it's difficult to believe it.  You imagine you're in love.
You're drifting out of an ordinary sort of friendship into ... what I saw
to-night.  Well, that can only lead to the most awful unhappiness for all
of us.  You must consider it finished.  We won't have any disturbance;
but, all the same, you can't see Arthur again.  We'll invent some reason
to explain your going away to-morrow ... something plausible ... to
satisfy him.  With your husband it will be more difficult.  But I'm
prepared to help you.  It can be managed without any scandal if we work
together...  I'm sure you'll agree with me and be sensible about it.  If
you won't, I can't answer for the consequences."

Mrs. Payne was presuming too much.  All the time that she spoke Gabrielle
sat with lowered eyes, motionless but for little protesting movements of
her hands; now she turned upon her, speaking very low and rapidly.

"You think I can give him up?  You think it's possible?  Love ... the
only thing I want!  The thing I've never had!  Happiness...  Why should
you ruin our happiness?  You've had yours.  Oh, you're selfish.  I shan't
give him up if he wants me.  Ask him yourself if he loves me...  Ah,
you're afraid.  You daren't.  You daren't!"

She almost laughed, and Mrs. Payne knew that she had spoken the truth.
It looked, for a moment, as if she were going to be beaten on this point,
for Gabrielle snatched at her weakness, repeating the unanswerable "You
daren't!"  Then, suddenly, without any warning, the girl's triumphant
spirit collapsed.  From the verge of laughter she toppled over into
tears.  She put her hands to her eyes and then, turning her back on Mrs.
Payne, collapsed on her bed, weeping bitterly.

At the sight of this thankfulness flooded Mrs. Payne's heart; but beneath
this dominant emotion, which came almost as the result of her conscious
wish, flowed another that she would gladly have suppressed: pity, nothing
less, for the child who lay sobbing on the bed.  A minute before she had
seen in Gabrielle her most dangerous enemy in the world; now, even though
she rejoiced in the girl's sudden collapse, she felt that she wanted to
take her in her arms and kiss her and comfort her.  For a moment or two
she fought against it, but in the end, scarcely knowing what she had
done, she found that she was fondling Gabrielle's hand and being shaken
by the communicated passion of her sobs.  One thought kept running
through her brain: "I've won ... I've won, and can afford to be
generous," and this, together with the curious physical liking that she
had always felt for Gabrielle, disarmed her.  She set herself to
comforting the child.  It was the last thing in the world she had
intended to do, but it came natural to her motherly soul.  She was glad,
indeed, that Gabrielle did not resent these attentions, as she very well
might have done.  Gradually her sobbing ceased and she began to speak,
clinging all the time to Mrs. Payne, herself not guiltless of a
sympathetic tear, while she told her the story of her early years: of the
wild life she had led at Roscarna, of Jocelyn's debauches and Biddy's
rough mothering.

It was the first time that all this flood of reminiscence had been
loosed.  Gabrielle had never made a confidante before, and it was an
ecstasy of tears and laughter to dwell upon these memories, and to
rehearse them.  "I was so happy as a child," she said, "so awfully happy.
But now there's nothing left."

Mrs. Payne, still sympathetic, found herself suddenly plunged into the
ardours of the Radway affair; the miraculous meeting on the Clonderriff
road; the halcyon days of August, and then the overwhelming tragedy.

"They made me marry him," said Gabrielle, clutching at her hand.  "They
made me.  I didn't understand.  It was cruel.  It would have been better
if I had died like my baby."

She relapsed into tears, and Mrs. Payne, quite bowled over by the
piteousness of her case, tried to soothe her with caresses.  It was a
curious end, she reflected, to the punitive expedition on which she had
set forth.  Holding Gabrielle triumphantly in her arms she did not
realize the mistake that she had made.  It wasn't the end at all, it was
merely the beginning.

"You see what a terrible time I've had," Gabrielle pleaded, drying her
tears.  "I always felt that you were the only person I could talk to
about these things.  I knew you would sympathize ... you're so human.
Now you can understand why I can't live without Arthur.  Do you see?"
She looked up, pleading, into Mrs. Payne's eyes.

Her quiet words staggered that good woman.  She had to pull herself
together and begin all over again.  It wasn't easy, for the sympathetic
mood into which the girl's story had betrayed her had subtly weakened her
purpose.  She felt that her position was false.  She must reassert
herself, and so she hurriedly freed herself from Gabrielle's arms and
stood with her back to the door.  Gabrielle too rose and faced her.  Her
tears had put an end to the dreamy mood in which Mrs. Payne had found her
at first.  Now she was determined, dangerous, ready to fight with all the
quickness of her wits and the suppleness of her youth against the elder
woman's dogged devotion.  They faced one another, ready to fight to the
end, for the possession of the thing they each loved best, and both of
them realized the bitter nature of the struggle.

"We can't speak of that again," said Mrs. Payne.  "I thought that was
understood.  Surely you didn't imagine that by playing on my feelings you
could make me change my mind?  I'm sorry you misunderstood me.  I will
write to your husband to-morrow.  For Arthur's sake I hope you won't tell
him the real explanation of your going back, and of Arthur's staying
here.  I think you owe that to us ... even if you don't realise that it's
also the best for yourself."  She turned towards the door.  "I think we
had better say good-night.  There is a train at seven-fifty in the
morning.  I'm sorry it's so early, but there's no other.  As I may not
see you again I'll say good-bye now.  There's no reason why we shouldn't
part friends."

She held out her hand, she couldn't think why, but as she did so
Gabrielle clasped it.  "No ... don't go!" she pleaded.

"There's nothing more to be said."  But Gabrielle still held her hand and
would not let it go.

"Only be merciful to me," she cried.  "Let us think about it.  There must
be some other way.  Supposing ... supposing that we go back to Lapton
just in the ordinary way: supposing that I promise you faithfully that
nothing more shall happen.  Listen, we never, never kissed before
to-night.  I'll give you my word of honour that it shan't happen again
... if only you'll let him go back to us.  Isn't that fair?  Surely it's
fair...."

Mrs. Payne shook her head.

"You mean that you don't believe me ... you won't trust me?"

"I can't trust both of you.  Do you think I don't know what love is?"

"But think ... think of all these months in which we've been so happy
together without a word of love!  I love him ... you know I love him ...
I believe I love him more than you do.  No, don't be angry with me for
saying that!  Don't you think my love is strong enough to prevent me from
doing anything that could possibly harm him?  Can't you believe that?"

"No ... it's too dangerous.  You can answer for yourself, but you can't
answer for Arthur."

"Oh, if you loved him as you say you do ... as I believe you do ...
wouldn't you trust him?  I'll talk to him.  I can tell him anything.
I'll tell him exactly how things stand.  I'll tell him what I've promised
you.  Only don't take him away from me altogether.  I couldn't bear it
... I couldn't."  She turned back on herself.  "Why won't you believe in
him?"

"You should know why that's impossible.  Haven't I told you his history?
You've only known him for a year.  I've had him for seventeen and loved
him all the time."  She became almost passionate.  "He's my son.  And all
those years my love has been full of the awful bitterness of his trouble.
The tears!  The disappointments!  You know nothing of them.  You can't
realize how I've struggled and schemed and had my hopes raised and dashed
to the ground ... time after time.  To see the person that you love best
in the world, a part of your own body, living without a soul: a thief, a
liar--that's the plain truth--inhuman and cruel ...  But you know as well
as I do what he was."

"I do know what he was."

"And now, thanks to your husband--God knows I'm grateful!--he's better.
He's what I knew he ought to have been all these awful years.  And then
you come on the scene--you, who've borne nothing of all the years
before--and begin to drag him down again.  You must be mad to think I
could risk it!"

"But don't I know all this?  Do you think I'm less anxious than you are
that he should stay as he is?  Only trust me ... trust me!  His future
... think of that...."

Mrs. Payne laughed bitterly, but Gabrielle persisted.

"His future ...  My husband says that he can make a success of him.  He
can take a high place in a Government examination; he can get into the
diplomatic service.  Just believe that I love him too much to stand in
his way.  Why, I can even help him.  If he does this I know that he'll
want influence.  _You_ haven't influence to help him.  I don't want to
belittle you, but I know you've nothing but your money, while I _can_
help him.  My cousin is Lord Halberton.  He's been a Cabinet minister.
There's no knowing what he mightn't do with his help.  If you love anyone
as I do him, why shouldn't you give your life to his interests?  That's
what I'd do.  I'd think of nothing else.  I'd give all my thoughts to
him.  And I promise ... oh, I promise faithfully, that I won't let him
love me ... if only you'll let me love him."

Mrs. Payne stiffened.  "You're trying to bribe me," she said, "and I'm
not the kind of person who can be bribed.  I don't care that much about
his future!  Until the last month I never so much as dreamed that any
future of that kind was possible.  It's quite enough for me that he
should settle down here into the sort of life that his father would have
lived if he'd been spared.  I don't want to share his successes with
you...."

"Ah, you're jealous!"

"Of course I'm jealous.  I've reason to be.  He's mine.  But even if I
could trust you ... and I believe I could ... Arthur's future wouldn't
tempt me to risk his present.  No ... it's too dangerous."

"Dangerous..."  Gabrielle clutched at the word.  "Dangerous!"  She became
suddenly quiet and intense.  "I don't believe you know where the danger
lies," she said.

"I can see the most obvious danger, and that's a love affair with a
married woman."

"You can't see any other?  You said just now that Arthur had changed
thanks to my husband.  Perhaps my husband took the credit for it and you
believed it.  But it isn't true.  I've seen the change coming hour by
hour, day by day.  Every moment of it I've watched and treasured.  He did
not change because he worked with my husband.  He changed because I loved
him and he loved me.  I know it ... I've known it all the time.  What did
your love do for him in all those years?  Nothing ... nothing at all.
For heaven's sake don't think I'm boasting!  Your love never changed him
a hair's breadth, and you know it!"

Mrs. Payne gasped.  "You don't realize what you're saying."

"But I do ... I do.  You say his body's part of you--belongs to you.
I'll give you that.  But this soul ... his new soul ... is mine.  That's
part of our love.  Ours and nobody else's...."

Mrs. Payne choked back her emotion.  "I don't grudge it you," she said,
"I only thank God for it gratefully ... gratefully."

"But you don't see what I mean," said Gabrielle slowly.  "Arthur has
changed because he loves me.  He's ceased to be cruel because he knows
that for him to be cruel pains me.  He's learned to see things just as I
see them.  And now you want to separate us ... even after what I have
promised you.  Can't you see what I'm afraid of?"

She paused, and Mrs. Payne was silent.  Gabrielle quickly pressed her
advantage.

"If you separate us, if you try to destroy our love, you'll be taking
away from him the thing that's saved him.  How do you know that he won't
slip back again?  You can take his body from me ...  I know that ... but
you may lose more than you get."

Mrs. Payne stood staring straight in front of her.

"Then you will know what you are worth to him."  Gabrielle's tone was
almost scornful.  "You see how it stands," she continued.  "We both of us
want him for ourselves, we want him as he is to-day ... and we can't
either of us have him without the other's consent.  You hold his body,
and I hold his soul.  Let's be reasonable.  Let's compromise.  I'm ready
to do my part.  Oh, I beg you to be reasonable!"

"You're a devil, not a woman," said Mrs. Payne.

"But you see that I'm right?" Gabrielle persisted.

Mrs. Payne summoned all her strength.  "No, I don't.  I don't believe it."

"Ah, you pretend that you don't!  But you're bluffing me.  I know it.
Why did you come to me about this instead of to Arthur himself?  Because
you were afraid.  That was the reason."

The shot was made at a venture, but Gabrielle quickly saw that it had
taken effect.  She followed it up:

"You thought that if you upset him he might lose what he's gained.  You
don't know--we none of us know yet--how deep the change is.  You didn't
dare to face that little risk; but it's nothing compared with the one you
want to take now.  That's what you've got to face!"

She could say no more.  When she stopped speaking Mrs. Payne knew that
the girl's eyes were fixed on her eagerly, desperately, trying to search
into her mind.  The older woman stood there still and bewildered by the
choice that had been presented to her.  It was the most awful moment in
her emotional life.  Her mind was a battlefield on which her love, her
sense of right, her acquired conventions, her religion, and her hungry
maternal passion were pitted against one formidable dread.  She wanted to
shield Arthur against harm: from a social disaster no less than from what
she considered a mortal sin; and, above all, after these years of patient
suffering, she wanted him for herself.  It was neither religion nor
morality that drove her to her final decision, but a thing far stronger:
her passionate instinct to possess the son of her body.  Even if she were
to lose him, to rescue no more than the changeling that she had always
known, she could not bring herself to share him with any other woman on
earth.  He was hers and hers alone.  She did not know if she were right.
She did not care if she were wrong.  The decision formed itself
inexorably in her mind.  She could only obey it.  Gabrielle, watching her
narrowly, saw a sudden peace descend upon her agonised face.  Mrs. Payne
gave a long shuddering sigh.  Then she spoke, dully, mechanically:

"The train goes at seven-fifty.  I will order the carriage.  I will write
to Dr. Considine in the morning."

Gabrielle clutched at her breast.  "You can't realise what you're doing!
It's too great a risk.  Think of it again ...  I beg you!"

"No," said Mrs. Payne slowly.  "I've made up my mind.  We must invent
some plausible excuse.  Illness will do ... anything.  And you must help
me, if only for your own sake."

Desperate tears came into Gabrielle's eyes.

"For your own sake," Mrs. Payne repeated.  "You've realised, I know, that
if you go on with this unfortunate love-affair you must ruin not only
your own happiness and your husband's, but Arthur's as well.  If you love
him at all you can't drag him into social ruin.  Well, I've made my
decision.  If anything disastrous happens my blood's on my own head.  We
must make the best of a bad job.  Don't think I'm not sorry for you, my
dear."

This final tenderness was too much for Gabrielle.  She broke down,
sobbing so tragically in Mrs. Payne's arms that the older woman was
almost ashamed of her victory.  She knew that she could afford to be
kind.  She felt that she would like to tell her that under any other
circumstances she knew none whom she would rather trust as Arthur's wife;
but to say so would have been a bitter mockery.  She waited in silence
while Gabrielle mastered her own feelings and raised, at last, her
haggard eyes.

"What can you say to my husband?" she said.

"We must say that I am ill.  That will give you a good reason for
returning."

"And Arthur?"

"The same reason will explain why he doesn't go back to Lapton on
Tuesday.  After that I don't know what I shall do."

"But I can see him before I go?"

"That would be quite useless.  It might even do harm.  You are going to
help me, you know, for his sake."

"He'll wonder.  How can we satisfy him?  What can I do?"

"You had better write to him.  Tell him that after to-night it's
impossible for you to stay.  Only ... only please don't mention me."

"It will kill him...."

"Or save him.  It's the only thing that you can do."

"I'll write it now."

She went over to the writing table in the window, and there, with
streaming eyes, she wrote her letter.  It took her a long time to do, and
when she had finished she brought it with the envelope to Mrs. Payne.

"Do you want to read it?" she asked.

"No ...  Of course I trust you."

"Thank you."  She fastened the envelope and addressed it.  "I feel as if
I were dead," she said.

"You're young," said Mrs. Payne.

"But you'll let me know what happens, you'll write to me?"

"Yes, I'll write to you."

"I have a dread, an awful dread of what may happen.  I can't be sure that
we've done right."

"Neither can I.  I had to make a decision.  I pray God that it will turn
out well.  We can do no more."

"I know now that you love him.  I'm glad to know that."

"Did you ever doubt it?"

"But for me there's nothing left ... nothing."  Gabrielle stood for a
moment in silence.  Then she said, "I'd better pack," and Mrs. Payne
clutching at any refuge from the intensity of the moment offered to help
her.

"No," said Gabrielle, "if you don't mind, I'd rather be alone.  We'd
better say good-bye."

"I don't like to leave you," said Mrs. Payne, "but perhaps you're right."

With a sudden impulse Gabrielle came over to her.  Mrs. Payne took her in
her arms and they kissed.

"I could love you," said Gabrielle.  "You have Arthur's eyes...."

Mrs. Payne left her.




XX

Much to the disgust of Hollis, who was in the habit of making the most
of his Sundays, Gabrielle left Overton by the early morning train while
Arthur slept undisturbed after his night of wonder, and Mrs. Payne rose
anxiously to face the certain embarrassments and the possible
bitterness of her victory.  She had not slept at all, for though she
never for one moment dreamed of going back on the decision which her
conscience, amongst other things, had dictated, she was still in doubt
as to whether she had won her son or lost him for ever.  She almost
regretted the burst of generosity in which she had refused to read
Gabrielle's letter of renunciation.  For all she knew the wording might
be provocative and calculated to wreck her plans at the last moment.
The letter lay sealed upon her dressing-table.  It speaks well for her
sense of honour in a bargain that this pathetic document remained
unopened.  Meanwhile she only prayed that the hours might pass and her
fate be revealed.  She could only rack her brains imagining some means
by which the severity of the blow might be tempered for Arthur.

Next morning he came down ten minutes late for breakfast.  He missed
Gabrielle at once.

"Where's Mrs. Considine?" he said.  "I called at her door as I came
down, but I don't think she's there."

"No," said Mrs. Payne.  "She had to go back to Lapton by the first
train.  An urgent call of some kind."

"A telegram?  The old man isn't ill, is he?"

"She left a letter for you," said Mrs. Payne, handing him Gabrielle's
envelope.

"What a rotten shame," he said as he took it.  "It's a splendid morning
for a ride.  I hope it's not serious."

He opened the letter and read it.  What Gabrielle had written Mrs.
Payne never knew, for even in later years he did not tell her.  She had
expected a terrible and passionate outburst and prepared herself to
meet it with argument and consolation, but no outburst came.  She saw
him go very red and then white.  Then he steadied himself and said in a
curious voice: "Mother ... if you'll excuse me, I must go out."

She put out her hand to him but he pushed back his chair and went
quickly through the French window of the dining-room, into the garden.
She wanted to follow him, for she feared that on the impulse of the
moment he might do something terrible, but controlled herself in time.

She stood on the terrace, impotent, watching him as he crossed the lawn
and made for the fields.  It was a terrible day for her.  She felt that
she couldn't go to church in her usual way, but stayed at home tortured
by the most hopeless and tragic anticipations of evil.  At lunch time
he had not returned.  It was with difficulty that she restrained
herself from sending Hollis out over the hill with a search party, but
the curious fatalism that had settled on her when once her decision was
made, compelled her to patience.  It was his own battle, she reflected,
and if he had wanted her help he would have come to her.  Evidently, he
had decided to fight it out alone.  She went to her own room and prayed
desperately for his salvation.

In the evening he returned, tired out with ceaseless wandering.  He had
eaten nothing all day and looked very old and haggard.  She had
expected a tender scene of confidence and was ready to overwhelm him
with the consolations of her love; but even now he said nothing to her,
and she dared not take the first step herself.  From his silent misery
she gathered that Gabrielle had not told him that she knew of the
secret.  Evidently, and very wisely, she had given him general and
conventional reasons for her renunciation, treating it as a matter that
concerned themselves and no one else, denying Mrs. Payne the privilege
and pain of sharing in Arthur's disillusionment.  Therefore, his mother
judged it wiser to behave as though she knew nothing of what he was
suffering, though she saw by the steadiness of his demeanour that he
had taken the blow squarely, and come through.

The fact that he didn't break down miserably, as she had expected he
would, convinced her more than ever that he had become a man.  She felt
certain now that she had been right in following her instinct and
facing the risk that her action involved.  She believed that she had
triumphed.  Certainly, the boy who faced her at the dinner-table in
suffering and awkward silence was very different from the Arthur of six
months before.  There was a look of determination in his eyes that made
her confident.  He kissed her good-night without the least tremor, and
she went to bed herself full of serene thankfulness.  Nor did she
forget how much she owed to the girl who was breaking her heart in the
loneliness of Lapton.  She wrote to Gabrielle that night.  "I think it
is all right," she said.  "Heaven only knows what I owe you for your
generosity ... what Arthur owes you."

He never mentioned Gabrielle's name to her again.  Next morning, in a
calm and serious mood, he approached her on the subject of his return
to Lapton.

"Would you mind very much," he said, "if I don't go back to Devonshire?
I feel that I'm rather out of place there.  You see, I'm older than the
others.  Do you think it could be arranged?"

At first she feigned surprise--she could do nothing else--but in doing
so she cleverly contrived to make it easy for him.

"If you wish it I will write to Dr. Considine," she said.  She didn't
suggest the elaborate falsehoods on which she would build her letter.
"I think you are old enough to decide," she told him.  "What would you
like to do?"

"Is there any reason why I shouldn't travel?" he said.  "I feel that I
want a change.  I should like to see something of the world."

So, without further difficulty, it was arranged.  She sent him round
the world with a new tutor, waiting placidly and happily at Overton for
his return.  It was in these days that I became acquainted with her and
conceived the admiration for her that I still hold.  She often spoke to
me in terms of the most utter devotion of her son.  I imagined her an
ideal mother, as indeed she was.

After a year or more abroad Arthur returned, very much the man of the
world.  At his own desire he went up to Oxford, where he passed a
perfectly normal three years and took a decent degree.  In his last
term he fell in love with the daughter of a neighbouring parson, whom,
in due course, he married.  The following year the young people went
out to New Zealand, a country to which Arthur had been attracted on his
travels, and that is all that I know of him.

During all this time Mrs. Payne corresponded regularly with Gabrielle.
Now that Arthur's safety was beyond question and even in the earlier
debatable period, she had not the least objection to sharing him with
her rival ... at a distance.  She even sent her his letters from
abroad.  In this way they arrived at a curious and altogether happy
intimacy.  Gabrielle's letters became part of her life, and when, in
the autumn after Arthur's engagement was announced, they suddenly
stopped, Mrs. Payne felt that she had suffered a loss.  She wrote two
or three times to Lapton, but received no reply, and it was only by the
chance meeting of a friend who had been staying in Devonshire that she
learned what had happened.  It came to her as a piece of idle gossip,
but the shock of an extraordinary coincidence upset her for many days.
It appeared that Dr. Considine, by this time a well known figure in the
county, had gone out one evening rabbit-shooting with his wife.  As
they were returning from their expedition down one of the steep slopes
above Lapton Manor, he had slipped in getting over a gate and fallen.
It was the usual type of shooting accident that no one could explain.
The gun had gone off and shot him dead.  "He was terribly mutilated
about the head," said Mrs. Payne's informant.  She did not know what
had happened to his widow.  Probably she had gone to her cousins the
Halbertons.  In any case the jury had completely exonerated her.

Mrs. Payne flared up in Gabrielle's defence.  "Exonerated?"

"It was well known that they were not on the best of terms," said her
visitor discreetly.




XXI

I do not know what has possessed me since I began to write this story.
I have grown tired of this river, where the trout are always shy, and
more tired than ever of Colonel Hoylake's fishing stories and his
obituary reflections.  The place is haunted for me by the tragic image
of Gabrielle Hewish.  It is strange that I should be affected by the
loss of a woman whom I have never seen or known.  But I feel that I
cannot stay here any longer.  Wherever I go in this valley I am
troubled by a feeling of desolation: a curious feeling, as though some
bright thing had fallen--a kingfisher, a dragon-fly.



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