Chapter V: Part II (3)

Arthur's jaw dropped. Then he said patronizingly, "Well done, Blanche," and leaned back pallid and exhausted on the satin couch.

"I must see him," he said over and over again as his mother laid a warm rug over his knees, and his wife put a cushion behind his head. "He could tell me things, tricks of the trade. Art is all a trick."

"He found no fault with your work," I said, "but--don't be discouraged, Blanche--he did criticise yours. He said you could not put down all you saw."

"What have I always told you, Blanche?" said Arthur solemnly. "You put down what you _don't_ see. Look at that shadow where I had not put one."

"He is really too ill to see anyone, but he will speak to Blanche for a few minutes." I turned to her. "You must not mind if he is severe. He is a drastic critic. Would you like to put on your hat and come with me? I am going on to him now."

I had some difficulty in getting her out of the house. Mrs. Robinson wanted to come too. Arthur was determined that she should wait till he was better, and they could go together. But I had long since established my authority in that household. I had my way.

Blanche asked no questions as we drove along. She did not seem the least surprised that the greatest painter of his day had bought her husband's pictures. Was she lacking in intelligence? Was there some tiny screw loose in her mind?

M. had not made a toilet as I half expected he would. When we came in he was standing with his back to us, leaning against the mantelpiece, his unshaved chin on his hands. His horrible old dressing gown, stained with paint, and showing numerous large patches of hostile colours, clung to him more tightly than ever. His decrepitness struck me afresh. He looked what, indeed, he was, an old and depraved man, repulsive, formidable--unwashed--a complex wreck, dying indomitably on his feet.

"And so you can do things like that," he said, turning towards Blanche a face contracted with pain, and pointing a lean finger at the goldfish, and the chrysanthemum shadow, propped side by side on the mantel piece.

"Yes."

"Where were you taught?"

She mentioned the school where she had studied.

"Why did you leave it?"

"Because Mother died, and I had not any money to go on with my education."

"And so you married for a home I suppose," he snarled, showing his black teeth, "for silken gowns and delicate fare and costly furs such as you are wearing now."

She did not answer.

"You had better have gone on the streets and stuck to your painting."

Blanche's dark eyes met the painter's horrible leer without flinching.

"I wish I had," she said.

They had both forgotten me. They were intent upon each other.

And she who never spoke about herself said to this stranger:

"I married because I did not want to go into a sisterhood, and because Arthur said he understood what I felt about painting, and that he felt the same, and that when we were married we would both study under S., and I was grateful to him, and I thought I loved him. But S. would not take him and wanted to take me. And Arthur was dreadfully angry, and would not let me go without him. And the years passed, hundreds and hundreds of years, and Arthur changed to me. And he has to be humoured. And now--I copy his pictures. I enlarge them. Sometimes I decrease them, but not often. He likes to watch me doing them. He does not care for me to be doing anything else."

There was a long silence.

They stood looking at each other, and it seemed as if the sword that had pierced her soul pierced his also.

"Leave all and follow me," said the painter at last. "That is the voice of art, as well as of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the law. There is no middle course. You have not left all, you have not followed. You have dallied and faltered and betrayed your gift. You have denied your Lord. And your sin has found you out. You are miserable; you deserve to be miserable."

She made no answer.

"But you are at the end of your tether. I know what I know. You can't go on. You are nineteen and your life is unendurable to you. You are touching the fringe of despair. Break away from your life before it breaks you. Shake its dust from off your feet. Forsake all and find peace in following your art."

"You might as well say to the goldfish, jump out," said Blanche, white to the lips, pointing to the picture.

"I do say to him, 'Jump out.' Leap in the dark, and risk dying on a vulgar Axminster carpet, and being trodden into it, rather than pine in prison on sponge cake."

"Yes," said Blanche fiercely, "but there is the wire netting. It's not in the picture, but _you know it's there_. He jumps and jumps. Haven't I said so in the picture! And it throws him back. You know that. I was like him once. I used to jump, but I always fell back. I don't jump any more now."

And then, without any warning, she burst into a paroxysm of tears.

For a moment I stared at her stupified, and then slipped out of the room to fetch a glass of water.

When I came back M. was sunk down in his armchair, and she was crouching on the ground before him almost beside herself, holding him by the feet.

"Let me live with you," she gasped half distraught. "Arthur hates me, and I'm frightened of him. He's mad, mad, mad, only Dr. Giles pretends he isn't, and Mrs. Robinson pretends; everything in that dreadful house is pretence, nothing real anywhere. Let me live with you. Then he'll divorce me, and you needn't marry me. I don't want to be married. I won't be any trouble to you. No pretty clothes, no amusements, no expense. I don't want anything except a little time to myself, to paint."

"You poor soul," said the painter faintly, and in his harsh voice was an infinite compassion.

"Help me to jump out," she shrieked, clinging to him.

"My child," he said. "I cannot help you. I am dying. I could not live long enough even to blacken your name. I have failed others in the past whom I might have succoured. Now I fail you as I failed them. There is no help in me."

He closed his eyes, but nevertheless two very small tears crept from beneath the wrinkled lids, and stood in the furrows of his cheeks.

She trembled and then rose slowly to her feet, and obediently took the glass of water which I proffered to her. She drank a little, and then placed the glass carefully on the table and drew on her gloves. I saw that she had withdrawn once more after a terrible bid for freedom into her fortress of reserve. She was once more the impassive, colourless creature whom I had seen almost daily for a year without knowing in the least until to-day what she really was.

"I ought to be going back now," she said to me.

"I will take you home," I said.

She went slowly up to M. and stood before him. I had never seen her look so beautiful.

The old man looked at her fixedly.

"I made up my mind," she said, "after I spoke to Dr. Giles that I would never try to jump out any more, but you see I did."

"Forgive me," he said brokenly, holding out a shaking hand.

"It's not your fault," she said, clasping his hand in both of hers. "You are good, and you understand. You are the only person I have ever met who would help me if you could. But no one can help me. No one."

And very reverently, very tenderly, she kissed his leaden hand and laid it down upon his knee.

As I took Blanche home I said to her:

"And when did you appeal to me, and when did I repulse you?"

"When I spoke to you about Goldy and you weren't sorry, you did not mind a bit. You only said he was a lucky goldfish."

"And what in Heaven's name had that to do with you?"

She looked scornfully at me as if she were not going to be entrapped into speaking again.

I saw that she had--so to speak--ruled me out of her life. Perhaps when I first came to that unhappy house nearly a year ago she had looked to me as a possible helper, had weighed me in the balance, and had found me wanting.

I was cut to the heart, for deep down, at the bottom of my mind I saw at last, that I _had_ failed her.

She might be, she probably was, slightly deranged, but, nevertheless, she had timidly, obscurely sought my aid, and had found no help in me.

M. died the following evening, after trying to die throughout the whole day. I never left him until, at last, late at night, he laid down his courage, having no further need of it, and reached the end of his ordeal.

Next morning after breakfast I went as usual to the Robinson's house, and, according to custom, was shown into the drawing-room. Now that M. was out of his agony my mind reverted to Blanche. My wife and children were going to the seaside, and my wife had eagerly agreed to take Blanche with her, if she could be spared.

"But they won't let her go," said the little woman.

"They must if I say it's necessary," I said with professional dignity. I wondered as I waited in the immense Robinson drawing-room how best I could introduce the subject. Half involuntarily I approached the aquarium. As I drew near my foot caught on something slippery and stiff. I looked down, and saw it was the dead body of the goldfish on the carpet. I picked it up, and was staring at it when Mrs. Robinson came in. She gave a cry when she saw it, and wrung her hands.

"Put him back in the water," she shrieked. "He may be still alive."

I put him back into his cell, but it had no longer any power over that poor captive. "Goldy" floated grotesque and upside down on the surface of the water. His release had come.

"He must have jumped out to get to me when I was not there," sobbed Mrs. Robinson, the easy tears coursing down her fat cheeks. "My poor faithful loving little pet. But someone has taken the wire off the aquarium. Who could have been so wicked? Downright cruel I call it."

The wire, true enough, had been unhooked, and was laid among the hyacinths on the water's edge.

"Where is Blanche?" I asked. "I want to talk to you about her. I do not think she is well, and I should advise--"

"That was just what I was going to tell you when I came in and saw that poor little darling dead in your hand. I am dreadfully worried about Blanche. She has been out all night. She hasn't come in yet."

"Out all night?" A vague trouble seized me.

"Yes," said Mrs. Robinson, "all night. Would you have thought it possible? But between you and me it's not the first time. Once long ago, just before you came to us, she did just the same. She--actually--ran away: ran away from her husband and me, and her beautiful home, though we had done everything in the world to make her happy. She went to her uncle at Liverpool, who never liked her. He telegraphed to us at once, and he brought her back next day. He spoke to her most beautifully, and left her with us. She seemed quite dazed at first, but she got round it and became as usual, always very silent and dull. Not the companion for Arthur. No brightness or gaiety. Blanche has been a great disappointment to me, tho' I've never shown it, and I'm not one to bear malice, I've always made a pet of her. But between you and me, Dr. Giles, Arthur is convinced that she is not quite right in her head, and that she ought to be shut up."

"But she is shut up now," I said involuntarily.

She stared at me amazed.

A servant brought in a telegram.

"I telegraphed to her uncle first thing this morning," said Mrs. Robinson, "to ask if she was with him. Now we shall hear what he says."

She opened the envelope and spread out the contents.

"She's _not_ with him," she said. "Then Dr. Giles, where _is_ she? Where can she be?"

Later in the day we knew that Blanche had taken refuge in the Serpentine.

The two pets had fled together. She had made the way of escape easy for her weaker brother.

* * * * *

It was early in May. There was the usual crush at the Academy. I elbowed my way through the crowd to look at Serjeant's majestic portrait of M. Near it on the line hung the picture of the goldfish.

A long-haired student and a little boy were staring at it.

"Mummy," said the child, running to a beautifully dressed slender woman looking at the Serjeant, "I want a goldfish, too."

"Well, darling, you shall have one," she said, and, turning to the young man who accompanied her, she added, "You never saw a child so fond of animals as Cedric."

The Stars in their Courses

I was always somewhat amazed when I came to think of it, but I hardly ever did think of it, that my cousin, Jimmy Cross, should have married Gertrude Bingham. There seemed no reason for such a desperate step on his part. But if one is going to be taken aback by the alliances of one's friends and relations one would journey through life in a continual state of astonishment, and the marriage service especially exhorts the married "not to be afraid with any amazement," which shows that that is the natural emotion evoked by contemplation of the holy estate, and that it is our duty not to give way to it.

I said there seemed no reason for the lethargic Jimmy to take this step, especially as he had been married before, and had enjoyed a serene widowhood for some years. But what I forgot was that he never did take any step at all in either marriage. He just sat still.

The first time his Mother arranged everything, and the result, if dull, was not actually unpleasant.

The second time Gertrude Bingham took all the necessary steps with precision and determination. Now and then it certainly seemed as if he would take alarm and run away, but he did not. He remained seated.

It is as impossible for a man rooted in inertia to achieve a marriage which implies an effort, as it is for him to evade a marriage, the avoidance of which requires an effort. He remains recumbent both when he ought to pursue and when he ought to fly. He is the prey of energetic kidnappers.

Gertrude was a great astrologer and conversed in astrological terms, which I repeat, but which I don't pretend to understand. She told me (after the wedding) that when she discovered that Jimmy's moon in the house of marriage was semi-sextile to her Venus she had known from the first that their union was inevitable. I think Jimmy felt it so too, and that it was no use struggling. To put it mildly, she placed no obstacles in the way of this inevitable union, and it took place amid a general chorus of rather sarcastic approval from both families.

What a mother Gertrude would make to Joan, Jimmy's rather spoilt girl of twelve, what a wife to Jimmy himself, what an excellent influence in the parish, what an energetic addition to our sleepy neighbourhood. We were told we were going to be stirred up. I never met the second Mrs. Cross till Jimmy brought her down as a bride to call on me in my cottage near his park gates. She at once inspired me with all the terror which very well-dressed people with exactly the right hair and earrings always arouse in me. She was good-looking, upright, had perfect health and teeth and circulation, did breathing exercises, had always just finished the book of the moment, and was ready with an opinion on it, not a considered opinion--but an opinion. During her first call I discovered that she had, for many years, held strong views about the necessity of school life for only children, and was already on the look-out for a seminary for Joan.

"It is in her horoscope," she said to me, as we walked in my orchard garden, too much engrossed with Joan's future to notice my wonderful yellow lupins. "Her Mercury and ruling planet are in Aquarius, and that means the companionship of her own age. I shall not delay a day in finding the best school that England can produce."

I need hardly say that such an establishment protruded itself on to Mrs. Cross's notice, with the greatest celerity, and thither the long-legged nail-biting, pimply, round-shouldered Joan repaired, and became a reformed character, with a clear complexion and a back almost as flat as her step-mother's.

"Wonderful woman," Jimmy used to say somewhat ruefully to me, sitting on the low stone wall which divides my little velvet lawn from my bit of woodland. "Gertrude has been the making of Joan."

"And of you, too, my dear Jimmy," I remarked.

He sighed.

It was perfectly true. She had been the making of him, just as she had been the making of the Manor garden, of the boot and shoe club, the boys' carving class, the Confirmation candidates' reading class, the mothers' working parties, the coal club, the Church members' lending library. The only misgiving that remained in one's mind after she had been the making of all these things was that it seemed a pity that they were all so obviously machine-made, turned out to pattern.

Personally, I should have preferred that they should have been treated less conventionally, or let alone. My own course and Jimmy's would, of course, have been to have left them alone. We left everything alone. But Gertrude always had a ready-made scheme for everything and everybody. She even had a scheme of salvation into which the Deity was believed to be compressed. I did not mind much the industrious efforts she expended on Jimmy, who was now an inattentive Magistrate and member of the County Council, and wobbly chairman of his own Parish Council, writing an entirely illegible hand, which perhaps did not matter much as he never answered letters. But I felt acutely distressed when she reconstructed the rambling old Manor garden entirely. All its former pleasant characteristics were wrenched out of it. It was drawn and quartered, and then put together anew in compartments. It contained everything; a Japanese garden, a rock garden, a herb garden, a sunk garden, a wilderness, a rose garden, a pergola, three pergolas, just as the village now contained, a boot club, a coal club, a--but I think I have said that before.

In the course of time she presented Jimmy with two most remarkable children, at least she said they were remarkable: and from their horoscopes I gathered the boy would probably become a prime minister, and the girl a musical genius. We don't actually know yet what form their greatness will take, for as I write this they are still greedy, healthy children, who come out in plum-pudding rash regularly at Christmas.

I knew her well by the time the garden had been given its _coup de grâce_, and I told her after I had been dragged all over it that she had a constructive mind. (I have never been a particularly truthful person, but my career as a liar dates from Jimmy's marriage with Gertrude.)

My remark pleased her. She smiled graciously and said, "Ah, I had not got Mars rising in Capricorn for nothing when I was born."

As we became more intimate she insisted on drawing out my horoscope, and after a week of intense mental activity produced a sort of cart wheel on paper at which I looked with respectful misgiving.

"I hope it does not say anything about my living anywhere except here," I said anxiously.

I had long had a fear at the back of my mind that she might need my cottage for some benevolent scheme. Jimmy, who had always been fond of me, had let it to me at a nominal rent in his easygoing widower days, because the mild climate suited my rheumatism, and my society suited him. Round the cottage had gradually sprung up what many, though not Gertrude, considered a beautiful garden.

"No travelling at all," she said, "no movement of any kind. And I am afraid, Anne, I can't hold out the slightest hope of a marriage for you."

"Since I turned forty I had begun to fear I might remain unwedded," I remarked.

"No sign of marriage," she said, exploring the cart wheel, "and there must have been considerable lethargy in the past when openings of this kind did occur. Your Venus seems for many years to have been in square to Neptune, and that would tend to make these chances slip away from you."

"I endeavoured to pounce on them," I said humbly. "My dear mother's advice to me as to matrimony was 'clutch while you can'--I assure you I left no stone unturned."

"In that case you probably turned the wrong ones," she said judicially. "And I am sorry to tell you that I don't see any good fortune coming to you either, and rather bad health. In short, you will have a severe illness next spring. March especially will be a bad month for you. Your Moon will be going through Virgo, the sign of sickness."

It generally was. I don't mean my moon, but March. I rarely got through the winter without an attack of rheumatism at the end of it.

All in a moment, as it seemed to me, after a few springs and autumns and attacks of rheumatism, Gertrude's two children were leaving the nursery, and Joan was returning home from school to be introduced into society. Gertrude began to look round for a governess who would also be a companion for Joan. I helped her to find one. It was a case of nepotism. I recommended my own niece, Dulcibella, who had just returned from the completion of her education at Dresden. Dulcibella's impecunious parents had, of course, both died and left her to battle with life--and me, alone, her only heritage being a wild rose prettiness and dark eyes like an Alderney calf's.

She was well educated. I had been able to achieve that owing to the cheap rate at which I lived, thanks to Jimmy. But I had thoroughly made up my mind that I was not going to have her twirling her thumbs under my roof. She was close on eighteen, and must now earn her own living.

She was staying with me on a visit when Gertrude told me of her requirements. Gertrude's two stout children were at that moment sitting on the lawn blowing soap bubbles with Dulcibella. Jimmy had been engaged in the same pursuit as his offspring five minutes earlier, but had departed. Gertrude looked at the group critically.

"Your niece does not look strong," she said dubiously.

"She isn't."

"Or energetic."

"She's not."

"Is she really firm with children?"

"I should not think so, but you are a better judge of character than I am."

Conscience pricked as I said the words, but I had become inured to its prickings.

"I have, of course, studied human nature," she said slowly, still looking at the pretty group on the lawn.

I have not yet met a fellow creature who does not think he has studied human nature. Yet how few turn the pages of that open book. And out of that few the greatest number scan it upside down.

"I could make a truer estimate," she continued, "if I drew out her horoscope. I go by that more than by my own fallible judgment. I may err, but I have never known astrology to fail."

* * * * *

Dulcie was duly engaged as governess on approval for three months, on the strength of her horoscope. Before she went to the Manor House I made a few remarks to her to which she listened decorously, her eyes reverently fixed on my face.

"You will leave with me that remarkably pretty lilac muslin you appeared in yesterday--and the sun-bonnet. You will make yourself look as like a district visitor as possible, thick where you ought to be thin, and thin where you ought to be thick. Don't cry, Dulcie. I am endeavouring to help you. Be thankful you have an aunt like me. Who educated you?"

"You did." Sob. Sob.

"Well, now I am finishing your education. You want to earn your living, I suppose. You know that I only have a small annuity, that I have not a farthing to leave you."

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne."

"Well, then, don't look prettier than that square Joan, and don't let the wave in your hair show."

The Alderney calf eyes brimmed anew with tears. Dulcie drooped her pin of a head. Like that defunct noodle, her mother, she lived solely for clothes and poetry and the admiration of the uncorseted sex. She had come into the world a little late. She conformed to the best Victorian ideals, but there are men still lurking in secluded rural districts if one could but find them, to whom her cheap appeal might be irresistible. I had hopes she might secure a husband if she took a country engagement. I proceeded with my discourse. It spread over Jimmy as well. I did not bid her pure eyes look into depths of depravity but I did make her understand that Mrs. Cross was becoming rather stout and middle-aged, and that if Mr. Cross blew soap bubbles in the schoolroom too frequently, she, Dulcie, might find that her French accent was not good enough for her young charges.

Dulcie has not the faintest gleam of humour, but she is docility itself.

She appeared next day staid, flat-figured, almost unpretty, her wonderful hair smoothed closely over her small ears.

I blessed her, and said as a parting word:

"Take an interest in astrology."

And then the gardener wheeled her luggage on the barrow to the Manor, and Dulcie crept timidly behind it to her first situation.

In order that this tragic story, for it is a tragedy, should not expand into a novel, I will say at once that she was a complete success. That was because she did exactly as I told her. As a rule, very silly people never will do what they are told. But in that one point Dulcie was no fool.

She was lamentably weak with the children. She had no art of teaching. She did not encourage Joan to preserve a burnished mind, but she took to astrology like a duck to water. From the first she was deeply interested in it, and believed in it with flawless credulity.

"Dulcie," said Gertrude with approval, "has a very alert mind for one so young. Joan has never taken the faintest interest in astrology, but Dulcie shows an intelligent grasp of the subject. She studies it while the children are preparing their syntax. You, yourself, Anne, have never in all these years mastered even the elements of the science. I don't believe you know what _an aspect_ means."

"I don't pretend to a powerful mind."

"Your difficulty is the inertia that belongs to a low vitality," said Gertrude, "and I rather think that is what is the matter with Joan. She hardly opens a book. She has not an idea beyond her chickens. She spends hours among her coops."

"Dulcie's horoscope," continued Gertrude after a pause, "shows a marked expansion in her immediate future. The wider life which she has entered upon under our roof is no doubt the beginning of it. I feel it my duty to help her in every way I can."

"Dear Gertrude," I said. "_Thank you._ My poor motherless child, for whom I can do but little has found a powerful friend in you."

Conscience jabbed me as with a knitting needle, but I paid no more attention to it than the Spartan boy to his fox.

"There is certainly a love affair in her near future," continued Gertrude affably. "_She_ says that astrologically she can't see any such thing for several years to come, but I know better. I found him under Uranus, transiting her Venus. She is an extremely intelligent pupil, but she is certainly obstinate. She _won't_ see it. But she can see Joan's engagement and marriage quite clearly. We both see that. But I am convinced Dulcie has an opportunity of marrying as well as Joan. Her moon will shortly be going through the fifth house, the house of lovers which speaks for itself. I wondered whether it might possibly be Mr. Wilson. Most respectable--you know--Mr. Benson's pupil. He's always coming over on one pretext or another, to play tennis or see Joan's chickens. I saw him walking back through the park with Dulcie and the children the other day."

I pretended to be horrified.

"I will speak to her," I mumbled, "most reprehensible."

"I beg you will do nothing of the kind," said Gertrude with asperity. "The world moves on, my dear Anne, while you sit dreaming in your cottage; and if you can't raise a finger to help your own niece then don't try to nullify the benevolent activities of those who can."

"Of course, Gertrude, if you look at it in that way. But a governess!"

"I do look at it in that way; and allow me to tell you, Anne, that you dress her abominably, and I have advised her to revolt. And her hair! I spoke to her about it yesterday, and she said you liked her to plaster it down like that. The child has beautiful hair, very like mine at her age. It needs releasing. It is not necessary that she should imitate your severe coiffure."

"Oh! Gertrude, I always brush my own hair back, and surely it is not too much to ask of my brother's only child who owes everything to me to--" I became tearful.

"It _is_ too much to ask. You are an egoist, Anne. The poor child looked quite frightened when I spoke to her yesterday. You mean well, but you have repressed her. I intend, on the contrary, to draw her out, to widen her narrowed, pinched existence." Gertrude had said the same of Jimmy when she married him. Everyone had a pinched existence till she dawned on them, though it would have been difficult to say who had dared to pinch Jimmy.

Next day Dulcie came down half frightened, wholly delighted, to confer with me.

"My dear," I said. "Do exactly what kind Mrs. Cross wishes about your hair and dress and general deportment. I can't explain, it would take too long, and when I had explained you would not understand. You may now take back with you the lilac gown and the sun-bonnet. And, by the way, what is this Mr. Wilson like who is always coming over?"

"Very, _very_ nice"--with fervour.

"And handsome?"

"Very, _very_ handsome."

"H'm! Now, Dulcie, no nonsense such as you ladled out to me about Herr Müller, the music master at Dresden. You needn't cry. That is all past and forgotten. But I want a plain answer. Does this very handsome man care about chickens?"

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne. He has taken several prizes."

"Does he come to see you, or Joan?"

Dulcie cogitated.

"At first it was Joan," she said.

Light broke in on me. _That serpent Gertrude!_ She did not think the poultry fancier good enough for the stolid Joan, but quite good enough for my exquisite Dulcibella.

"I must go back now," said Dulcie. "I'm dining down because Mr. Cross likes a game of patience in the evening. It keeps him from falling asleep. Mr. Wilson is staying to dinner. I'm going to wear my amber muslin, and Mr. Vavasour is coming to stay. We've seen a good deal of him lately. Mrs. Cross says he has had a very overshadowed life with his old mother, and she wants to help him to a wider sphere."

I pricked up my ears.

"Is he Vavasour, of Harlington?"

"Yes, that's his home, near Lee on the Solent."

"But surely he is quite an infant."

"I don't know what you mean by an infant, Aunt Anne. He is two years older than me, and he simply _loves_ poetry."

"And is he as nice as Mr. Wilson?"

"Very, _very_ nice."

Further lights were bursting in. The illumination momentarily staggered me.

"H'm. Dulcie, you will now attend to what I tell you."

"Yes, yes, Aunt Anne. I always do."

"Now, mind you don't make eyes at Mr. Wilson, who is Joan's friend. That is what horrid little cats of girls do, not what I expect of _you_. Chickens draw people together in a way, ahem! you don't understand, but--you will later on."

"Like poetry does?" Dulcie hazarded.

"Just like poetry. And one thing more. Don't speak to Mr. Vavasour unless he speaks to you."

"No, no, Aunt Anne. I never do."

Once again I must compress. As the summer advanced, Gertrude, nose down in full cry on the track, unfolded to me a project which only needed my co-operation.

I reminded her that I never co-operated, but she paid no attention, and said she wished to send the children with Joan and Dulcie to the seaside for a month, while she watched over Jimmy during his annual visit to Harrogate. The children required a change.

I agreed.

She had thought of Lee on the Solent. (You will remember, reader, that Mr. Vavasour's place was near Lee.)

"Why Lee?" I said, pretending surprise. "Expensive and only ten miles away. No real change of climate. Send them to Felixstowe or Scarborough."

But Gertrude's mind was made up. She poured forth batches of adequate reasons. It must be Lee. Would I accompany the party as their guest? Joan and Dulcie were rather too young to go into lodgings alone.

I saw at once that, under the circumstances, Lee was no place for me. I might get into hot water. I, so free now, might become entangled in the affairs of others, and might be blamed later on. I might find myself acting with duplicity or, to be more exact, I might be found out to be doing so.

I declined with regretful gratitude. If it had been Felixstowe or Scarborough I would have taken charge with pleasure, but I always had rheumatism at Lee. Rheumatism was a very capricious ailment.

"It is, indeed," said Gertrude coldly.

"Send your old governess," I suggested, "the ancient Miss Jones who lives at Banff. You have her here every summer for a month. Kill two birds with one stone. Let her have her annual outing at Lee instead of here."

Gertrude was undeniably struck by my suggestion, though she found fault with it. As she began to come round to it I then raised objections to it. I reminded her that Miss Jones was as blind as a bat: that when she accompanied them to Scotland the year before she had mistaken the footman bathing for a salmon leaping. But Gertrude was of the opinion that Miss Jones's shortsightedness was no real drawback.

The expedition started, and I actually produced five pounds for Dulcie to spend on seaside attire. I considered it a good investment.

Before Gertrude departed with Jimmy for Harrogate she volunteered with a meaning smile that she understood Mr. Wilson bicycled over frequently to Lee.

"Ten miles is nothing," I said, "to a high principled poultry fancier."

"Now you know," she said archly, "why I did not wish to remove Dulcie to a great distance at this critical moment in her young life. I hear from Miss Jones, who writes daily, that there are shrimping expeditions and picnics with the children, strolls by moonlight without them."

Reader, I did not oblige that serpent to disgorge the fact that moonlight strolls are not taken by two women and one man. I knew as well as possible that Miss Jones had received a hint to give these two young men every opportunity. I thanked Providence that I had not got into that _galère_. I had been saved by the fixed principle of a life time to avoid action of any kind.

I had hardly begun to enjoy the month of solitude when it was over, and Gertrude and Jimmy returned from Harrogate, he very limp and depressed, as always after his cure, and sure that it had done him more harm than good.

The two girls came back from the Solent looking the picture of health; even Joan was almost pretty, beaming under her tan. Dulcibella, who did not tan, was ravishing. The children were a rich brown pink apparently all over, and the ancient Miss Jones was a jet-beaded mass of bridling gratitude and self-importance.

Then, of course, the storm burst.

You and I, reader, know exactly what had happened. Dulcie had got engaged to Mr. Vavasour, and Joan to Mr. Wilson.

Dulcie came skimming down in the dusk the first evening to announce the event to me, her soft cheek pressed to mine. She said she wanted me to be the first to know.

_And Gertrude had said I could do nothing for her!_

She told me that at that very moment the blissful Joan was announcing her own betrothal to her parents.

Next morning Jimmy came down to see me. He generally gravitated to me if anything went wrong.

"We are in a hat up at the house," he said. "Joan has actually engaged herself to that oaf, Wilson. Infernal cheek on his part, I call it."

"You have had him hanging about for months," I said, "I expect he and Joan thought you approved."

"They did. They do. But that doesn't make it any better. Of course I said I would not allow it, and Joan was amazed and cried all night, and Gertrude is in a state of such nervous tension you can't go near her, and poor old Jones, who came back preening herself, is bathed in tears--and Gertrude says I have got to speak to Wilson at once. She always says things have got to be done at once."

He groaned, and sat down heavily on my low wall, crushing a branch of verbena.

"It's not as if I hadn't warned Gertrude," he went on. "I said to her several times 'I'm always catching my foot against Wilson,' and yet she would have him about the place. She as good as told me she thought he and Dulcie might make a match of it. But it's my opinion Dulcie never so much as looked at him. I told Gertrude so, but she only smiled, and said I was to leave it to her, and that it was in those confounded stars that Dulcie would marry almost at once. This is what her beastly stars have brought us to."

"She did tell me there was an early marriage for Joan, too, in her horoscope," I hazarded.

"Well, we had had thoughts, I mean Gertrude had, that young Vavasour came over oftener than he need. He's rather a bent lily, but of course he's an uncommonly good match. I should not have thought there was anything in it, myself, but Gertrude kept rubbing it in. That is why they went to Lee."

"You don't say so!"

"Yes, I do say so. But look how it has turned out."

"I think I ought to tell you--I'm so astonished that even now I don't know how to believe it--I only heard of it last night,--that Dulcie has accepted Mr. Vavasour."

For a moment Jimmy stared at me, and then he burst into shouts of laughter.

"Well done, Anne!" he said, rolling on my poor verbena. "Well done, Dulcie. That little slyboots. Thirty thousand a year. What a score. Who would have thought it, Anne! You look so remote and unworldly in your grey hair, stitching away at your woolwork picture. But you've outwitted Gertrude. Well, I don't care what she says. I'm glad of any luck happening to Dulcie. She is not fit to struggle for herself in this hard world. But Gertrude will never forgive _you_, Anne. You may make up your mind to that."

"But what have I done?" I bleated. "Nothing. I'm as innocent as an unlaid egg."

"You may be, but she will never forgive you all the same," said Jimmy slowly rising, and brushing traces of verbena from his person. "Stupid people never forgive, and they always avenge themselves by brute force."

Old Miss Jones, bewildered and tearful, toddled down to see me, boring me to death with plans for leaving Banff and settling in Bournemouth with a married niece. Joan rushed down, boisterously happy, and confident that her father would give in; Jimmy, weakening daily, came down. Mr. Wilson called, modest and hopeful; Dulcie, and the children came down, Mr. Vavasour, a stooping youth, with starling eyes, and an intense manner, motored over.

_But Gertrude never came._

I consoled myself with Mr. Vavasour. There was no doubt he was in love with Dulcie, and I surmised that in the future, if she could not dominate him, his aunt by marriage might be able to do so. I can't say whether Dulcie cared much about him, but I told her firmly that she was very much in love, and she said, "Yes, yes, Aunt Anne."

That was what was so endearing about Dulcie.

She was so obliging; always ready to run upstairs for my spectacles, or to marry anybody.

One evening, when she was dining with me, she proceeded to draw out her Ronald's horoscope.

She was evidently extraordinarily well up in the subject.

"I will ask, Mrs. Cross," she said at last, after much knitting of white brows, "but I should say Ronald was certainly not going to marry at all at this moment with Mercury and Jupiter in opposition. But then I said the same about myself, and about your going on a long journey. I should have thought some great change was inevitable with your sun now sesquiquadrate to Uranus in Cancer. But Mrs. Cross said I was absolutely mistaken about both. She was very emphatic."

"You don't mean to say you believe a single word of it," I said, amazed.

"Oh, yes, Aunt Anne, of course I do. Why, don't you remember you yourself advised me to study it. I'm _sure_ it's all true, only it's difficult to disentangle."

Jimmy came down next day, and a more crestfallen man I have never seen. I was dividing my white pinks, and he collapsed on a bench, and looked at me.

"You've given in about Mr. Wilson," I said drily.

"I have. Gertrude came round to it quite suddenly last night."

"Bear up," I said "They will probably be very happy."

"I don't find I mind much now it's decided on. And between ourselves Gertrude and Joan did not hit it off too well. I used to get a bit rattled between the two of them. It will be more peaceful when Joan is married."

"Then I don't see why you look so woe-begone."

Jimmy shifted on his bench.

"Anne," he said solemnly, "you made the great mistake of your life when you refused me."

"You could not expect me to leave a brand new kitchen boiler for you. I told you that at the time."

"We should have suited each other," went on Jimmy, drearily, ignoring manlike, my reasons for celibacy. "We are both," he paused and then added with dignity, "contemplatives by nature. We should have sat down in two armchairs for life. I should never have been a magistrate, and a chairman of a cursed Parish Council. I should just have been happy."

"I _have_ been happy," I said, "I _am_ happy."

"You have had a beautiful life: one long siesta. That is so like you. _You_ have fetched it off and I've missed it. Just as Gertrude has missed this match for Joan, and you have fetched it off for Dulcie. If I had married you you would never have wanted me to exert myself. That was why my higher nature turned to you like a sunflower to the sun. You ought to have taken me. After all, you are the only woman I have ever proposed to," said the twice married man.

"I thought as much," I said, pulling my white pinks apart.

"You might have known," he said darkly, and a glint of malice momentarily shone in his kindly eyes, "that trouble would some day overtake you for your wicked selfishness in refusing me."

I did not notice what he was saying so much as that alien expression in my old friend's face. I stared at him.

"I'm putty in Gertrude's hands," he continued solemnly, "as I should have been in yours. It's no kind of use saying I ought not to be putty. I know I ought not, but putty I am. You don't know what marriage is like. No peace unless you give in entirely--no terms--no half-way house, no nothing except unconditional surrender."

I had never heard Jimmy speak like this before. I put in a layer of pinks, and then looked at him again.

There were tears in his eyes.

"My dear old soul," he burst out, "I can't help it, I _cannot_ help it. She insisted on my coming down and telling you myself. She said it must come from me, as my own idea, and I'm not to mention her at all. The truth is--she has decided--and nothing will move her--that it will be best if Joan and Bobby Wilson lived quite near us for a time as they are both so young--in fact--" his voice became hoarse--"in this cottage."

"_My_ cottage!" I said. "_Here!_"

He nodded.

For a moment I could neither see nor hear. My brain reeled. I clutched at something which turned out to be Jimmy's hand.

"My own little house," I gasped. "My garden, made with my own hands. The only place my rheumatism--" I choked.

"Don't take on so, Anne," but it was Jimmy who was crying, not I, "I'll find something else for you. Miss Jones is leaving Banff. You shall have her house rent free. I hate it all just as much as you. It makes me sick to think of chicken hutches on your lawn; but, but--you _shouldn't_ have outwitted Gertrude."

"She told me there was no movement, no journey of any kind in my horoscope," I groaned.

"She says she made a mistake, and that she sees now there is a long journey. Dulcie told her so some time ago, but she would not hear of it. But now she has worked it out again, and she says Dulcie was right after all. You are plum in the thick of Uranian upheavals."

"And is Dulcie's marriage a mistake, too?"

"She said nothing about that. But, between ourselves, Anne, though I'm not an astrologer, I should not count on it too much, for I've been making a few enquiries about Vavasour, and I find he has been engaged four times already. It's a sort of habit with him to get engaged, and his mother never opposes him, but she has a sort of habit of gently getting him out of it--every time."

* * * * *

All this took place several years ago. I live in the suburbs of Banff now in Miss Jones's old house. As there is no garden that kind Jimmy has built me a little conservatory sticking like a blister to the unattached wall of my semi-detached villa. He sends me a hamper of vegetables every week, and Joan presents me with a couple of chickens now and then, _reared on my lawn_.

They come in handy when Dulcie and her Wilhelm are staying with me. Herr Müller has an appointment in Aberdeen now. They are dreadfully poor, and a little Müller arrives every year, but Dulcie is as happy as she is incompetent and impecunious. She adds to their small muddled away income by giving lessons in astrology. I have learned the rudiments of the science, in order when I stay with her to help her with her pupils. But I never stay long as I have rheumatism as severely in Aberdeen as in Banff.

Her Murderer

"The truth is, I shall have to murder her!" said Mark gloomily. "I see no way out of it."

"I could not be really happy with a husband whose hands were red with gore," I remarked. "I'm super-sensitive, I know. I can't help it. I was made so. If you murder her, I warn you I shall throw you over. And where would you be then?"

"Exactly where I am now, as far as marrying you is concerned. You may throw me over as much as you like. I shan't turn a hair."

He had not many hairs left to turn, and perhaps he remembered that fact, and that I held nothing sacred, for he hurried on in an aggrieved tone:

"You never give me credit for any imagination. I'm not going to spill her blood. I'm much too tidy. I've thought it all out. I shall take you and her on a picnic to the New Forest, and trot you both about till you're nearly famished. And then for luncheon I shall produce a tin of potted lobster. I shall choose it very carefully with a bulging tin. Potted lobster is deadly when the tin bulges. And as the luncheon will be at my expense, she will eat more than usual. She will 'partake heartily,' as the newspapers will say afterwards; at least, as I hope they will have occasion to say. And then directly the meal is over the lobster will begin to do its duty, and swell inside her, and she'll begin struggling among the picnic things. I shan't be there. I shall have gone for a little stroll. You will support her in her last moments. I don't mind helping with the funeral. I'd do that willingly."

I laughed, but I was near to tears.

"How long have we been engaged?" asked Mark.

"Twelve years. You know that as well as I do."

"Well, as far as I can see, we shall be still affianced in twenty years' time. Aunt Pussy will see us all out."

"We may toddle to the altar yet," I said hysterically, "when you are about eighty and I am seventy. And I shall give you a bath-chair, and you will present the bridesmaids, who must not be a day younger than myself, with rubber hot-water bottles. Rubber will be cheap again by then."

He came back, and sat down by me.

"It's damnable!" he said.

"It is," I replied.

"And it isn't as if the little ass couldn't afford it!" he broke out, after a moment. "She can't have less than thirty thousand a year, and she lives on one. And it will all come to you when she dies. And it's rolling up, and rolling up, and the years pass and pass. Our case is desperate. Janet, can't you say something to her? Can't you make a great appeal to her? Can't you get hold of someone who has an influence over her, and appeal to them?"

I did not think it necessary to answer. He knew I had tried everything years ago.

It had been thought a wonderful thing for me when Aunt Pussy, my godmother, adopted me when I was fourteen. We were a large family, and I was the only delicate one, not fitted, so my parents thought, to "fend for myself" in this rough world. And I had always liked Aunt Pussy, and she me. And she promised my father, on his impecunious death-bed, that she would take charge of me and educate me. She further gratuitously and solemnly promised that she would leave me all her money. Her all was not much, a few hundreds a year. But that was a great deal to people like ourselves. She was our one rich relation, and it was felt that I was provided for, which eventually caused an estrangement between me and my brothers and sisters, who had to work for their living; while I always had pretty clothes and a little--a very little--pocket-money, and did nothing in the way of work except arrange flowers, and write a few notes, and comb out Aunt Pussy's Flossy, being careful to keep the parting even down the middle of his back.