PART I

Chapter I

I

"YES," said the girl gently. "The doctor says you may talk for half an hour; no more. Tell me, Jack."

The room looked out of its two wide windows straight upon the lawns and woods to the south of the house, where in the midday silence there was heard the contented cooing of the pigeons half a mile away. Beneath, in a little paved space, a fountain splashed gently in its basin.

The room itself calls for no particular remark. It was like a hundred thousand others, scattered in country-houses wherever the well-to-do public sets itself down to be entirely comfortable. A dressing-table between the windows shone with silver. There was a deep pile carpet on the floor; tall chintz curtains hung upon the window-poles; there was a high, white marble fireplace; there was plenty of opulent-looking mahogany furniture; a chintz covered couch stood at the end of the bed; and within the chintz curtains of the bed itself lay the young man who, it seemed, had had a very remarkable syncope from which he had recovered. And there sat by him his wife, a small, pretty, rather pale girl of about twenty-two years old. They had been married three years--ever since, in fact, Jack's Americanised uncle had suddenly died and left him wealthy.

About Jack Weston himself there is not a great deal to say. The most remarkable thing he had accomplished so far in his twenty-five years of life was his recovery from this syncope which Sir James Martin had actually mistaken for death. And the next most distinguished thing about him was the fact that for two years past he had played cricket for the Gentlemen against the Players; and, as every schoolboy knew, had three weeks before his illness made one hundred and seventy-two runs not out against the South Africans. Beyond these facts, and his inheritance of an immensely large fortune three years ago, there is nothing particular to say about him. He had been an only son; his parents had died while he had been at school at Stonyhurst. He had gone to Oxford, and he had married Mary. They were both Catholics, and had always been so; and there was a chapel in this house which they kindly allowed to be used by the village Catholics and by Father Banting. He was an ordinary, pleasant, straightforward, clean kind of man, without any subtlety at all.

Jack shifted a little on his pillows and took a firmer grasp of his wife's hand.

"He said I might, did he? Well, I'll try."

His blue eyes strayed out to the woods as he meditated his beginning; and his wife noticed with an inexplicable thrill the sane, healthy look of his tanned face and strong throat against the lace-fringed white pillow. Certainly the sun-burning had worn off a little in his fortnight's illness, and the hand that held hers might have been stronger with advantage; yet there was no longer on his face that deathly greyness that had deepened so steadily only yesterday afternoon, and that had faded at last to that horrible tint that had thrown her all but screaming on to her knees. Certainly there was an odd look still on his face, but that would pass. Her hand closed with a yet tighter spasm upon his as she set herself to listen.

"Yes, half an hour, Jack," she said; "then you've got to be quiet before lunch."

His eyes rolled round to hers, and he smiled.

"Very well," he said. "Now listen carefully, please.

"I want to ask you first," he began, "to tell me once more what the doctors say. No, no; I don't mean about the future. I know that's all right; but about yesterday."

She swallowed in her throat. It was dreadful even to speak of yesterday.

"Oh! they say it was very remarkable... They... they thought--"

She could not go on.

"Yes," said the quiet voice. "They thought me dead? They left the room?"

She gripped his hand tighter, for answer.

"Thank you. I thought so. And Sir James was one of them, I think?"

"Yes."

He lay silent a moment.

"And they were perfectly right," he said suddenly. "I was dead... No; don't interrupt. Just listen."

He shifted again a little on his pillows.

"Mary dear, I must tell you and get it over. You'll see why presently."

She sat back a little, still holding his hand; and her heart began that quick, low hammering that is one of the signs of a fierce nervous strain held in check by the will.

"It was about three o'clock that I felt I was going to die for certain. I heard the church clock in the village. I wasn't the least frightened; and hardly even interested. I suppose I was too weak. I know I ought to have sent for Father Banting then. Well, I didn't. I didn't care in the least. It seemed to me quite--quite external and useless. I just wanted to be let alone. Well, that went on. No, I can't describe it: it was like a steady slipping downhill, down into the dark. I remember just thinking that all religion was lies. It--it had nothing whatever to do with facts. This was the one fact--this dark. That was the end. Then things changed; and I began to dream--all sorts of things, one after another, connected with my father and mother, and going out riding, and bathing. There was some rot about water too; but I can't remember that." (Jack smiled.) "But it seemed awfully important then.

"Well; that doesn't matter. All that went again; and then after a time I came back again to nothing at all, except just knowing that I was I.

"I don't in the least know what time that was But first I found that all my senses were gone except hearing. That lasted a long time. I couldn't move, or speak, or feel anything; but I could hear, long after everything else. I heard--I heard Father Banting come in sometime. You know the way he breathes through his nose? And I heard what he said--the absolution, the anointing, and the prayers. I heard lots of things. What time was that?"

"That was about half-past five," said Mary breathlessly.

"Very well. Well, some time after that began a roaring noise; and that went on either louder and louder or softer and softer. I don't know which. There wasn't anything else at all, except that it seemed to go on for days and days. And then, I suppose that stopped. At any rate that was the last thing, until--"

He stopped suddenly.

"Oh, Jack! don't go on."

"I must, my darling. I must tell you, while I remember. You'll see why directly. Besides, it's--it's not exactly frightening. Well, we'll put it like this. We'll say I dreamt something. This was the dream.

"I dreamt I was standing at the foot of my bed, looking at myself. I could see myself quite plainly. You were there, and Lady Sarah behind you." (He nodded to where she sat.) "Sir James was on this side, with his watch out; and he held my left hand. Old Basing was at the foot of my bed, close by where I stood. And the two nurses were by the door of the dressing-room. I looked at myself; and I could see that I was practically dead. You were--were kissing my right hand, and after a kiss or two you looked suddenly frightened. Then I looked at myself again; and I could see that I was dead. Sir James shut up his watch and stood up. Then he drew the sheet over my face, and came round the bed, and said something to you as Lady Sarah caught hold of you--"

"Oh, Jack! don't--don't go on."

"My darling; I must go on. Well, I'll leave that part out.

"When Sir James and old Basing went downstairs, I went with them. I was just frightfully interested. And as I stood there on the steps, I saw Lady Sarah come out and say something to Sir James. Then they went to the piece of grass by the horse-block--you know--on the left. And then something happened."

He turned his eyes on her straight with an extraordinary look. For an instant she thought him mad. Then his look relaxed and he smiled.

"I've nearly done," he said; "but this is the point. I saw that it was time to go. I don't know where; but it was somewhere else; and then, all in a moment I saw that the whole thing was true--that--the Catholic religion was really true, not just in a pious sort of way, you know, but solid, solid as a rock--judgment, hell, heaven, and the rest of it. And that I had to go and hand in my account... There were all sorts of people round me, looking at me. Real people, you know... It--it was ghastly."

"Jack, I do ask you not to say another word. Why not wait a day or--"

"I can't--I may forget. I must tell you before I forget. Besides, I'm all right now, you know. Oh! I'm not going to die again just yet.

"Well, there are no words to use at all. All I can say is that the thing was as real as--as tables and chairs, only very much more so. It was all real, the whole thing from beginning to end; and--and I knew I'd made a most frightful mess of things. I--I was frightened to death.

"Well, I made the most awful struggle. I don't know what with, but it was with something. But it was entirely useless. No, I didn't see anyone just then, or in fact, anything. It had all gone again. The last I had seen before those people, you know, was Lady Sarah and the man by the horse-block--oh! and two carriages and a motor. And I think a horse or two, besides. Whose motor was that? It wasn't one of ours."

"Sir James came down from town in a motor."

"Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I made this struggle. It was--just hell. I haven't an idea how long it went on. All I knew was that I couldn't and wouldn't go to that place, or whatever it was, where I had to go. And then suddenly something happened--I don't know what. All I know is that it wasn't anything I did. There was something that simply caught hold of me and swept me off. I thought it was the next stage. But the next thing I knew was that I was back in bed, and you were screaming. I couldn't see you; but I heard you and felt the bedclothes."

Mary made a huge effort to be serene.

"Dear boy, you've finished now, haven't you?... Really I think the half-hour--"

"Not quite. No; I will finish. It's just a question or two. Tell me. Was all that I said true? Wasn't it?... Of course it was."

"Well--er--certainly we were like that in the bedroom. But, you know, you saw us. My dear, do be--"

"And downstairs. The motor, and all that?"

"Why, you heard the motor arrive, of course; and remembered it afterwards."

He nodded.

"Well, we'll let it go at that And Lady Sarah and Sir James--"

"I--I think they did talk there for a minute or two."

"And they did tell you I was dead?"

"They--they thought so. But they were wrong, you see, Jack dear. It was just what they call 'suspended animation.'"

He made no answer to that; but she saw him smile contentedly to himself, and understood that his conviction was unshaken. She stood up, still holding his hand, turning her fingers gently in and out of his. Of course all this would pass in a day or two, she said to herself.

"Your beef-tea--" she began.

He did not seem to hear; and she released her fingers quietly. He drew his hand in under the bedclothes, as if he did not notice.

"Of course you see the difference all this makes?" he said quietly.

"Difference! Why?--"

"Why, yes; the whole difference. You must see that. I can't possibly go on with all this--this footling sort of life. I've got another chance, thank God--and by George--"

A discreet tap came at the door.

"Wait," he said, with that same unruffled air. "I wanted just to tell you. It isn't fair not to. I want you to think it over. I think you'll see--"

"Jack, I will not hear another word. You can tell me to-morrow."

He glanced at her with a faint deprecating smile.

"Very well; I'll be good," he said. "But remember I've told you. Oh! and don't forget about Father Banting. I must see him this afternoon."

II

"Mrs. Weston wishes to see you, sir, in her own room, as soon as you have finished with the master."

The doctor nodded and went upstairs. And when he came down again he was more perturbed than ever.

He had never seen such a case before in his life; and he had Sir James Martin's authority for it that it was unique in modern experience. Here was a man pronounced dead by two physicians--dead so certainly that they had left the room, entirely ready to sign the certificate instantly, had it been presented to them; in fact they had actually mounted into the motor together to go to the village for this very purpose. All up to that point had been entirely according to precedent; they had feared syncope, and syncope had come and done its work. No symptom was lacking... This was yesterday; and to-day he had had his third interview with the dead man, weak indeed, but entirely convalescent; and he had received during this third interview an explicit and apparently sane corroboration of his own and Sir James's diagnosis, given so fully in detail, so wholly without excitement or delirium, so well connected and so simple, and yet so extravagantly impossible, that thoughts refused to formulate themselves. It was not catalepsy, it was not any known form of paralysis. Certain details that need not be discussed here had put all that beyond a doubt... Well, "suspended animation" was a convenient phrase; it meant nothing particular; but, well, it sounded all right, and at any rate it covered the truth.

He was therefore a little grave as he came into the morning-room and the girl stood up to receive him. She looked rather white and constrained; but what wonder!

"What account now, Dr. Basing?"

He sat down in the chair indicated and clasped his hands.

"All perfectly satisfactory, Mrs. Weston. Temperature and pulse normal. A little weak, of course, still; it will take a few days, but I see no reason, unless there is a quite unexpected relapse--"

He broke off.

"Ah!" said the girl. "And Sir James--?"

"He told me that there was no need for him to come again, unless, as I say, any new complications show themselves. He wishes for news, of course. You see it is an unusual case."

"Unusual. Yes. Have you ever known a case like it?"

He shook his head.

"Never quite like it. Sir James assures me of that. Otherwise--"

"I understand perfectly. You mean that you have never seen a case go so far and recover."

"Exactly, Mrs. Weston. Of course it was not death--" (he smiled doubtfully), "it was not death; but it had all the symptoms--at least--"

"Ah! it was not death. You are quite sure?" she said, with sudden eagerness.

He smiled more confidently this time.

"Why, yes; in the very nature of the case, it could not be death."

She sat silent an instant.

"Did--did he--my husband, I mean--did he talk much this afternoon?"

"A little, Mrs. Weston. I would not allow him--"

"Was he quite clear and coherent?"

"Oh! perfectly; remarkably so. But for all that--"

She interrupted him again.

"And no fever. I think you said? No delirium at all?"

He shook his head.

"He was perfectly reasonable," he said.

Mary stood up suddenly. Then she leaned back, half sitting, against her writing-table, and took up an ivory paper-knife.

"Doctor Basing, I want to ask you a direct question. Please tell me the truth. Is his brain at all affected? I mean, even temporarily; as it is after typhoid, for instance? Is that possible?"

"Not the very faintest sign of that, Mrs. Weston. He seems completely normal in all respects."

"He didn't seem to talk wildly, even?"

"His brain is as sane as yours or mine."

"Ah!" (She paused.) "Did he--did he talk about religion?"

He glanced up at her.

"Indeed no; not a word. He just answered my questions."

"And there is no fear of even temporary brain trouble?"

"There is not the smallest reason for it, at any rate. May I ask why you mention that?"

Mary hesitated.

"Oh! it's nothing particular. He doesn't seem quite himself, that's all. I just wondered. Did he tell you he had actually died, and saw himself in bed, and all that?"

"He said something of the sort. Of course, that was simply a delusion--a kind of self-suggestion. That kind of thing is quite common, comparatively speaking."

Mary mused an instant.

"I see," she said. "But, you know, he thinks he came downstairs, and saw things that--that really did happen."

The doctor smiled reassuringly.

"That would be all part of it," he said. "One mustn't pay any attention to that. That'll all go when he gets stronger."

She played silently with the paper-knife an instant or two, twisting it nervously between her fingers. Then she laid it down and stood upright.

"Well, thank you very much," she said abruptly. "Good afternoon, doctor. You have left all instructions with the nurses?"

"Everything, Mrs. Weston. I'll just look in again before dinner."

"And... and there's no harm in his seeing the priest? He wants to, very much."

"I think a quarter of an hour would do no harm. But he mustn't get excited."

"Oh! I don't think Father Banting will excite him," smiled the girl.

"Well--er--good afternoon, Mrs. Weston."

"Oh! by the way," said Mary, suddenly calling him back. "Have you any books you could lend me on--on this sort of thing?"

The little doctor blinked.

"I--I don't quite understand. As a rule, you know, we don't lend books on medicine. They are apt to do harm. Do you mean a book on diseases such as Mr. Weston's?"

"I meant rather on exceptional cases--like his."

"There is no such book, so far as I know. His case is quite exceptional, you know."

"But--but you are sure it was not death?"

"Quite sure, Mrs. Weston."

"Well... thanks very much," said the girl.

As he passed out through the hall he was wondering how far he had been successful in concealing his own perplexity. It was a comfort to him, at any rate, that Sir James had been there, and had been as bewildered as himself.

III

But the doctor's bewilderment was nothing to that of the priest, as, an hour later, he came out from the patient's room, and meditated to himself all the way down the park to his own lodgings in the village. On the spiritual plane the resurrection was as unique as on the physical.

Father Banting had had a rather hard time of it during his two years in the place. It was not that the squire and his wife were exactly irreligious. They performed their duties with tolerable care: they were at Mass on Sundays; they permitted the use of their chapel; and about four times in the year they asked their priest to dine with them. And that was about all. The atmosphere, therefore, was not ideal. Five-sixths of the people on the estate were Protestants; and the Catholics were not eminent for zeal. The result was a kind of respectable deadness, that had not in it even the stimulating sting of a grievance. Only, every single proposal made by the priest that was in the least unusual was met at the Hall by an attitude of mind that rendered enterprise impossible. Father Banting had recollections of certain public rites and processions suggested by himself, blocked, not by opposition, but by entire indifference. It was not that these great folk were at all wicked. On the contrary, Jack was an excellent young man, who played cricket really brilliantly, and looked after his tenants suitably; and Mary was an excellent young woman, who allowed her flower-garden to supply the altar, who rode very well, was extremely kind and courteous always, and gave a certain moderate financial assistance to the mission. They were always quite polite to the priest; allowed him to use short cuts through the park; sent him a dozen pheasants each season and a tolerable supply of grapes; and never pretended for a single instant to be anything but Catholics. And that was all that could be said.

Well, matters seemed changed now: and Father Banting meditated them all the way down to his. lodgings.

He reviewed the points.

First, the squire had made his confession. Well, that was a thing apart; not even to be thought of, except as regards the fact that he had made it. For two years past that ceremony had only been performed three times in the year--last year, indeed, only twice; and the month of July had not been one of them.

The second point was the cheque.

He had been instructed, when the religious part was over, to go to the writing-table and bring thence a fountain-pen, a cheque-book, and a magazine to write upon; and there and then, before his amazed eyes, Mr. Weston had drawn out a cheque for one thousand pounds, made payable to the Rev. James Banting, to be applied at his sole discretion for the benefit of the mission. And that, Jack had remarked, was to be regarded as an act of restitution to begin with. (This had all been done, by the way, in a perfectly brisk and straightforward manner, unemotionally and naturally.)

The third point was the astounding series of questions put to him by this curious young man.

First, was it possible, under any circumstances, for a married man to enter a Religious Order: and,, if so, under what conditions?

Secondly, would Father Banting kindly state, in as few words as possible, what were the usual signs of a Religious Vocation?

Thirdly, was it always a duty for a man living in an important and responsible position to keep up that position at all costs, so long as he was not unduly extravagant; and, if not, under what circumstances should he make a complete sweep of the whole of his life, having regard to the claims of his friends and relations upon him?

Fourthly, what would Father Banting think of coming to live at the Hall? The three rooms in the chapel-wing, once occupied by the priest of the mission, should be put at his disposal entirely. Would Father Banting kindly think it over and let him know by and by his views on the point?

And these questions, too, had been put quietly and sanely, without any appearance of undue excitement, and the answers listened to with attention. No explanation whatever had been given as to the cause of the enquiries.

Finally, would Father Banting kindly bring him Holy Communion to-morrow morning; and would he cause it to be announced publicly at Mass next morning that John Weston desired to express his gratitude to Almighty God for signal mercies showed to him in his recovery from the grave danger of an unprepared death?

"You can put it as you like, father," said Jack serenely, "but that's the substance. 'Unprepared' death, remember. I particularly want that; it's only decent."

Well, there was the situation. And the only conclusion to be drawn from it was that Jack had suddenly gone mad in a most unexpected but very edifying direction. The cheque, of course, must not be presented; at any rate for a week or two; it must be locked up carefully. As for the announcement in church to-morrow, well--he supposed he must make it, as he had given his word; but he must tone it down somehow; it would not do for the squire to make this confession of unpreparedness. What an example!

It was a very curious position, thought the priest, as he climbed the staircase of his rather dingy lodging in the village street. Of course there was, too, that extraordinary recovery to be remembered; but extraordinary recoveries did not generally end in the patient's madness, especially in what seemed to the priest such a very sane kind of madness as this. He must think it all over and have a good talk with Mrs. Weston.

But it was a pleasant thought, on the whole, that he might not have to remain in those rather dreary rooms, so far from his church. He looked round them, smiling unknown to himself. The window commanded a view of the back premises of a tanyard. Certainly the chapel-wing, with the fountain and the park, would be an improvement. But then, what about domestic arrangements? These might be difficult, if Mr. Weston were really mad; and if he were not--

The priest made a little movement with his head and sat down to say his office.

Chapter II

I

"I THINK Jack must have gone perfectly mad," said Mary, almost hysterically, to her friend Lady Sarah.

"Tell me all over again, clearly and distinctly," said the girl.

The two were sitting together in the morning-room on the evening of the third day. It had just gone six; and Lady Sarah had been contemplating a move homewards to her house a mile beyond the village. But after a long silence, broken only by obvious attempts to be conversational, Mary had suddenly burst out into such a torrent of incoherent information that a departure was impossible. (Jack, by the way, was doing excellently: that fact had emerged at an earlier point. He was even in his dressing-gown upstairs before a small fire, as the evening was chilly.)

Mary sat down again abruptly on the low, wide window-seat, snatched a blind-tassel, and staring desolately out over the box-lined beds in front to where the upper lawns rose to the fringe of the park, began her story.

"Well, the first kind of things I didn't mind. I mean things like asking Father Banting to come and live here. I think it's a bore, but--but there it is. Some Catholics do do it, and it's Jack's house after all. Besides, he'll be safely tucked away in the chapel-wing, anyhow. And I didn't much mind that--that ridiculous notice that was given out in church. (My dear! It was awful. You could have heard the tenants shiver. I thought I couldn't ever look Parkinson in the face again.) But I suppose he can do all that if he wants. But it's the other thing--the thing he asked me this morning that's finished me."

"Tell me again," said Lady Sarah patiently. (She was thinking that husbands had their disadvantages after all.)

"Well, it was this. (Don't laugh, please.) Jack has been hunting up things in books. I never knew him do that before, by the way, except in Badminton, and so on. But he has. And he's discovered that the highest life in the world is to be a monk. And he wants to be one. And--"

"And what about--"

"Yes, just so. Well, it appears that I've got to be a nun. (No, really, don't laugh.) But that's his cheerful idea. It seems that he can't be one unless I'm the other. So he wants to sell this house, or give it away to some Order; and just go off--he to one monastery and I to another. And there we're to--"

"But I've never heard such--"

"I know. Nor have I. But he's quite serious, and--and not a bit melancholy or that. On the contrary, he's quite cheerful, and couldn't imagine why I bounced out of the room. And how in the world I'm to face him again!"

Mary broke off desperately, tossed the blind-tassel away, and sat regarding her friend.

"Oh, Sarah! don't look like that! It's I who ought to have the hysterics."

"But, my dear!"

"Yes, indeed. And the worst of it is that he's perfectly right in the head. At least the doctor says so; And--and" (she fumbled in her pocket a moment) "here's Sir James's letter. It came yesterday." (She tossed it over to her friend.) "Just read that. You see what he says."

There was silence for a minute while Lady Sarah, her face a picture of consternation, turned the page. Then she laid down the paper. It is to be doubted whether she understood one word of what she read. (Hers was a mind which could contemplate only one fact at a time: she had no power of correlation.)

"And what are you going to say?" she asked.

"Say! What is there to say except No, No, No? I'd--I'd sooner die. If I wanted to be a nun, I wouldn't have married Jack--naturally. But that doesn't seem to have occurred to him."

"But what's put it into his head?"

"Why, all that I told you about. That nonsense about dying. Of course he didn't die. Why, he's alive. But he's got it into his head that the Catholic religion is--well--is true in a kind of way he hadn't guessed. He's--he's frightfully in earnest. It's awful."

"And he isn't depressed?"

"Not a scrap. He seems quite reasonable in anything else. Of course Jack and I have always been Catholics and all that; we've 'got the Faith,' as we say: I mean, we couldn't possibly be anything else; and we'd always go to our duties, and the Last Sacraments, and all that. But--but this sort of thing! Oh! I'm certain religion wasn't meant to upset people like this!" she ended passionately.

Lady Sarah meditated. She entirely agreed with the latter remark; and religion had certainly never upset her for even one passing instant. In fact her rector would have agreed with her that it would be a most improper thing for it to do. But you never quite knew where you were with Catholics, she reflected. She had known more than one case--However, that was neither here nor there.

It was her duty to say something to poor Mary.

"I don't see what else you can do," she said rather feebly at last. "You must just tell Jack how the matter lies; and that you can't possibly be a nun. And that'll be the end of it. How fortunate--"

"Yes, indeed, there's some sense in theology after all. And at any rate he can't do it if I won't. And I won't. So he can't."

Mary got up. She felt rather better after formulating her conclusions. She came a step or two nearer and threw herself down on the sofa.

Certainly, reflected Lady Sarah after all, there were some sensible Catholics. She looked at Mary, at that small, very determined face, her low eyebrows and her set lips. She looked perfectly charming, thought the girl; entirely fitted for her position, and entirely unfitted for any other. What a pity there were no children! That would have settled things.

"Well, there's not much to say. I expect it'll pass off in a week or two," she said. "And the other things--"

"Oh, the other things don't matter. I can stand them."

"Well, then--"

"Yes; I know. But it's such a relief just to have said out loud, 'I won't, I won't, I won't.' And when I say that I mean it. Oh, by the way, he's given a thousand pounds to Father Banting. The poor man was dreadfully upset. He came and asked whether he should cash it."

"And did he?"

"Well, he's put it into the bank, with a note he made me sign about my approving of it provisionally. (That's just like a priest!) I'm afraid we have been rather brutes to him. Oh! I don't grudge that. Jack's frightfully rich, you know."

Lady Sarah sniffed slightly. It appeared to her a cruel waste of money. Such a lot might have been done with it. However, that wasn't her affair.

She stood up.

"My dear, I must be going. Come with me to the front door."

"Then you think I'm right?" asked Mary defiantly.

"Right! Why I should think so! What else did you expect me to say?"

"Yes, I suppose so. At any rate, I haven't got the faintest vocation. And Father Banting--"

"Oh, my dear, I don't understand about all that. You're absolutely, perfectly right. That's the end of it."

Mary got up.

"Oh, Sarah! what a comfort you are! I wish you were my confessor. Yes; I'll come to the front door."

As they passed together through the hall, Mary noticed a door left ajar, and remembering what room it was, went a step out of her way to shut it. She didn't want the smoking-room to be disturbed until Jack came to disturb it again himself. So she peeped in (as one does), and recoiled with an exclamation.

"What's the matter?" asked the girl.

But Mary paid no attention. She vanished straight through the door; and as Lady Sarah hurried in after her she was confronted by Jack himself, in a dressing-gown, cheerfully seated by a very large wood fire, and Mary staring at him.

"Yes, I know," the young man was saying with apologetic geniality; "it's strictly forbidden. But I had to come down--Good evening, Lady Sarah. You must forgive this."

"Jack," cried Mary suddenly, "what are you burning?"

"That? Oh, that's nothing. I found a little job waiting for me. That's all."

"But--but--"

Mary darted to the fire and dragged out from among the logs a large piece of smouldering wood. She held it in a kind of dumb consternation, by a curiously finished sort of handle.

"Don't. You'll be all over sparks," said Jack.

"But--but it's your bat. The--the South African--"

"I know. I thought it had better go in here, once and for all. I meant to do it some time, anyhow."

Mary stared at him, white-faced, still holding the smoking wood.

"My dear girl; don't be so dramatic! Here; give it me."

Jack took it from her, and thrust it down again into the heart of the fire, with an odd sort of smile.

"But--but--" began Mary.

"Oh, don't let me have to explain. I should have thought you'd have known. I say, Lady Sarah, do sit down, won't you? if you don't mind--"

"But, Jack--" cried his wife again, as the girl sat down deliberately.

Then the young man's face changed a little. It is impossible to describe that change as the two saw it, but it had a curiously sobering effect upon them both. For the first time in her life to the elder girl it appeared that Mr. Jack Weston was not simply a jolly schoolboy. But as to exactly what he was at this moment she could not judge. His lips closed and his brows came down, and a new spirit looked out from his eyes for one instant.

"My dear," he said quietly to his wife, "I thought you understood. You didn't really think I was going to go on with--with all this sort of footle?"

Mary looked at him for one moment longer. Then she suddenly burst into tears.

II

Mary got up next morning feeling just a little ashamed of herself. Yet she could not have said why. Every particle of reason that was in the situation at all lay on her side, and all the fanaticism on Jack's. "Fanaticism"--that was the word she wanted. It was kind, yet firm, like the pedagogues of childhood: it was charitable, yet just. Neither did it even hint at actual brain-trouble; and it was loyal therefore to medical advice.

She looked in at Jack before going down to breakfast, exchanged a few pleasingly irrelevant remarks, and was just going out of the room, when he uttered one sentence that spoiled for her the next two hours.

"I say; I wish you'd just look in about eleven. I want to talk about something."

She spent those two hours deliberately screwing up her will, wandering vaguely with a newspaper and a pair of garden scissors up through the terraces that led to the upper lawns. And here she sat down on a white bench.

It was this part of the garden that was her particular joy; and it was looking simply heavenly this morning.

From where she sat there spread before her a great stretch of perfectly level velvet lawn, spread, so to speak, exactly on the top of the rounded hill behind the house, forming a large semicircle surrounded throughout its curve by a yew hedge. In this hedge were cut windows, commanding immensely long vistas of woodland, radiating out like the spokes of a wheel, showing the green gloom of trees and undergrowth for at least a quarter of a mile ahead. Immediately behind the hedge rose giant elms and beeches, shadowing, when the sun stood at noon, and through most of the afternoon, the whole lawn on which she looked. This was, so to speak, the sacred place of the gardens. It was the place where those who wished to be more or less alone retired: flaming beds, and fountains, and terraced walks, and so forth, were necessary for visitors, and these were profusely supplied down below. Down below, too, were croquet hoops, and bowls, and the rest, with their proper lawns. But here was peace. One could walk right up to the yew-windows, and, leaning there, be, so far as sight was concerned, in the heart of the woodland. Rabbits, even at midday, would sit up in the rides beyond and regard, with doubtful ears, the face looking at them--yet without panic.

It was, then, with this part in particular that Mary had fallen in love when Jack had first taken her over her new home. It seemed to her still a sort of solemn, yet friendly sanctuary, that made no demands on piety: she disliked, so far as it was proper to do so, with her whole heart the Georgian interior of the house-chapel, with St. Peter and St. Paul, giant figures of plaster, regarding the worshipper from either side of the mahogany altar. This lawn was the place where she felt good.

It soothed her even this morning a little. She stared out at lawn and yews and elms, with a faint sense that they sympathised. Surely it was trying to be met by such an atmosphere as that which awaited her in the house! One thing only was certain: she must be perfectly resolute; she must give in, even genially, to minor discomforts, such as the perpetual presence of a priest, and impulsive gifts to him of heavy cheques--even to the burning of cricket-bats. But she must act as if she were entirely selfish in all matters directly connected with herself: she mustn't be swayed by Jack's moods. Of course all would come right in a few months at the latest; and a little resolution on her part would make that return more easy. Monk and nun, indeed! She smiled a little disconsolately.

This, then, was her programme. She must judge swiftly, by intuition, whether or not any new bombshell ignited by Jack would be likely to wreck her own comfort; if so, it must be firmly and kindly quenched. If it was only his own happiness in danger, she must acquiesce instantly... She wondered what it was that he wished to say to her at eleven o'clock. Surely it was not the cricket-business. She had made her peace in that matter, more or less, after Sarah's departure. Yes, she had treated him like an invalid. An "invalid"--that was another useful word--almost as good as fanatic. Even his mind seemed to be like an invalid. He wasn't himself. He wasn't real.

She was interrupted by a sudden vision of Parkinson with a salver, appearing abruptly round the corner of the bushes that shielded her seat from the house.

"Please, 'm, master says, would you kindly answer this? Master says he can't go himself."

She took up the note, wondering.

It was directed to Jack; it was an invitation to either or both of them, written by a friend of Jack's, asking them to dine and sleep a fortnight hence in a house the other side of the county.

She hesitated.

"Is there any hurry?"

"Chauffeur's waiting, 'm."

She waited an instant longer, foreseeing, yet dreading to foresee, the reason of Jack's refusal. It was the kind of thing he usually jumped at. He was particularly sociable.

"I can't answer now," she said deliberately. "Tell the man I'll write."

So this was the kind of thing she had to expect now--for months to come, at any rate; until Jack's--Jack's fanaticism had worn out. Oh, it was intolerable!

Then she fell once more to considering the whole business: the illness; the apparent death; the recovery. And yet she saw no light. The thing was a dream--just a very vivid dream, of the kind that haunts one sometimes for a few hours. Only in this case it had been more vivid than usual; and was acting upon a state particularly ill-fitted to resist its suggestion. That was the whole thing. It was utterly and hopelessly impossible that what Jack had described had been really experienced. People did not die and come back again. If they died, they did not come back. Therefore there was no means of knowing--knowing for certain that religion was--well, of course it was true; all Catholics knew that; but true in the kind of way that Jack thought it. Why, if religion was "true" like that, if it was possible to verify by actual experience the realities of faith, life would become impossible. No one could ever think of anything else. The whole world would go about in silence; everything would stop; nobody would marry anybody; nobody would dream of doing wrong ever; money and motors and horses--well--all these would be valueless; everybody would become a saint--

Then she broke off her meditations. But she could see a little better what Jack meant. Poor Jack--an "invalid"--a "fanatic"; just for a month or two. Then he'd become reasonable again, and buy another bat or two; and everybody would live happily for ever after.

Well, well: that was eleven striking. She must be getting back. "Resolute"; that was the word; she must be resolute and reasonable. She must just have common sense enough for two.

III

The doctor met her in the hall.

"Well?" she said.

"An extraordinary recovery, Mrs. Weston. I've given him leave to come down to lunch. It'll do him good. But please see that he eats well; he'll want all the strength he can get. I'll write to Sir James Martin. He's very deeply interested."

She said a word or two, and turned upstairs.

"Well, Jack," she said. "Here I am."

He was sitting in a deep chair by the fire-place, looking very nearly himself again. A little table stood beside him, deep in books, and three or four torn-open letters lay on the top. He nodded at her pleasantly, laying aside the book in his hands; and she sat down opposite on the couch that stood with its back to the window. The summer light fell full on his face.

"I saw the doctor just now," she said. "He gives an excellent account."

He said nothing for an instant. Then he turned to her full.

"Mary." he said, "I want to ask you a question. Will you promise to answer it truthfully?"

"Why, yes; if I know the answer," she smiled. (But she felt a little tremulous for all that)

"Well, then--do you think I'm mad?"

For a moment she was taken aback.

"Mad!" she said. "Why--"

"Yes; but do you?"

"Jack, of course I don't. I swear I don't. I think you're a little shaken by your illness, you know. People often are. I don't think you're quite reasonable always. But--"

"I see," he said. "Then that thing I asked you yesterday. Have you thought about it?" (Here was a fine opportunity to show resolution and naturalness.)

"Yes, my dear boy; of course I have. But only because you asked me. And I feel exactly the same, and I always shall."

"You're quite sure?"

"Absolutely. Why I haven't the faintest sign of a vocation. Jack dear, do you think I'd have married you if I had? You don't really wish--"

"That's final?"

Mary grew a little sore at his perfectly confident tone.

"Jack dear, I don't want to be beastly; but--but don't you think you had better consider my point of view just a little? I am your wife, you know. And--"

"But, my darling, what are you complaining of? I just made a suggestion. You don't like it? Very well. That's the end of it."

Mary sat silent. She had not expected such a swift capitulation. Plainly she was on the right road as regards treatment, however.

"Then I must just consider the next best thing to do," continued Jack tranquilly. "I perfectly recognise your rights as my wife. I've had a good talk to Father Banting about that. So we won't ever speak of that any more, unless you open the subject. That's all right, isn't it?"

"Er--yes," said Mary.

"Well, then; the next best thing. That's my point now. Do you like this place very much?"

"Why--I don't understand."

"Of course, if you're quite clear you want to go on living here, well, I suppose we must. But has it ever occurred to you that we should do better in a rather smaller house?"

Mary looked at him. This was worse than anything she had dreamed of. His persistence was horrible. Yet he looked practically himself.

"I don't understand," she said again faintly.

He smiled.

"It seems rather big for two people, doesn't it? Now I had thought perhaps we might get rid of this, and move--let's say--to one of the gamekeepers' cottages. Would you mind that very much?"

It seemed to Mary as if she were in some kind of appalling dream. Mentally she shook herself.

Then she remembered the blessed words "invalid" and "fanatic," and took courage.

"Yes, dear," she said gently. "I should mind very much indeed. I couldn't dream of it."

"You mean that?" he said quickly.

"Certainly. Dear Jack, you must remember I've got the same ideas that both you and I had a week ago. If you haven't got them, I have. And, you know, they aren't morally wrong."

He considered this with his head a little on one side.

"No," he said, "that's fair enough. I'm not going to be selfish, you know; or, at least, I'm going to try not to be."

"But--"

"One instant. I want to say that I recognise entirely your rights as my wife; and, indeed, your wishes as well: so long as they don't actually interfere"... (He broke off.) "Then I understand you wish to live on here just as before--motors, horses, servants--everything--just the same?"

"Yes, please," she said quietly, though her heart almost shook her dress with its beating. Fortunately he was not looking at her. He sat, just as before, in his easy attitude, looking steadily at the fire.

Then a sudden spasm shook him.

"Mary!" he cried. "Mary darling!"

For an instant his face was changed, and an extraordinary appeal looked from his eyes.

"Don't--don't--Jack."

"My darling, I must--just one word. Oh! don't you understand? The thing's real, real. God, heaven, hell, sin."

"Jack, I shall scream."

She was up, crouching back from him as if to ward off a blow. It was appalling that Jack should be like this.

His face relaxed first into a deep disappointment; then once more it cleared into that steady, slightly unfamiliar look that it had borne since his illness.

"I'm sorry," he said; "I know it's no good. I won't do it again. Look here; let's begin again where we left off. You really mean what you said?"

She nodded, and sat down again, trembling a little.

"Very good. Then that's clear. Then we'll both remember that. If I do anything, or propose anything that really interferes with your views, you'll let me know, won't you? You mustn't let me do anything, and then complain afterwards, will you?"

The reasonableness of this pierced her like a knife. Yet she knew she must not show it. She assented quietly.

"Then you must leave me too my individual freedom--my individual freedom," he repeated; "so long as it does not interfere with yours. That's all right, isn't it?"

She assented again. (What else could she do?) But it was hard to realise that this was Jack--Jack-- with his charming selfishness and occasional petulance. She began to see how much more pleasant it was to be ruled than to be deferred to. Yet anything was better than the hysteria of a minute ago.

"Very well."

He reached a letter from the little pile and handed it to her.

"Just read that," he said. "It seems to me to fall just pat."

She took it nervously.

It was in French. It was an appeal from a convent near Tours. It seemed that the nuns were to be driven out. They had no money and no friends. Mr. Weston's name appeared among the Catholic gentry of England. Was it possible that he could give them any assistance?

Mary sighed internally as she laid it down again. She foresaw, as in a flash, the interminable begging letters that would come now, so soon as Jack's new mood became known.

"I see," she said; "you want to keep them? That seems all right. You'll get references, I suppose?"

He smiled a little.

"Yes; I have been thinking it over. That letter came by the first post. I thought probably you wouldn't like my other suggestions, from what you said yesterday. So I've thought out a plan."

"Yes?"

"It seems to me that--that lawn on the top of the hill would be just the place for them. There's a spring there, you know. And they're enclosed nuns, you know; so they wouldn't bother you much."

"I don't understand," said Mary faintly.

"Why, surely. Up there on the top seems to me just the place. It's an extraordinarily healthy situation; and I could build a really fine convent, and endow it."

"Jack! You don't mean that, really?"

"Yes, I think so. I've had a talk to Father Banting. He thinks it most suitable. You see, we should keep all the other gardens. And there's that road through the park by which the tradesmen could come, and so on. And then the people, too. I had thought of a really fine church, with a transept for the public. Don't you think it's rather a brilliant idea?"

She sat in silence, looking at him.

Chapter III

I

OLD Lady Carberry always left London punctually on the thirtieth of June, and her daughter had to come with her. Some mysterious principle, no doubt, lay behind the selection of this day, in the great lady's mind; but whatever it was she kept it to herself. No disorganisation of this plan was permitted on any pretext whatever. She had even been heard to say when the carriage that was to take her the thirty miles did not appear upon the instant that "they would never get to Hadham Park in time"; but it was still a mystery as to what engagement awaited her there. It would have made no difference to anyone in this world besides herself, her daughter, and her immediate dependents, if she had remained in London throughout the entire year; for she did nothing whatever of any importance to anybody either in Grosvenor Street or at Hadham. Her life consisted, so to speak, entirely of scaffolding, with no building inside. The morning was divided between getting up and preparing for lunch; her afternoon between "resting" from those labours and going for a short drive in a closed brougham with two horses and two men, in no particular direction; and her evening between "resting" again, dining, taking a little recreation at cards, and going to bed. Three or four other mysterious and solemn-faced old ladies spent a large part of the year with her in the same kind of pursuits, and nothing whatever happened ever to anybody. They were all rather religious in an Established sort of way.

It had been a real relief, therefore, to Sarah when the Westons had bought the place on the other side of the valley, and she had found that Mary was younger than herself, and of the same breezy sort of nature. They rode together now and then; they wrote letters to one another; and they learnt the art of allusive conversation.

It had taken a few months before Sarah had quite got over, with respect to Mary, the odd sense of apprehensiveness with which she regarded Catholics. You never quite knew where you were with those curious people. Something rigid would suddenly emerge like a hidden rock from a smooth bay; and you spiked your boat before you knew there was any danger. This had happened once or twice to Sarah. There was an appalling memory still in her mind of a story she had once told to a middle-aged Catholic woman. The memory made her hot all over. It was not at all a bad story, you understand; but it was just of the sort that nobody tells unless very certain of the company. The silence that had followed the story, and, when Sarah got indignant, the speech that followed the silence--well, it had all been exceedingly unpleasant. But Mary seemed different, somehow. And it was after a visit together to the hideous little chapel (that always smelt of soft soap), and a conversation afterwards in the morning-room, that Sarah had lost her last trace of alarm.

"My dear," Mary had said very gravely, "I hate it all, exactly in the same sort of way that you do. It gives me the creeps. Yes, that small confessional that creaks and all the rest of it. I've got to do it, you see, because I'm a Catholic. But I try not to let religion interfere with my ordinary life at all. I think that's so important."

This was at least reassuring. It was precisely Sarah's own attitude to her own faith, and she found it satisfactory. After that the friendship had bloomed apace. And now an unsuspected mine had been exploded, and all was in confusion. She was sincerely sorry for Mary.

It was about a week later that the full significance of the situation burst upon her. She was riding through the village when she saw the first evidence of catastrophe. In front of a small enclosed court there was gathered a little group of round-eyed children, and in the midst stood a cart, drawn by an aged white horse, piled with the most incongruous-looking objects she had ever set eyes on. As a foundation to the stack there rested several large pieces of painted furniture, grained and varnished; from the midst of which protruded two bed-legs of iron like a pair of appealing arms; the castor of one was gone, she noticed. On the top of all this was a heap of rolled carpets, and on one side a mahogany bookcase, with all the books wrapped up in whity-brown paper. But it was the crown of the heap that struck her most. A large plaster angel, painted pink, with one wing gone, lay on his face, as if in attitude to swim (she perceived that he was in an attitude of adoration reversed); and a pallid unpainted figure, terribly chipped, lay beside him on his back, grasping a small child in a position of benediction, lacking two fingers of his hand. Various other objects, like pieces of palm, a heap of pictures, a nondescript bundle, and bedroom china, were secured by string wherever room could be found. One picture in particular struck her thoughts dumb for an instant: it lay, fully displayed to the passer-by, and represented an immense heart, blood-coloured, surrounded by yellow flames, in a black, shining frame with a cracked glass.

Then, as she looked, the priest came out, in an alpaca jacket and a biretta cocked rakishly on one side, carrying a pair of indescribable yellow vases filled with dyed grass; and the moisture ran off his face. Then she realised that the move was being made, and rode on hurriedly.

But the real shock came at the park-gate.

The gate itself was open, and she saw standing within it two figures of men, beside a dog-cart. One of these, whom she did not know, held a large parti-coloured piece of paper in his hands, and the other was Jack Weston. He lifted his cap as he saw her.

"Going up to see Mary?" he asked cheerfully. "I think she's out."

"I wasn't thinking of it," said the girl, as she reined up for an instant. "So glad to see you out."

She was at that point of acquaintance when she called him Jack to his wife and nothing at all to himself. She had ventured about twice on "Mr. Jack."

"Oh, I'm all right, thanks. Look here; what do you think of this? (Stand still, will you?)"

Her horse began an ineffectual prancing as a map was suddenly displayed before her.

"Oh, may I introduce Mr. Farquharson?... Lady Sarah...er... He's kind enough to undertake the building for me."

"I don't understand," she said. "What's that for?"

"Oh, that's the Carmelite convent. Mary's told you, hasn't she?"

"Convent! No!"

"Oh, I thought she'd be sure to have told you. We're going to build a convent on the top of the hill; just above the house. French Order, you know--expelled from France; at least just going to be."

"I don't understand," said the girl. "Mary hasn't told me a word. When was it settled?"

"Oh, about a week ago. It'll be rather fine in its way; at least I think so. This is only a rough sketch, you know."

She looked at the plan as well as she could, saw lines and labels, and finally recognised the site.

"But--but where's it going to stand? It's not to be on the upper lawn, is it?"

He nodded cheerfully.

"That's the idea," he said. "It's far the best site, Mr. Farquharson says. There's a spring, and all that, you know. And I'm rather thinking of an orphanage down on this side, somewhere. But that's not settled yet."

She rode on after a word or two; and the horror deepened at every step. It really was to be; the whole place was going to be changed. It was going to become a kind of Catholic settlement, of an appalling kind--convents, orphanages; with Jack Weston in the middle as Universal Provider--mad beyond a doubt, but with a madness that could not be laid hold of; and Mary--poor Mary, distracted and miserable. It was simply wicked. But why in the world had not Mary told her?

The reason was apparent when she reached home and saw a pony carriage.

"Mrs. Weston's been waiting half an hour, my lady. I said I thought your ladyship'd be home about half-past four."

She was in Sarah's sitting-room on the first floor, a charming little square green and white place, looking out on to a small lawn that seemed to belong to it; but it was a desolate face that looked at her.

"Oh, my dear," she wailed. "I simply couldn't tell you before I was certain. It's too awful. But the architect's come with his horrible plans, and it's really settled. I gave in; yes, I know I shouldn't have; but it's to be on the upper lawn--just the one place. It's too dreadful."

"You gave in?"

"Yes, I had thought it out so clearly, I thought; and Jack talked about his 'individual liberty' and mine; and I really couldn't see any excuse. And he gave in so instantly on the other things. He is so dreadfully reasonable--not a bit like Jack. And I had to. And the next thing I knew was Mr. Farquharson at lunch, and his plans propped up against the spiraea, and a fountain-pen behind his ear. I'd no notion he really meant it."

"Why don't you tell him you can't?" remarked Sarah, taking off her hat.

"I daren't. He'd think it so weak. Besides, it really wouldn't be fair. You know he did give in to me."

Sarah sniffed. Mary continued.

"And then, you know, it is really rather splendid--from Jack's point of view. Oh, I quite see that. I'm dreadfully reasonable too, in a kind of way; and--and if I felt as Jack does about religion, I suppose I'd do it too. But you see I don't."

"Why didn't you tell me before?" demanded the girl sharply.

"I couldn't. It was like telling a bad dream. It would have made it real, in a kind of way. Oh, but that's not the point. The point is, what on earth I'm going to do about it?"

"Cigarette?" said Sarah.

Mary took one without attending to it. She held it without lighting it, waving it about as she talked; and it was not until a match was thrust before her face that she put it to its proper use. Even then she continued her lament, pouring out horrible phantom schemes of Jack's, worse even than the visionary orphanage, describing the proposal to live in a gamekeeper's cottage and the rest of it.

"And he's given notice to his man," she ended. "He's been with him for years; but Jack says he simply can't be waited upon any more in that kind of way. Oh, and he goes to Mass every morning, and I've got to go too generally; and he makes his meditation every morning, just as if he was pious. Jack! Meditation! But he does; I've seen him from the gallery with a little paper book. It's too dreadful! And he tries to say the divine office. I came upon him and Father Banting at it in the garden one day. They were signing themselves like semaphores."

Sarah emitted a short chuckle.

"My dear, it won't last."

Mary shook her head dolefully.

"You don't know Jack," she said. "Cricket! That's the worst symptom. If you knew what cricket was to Jack! And he's given up the Field! He's--he's not like a real person at all. He's like a bad actor who's perfectly sincere and painstaking."

Sarah sniffed again.

"It strikes me it's the worst case of--do you mind my saying what I think, darling?"

"I want you to," wailed Mary.

"Well, it strikes me Jack's become the worst sort of prig."

"Oh, you don't understand. It isn't that. It's not the least that. He's not a prig. He doesn't think anything of himself at all. No, it's a sort of awful religious disease. Well, at any rate, it's a form that I don't like at all. Catholics do get it sometimes; and it's no good arguing. But it isn't priggishness."

"But what about you? Doesn't he think you very wicked and worldly?"

"Not in the least. That's the dreadful thing. He explained it all carefully a day or two ago."

"Tell me."

"Well, you see, it's like this. He thinks he's been sent a warning, at least that's what the poor dear says: that--that he was living an awfully careless life--and so he was in a sort of way; and that this has been given him as another chance. Otherwise he'd have gone to hell."

"Hell! You don't believe in that, do you?" asked Sarah, seriously shocked.

Mary stopped dead.

"Yes, I do," she said, "underneath somewhere. You don't understand, dearest. But it's all underneath. Now with Jack it's come to the top. Oh, it isn't only hell he's frightened of. He talks about ingratitude, and waste of his life and money, and all the rest."

"But you--what does he think about you?"

"Oh, he doesn't condemn me at all. He told me that he knew that it was quite possible to become a saint living as I do--think of that, Sarah! but that he mustn't. Oh, he's raving mad."

"I saw Father Banting making his move this afternoon," observed the other after a short pause.

Mary gave a little resigned gesture with her cigarette.

"Oh, that's a mere trifle now. If that was all--yes; he'll be there to-night, and to-morrow morning, and so on."

Sarah sat silent.

The situation appeared to grow worse every instant. She was not in the least persuaded against Jack's priggishness: it struck her as an appalling example of the vice she hated most. It was odd that Mary didn't see it. However, there it was--the Catholic point of view once more; and she had run herself against it, full tilt. She must just back off, and sympathise. At any rate, there was some practical advice to be given.

"Look here," she said, "you simply must not give in about this convent. It would entirely ruin the whole place to have it there. If he must have it, why in the world not stick it down by the upper lodge?"

"There's no water there."

"Then they can go and fetch it; it would be an excellent mortification, as you call it. Or have it laid on. Besides, I'm sure nuns don't wash much--particularly French nuns."

Mary shook her head grievously.

"I gave in," she said. "I was mad; but I did."

"Then go and eat humble pie. Tell him you've changed your mind--that you simply can't have it there. You've simply no right at all to let that lovely garden be spoiled."

"He'd think me so changeable."

"Not more than he is himself."

"I don't think I can, Sarah."

"Stuff and nonsense. Of course you can. Stand up to him."

Mary shook her head slowly.

A gong resounded from beneath. Sarah jumped up.

"Oh! and I haven't changed my habit. Well, they'll have to put up with it. Come down to tea."

Mary rose.

"Do you think I must? I don't want to, you know."

"Of course you must. Don't be afraid. There's only mother, and Miss Fakenham and her nephew. They're staying here."

II

Persons who have nothing whatever to do frequently succeed in investing that nothing with extraordinary pomp. Lady Carberry's afternoon drive, for example, was as carefully regulated in detail and etiquette as a state progress of Queen Victoria (whom, as a matter of fact, in personal appearance she rather resembled); and afternoon tea, dispensed in the shadow of her presence, stood, so to speak, for a banquet to foreign ambassadors. Things had to be done in this way, and not that; the tea-cake was never to be placed upon the slop-basin; the toast was to be of a particular texture; and so forth.

In appearance, as has been said, her ladyship resembled the late Queen; in manner and mind a hanging judge. She was severe. Severity sat upon her like a crown. The only possible way of tolerating her therefore was to regard her from a humorous point of view; to elicit characteristic remarks and reckon them up afterwards--if possible in the company of a sympathiser; to take one's seat, so to speak, in the front row and look on at the play. Mary had soon learnt this; and Lady Carberry therefore thought her charming and right-minded.

But this afternoon the girl was too much depressed to play her part; and a kind of despair fell on her as she watched and considered. (I have felt that despair myself sometimes on watching some stout and aged lady, let us say, setting out for a drive in a brougham; or a bald-headed nobleman reading his paper at the window of his club.) Nothing much happened for some time: words proceeded out of people's mouths; small things to eat were handed to and fro; the bell was rung; young Mr. Fakenham, a slim and melancholy man of thirty years old, with hair quite beautifully brushed, did his duty; and the two old ladies discussed things like the view from the hill above Barkway and the iniquitous doings of the Liberal Government.

This was all enacted in the drawing-room, a pleasant, low room, faintly suggestive of the early Victorian era, in spite of the Morris paper and the diamond-paned windows.

About half-past five the Rector appeared.

There is nothing particular to say about him, nor had he anything particular to say, yet his coming gradually switched off the talk to another line; and a sudden remark of his brought Mary forward, on that subject on which she would have most preferred to keep silence in such company.

"I saw Mr. Weston very busy over some plans at the lower lodge gate an hour ago," he said.

Lady Carberry stopped talking.

"Yes; that was an architect with him," said Mary.

"Indeed! You are contemplating some building--"

The Rector did not approve of the Westons overmuch. It had been something of a blow to him when this Papist couple had turned up; and it had taken nearly all the time that had elapsed since their coming to assure him that no harm would be done in his parish. He was a kindly enough man, getting on for sixty years old, with a very Established way of looking at things. Romanists were a superior kind of Dissenters to his loyal mind.

Mary hesitated for a moment. Then she reflected that it had to come out some time.

"Yes," she said, "my husband is thinking of building a convent for some expelled French nuns."

The Rector stopped stirring his tea. (It is a significant detail that for the clergy Lady Carberry did not usually send out for a fresh supply. Sarah, by the way, did the pouring out.)

"But--" he began.

Mary felt suddenly defiant. She went on rather rapidly.

"Yes, you know. It's dreadful to think of those poor creatures; and, as Catholics, of course we sympathise with them."

"But I should not have thought that Mr. Weston--" began the other.

Mary thought it better to elude this implication by a swift interruption.

"Of course, it isn't exactly what we should have preferred, in itself. But things are really serious. My husband got a most piteous letter a week ago; and--er--we decided almost at once."

"Do I understand you aright, Mrs. Weston?" began Lady Carberry. "I am a little hard of hearing. Is it that you are really thinking of building a nunnery here?"

"Well, on the top of the hill behind our house yes, certainly--a convent; yes, a nunnery."

"In those beautiful gardens?"

"That seems the best we can offer," said Mary recklessly. "It seems the obvious place."

(She saw Sarah out of the corner of her eye suddenly bend to do something with the urn. She knew exactly what she was thinking, but was too sore to care.)

Then Lady Carberry, having wheeled her battery into position, opened fire. She was not exactly insolent, nor exactly uncharitable; indeed, she professed a great breadth of view; but she discussed the French question with extraordinary frankness. It seemed to her, she said (and would Mrs. Weston forgive her for saying so?) that there must have been some reason why it was being found impossible in one civilised country after another to--tolerate the Religious Orders. She did not wish to say one word against the Roman Catholic religion; indeed, she had more than one friend of that faith; but it was politics--was it not?--that made it so essential for no community to be permitted which interfered in them. It was, of course, most kind most kind and charitable of Mr. and Mrs. Weston to give shelter to those poor creatures, who no doubt had erred in ignorance; but would it not have been the truest kindness to have just given them help on condition that they went to live in their homes again? And, again, what of convent life as a whole? Was it desirable in any case? Was it not unnatural and mistaken to shut oneself up within four walls (Mary had an intuitive flash of vision, and saw the brougham with closed windows, and Lady Carberry nodding inside)--within four walls, instead of doing useful work? And then, in any case, did Mrs. Weston think it wise to disturb a quiet little English village with foreigners, however unfortunate? Would it not be better... and so on.

Lady Carberry was extraordinarily difficult to stop when she got under way. She moved in conversation like a great brig; her wake affected all smaller craft within half a mile. Sarah made more than one attempt; but the silence that followed was so terribly abrupt on both occasions that she dared not do it again. So it flowed on to the end. Miss Fakenham, still in the hat with jet flowers in which she had shared in the progress this afternoon, nodded gentle approval, with closed lips. Mr. Fakenham, who had only arrived that evening from town, sat in an attitude of impartial deference, apart on the sofa; and the Rector ate and drank with an air of being fair to both sides.

The effect on Mary was, of course, exactly what might have been expected. She began by being bitterly amused at Lady Carberry's judicial attitude towards Carmelites. She did not in the least mind criticising them herself, but for Lady Carberry-of-the-brougham to do so was another matter. In fact, Mary had said most of the things herself, in expansive moments, including the "four walls" phrase; but it began to seem to her that the case was a singularly weak one when put by her hostess. By the end of the exordium she was cross; by the beginning of the peroration she was furious; and when the last words sank into silence she was speechless--though she preserved an admirable composure--and was almost persuaded that the top of the hill was precisely the right place, and that Jack's scheme was admirable in all respects.

She said one sentence as soon as her chance came.

"Yes, Lady Carberry; but you must remember that Jack and I are Catholics."

Sarah came out with her to the stable yard to fetch the pony carriage; and said nothing at all till they had turned the second corner.

"My dear, I'm so sorry. What can I say?"

Mary offered no suggestions. She was still trembling a little.

"What are you going to say to Jack?"

"I don't know," said Mary. "I--I think it's abominable of him; but--"

And she would make no more illuminating remarks.

III

The two dined together that night as usual in the small dining-room that they used when there were no guests; and once more Mary was overwhelmed by despair. (Father Banting, it seemed, in the agonies of moving, preferred to sleep for one night more in his old rooms.) The thing that brought her misery to a point was her observation that Jack took no wine and refused two courses.

She remonstrated when the men had gone out.

"My dear, it's all right. I asked old Basing this afternoon."

"And--and do you mean always to starve yourself in future?" she asked, her voice trembling a little with dismay.

Jack laughed gently.

"Look here, Mary, do remember about individual liberty. And you must remember that I'm only just finding my feet. I haven't the least idea what I shall do later."

She was silent. Then she glanced up at him, as he sat there, serene in the candle-light. It was something for him to be alive at all, she reflected. Then she put her elbows on the table and her chin on her hands.

"I want to have a long talk, Jack," she said. "Shall we have coffee out of doors?"

There was a small stone table fenced by seats in the little sheltered three-sided court where the fountain played; and here, when the windows had been shuttered behind them, and coffee had been set down under the summer stars, Mary began.

"Look here, Jack," she said, "I really do want to know how we stand. Are you going to spring any more surprises on me? That's the first thing. I want to know the sort of programme you've got in your mind. I know perfectly that you mean to be fair to me. That goes without saying. Besides, you've said it. But I want you to explain exactly what you mean to do."

He looked at her without speaking.

"And I want to make a confession," she went on. "I'll tell you plainly that I thought you, not mad, but just upset by your illness; and I've been hoping it would all pass away again. Well, it doesn't seem to me as if it is going to. So I must rearrange my mind. Please help me. I don't want to be tiresome."

Jack crossed one leg over the other, and she could see him begin to finger his moustache.

"It's nice of you to have said that," he remarked quietly. "I was hoping you would. Oh, yes, I'm perfectly sane--for the very first time, it seems to me. Well, I'll tell you all I know myself."

He tilted his chair forward again on to its fore legs.

"Well, this is the position," he said. "I've had a startler. It's no good going into all that again; but there it is. And it's just made the whole difference. It seems to me now that, knowing what I do know, it's everybody else that's a little mad--yes, my dear, even you. I see, in a sort of way, your point of view; after all, I had it myself till a week or two ago; but--but now it's exactly like a dream. Well, I want to fix that--my new point of view, I mean. I'm perfectly certain that nothing can change me again; but well one never knows whether one mayn't get a little slack. I can see absolutely that it would be quite easy, in an ordinary way, to slip back again; and I want to take every precaution. I know now--at least, I saw it quite plainly in--in my illness, that the thing's solid. I can see now that religion, and so on, is the one thing that matters; but I can also see perfectly well that you don't. Very good. Then we must arrange matters on that footing. You've got your rights: I know that; and I'm not going to--touch them. I wouldn't have touched that upper garden if you hadn't consented. By the way, you do feel that's all right, don't you?"

There was a moment's pause before she answered, long enough for her to see how much depended on it, not long enough for him to notice it.

"Of course I consent," she said quietly. "I said so,"

"Yes, but--All right then. Well, I shall always consult you before doing anything that will affect you in the slightest. I mean I'm going to continue to dress for dinner, and so on; but, for the rest, you really must allow me to make experiments and go my own way. About social things--I don't know. They seem to me simple rot just now."

"We've got people coming soon," slid in Mary swiftly.

"Oh, of course here things must go on as usual. That's your affair; and I shall be polite, and all that; but about other things--I'm not so sure... Mary, don't you see that it'll take a little time before I see things clearly, and what to do, and so on? You must really let me alone."

Mary put out her hand to the cigarettes. Jack wasn't smoking, she noticed.

"Do you see?" he said again. "It's not exactly easy for me, anyhow."

"Wait, please; I'm thinking."

They had always been on good terms, those two; almost like two boys together. They had made a special point of this, and it had worked admirably. Certainly it was good that such terms existed in such a crisis as this.

Overhead burned the myriad pin-heads in their velvet setting. The great trees across the lawn stood silent and massive against them; and the fountain did no more than throw into relief the enormous stillness of the night.

Mary was thinking hard. That last sentence had struck her with a certain sense of hope. This afternoon she had been furiously hard against him, judging him sternly from the height of her own excellent sanity. But somehow the old lady's assault had thrown her, almost unconsciously, on to the other side. That strange Catholic pride, so incomprehensible to others, had come to her rescue; she must support Jack, in speech, at any rate, and in public, against all comers that were not of the fold. And the very action of doing this had contributed to make her ask for this final explanation this evening, and to judge more leniently.

"It's not exactly easy for me, anyhow."

A certain hope surely lay hidden in that sentence. It was not a mere fanaticism that moved him then--not such a drunkenness of spirit as that which enables the fakir to find iron spikes his most pleasant bed: there was still effort; and effort involved the possibility of cessation of effort. Further, it was even rather admirable.

Jack's voice broke in on her silence, as if designed to emphasise her new thought.

"For instance, you don't suppose I like giving up that upper lawn. I know it's the best of the garden. But that's exactly why they must have it. You see that, don't you?"

She nodded meditatively,

"Yes, I see that," she said mechanically. "Wait a second, Jack. I want to put into exactly the right words what I want to say."

Again the silence came down. Then Mary broke it, with an abrupt movement of her head.

"Jack," she said, "I think I'd better say it plainly. It's this. I can't think that all this is more than a mood with you. I'm not saying anything against it. It's much better than a good many moods. So I'm not going to fight any more. But you don't seem to me to be quite yourself, somehow... Of course it may be a complete change, and I may be quite wrong; but--"

"My dear--"

"Yes, I know; of course you're bound to think that."

"My dear, I tell you the whole world's absolutely changed. Tell me; I'm not excited, am I?"

"Well, no, but--"

"Oh, Mary--"

Mary turned her head to look at him. She had said just now that he was not excited; yet even already she was beginning to doubt that. There was, again, a very odd look in his face, so well as she could see it in the dim light, an almost mask-like look, with some hot passion burning through the eyes. Certainly it was Jack all right; yet there was entirely gone from his features that placid, utterly natural, almost animal expression that simple well-bred people wear. Again she hesitated. Which of the two was the real Jack? Was it conceivable that his soul had only now awakened for the first time? Or was this some gust of feeling, working on a slightly unbalanced brain, that would pass again? She strove to reassure herself that it was the second.

"No," she said. "Please don't try to persuade me. I'm being quite reasonable. Just talk to me simply about your plans."

He dropped his eyes.

Then, while he continued to talk, she continued to think, answering him only when necessary, pursuing meantime that new point that she had only just perceived. It was really a relief, she saw now, to know that he found it just a little difficult. It made him somehow more human. Perhaps even he might already be regretting the burning of the cricket bat. Of course it was intensely annoying--though she kept that annoyance loyally suppressed--that this new course of life should interfere with things like the upper garden, and that Father Banting should be in the house, and all the rest of it. Yet there began to come into her mind a certain faint sense of admiration that had been wholly lacking. She knew that she would probably be annoyed very often again; but it was a consolation to know too that it cost Jack something as well as herself. It would be easier to co-operate on that understanding, or, at least, not actively to hinder.

Yes, it was rather admirable--this furious, even fanatical response, to--to an illusion such as he was suffering from. There appeared in it a certain nobility.

... "Yes," she said suddenly, in answer to a suggestion. "Get the plans and a candle, and let's look at them. I understand better now. Give me a kiss, Jack. I'll try not to be tiresome."

Chapter IV

I

MR. JAMES FAKENHAM was walking on the gravel path behind the house with a cigarette after breakfast.

He was a very harmless and entirely respectable young man of thirty-two years, with a thin, mask-like face; black hair so beautifully ordered that it resembled a discreet wig; narrow black eyes, rather melancholy; very delicate, hairless hands, with blue veins showing on the back; and was dressed this morning in that costume which he considered absolutely appropriate to a small country house where there was nothing to do except riding and trout-fishing.

His history was as correct as himself. He had had the dignity of orphanhood for thirty years; he had been sent to Harrow and Oxford by his aunt, in whose house he spent his holidays; he had entered the Home Office at the earliest possible age, and had remained there ever since, discharging his duties with that exact proportion of zeal, punctuality, and indifference that was compatible with and appropriate to his proper position. His aunt, whose heir he was to be, allowed him four hundred pounds a year and the hospitality of her house in Queen's Gate. He kept a small, trim horse in the mews round the corner, and might be observed riding in the Row, carefully and slowly, with his toes out, in the proper manner at the proper times. He had a small group of persons whom he called his friends, with whom he dined, danced, smoked, motored, and went to the theatre. He moved gently about in town among extremely correct people, and went dutifully with his aunt for at least a part of his vacations. He had no vices worth mentioning; he did the duties of his state of life; he was very far indeed from being stupid; and if it was impossible for anyone to be enthusiastic about him, it was equally impossible to be enthusiastic against him. One is not enthusiastic about a quiet, inhuman machine.

I love contemplating people of this kind, because the subject is so endless and evasive. I have no certainty of what Mr. Fakenham thinks about, but I am stimulated by him to form unverifiable conjectures for ever. Thoughts undoubtedly pass through his mind beyond those to which he gives expression, but I have no idea as to what they are; words proceed out of his mouth--often, so long as the subject is on his own plane, shrewd and suggestive; and actions are done by him. He lives, and he will die; and as to what he will do then not even I dare to form conjectures of any kind. He is the strongest argument for the annihilation of the soul that I have ever met.

He is religious? Well, he goes to church nearly always in the country, and even sometimes in town, and I imagine that his philosophy consists in regarding himself as a philosopher.

He is artistic? Intellectual? Well, he collects a few engravings and first editions of artists and poets whom no one has ever heard of except a group of persons in London and Paris of which he is one. He published a small volume of slightly improper essays ten years ago, and is extremely pained if anyone mentions the fact, for that was in the days of his youthful enthusiasm and indiscretion, before he had learned that self-repression was the epitome of all the virtues. (It was in those days that for about two years he had been accustomed to dress in the fashion of George IV, with, I think, straps to his trousers and a high satin stock. It had caused quite a sensation for a time.) He is really rather shrewd about people and human nature generally, though his outlook is not as catholic as it might be.

I wish now to describe his appearance this morning--not that anything depends upon it. (He is not, later on, to be convicted by its means of some nameless crime.) I wish only to gaze upon him for a minute or two.

He went up and down the path between the laurels neither slowly nor fast--the former would be self-conscious, the latter enthusiastic; he carried in his left hand a small silver matchbox with "Jim" engraved upon it in a feminine handwriting. I have no idea who gave it him; perhaps he bought it. His right hand held a small round Turkish cigarette. He wore upon his body a grey flannel suit, with a single carnation in his button-hole, and upon his head a neat Panama hat with a dark green ribbon; he had a high collar of the new fashion round his neck, embraced by a beautiful little very dark red silk tie that contrasted admirably with the soft blue-green flannel shirt beneath. On one finger he wore a gold ring with a coat lightly engraved. He had pumps upon his feet, and green clocked socks. A couple of documents in long envelopes, of no importance whatever, protruded from his jacket-pocket on the left side.

So, then, he walked. Below him was the shrubbery that shrouded the house; above him, beyond the laurels, stood the summer-house and the woods behind. Birds sang, and insects hummed, and the sun shone in an unclouded sky. And this lord of creation walked up and down, formulating thoughts, no doubt, though no living man could conjecture with any certainty as to their contents--in a grey flannel suit and Panama hat. He had breakfasted half an hour before, and would go indoors presently to the smoking-room to see if the papers had come.

Probably he was a little annoyed, therefore, when Lady Sarah appeared, radiant, flushed, healthy, and hatless, but carrying a dog-whip, and accompanied by a trio of fox-terriers. He was first aware of their approach by the sudden apparition of a young rabbit, panic-stricken, but running like a streak, which burst from the lower shrubbery, as a chorus of shrill barks broke out below, and vanished again upwards in the direction of the summer-house. Then the quartet appeared, en échelon, the girl last, cracking her whip and issuing orders. But the thing was useless; the pack had disappeared in full cry among the woods; and the two began to saunter together to await their return.

They knew one another quite well, in a flat sort of key; for there was no emotion available with Mr. Jim Fakenham. Their elders were old friends, and this was perhaps the fourth or fifth time that Jim had come here for a week or so in the summer. Further, they met fairly often in London, and were each of them perfectly acquainted with the tastes of the other. Jim was a little critical sometimes of the lack of repose in Lady Sarah, and she, in moments of expansion, rather impatient of the extreme self-repression and colourlessness of Jim. But they were good friends; they had quite finished at least two years ago those remarks of mutual disapprobation that were bound to be said, and had survived them. They accepted one another now as final. Sarah, even, had begun to repeat some of Jim's sayings as her own.

"Sorry there are no men here," she said presently. "What'll you do with yourself to-day?"

"Oh, I'm all right," he said vaguely. "I've got one or two papers to finish; and--and there's the trout stream."

"By the way, the Westons' stream's in better order than ours. You can always go there, if you want, you know."

"Perhaps I will," he said. "After tea."

This was Jim's one physical accomplishment. It was impossible to call it a passion; for he had no such thing; but, so far as things interested him at all, trout fishing interested him most. His enthusiasm had never yet risen--since one fatal holiday in Norway which he had spent with zealots who refused to dine at eight--to making anything resembling a business of that sport; but he certainly quite liked to take out his beautifully polished split-cane rod, his fly-book and net, half an hour after tea, and go down to some slow-flowing stream where monsters dwelt, subaqueous and alone, beneath the tangled roots of chestnut and lime. (He would always, however, be back at half-past seven.) He was just a little ashamed of his liking for it; for in his dim philosophy indifference was the greatest of virtues: and no doubt he would give it up, like everything else, in a few years' time. Meanwhile, if the weather was really pleasant, it was worth while just to go down alone for an hour or two, and see what could be done. It gave him an appetite for dinner; the sport was not noisy, and he could enjoy it without perturbation, in a really nice-looking suit.

"You might go to tea with the Westons," said Lady Sarah presently. "It'd give you an extra half-hour. Mother takes rather a long time, you know; and there's the walk afterwards."

Jim nodded gently. I imagine that he was considering whether it was worth it. He had nothing particular to say to the Westons, and was inclined to regard their religion as something corresponding to a slight air of ill-breeding. It had a fatal capacity for the production of enthusiasm.

"Yes, I might," he said. Then he glanced at Sarah.

"Yes, I know," she said. "It's very early to be so untidy. But those dogs, you know."

"I was thinking how charming," said Jim.

This was a little unusual from Jim, and the girl wondered why he had said it. She was quite sure he did not mean it. She decided to pay no further attention to it.

"I must see after those dogs," she said. "By the way, I wish you would go to the Westons. You heard all that last night? I can't make out Mary."

"Yes, I heard it," he said. "I suppose it's all right?"

"How do you mean?"

"Oh, the sort of thing Catholics do. It seems to me very odd. But, of course, I'm very narrow-minded. And up in those gardens, too."

"I can't make it out. Mary seemed to hate it as much as I do; but she's given in; at least, I think so. It isn't like her. I told you about Mr. Weston, didn't I?"

"His recovery?" asked Jim, carefully lighting a new cigarette from the stump of the old one.

"Yes. Well, that's at the bottom of it, of course. It seems to have sent him perfectly mad."

"Sort of revival, in both senses," remarked Jim.

"Exactly. Well, I wish you'd look in and see what you think. I think you're rather good at that kind of thing, you know."

"I daresay I will," said Jim, secretly pleased.

Sarah understood his attitude perfectly; in fact, it was largely her own. It seemed to him slightly indecent that religion, or indeed any instinct of the kind, should so display itself in outward action. It was not meant for that. And as for this form of display, no reprobation could be strong enough. They were both a little shocked, as if acquaintances of theirs should suddenly manifest bad taste. It was kinder not to say too much about it.

Then a dog arrived suddenly, miry-nosed and panting, and regarded them with his head on one side, from the vantage of a high bank; justice had to be administered and further search made. Jim went discreetly indoors to look at the papers.

II

The Manningham stream, Jim thought (and said later at dinner), as he approached it along the inside of the park palings (he had not been to tea at the house, after all), looked extraordinarily like a certain sort of Academy picture this evening.

It moved leisurely along at the foot of the slope on which the house was built, looping itself generously here and there, full-brimming, translucent; with here a water-meadow, dark with clumps of rushes, here an opulent may-hedge, while overhead towered the chestnuts, limes, and beeches that formed the front rank of the woods that trooped to the water's edge. The stream itself was a joy to the eye of the observer as well as to that of the dry-fly-fisher. It was full to the very brim just now, after the rains of early July, yet clear as glass; the chestnut blossom had for the most part floated away long ago, and lay now only in thin rims of faded pink above the lines of posts that here and there broke the even flow of the water into tiny cataracts. The rich evening sunlight poured across the western slopes, turning the green to gold, and the gold to an indescribable radiance; and as a foil, just beyond the stream, lay the heavy scented gloom of the deep woods. The air was full of evening sounds, the liquid talking of birds, the steady organ-hum of insects, the far-away suggestive jangle of cow-bells.

Jim was aware of all this with a certain pleasure. It was a little common and simple and English, of course--he preferred Italy--but it had its charm; and he hummed softly to himself as he set up his rod, passed the line through the rings, and at last, cigarette in lips, sat down on a stump to select his fly.

It was a "coch-y-bonddhu" that he chose at last, after a careful stare at the surface of the water--a fat little fly, consisting of iridescent feathers standing all ways at once, with dishevelled wings of a light brown--altogether an important-looking little beast, that would fall with a small succulent plop, would float detached on the liquid mirror, and above all to be considered under the circumstances--would dry quickly.

It was attached; the reel was looked to; the fly-book put away; and business began.

It would be about an hour later that Jim, now half a mile upstream and immediately below the northern side of the house, became aware of footsteps that approached and halted. But it was impossible to attend just then. Not two minutes before, as the "Welshman's button" (female), who had succeeded the "coch-y-bonddhu," floated, an apparently agonising moribund, just beyond a small clump of rushes, beneath an overhanging beech, there had appeared for one instant a solemn fish-face of incalculable size, seen magnified beneath the surface, and gone again, with a single ripple to mark it, inspecting the fly and vanishing with a hesitating air. All now depended upon a perfect cast. Jim, crouching unseen, kneeling in spite of his beautiful grey flannel trousers on a damp tussock, was waving the fly softly to and fro, waiting for that psychological moment when first impressions should have faded from the fish-mind and a second temptation should prove irresistible.

That moment came. There was a long, careful movement of the rod backwards (the fly whirled exquisitely in the sunlight), an indescribable pushing swish forwards, and simultaneously the sudden plunge of a rat opposite, and the consequent destruction of that mirror of peace. The rod checked, the fly flew up and wrapped itself affectionately about the beech leaves that sloped from the further bank.

"Damn!" said Jim softly.

Then Jack came forward.

There was a short exchange of greetings and technical explanations. It appeared that Jim had caught one two-pounder in the pool below the keeper's cottage (this was exhibited); that his rod was by Farlow, with double-brazed suction joints and a greenheart top; that the stream would be the better for just one thunder-shower; that Lady Carberry was extremely well and was to open the flower-show next Thursday; that Mr. Fakenham himself was to stay at least another week, then he was going to Norfolk; that he hoped Weston was really all right again; that he thought he must be getting homewards, and would Weston have a cast or two first?

Jack did not say much beyond what was necessary for courtesy's sake. These two had never got on very enthusiastically together, though they had smoked together perhaps half a dozen times, and the trout stream had been put at Jim's disposal in a general kind of way whenever he was with the Carberrys. Jack had secretly considered Jim rather an effeminate fool, and Jim had hinted gently to Sarah that Jack was rather bourgeois and Philistine. The two points of view were quite characteristic and quite untrue. Yet as they talked now each ratified emphatically his previous judgment.

"I suppose you won't stop to dinner," said Jack, with a regretful air that was completely hypocritical.

"Thanks very much; but Lady Carberry mightn't like it, you know," said Jim, with a sorrow he did not feel.

That courtesy was exchanged; and the two walked in silence.

Then suddenly Jack broke it, quite uncharacteristically, thought Jim.

"You've heard about our change of plans?" he said.

"I--er--heard something," said Jim vaguely. "Mrs. Weston was talking--"

"Yes," said Jack, with an air of finality, and walked again in silence.

He seemed a little jumpy, thought Jim; it was just like these slightly bourgeois people to lack repose. If Jim himself was ever compelled by circumstances to embrace the profession of an acrobat, he would say nothing whatever about it: he would simply appear one evening in exceedingly well-fitting fleshings of a slightly unusual tint, and would silence criticism by his assumption that all was as it should be. He sincerely hoped now that there were going to be no confidences. But Jack broke out again presently, with an effort.

"Look here," he said. "I want just to say this. I daresay it'll seem quite mad; but--but you've heard about my illness. Well, it's that--that's made the difference. And--and I just want to know what Lady Carberry and that lot think about it. Not that it'll make any difference," he added; "but I want to know."

"My dear Weston, I don't think it's anybody's affair but your own--and Mrs. Weston's."

"Well, then--what do they say?"

Jim reflected an instant He recalled very vividly a conversation at dinner last night--or rather a monologue, which it would be hardly discreet to report.

"Oh, she doesn't like it, of course--since you've asked me," he said. "But I don't see that it's her affair."

"And you?"

Jim smiled with his melancholy eyes.

"Oh, my theory is, Live and let live. You see, I'm not a Catholic, and don't understand."

Jack nodded.

"Thanks," he said. "Well, you'll come and dine one night?"

"I shall be charmed," said Jim. "Ah, here's Mrs. Weston."

They had come in sight of the lodge gate by now, and a pony-carriage wheeled in as they looked.

"Mary," cried Jack. "No, don't bother."

The girl climbed out, for all that, as the groom ran to the pony's head. Then she came towards them across the thirty yards of grass. She looked very well indeed, thought Jim, with his artistic perceptions, though again regrettably like an Academy figure against her background--small, trim, and brisk, rather flushed and bright-eyed with sun and breeze, and the west behind her. But she was just a little bourgeois in character too, he considered: she was too enthusiastic and decided to be quite perfect. She was not at all of the solemn number of the elect. He took off his cap and smiled as she came up and linked herself to her husband's arm.

"How do you do again, Mr. Fakenham?" she said, and made an enquiry after the sport.

The three walked together slowly, and halted to say good-bye. But there was plainly something the matter with Jack, for he again recurred.

"I've been telling him," he said almost defiantly, "that I don't care in the least what people say, and he quite agrees."

"Why, of course," said Mary, with an astonished air of whose genuineness Jim was not quite certain. "Of course we do as we please with our own things."

"It's nobody's business but ours, I think," repeated Jack.

Jim looked at him gently. He was quite a tolerable judge of moods, according to his own standards.

"You see it's like this, Fakenham," went on the other. "I've had a shock. I needn't go into it, but there it is. And I'm going to make a change. My wife didn't much like it at first, but we had a good talk last night, and she sees now as I do, at least in some of the things, anyhow. I know it's ridiculous talking like this to you, but I want you to let them know--oh, in your own words, of course--that we really mean business. So we do hope they'll mind theirs."

Jim looked for a fleeting instant at Mary. He felt as if the whole thing was slightly indecent, and wondered how she took it. But she was looking at her husband with an expression he could not understand, a kind of set look, one of a kind of admiration too, that was inexplicable.

"Oh, I'm sure--" began Jim, almost uncomfortably.

"Yes, that's exactly it, Mr. Fakenham," said the girl. "Jack and I entirely agree in this business. We want that to be quite clear."

Again she glanced at her husband, and again Jim was a little puzzled. What he read in her face was not at all in accordance with what he had learned of her through her friend Sarah. However, he told himself, it was not his business.

The rod had to be readjusted now, and it took a moment or two while the others waited. Then the usual things were said, and Jim went off. The two stood looking after him.

Mary took her husband's arm again and pressed it.

"Oh, Jack!" she said quite inconsequently, "I'm glad we talked last night."

"Yes," said Jack.

Jim Fakenham seemed doomed to fill the role of confidant just now, and it was one for which he felt himself possessed of no ability, except for very subtle temperaments.

He came down this evening an hour later, in a costume of dinner jacket, braided trousers, and a shirt with just the hint of a frill, and feeling that a flower was demanded, stepped out of the drawing-room window immediately to obtain one.

There he ran into Lady Sarah, also dressed for dinner, but with an air of unusual perturbation. She held a note in her hand.

He made a remark or two, selected a white rose and pinned it daintily into his button-hole, while she looked on abstractedly.

"Look here," she said suddenly. "It's frightfully indiscreet of me; but do just read this--oh! and don't breathe a word, of course."

He took it, glanced at the name at the end, then turning back read it through. He made no comment at all as he gave it back.

"Well?" she said.

"I've no remarks to make," observed Jim, with his hands in his pockets, looking at the sunset.

"But I don't understand it a bit," said the girl peevishly. "It's not like Mary. Do you think she's trying to be loyal, or what?"

Jim creased his lips tightly. (It was a substitute for a shrug of the shoulders.)

"I hardly know her, you see."

"Mary shan't play-act with me," said the girl vehemently. "I'll soon have it out of her, if that's all."

"No, I really don't think she's doing that," said Jim. "I met them both just now. He seemed more uncomfortable than she did--if I may venture to say so... Oh no, I don't mean he was giving in at all. On the contrary, he seemed extremely pugnacious. But he asked me right out what Lady Carberry thought of it all; and she didn't."

"But she knew."

"Perhaps that was it," said Jim.

Sarah stood silent for a moment, creasing and uncreasing the note.

"I don't understand all this about her talking to Mr. Jack last night, and the difference it has made. What difference can it make? He's perfectly mad. Don't you think so?"

"Yes, I do."

"But Mary's not. Far from it. Oh, do tell me what you think."

Jim moved on a step along the garden-path without speaking. The ground fell steeply away behind them, and far across the valley to the eastwards Manningham Hall pricked its chimneys among the woods. The sun was gone down, but the sky was still glorious with colour.

"They're Catholics," he said at last. "And with Catholics you can never know. There's a touch of fanaticism always, and it flares up." (He felt extremely shrewd and large as he uttered this sentence.) "Personally I should guess that Mrs. Weston was--well, piqued by what--er--Lady Carberry said yesterday. She probably went home rather angry. Then they talked, as she says; and she just chose, partly out of pique, and partly, I daresay, because she's very fond of her husband, to wish what he wishes."

"And you think that's all? Why she talks as if she was repentant about something--all that about 'understanding' and so on. And then there's that other mysterious sentence on the last page, about there being something she can't ever mention to a soul."

Jim smiled.

"You think that means nothing?" asked the girl.

"No--I mean yes."

"You're sure?"

"I think it's just part of the pose," said Jim magnificently.

Sarah sighed.

"Well, I'm sure I hope so," she said. "If Mary's going to become religious too, I shan't ever trust anyone again. Why are you smiling, Mr. Fakenham?"

"Only--only it's all so odd. Do--er--women always watch one another like that, and get interested and excited?"

Sarah smiled.

"Mary's a dear," she said. "No, of course they don't. Well, yes; I think they do more than men."

Dinner was as august an affair in this house as it was possible to imagine, and was conducted with a solemnity of demeanour entirely unimaginable. Other persons might make alterations, and begin with this and end with that, and dine in the garden, and have iced soup and frozen coffee on hot days, and permit cigarettes to appear on the very cloth itself; but here were no modernities. The date of eighteen hundred and seventy, I believe, was the year in which Lady Carberry first shone upon the social world; and the details of custom in that year--I forget at this moment what they are--were for her immovable and sacrosanct. Poor Jim was conscious of committing a hundred solecisms; even his dinner jacket had once been eyed through a pair of long glasses; but he was determined not to yield, and he compensated by his extreme deference to the old lady in conversation for those little ways of which she did not approve. It is a cheering and a pleasing fact that young men of this kind have a strange attractiveness to severe old ladies of Lady Carberry's kind; and she permitted herself to talk before him with a confidence she did not give to everyone. She even allowed him to smoke his cigarette in full view of the very drawing-room windows themselves.

It was as cheese appeared that she diverted the talk in the dangerous direction.

"I have been thinking a great deal," she said, "about that poor Mrs. Weston. I think it's terrible her being put upon like that."

That struck the key. It was evident that Lady Carberry's attitude was to be one of commiseration. She had two methods in dealing with antagonists: one consisted in severe and public reprobation or in yet more severe silence; the other in a vehement compassion which there was no resisting. It was under this scourge that Mary was to be brought; she was to be represented as a victim of her husband's folly. It did not matter in the least that the whole thing was not at all the old lady's business; as she herself said in a phrase that was irresistible--she made it her business; and that was an end of it.

Sarah glanced up and down again.

"Of course we can do nothing," continued her mother severely; "we shall have to wait and see the whole village turned upside down and all the Rector's work undone. We must just submit; I know that. But I am sorry for that poor woman."

Sarah flushed a little.

"Mother, I don't think you need be," she said. "I've had a note from Mary. She seems quite reconciled."

The old lady shook her head with a bitter smile. Jim noticed, in that kind of paralytic state which the old lady's more emphatic conversation tended to produce in him in spite of himself, the miniature of the deceased Lord Carberry [1] --a nobleman in a red coat, with whiskers and a long upper lip rise and fall upon the lace-shrouded throat of his widow.

"She may say so," said the great lady; "of course she must be loyal to her husband. I admire her for that. But she's far too sensible to agree with him. I shall make an opportunity to have a good talk with her."

Miss Fakenham murmured an admirative assent.

It is an appalling, and yet a fascinating spectacle--this tyranny of the old. Here was the whole situation staked out, regardless of others' claims; or, to change the metaphor, here were all these persons, attached like marionettes to their wires, set to play those parts thought suitable by this one old lady. I despair of describing her forcefulness. Jim was aware of it, no doubt, in a detached kind of way; after all, he was only her guest. He could hardly remember a single conversation under his hostess's auspices in which he had sincerely said what he thought; (that is the one drawback to forcefulness). Sarah was aware of it--no longer with anything that could be called resentment: that had flared, perhaps ten times in as many years, and seemed dead within her. A dull, half-humorous resignation had taken its place. Miss Fakenham was aware of it, and revelled in its power. The men behind the chairs were aware of it; in fact, it was worth their respective places to forget it. The very furniture of the room--the hopelessly inconvenient sideboard, purchased lit the year 1873; the gouty-legged mahogany chairs; the stuffy carpet; the terrible splendour of the pictures--all were aware of it; or at least retained their positions only by its power. The presence brooded over all, and made all its own. Yet it resided in but one old lady, stout and ill-formed, of no great position, of second-rate faculties, always rather unwell, with the portrait of her deceased husband round her neck, a bracelet of his hair on her wrist, a rich black dress trimmed with lace, a small country house, a town house, and two thousand a year.

Why are such things permitted?

III

It is a characteristic of Catholic clergy, politicians, and diplomats that they usually say less than they think--in distinction from the rest of the world, who usually say more than they think. The priest, that is, usually makes up his mind before he utters it; the layman employs utterance as a method of thought. (Of course there are exceptions to both rules.)

Father Banting, for instance, had not in the least made up his mind as to the new situation that had unfolded round him, and accordingly said nothing whatever about it to anybody, except as regarded the barest external facts. He did not know whether the development would advance or recede; Jack would become more or less of a dévot; whether Mary would resent the change less or more as time went on. But he thought about it a great deal.

Now it is a fact, if the world would only believe it, that a priest is usually an extremely commonsense and cautious man. He knows perfectly well, from books, if not from experience, that there are few catastrophes so great and irremediable as those that follow an excess of zeal. He has read of, if he has not seen, shipwreck after shipwreck caused by the mere crowding on of too much sail with the best will in the world; the disease that he has to combat at least as often as any other is the state of mind called Scrupulousness--the result, in most cases, of some unbalanced excess of virtue.

Father Banting, then, was not as content as might be thought with Jack's sudden burst into devotion. He was pleased, naturally, with its very solid fruits so far; but he had not in the least made up his mind as to the future. As to the origin of it all--the apparent resuscitation from death--well, he put that into a small pigeon-hole in his mind labelled "doubtful," that already contained a certain number of well-wrappered packets. He did not know: that was all. He marked time; and meanwhile was in correspondence with his bishop as to the bestowal of his thousand pounds.

The rooms he occupied were an enormous improvement on his old lodgings. They were three in number, in the chapel-wing; his bedroom, a small rather stuffy apartment, chiefly occupied by a large bed and a chipped-winged cherub in pink plaster; his sitting-room, where his pipes lay about and his books; and a small prim apartment, where he could eat when the squire was away. But they were comfortable and convenient, and it was a pleasure not to have to trudge up through the park every morning before breakfast. He interviewed people when necessary in the sacristy down below.

It was here that Sarah was requested to wait one morning, a week or two later, when she asked for him.

She had never been in a sacristy before, and looked about her with a superior sort of curiosity. It seemed to her as if she were very much behind the scenes indeed. Two chairs called "Glastonbury" stood before a disreputable-looking pine table on which rested a large flat book, an ink-bottle, a clogged pen, a grimy book of devotion, and two or three crumpled pieces of linen. There was a kind of tallish cupboard on one side, with drawers covered with American cloth; and at the back small glass vessels, a dish, a bottle of wine, and a mysterious sort of calendar lay huddled together. Other objects met her eye as she looked round--a sheeted flat thing hanging on a pole; a couple of staves bound with brass; a censer. A yellowish wardrobe between the windows was half open and disclosed a vision of linen within. It was all rather dingy and unswept. There was not much glamour here, at any rate.

She sat down; and almost immediately Father Banting creaked in, in new boots with elastic sides and sham laces.

It was rather difficult for Sarah to approach her business, for it was nothing else than to pump the clergyman of all the information she could gain. She was persuaded, of course, that he knew a great deal about the whole matter, even if he were not somehow at the back of it all. She did not actually suspect him of having engineered the entire affair from the beginning, but she was quite positive that he had pulled the strings very adroitly ever since. There was that thousand pounds, for example, of which Mary had told her.

"I came to talk to you about Mrs. Weston," she said presently, with an air of great frankness. "Of course she doesn't know I've come, and you won't say anything, will you?"

Father Banting smiled gently. He had not a notion what to say.

"Why, of course not, if you wish me not to," he said. "Won't you move your chair, Lady Sarah? I'm afraid you're in a draught there."

He got up and satisfied himself that the door into the chapel was closed. Sarah repressed her impatience admirably.

"It's all a terrible upset," she said, when he had settled down again. "Of course from your point of view, Father Banting, it's all as good as can be. I quite understand that. But I wondered whether there wasn't anything I could do to smooth down matters. Mary--Mrs. Weston--seems to be quite changing."

The priest took off his spectacles, drew out a magenta silk handkerchief from the breast pocket of a very old cassock, and began to polish the glasses carefully. But still he said nothing. Sarah thought him very stupid indeed, and certainly he did not look very clever. He had what is called an amiable expression. He was going grey fast, and his forehead above his eyes--more weak-looking than ever now that his glasses were off--was a gentle moist pink. He wore a celluloid collar, rather yellow at its rim, Sarah observed.

Something in his air of timidity irritated her. She felt it was dreadful that this stupid old man--not even a strong, crafty personality such as a priest ought to be--should so control people like Jack and his wife. It was just because he was a priest, she supposed. Well, at any rate, she had no superstitious awe of him. So she became a little more rude than she had intended.

"It's a very serious thing, you know, to the neighbourhood--all these changes. I don't think your--your Church will gain by it at all in the long run. People are beginning to talk."

He replaced his handkerchief in his pocket. A corner of it still showed, vivid against the dusky shiny cloth. Then he put his spectacles on again and cleared his throat.

"What do you want me to do, Lady Sarah? I don't quite understand. What are people saying?" (Ah! that had gone home, then! She congratulated herself on the stroke)

"Well, I don't want to offend you," she said, smiling, watching his rather stout old hands folded on the table, "but you know what people do say about priest-craft, and so on. Of course I don't believe it, but--"

"Then why do you tell me of it?" came gently back.

She started a little. It almost sounded like a reproof. But that, of course, was out of the question.

"I thought it my duty," she said, with patient tolerance. "I knew you wouldn't wish to do anything that brought disrepute--"

"Do I understand you to mean that you think I am urging Mr. Weston on?"

She was genuinely surprised.

"Why, of course," she said. "And I don't blame you in the least. It's perfectly right and natural from your point of view. I quite see that."

He cleared his throat again, rather suddenly, and she heard him uncross his feet beneath the table.

"And you have come to say--"

(She seemed to have been so successful up to this point that she determined on a far bolder stroke than she had imagined possible. She had had no idea that he would give in so easily. He seemed to have no personality at all.)

"Well, I've come to see whether it isn't possible, even now, to dissuade Mr. Weston from this scheme. You know Mrs. Weston can't bear it, though she's given in at last. Don't you think that a few tactful words, dropped at the right time, might make him pause even now? I'm sure you know the way in the confessional, perhaps--or--"

Again he took off his spectacles, again drew out his handkerchief and fell to polishing.

Sarah felt her spirits rise incalculably. She had prepared herself, with some timorousness, for a really formidable interview; for there lurked in her, in spite of her protestations to herself, an indefinable kind of fear of this old man. She had very seldom spoken to him before--perhaps half a dozen times altogether; but she had a sort of innate distrust and awe of a priest, as of one who possessed arts and powers beyond the reach of the average worldling. (Of course she would have denied this vigorously, if she had been challenged.)

And now that he was really bearded, he was nothing at all--just a nervous, short-sighted old man among his shabby instruments of worship. She waited for his capitulation. It surely must come soon.

He put his spectacles on the table before him and wiped his nose carefully.

"Lady Sarah," he said, "I'm sorry to have to say this; but I'm afraid I am obliged. I don't think you quite understand what you are doing."

She looked at him in the blankest astonishment.

"I understand you," he went on carefully, "to have threatened me with the displeasure of your friends if I continue a course of action with regard to two of my own people--a course of action which you credit me with without any evidence at all. I shall not discuss whether or no that course of action is mine or not; but in any case I am bound to tell you that I cannot for one instant allow--er--your ladyship to interfere, even with the best intentions, or to suggest to me what I am or am not to say in the confessional."

"But, Father Banting--"

"I am very sorry that your ladyship should have thought it possible--"

"Father Banting--"

He rose steadily, picking up his spectacles; but his old hands shook uncontrollably.

"I trust that your ladyship will not bear malice against me for having spoken so. I--I thought it better to explain the situation as clearly as possible."

Sarah too stood up white with anger and disappointment. And the worst of it was that she knew perfectly well that it was her own fault.

"I shall not trouble you again with the matter. Good morning, Father Banting. I am sorry that you should have so misunderstood me."

Chapter V

I

I REFUSE to describe the flower-show held at Sir Samuel Cohen's beyond saying that it was exactly like all other flower-shows; and I forget whether it was in support of any charitable institution. I think it must have been; otherwise I do not think that even Lady Carberry would have made a speech. There were all the usual things--hot tents, moderately cold ices, awnings over the windows, grass trampled till it bled a dark green, a nerve-shattering noise of talking and brass-band playing, an enormous crowd that ebbed and flowed continually, motor-cars, carriages, dust, turnstiles, a good deal of crossness, small girls with black legs and white frocks, men in straw hats, women with Zulu head-dresses: and there were some flowers, I think. Sir Samuel walked about indefatigably, in a frock-coat and white waistcoat, and his wife sat in the drawing-room and said the same things over and over again during three hours and a half. There seems to be a vacuum in life which this kind of business fills; and it filled it on this occasion; at least everybody said it would have been a great success if only the champagne and strawberries had been a little better iced.

The point of it, however, so far as I am concerned, lay in a conversation that took place in the morning-room--a small place with the blinds drawn down, whither Lady Carberry retired with Miss Fakenham after her opening speech in the biggest tent.

Mary had come, as befitted her position, though without Jack, and was wandering with Sarah, whom she had suddenly met, to and fro, up and down an unfrequented path behind the shrubbery. Sarah could not altogether make out her friend; and she had hardly begun to put a few leading questions when Miss Fakenham's sunshade appeared round the corner. The summons was issued, and Mary, after one enigmatical glance at the girl beside her, disappeared in captivity.

Sarah remained conscience-stricken, and sat down to consider the situation. She had been on the very point of disclosing her mother's intention to deal with the matter in person, when the summons had come: she wondered what in the world would happen.

To her entered presently Jim Fakenham, cool and unperturbed, round the corner of the protecting shrubbery. He did not know a great many people here. He had strayed into the dining-room to look at a reputed Gainsborough, and out again after a glance; he had stood absorbed in a small green book, leaning against the library shelves; and he had soon afterwards congratulated his host on possessing a book of which the owner was not aware, though he pretended to be; and had said nothing at all about the Gainsborough. He felt it would have been very painful if he had. Then he had wondered where Sarah was, and had wandered gently away to look for her. I think he very likely wanted her to observe him as the Philosopher at a Flower Show.

He said nothing at all. He sat down beside her, placed one knee over the other, drew out his cigarette-case and the little matchbox engraved "Jim," and went through the series of actions necessary for smoking with a precise air.

"Mother's started on Mary," burst out Sarah suddenly.

"So I perceived," said Jim, looking at her.

Sarah looked charming in her afternoon party costume--far more charming to an aesthetic eye than in her rather short skirts and blouse and jacket that she wore usually, more charming even than in her riding-habit. She had that simple and fundamental kind of good looks and healthiness of the rather fair sort, that fitted most costumes; but her large, shady hat to-day, trimmed with red roses; her white dress, which I do not propose to describe, beyond saying that it presented a general appearance of grace and white lace and cambric and silver; her silver-buckled brown shoes, and the rest--all this made her more feminine and youthful and even delicate. Jim looked and approved... Besides, she had expectations of two thousand pounds a year and two houses--and that would make three. All these things were combining consciously in his mind, this year for the first time.

Jim too, to her eyes, looked all that he should. I really cannot bother with his dress too; but it suited him. His clean-shaven, clever face, thin and black-eyed and cool, his precise, rather fastidious mouth, his pleasant detached air--in fact that air which he wished to carry--his assumption of homely friendliness and intimacy in sitting down beside her like this, away from the crowds who buzzed like bees forty yards away behind the screening shrubbery--all this made her feel friendly and confidential.

"And I don't know what to do. Shall I go and interrupt? I don't think I dare."

"Shall I do it for you?" suggested Jim. "I might go in and forget to throw away my cigarette. That would cause a diversion."

Sarah smiled with one side of her mouth, and looked serious again.

"Really," she said, "I'm rather anxious. Mary will be driven quite desperate. She had just time to tell me that Mr. Weston wouldn't come, when your aunt fetched her away. And now mother's at her."

"I can't make out why you bother so much," said Jim.

"Oh, you can't help it with Mary. I've got frightfully fond of her. She's the sort you can't help liking."

"But what are you afraid of?"

"I don't know. Catholics are so hopeless. And their priests!..." She broke off eloquently.

Jim nodded gravely.

"And--er--Weston too?" he asked.

"Oh, you know him as well as I do. He's exactly what he looks. He'd be quite sensible--in fact he was--until this absurd thing happened. It doesn't suit him at all. You can see it in his face."

Jim considered this. By "sensible" he knew quite well what Sarah meant--she meant what he himself called Philistine--cricket-playing, sunburnt, conventional that is by conventions that were not Jim's--quite transparent and rather dull. It seemed a queer thing--almost ironical--that this elusive thing called religion, above all that most elusive aspect of it that is called Catholicism, should have been overlaid on such a foundation. It was like looking at a green meadow through a magenta glass. The two things didn't mix: they looked just unreal and rather repellent.

He presently put this more or less into words with a wistful air of not being understood. The air was justified.

"Magenta glass! I don't understand. Please don't be clever, Mr. Fakenham."

Jim sighed inaudibly; but he determined to be tolerant.

"I mean that it doesn't suit Mr. Weston," he said. "He isn't really religious, you know; it's only a phase."

"Yes, I think that's true. But he's a Catholic, you know."

"Only by education."

Sarah reflected. Her face looked delightful in meditative repose.

"Yes, I think I agree. That's rather clever, Mr. Fakenham. How did you notice that?"

"Oh! it's pretty obvious," said Jim. "He's rather dull, you know, really. Now it seems to me that the only point of religion is to make people interesting."

Sarah glanced at him sideways.

"But--" she began.

Jim said nothing. He felt more a philosopher than ever.

"And do you think it won't last with him?" she asked.

"I shouldn't think so. You've got to take away the magenta glass some time, you know. Besides you can see it in his face, as you said."

Sarah got up suddenly.

"Well, let's move about a bit. We can't sit here all the afternoon. It isn't polite."

The crowd wore rather a fatigued air as they emerged into it again. There was not the previous activity visible: the hot tents were almost empty; groups were tending to sit upon and lean against everything that could support the human frame; and there were distinctly fewer people. Suddenly Sarah made a small sound.

"Look," she said, "there's Mr. Weston. I wonder what he's doing here, after all."

Jack was indeed coming towards them, alone; but he was eyed a little as he came, and people dropped their voices. It was obvious that he was beginning to be talked about. For one thing, at least, Sarah was thankful: he was, at least, respectably dressed. She had not been quite comfortable on the point: visions of sackcloth or camel's hair had moved before her, or the absence of a shirt collar, or even of shoes and socks. Another thought also struck her, and she moved quickly towards him.

"Are you looking for Mary?" she said. "She's with Lady Carberry in the morning-room, I think."

Jack saluted her.

"Thanks very much," he said. "Yes, I was beginning to wonder--"

"So you came after all," said Sarah as they went together, with Jim looking philosophical in the rear.

"I--I thought I would," said Jack, rather feebly.

She glanced at him again. Yes; he looked uneasy somehow--it was in his face--but it was so slight an air that she hesitated to draw any conclusions.

"Here's the window," she said, and rustled in before him.

II

It was quite a dramatic scene, on a very small scale, that opened before them. Miss Fakenham was absent; no doubt she had discreetly withdrawn. But the two figures were placed admirably. Lady Carberry's likeness to Queen Victoria was quite extraordinary; her dignity was supreme. She sat in a tall chair with her handled eyeglasses on her knee, and a look of furious commiseration on her face. Opposite her, on a sofa, sat Mary, also bolt upright, rather white in the face, but so exceedingly composed that it was obvious that she had determined to remain so against all odds. Her voice when she said a word of astonishment to Jack was cool and high-pitched.

"Ah!" said the old lady; "so here is Mr. Weston, after all."

Jack shook hands carefully and drew himself up.

Sarah began, hypocritically, to hope that she had not interrupted, but that Mr. Weston--

"Not at all," said her mother. "I am most pleased that Mr. Weston came so opportunely. Do sit down, Mr. Weston."

Jack sat down, and a small conversation followed that Sarah followed with all her powers at full stretch. Jim Fakenham looked in for a moment; then withdrew to a chair set outside the windows, from which he could hear every word and pretend not to be doing so.

Lady Carberry began by a little arch scolding, in which her voice now and then cracked with passion. She knew and they knew, and she knew that they knew, that it was not in the very faintest degree any business of hers if they had chosen to bring the Pope of Rome or the Grand Lama of Thibet to their upper gardens; so she was unable to loose such vials of wrath as she might have done under other circumstances; so she assumed a motherly attitude towards these two young things, with the veins on her forehead swollen with indignation. To Jack was assigned the part of the enthusiastic boy who did not know what he was doing; to Mary that of the blindly adoring, though timid wife who followed his lead. Lady Carberry's own experience of above sixty years was spread before them: her deceased husband's name appeared more than once; they were entreated to consider the situation more tranquilly, to let at least a year elapse, to make a quantity more of enquiries, to have a good talk to the Rector, to beware of the influence of the insidious Father Banting, who must, of course, have planned the whole thing from beginning to end.

"My dear young man," she said at last. "You really must let me call you that; I am more than old enough to be your mother. You really ought not to let a little thing like this--oh, yes! I heard all the story of your illness from Sarah over there--you ought not to let this little thing make all the difference in your life--and the life of your wife."

Sarah glanced at Jack, in time to see him pass his tongue softly over his lips, and then back again to Mary.

For it was not mere impatience or resignation that she saw there. There was a look she could not understand. She did not have to wait long.

After one more paragraph from the old lady, Mary rose suddenly, whiter than ever, but, it seemed, completely herself.

"Lady Carberry," she said, "I am sure you mean nothing but what is kind. You have talked to me now for nearly half an hour, and I've hardly said one word. I must say to you now what I haven't even said to Jack--yet I suppose I've been too shy--but it's this: and Jack can hear it too. I wasn't convinced at first--" she broke off--"I mean I wouldn't let myself be convinced at first, though I knew it perfectly well, and I know it now beyond the shadow of a doubt, that Jack really did die (I don't care the least what the doctors say; what else can they say from their point of view?)--that Jack really did die and was brought back again in answer--well, I needn't go into that--" (her voice faltered) "but that he came back in order to have another chance... and--and that I might too. You're not a Catholic, Lady Carberry, and you can't possibly understand."

"My dear girl--"

Then the pent-up nerves flashed a little.

"Please mind your--Please don't trouble to say any more. We're perfectly determined, both of us now. It's not the least good--"

"But, Mary--" began Jack in such a tone that Sarah glanced at him again sudden- and quick-eyed. But Mary seemed to notice nothing. Sarah, herself excited now, saw how she trembled as she turned to her husband.

"Yes, Jack; you've been right and I've been wrong. I'm sorry. I agree with every word you've said. Come, let's go home."

Lady Carberry arose in majesty.

"I am very sorry for you, Mrs. Weston," she said emphatically. "But I quite understand. Of course you must be loyal--"

Mary flashed again a little.

"It's quite useless to say any more," she said. "I don't think I can possibly persuade you, if you insist on thinking that--that's my reason. I think Jack'll tell you that--that's not the reason."

She turned to him swiftly; but before he could answer (certainly he seemed a little troubled, thought Sarah) she wheeled again.

"No, I must say it," she said, "right out. It's this. It's partly you, Lady Carberry, who have helped me to see more clearly. (I'm not being in the least sarcastic or bitter.) But first when you began to speak against the Carmelites you made me rather angry; and--and I suppose when one's angry something melts. Well, my-my sham opposition melted. You made me go right over to the other side. Then I talked to Jack the same evening--a long talk; and I found I'd believed all along that his recovery was very extraordinary, and that we must do something. And now you've finished me."

She stopped abruptly; and Sarah saw the defiance fade from her face. Then she seemed to make an effort at recovery.

"Tell them, Jack," she said. "Isn't that true?"

He had been looking at her doubtfully. But he responded with a jerk; his fair-skinned face flushed a little, and his eyelids came slightly down.

"It's perfectly true," he said. "We had agreed to differ. Now we don't--I mean, we agree. We--we see perfectly together. We're going to carry it through that and--and perhaps other things too."

Lady Carberry's mouth mumbled a little in excitement.

"Well," she said, "it's your affair, of course; but--"

Mary made a little impulsive movement forwards.

"Oh, I'm sorry," she said. "Really, we don't mean to be rude. But, you know, we are Catholics--real Catholics, both of us--and--and you can't understand."

The great lady drew herself up a little. She saw her advantage, and took it shrewdly.

"Well, I've no more to say, Mrs. Weston. You must do as you please. But you mustn't expect the rest of us--"

Mary again twitched suddenly. Then she came forward and held out her hand.

"Good-bye," she said. "We must be going. Oh, don't be angry, please."

There was but one instant in which a confidential sentence could be exchanged between Sarah and Jim. And that instant Sarah took. It was as the elaborate leave-takings and congratulations were passing with Lady Cohen.

"Well, that's clear enough, anyhow," she murmured a little bitterly.

"Oh, do you think so?" said Jim.

III

It was not until after dinner that Sarah was able to pursue the subject.

Dinner was rather terrible. Lady Carberry discoursed upon the garden-party, upon the duties of landowners, upon Sir Samuel's virtues--of which she did not usually make much account; but all present fully understood her motive--upon the enormous responsibilities that rested upon persons like herself, to foster the welfare of people who lived in the country; and Miss Fakenham played a sincere, and her nephew an insincere, chorus.

Sarah contented herself with listening and pondering the situation.

Lady Carberry retired early that night, worn out, she said (presumably with the admirable discharge of her responsibilities that day), and Miss Fakenham disappeared into the morning-room. Miss Fakenham was one of those persons plainly intended by Providence always to fulfil the function of tactful admirer. Her silences, her movements, her glances, far more than her words, conveyed flattery and agreement with an eloquence that must be taken on trust. She revived like a flower in sunlight beneath Lady Carberry's presence; and, like a flower, wilted in her absence. She was a good soul, but she must be figured while living in her friend's house as a mere appreciative shadow of that friend without any perceptible personality of her own. At home she was sufficiently real; here it was almost impossible ever to remember that she was in the room. She vanished into the social atmosphere, like an animal with protective colouring.

I have caught myself in the very act of soliloquy in her presence when Lady Carberry has been absent for a moment--at least that is a vivid way of putting it. But I have found her pleasant and kindly, an excellent housekeeper, even almost a little formidable, seated at her own table in her own house in Queen's Gate after a course of Lady Carberry has had time to fade in its effects. In fact, she was a kind of shadow of Lady Carberry in the latter's absence as she was her reflection in her presence. I cannot imagine why she had never married; I suppose there was not anything of her to marry. She was about fifty-eight, and dressed in black; and that's enough of her just now.

Sarah and Jim then found themselves alone on a garden seat outside the drawing-room windows. Lady Carberry's bedroom was overhead, so they talked but cautiously. The valley lay dark and silent beneath them, seen but incoherently through the foreground of gravel and shrub and grass viewed in the light of the drawing-room windows projected from behind.

"I want you to explain," said Sarah suddenly. "Why did you say it wasn't clear this afternoon?"

(The fact that she made no preface made it obvious even to herself how much this queer little situation was on her mind.)

"Why did you say it was?" asked Jim. "At least I suppose you mean the Weston affair."

"Well, Mary's changed; that's all. Surely that's obvious. You can't say she didn't mean what she said? Somehow she's come round to the other point of view. I was afraid she might, when she was so weak about the lawns."

"Ah!" said Jim.

"Well, isn't that so? Oh, do say what you think."

It was but proper for a Philosopher to show a little reluctance; and. Jim showed it.

"Really, you know, I was hardly attending."

"I don't care; please say what you think. I'm wild about Mary, you know. I can't think why; but it is so. Go on."

"Well," said Jim meditatively. "I think she meant more than she said; and--and Mr. Weston--"

"Yes?"

"Weston, less."

"How do you mean?"

"I think--well--that she's as keen as he is, now."

This was rather a tame conclusion; but Sarah was not very sharp.

"Oh, is that all? That's what I said, isn't it?"

Jim ground the heel of his shoe gently into the gravel in a quarter-circle.

"I think there's something more behind, in Mrs. Weston, at least."

"Why?"

"Well, she interrupted herself once or twice, in rather an odd way. And didn't it strike you she was a little feverish in her manner?"

"She was angry."

"Perhaps that was it," said Jim.

This was all so very philosophical and allusive and suggestive that Sarah entirely failed to take it in. She thought only that Mr. Fakenham was a little obscure. She pondered it by herself a moment or two.

"Well, I think it's extraordinary--such a sudden change."

Jim smiled to himself in the shadow.

"Oh, do you think people change much?" he said.

"How do you mean?"

"Well, I should have thought it was only that they showed themselves more--that they're really what they finally are, all along."

"I don't agree at all," said the girl decisively. "And there's Mr. Weston to prove you wrong."

"But he's just a case in point," murmured Jim, who was enjoying himself.

"Why, he's utterly different! Don't you remember--?"

"I mean," said Jim, deliberately interrupting, "that I don't believe he has changed. He's just put it on, like--like a hat."

Sarah made a small sardonic sound resembling a laugh.

"He's crammed it on pretty tight, then" she said. "He'll never get it off again."

"Oh, I daresay the head'll come with it," murmured Jim.

Sarah made an impatient movement.

"You're so dreadfully clever," she said. "I wish you wouldn't."

Jim's soul expanded in him like a flower. He was quite aware of his extreme capabilities; but it was pleasant for someone else to recognise them. He felt more attraction towards this girl than ever. It was this common confidence that did it. He glanced at her with approval. She was still looking perplexed and bothered.

"Did I tell you about Father Banting?" she said suddenly.

"What about him?"

"Oh, my interview with him."

"No; tell me."

Sarah's face suddenly looked pinched.

"I think I won't," she said, "after all. He was abominably rude to me."

Jim pursed up his mouth.

"Why do you look like that?" she asked abruptly.

"Nothing."

"Tell me. I will know."

Jim glanced at her.

"Well, I imagined you put your finger into the pie, and got it scalded."

Sarah's face positively froze.

"Suppose we leave the Westons for a bit," said Jim generously.

I cannot bring myself to write down the conversation that followed, because it has nothing whatever to do with the story, and depends only for its interest upon those two persons. Certainly they enjoyed it, since they talked for the next ten minutes almost exclusively about themselves.

Jim described with something very nearly approaching pathos the hardships and routine of his life in town. He spoke, allusively again, of papers upstairs on which, it seemed, the foreign policy of England entirely depended. He had drunk a certain amount of wine--I hasten to say not at all too much--but sherry, five glasses of claret, and three of port produce a certain expansiveness even in the most self-contained of philosophers. He did not actually say right out that nobody really understood him, but Sarah gathered as much.

Then she too began. Her life also was spread beneath the stars in the light from the drawing-room window. She acknowledged that she liked an outdoor life exceedingly, but that there were certain moments--and so on. It was quite well done. A little more crudely than Jim's, yet never passing a certain point. It was rather a hot night. She was very slightly feverish. She too had drunk two full glasses of claret. (Yes, I acknowledge that is rather a coarse thing to say.) And they were actually beginning upon religion. Jim had just conveyed an intimation that no system of belief hitherto known to the world really satisfied him, when a shadow and a rather heavy footstep behind interrupted them.

"A note, my lady."

Sarah took it, read it in the light from behind, made a small exclamation, and paused. It took a perceptible time to read.

"No answer," she said.

Then she handed it to Jim.

"Read it."

The paper was headed Manningham Hall, no date. The handwriting was an excellent one--firm, self-contained, without flourishes.

"My dearest,--I want you to understand at once. It is this. I take back all I said to you the other day. I was perfectly sincere in everything I said this afternoon. I really have changed entirely after my talk with Jack. I fully and entirely agree now that the convent ought to be built, and that the lawn is the best place. This recovery of Jack's is really an extraordinary thing. Oh, it's no good going into that, but I am sure now that I knew all along, and that we must really do something big. Please don't think me tiresome, but you don't know what religion means to us, really. Of course we shan't alter our life very much in ordinary things, but we're going to be different. Jack's simply a dear--so simple about it all. He half withdrew this evening, thinking that perhaps I really did mind after all, but of course I wouldn't let him. So we're beginning at once. The architect's got everything ready, and the nuns ought to be here in about four months. Don't be angry.

Yours,

M."

Jim handed it back.

"Well, well," he said.

Chapter_VI

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