Chapter VII: Part 7

Muriel had already gone back to school, so that Geoffrey, as the only child at home, became for the time the chief object of his parents' solicitude.

"You've always taken his part when I've tried to be severe with him," the father pointed out.

"Yes, I know I have, and I think rather foolishly. But I suppose it's natural for a mother. It's what remains of the instinct to defend one's young. I wish he were a little boy again. I believe I should bring him up quite differently, if I had another chance."

Jemmie shook his head.

"Ah, if," he murmured sapiently. "If if's were horses, old lady, beggars might ride."

"Yes, and I think I've been rather foolish," Mary continued, "in keeping from you certain things about Geoffrey. You know, three times already since he went to Oxford I've lent him comparatively large sums for him to pay his debts. Gambling debts, I'm afraid."

"Gambling debts?" Jemmie echoed. "You don't mean to tell me that the young fool has been gambling? Gambling debts at nineteen? Why, the notion is ridiculous. Think of me. There was I, my own master from the time I left school. But I never had any gambling debts. I never had any debts at all. Why, when I was not much older than Geoffrey, my poor old father died and I was left in sole charge of the business. Suppose I had had gambling debts? A pretty stockbroker I should have made."

"There's no need for you to imagine that I'm trying to defend Geoffrey for running into debt," Mary observed.

"But why did you keep it from me? Why didn't you tell me before?"

"I know it was silly of me. I've admitted it was silly. Let that pass."

"How much have you paid for him?"

"About three hundred pounds."

"Three hundred what? Did you say three hundred pounds, or am I going mad and deaf? Three hundred pounds? Why, that's nearly a whole year's allowance. Do you seriously mean to tell me that you've allowed Geoffrey to play ducks and drakes with three hundred pounds of your money?"

"Frankly, Jemmie, I don't think that the amount matters," she said. "Three hundred pounds or three hundred pence, if he can't pay, the large sum is morally no worse than the smaller."

Jemmie began to splutter.

"Now that's a woman all over. No idea whatever of the value of money. It's not a question of morality, my dear. It's a question of finance. He knows very well, even if you don't, that he has no more business to risk three hundred pounds than I have to risk three thousand. A fine father my children would call me if I started gambling and gambled away all their inheritance."

"Jemmie dear, there is really no need for you to get angry with me," she protested. "I am as well aware as you how wrong it is of Geoffrey to gamble. But I do blame my own indulgence. I ought to have refused to give him the money and sent him to you. I don't know why I didn't. I suppose it was an absurd kind of jealousy. I suppose really that I hoped to make him fonder of me by giving him the money he wanted."

"But why have you told me now?" her husband asked in sudden bewilderment.

Mary looked unhappy.

"Promise me," she began, "that if I tell you something more you won't fly into a rage with Geoffrey and by losing your temper perhaps do him more harm than good. Promise me that, Jemmie, before I tell you anything more."

"He's not been stealing? He hasn't committed forgery or anything like that, has he?" stammered an apprehensive father.

"No, it's not quite so bad as that," she laughed sadly. "But you haven't promised."

"As long as it's nothing criminal, I promise to do my utmost to be patient with the boy."

Mary hesitated for a few moments, half regretting that she had raised the subject of Geoffrey's behavior. Then she plunged.

"It's this girl at the White Hart. Mrs. Woldingham came to see me this morning...."

"Girl at the White Hart?" Jemmie interrupted. "What has Mrs. Woldingham got to do with girls at the White Hart, even if she is the Rector's wife?"

"Jemmie, I must beg you not to interrupt me. If you will have the patience to let me say what I was going to say, you'll hear. Mrs. Woldingham, who came to see me about the Bazaar which is being got up for the debt on the new peal of bells, spoke very nicely about Geoffrey, and I'm sure she had not the least idea of making mischief or repeating village gossip. But people are beginning to talk about Geoffrey's being seen so often at the White Hart."

"Drinking too!" the father apostrophized. "Great Heavens, my second son appears to have every vice."

"No, not drinking," Mary contradicted irritably. "At least Mrs. Woldingham did not suggest that he was drinking. The attraction is this girl."

"What girl?"

"The girl at the White Hart."

"Do you mean the barmaid?"

"I suppose that's what she is. I really don't know anything more except that Geoffrey is credited with having a love affair with some girl at the White Hart."

Jemmie shook his head to Heaven.

"I really don't know what's happening to the young men of to-day. They stop at nothing. Still, I'm relieved to hear it's only that. At least, I suppose it's only that."

"Only what?" Mary asked frowning.

"Only a flirtation with a barmaid. Of course, he ought not to do that kind of thing in his own village; but I'm relieved to hear it's only that."

"That was all Mrs. Woldingham said."

"She didn't suggest that there was the likelihood of an open scandal?"

Mary looked puzzled.

"Come, come," her husband scoffed. "You are not a schoolgirl. I suppose Mrs. Woldingham didn't suggest that the young woman was going to have a child?"

"Jemmie, sometimes you really are unnecessarily coarse in the way you blurt things out. No, Mrs. Woldingham didn't say anything about that or indeed hint anything of the sort. At least, I don't think she did. But, oh dear, what a horrible notion! Please, I do beg of you, speak seriously to Geoffrey. If there were anything like that he would have to admit it to you."

When Mary was alone, she reproached herself for being so disloyal to Geoffrey as to tell his father about the money she had given him. It was no use trying to pretend to herself that her only motive for telling was a desire for Geoffrey to make a complete avowal of everything and after he had been forgiven to be able to start fair in his first encounter with life. She had not had the least temptation to say a word about his debts until Mrs. Woldingham had thrown out those hints about his behavior at the White Hart.

"I really believe I was jealous," she told herself. Jealous? Could she possibly be jealous of this girl? It sounded too absurd when stated in words. But there certainly had been an impulse to hurt Geoffrey and a desire to punish him not for his generally unsatisfactory behavior so much as for presuming at his age to fancy himself in love. It was not the knowledge that people were talking which had roused her indignation, but the suggestion that Geoffrey was madly in love with this girl, this common, crude, flamboyant creature, this barmaid. Even now her heart was beating fast with rage at the thought of such a disgraceful entanglement.

"Of course, my dear Mrs. Alison, it may be nothing but a youthful infatuation. At the same time I think I ought to warn you that they do say he has proposed to the girl."

She had not told Jemmie that. She had unjustly allowed him to suppose that the only scandal to be feared was Geoffrey's treatment of the girl. Jemmie had jumped to the commonplace conclusion, and she had been able to do no more than simulate the shocked feelings of a prude. She had been annoyed by her husband's clumsy assumption of Geoffrey's guilt, and she had found no better way to display her annoyance than by that pretense of delicacy.

"One always thinks that one is going to find it easier to be better in a few years' time; but, when the few years roll by, there is always a new trap for one's self-confidence," Mary reflected.

She made up her mind to be patient with Geoffrey, and went down to dinner with the intention of persuading Jemmie to be as patient as she hoped to be herself. But her good intentions were frustrated by Geoffrey's failure to appear.

"Keep nothing hot for Mr. Geoffrey," his father commanded.

Mary realized the extent of his wrath from this order, for nothing in life seemed more important to Jemmie than the temperature of food. Deliberately to let his son's dinner spoil was in his case almost the equivalent of open excommunication. Another sign of his anger was manifested after dinner, when, before he fell asleep in his chair, instead of reading the headlines of _The Times_, the list of killed and wounded in South Africa, and the sum of Roberts' points at billiards, he neither read nor slept; when instead he paced up and down the drawing-room, always tripping on the same head of a grizzly bear shot by himself long ago in the Rocky Mountains, always saying "damn," always begging his wife's pardon for the oath with an implication that Cæsar as well as Cæsar's wife should be above suspicion in dealing with Cæsar's son.

"This is a bit too much of a good thing," he declared when the clock struck ten without Geoffrey's arrival. "A little bit too much of a good thing, by George! He's staying down at that confounded inn till closing-time. That's what he's doing, you mark my words."

Half-past ten struck; but there was still no sign of Geoffrey.

"If his highness thinks that he's going to keep the whole household up while he wanders about with that girl in the moonlight, he's mistaken. I'll lock him out. By George, I will."

"But Jemmie, he may have had an accident."

"Fiddlesticks, my dear. If he'd had an accident, we should have heard of it by now. I'll give him until eleven. If he isn't home by then, the house shall be locked against him. I'll give him a lesson. I'll frighten him this time."

The clock struck eleven; but Geoffrey did not come. His father rang the bell.

"Please, Jemmie," his wife expostulated. "I'd rather you didn't say too much in front of the servants."

"You're weakening. You're not backing me up. You're perfectly ready to let him in. I tell you he has got to have a lesson."

"But the servants...."

"Bother the servants. I decline to let Geoffrey flout me, because I'm afraid of the servants."

However, Jemmie did so far humor his wife as to imply when he was giving orders to lock up the house, that he and she knew where their son was.

"Although I was in half a mind to forbid anybody in the house to go downstairs and let him in when he does come."

"I'm glad you didn't," Mary said. "I think that would only have made ourselves look ridiculous."

She resolved not to go to sleep, so that when Geoffrey did come back, she should hear him herself and be able to go downstairs and let him in. She felt certain that she should be able to do this and that Jemmie, who had announced his own intention of admitting this errant son, would be fast asleep by that time. Jemmie must be very sleepy by now, for he had been awake ever since dinner.

But Geoffrey did not come back at all that night, and in the morning his mother received a letter.

Hawkins' Hotel, Buckingham Street, Strand, W.C. _Sept. 27th, 1901._

_My dearest Mother_,

_I find this a very difficult letter to write, but it has got to be
written, and you may as well know at once that by the time you get
this letter I shall be married to Mary Wyatt who was at the White
Hart Inn. I made up my mind to do this a month ago and I would have
told you if I had not been afraid that somehow or other I would have
been prevented. Of course I know that you and Father will be angry,
but it can't be helped. It's done now. At least it will be by the
time you get this. I'm going out to make arrangements now. Of course
I'm rather worried about what you will say, but she is a charming
girl and if you could only get over your prejudice and meet her I
think you would agree with me. She is only three years older than me.
Of course I cannot dictate what you are or are not to do. But unless
you can see your way to being decent to Mary I would rather cut
myself off from the family altogether. It would only make me angry
if I thought she was being snubbed, and she is very sensitive. I am
sorry for the way I am getting married, but please do not think that
I am sorry about getting married, if you can understand what I mean.
If I am old enough to know what profession I want to choose, I am
old enough to know what wife I want to choose. I mention this because
Father said to me last week that if I hadn't made up my mind yet
what I wanted to do with my life, I never would make up my mind. I'm
afraid this letter sounds rather defiant, but it's not meant to be
defiant. Only I do want you both to understand that I'm in earnest. I
will spare you the boredom of hearing how fond I am of Mary, partly
because I know it would probably bore you and partly because I could
not possibly express what I would like to say about her in writing.
I know that this will mean giving up Oxford. But I do not mind about
that. I think most people stay there too long. It's no good doing
nothing for three years. We are going to stay for three or four
days in London, and then we are going to spend our honeymoon in the
village where Mary lives in Berkshire. After that I had an idea of
emigrating to Canada._

_Your loving son, Geoffrey._

Mary gave this letter to her husband without comment and left him to read it alone. She did not feel that there was any possible comment except an outburst of bad language, and she was sure that Jemmie would manage that better than herself. When she rejoined him, he was still spluttering with rage, damning and disinheriting his son with equal fervor. For one thing Mary was grateful. He did not say it was all due to the way she had spoilt him. Indeed, he offered no reproaches. The blow was as inevitable as an apoplexy. There was no human being to be blamed apart from the unhappy principal.

"Married at nineteen to a barmaid! What a future! It isn't as if I'd set him a bad example. I can't blame myself. It's his natural wickedness and selfishness. It's the sort of thing young men do nowadays. No sense of decency. Want of proportion. Form ... no good form. Fancy comparing the choice of a profession with the choice of a wife! You can't compare things like that. The boy's mad. He's been touched by the sun playing golf. He's not normal. I consider we might get the marriage annulled on the ground that he was _non compos_ when he committed it. Yes, _non compos_! We'll shut him up in a nursing-home for a couple of months. A rest cure. He's mad. The damned lunatic! Emigrate indeed? Canada! He might as well talk of emigrating to the moon. In fact, it strikes me that's the place to which his brains have emigrated...."

Jemmie went on railing like this until his wife interposed with a suggestion that she should go up to town this very morning and interview Geoffrey. There was just a chance he was not married yet. He probably had not realized how hard it was to get married without some preparation. Yes, there was just a chance that he was still free, and that if he were tactfully handled he might consent to remain free.

"You see, he's evidently nervous about us," Mary pointed out. "He had to run away in order to bring himself to do it. I expect the girl is a hussy. I expect she hooked him. Oh dear, how vulgar it makes oneself, when one mixes oneself up with vulgarity. Hooked him! And yet there's no other word for it."

"He's no longer a son of mine," the father swore. "By George, Mary, he is no longer my son. A lazy spendthrift who gets married with less preparation than he would give to ordering himself a lunch. This money he's been wheedling out of you. Depend upon it, his gambling debts were nothing but an excuse, a mean subterfuge. If he'd really been losing money at roulette, he'd have come to me. He'd have known that I wouldn't be hard on him."

"I should prefer to think that the money I gave him was spent upon getting married," said Mary unreasonably. "I loathed the idea of my son's being a weak gambler."

"Well, don't let you and me start arguing. Whatever he did with it, he has had the money. A barmaid! A girl who spends her day listening to beastly chaff! A crimped, corseted, vulgar barmaid to be my daughter-in-law! It's incredible."

"But there is a slight chance that she is not your daughter-in-law yet. So, if you've no objection, dear, I think I'll catch the midday train and go straight to this hotel in the Strand. I will take my dressing-case, and if necessary I can stay in town. I might go to Morley's Hotel. That would be close by."

Hawkins' Hotel was a tall, narrow, gloomy house with a German porter, sluttish chambermaids, and a manageress like a large doll with hair of tow. In the lower half of the house there was a perpetual odor of vegetables being cooked, and in the upper part there was a smell of dusty muslin.

Mary was shown into what was called the writing-room while inquiries were made for Number Nineteen, which was as far as Geoffrey's individuality was recognized. In each of the windows of the writing-room there was a frayed aspidistra growing apparently in a compost of cigarette-ends, matches, and old plaster. In one corner of the room a man in a stained check-suit with cuffs that were continually trying to swallow his hands was seated at a spindle-shanked desk working out from a Bradshaw fifteen months old a railway journey across country.

"Number Nineteen's gone out," announced the waiter, who looked like the negative of a photograph, so black were his face and shirt-front, so greasy and begrimed were his clothes.

Mary told him that she would wait and asked him to bring her a cup of tea, which he brought half an hour later in a breakfast cup with blunted lumps of dead-looking sugar lying in the saucer beside it, and a hare-lipped jug of pale blue milk.

"I'll bring the bread and butter in a minute," he promised, and though Mary told him that she did not want anything to eat, he brought her four slices a quarter of an hour later.

It was growing dusk in the writing-room of Hawkins' Hotel; the man in the check-suit, unable to read the figures in the railway-guide, was moping in an arm-chair by the empty grate, before Geoffrey came in followed by the waiter, who lighted the two burners of the gaselier which had been fitted with incandescent mantles and pulled down the blinds.

"We can't talk here," said Mary, glancing across at the man in the check-suit, who as soon as the room was lighted up had returned to his railway-guide. "You'd better walk round with me to Morley's Hotel, where I'm staying for to-night."

"I can't leave Mary alone here," Geoffrey replied.

His mother winced at the name.

"If you want to talk private," said the man with the railway-guide, "I'll leave you to yourselves. I've found what I was looking for."

He pushed his cuffs well up with the aid of the edge of the desk, and, whistling "The Honeysuckle and the Bee," went out of the room, leaving mother and son together.

"Geoffrey, are you married?"

"Well, as a matter of fact, no, I'm not," he admitted sulkily. "Apparently you have to live in a parish for a certain amount of time first. One would imagine it was a crime to get married by the difficulties the parson made."

"Then you'll think better of it?" his mother pleaded. "You'll change your mind and come back with me to High Corner? Father will say nothing. Your mad freak shall be forgiven and forgotten."

"Steady on, Mother. I can't leave Mary like that. You see, it's a bit awkward. I thought I should have been married to-day, and so we should have been if I hadn't made a muddle about the license. I wanted to be married in a register office, but Mary stuck out for a church. She can't believe that any other kind of marriage is genuine. Besides, I don't want to give her up, if that's what you mean by coming back to High Corner."

His mother argued with him in vain. He did not attempt to answer her, but stood sulkily first on his right leg, then on his left leg until she stopped talking.

"I don't agree with you that she'll drag me down, as you say. I think it will buck me up to be married."

"But, my dear boy, look at your surroundings already. Look at this horrible hotel. How on earth did you ever come to discover such a place? It's like some dreadful place in a French novel."

"The bedrooms are all right," Geoffrey said. "And we've been eating out. I think if you'd let me bring Mary down to see you, you wouldn't be so much upset by the prospect of my future. Anyway, you needn't think I'll disgrace the family. I've made up my mind to emigrate. It's a funny thing, but when a fellow does what he thinks is the right thing to do, he gets more blamed than if he just plays about with a girl."

"Geoffrey," said his mother, "I'm grieved that I cannot see things from your point of view; but you are too young, my dear boy, to hamper yourself like this so early in your life. I have never told you before; but I think that it is only fair that I should tell you about your grandfather. He quarreled with his father because he insisted on marrying my mother. They emigrated, and both he and my mother were drowned. I was a baby then, and I was about the only person saved from the wreck."

"Well, it's much safer traveling nowadays," argued Geoffrey obstinately. "And anyway I don't see that it did you much harm."

"But it caused infinite misery to others. My grandmother never really got over it. It brought about the extinction of the Flowers."

"I'm sorry, Mother, but I can't go back on my word. Besides, we've been living here as man and wife. It wouldn't be right."

This boy of nineteen to be talking of living here as man and wife!

Mary was suddenly chilled.

"Very well, Geoffrey, if you will not listen to me, I must see what your father can do. You must remember that you are not yet of age, and if your father sees fit to exercise his authority you will _have_ to obey. I shall telegraph for him at once."

"Perhaps Father will condescend to see Mary before he does anything," Geoffrey said. "Perhaps he won't judge her as you have judged her without seeing her."

Mary turned away from her son and went quickly from the room. She felt when she walked up Buckingham Street as if she was struggling up through some horrible drain to reach the air.

In the hall of her own hotel the porter told her that Mr. Alison had arrived and was waiting for Mrs. Alison in Mrs. Alison's room. Mary went upstairs, glad that he had come, because he might do something with Geoffrey. He might remonstrate with the girl and persuade her to give him up. In books it would have been herself who would have done that; but books seemed to forget that a mother could be as proud as anybody when her deepest feelings were outraged.

"Mary, my poor little wife, prepare yourself for a dreadful shock," Jemmie cried when she entered her room.

In an instant she guessed that it was bad news about Richard.

"South Africa," she heard herself murmur with a tongue that was parched with apprehension and horror.

"A telegram from the War Office."

"Jemmie, he's not dead? He's only wounded?"

"My poor darling Mary, our boy is dead."

"Richard! Richard! Richard!" she wailed to the roar of London, the cruel roar of London which let young men die to keep the city roaring.

"It wasn't even in battle. He was in charge of a convoy. He was ambushed. By God, Mary, I'd like to burn the scoundrels in Parliament who talk about brother Boer. I'd like to throw them down into Trafalgar Square from the top of Nelson's Column. Lloyd George and the whole skulking crew. It's they who are encouraging the Boers to go on with this guerilla warfare. Mary, don't look so white. Shall I ring for some brandy? Did you do anything about Geoffrey and this marriage?"

"Geoffrey!" the mother echoed, and her voice was like the tinkling of broken ice. "Let him do what he likes, and go where he likes, and die where he likes. I want Richard. Do you hear? I want Richard. I want him. I want him. He's mine. He can't really be taken away from me like this. There must be some mistake in the name. Mistakes are made. We must go to Africa and make sure. _We'll_ emigrate," she laughed, and then mercifully the tears began to flow.

_Chapter Six_

THE WIDOW

_Chapter Six: The Widow_

Jemmie Alison had been buried a fortnight. The rays of the fallow November sun lighted the table in the window of his old study at which his widow was seated engaged upon the task of sorting out his papers. Mary's hands frilled with snowy organdie were now the hands of her grandmother when _she_ was fifty, fifty years ago. Otherwise she did not resemble Lady Flower, being of a fairer complexion with roses still fresh upon her cheeks and rich brown hair on which the gossamer spun by age was less conspicuous than the first rime upon October leaves. She had paused for a moment from her task and was staring out at the drooping chrysanthemums that gave to the garden of Woodworth Lodge such an aspect of mournfulness and decay. Why did not Markham take them up? There was nothing so melancholy as flowers which had outstayed their season. Winter was at hand. Of what use was it to try to prolong the illusion of summer? Winter was not to be cajoled by such pretenses. Besides, chrysanthemums were at best funereal blossoms. How high they had been heaped a fortnight ago, wreath upon wreath, on Jemmie's coffin.... She turned back to her task of sorting out the papers; but a minute or two later she stopped to reproach herself, as she had reproached herself many times daily since her husband's death with having failed to be as deeply moved by it as she ought. No doubt the protracted illness, when he lingered month by month after the doctors had declared that he could not survive another week, was partly responsible for the absence of emotion. She had been preparing so long for the death that, when at last he did die, she discovered that there was no emotion which she had not already exhausted. Yes, although while he lay dying all those weeks she had fought against a monstrous and wicked hope that the agony would not be too long protracted, at the end her only definite feeling had been one of relief. Poor old Jemmie, he had been so good throughout those weary weeks. The nurses had assured her that they had never known such a patient. It was strange that a man who throughout his life had allowed himself to be disconcerted by the smallest interference with his minor comforts should be able to endure without a murmur months of fierce pain. There must have been something fundamentally noble about Jemmie, some bedrock of character impervious alike to violent passions and the fretful whims of ordinary existence. Impervious at any rate to the latter. It was verging on the ludicrous to associate violent passions with Jemmie, for surely no man ever lived less subject to the stress of the unattainable. Not that his exemption should detract at all from her admiration of his suffering. On the contrary she should yield him a greater respect, because he could never have been tested in the whole of his life as he was tested every hour of that last illness. But herself? Had that endlessly drawn out vigil revealed in herself any fundamental nobility of character? Outwardly she had been all devotion. She had accepted the flattery of the nurses, the laudation of her friends, the pathetic gratitude of her husband for the care she lavished, the zeal with which she waited on him, the affection never in all their married life so freely given as when he lay dying. Yet always at the back of her mind had lurked the question when it would be over, the desire to be quit of her obligation, the longing to be herself for the remainder of her life. Or was she doing herself an injustice in thinking that? Was it not really the nervous strain of expecting the inevitable for so long which made her sigh for that consummation to achieve itself? It was foolish to exaggerate one's deficiencies. It savored of a morbid self-interest. These inward contests in which women permitted themselves to indulge, especially in books, were nothing more than a subtle form of self-flattery. They were another aspect of the schoolgirl's habit of talking a situation to death. The female mind could never resist the remnants of a conversation a whit more easily than it could resist a July sale.

Mary compelled herself to concentrate upon the task she had taken in hand, and for a while she was able to keep her thoughts fixed upon her husband's papers. How neatly he had kept his receipted bills until January of this year. Here was a thin sheaf for 1910, the record of the last month he spent walking about before he took to his bed. There had been plenty of bills all through this year for doctors and nurses and medicine, and at last for the funeral. But it was she who had kept them, so they were lying about anyhow. How vexed Jemmie would have been with her if he had known that she had already mislaid the undertaker's receipt.

"I wish you would try to be more business-like."

She could hear his voice so plainly that she looked round the room, and noted with a pang of regret that this pallid sunshine was not so weak but that it lighted up the dust upon his empty pipes. Was it conceivable that Jemmie was regarding her at this moment from another sphere? Was there really anything in spiritualism? She had wished to experiment with it after Richard was killed; but Jemmie had been so contemptuous of the idea and so profoundly convinced of the fraud it was, that she had lacked the courage for a real investigation. There was no Jemmie now to deter her. She must have a talk with Mrs. Hippisle who so firmly believed in the possibility of communicating with the dead ... yes, it would make such a difference if one could only be sure.

1909? Nothing but bills in that file. It would be prudent to keep them. Not that it was likely one of Jemmie's tradesmen would be dishonest. He had always patronized the oldest and most respectable firms in London. Still, there might be a clerical mistake. Better to keep 1909. 1908? She turned the leaves of that file. To one Angora coat ... to cuffs for same ... to one large bottle of Crinum ... to one large bottle of Doctor Gunter's Hair Tonic ... to one large bottle ... Jemmie had never ceased to abuse hair-restorers, but in his sixty-third year he was still the victim of their audacious promises.

If she did decide to take up spiritualism, she should not be so gullible as that. Why, Jemmie had begun to lose his hair before he was married! 1907, 1906, 1905, 1904. All receipted bills. 1904? A letter in Geoffrey's handwriting. That was queer.

Hopkinsville, Ontario, _April 4th_.

_My dear Father_,

_Thank you very much for the check you sent me. I am hoping very much
that the milk business will turn out as well as I hope. I now owe
you £420. Do you want me to send you a formal I.O.U.? Or will this
acknowledgment by letter be enough?_

_Your affectionate son, Geoffrey._

It was strange that Jemmie should never have mentioned that he was giving Geoffrey money. And stranger still that he should keep his son's letter with the receipted bills of hatters and hosiers. Perhaps there were other letters. Mary examined again more carefully the recent files. Yes, here was another that spoke of receiving money two years later, written from Winnipeg. And here, why here in 1909 was a letter from London!

45 Almond Terrace, Wood Green, _November 15_.

_My dear Father_,

_Thank you very much for the £100 which brings up my debt to £930. I
shouldn't have bothered you again, but the expenses of getting back
from Canada and the birth of our little girl have made things rather
difficult. I am going in for the cinematographic business which from
what I can see looks like being the business of the future. I've got
a job as studio manager with a new firm who I hope will prove to have
some staying power. I don't think any good purpose would be served by
my coming to see you. I've kept out of your way for so long now that
it's better to keep out of the family for good. It would be useless
to pretend that Mary doesn't feel a certain amount of resentment,
and now that we have our little girl we get on very happily. Please
do not misunderstand my motive in writing to you like this. If it
was only you I might take a different course. But there is Mother
to be considered. She would feel--quite rightly from her point of
view--that the baby ought to be brought up in different surroundings.
This would only cause bad feeling between her and Mary, which I would
not like. I haven't made such a terrific success of my life, and so
I am perhaps a bit oversensitive. It seems very ungrateful to write
like this after your kindness, but I hope you will understand that
I'm trying to act for the best. I am sorry to hear that you've not
been feeling quite yourself lately. I hope it's nothing more than
the effect of the beastly weather we've been having. I'm glad to be
back in England again. I don't know what made me choose Canada as a
country to settle in._

_Your affectionate son, Geoffrey._

Geoffrey had written this only a year ago. Perhaps he was still at the same address. Mary felt inclined to order the car so that she could drive immediately to Wood Green, wherever Wood Green was, and find out. She had risen from the table before she remembered that Muriel had taken the car for the afternoon. But to-morrow she would go. Nothing should stop her to-morrow.

Poor old Jemmie, he must have been pining for his son. He must have had a vague presentiment of his last illness. And how extraordinary that he should have said nothing about the birth of Geoffrey's little girl. To have lain there all these months silent about that great event! It was strange too that he should not have left any money to Geoffrey. Perhaps he had known when he left in his will everything to her that she would find out from his papers about Geoffrey and the little girl, and had trusted to her to make some provision for them. It might be that all those years he had been anxious for a reconciliation and that he had waited for a word from herself to give him an excuse to make the first move. He would have been too proud of his own accord to propose the reconciliation; but if he could have salved his pride by pretending that he was receiving Geoffrey back into the family on her account, there was no doubt that he would have done so. Oh, it was clearly her duty to go to-morrow and find out if Geoffrey was still in Wood Green. It was her duty to the dead man and to her own self. Few might be the gray hairs of her head, but heavy had been the frost upon her heart all these years of middle-age. The more she thought about it, the more remarkable appeared Jemmie's secretiveness. What could have been at the back of his mind? To be sure, when first Geoffrey married, it was she who had been of all the bitterest against him. But there had been some justification then. She had not stayed implacable. Yet she had never suggested a reconciliation, which it was her place to do. Jemmie might be pardoned for supposing that she did not want one. But what a pity! He would have died more happily if he had been friends at the last with the only son left to him. How much she hoped that he could be looking down from that mysterious hinterland of death, and that he might behold her setting out to-morrow on her mission of good-will.

How far had she got with the papers? Oh yes, 1904. 1903? Nothing from Geoffrey in 1903. Nothing from him in 1902 either. She wished that Jemmie had kept his first letters from Canada, for there must have been earlier letters. Those first hundreds of pounds must have been begged for with tales of misfortune in Canada. Or had Geoffrey written casually in the beginning as he used to write to her from Oxford for a hundred pounds? Perhaps that was the reason why his father had always spoken bitterly of him in those first years of the marriage. 1901. Mary turned pale. Here was the bill for Richard's uniform. _Received with compliments and thanks_ ... the money that equipped her boy to be killed. The paper with its royal warrants was as fresh as the day on which it was printed. But Richard! Her Richard! What was Richard now? And here in the file for 1900 was the bill for Richard's uniform as a cadet at Sandhurst. All these years going backward from this date held something of Richard. 1899? White waistcoats for Richard when he got into Pop at Eton. How delighted he had been! 1898? 1897? 1896? Tophats for Richard every year. 1895? The right kind of Eton jacket, "because a chap at my private school told me to be jolly careful about that, mother." And Jemmie had remembered from his own Eton days how important it was to be jolly careful about that. 1894? School fees. 1893? Richard's straw hat with the second eleven ribbon of his private school. That hot summer of 1893 when they had moved in to High Corner for the holidays. 1892? School fees, and the bill for a bicycle in which Jemmie had invested to reduce his growing stoutness. That bicycle with cushion tires of which Jemmie had been so proud, but which almost immediately became old-fashioned by the invention of pneumatic tires. How Richard and Geoffrey had scorned his offer of it to them! They would not be seen dead on such an out-of-date old boneshaker; and two years later Richard had been given £7 10s. to buy from a friend at school a second-hand one with huge pneumatic tires. His first big present. It had made both him and his mother feel so very old.

1891? The doctor's bill when Richard had diphtheria. That was the year when she might have changed the whole course of her life. Ought she to have confessed the impulse of that May evening to Jemmie before he died? From the file of bills dropped a lilac-hued and even after twenty years still faintly lilac-scented scrap of notepaper.

Frivolity Theater, _May? Wednesday_.

_Darling old Podge_,

_I can get away to-night, so you must come. Thanks everso for the
duck of a ring. My eye, won't it dazzle some of the mashers in the
front row when we open next week. Lots of love._

_From Maudie._

1891? May, 1891? It could not be just a coincidence that this old letter was in the file of 1891. That must have been the year when Jemmie received it. And the month was May. That was the time when Jemmie was so frequently having to be away for the night on business. But why should he have filed only this note? It surely had no more sentimental value than many others he must have received from this Maudie. It must have been put away with his papers by accident. Perhaps this was the very note that kept him from coming home to dinner that night when Pierre came and when Richard fell ill.

"If I had known of the existence of this Maudie, would anything have kept me from going away that night?" Mary asked herself.

The sere chrysanthemums were lost in the wan radiance of the November sunlight: the sodden lawn and greasy London trees vanished: the outlines of other houses no longer affronted the vision. Mighty palms cooled the fervid air with their green and glittering fans: their trunks were wreathed with odorous trumpet-flowers to steal whose honey came fluttering a myriad humming-birds with breasts of emerald and lapis-lazuli, and rubied wings, and tails of fire.

"My boys have cut a path before us through the forest. Let us ride through, my love, to the sea."

Perfume on perfume, color on color, with the forest stretching behind them and before them.

"You are tired, my love. Dismount. Here is a filanjàna in which you may travel through the forest to the sea."

A filanjàna, a filanjàna. Thus had Pierre named the palanquin in which he promised that she should travel with him in Madagascar. A filanjàna! A filanjàna! Swaying lightly in a filanjàna, she traveled on through the forest to the sea. Sun-birds and parroquets and purple kingfishers flew down the forest glade on either side of the gently swaying filanjàna; and so at last they came to the sea ... the sea ... to the nipped and withered chrysanthemums and the slimy city trees.

"If I had known that Richard would be killed ten years later, and that Geoffrey would run off with a barmaid, would I have gone away that night?"

"No."

"Why not?"

"Because I should have known that one day I should be fifty."

"Am I really fifty?"

"Yes. I am fifty, fifty, fifty. How strange that I should have remembered that word filanjàna. It had been hidden away all these years in a secret room of memory like a bit of jewelry that one buys on a voyage."

"Yes, but if I'm fifty, Maudie can't be much less. What happened then to her and what happened then to me matters nothing, to either of us."

"Poor Maudie!"

She could not have had any illusions about Jemmie, or she would never have called him Podge. It was not a name that could share a grand passion. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet. Still, Podge and Juliet. No, whatever Juliet might think about roses and Montagues, she would never have called Romeo Podge.

"But I need not reproach myself with not having told him about Pierre."

How long had Maudie lasted? Probably until Jemmie took up golf, and that was soon after they bought High Corner in 1893. He must have forgotten all about her, or he surely could not have been so indignant with Geoffrey when he was first told about the girl at the White Hart. Yet if Jemmie did involve himself in a romance, it was her own fault. She had never encouraged him to be romantic with her. When they were first married she had let him think that any kind of affectionate demonstrativeness was distasteful to her. It had been. She had known nothing of life. Muriel was different. Somehow girls nowadays seemed able to find out much more. One could not imagine Muriel's marrying anybody, because her mother advised it. But it was time for Muriel to think about marriage. She was twenty-five. The modern girl was inclined to cherish her independence too long and too dearly. Next season it would be well to make a point of inviting suitable young men to the house. Perhaps, with the strain of Jemmie's illness, she had allowed Muriel's interests to be neglected. And Muriel herself was discouraging. She had always been remote even at school; but Newnham had made her more than remote. She was now as unapproachable as the inhabitant of a star. Jemmie, dead though he was, seemed nearer to her than Muriel. It was not surprising that she was still unmarried. Young men must stand in awe of her. Those calm cold eyes lacked any expression that might lead even the most self-confident young man to suppose that she could be thought of in connection with marriage. No doubt, as she grew older, she would acquire the warmth of humanity; but at present she was a statue. And then there was her Socialism. That was a very unattractive side of Muriel. That continuous drip of ice-cold water upon all existing laws and institutions, upon all creeds and sentiments and political opinions, could not but be alarming to the average young man. Why should she be so hostile to established beliefs? It was not as if she had too much church-going forced upon her when she was small. She had had to go to church once every Sunday; but the rest of the day, at any rate when she was at home, had been hers without Puritanical restrictions to sicken her of religion for the rest of her life. Yet the contempt with which she spoke of Christians was quite unpleasant to hear. Moreover, she had a habit of attributing the worst motives to many dull but essentially worthy people, a trick of assuming that they did not in their hearts believe what they professed. According to Muriel the world consisted of idiots and hypocrites, an opinion which was not calculated to make young men fall in love with her. Nowadays, girls were really as great a problem as boys. No wonder people were beginning to have fewer children.

1890 ... 1889 ... 1888 ... these early bills could all be burnt. Ah, there was Markham setting to work at last to clear the borders of the chrysanthemums.

Mary did not change her mind about her visit to Wood Green; nor did she allow herself to be deterred by Muriel's indignation at not being able to have the car in order to drive round the sights of London the Northern delegates to a conference that was being held in town.

"It's very inconvenient, Mother," she protested.

"I daresay it is, dear. But it would be still more inconvenient for me not to have the car this afternoon."

"You see I'd promised the committee...."

"I'm sorry, Muriel dear, but I am unable to let you have the car this afternoon. And your committee cannot complain. They are doing their best to make it impossible for people to keep cars. So really while they allow us to keep them, we had better make the most of them. You'll have to take your party from Sheffield in an omnibus. You can really see more of London from the top of an omnibus."

"The point is that it makes me look somewhat ridiculous," said Muriel.

"No more ridiculous than you would look tearing about London with these gentlemen in your mother's car."

Driving along to Wood Green, Mary wondered why they allowed trams on these crowded roads. They made it most dangerous for a car to drive fast; now that she was on her way to heal a breach that had endured ten years, every minute gained seemed of the utmost importance. It would be terrible to find that Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace a month ago for some unknown destination. He must have read in the _Morning Post_ or in _The Times_ the announcement of his father's death, and if he was still in London it was strange that he had not attended the funeral. A quarrel should not be allowed to endure after death. Of course, there was a chance that Geoffrey had missed the announcement and that he was actually unaware of his father's death. London was so huge. One realized how large it was when one drove along roads like this, past clanging trams full of people, past side-street after side-street, each of them leading to other side-streets which led to others full of human beings who all lived in London just as one lived in London oneself. If Geoffrey had left Almond Terrace, she should never find him; and she might die without his knowing that she was dead, without his knowing that she had sought him out for a reconciliation.

"Does Mr. Geoffrey Alison live here?"

"Ye-es," grudgingly admitted what was evidently a landlady of the common vulturine type, beneath whose outspread apron lurked a fledgling. "Ye-es," she repeated. "Was you wanting to see him about anything?"

"Please."

"Well, he's out," said the landlady with a triumphant sniff. "And not likely to be back till late, what's more. Yes, he was out soon after ten this morning. Soon after ten--well, it was about five after as near as a touch--soon after ten, he was out. I suppose you're from the Pictures where he works? Any message, of course, as you care to leave with me I'll see he 'as it, and no one can't do more than that."

"But I wanted to see him myself," said Mary, pausing undecided upon the steps of the little two-storied house.

"Ah, there you are," the landlady rejoined. "Well, I can't do no more than what I've said. Leave off, do, Eric," she exclaimed, slapping her son's hand for some misdeed committed upon the apron that sheltered him from observation. "One don't know which way to turn with children sometimes, and that's a fact."

"Perhaps I could see ... Mrs. Alison?" Mary suggested.

Little did the landlady know how much it cost her to make that simple inquiry.

"Mrs. Alison?" the woman echoed with a return of that first suspicion in her manner. "Well, I'm sure I don't know what to say. Eric! If you don't give over picking at my boot-buttons, my lad, I'll give you something to remember with next time. Stand up, you naughty boy. Who should I say wants to see Mrs. Alison?"

"I'm Mr. Alison's mother."

This announcement was altogether too much for the landlady, who without another word grabbed Eric by the hand and led the way upstairs to the lodgers' sitting-room.

"Here's Mr. Alison's mother to see you, Mrs. Alison," she exclaimed in the doorway, after which thunderclap she returned to her own intimate glooms at the back of the house, admonishing Eric to ush if he didn't want to get such a slapping as would properly ush him for a week.

As Mary entered, the woman who had ruined her son's life rose from an arm-chair by the fire and putting a finger to her lips pointed to a cot.

"Molly's asleep," she exclaimed.

"My granddaughter," said Mary.

"My little gurl," replied the other with a burr that in these sharp-set London lodgings sounded strange. There was nothing about her except the accent to proclaim that she was rural. Mary remembered that Geoffrey had said she was three years older than himself. That would make her about thirty-two. She looked nearer forty with her thin-lipped anxious mouth, her fretful eyes, and needle-like fingers. It was hard to perceive now what beauty had charmed Geoffrey into marrying her. However, she did not appear blatant, which was something to be thankful for.