Chapter I: DID not go out with Rosie again for more than a week. She was going

down to Haversham to spend a night with her mother. She had various engagements in London. Then she asked me if I would go to the Haymarket Theatre with her. The play was a success and free seats were not to be had so we made up our minds to go in the pit. We had a steak and a glass of beer at the Café Monico and then stood with the crowd. In those days there was no orderly queue and when the doors were opened there was a mad rush and scramble to get in. We were hot and breathless and somewhat battered when at last we pushed our way into our seats.

We walked back through St. James’s Park. The night was so lovely that we sat down on a bench. In the starlight Rosie’s face and her fair hair glowed softly. She was suffused, as it were (I express it awkwardly, but I do not know how to describe the emotion she gave me) with a friendliness at once candid and tender. She was like a silvery flower of the night that only gave its perfume to the moonbeams. I slipped my arm round her waist and she turned her face to mine. This time it was I who kissed. She did not move; her soft red lips submitted to the pressure of mine with a calm, intense passivity as the water of a lake accepts the light of the moon. I don’t know how long we stayed there.

“I’m awfully hungry,” she said suddenly.

“So am I,” I laughed.

“Couldn’t we go and have some fish and chips somewhere?”

“Rather.”

In those days I knew my way very well about Westminster, not yet a fashionable quarter for parliamentary and otherwise cultured persons, but slummy and down-at-heel; and after we had come out of the park, crossing Victoria Street, I led Rosie to a fried fish shop in Horseferry Row. It was late and the only other person there was the driver of a four-wheeler waiting outside. We ordered our fish and chips and a bottle of beer. A poor woman came in and bought two penn’orth of mixed and took it away with her in a piece of paper. We ate with appetite.

Our way back to Rosie’s led through Vincent Square and as we passed my house I asked her:

“Won’t you come in for a minute? You’ve never seen my rooms.”

“What about your landlady? I don’t want to get you into trouble.”

“Oh, she sleeps like a rock.”

“I’ll come in for a little.”

I slipped my key into the lock and because the passage was dark took Rosie’s hand to lead her in. I lit the gas in my sitting room. She took off her hat and vigorously scratched her head. Then she looked for a glass, but I was very artistic and had taken down the mirror that was over the chimney-piece and there was no means in the room for anyone to see what he looked like.

“Come into my bedroom,” I said. “There’s a glass there.”

I opened the door and lit the candle. Rosie followed me in and I held it up so that she should be able to see herself. I looked at her in the glass as she arranged her hair. She took two or three pins out, which she put in her mouth, and taking one of my brushes, brushed her hair up from the nape of the neck. She twisted it, patted it, and put back the pins, and as she was intent on this her eyes caught mine in the glass and she smiled at me. When she had replaced the last pin she turned and faced me; she did not say anything; she looked at me tranquilly, still with that little friendly smile in her blue eyes. I put down the candle. The room was very small and the dressing table was by the bed. She raised her hand and softly stroked my cheek.

I wish now that I had not started to write this book in the first person singular. It is all very well when you can show yourself in an amiable or touching light; and nothing can be more effective than the modest heroic or pathetic humorous which in this mode is much cultivated; it is charming to write about yourself when you see on the reader’s eyelash the glittering tear and on his lips the tender smile; but it is not so nice when you have to exhibit yourself as a plain damned fool.

A little while ago I read in the _Evening Standard_ an article by Mr. Evelyn Waugh in the course of which he remarked that to write novels in the first person was a contemptible practice. I wish he had explained why, but he merely threw out the statement with just the same take-it-or-leave-it casualness as Euclid used when he made his celebrated observation about parallel straight lines. I was much concerned and forthwith asked Alroy Kear (who reads everything, even the books he writes prefaces for) to recommend to me some works on the art of fiction. On his advice I read _The Craft of Fiction_ by Mr. Percy Lubbock, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Henry James; after that I read _Aspects of the Novel_ by Mr. E. M. Forster, from which I learned that the only way to write novels was like Mr. E. M. Forster; then I read _The Structure of the Novel_ by Mr. Edwin Muir, from which I learned nothing at all. In none of them could I discover anything to the point at issue. All the same I can find one reason why certain novelists, such as Defoe, Sterne, Thackeray, Dickens, Emily Brontë, and Proust, well known in their day but now doubtless forgotten, have used the method that Mr. Evelyn Waugh reprehends. As we grow older we become more conscious of the complexity, incoherence, and unreasonableness of human beings; this indeed is the only excuse that offers for the middle-aged or elderly writer, whose thoughts should more properly be turned to graver matters, occupying himself with the trivial concerns of imaginary people. For if the proper study of mankind is man it is evidently more sensible to occupy yourself with the coherent, substantial, and significant creatures of fiction than with the irrational and shadowy figures of real life. Sometimes the novelist feels himself like God and is prepared to tell you everything about his characters; sometimes, however, he does not; and then he tells you not everything that is to be known about them but the little he knows himself; and since as we grow older we feel ourselves less and less like God I should not be surprised to learn that with advancing years the novelist grows less and less inclined to describe more than his own experience has given him. The first person singular is a very useful device for this limited purpose.

Rosie raised her hand and softly stroked my face. I do not know why I should have behaved as I then did; it was not at all how I had seen myself behaving on such an occasion. A sob broke from my tight throat. I do not know whether it was because I was shy and lonely (not lonely in the body, for I spent all day at the hospital with all kinds of people, but lonely in the spirit) or because my desire was so great, but I began to cry. I felt terribly ashamed of myself; I tried to control myself, I couldn’t; the tears welled up in my eyes and poured down my cheeks. Rosie saw them and gave a little gasp.

“Oh, honey, what is it? What’s the matter? Don’t. Don’t!”

She put her arms round my neck and began to cry too, and she kissed my lips and my eyes and my wet cheeks. She undid her bodice and lowered my head till it rested on her bosom. She stroked my smooth face. She rocked me back and forth as though I were a child in her arms. I kissed her breasts and I kissed the white column of her neck; and she slipped out of her bodice and out of her skirt and her petticoats and I held her for a moment by her corseted waist; then she undid it, holding her breath for an instant to enable her to do so, and stood before me in her shift. When I put my hands on her sides I could feel the ribbing of the skin from the pressure of the corsets.

“Blow out the candle,” she whispered.

It was she who awoke me when the dawn peering through the curtains revealed the shape of the bed and of the wardrobe against the darkness of the lingering night. She woke me by kissing me on the mouth and her hair falling over my face tickled me.

“I must get up,” she said. “I don’t want your landlady to see me.”

“There’s plenty of time.”

Her breasts when she leaned over me were heavy on my chest. In a little while she got out of bed. I lit the candle. She turned to the glass and tied up her hair and then she looked for a moment at her naked body. Her waist was naturally small; though so well developed she was very slender; her breasts were straight and firm and they stood out from the chest as though carved in marble. It was a body made for the act of love. In the light of the candle, struggling now with the increasing day, it was all silvery gold; and the only colour was the rosy pink of the hard nipples.

We dressed in silence. She did not put on her corsets again, but rolled them up and I wrapped them in a piece of newspaper. We tiptoed along the passage and when I opened the door and we stepped out into the street the dawn ran to meet us like a cat leaping up the steps. The square was empty; already the sun was shining on the eastern windows. I felt as young as the day. We walked arm in arm till we came to the corner of Limpus Road.

“Leave me here,” said Rosie. “One never knows.”

I kissed her and I watched her walk away. She walked rather slowly, with the firm tread of the country woman who likes to feel the good earth under her feet, and held herself erect. I could not go back to bed. I strolled on till I came to the Embankment. The river had the bright hues of the early morning. A brown barge came down stream and passed under Vauxhall Bridge. In a dinghy two men were rowing close to the side. I was hungry.

XVII

AFTER THAT for more than a year whenever Rosie came out with me she used on the way home to drop into my rooms, sometimes for an hour, sometimes till the breaking day warned us that the slaveys would soon be scrubbing the doorsteps. I have a recollection of warm sunny mornings when the tired air of London had a welcome freshness, and of our footfalls that seemed so noisy in the empty streets, and then of scurrying along huddled under an umbrella, silent but gay, when the winter brought cold and rain. The policeman on point duty gave us a stare as we passed, sometimes of suspicion; but sometimes also there was a twinkle of comprehension in his eyes. Now and then we would see a homeless creature huddled up asleep in a portico and Rosie gave my arm a friendly little pressure when (chiefly for show and because I wanted to make a good impression on her, for my shillings were scarce) I placed a piece of silver on a shapeless lap or in a skinny fist. Rosie made me very happy. I had a great affection for her. She was easy and comfortable. She had a placidity of temper that communicated itself to the people she was with; you shared her pleasure in the passing moment.

Before I became her lover I had often asked myself if she was the mistress of the others, Forde, Harry Retford, and Hillier, and afterward I questioned her. She kissed me.

“Don’t be so silly. I like them, you know that. I like to go out with them, but that’s all.”

I wanted to ask her if she had been the mistress of George Kemp, but I did not like to. Though I had never seen her in a temper, I had a notion that she had one and I vaguely felt that this was a question that might anger her. I did not want to give her the opportunity of saying things so wounding that I could not forgive her. I was young, only just over one and twenty, Quentin Forde and the others seemed old to me; it did not seem unnatural to me that to Rosie they were only friends. It gave me a little thrill of pride to think that I was her lover. When I used to look at her chatting and laughing with all and sundry at tea on Saturday afternoons, I glowed with self-satisfaction. I thought of the nights we passed together and I was inclined to laugh at the people who were so ignorant of my great secret. But sometimes I thought that Lionel Hillier looked at me in a quizzical way, as if he were enjoying a good joke at my expense, and I asked myself uneasily if Rosie had told him that she was having an affair with me. I wondered if there was anything in my manner that betrayed me. I told Rosie that I was afraid Hillier suspected something; she looked at me with those blue eyes of hers that always seemed ready to smile.

“Don’t bother about it,” she said. “He’s got a nasty mind.”

I had never been intimate with Quentin Forde. He looked upon me as a dull and insignificant young man (which of course I was) and though he had always been civil he had never taken any notice of me. I thought it could only be my fancy that now he began to be a little more frigid with me than before. But one day Harry Retford to my surprise asked me to dine with him and go to the play. I told Rosie.

“Oh, of course you must go. He’ll give you an awfully good time. Good old Harry, he always makes me laugh.”

So I dined with him. He made himself very pleasant and I was impressed to hear him talk of actors and actresses. He had a sarcastic humour and was very funny at the expense of Quentin Forde, whom he did not like; I tried to get him to talk of Rosie, but he had nothing to say of her. He seemed to be a gay dog. With leers and laughing innuendoes he gave me to understand that he was a devil with the girls. I could not but ask myself if he was standing me this dinner because he knew I was Rosie’s lover and so felt friendly disposed toward me. But if he knew, of course the others knew too. I hope I did not show it, but in my heart I certainly felt somewhat patronizing toward them.

Then in winter, toward the end of January, someone new appeared at Limpus Road. This was a Dutch Jew named Jack Kuyper, a diamond merchant from Amsterdam, who was spending a few weeks in London on business. I do not know how he had come to know the Driffields and whether it was esteem for the author that brought him to the house, but it was certainly not that which caused him to come again. He was a tall, stout, dark man with a bald head and a big hooked nose, a man of fifty, but of a powerful appearance, sensual, determined, and jovial. He made no secret of his admiration for Rosie. He was rich apparently, for he sent her roses every day; she chid him for his extravagance, but was flattered. I could not bear him. He was blatant and loud. I hated his fluent conversation in perfect but foreign English; I hated the extravagant compliments he paid Rosie; I hated the heartiness with which he treated her friends. I found that Quentin Forde liked him as little as I; we almost became cordial with one another.

“Mercifully he’s not staying long.” Quentin Forde pursed his lips and raised his black eyebrows; with his white hair and long sallow face he looked incredibly gentlemanly. “Women are always the same; they adore a bounder.”

“He’s so frightfully vulgar,” I complained.

“That is his charm,” said Quentin Forde.

For the next two or three weeks I saw next to nothing of Rosie. Jack Kuyper took her out night after night, to this smart restaurant and that, to one play after another. I was vexed and hurt.

“He doesn’t know anyone in London,” said Rosie, trying to soothe my ruffled feelings. “He wants to see everything he can while he’s here. It wouldn’t be very nice for him to go alone all the time. He’s only here for a fortnight more.”

I did not see the object of this self-sacrifice on her part.

“But don’t you think he’s awful?” I said.

“No. I think he’s fun. He makes me laugh.”

“Don’t you know that he’s absolutely gone on you?”

“Well, it pleases him and it doesn’t do me any harm.”

“He’s old and fat and horrible. It gives me the creeps to look at him.”

“I don’t think he’s so bad,” said Rosie.

“You couldn’t have anything to do with him,” I protested. “I mean, he’s such an awful cad.”

Rosie scratched her head. It was an unpleasant habit of hers.

“It’s funny how different foreigners are from English people,” she said.

I was thankful when Jack Kuyper went back to Amsterdam. Rosie had promised to dine with me the day after and as a treat we arranged to dine in Soho. She fetched me in a hansom and we drove on.

“Has your horrible old man gone?” I asked.

“Yes,” she laughed.

I put my arm round her waist. (I have elsewhere remarked how much more convenient the hansom was for this pleasant and indeed almost essential act in human intercourse than the taxi of the present day, so unwillingly refrain from labouring the point.) I put my arm round her waist and kissed her. Her lips were like spring flowers. We arrived. I hung my hat and my coat (it was very long and tight at the waist, with a velvet collar and velvet cuffs; very smart) on a peg and asked Rosie to give me her cape.

“I’m going to keep it on,” she said.

“You’ll be awfully hot. You’ll only catch cold when we go out.”

“I don’t care. It’s the first time I’ve worn it. Don’t you think it’s lovely. And look: the muff matches.”

I gave the cape a glance. It was of fur. I did not know it was sable.

“It looks awfully rich. How did you get that?”

“Jack Kuyper gave it to me. We went and bought it yesterday just before he went away.” She stroked the smooth fur; she was as happy with it as a child with a toy. “How much d’you think it cost?”

“I haven’t an idea.”

“Two hundred and sixty pounds. Do you know I’ve never had anything that cost so much in my life? I told him it was far too much, but he wouldn’t listen. He made me have it.”

Rosie chuckled with glee and her eyes shone. But I felt my face go stiff and a shiver run down my spine.

“Won’t Driffield think it’s rather funny, Kuyper giving you a fur cape that costs all that?” said I, trying to make my voice sound natural.

Rosie’s eyes danced mischievously.

“You know what Ted is, he never notices anything; if he says anything about it I shall tell him I gave twenty pounds for it in a pawnshop. He won’t know any better.” She rubbed her face against the collar. “It’s so soft. And everyone can see it cost money.”

I tried to eat and in order not to show the bitterness in my heart I did my best to keep the conversation going on one topic or another. Rosie did not much mind what I said. She could only think of her new cape and every other minute her eyes returned to the muff that she insisted on holding on her lap. She looked at it with an affection in which there was something lazy, sensual, and self-complacent. I was angry with her. I thought her stupid and common.

“You look like a cat that’s swallowed a canary,” I could not help snapping.

She only giggled.

“That’s what I feel like.”

Two hundred and sixty pounds was an enormous sum to me. I did not know one _could_ pay so much for a cape. I lived on fourteen pounds a month and not at all badly either; and in case any reader is not a ready reckoner I will add that this is one hundred and sixty-eight pounds a year. I could not believe that anyone would make as expensive a present as that from pure friendship; what did it mean but that Jack Kuyper had been sleeping with Rosie, night after night, all the time he was in London, and now when he went away was paying her? How could she accept it? Didn’t she see how it degraded her? Didn’t she see how frightfully vulgar it was of him to give her a thing that cost so much? Apparently not, for she said to me:

“It was nice of him, wasn’t it? But then Jews are always generous.”

“I suppose he could afford it,” I said.

“Oh, yes, he’s got lots of money. He said he wanted to give me something before he went away and asked me what I wanted. Well, I said, I could do with a cape and a muff to match, but I never thought he’d buy me anything like this. When we went into the shop I asked them to show me something in astrakhan, but he said: No, sable, and the best money can buy. And when we saw this he absolutely insisted on my having it.”

I thought of her with her white body, her skin so milky, in the arms of that old fat gross man and his thick loose lips kissing hers. And then I knew that the suspicion that I had refused to believe was true; I knew that when she went out to dinner with Quentin Forde and Harry Retford and Lionel Hillier she went to bed with them just as she came to bed with me. I could not speak; I knew that if I did I should insult her. I do not think I was jealous so much as mortified. I felt that she had been making a damned fool of me. I used all my determination to prevent the bitter jibes from passing my lips.

We went on to the theatre. I could not listen to the play. I could only feel against my arm the smoothness of the sable cape; I could only see her fingers for ever stroking the muff. I could have borne the thought of the others; it was Jack Kuyper who horrified me. How could she? It was abominable to be poor. I longed to have enough money to tell her that if she would send the fellow back his beastly furs I would give her better ones instead. At last she noticed that I did not speak.

“You’re very silent to-night.”

“Am I?”

“Aren’t you well?”

“Perfectly.”

She gave me a sidelong look. I did not meet her eyes, but I knew they were smiling with that smile at once mischievous and childlike that I knew so well. She said nothing more. At the end of the play, since it was raining, we took a hansom and I gave the driver her address in Limpus Road. She did not speak till we got to Victoria Street, then she said:

“Don’t you want me to come home with you?”

“Just as you like.”

She lifted up the trap and gave the driver my address. She took my hand and held it, but I remained inert. I looked straight out of the window with angry dignity. When we reached Vincent Square I handed her out of the cab and let her into the house without a word. I took off my hat and coat. She threw her cape and her muff on the sofa.

“Why are you so sulky?” she asked, coming up to me.

“I’m not sulky,” I answered, looking away.

She took my face in her two hands.

“How can you be so silly? Why should you be angry because Jack Kuyper gives me a fur cape? You can’t afford to give me one, can you?”

“Of course I can’t.”

“And Ted can’t either. You can’t expect me to refuse a fur cape that cost two hundred and sixty pounds. I’ve wanted a fur cape all my life. It means nothing to Jack.”

“You don’t expect me to believe that he gave it you just out of friendship.”

“He might have. Anyhow, he’s gone back to Amsterdam, and who knows when he’ll come back?”

“He isn’t the only one, either.”

I looked at Rosie now, with angry, hurt, resentful eyes; she smiled at me, and I wish I knew how to describe the sweet kindliness of her beautiful smile; her voice was exquisitely gentle.

“Oh, my dear, why d’you bother your head about any others? What harm does it do you? Don’t I give you a good time? Aren’t you happy when you’re with me?”

“Awfully.”

“Well, then. It’s so silly to be fussy and jealous. Why not be happy with what you can get? Enjoy yourself while you have the chance, I say; we shall all be dead in a hundred years and what will anything matter then? Let’s have a good time while we can.”

She put her arms round my neck and pressed her lips against mine. I forgot my wrath. I only thought of her beauty and her enveloping kindness.

“You must take me as I am, you know,” she whispered.

“All right,” I said.

XVIII

DURING ALL this time I saw really very little of Driffield. His editorship occupied much of his day and in the evening he wrote. He was, of course, there every Saturday afternoon, amiable and ironically amusing; he appeared glad to see me and chatted with me for a little while pleasantly of indifferent things; but naturally most of his attention was given to guests older and more important than I. But I had a feeling that he was growing more aloof; he was no longer the jolly, rather vulgar companion that I had known at Blackstable. Perhaps it was only my increasing sensibility that discerned as it were an invisible barrier that existed between him and the people he chaffed and joked with. It was as though he lived a life of the imagination that made the life of every day a little shadowy. He was asked to speak now and then at public dinners. He joined a literary club. He began to know a good many people outside the narrow circle into which his writing had drawn him, and he was increasingly asked to luncheon and tea by the ladies who like to gather about them distinguished authors. Rosie was asked too, but seldom went; she said she didn’t care for parties, and after all they didn’t want her, they only wanted Ted. I think she was shy and felt out of it. It may be that hostesses had more than once let her see how tiresome they thought it that she must be included; and after inviting her because it was polite, ignored her because to be polite irked them.

It was just about then that Edward Driffield published _The Cup of Life_. It is not my business to criticize his works, and of late as much has been written about them as must satisfy the appetite of any ordinary reader; but I will permit myself to say that _The Cup of Life_, though certainly not the most celebrated of his books, nor the most popular, is to my mind the most interesting. It has a cold ruthlessness that in all the sentimentality of English fiction strikes an original note. It is refreshing and astringent. It tastes of tart apples. It sets your teeth on edge, but it has a subtle, bitter-sweet savour that is very agreeable to the palate. Of all Driffield’s books it is the only one I should like to have written. The scene of the child’s death, terrible and heart-rending, but written without slop or sickliness, and the curious incident that follows it, cannot easily be forgotten by anyone who has read them.

It was this part of the book that caused the sudden storm that burst on the wretched Driffield’s head. For a few days after publication it looked as though it would run its course like the rest of his novels, namely that it would have substantial reviews, laudatory on the whole but with reservations, and that the sales would be respectable, but modest. Rosie told me that he expected to make three hundred pounds out of it and was talking of renting a house on the river for the summer. The first two or three notices were noncommittal; then in one of the morning papers appeared a violent attack. There was a column of it. The book was described as gratuitously offensive, obscene, and the publishers were rated for putting it before the public. Harrowing pictures were drawn of the devastating effect it must have on the youth of England. It was described as an insult to womanhood. The reviewer protested against the possibility of such a work falling into the hands of young boys and innocent maidens. Other papers followed suit. The more foolish demanded that the book should be suppressed and some asked themselves gravely if this was not a case where the public prosecutor might with fitness intervene. Condemnation was universal; if here and there a courageous writer, accustomed to the more realistic tone of continental fiction, asserted that Edward Driffield had never written anything better, he was ignored. His honest opinion was ascribed to a base desire to play to the gallery. The libraries barred the book and the lessors of the railway bookstalls refused to stock it.

All this was naturally very unpleasant for Edward Driffield, but he bore it with philosophic calm. He shrugged his shoulders.

“They say it isn’t true,” he smiled. “They can go to hell. It is true.”

He was supported in this trial by the fidelity of his friends. To admire _The Cup of Life_ became a mark of æsthetic acumen: to be shocked by it was to confess yourself a philistine. Mrs. Barton Trafford had no hesitation in saying that it was a masterpiece, and though this wasn’t quite the moment for Barton’s article in the _Quarterly_, her faith in Edward Driffield’s future remained unshaken. It is strange (and instructive) to read now the book that created such a sensation; there is not a word that could bring a blush to the cheek of the most guileless, not an episode that could cause the novel reader of the present day to turn a hair.

XIX

ABOUT SIX months later, when the excitement over _The Cup of Life_ had subsided and Driffield had already begun the novel which he published under the name of _By Their Fruits_, I, being then an impatient dresser and in my fourth year, in the course of my duties went one day into the main hall of the hospital to await the surgeon whom I was accompanying on his round of the wards. I glanced at the rack in which letters were placed, for sometimes people, not knowing my address in Vincent Square, wrote to me at the hospital. I was surprised to find a telegram for me. It ran as follows:

_Please come and see me at five o’clock this afternoon without
fail. Important._

ISABEL TRAFFORD.

I wondered what she wanted me for. I had met her perhaps a dozen times during the last two years, but she had never taken any notice of me, and I had never been to her house. I knew that men were scarce at teatime and a hostess, short of them at the last moment, might think that a young medical student was better than nothing; but the wording of the telegram hardly suggested a party.

The surgeon for whom I dressed was prosy and verbose. It was not till past five that I was free and then it took me a good twenty minutes to get down to Chelsea. Mrs. Barton Trafford lived in a block of flats on the Embankment. It was nearly six when I rang at her door and asked if she was at home. But when I was ushered into her drawing room and began to explain why I was late she cut me short.

“We supposed you couldn’t get away. It doesn’t matter.”

Her husband was there.

“I expect he’d like a cup of tea,” he said.

“Oh, I think it’s rather late for tea, isn’t it?” She looked at me gently, her mild, rather fine eyes full of kindness. “You don’t want any tea, do you?”

I was thirsty and hungry, for my lunch consisted of a scone and butter and a cup of coffee, but I did not like to say so. I refused tea.

“Do you know Allgood Newton?” asked Mrs. Barton Trafford, with a gesture toward a man who had been sitting in a big armchair when I was shown in, and now got up. “I expect you’ve met him at Edward’s.”

I had. He did not come often, but his name was familiar to me and I remembered him. He made me very nervous and I do not think I had ever spoken to him. Though now completely forgotten, in those days he was the best-known critic in England. He was a large, fat, blond man, with a fleshy white face, pale blue eyes, and graying fair hair. He generally wore a pale blue tie to bring out the colour of his eyes. He was very amiable to the authors he met at Driffield’s and said charming and flattering things to them, but when they were gone he was very amusing at their expense. He spoke in a low, even voice, with an apt choice of words: no one could with more point tell a malicious story about a friend.

Allgood Newton shook hands with me and Mrs. Barton Trafford, with her ready sympathy, anxious to put me at my ease, took me by the hand and made me sit on the sofa beside her. The tea was still on the table and she took a jam sandwich and delicately nibbled it.

“Have you seen the Driffields lately?” she asked me as though making conversation.

“I was there last Saturday.”

“You haven’t seen either of them since?”

“No.”

Mrs. Barton Trafford looked from Allgood Newton to her husband and back again as though mutely demanding their help.

“Nothing will be gained by circumlocution, Isabel,” said Newton, a faintly malicious twinkle in his eye, in his fat precise way.

Mrs. Barton Trafford turned to me.

“Then you don’t know that Mrs. Driffield has run away from her husband.”

“What!”

I was flabbergasted. I could not believe my ears.

“Perhaps it would be better if you told him the facts, Allgood,” said Mrs. Trafford.

The critic leaned back in his chair and placed the tips of the fingers of one hand against the tips of the fingers of the other. He spoke with unction.

“I had to see Edward Driffield last night about a literary article that I am doing for him and after dinner, since the night was fine, I thought I would walk round to his house. He was expecting me; and I knew besides that he never went out at night except for some function as important as the Lord Mayor’s banquet or the Academy dinner. Imagine my surprise then, nay, my utter and complete bewilderment, when as I approached I saw the door of his house open and Edward in person emerge. You know of course that Immanuel Kant was in the habit of taking his daily walk at a certain hour with such punctuality that the inhabitants of Königsberg were accustomed to set their watches by the event and when once he came out of his house an hour earlier than usual they turned pale, for they knew that this could only mean that some terrible thing had happened. They were right; Immanuel Kant had just received intelligence of the fall of the Bastille.”

Allgood Newton paused for a moment to mark the effect of his anecdote. Mrs. Barton Trafford gave him her understanding smile.

“I did not envisage so world-shaking a catastrophe as this when I saw Edward hurrying toward me, but it immediately occurred to me that something untoward was afoot. He carried neither cane nor gloves. He wore his working coat, a venerable garment in black alpaca, and a wide-awake hat. There was something wild in his mien and distraught in his bearing. I asked myself, knowing the vicissitudes of the conjugal state, whether a matrimonial difference had driven him headlong from the house or whether he was hastening to a letter box in order to post a letter. He sped like Hector flying, the noblest of the Greeks. He did not seem to see me and the suspicion flashed across my mind that he did not want to. I stopped him. ‘Edward,’ I said. He looked startled. For a moment I could have sworn he did not know who I was. ‘What avenging furies urge you with such hot haste through the rakish purlieus of Pimlico?’ I asked. ‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said. ‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘Nowhere,’ he replied.”

At this rate I thought Allgood Newton would never finish his story and Mrs. Hudson would be vexed with me for turning up to dinner half an hour late.

“I told him on what errand I had come, and proposed that we should return to his house where he could more conveniently discuss the question that perturbed me. ‘I’m too restless to go home,’ he said; ‘let’s walk. You can talk to me as we go along.’ Assenting, I turned round and we began to walk; but his pace was so rapid that I had to beg him to moderate it. Even Dr. Johnson could not have carried on a conversation when he was walking down Fleet Street at the speed of an express train. Edward’s appearance was so peculiar and his manner so agitated that I thought it wise to lead him through the less frequented streets. I talked to him of my article. The subject that occupied me was more copious than had at first sight appeared, and I was doubtful whether after all I could do justice to it in the columns of a weekly journal. I put the matter before him fully and fairly and asked him his opinion. ‘Rosie has left me,’ he answered. For a moment I did not know what he was talking about, but in a trice it occurred to me that he was speaking of the buxom and not unprepossessing female from whose hands I had on occasion accepted a cup of tea. From his tone I divined that he expected condolence from me rather than felicitation.”

Allgood Newton paused again and his blue eyes twinkled.

“You’re wonderful, Allgood,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford.

“Priceless,” said her husband.

“Realizing that the occasion demanded sympathy, I said: ‘My dear fellow.’ He interrupted me. ‘I had a letter by the last post,’ he said. ‘She’s run away with Lord George Kemp.’”

I gasped, but said nothing. Mrs. Trafford gave me a quick look.

“‘Who is Lord George Kemp?’ ‘He’s a Blackstable man,’ he replied. I had little time to think. I determined to be frank. ‘You’re well rid of her,’ I said. ‘Allgood!’ he cried. I stopped and put my hand on his arm. ‘You must know that she was deceiving you with all your friends. Her behaviour was a public scandal. My dear Edward, let us face the fact: your wife was nothing but a common strumpet.’ He snatched his arm away from me and gave a sort of low roar, like an orang-utan in the forests of Borneo forcibly deprived of a cocoanut, and before I could stop him he broke away and fled. I was so startled that I could do nothing but listen to his cries and his hurrying footsteps.”

“You shouldn’t have let him go,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford. “In the state he was he might have thrown himself in the Thames.”

“The thought occurred to me, but I noticed that he did not run in the direction of the river, but plunged into the meaner streets of the neighbourhood in which we had been walking. And I reflected also that there is no example in literary history of an author committing suicide while engaged on the composition of a literary work. Whatever his tribulations, he is unwilling to leave to posterity an uncompleted opus.”

I was astounded at what I heard and shocked and dismayed; but I was worried too because I could not make out why Mrs. Trafford had sent for me. She knew me much too little to think that the story could be of any particular interest to me; nor would she have troubled to let me hear it as a piece of news.

“Poor Edward,” she said. “Of course no one can deny that it is a blessing in disguise, but I’m afraid he’ll take it very much to heart. Fortunately he’s done nothing rash.” She turned to me. “As soon as Mr. Newton told us about it I went round to Limpus Road. Edward was out, but the maid said he’d only just gone; that means that he must have gone home between the time he ran away from Allgood and this morning. You’ll wonder why I asked you to come and see me.”

I did not answer. I waited for her to go on.

“It was at Blackstable you first knew the Driffields, wasn’t it? You can tell us who is this Lord George Kemp. Edward said he was a Blackstable man.”

“He’s middle-aged. He’s got a wife and two sons. They’re as old as I am.”

“But I don’t understand who he can be. I can’t find him either in _Who’s Who_ or in Debrett.”

I almost laughed.

“Oh, he’s not really a lord. He’s the local coal merchant. They call him Lord George at Blackstable because he’s so grand. It’s just a joke.”

“The quiddity of bucolic humour is often a trifle obscure to the uninitiated,” said Allgood Newton.

“We must all help dear Edward in every way we can,” said Mrs. Barton Trafford. Her eyes rested on me thoughtfully. “If Kemp has run away with Rosie Driffield he must have left his wife.”

“I suppose so,” I replied.

“Will you do something very kind?”

“If I can.”

“Will you go down to Blackstable and find out exactly what has happened? I think we ought to get in touch with the wife.”

I have never been very fond of interfering in other people’s affairs.

“I don’t know how I could do that,” I answered.

“Couldn’t you see her?”

“No, I couldn’t.”

If Mrs. Barton Trafford thought my reply blunt she did not show it. She smiled a little.

“At all events that can be left over. The urgent thing is to go down and find out about Kemp. I shall try to see Edward this evening. I can’t bear the thought of his staying on in that odious house by himself. Barton and I have made up our minds to bring him here. We have a spare room and I’ll arrange it so that he can work there. Don’t you agree that that would be the best thing for him, Allgood?”

“Absolutely.”

“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t stay here indefinitely, at all events for a few weeks, and then he can come away with us in the summer. We’re going to Brittany. I’m sure he’d like that. It would be a thorough change for him.”

“The immediate question,” said Barton Trafford, fixing on me an eye nearly as kindly as his wife’s, “is whether this young sawbones will go to Blackstable and find out what he can. We must know where we are. That is essential.”

Barton Trafford excused his interest in archæology by a hearty manner and a jocose, even slangy way of speech.

“He couldn’t refuse,” said his wife, giving me a soft, appealing glance. “You won’t refuse, will you? It’s so important and you’re the only person who can help us.”

Of course she did not know that I was as anxious to find out what had happened as she; she could not tell what a bitter jealous pain stabbed my heart.

“I couldn’t possibly get away from the hospital before Saturday,” I said.

“That’ll do. It’s very good of you. All Edward’s friends will be grateful to you. When shall you return?”

“I have to be back in London early on Monday morning.”

“Then come and have tea with me in the afternoon. I shall await you with impatience. Thank God, that’s settled. Now I must try and get hold of Edward.”

I understood that I was dismissed. Allgood Newton took his leave and came downstairs with me.

“Our Isabel has _un petit air_ of Catherine of Aragon to-day that I find vastly becoming,” he murmured when the door was closed behind us. “This is a golden opportunity and I think we may safely trust our friend not to miss it. A charming woman with a heart of gold. _Venus toute entière à sa proie attachée._”

I did not understand what he meant, for what I have already told the reader about Mrs. Barton Trafford I only learned much later, but I realized that he was saying something vaguely malicious about her, and probably amusing, so I sniggered.

“I suppose your youth inclines you to what my good Dizzy named in an unlucky moment the gondola of London.”

“I’m going to take a bus,” I answered.

“Oh? Had you proposed to go by hansom I was going to ask you to be good enough to drop me on your way, but if you are going to use the homely conveyance which _I_ in my old-fashioned manner still prefer to call an omnibus, I shall hoist my unwieldy carcase into a four-wheeler.”

He signalled to one and gave me two flabby fingers to shake.

“I shall come on Monday to hear the result of what dear Henry would call your so exquisitely delicate mission.”

XX

BUT IT was years before I saw Allgood Newton again, for when I got to Blackstable I found a letter from Mrs. Barton Trafford (who had taken the precaution to note my address) asking me, for reasons that she would explain when she saw me, not to come to her flat but to meet her at six o’clock in the first-class waiting room at Victoria Station. As soon then as I could get away from the hospital on Monday I made my way there, and after waiting for a while saw her come in. She came toward me with little tripping steps.

“Well, have you anything to tell me? Let us find a quiet corner and sit down.”

We sought a place and found it.

“I must explain why I asked you to come here,” she said. “Edward is staying with me. At first he did not want to come, but I persuaded him. But he’s nervous and ill and irritable. I did not want to run the risk of his seeing you.”

I told Mrs. Trafford the bare facts of my story and she listened attentively. Now and then she nodded her head. But I could not hope to make her understand the commotion I had found at Blackstable. The town was beside itself with excitement. Nothing so thrilling had happened there for years and no one could talk of anything else. Humpty-dumpty had had a great fall. Lord George Kemp had absconded. About a week before he had announced that he had to go up to London on business, and two days later a petition in bankruptcy was filed against him. It appeared that his building operations had not been successful, his attempt to make Blackstable into a frequented seaside resort meeting with no response, and he had been forced to raise money in every way he could. All kinds of rumours ran through the little town. Quite a number of small people who had entrusted their savings to him were faced with the loss of all they had. The details were vague, for neither my uncle nor my aunt knew anything of business matters, nor had I the knowledge to make what they told me comprehensible. But there was a mortgage on George Kemp’s house and a bill of sale on his furniture. His wife was left without a penny. His two sons, lads of twenty and twenty-one, were in the coal business, but that, too, was involved in the general ruin. George Kemp had gone off with all the cash he could lay hands on, something like fifteen hundred pounds, they said, though how they knew I cannot imagine; and it was reported that a warrant had been issued for his arrest. It was supposed that he had left the country; some said he had gone to Australia and some to Canada.

“I hope they catch him,” said my uncle. “He ought to get penal servitude for life.”

The indignation was universal. They could not forgive him because he had always been so noisy and boisterous, because he had chaffed them and stood them drinks and given them garden parties, because he had driven such a smart trap and worn his brown billycock hat at such a rakish angle. But it was on Sunday night after church in the vestry that the churchwarden told my uncle the worst. For the last two years he had been meeting Rosie Driffield at Haversham almost every week and they had been spending the night together at a public house. The licensee of this had put money into one of Lord George’s wildcat schemes, and on discovering that he had lost it blurted out the whole story. He could have borne it if Lord George had defrauded others, but that he should defraud him who had done him a good turn and whom he looked upon as a chum, that was the limit.

“I expect they’ve run away together,” said my uncle.

“I shouldn’t be surprised,” said the churchwarden.

After supper, while the housemaid was clearing away, I went into the kitchen to talk to Mary-Ann. She had been at church and had heard the story too. I cannot believe that the congregation had listened very attentively to my uncle’s sermon.

“The vicar says they’ve run away together,” I said. I had not breathed a word of what I knew.

“Why, of course they ’ave,” said Mary-Ann. “He was the only man she ever really fancied. He only ’ad to lift ’is little finger and she’d leave anyone no matter who it was.”

I lowered my eyes. I was suffering from bitter mortification; and I was angry with Rosie: I thought she had behaved very badly to me.

“I suppose we shall never see her again,” I said. It gave me a pang to utter the words.

“I don’t suppose we shall,” said Mary-Ann cheerfully.

When I had told Mrs. Barton Trafford as much of this story as I thought she need know, she sighed, but whether from satisfaction or distress I had no notion.

“Well, that’s the end of Rosie at all events,” she said. She got up and held out her hand. “Why will these literary men make these unfortunate marriages? It’s all very sad, very sad. Thank you so much for what you’ve done. We know where we are now. The great thing is that it shouldn’t interfere with Edward’s work.”

Her remarks seemed a trifle disconnected to me. The fact was, I have no doubt, that she was giving me not the smallest thought. I led her out of Victoria Station and put her into a bus that went down the King’s Road, Chelsea; then I walked back to my lodgings.

XXI