Chapter II: Part 2

"Tom Toole," said the little old man, "It's what I'll do. I'll walk on to the Comeragh Mountains to see what I will see, and do you go on searching here, for to find that young girl would be better than forty guineas worth of blather. And when I find the cow I'll take my fill of a cup and bring you to it."

So they agreed upon it and the old man went away saying, "I'll be a score of days, no more. Good day, Tom Toole, good day!" much as an old crow might shout it to a sweep.

When he was gone Tom Toole journeyed about the world, and the day after he went walking to a fair. Along the road the little ass carts were dribbling into town from Fews and Carrigleena, when he saw a young girl in a field trying to secure an ass.

"Oi----, Oi----!" the girl was calling out to him, and he went in the field and helped her with the ass, which was a devil to capture, and it not wanting. She thanked him; she was a sweet slip of a colleen with a long fall of hair that the wind was easy with.

"'Tis warm!" she said to Tom Toole. "Begod, ma'am," says he to her quickly, taking his cue, "it is a hot day."

"Where are ye going, Tom Toole," she asked him, and he said:

"I am seeking a little contrivance, ma'am, that will let me enjoy the world and live easy in it. That is my aspiration."

"I'll give you what you are seeking," and she gave him a wee bottle with red juices in it.

"Indeed, ma'am, I'm obliged to ye," and he took her by the hand and wished her Good day and Good luck, and that he might meet her again.

When he got the elixir of youth he gave over his searching. He hid the bottle in his breast and went up into the mountains as high as he could go to bide the coming of the little old man. It is a queer thing but Tom Toole had never heard the name of him--it would be some place in the foreign corners of the world like Portugal that he had come from no doubt. Up he went; first there was rough pasture for bullocks, then fern and burnt furze, and then little but heather, and great rocks strewn about like shells, and sour brown streams coming from the bog. He wandered about for twenty days and the old man did not return, and for forty days he was still alone.

"The divil receive him, but I'll die against his return!" And Tom Toole pulled the wee bottle from his breast. He was often minded to lift the cork and take a sup of the elixir of youth. "But," says he, "it would be an unfriendly deed. Sure if I got me youth sudden I'd be off to the wonders of the land and leave that old fool roaming till the day of Judgment." And he would put the bottle away and wait for scores of days until he was sick and sorry with grieving. A thousand days he was on his lonely wanderings, soft days as mellow as cream, and hard days when it is ribs of iron itself you would want to stiffen you against the crack of the blast. His skimpy hair grew down to the lappet of his coat, very ugly he was, but the little stranger sheep of the mountain were not daunted when he moved by, and even the flibeens had the soft call for him. A thousand days was in it, and then he said:

"Good evening to my good luck. I've had my enough of this. Sure I'll despise myself for evermore if I wait the tide of another drifting day. It's to-night I'll sleep in a neat bed with a quilt of down over me heart, for I'm going to be young again."

He crept down the mountain to a neat little town and went in a room in the public to have a cup of porter. A little forlorn old man also came in from the road and sat down beside, and when they looked at each other they each let out a groan. "Glory be!" says he. "Glory be," cried Tom Toole, "its the good little man in the heel of it. Where are ye from?"

"From the mountains."

"And what fortune is in it, did ye find the farm?"

"Divil a clod."

"Nor the Kerry cow?"

"Divil a horn."

"Nor the good milk?"

"Divil a quart, and I that dry I could be drunk with the smell of it. Tom Toole, I have traipsed the high and the deep of this realm and believe you me it is not in it; the long and the wide of this realm ---- not in it." He kept muttering sadly, "Not in it."

"Me good little man," cried Tom Toole, "don't be havering like an old goat. Here it is! the fortune of the world!"

He took the wee bottle from his breast and shook it before his eyes. "The drops that 'ull give ye your youth as easy as shifting a shirt. Come, now, I've waited the long days to share wid ye, for I couldn't bring myself to desart a comrade who was ranging the wild regions for the likes of me. Many's the time I've lifted that cork, and thinks I: he's gone and soon I'll be going, so here goes. Divil a go was in it. I could not do it, not for silver and not for gold, and not for all the mad raging mackerel that sleep in the sea."

The little old stranger took the wee bottle in his two hands. He was but a quavering stick of a man now; half dead he was, and his name it is Martin O'Moore.

"Is it the rale stuff, Tom Toole?"

"From herself I got it," he said, and he let on to him about that sweet spoken young girl.

"Did she give you the directions on the head of it?"

"What directions is it?"

"The many drops is a man to drink!"

"No, but a good sup of it will do the little job."

"A good sup of it Tom Toole, a good sup of it, ay?" says he, unsqueezing the cork. "The elixir of youth, a good sup of it, says you, a good sup of it, a great good good sup of it!"

And sticking it into his mouth he drained the wee bottle of its every red drop. He stood there looking like a man in a fit, holding the empty bottle in his hand until Tom Toole took it from him with reproaches in his poor old eyes. But in a moment it was his very eyes he thought were deceiving him; not an inch of his skin but had the dew of fear on it, for the little old man began to change his appearance quick like the sand running through a glass or as fast as the country changes down under a flying swan.

"Mother o' God!" screamed Martin O'Moore, "its too fast backward I'm growing; dizzy, dizzy I am."

And indeed his bald head suddenly got the fine black hair grown upon it, the whiskers flew away from him and his face was young. He began to wear a strange old suit that suddenly got new, and he had grown down through a handsome pair of trousers and into the little knickerbockers of a boy before you could count a score. And he had a bit of a cold just then, though he was out of it in a twink, and he let a sneeze that burst a button off his breeches, a little tin button, which was all that ever was found of him. Smaller and smaller he fell away, like the dust in an hour glass, till he was no bigger than an acorn, and then devil a bit of him was left there at all.

Tom Toole was frightened at the quiet and the emptiness and he made to go away, but he turned in the doorway and stretching out his arms to the empty room he whispered, "The greed, the avarice, may hell pour all its buckets on your bad little heart! May----" But just then he caught sight of the cup of porter that Martin O'Moore had forgotten to drink, so he went back to drink his enough and then went out into the great roaring world where he walked from here to there until one day he came right back to his old asylum. He had been away for twenty years, he was an old man, very old indeed. And there was the man from Kilsheelan digging potatoes just inside the gates of the sunny garden.

"Tis warm!" said the traveller staring at him through the railings, but the man from Kilsheelan only said, "Come in, Tom Toole, is it staying or going ye are?"

FELIX TINCLER

FELIX TINCLER

The child was to have a birthday tomorrow and was therefore not uneasy about being late home from school this afternoon. He had lost his pencil case, a hollow long round thing it was, like a rolling-pin, only it had green and yellow rings painted upon it. He kept his marbles in it and so he was often in a trouble about his pencils. He had not tried very much to find the pencil case because the boys 'deludered' him--that's what his father always said. He had asked Heber Gleed if he had seen it--he had strange suspicions of that boy--but Heber Gleed had sworn so earnestly that the greengrocer opposite the school had picked it up, he had even "saw him do it," that Felix Tincler went into Mr. Gobbit's shop, and when the greengrocer lady appeared in answer to the ring of the door bell he enquired politely for his pencil case. She was tall and terrible with a squint and, what was worse, a large velvety mole with hairs sprouting from it. She immediately and with inexplicable fury desired him to flee from her greengrocer shop, with a threat of alternative castigation in which a flat iron and a red-hot pick-axe were to figure with unusual and unpleasant prominence. Well, he had run out of Mr. Gobbit's shop and there was Heber Gleed standing in the road giggling derisively at him. Felix walked on alone looking in the gutters and areas for his pencil case until he encountered another friendly boy who took him to dig in a garden where they grew castor-oil plants. When he went home it was late; as he ran along under the high wall of the orphanage that occupied one end of his street its harsh peevish bell clanged out six notes. He scampered past the great gateway under the dismal arch that always filled him with uneasiness, he never passed it without feeling the sad trouble that a prison might give. He stepped into his own pleasant home, a little mute, and a little dirty in appearance; but at six years of age in a home so comfortable and kind the eve of the day that is to turn you into seven is an occasion great enough to yield an amnesty for peccadilloes. His father was already in from work, he could hear him singing. He gave his mother the sprigs he had picked from the castor-oil plant and told her about the pencil case. The meal was laid upon the table, and while mother was gone into the kitchen to boil the water for tea he sat down and tried to smooth out the stiff creases in the white table cloth. His father was singing gaily in the scullery as he washed and shaved:--

High cockalorum,
Charlie ate the spinach...,

He ceased for a moment to give the razor a vigorous stropping and then continued:--

High cockalorum,
High cockalee....

Felix knew that was not the conclusion of the song. He listened, but for some moments all that followed was the loud crepitation of a razor searching a stubborn beard and the sigh of the kettle. Then a new vigour seized the singer:--

But mother brought the pandy down
And bate the gree....

Again that rasping of chin briefly intervened, but the conclusion of the cropping was soon denoted by the strong rallentando of the singer

... dy image,
High cock--alorum,
High cock--a--lee.

Mrs. Tincler brought in the teapot and her husband followed her with his chin tightly shaven but blue, crying with mock horror:

"Faylix, my son! that is seven years old tomorrow! look at him, Mary, the face of him and the hands of him! I didn't know there was a bog in this parish; is it creeping in a bog you have been?"

The boy did not blench at his father's spurious austerity, he knew he was the soul of kindness and fun.

"Go wash yourself at the sink," interposed his mother. Kevin Tincler, taking his son by the hand, continued with mocking admonishment: "All the fine copybooks of the world that you've filled up with that blather about cleanliness and holiness, the up strokes very thin and the down strokes very thick! What was it, Mary, he has let it all out of his mind?"

"Go and wash, Felix, and come quickly and have your tea," laughed Mary Tincler.

"Ah, but what was it--in that grand book of yours?"

The boy stood, in his short buff tunic, regarding his father with shy amusement. The small round clear-skinned face was lovely with its blushes of faint rose; his eyes were big and blue, and his head was covered with thick curling locks of rich brown hair.

"Cleanliness comes next to godliness," he replied.

"Does it so, indeed?" exclaimed his father. "Then you're putting your godliness in a pretty low category!"

"What a nonsense," said Mary Tincler as the boy left them.

The Irishman and his dark-eyed Saxon wife sat down at the table waiting for their son.

"There's a bit of a randy in the Town Gardens tonight, Mary, dancing on the green, fireworks! When the boy is put to bed we'll walk that way."

Mary expressed her pleasure, but then declared she could not leave the boy alone in his bed.

"He'll not hurt, Mary, he has no fear in him. Give him the birthday gift before we go. Whisht, he's coming!"

The child, now clean and handsome, came to his chair and looked up at his father sitting opposite to him.

"Holy Mother!" exclaimed the admiring parent, "it's the neck of a swan he has. Faylix Tincler, may you live to be the father of a bishop!"

After tea his father took him up on the downs for an hour. As they left their doorway a group of the tidy but wretched orphans was marching back into their seminary, little girls moving in double columns behind a stiff-faced woman. They were all dressed alike in garments of charity exact as pilchards. Gray capes, worsted stockings, straw hats with blue bands round them, and hard boots. The boys were coming in from a different direction, but all of them, even the minutest, were clad in corduroy trousers and short jackets high throated like a gaoler's. This identity of garment was contrary to the will of God, for he had certainly made their pinched bodies diverse enough. Some were short, some tall, dark, fair, some ugly, others handsome. The sight of them made Felix unhappy, he shrank into himself, until he and his father had slipped through a gap in a hedge and were going up the hill that stretched smoothly and easily almost from their very door. The top of the down hereabouts was quiet and lovely, but a great flank of it two miles away was scattered over with tiny white figures playing very deliberately at cricket. Pleasant it was up there in the calm evening, and still bright, but the intervening valley was full of grey ungracious houses, allotments, railway arches, churches, graveyards, and schools. Worst of all was the dull forbidding aspect of the Orphanage down beyond the roof of their own house.

They played with a ball and had some wrestling matches until the declining day began to grow dim even on the hill and the fat jumbo clouds over the town were turning pink. If those elephants fell on him--what would they do? Why they'd mix him up like ice-cream! So said his father.

"Do things ever fall out of the sky?"

"Rain," said Mr. Tincler.

"Yes, I know."

"Stars--maybe."

"Where do they go?"

"Oh they drop on the hills but ye can never find 'em."

"Don't Heaven ever?"

"What drop down! No," said Mr. Tincler, "it don't. I have not heard of it doing that, but maybe it all just stoops down sometimes, Faylix, until it's no higher than the crown of your hat. Let us be going home now and ye'll see something this night."

"What is it?"

"Wait, Faylix, wait!"

As they crossed from the hill Mary, drawing down the blinds, signalled to them from the window.

"Come along, Felix," she cried, and the child ran into the darkened room. Upon the table was set a little church of purest whiteness. Kevin had bought it from an Italian hawker. It had a wonderful tall steeple and a cord that came through a hole and pulled a bell inside. And that was not all; the church was filled with light that was shining through a number of tiny arched windows, blue, purple, green, violet, the wonderful windows were everywhere. Felix was silent with wonder; how could you get a light in a church that hadn't a door! then Mary lifted the hollow building from the table; it had no floor, and there was a night-light glowing in one of her patty-pans filled with water. The church was taken up to bed with him in the small chamber next his parents' room and set upon a bureau. Kevin and Mary then went off to the 'bit of devilment' in the town gardens.

Felix kept skipping from his bed, first to gaze at the church, and then to lean out of the window in his night-shift, looking for the lamplighter who would come to the street lamp outside. The house was the very last and the lamp was the very last lamp on one of the roads that led from the town and went poking out into the steady furze-covered downs. And as the lamp was the very last to be lit darkness was always half-fallen by the time the old man arrived at his journey's end. He carried a pole with a brass tube on its top. There were holes in the brass tube showing gleams of light. The pole rested upon his shoulders as he trudged along humming huskily.

"Here he is," cried Felix, leaning from the window and waving a white arm. The dull road, empty of traffic, dim as his mother's pantry by day, curved slightly, and away at the other end of the curve a jet of light had sprung into the gloom like a bright flower bursting its sheath; a black figure moved along towards him under the Orphanage wall. Other lamps blossomed with light and the lamplighter, approaching the Tinclers' lamp, thrust the end of his pole into the lantern, his head meanwhile craning back like the head of a horse that has been pulled violently backwards. He deftly turned the tap; with a tiny dull explosion that sounded like a doormat being beaten against the wall in the next street the lamp was lit and the face of the old man sprang into vague brilliance, for it was not yet utterly dark. Vague as the light was the neighbouring hills at once faded out of recognition and became black bulks of oblivion.

"Oi ... Oi ..." cried the child, clapping his hands. The old man's features relaxed, he grunted in relief, the pole slid down in his palm. As the end of it struck the pavement a sharp knock he drew an old pipe from his pocket and lit it quite easily, although one of his hands was deficient of a thumb and some fingers. He was about to travel back into the sparkling town when Felix called to him:

"Soloman! Soloman!"

"Goo an to yer bed, my little billycock, or you'll ketch a fever."

"No, but what's this?" Felix was pointing to the ground below him. The old man peered over the iron railings into the front garden that had just sufficient earth to cherish four deciduous bushes, two plants of marigold, and some indeterminate herbs. In the dimness of their shadows a glowworm beamed clearly.

"That?" exclaimed he; "O s'dripped off the moon, yas, right off, moon's wasting away, you'll see later on if you'm watch out for it, s'dripped off the moon, right off." Chuckling, he blew out the light at the end of his pole, and went away, but turned at intervals to wave his hand towards the sky, crying "Later on, right off!" and cackling genially until he came to a tavern.

The child stared at the glowworm and then surveyed the sky, but the tardy moon was deep behind the hills. He left the open window and climbed into bed again. The house was empty, but he did not mind, father and mother had gone to buy him another birthday gift. He did not mind, the church glowed in its corner on the bureau, the street lamp shined all over the ceiling and a little bit upon the wall where the splendid picture of Wexford Harbour was hanging. It was not gloomy at all, although the Orphanage bell once sounded very piercingly. Sometimes people would stroll by, but not often, and he would hear them mumbling to each other. He would rather have a Chinese lantern first, and next to that a little bagpipe, and next to that a cockatoo with a yellow head, and then a Chinese lantern, and then.... He awoke; he thought he heard a heavy bang on the door as if somebody had thrown a big stone. But when he looked out of the window there was nobody to be seen. The little moon drip was still lying in the dirt, the sky was softly black, the stars were vivid, only the lamp dazzled his eyes and he could not see any moon. But as he yawned he saw just over the downs a rich globe of light moving very gradually towards him, swaying and falling, falling in the still air. To the child's dazzled eyes the great globe, dropping towards him as if it would crush the house, was shaped like an elephant, a fat squat jumbo with a green trunk. Then to his relief it fell suddenly from the sky right on to the down where he and father had played. The light was extinguished and black night hid the fire-balloon.

He scrambled back into bed again, but how he wished it was morning so that he could go out and capture the old elephant--he knew he would find it! When at last he slept he sank into a world of white churches that waved their steeples like vast trunks, and danced with elephants that had bellies full of fire and hidden bells that clanged impetuously to a courageous pull of each tail. He did not wake again until morning was bright and birds were singing. It was early, but it was his birthday. There were no noises in the street yet, and he could not hear his father or mother moving about. He crawled silently from his bed and dressed himself. The coloured windows in the little white fane gleamed still but it looked a little dull now. He took the cake that mother always left at his bedside and crept down the stairs. There he put on his shoes and, munching the cake, tiptoed to the front door. It was not bolted, but it was difficult for him to slip back the latch quietly, and when at last it was done and he stood upon the step he was doubly startled to hear a loud rapping on the knocker of a house a few doors away. He sidled quickly but warily to the corner of the street, crushing the cake into his pocket, and then peeped back. It was more terrible than he had anticipated! A tall policeman stood outside that house, bawling to a woman with her hair in curl papers who was lifting the sash of an upper window. Felix turned and ran through the gap in the hedge and onwards up the hill. He did not wait; he thought he heard the policeman calling out "Tincler!" and he ran faster and faster, then slower and more slow as the down steepened, until he was able to sink down breathless behind a clump of the furze, out of sight and out of hearing. The policeman did not appear to be following him; he moved on up the hill and through the soft smooth alleys of the furze until he reached the top of the down, searching always for the white elephant which he knew must be hidden close there and nowhere else, although he had no clear idea in his mind of the appearance of his mysterious quarry. Vain search, the elephant was shy or cunning and eluded him. Hungry at last and tired he sat down and leaned against a large ant hill close beside the thick and perfumed furze. Here he ate his cake and then lolled, a little drowsy, looking at the few clouds in the sky and listening to birds. A flock of rooks was moving in straggling flight towards him, a wide flat changing skein, like a curtain of crape that was being pulled and stretched delicately by invisible fingers. One of the rooks flapped just over him; it had a small round hole right through the feathers of one wing--what was that for? Felix was just falling to sleep, it was so soft and comfortable there, when a tiny noise, very tiny but sharp and mysterious, went "Ping!" just by his ear, and something stung him lightly in the neck. He knelt up, a little startled, but he peered steadily under the furze. "Ping!" went something again and stung him in the ball of the eye. It made him blink. He drew back; after staring silently at the furze he said very softly, "Come out!" Nothing came; he beckoned with his forefinger and called aloud with friendliness, "come on, come out!" At that moment his nose was almost touching a brown dry sheath of the furze bloom, and right before his eyes the dried flower burst with the faint noise of "Ping!" and he felt the shower of tiny black seeds shooting against his cheek. At once he comprehended the charming mystery of the furze's dispersal of its seeds, and he submitted himself to the fairylike bombardment with great glee, forgetting even the elephant until in one of the furze alleys he came in sight of a heap of paper that fluttered a little heavily. He went towards it; it was so large that he could not make out its shape or meaning. It was a great white bag made of paper, all crumpled and damp, with an arrangement of wire where the hole was, and some burned tow fixed in it. But at last he was able to perceive the green trunk, and it also had pink eyes! He had found it and he was triumphant! There were words in large black letters painted upon it which he could not read, except one word which was CURE. It was an advertisement fire-balloon relating to a specific for catarrh. He rolled the elephant together carefully, and carrying the mass of it clasped in his two arms he ran back along the hill chuckling to himself, "I'm carrying the ole elephant." Advancing down the hill to his home he was precariously swathed in a drapery of balloon paper. The door stood open; he walked into the kitchen. No one was in the kitchen, but there were sharp straight voices speaking in the room above. He thought he must have come into the wrong house, but the strange noises frightened him into silence; he stood quite still listening to them. He had dropped the balloon and it unfolded upon the floor, partly revealing the astounding advertisement of

PEASEGOOD'S PODOPHYLLIN.

The voices above were unravelling horror upon horror. He knew by some divining instinct that tragedy was happening to him, had indeed already enveloped and crushed him. A mortar had exploded at the fireworks display, killing and wounding people that he knew.

"She had a great hole of a wound in the soft part of her thigh as you could put a cokernut in...."

"God a'mighty...."

"Died in five minutes, poor thing."

"And the husband ... they couldn't....?"

"No, couldn't identify ... they could not identify him only by some papers in his pocket."

"And he'd got a little bagpipe done up in a package ... for their little boy...."

"Never spoke a word...."

"Never a word, poor creature."

"May Christ be good to 'em."

"Yes, yes," they all said softly.

The child walked quietly up the stairs to his mother's bedroom. Two policemen were there making notes in their pocket books, their helmets lying on the unused bed. There were also three or four friendly women neighbours. As he entered the room the gossip ceased abruptly. One of the women gasped "O Jesus!" and they seemed to huddle together eyeing him as if he had stricken them with terror. With his fingers still upon the handle of the door he looked up at the tallest policeman and said:

"What's the matter?"

The policeman did not reply immediately; he folded up his notebook, but the woman who had gasped came to him with a yearning cry and wrapped him in her protesting arms with a thousand kisses.

"Ye poor lamb, ye poor little orphan, whatever 'ull become of ye!"

At that moment the bell of the Orphanage burst into a peal of harsh impetuous clangour and the policemen picked up their helmets from the bed.

CRAVEN ARMS

CRAVEN ARMS

All schools since the beginning of time have been modern at some period of their existence, but this one was modern, so the vicar declared, because it was so blessedly hygienic; the townspeople were perhaps proudest of its evening classes, very advanced they were--languages, sciences, arts--and very popular. The school was built upon a high tree-arboured slope overlooking the snug small town and on its western side stared ambiguously at a free upland country that was neither small nor snug. The seventeen young women and the nine young men who comprised the evening sketching class were definitely, indeed articulately, inartistic; they were as unæsthetic as pork pies, all except Julia Tern, a golden-haired pure-complexioned fawn of a girl whose talent was already beyond the reach of any instruction the teacher could give. He could not understand why she continued to attend his classes.

One evening she brought for his criticism a portrait sketch of himself.

"This is extraordinarily beautiful," he murmured.

"Yes," said Julia.

"I mean the execution, the presentation and so on."

Julia did not reply. He stared at her picture of him, a delicately modelled face with a suggestion of nobility, an air that was kind as it was grave. The gravity and nobility which so pleased him were perhaps the effect of a high brow from which the long brown hair flowed thinly back to curve in a tidy cluster at his neck. Kindness beamed in the eyes and played around the thin mouth, sharp nose and positive chin. What could have inspired her to make this idealisation of himself, for it was idealisation in spite of its fidelity and likeness? He knew he had little enough nobility of character--too little to show so finely--and as for that calm gravity of aspect, why gravity simply was not in him. But there it was on paper, deliberate and authentic, inscribed with his name--_David Masterman_ 1912.

"When, how did you come to do it?"

"I just wanted it, you were a nice piece, I watched you a good deal, and there you are!" She said it jauntily, but there was a pink flush in her cheeks.

"It's delicious," he mused, "I envy you. I can't touch a decent head--not even yours. But why have you idealised me so?" He twitted her lightly about the gravity and nobility.

"But you are like that, you are. That's how I see you at this moment."

She did not give him the drawing as he hoped she would. He did not care to ask her for it--there was delicious flattery in the thought that she treasured it so much.

Masterman was a rather solitary man of about thirty. He lived alone in a bungalow away out of the town and painted numbers of landscapes, rather lifeless imitations, as he knew, of other men's masterpieces. They were frequently sold.

Sometimes on summer afternoons he would go into woods or fields with a few of his pupils to sketch or paint farmhouses, trees, clouds, stacks, and other rural furniture. He was always hoping to sit alone with Julia Tern; but there were other loyal pupils who never missed these occasions, among them the two Forrest girls, Ianthe, the younger, and Katherine, daughters of a thriving contractor. Julia remained inscrutable, she gave him no opportunities at all: he could never divine her feelings or gather any response to his own, but there could be no doubt of the feelings of the Forrest girls--they quite certainly liked him, liked him enormously, and indeed could have had no other reason for continuing in his classes, both being as devoid of artistic grace as an inkstand. They brought fruit or chocolate to the classes and shared them with him. Their attentions, their mutual attentions, were manifested in many ways, small but significant and kind. On such occasions Julia's eyes seemed to rest upon him with an ironical gaze. It was absurd. He liked them well enough, and sometimes from his shy wooing of the adorable but enigmatic Julia he would turn for solace to Ianthe. Yet strangely enough it was Kate, the least alluring to him of the three girls, who took him to her melancholy heart.

Ianthe was a little bud of womanhood, dark-haired but light-headed, dressed in cream-coloured clothes. She was small and right and tight, without angularities or rhythms, just one dumpy solid roundness. But she had an extraordinary vulgarity of speech, if not of mind, that exacerbated him, and in the dim corridors of his imagination she did not linger; she scurried as it were into doorways or upon twisting staircases or stood briefly where a loop of light fell upon her hair, her dusky face, her creamy clothes and her delightful rotundities. She had eyes of indiscretion and a mind like a hive of bees, it had such a tiny opening and was so full of a cloying content.

One day he suddenly found himself alone with Ianthe in a glade of larch trees which they had all been sketching. They had loitered. He had been naming wild flowers which Ianthe had picked for the purpose and then thrown wantonly away. She spied a single plant of helleborine growing in the dimness under the closely planted saplings.

"Don't! don't!" he cried. He kept her from plucking it and they knelt down together to admire the white virginal flower. His arm fell around Ianthe's waist in a light casual way. He scarcely realised its presumption. He had not intended to do it; as far as that went he did not particularly want to do it, but there his arm was. Ianthe took no notice of the embrace and he felt foolish, he could not retreat until they rose to walk on; then Ianthe pressed close to his side until his arm once more stole round her.

"Heavens above," she said, "you do get away with it quick!"

"Life's short, there's no time to lose, I do as I'd be done by."

"And there are so many of us! But glory," said the jolly girl, taking him to her bosom, "in for a penny, in for a pound."

She did not pick any more flowers, and soon they were out of the wood decorously joining the others. He imagined that Julia's gaze was full of irony, the timid wonder in Kate's eyes moved him uncomfortably, there was something idiotic in the whole affair.

Until the end of the summer he met Ianthe often enough in the little town or in the city three miles further off. Her uncouthness still repelled him and sometimes he disliked her completely, but she was always happy to be with him, fond and gay with all the endearing alertness of a pert bird.

Her sister Kate was not just the mere female that Ianthe was; at once sterner and softer her passions were more strong but their defences stood solid as a rock. In spite of her reserve she was always on the brink of her emotions, and they, unhappily for her, were often not transient, but enduring. She was nearly thirty, still unwed. Her dark beauty, for she, too, was fine, seemed to brood in melancholy over his attentions to the other two women. She was quiet, she had little to say, she seemed to stand and wait.

One autumn night after the pupils had gone home from school he walked into the dim lobby for his hat and coat. Kate Forrest was there. She stood with her back to him adjusting her hat. She did not say a word nor did he address her. They were almost touching each other, there was a pleasant scent about her. In the class-room behind the caretaker was walking about the hollow sounding floor, humming loudly as he clapped down windows and mounted the six chairs to turn out the six gas lamps.

When the last light through the glazed door was gone and the lobby was completely dark Kate all at once turned to him, folded him in her arms, and held him to her breast for one startling moment, then let him go, murmuring "O ... O." It made him strangely happy. He pulled her back in the gloom, whispering tender words. They walked out of the hall into the dark road and stopped to confront each other. The road was empty and dark except for a line of gas lamps that gleamed piercingly bright in the sharp air and in the polished surface of the road that led back from the hill down past her father's villa. There were no lamps in the opposite direction and the road groped its way out into the dark country where he lived, a mile beyond the town. It was windy and some unseen trees behind a wall near them swung and tossed with many pleasant sounds.

"I will come a little way with you," Kate said.

"Yes, come a little way," he whispered, pressing her arm, "I'll come back with you."

She took his arm and they turned towards the country. He could think of nothing to say, he was utterly subdued by his surprise: Kate was sad, even moody; but at last she said slowly: "I am unlucky. I always fall in love with men who can't love me."

"O but I can and do, dear Kate," he cried lightly, "love me, Kate, go on loving me, I'm not, well, I'm not very wicked."

"No, no, you do not." She shook her head mournfully; after a few moments she added: "It's Julia Tern."

That astonished him too. How could she have known it! How could anyone have known--even Julia herself. It was queer that she did not refer to his friendship with Ianthe; he thought that was much more obvious than his love for Julia. In a mood that he only half understood he began to deny her reproachful charge. "Why, you must think me very fickle indeed. I really love you, dear Kate, really you."

His arm was around her neck, he smoothed her cheek fondly against his own. She returned his caresses, but he could glimpse the melancholy doubt in her averted eyes.

"We often talk of you, we often talk of you at night in bed, often."

"What do you say about me--in bed? Who?"

"Ianthe and me. She likes you."

"She likes me! What do you say about me--in bed?"

He hoped Ianthe had not been indiscreet, but Kate only said: "She doesn't like you as I do--not like this."

Soon they began to walk back towards the town. He smiled once when, as their footsteps clattered irregularly upon the hard clean road, she skipped to adjust the fall of her steps to his.

"Do not come any further," she begged, as they neared the street lamps. "It doesn't matter, not at all, what I've said to you. It will be all right. I shall see you again."

Once more she put her arms around his neck, murmuring "Good-night, good-night, good-night."

He watched her go quietly away. When he turned homeward his mind was full of thoughts that were only dubiously pleasant. It was all right, surprisingly sweet, but it left him uneasy. He managed to light a cigarette, but the wind blew smoke into his eyes, tore the charred end into fiery rags, and tossed the sparkles across his shoulder. If it had only been Julia Tern!--or even Ianthe!--he would have been wholly happy. Kate was good-looking, but these quietly passionate advances disturbed him. Why had he been so responsive to her? He excused himself, it was quite simple; you could not let a woman down, a loving woman like that, not at once, a man should be kind. But what did she mean when she spoke of always falling in love with men who did not like her?

He tossed the cigarette away and turned up the collar of his coat, for the faintest fall of warm rain blew against his face like a soft beautiful net. He thrust his hands into his pockets and walked sharply and forgettingly home.

2

Three miles away from the little town was the big city with tramways, electric light, factories, canals, and tens of thousands of people, and there a few nights later he met Ianthe. Walking around and away from the happy lighted streets they came out upon the bank of a canal where darkness and loneliness were intensified by the silent passage of black water whose current they could define but not see. As they stepped warily along the unguarded bank he embraced her. Even as he did so he cursed himself for a fool to be so fond of this wretched imp of a girl. In his heart he believed he disliked her, but he was not sure. She was childish, artful, luscious, stupid--this was no gesture for a man with any standards. Silently clutching each other they approached an iron bridge with lamps upon it and a lighted factory beyond it. The softly-moving water could now be seen; the lamps on the bridge let down thick rods of light into its quiet depths, and beyond the arch the windows of the factory, inverted in the stream, bloomed like baskets of fire with flaming fringes. A boy shuffled across the bridge whistling a tune; there was the distant rumble and trot of a cab. Then all sounds melted into quiet without one wave of air. Ianthe was replying to him:

"No, no, I like it, I like you." She put her brow against his breast: "I like you, I like you."

His embracing hand could feel the emotion streaming within the girl.

"Do you like me better than her?"

"Than whom," he asked.

Ianthe was coy. "You know, you know."

Masterman's feelings were a mixture of perturbation and delight, delight at this manifestation of jealousy of her sister which was an agreeable thing, anyway, for it implied a real depth of regard for him; but he was perturbed, for he did not know what Kate had told this sister of their last strange meeting.

He saluted her again, exclaiming:

"Never mind her. This our outing, isn't it?"

"I don't like her," Ianthe added naively, "she is so awfully fond of you."

"O confound her," he cried; and then: "You mustn't mind me saying that so, so sharply; you don't mind, do you?"

Ianthe's lips were soft and sweet. Sisters were quite unscrupulous, Masterman had heard of such cases before, but he had tenderness and a reluctance to wound anybody's susceptibility, let alone the feelings of a woman who loved. He was an artist not only in paint but in sentiment, and it is possible that he excelled in the less tangible medium.

"It's a little awkward," he ventured. Ianthe didn't understand, she didn't understand that at all.

"The difficulty, you see," he said, with the air of one handling whimsically a question of perplexity that yet yielded its amusement, "is ... is Kate."

"Kate?" said Ianthe.

"She is so--so gone, so absolutely gone."

"Gone?"

"Well, she's really, really in love, deeply, deeply," looking away anywhere but at her sister's eyes.

"With Chris Halton, do you mean?"

"Ho, ho!" he laughed. "Chris who? Lord, no! With me, with me, isn't she?"

"With you!"

But Ianthe was quite positive, even a little ironical, about that. "She is not. She rather dislikes you, Mr. Prince Charming, so there! We speak of you sometimes at night, in bed--we sleep together. She knows what I think of you. But she's quite, well, she doesn't like you at all--she acts the heavy sister."

"O!" said Masterman, groping as it were for some light in his darkness.

"She--what do you think?--she warns me against you," Ianthe continued.

"Against me?"

"As if I care. Do you?"

"No, no! I don't care."

They left the dark bank where they had been standing and walked along to the bridge. Halfway up its steps to the road he paused, and asked: "Then who is it that is so fond of me?"

"O, you know, you know." Ianthe nestled blissfully in his arm again.

"No, but who is it; I may be making another howler, I thought you meant Kate; what did she warn you of, I mean against me?"

They were now in the streets again, walking towards the tram centre. The shops were darkened and closed, but the cinemas lavished their unwanted illuminations on the street. There were no hurrying people, there was just strolling ease; the policemen at corners were chatting to other policemen now in private clothes. The brilliant trams rumbled and clanged and stopped, the saloons were full and musical.

"What did she warn you against?" he repeated.

"You," chuckled Ianthe.

"But what about? What has she got against me?"

"Everything. You know. You know you do." The archness of Ianthe was objectively baffling, but under it all he read the significance, its invitation.

He waited beside her for a tram, but when it came he pleaded a further engagement in the city and left her rather crest-fallen to her journey. He had no other engagement, he only wanted to be alone to sort out the things she had dangled before his mind, so he boarded the next car and walked from the Tutsan terminus to his cottage. Both girls were fond of him, then--Ianthe's candour left him no room for doubt--and they were both lying to each other about him. Well, he didn't mind that, he lied himself whenever it was necessary or suited him. Not often, but when truth was inappropriate to a sensitive-minded man, this was his protective colouring. Why after all should sympathetic mendacity be a monopoly of polite society?

"But it's also the trick of thieves and seducers," he muttered to himself. "I'm not a thief, no, I'm not a thief. As for the other thing, well, what is there against me--nothing, nothing at all." But a strange voiceless sigh seemed to echo from the trees along the dark road; he walked on more rapidly.

Three women! There was no doubt either about the third, Ianthe had thought of Julia, too, just as Kate had. What a fate for a misogamist! He felt like a mouse being taken for a ride in a bath chair. He had an invincible prejudice against marriage, not as an institution but because he was perfectly aware of his incapacity for faithfulness. His emotions were deep but unprolonged, they were fickle. Love was love, but marriage turned love into the stone of Sisyphus. At the sound of the marriage bell--a passing bell--earth at his feet would burst into flame and the sky above would pour upon him an unquenching profusion of tears. Love was a fine ennobling thing, but though he had the will to love he knew beyond the possibility of doubt that his capacity for love was a meandering strengthless thing. Even his loyalty to Julia Tern--and that had the strongest flavour of any such emotion that had ever beset him, no matter how brief its term--even that was a deviating zig-zag loyalty. For he wanted to go on being jolly and friendly with Ianthe if only Julia did not get to know. With Kate, too, that tender melancholy woman. She would be vastly unhappy. Who was this Christopher whom Ianthe fondly imagined her sister to favour? Whoever he was, poor devil, he would not thank D. M. for his intervention. But he would drop all this; however had he, of all men, come to be plumped so suddenly into a state of things for which he had shown so little fancy in the past? Julia would despise him, she would be sure to despise him, sure to; and yet if he could only believe she would not it would be pleasant to go on being friendly with Ianthe pending ... pending what?

Masterman was a very pliant man; but as things shaped themselves for him he did not go a step further with Ianthe, and it was not to Julia at all that he made love.

3

The amour, if it may be described as such, of David Masterman and Kate Forrest took a course that was devoid of ecstasy, whatever other qualities may have illuminated their desires. It was an affair in which the human intentions, which are intellectual, were on both sides strong enough to subdue the efforts of passion, which are instinctive, to rid itself of the customary curbs, and to turn the clash of inhibitions wherein the man proposes and the woman rejects into a conflict not of ideal but of mere propriety. They were like two negative atoms swinging in a medium from which the positive flux was withdrawn; for them the nebulæ did not 'cohere into an orb.'

Kate's fine figure was not so fine as Julia Tern's; her dusky charms were excelled by those of Ianthe; but her melancholy immobility, superficial as it was, had a suggestive emotional appeal that won Masterman away from her rivals. Those sad eyes had but to rest on his and their depths submerged him. Her black hair had no special luxuriance, her stature no unusual grace; the eyes were almost blue and the thin oval face had always the flush of fine weather in it; but her strong hands, though not as white as snow, were paler than milk, their pallor was unnatural. Almost without an effort she drew him away from the entangling Ianthe, and even the image of Julia became but a fair cloud seen in moonlight, delicate and desirable but very far away; it would never return. Julia had observed the relations between them--no discerning eye could misread Kate's passion--and she gave up her class, a secession that had a deep significance for him, and a grief that he could not conceal from Kate though she was too wise to speak of it.

But in spite of her poignant aspect--for it was in that appearance she made such a powerful appeal to Masterman; the way she would wait silently for him on the outside of a crowd of the laughing chattering students was touching--she was an egotist of extraordinary type. She believed in herself and in her virtue more strongly than she believed in him or their mutual love. By midsummer, after months of wooing, she knew that the man who so passionately moved her and whose own love she no less powerfully engaged was a man who would never marry, who had a morbid preposterous horror of the domesticity and devotion that was her conception of living bliss. "The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world," he said. He, too, knew that the adored woman, for her part, could not dream of a concession beyond the limits her virginal modesty prescribed. He had argued and stormed, sworn that baffled love turns irrevocably to hatred. She did not believe him, she even smiled, but he had behaved grossly towards her, terrified her, and they parted in anger.

He did not see her for many weeks. He was surprised and dismayed, his misery was so profound. He knew he had loved her; he had not doubted its sincerity, but he had doubted its depth. Then one September evening she had come back to the class and afterwards she had walked along the road with him towards his home.

"Come to my house," he said, "you have never been to see it."