Chapter V: Book II: Nell (1)

chapter 1

The room was full of cigarette smoke. It eddied and drifted about, forming a thin blue haze. Through it came the sound of three voices occupied with the betterment of the human race and the encouragement of art--especially art that defied all known conventions.

Sebastian Levinne, leaning back against the ornate marble mantelpiece of his mother's town house, spoke didactically, gesticulating with the long yellow hand that held his cigarette. The tendency to lisp was still there, but very faint. His yellow Mongolian face, his surprised-looking ears, were much the same as they had been at eleven years old. At twenty-two he was the same Sebastian, sure of himself, perspective, with the same love of beauty and the same unemotional and unerring sense of values.

In front of him, reclining in two immense leather-covered arm chairs, were Vernon and Joe. Very much alike these two, cast in the same sharply accentuated black and white mould. But, as of old, Joe's was the more aggressive personality, energetic, rebellious, vehement. Vernon, an immense length, lay back slothfully in his chair. His long legs rested on the back of another chair. He was blowing smoke rings and smiling thoughtfully to himself. He occasionally contributed grunts to the conversation, or a short lazy sentence.

"That wouldn't pay," Sebastian had just said decisively.

As he had half expected, Joe was roused at once to the point of virulence.

"Who wants a thing to _pay_? It's so--so _rotten_--that point of view! Treating everything from a commercial standpoint. I hate it."

Sebastian said calmly: "That's because you've got such an incurably romantic view of life. You like poets to starve in garrets, and artists to toil unrecognized, and sculptors to be applauded after they are dead."

"Well--that's what happens. Always!"

"No, not _always_. Very often, perhaps. But it needn't be as often as it is. That's my point. The world never likes anything new--but I say it could be made to. Taken the right way, it could be made to. But you've got to know just what will go down and what won't."

"That's compromise," murmured Vernon indistinctly.

"It's common sense! Why should I lose money by backing my judgment?"

"Oh! Sebastian," cried Joe, "you--you----"

"Jew!" said Sebastian calmly. "That's what you mean. Well, we Jews have got taste--we know when a thing is fine and when it isn't. We don't go by the fashion--we back our own judgment, and we're _right_! People always see the money side of it, but the other's there too."

Vernon grunted. Sebastian went on:

"There are two sides to what we're talking about--there are the people who are thinking of new things, new ways of doing old things, new thoughts altogether, and who can't get their chance because people are afraid of anything new. And there are the other people--the people who know what the public has always wanted and who go on giving it to them, because it's safe and there's a sure profit. But there's a third way--to find things that are new and beautiful and take a chance on them. That's what I'm going to do. I'm going to run a picture gallery in Bond Street--I signed the deeds yesterday--and a couple of theatres--and later I want to run a weekly of some kind on entirely different lines from anything that has been done before. And what's more, I'm going to make the whole thing _pay_. There are all sorts of things that I admire, that a cultivated few would admire--but I'm not going out for those. Anything I run's going to be a popular success. Dash it all, Joe, don't you see that half the fun of the thing is _making_ it pay? It's justifying yourself by success."

Joe shook her head, unconvinced.

"Are you really going to have all those things?" said Vernon.

Both the cousins looked at Sebastian with a tinge of envy. Queer, and rather wonderful, to be in old Sebastian's position. His father had died some years before. Sebastian, at twenty-two, was master of so many millions that it took one's breath away to think about them.

The friendship with Sebastian, begun all those years ago at Abbots Puissants, had endured and strengthened. He and Vernon had been friends at Eton, they were at the same college at Cambridge. In the holidays the three had always managed to spend a good deal of time together.

"What about sculpture?" asked Joe suddenly. "Is that included?"

"Of course. Are you still keen about taking up modelling?"

"Rather. It's the only thing I really care about."

A derisive hoot of laughter came from Vernon.

"Yes, and what will it be this time next year? You'll be a frenzied poet or something."

"It takes one some time to find one's true vocation," said Joe with dignity. "But I'm really in earnest this time."

"You always are," said Vernon. "However, thank heaven you've given up that damned violin."

"Why do you hate music so, Vernon?"

"Dunno--I always have."

Joe turned back to Sebastian. Unconsciously her voice took on a different note. It sounded ever so faintly constrained.

"What do you think of Paul la Marre's work? Vernon and I went to his studio last Sunday."

"No guts," said Sebastian succinctly.

A slight flush rose in Joe's cheek.

"That's simply because you don't understand what he's aiming at. I think he's wonderful."

"Anæmic," said Sebastian, unperturbed.

"Sebastian, I think you're perfectly hateful sometimes. Just because La Marre has the courage to break away from tradition----"

"That's not it at all," said Sebastian. "A man can break away from tradition by modelling a Stilton cheese and calling it his idea of a nymph bathing. But if he can't convince you and impress you by doing so, he's failed. Just doing things differently to anyone else isn't genius. Nine times out of ten it's aiming at getting cheap notoriety."

The door opened and Mrs. Levinne looked in.

"Tea'th ready, dearths," she said, and beamed on them.

Jet dangled and twinkled on her immense bust. A large black hat with feathers sat on top of her elaborately arranged coiffure. She looked the complete symbol of material prosperity. Her eyes dwelt adoration on Sebastian.

They got up, and prepared to follow her. Sebastian said in a low voice to Joe:

"Joe--you're not angry, are you?"

There was suddenly something young and pathetic about his voice--a pleading in it that exposed him as immature and vulnerable. A moment ago he had been the master spirit laying down the law in complete self-confidence.

"Why should I be angry?" said Joe coldly.

She moved toward the door without looking at him. Sebastian's eyes rested on her wistfully. She had that dark magnetic beauty that matures early. Her skin was dead white, and her eyelashes so thick and dark that they looked like jet against the even colour of her cheeks. There was magic in her way of moving, something languorous and passionate that was wholly unconscious as yet of its own appeal. Although she was the youngest of the three, just past her twentieth birthday, she was at the same time the oldest. To her Vernon and Sebastian were boys, and she despised boys. That queer doglike devotion of Sebastian's irritated her. She liked men of experience, men who could say exciting, half-understood things. She lowered her white eyelids for a moment, remembering Paul la Marre.

_2_

Mrs. Levinne's drawing room was a curious mixture of sheer blatant opulence and an almost austere good taste. The opulence was due to her--she liked velvet hangings and rich cushions and marble and gilding--the taste was Sebastian's. It was he who had torn down a medley of pictures from the wall and substituted two of his own choosing. His mother was reconciled to their plainness, as she called it, by the immense price that had been paid for them. The old Spanish leather screen was one of her son's presents to her--so was the exquisite _cloisonné_ vase.

Seated behind an unusually massive silver tea tray, Mrs. Levinne raised the teapot with two hands and made conversational inquiries, lisping slightly.

"And how'th your dear mother? She never comes to town nowadays. You tell her from me she'll be getting rusty."

She laughed, a good-natured fat wheezy chuckle.

"I've never regretted having this town hou'th as well as a country one. Deerfields is all very well, but one wantth a bit of life. And of course Sebastian will be home soon for good--and that full of schemes as he ith! Well, well, his father was much the same. Went into deals against everybody'th advice, and instead of losing his money he doubled and trebled it every time. A thmart fellow, my poor Yakob."

Sebastian thought to himself: "I wish she wouldn't. That's just the sort of remark Joe always hates. Joe's always against me nowadays...."

Mrs. Levinne went on: "I've got a box for _Kings in Arcady_ on Wednesday night. What about it, my dearth? Will you come?"

"I'm awfully sorry, Mrs. Levinne," said Vernon. "I wish we could. But we're going down to Birmingham to-morrow."

"Oh! you're going home."

"Yes."

Why hadn't he said "going home?" Why did it sound so fantastic in his ears? There was only one home, of course--Abbots Puissants. Home! A queer word, so many meanings to it. It reminded him of the ridiculous words of a song that one of Joe's young men used to bray out (What a damnable thing music was!) while he fingered his collar and looked at her sentimentally. "Home, love, is where the heart is, where'er the heart may be...."

But in that case his home ought to be in Birmingham where his mother was.

He experienced that faint feeling of disquietude that always came over him when he thought of his mother. He was very fond of her, naturally. Mothers, of course, were hopeless people to explain things to, they never understood. But he _was_ very fond of her--it would be unnatural if he wasn't. As she so often said, he was all she had.

Suddenly a little imp seemed to jump in Vernon's brain. The imp said suddenly and unexpectedly: "What rot you are talking! She's got the house, and the servants to talk to and bully, and friends to gossip with, and her own people all round her. She'd miss all that far more than she'd miss you. She loves you, but she's relieved when you go back to Cambridge--and even then she's not as relieved as you are!"

"Vernon!" It was Joe's voice, sharp with annoyance. "What are you thinking of? Mrs. Levinne was asking about Abbots Puissants--if it's still let?"

How fortunate that when people said "What _are_ you thinking about?" they didn't in the least mean that they wanted to know! Still, you could always say "Nothing much," just as when you were small you had said "Nothing."

He answered Mrs. Levinne's questions, promised to deliver her various messages to his mother.

Sebastian saw them to the door, they said a final good-bye and walked out into the London streets. Joe sniffed the air ecstatically.

"How I love London! You know, Vernon, my mind's made up. I'm coming up to London to study. I'm going to tackle Aunt Myra about it this time. And I won't live with Aunt Ethel, either. I'm going to be on my own."

"You can't do that, Joe. Girls don't."

"They _do_. I could share rooms with another girl or girls. But to live with Aunt Ethel, always asking me where I'm going, and who with--I just can't stand it. And anyway she hates me being a suffragette."

The Aunt Ethel they referred to was Aunt Carrie's sister, an aunt by courtesy only. They were staying with her at the present moment.

"Oh! and that reminds me," went on Joe. "You've got to do something for me, Vernon."

"What?"

"To-morrow afternoon Mrs. Cartwright's taking me to that Titanic Concert as a special treat."

"Well?"

"Well, I don't want to go--that's all."

"You can make some excuse or other, I suppose."

"It's not so easy as that. You see, Aunt Ethel's got to think I've gone to the concert. I don't want her ferreting out where I am going."

Vernon gave a whistle.

"Oh! So that's it? What are you really up to, Joe? Who is it this time?"

"It's La Marre, if you really want to know."

"That bounder."

"He's not a bounder. He's wonderful--you don't know how wonderful he is."

Vernon grinned.

"No, indeed I don't. I don't like Frenchmen."

"You're so horribly insular. But it doesn't matter whether you like him or not. He's going to motor me down to the country to a friend's house where his _chef d'œuvre_ is. I do so want to go, and you know perfectly that Aunt Ethel would never let me."

"You oughtn't to go racketing about the country with a fellow like that."

"Don't be an ass, Vernon. Don't you know that I can look after myself?"

"Oh! I suppose so."

"I'm not one of those silly girls who know nothing about anything."

"I don't see, though, where _I_ come in."

"Well, you see," Joe displayed a trace of anxiety, "you're to go to the concert."

"No, I won't do anything of the kind. You know I hate music."

"Oh! You must, Vernon. It's the only way. If I say I can't go she'll ring up Aunt Ethel and suggest one of the girls coming instead, and then the fat will be in the fire. But if you just turn up instead of me--I'm to meet her at the Albert Hall--and give some weak excuse, everything will be all right. She's very fond of you--she likes you heaps better than me."

"But I loathe music."

"I know, but you can just bear it for one afternoon. An hour and a half. That's all it will be."

"Oh! Damn it all, Joe, I don't want to."

His hand shook with irritation. Joe stared at him.

"You are _funny_ about music, Vernon! I've never known anyone who sort of--well, hates it like you. Most people just don't care for it. But I do think you might go--you know _I_ always do things for _you_."

"All right," said Vernon abruptly.

It was no good. It had got to be. Joe and he always stood together. After all, as she had said, it would only be an hour and a half. Why should he feel that he had taken a momentous decision? His heart felt like lead--right down in his boots. He didn't want to go--oh! He didn't want to go!

Like a visit to the dentist--best not to think about it. He forced his mind away to other things. Joe looked up sharply as she heard him give vent to a chuckle.

"What is it?"

"I was thinking of you as a kid--so grand about saying you were never going to have anything to do with men. And now it's always men with you, one after the other. You fall in and out of love about once a month."

"Don't be so horrid, Vernon. Those were just silly girls' fancies. La Marre says if you have any temperament that always happens--but the real grand passion is quite different when it comes."

"Well, don't go and have a grand passion for La Marre."

Joe did not answer. Presently she said:

"I'm not like Mother. Mother was--was so _soft_ about men. She gave in to them--would do anything for anyone she was fond of. I'm not like that."

"No," said Vernon, after thinking for a moment. "No, I don't think you are. You won't make a mess of your life in the same way she did. But you might make a mess of it in a different way."

"What sort of a way?"

"I don't quite know. Going and marrying someone you thought you had a grand passion for, just because everyone else disliked him, and then spending your life fighting him. Or deciding to go and live with someone just because you thought Free Love was a fine idea."

"So it is."

"Oh! I am not saying it isn't--though, as a matter of fact, I really think it is anti-social myself. But you're always the same. If anyone forbids you anything you always want to do it--quite irrespective of whether you really want to. I haven't put that well, but you know what I mean."

"What I really want is to _do_ something! To be a great sculptor."

"That's because you've got a pash for La Marre."

"It isn't. Oh! Vernon, why will you be so trying? I've _always_ wanted to do something--always--always! I used to say so at Abbots Puissants."

"It's odd," said Vernon thoughtfully. "Old Sebastian used to say then very much what he says now. Perhaps one doesn't change as much as one thinks."

"You were going to marry someone very beautiful and live at Abbots Puissants always," said Joe with slight scorn. "You don't still feel that to be your life's ambition, do you?"

"One might do worse," said Vernon.

"Lazy--downright lazy!"

Joe looked at him in unconcealed impatience. She and Vernon were so alike in some ways, and so different in others!

Vernon was thinking: "Abbots Puissants. In a year I shall be twenty-one."

They were passing a Salvation Army meeting. Joe stopped. A thin white-faced man was standing on a box. His voice, high and raucous, came echoing across to them:

"Why won't you be saved? Why won't you? Jesus wants you! Jesus wants _you_!" Tremendous emphasis on the _you_. "Yes, brothers and sisters, and I'll tell you something more. _You want Jesus._ You won't admit it to yourselves, you turn your back on him, you're afraid--that's what it is, you're afraid, because you want him so badly--you want him and you don't know!" His arms waved, his white face shone with ecstasy. "But you will know--you _will_ know. There are things that you can't run away from for ever." He spoke slowly, almost menacingly. "_I say unto you, this very night shall thy soul be required of thee._"

Vernon turned away with a slight shiver. A woman on the outskirts of the crowd gave a hysterical sob.

"Disgusting," said Joe, her nose very much in the air. "Indecent and hysterical! For my part, I can't see how any rational being can be anything but an atheist."

Vernon smiled to himself, though he said nothing. He was remembering the time, a year ago, when Joe had risen every day to attend early service and had insisted on eating a boiled egg with some ostentation on Fridays, and had sat spellbound listening to the somewhat uninteresting but strictly dogmatical sermons of handsome Father Cuthbert at the Church of St. Bartholemew which was reputed to be so "high" that Rome itself could do no more.

"I wonder," he said aloud, "what it would feel like to be 'saved'?"

_3_

It was half-past six on the following afternoon when Joe returned from her stolen day's pleasure. Her Aunt Ethel met her in the hall.

"Where's Vernon?" inquired Joe, in case she might be asked how she had liked the concert.

"He came in about half an hour ago. He said there was nothing the matter, but somehow I don't think he's very well."

"Oh!" Joe stared. "Where is he? In his room? I'll go up and see."

"I wish you would, dear. Really he didn't look well at all."

Joe ran quickly up the stairs, gave a perfunctory rap on Vernon's door, and walked in. Vernon was sitting on his bed, and something in his appearance gave Joe a shock. She had never seen Vernon look quite like this.

"Vernon, what's the matter?"

He didn't answer. He had the dazed look of someone who has undergone a terrible shock. It was as though he were too far away to be reached by mere words.

"Vernon." She shook him by the shoulder. "What _is_ the matter with you?"

He heard her this time.

"Nothing."

"There must be something. You're looking--you're looking----"

Words failed her to express how he was looking. She left it at that.

"Nothing," he repeated dully.

She sat down on the bed beside him.

"Tell me," she said gently but authoritatively.

A long shuddering sigh broke from Vernon.

"Joe, do you remember that man yesterday?"

"Which man?"

"That Salvation Army chap--those cant phrases he used. And that one--a fine one--from the Bible: _This night shall thy soul be required of thee._ I said afterward I wondered what it would be like to be saved. Just idly. Well, I _know_!"

Joe stared at him. _Vernon!_ Oh! But such a thing was impossible.

"Do you mean--do you mean----" Difficult, somehow, to get the words. "Do you mean you've 'got religion'--suddenly--like people do?"

She felt it was ridiculous as she said it. She was relieved when he gave a sudden spurt of laughter.

"_Religion?_ Good God, no! Or is it that for some people? I wonder.... No, I mean----" he hesitated, brought the word out at last very softly, almost as though he dared not speak it: "_Music._"

"Music?" She was still utterly at sea.

"Yes. Joe, do you remember Nurse Frances?"

"Nurse Frances? No, I don't think I do. Who was she?"

"Of course you wouldn't. It was before you came--the time I broke my leg. I've always remembered something she said to me. About not being in a hurry to run away from things before you've had a good look. Well, that's what happened to me to-day. I couldn't run away any longer--I just had to look. Joe, music's the most wonderful thing in the world."

"But--but--you've always said----"

"I know. That's why it's been such an awful shock. Not that I mean music is so wonderful _now_--but it _could_ be--if you had it as it was meant to be! Little bits of it are ugly--it's like going up to a picture and seeing a nasty gray smear of paint--but go to a distance and it falls into its place as the most wonderful shadow. It's got to be a _whole_. I still think one violin's ugly, and a piano's beastly--but useful in a way, I suppose. But oh! Joe, music could be so wonderful--I know it could."

Joe was silent, bewildered. She understood now what Vernon meant by his opening words. His face had the queer dreamy exaltation that one associated with religious fervour. And yet she was a little frightened. His face had always expressed so little. Now, she thought, it expressed too much. It was a worse face or a better face, just as you chose to look on it.

He went on talking, hardly to her, more to himself.

"There were nine orchestras, you know. All massed. Sound can be glorious if you get enough of it. I don't mean just loudness--it shows more when it's soft. But there must be enough. I don't know what they played--nothing, I think, that was real. But it showed one--it showed one----"

He turned queer bright excited eyes upon her.

"There's so much to know--to learn. I don't want to play things--never that. But I want to know about every instrument there is. What it can do, what are its limitations, what are its possibilities. And the notes, too. There are notes they don't use--notes that they ought to use. I know there are. Do you know what music's like now, Joe? It's like the little sturdy Norman pillars in the crypt of Gloucester Cathedral. It's at its beginnings, that's all."

He sat silent, leaning forward dreamily.

"Well, I think you've gone quite mad," said Joe.

She tried on purpose to make her voice sound practical and matter of fact. But, in spite of herself, she was impressed. That white-hot conviction. And she had always thought Vernon rather a slow coach--reactionary, prejudiced, unimaginative.

"I've got to begin to learn. As soon as ever I can. Oh! it's awful--to have wasted twenty years!"

"Nonsense," said Joe. "You couldn't have studied music when you were an infant in a cot."

He smiled at that. He was coming out of his trance by degrees.

"You think I'm mad? I suppose it must sound like that. But I'm not. And oh! Joe, it's the most awful _relief_. As though you had been pretending for years, and now you needn't pretend any more. I've been horribly afraid of music--always. Now----"

He sat up, squared his shoulders.

"I'm going to work--work like a nigger. I'm going to know the ins and outs of every instrument. By the way, there must be more instruments in the world--many more. There ought to be a kind of waily thing--I've heard it somewhere. You'd want ten--fifteen of those. And about fifty harps."

He sat there, planning composedly details that to Joe sounded sheer nonsense. Yet it was evident that to his inner vision some event was perfectly clear.

"It'll be supper time in ten minutes," Joe reminded him timidly.

"Oh! Will it? What a nuisance. I want to stay here and think and hear things in my head. Tell Aunt Ethel I've got a headache or that I've been frightfully sick. As a matter of fact, I think I _am_ going to be sick."

And somehow that impressed Joe more than anything else. It was a homely familiar happening. When anything upset you very much, either pleasurably or otherwise, you always wanted to be sick! She had felt that herself, often.

She stood in the door hesitating. Vernon had relapsed into abstraction again. How queer he looked! Quite different. As though--as though--Joe sought for the words she wanted--as though he had suddenly come alive.

She was a little frightened.

chapter 2

Carey Lodge was the name of Myra's house. It was about eight miles from Birmingham.

A subtle depression always weighed down Vernon's spirits as he got near Carey Lodge. He hated the house, hated its solid comfort, its thick bright-red carpets, its lounge hall, the carefully selected sporting prints that hung in the dining room, the superabundance of knick-knacks that filled the drawing room. And yet, was it so much those things he hated as the facts that stood behind them?

He questioned himself, trying for the first time to be honest with himself. Wasn't it the truth that he hated his mother being so at home there, so placidly content? He liked to think of her in terms of Abbots Puissants--liked to think of her as being, like himself, an exile.

And she wasn't! Abbots Puissants had been to her what a foreign kingdom might be to a queen consort. She had felt important there, and pleased with herself. It had been new and exciting. But it hadn't been home.

Myra greeted her son with extravagant affection as always. He wished she wouldn't. In some way it made it harder than ever for him to respond. When he was away from her he pictured himself being affectionate to his mother. When he was with her all that illusion faded away.

Myra Deyre had altered a good deal since leaving Abbots Puissants. She had grown much stouter. Her beautiful golden-red hair was flecked with gray. The expression of her face was different, it was at once more satisfied and more placid. There was now a strong resemblance between her and her brother Sydney.

"You've had a good time in London? I'm so glad. It's so exciting to have my fine big son back with me--I've been telling everybody how excited I am. Mothers are foolish creatures, aren't they?"

Vernon thought they were rather--then was ashamed of himself.

"Very jolly to see you, Mother," he mumbled.

Joe said: "You're looking splendidly fit, Aunt Myra."

"I've not really been very well, dear. I don't think Dr. Grey quite understands my case. I hear there's a new doctor--Dr. Littleworth--just bought Dr. Armstrong's practice. They say he is wonderfully clever. I'm sure it's my heart--and it's all nonsense Dr. Grey saying it's indigestion."

She was quite animated. Her health was always an absorbing topic to Myra.

"Mary's gone--the housemaid, you know. I was really very disappointed in that girl. After all I did for her."

It went on and on. Joe and Vernon listened perfunctorily. Their minds were full of conscious superiority. Thank heaven they belonged to a new and enlightened generation, far above this insistence on domestic details! For them, a new and splendid world opened out. They were deeply, poignantly sorry for the contented creature who sat there chattering to them.

Joe thought: "Poor--poor Aunt Myra! So terribly female! Of course Uncle Walter got bored with her. Not her fault! A rotten education, and brought up to believe that domesticity was all that mattered. And here she is, still young really--at least not too terribly old--and all she's got to do it to sit in the house and gossip, and think about servants, and fuss about her health. If she'd only been born twenty years later she could have been happy and free and independent all her life."

And out of her intense pity for her unconscious aunt she answered gently and pretended an interest that she certainly did not feel.

Vernon thought: "Was Mother always like this? Somehow she didn't seem so at Abbots Puissants. Or was I too much of a kid to notice? It's rotten of me to criticize her when she's been so good to me always. Only I wish she wouldn't treat me still as though I were about six years old. Oh, well, I suppose she can't help it. I don't think I shall ever marry."

And suddenly he jerked out abruptly, urged thereto by intense nervousness:

"I say, Mother. I'm thinking of taking music at Cambridge."

There, it was out! He had said it.

Myra, distracted from her account of the Armstrongs' cook, said vaguely:

"But darling, you always were so unmusical. You used to be quite unreasonable about it."

"I know," said Vernon gruffly. "But one changes one's mind about things sometimes."

"Well, I'm very glad, dear. I used to play quite brilliant pieces myself when I was a young girl. But one never keeps up anything when one marries."

"I know. It's a wicked shame," said Joe hotly. "I don't mean to marry--but if I did I'd never give up my own career. And that reminds me, Aunt Myra, I've just got to go to London to study if I'm ever going to be any good at modelling."

"I'm sure Mr. Bradford----"

"Oh, damn Mr. Bradford! I'm sorry, Aunt Myra, but you don't understand. I've got to study--_hard_. And I must be on my own. I could share diggings with another girl----"

"Joe, darling, don't be so absurd." Myra laughed. "I need my little Joe here. I always look on you as my daughter, you know, Joe dear."

Joe wriggled.

"I really am in earnest, Aunt Myra. It's my whole life."

This tragic utterance only made her aunt laugh more.

"Girls often think like that. Now don't let's spoil this happy evening by quarrelling."

"But will you really seriously consider it?"

"We must see what Uncle Sydney says."

"It's nothing to do with him. He's not _my_ uncle. Surely, if I like, I can take my own money."

"It isn't exactly your own money, Joe. Your father sends it to me as an allowance for you--though I'm sure I would be willing to have you without any allowance at all--and knows you are well and safely looked after with me."

"Then I suppose I'd better write to Father."

She said it valiantly, but her heart sank. She had seen her father twice in ten years, and the old antagonism held between them. The present plan doubtless commended itself to Major Waite. At the cost of a few hundreds a year, the problem of his daughter was lifted off his hands. But Joe had no money of her own. She doubted very much if her father would make her any allowance at all if she broke away from Aunt Myra and insisted on leading her own life.

Vernon murmured to her: "Don't be so damned impatient, Joe. Wait till I'm twenty-one."

That cheered her a little. One could always depend on Vernon.

Myra asked Vernon about the Levinnes. Was Mrs. Levinne's asthma any better? Was it true that they spent almost all of their time in London nowadays?

"No, I don't think so. Of course, they don't go down to Deerfields much in the winter, but they were there all the autumn. It'll be jolly to have them next door when we go back to Abbots Puissants, won't it?"

His mother started, and said in a flustered sort of voice: "Oh! yes--very nice."

She added almost immediately: "Your Uncle Sydney is coming round to tea. He's bringing Enid. By the way, I don't have late dinner any more. I really think it suits me better to have a good sit-down meal at six."

"Oh!" said Vernon, rather taken aback.

He had an unreasoning prejudice against those meals. He disliked the juxtaposition of tea and scrambled eggs and rich plum cake. Why couldn't his mother have proper meals like other people? Of course, Uncle Sydney and Aunt Carrie always had high tea. Bother Uncle Sydney! All this was his fault.

His thought stopped--checked. All what? He couldn't answer--didn't quite know. But anyway, when he and his mother went back to Abbots Puissants everything would be different.

_2_

Uncle Sydney arrived very soon--very bluff and hearty, a little stouter than of old. With him came Enid, his third daughter. The two eldest were married, and the two youngest were in the schoolroom.

Uncle Sydney was full of jokes and fun. Myra looked at her brother admiringly. Really, there was nobody like Syd! He made things go.

Vernon laughed politely at his uncle's jokes, which he privately thought both stupid and boring.

"I wonder where you buy your tobacco in Cambridge," said Uncle Sydney. "From a pretty girl, I'll be bound. Ha! Ha! Myra, the boy's blushing--actually blushing."

"Stupid old fool!" thought Vernon disdainfully.

"And where do _you_ buy your tobacco, Uncle Sydney?" said Joe, valiantly entering the lists.

"Ha! Ha!" trumpeted Uncle Sydney. "That's a good one! You're a smart girl, Joe. We won't tell your Aunt Carrie the answer to that, eh?"

Enid said very little but giggled a good deal.

"You ought to write to your cousin," said Uncle Sydney. "He'd like a letter, wouldn't you, Vernon?"

"Rather," said Vernon.

"There you are," said Uncle Sydney. "What did I tell you, Miss? The child wanted to, but was shy. She's always thought a lot of you, Vernon. But I mustn't tell tales out of school, hey, Enid?"

Later, after the heavy composite meal was ended, he talked to Vernon at some length of the prosperity of Bent's.

"Booming, my boy, booming."

He went into long financial explanations: profits had doubled, he was extending the premises--and so on and so on.

Vernon much preferred this style of conversation. Not being the least interested, he could abstract his attention. An encouraging monosyllable from time to time was all that was needed.

Uncle Sydney talked on, developing the fascinating theme of the Power and Glory of Bent's, World without End, Amen.

Vernon thought about the book on musical instruments which he had bought that morning and read coming down in the train. There was a terrible lot to know. Oboes--he felt he was going to have ideas about oboes. And violas--yes, certainly, violas.

Uncle Sydney's talk made a pleasant accompaniment, like a remote double bass.

Presently Uncle Sydney said he must be getting along. There was more facetiousness--should or should not Vernon kiss Enid good-night?

How idiotic people were! Thank goodness he'd soon be able to get up to his own room!

Myra heaved a happy sigh as the door closed.

"Dear me!" she murmured. "I wish your father had been here. We've had such a happy evening. He would have enjoyed it."

"A jolly good thing he wasn't," said Vernon. "I don't remember that he and Uncle Sydney ever hit it off really well."

"You were only a little boy. They were the greatest of friends, and your father was always happy when I was. Oh, dear, how happy we were together!"

She raised a handkerchief to her eyes. Vernon stared at her. For a moment he thought: "This is the most magnificent loyalty." And then suddenly: "No, it isn't. She really believes it."

Myra went on in a soft reminiscent tone:

"You were never really fond of your father, Vernon. I think it must have grieved him sometimes. But then you were so devoted to me. It was quite ridiculous."

Vernon said suddenly and violently, and with a strange feeling that he was defending his father by saying so:

"Father was a brute to you."

"Vernon, how dare you say such a thing? Your father was the best man in the world."

She looked at him defiantly. He thought: "She's seeing herself being heroic. 'How wonderful a woman's love can be--protecting her dead'--that sort of thing. Oh! I hate it all. I hate it all."

He mumbled something, kissed her, and went up to bed.

_3_

Later in the evening Joe tapped at his door and was bidden to enter. Vernon was sitting sprawled out in a chair. The book on musical instruments lay on the floor beside him.

"Hullo, Joe. God, what a beastly evening!"

"Did you mind it so much?"

"Didn't you? It's all wrong. What an ass Uncle Sydney is. Those idiotic jokes! It's all so cheap."

"H'm," said Joe. She sat down thoughtfully on the bed and lit a cigarette.

"Don't you agree?"

"Yes--at least I do in a way."

"Spit it out," said Vernon encouragingly.

"Well, what I mean is, _they're_ happy enough."

"Who?"

"Aunt Myra. Uncle Sydney. Enid. They're a united happy lot, thoroughly content with one another. It's we who are wrong, Vernon. You and I. We've lived here all these years--but we don't belong. That's why--we've got to get out of it."

Vernon nodded thoughtfully.

"Yes, Joe, you're right. We've got to get out of it." He smiled happily, because the way was so clear. Twenty-one.... Abbots Puissants.... Music.

chapter 3

"Do you mind just going over that once more, Mr. Flemming?"

"Willingly."

Precise, dry, even, word after word fell from the old lawyer's lips. His meaning was clear and unmistakable! Too much so! It didn't leave a loophole for doubt.

Vernon listened. His face was very white, his hands grasped the arms of the chair in which he was sitting.

It couldn't be true--it _couldn't_! And yet, after all, hadn't Mr. Flemming said very much the same, years ago? Yes, but then there had been the magic words "twenty-one" to look forward to. "Twenty-one" which by a blessed miracle was to make everything right. Instead of which:

"Mind you, the position is infinitely improved from what it was at the time of your father's death, but it is no good pretending we are out of the wood. The mortgage...."

Surely, surely, they had never mentioned a mortgage? Well, it wouldn't have been much use, he supposed, to a boy of nine. No good trying to get round it. The plain truth was that he couldn't afford to live at Abbots Puissants.

He waited till Mr. Flemming had finished and then said: "But if my mother...."

"Oh! of course. If Mrs. Deyre were prepared to...." He left the sentence unfinished, paused, and then added: "But, if I may say so, every time that I have had the pleasure of seeing Mrs. Deyre she has seemed to me to be very settled--very settled indeed. I suppose you know that she bought the freehold of Carey Lodge two years ago?"

Vernon hadn't known it. He saw plainly enough what it meant. Why hadn't his mother told him? Hadn't she had the courage? He had always taken it for granted that she would come back with him to Abbots Puissants, not so much because he longed for her presence there, as because it was--quite naturally--her home.

But it wasn't her home. It never could be in the sense that Carey Lodge was her home.

He could appeal to her, of course. Beg her, for his sake, because he wanted it so much.

No, a thousand times no! You couldn't beg favours from people you didn't really love. And he didn't really love his mother. He didn't believe he ever really had. Queer and sad and a little dreadful, but there it was.

If he never saw her again, would he mind? Not really. He would like to know that she was well and happy--cared for. But he wouldn't miss her, would never feel a longing for her presence. Because, in a queer way, he didn't really _like_ her. He disliked the touch of her hands, always had to take a hold on himself before kissing her good-night. He'd never been able to tell her anything--she never understood or knew what he was feeling. She had been a good loving mother--and he didn't even like her! Rather horrible, he supposed, most people would say....

He said quietly to Mr. Flemming: "You are quite right. I am sure my mother would not wish to leave Carey Lodge."

"Now, there are one or two alternatives open to you, Mr. Deyre. Major Salmon, who, as you know, has rented it furnished all these years, is anxious to buy----"

"No!" The word burst from Vernon like a pistol shot.

Mr. Flemming smiled.

"I was sure you would say that. And I must confess I am glad. There have been--er--Deyres at Abbots Puissants for, let me see, nearly five hundred years. Nevertheless, I should be failing in my duty if I didn't point out to you that the price offered is a good one, and that if, later, you should decide to sell, it may not be easy to find a suitable purchaser."

"It's out of the question."

"Very good. Then the best thing, I think, is to try and let once more. Major Salmon definitely wants to buy a place, so it will mean finding a new tenant. But I dare say we shall have no great difficulty. The point is, how long do you want to let for? To let the place for another long term of years is, I should say, not very desirable. Life is very uncertain. Who knows, in a few years the state of affairs may have--er--changed very considerably, and you may be in a position to take up residence there yourself."

"So I shall, but not the way you think, you old dunderhead," thought Vernon. "It'll be because I've made a name for myself in music--not because Mother is dead. I'm sure I hope she'll live to be ninety."

He exchanged a few more words with Mr. Flemming, then rose to go.

"I'm afraid this has been rather a shock to you," said the old lawyer as he shook hands.

"Yes--just a bit. I've been building castles in the air, I suppose."

"You're going down to spend your twenty-first birthday with your mother, I suppose?"

"Yes."

"You might talk things over with your uncle, Mr. Bent. A very shrewd man of business. He has a daughter about your age, I think?"

"Yes, Enid. The two eldest are married, and the two youngest are at school. Enid's about a year younger than I am."

"Ah! very pleasant to have a cousin of one's own age. I dare say you will see a good deal of her."

"Oh! I don't suppose I shall," said Vernon vaguely.

Why should he be seeing a lot of Enid? She was a dull girl. But of course Mr. Flemming didn't know that.

Funny old chap. What on earth was there to put on such a sly knowing expression about?

_2_

"Well, Mother, I don't seem to be exactly the young heir!"

"Oh! well, dear, you mustn't worry. Things arrange themselves, you know. You must have a good talk with your Uncle Sydney."

Silly! What good could a talk with his Uncle Sydney do him?

Fortunately the matter was not referred to again. The extraordinary surprise was that Joe had been allowed to have her way. She was actually in London--somewhat dragoned and chaperoned, it is true--but still she had got her way.

His mother seemed always to be whispering mysteriously to friends. Vernon caught her at it one day.

"Yes ... quite inseparable, they were ... so I thought it wiser ... it would be such a pity...." And what Vernon called the "other tabby" said something about "First cousins ... most unwise...." and his mother, with a suddenly heightened colour and raised voice, had said: "Oh! I don't think in _every_ case."

"Who were first cousins?" asked Vernon later. "What was all the mystery about?"

"Mystery, darling? I don't know what you mean."

"Well, you shut up when I came in. I wondered what it was all about?"

"Oh! nothing interesting. Some people you don't know."

She looked rather red and confused.

Vernon wasn't curious. He asked no more.

He missed Joe most frightfully. Carey Lodge was pretty deadly without her. For one thing, he saw more of Enid than he ever had before. She was always coming in to see Myra, and Vernon would find himself let in for taking her to roller skate at the new rink, or for some deadly party or other.

Myra told Vernon that it would be nice if he asked Enid up to Cambridge for May Week. She was so persistent about it that Vernon gave in. After all, it didn't matter. Sebastian would have Joe and he himself didn't much care. Dancing was rather rot. Everything was rot that interfered with music.

The evening before his departure Uncle Sydney came to Carey Lodge and Myra pushed Vernon into the study with him and said, "Your Uncle Sydney's come to have a little talk with you, Vernon."

Mr. Bent hemmed and hawed for a minute or two and then, rather surprisingly, came straight to the point. Vernon had never liked his uncle as much. His facetious manner had been entirely laid aside.

"I'm coming straight out with what I want to say, my boy--but I don't want you interrupting till I've finished. See?"

"Yes, Uncle Sydney."

"The long and short of it is just this. _I want you to come into Bent's._ Now remember what I said--no interruptions! I know you've never thought of such a thing, and I dare say the idea isn't very congenial to you now. I'm a plain man, and I can face facts as well as anyone. If you'd got a good income and could live at Abbots Puissants like a gentleman, there wouldn't be any question of the thing. Well, I accept that. You're like your father's people. But for all that, you've got good Bent blood in your veins, my boy, and blood's bound to tell.

"I've got no son of my own. I'm willing--if you're willing--to look upon you as a son. The girls are provided for, and handsomely provided for at that. And mind you, it won't be a case of toiling for life. I'm not unreasonable--and I realize just as much as you do what that place of yours stands for. You're a young fellow. You go into the business when you come down from Cambridge--mind you, you go into it from the bottom. You'll start at a moderate salary and work up. If you want to retire before you're forty, well, you can do so. Please yourself. You'll be a rich man by then, and you'll be able to run Abbots Puissants as it should be run.

"You'll marry young, I hope. Excellent thing, young marriages. Your eldest boy succeeds to the place, the younger sons find a first-class business to step into where they can show what they're made of. I'm proud of Bent's--as proud of Bent's as you are of Abbots Puissants--that's why I understand your feeling about the old place. I don't want you to have to sell it. Let it go out of the family after all these years--that would be a shame. Well, there's the offer."

"It's most awfully good of you, Uncle Sydney----" began Vernon.

His uncle threw up a large square hand and stopped him.

"We'll leave it at that, if you please. I don't want an answer now. In fact, I won't have one. When you come down from Cambridge--that's time enough."

He rose.

"Kind of you to ask Enid up for May Week. Very excited about it, she is. If you knew what that girl thought of you, Vernon, you'd be quite conceited. Ah! well, girls will be girls."

Laughing boisterously, he slammed the front door.

Vernon remained in the hall frowning. It was really jolly decent of Uncle Sydney--_jolly_ decent.

Not that he was going to accept. All the money in the world wouldn't tear him from music.

And, somehow, he would have Abbots Puissants as well.

_3_

May Week!

Joe and Enid were at Cambridge. Vernon had been let in for Ethel, too, as chaperon. The world seemed largely composed of Bents just at present.

Joe had burst out at once with: "Why on earth did you ask Enid?"

He had answered: "Oh! Mother went on about it--it doesn't really matter."

Nothing mattered to Vernon just then except one thing. Joe talked privately to Sebastian about that.

"Is Vernon really in earnest about this music business? Will he ever be any good? I suppose it's just a passing craze?"

But Sebastian was unexpectedly serious.

"It's extraordinarily interesting, you know," he said. "As far as I can make out, what Vernon is aiming at is something entirely revolutionary. He's mastering now what you might call the main facts, and mastering them at an extraordinary rate. Old Coddington admits that, though of course he snorts at Vernon's ideas--or would if Vernon ever let out about them. The person who's interested is old Jeffries--mathematics! He says Vernon's ideas of music are fourth dimensional.

"I don't know if Vernon will ever pull it off--or whether he'll be considered as a harmless lunatic. The border line is very narrow, I imagine. Old Jeffries is very enthusiastic. But not in the least encouraging. He points out, quite rightly, that to attempt to discover something new and force it on the world is always a thankless task, and that in all probability the truths that Vernon is discovering won't be accepted for at least another two hundred years. He's a queer old codger. Sits about thinking of imaginary curves in space--that sort of thing.

"But I see his point. Vernon isn't creating something new. He's discovering something that's already there. Rather like a scientist. Jeffries says that Vernon's dislike of music as a child is perfectly understandable. To his ear music's incomplete--it's like a picture out of drawing. The whole perspective is wrong. It sounds to Vernon like--I suppose--a primitive savage's music would sound to us--Mostly unendurable discord.

"Jeffries is full of queer ideas. Start him off on squares and cubes and geometrical figures and the speed of light and he goes quite mad. He writes to a German fellow called Einstein. The queer thing is that he isn't a bit musical, and yet he can see--or says he can--exactly what Vernon is driving at."

Joe cogitated deeply.

"Well," she said at last, "I don't understand a word of all this. But it looks as though Vernon might make a success of it all."

Sebastian was discouraging.

"I wouldn't say that. Vernon may be a genius--and that's quite a different thing. Nobody welcomes genius. On the other hand, he may be just slightly mad. He sounds mad enough sometimes when he gets going--and yet, somehow, I've always got a kind of feeling that he's right--that in some odd way he knows what he's talking about."

"You've heard about Uncle Sydney's offer?"

"Yes. Vernon seems to be turning it down very light-heartedly, and yet, you know, it's a good thing."

"You wouldn't have him accept it?" flamed out Joe.

Sebastian remained provokingly cool.

"I don't know. It needs thinking about. Vernon may have wonderful theories about this music business--there's nothing to show that he's ever going to be able to put them into practice."

"You're maddening," said Joe, turning away.

Sebastian annoyed her nowadays. All his cool analytical faculties seemed to be uppermost. If he had enthusiasms, he hid them carefully.

And to Joe, just now, enthusiasm seemed the most necessary thing in the world. She had a passion for lost causes, for minorities. She was a passionate champion of the weak and oppressed.

Sebastian she felt, was only interested in successes. She accused him in her own mind of judging everyone and everything by a monetary standard. Most of the time they were together they fought and bickered incessantly.

Vernon, too, seemed separated from her. Music was the only thing he wanted to talk about, and even then on lines that were not familiar to her.

His preoccupation was entirely with instruments--their scope and power--and the violin which Joe herself played seemed the instrument in which he was least interested. Joe was quite unfitted to talk about clarionets, trombones, and bassoons. Vernon's ambition in life seemed to be to form friendships with players of these instruments so as to be able to acquire some practical as opposed to theoretical knowledge.

"Don't you know any bassoon players?"

Joe said she didn't.

Vernon said that she might as well make herself useful and try and pick up some musical friends. "Even a French horn would do," he said kindly.