Chapter VIII: Part 8

The two women had been watching each other in silence, when the child in the cot gave a low restless cry. At once they both made an instinctive movement to see what was the matter; but the mother was the quicker to bend over and murmur a few soothing words.

"Her teeth are fidgeting her," she explained. "She's been late in cutting them." In that instant she seemed to think that by saying so much she was offering her visitor more than she had intended to offer, and she drew close her eyebrows in a scowl.

"Not that my little gurl's teeth can interest you," she added scornfully.

"On the contrary," said Mary. "They interest me enormously. I did not know until yesterday that I was a grandmother. As soon as I knew, I came to see my granddaughter."

"But you knew that you were a mother ten years ago. You weren't in any hurry to come then except to try and keep Geoff from marrying me. That was all your worry then."

"You must think of the situation from our point of view. Geoffrey was not even of age. It was our duty to protest against his committing himself to a marriage before he knew his own mind. But isn't it rather a mistake to argue about the past now? I am anxious to forget the past."

"Some people can forget very easily," said the younger woman, "others can't."

"You may not know that Geoffrey's father is dead."

"Geoffrey does know, so there. And he wanted to go to the funeral, but I said, 'No, you don't want them to think that as soon as your father died you was looking around for what you might pick up. You let well alone,' I said, and Geoff he took my advice. 'Your father's been dead to you,' I said, 'this many a year. There's no call for you,' I said, 'to attend his funeral all on your own. I'm not going to wear black for him,' I said. 'And I'm not going to his funeral, not if you was to ask me on your bended knees.'"

"Whatever you think about me," said Mary, "you've no right to speak like that about my husband. Why, I've just found out that all these years he has been helping Geoffrey with money whenever he asked for it."

"He wouldn't ever have been asked for it, if I'd had my way. I'd sooner have starved in the gutter, _I_ would. But Geoff's got no pride, Geoff hasn't."

"You should be the best judge of that," said Mary. She regretted the sneer as soon as she had uttered it, not because she minded hurting the feeling of her son's wife, but because it might jeopardize the object she had in view, which was nothing less than to be awarded the guardianship of her granddaughter. An immense jealousy had been roused in her by the sight of the sleeping child, and she was thinking how well she should know with all her experience the way to bring her up. It was imprudent to say anything that might increase her daughter-in-law's hostility. In order to obtain what she desired Mary compelled herself to think of this woman as her daughter-in-law.

"It's no use for you to be sarcastic with me," said Geoffrey's wife. "Geoff's tried being sarcastic once or twice. But he always got the worst of it. Always."

Mary had a vision of Geoffrey's existence during these ten years. She was filled with a profound pity for him, picturing him forever in rooms like these, the prey of his wife's tongue, the victim of her determination to drag him down to her level. It never struck her that the child in the cot whom she was so eager to take for herself was probably the only thing that made his life endurable.

"I'm sure it's a mistake to be sarcastic," Mary admitted. "I'm sorry, Mary. You know I find it quite difficult to call you Mary, because it's my own name. I really came this afternoon to try to effect a reconciliation. I'm anxious to be friends. It's useless to live in the past. We should all be miserable if we did that, for we all of us make mistakes. It struck me that it might be difficult for you and Geoffrey suddenly to re-enter the family circle--a very small circle nowadays. Only myself and Muriel. So, I didn't suggest that you and he should come and live at Woodworth Lodge or anything like that. But what I thought was that perhaps you might be glad to let me assume the responsibility for that little girl in the cot. If she was allowed to live with me, you would of course be coming to see her often, and then gradually we should get to know one another, and this gulf between us might be bridged."

"Never!" cried the mother. "I wouldn't let you have my Molly for nothing. Not if she was going to die the next minute. I'd sooner for her to die than have her go to you. I suppose you think I'm not fit to look after my own little gurl? Well, you've made a mistake, let me tell you. I'm as fit to look after her as what you are. She's mine. She's not yours. She never shall be yours, not while I'm alive anyway. I suppose you think I ought to be so proud because I've married a gentleman that I ought to sit still for the rest of my life with my hands crossed on my lap and do nothing. Only be proud. But I didn't marry Geoff because he was a gentleman. I married him because I loved him. I suppose you think a woman like me can't love? I suppose you think it's only ladies who can love? But that's just where you're wrong. I've loved him so much that I've been angry with myself for being so soft and carried on at him something cruel. You wouldn't have done that, would you? But I've nagged at him until he's been fit to jump into the lake, which is near where we were living at Hopkinsville. Only it isn't like a lake. More like a sea really. I suppose you think that I wouldn't dare to be jealous, just because I'd married a gentleman? I suppose you think I ought to have let him do just what he wanted? Not me. Why, he couldn't be half an hour late without I was ready to tear his eyes out to know where he'd been and what he'd been doing. I reckon sometimes he wished he'd never set eyes on me. But I loved him all the time. You needn't make no mistake about that. I've wished sometimes he'd beat me, but he never raised his hand to me. Not once. Though I've nagged him enough to make any man hit me, even though he might have been a gentleman. And then last year, when I'd given up all hopes of such things, my little Molly came along, and since she came I've been better with Geoff. I seemed to feel he belonged to me at last, because the kid's half him and half me, as I figure it out. And now you come along and want to carry off my Molly. Never. That's my last word. Never! Perhaps if you'd come along before my little girl arrived and wanted to carry off Geoff, I might have let him go. I was fond enough of him to do that, I believe. Once I'd thought it was really for his good. But now him and me has never been such friends, just because we've got the baby. Our baby. His and mine. Not yours, and she never will be."

The child whose future was at stake was disturbed by the clamor of her mother's voice and woke up shrieking.

Mary waited a moment or two in embarrassment, uncertain how to get herself out of the room. In the end she went away in silence.

When she reached home, she sat down and wrote to her daughter-in-law:

Woodworth Lodge, Campden Hill, W., _November 9, 1910_.

_Dear Mary_,

_I am afraid that you misunderstood the spirit in which I paid you
my visit to-day. I feel that you may have imagined that my proposal
for you to let me assume the responsibility for Molly's future meant
that the little girl would be taken away from you. What I intended
was that she should be the means of bringing us all together again.
Perhaps in a little time you will be able to look at the situation
with less bitterness. I do so hope that you will. Please accept this
check as a belated wedding present and_

_Believe me to be, Yours affectionately, Mary Alison._

To which she received the following answer from her daughter-in-law:

_Dear Mrs. Alison_,

_Thank you for the check which I would rather not accept if you don't
mind. I'm sorry I was rude when you came to see me, but I should only
be rude again, and so it's better for you not to come._

_Yours sincerely, Mary Alison._

And from her son:

_My dear Mother_,

_I'm afraid you will think us ungracious in the way we've received
your kindness. I'm afraid that Mary allowed herself to give vent to a
good deal of the resentment she has had ten years to accumulate._

_I feel I ought to have written to you about poor Father's death,
but for various reasons I was naturally a little shy of intruding
myself at such a moment, which I'm sure you will understand. I expect
you know that from time to time Father very kindly helped me with
loans. I should like to be in a position to repay these, but that is
impossible. However, I seem to be fairly well fixed up now in a job,
and I would rather not incur any more obligations. It is better, I
feel, that Mary and I should continue to lead a life apart from the
rest of the family. Please do not think that I am giving way to a
false pride in taking up this attitude. I do feel that I owe a duty
to Mary as the mother of our little girl. I wish I was a better hand
at explaining myself. But she would never fit into the sort of life
she would have to lead if she were to be "adopted" now. You may say
that she never would have fitted in. I do not wish to give the idea
that I am reproaching you for the past, but I do believe that if that
day you came to the hotel where we were staying you had welcomed her
as a daughter you would have found her responsive. She has become
hard during these ten years, because, poor little girl, she felt that
she had spoilt things for me. She was becoming really quite difficult
to manage in her moods until Molly was born. But now, thank God, we
are quite happy together, and so long as I can keep my job I believe
that we shall go on being happy. I very much fear, however, that if
she felt that she was not considered good enough to bring up her baby
she would sink back into her former state of resentment, and the
peace which we now enjoy would be destroyed._

_So please forgive me, dear Mother, for the way we have received your
kind visit. I do often think about you and wish that things had gone
differently. I want you to believe that it is very difficult for me
not to come and see you. But I know that if I did I should be weak
and try to persuade Mary to do what you want. And then there would
be difficulties, and I am so tired of squabbles. I feel wretched at
writing to you like this, but I've braced myself up to do it, and
it's done._

_Your loving son, Geoffrey._

Geoffrey's letter did not have the effect upon his mother of a rebuff. At any rate she had no emotion of mortification or wounded self-esteem when she read it. She felt as if she had tried to bridge the chasm between the living and the dead and failed. Geoffrey had passed out of her life as irrevocably as Richard. She shivered for a moment in the chill of age and wondered how she should occupy herself for the remainder of her life. So long as Jemmie had been alive she had always had somebody who wanted her solicitude, but now that Jemmie was dead nobody seemed to want her. Yes, she ought to have behaved differently ten years ago. She ought not to have let the loss of Richard embitter her like that. It was her own fault that Geoffrey and his wife wanted to live their life apart from her. She could leave money to her grandchild. That was something. It was thoughtful of Jemmie not to attempt to say what was to be done with his money. Her own, of which he had always had complete control, naturally remained her own. It was to be hoped that Muriel would soon be cured of this Socialistic craze. She did not want to have her money spent upon furthering the schemes of faddists. Jemmie would have hated that. Jemmie was always so normal and sensible. If he did have that temporary infatuation, it was her own fault. Twenty years ago she had neglected him, and he had sought consolation elsewhere. Ten years ago she had neglected Geoffrey, and he too had found consolation elsewhere. Before it was too late she must make an effort to understand and sympathize with Muriel. She had perhaps been too ready to believe that the shyness and awkwardness of Muriel's youth sprang from a natural lack of affection. Not that Muriel was so very young nowadays; but the rift had begun when she was still a schoolgirl, and all rifts tended to widen with time.

"Dear child, I wish you'd tell me something about the various movements in which you're interested. I daresay I've been stupidly conservative in my attitude. You know, everything has changed very much during the last ten years. You'll have to be patient with people like me who were brought up to think that Queen Victoria always had been reigning and always would be reigning."

Muriel stared at her mother from those candid blue eyes of hers.

"It's rather difficult to explain suddenly in a few words the culmination of centuries of human thought," she said.

Mary laughed.

"You mustn't snub me like that, Muriel, unless you want me to remain hidebound by my own prejudices and conventions."

"But, Mother, it isn't really worth while for you to believe in what I believe. You must be young to believe it. You must believe that before you die you'll see your dreams brought to pass."

"Am I so old then?"

"You haven't forty years of activity before you. I'm not being very discouraging when I say that."

"Have you forty years before you, dear child?"

"I hope so."

"1950," her mother mused. "So you think that, when you're fifteen years older than I, you'll see the millennium? It sounds a long way off--1950. But, Muriel, you've no idea how near it really is and how little people will have changed."

"You said just now how much they had changed in the last ten years."

"I think that in these ten years they have accomplished what ordinarily would have begun long before and taken longer. You can't expect to have another reign like Queen Victoria's."

"No, thank goodness," said Muriel fervidly.

"England wouldn't be England without that reign."

"The question is, 'Is England our England?'" Muriel countered. "I should say that England belongs to a few rich people and that the reason why it does was the worship of money during the Victorian Age."

"I don't think that people worshiped money then more than they did at any other period of the world's history. People will always worship money, because people worship themselves, and they think that money gives them the opportunity to express that worship."

"It's disgusting," Muriel ejaculated.

"Yes, but have you ever thought how easy it is to be disgusted by anything to do with money when one has plenty oneself? I feel that the best that can be said for your Socialist state is that if nobody could have more than a certain amount and everybody had that amount it might end in people's despising money."

"Oh, my dear mother," Muriel burst in impatiently, "must you really trot out the old legend that Socialism means equal money for all? It doesn't really mean anything of the kind."

In a moment Muriel was embarked upon a passionate disquisition about the real aims of Socialism; and Mary felt with a thrill of pleasure that she had lured her daughter into revealing some of herself without being aware that she was doing so and in the knowledge becoming self-conscious and reserved.

After their talk, in which Muriel admitted that her mother displayed an unusual ability to understand her point of view, there seemed the likelihood of a friendship springing up between the mother and daughter. Mary talked to her about Geoffrey, and it was agreed between them that Muriel should pay a visit to Wood Green.

"For perhaps with tact Geoffrey's wife may grow less suspicious of my advances. I was too precipitate when I visited them in November. I was so much distressed by the rooms and so much upset to think about my own behavior's being the cause of it all, that I foolishly suggested bringing the little girl to live with us here. But if you were to go, dear child, you would manage better than I can to reassure his wife."

A week or two later Muriel set out to pay her first visit; but when she reached 45 Almond Terrace the vulturine landlady told her that Mr. and Mrs. Alison had gone away without an address.

"There's nothing to be done now," Mary lamented. "I left it until it was too late."

"You did all you could, mother."

"_Now_ when it's too late. By the way, dear, I want to give a few very quiet dinner-parties during May. You won't find them too much of a bore?"

"Not if you want to have dinner-parties, mother."

"Well, to be frank, I've been telling myself for some time that you ought to be thinking about getting married. You'll be twenty-six soon, you know, dear, and I _should_ like to see you happily settled."

Muriel's face hardened to that old expression her mother knew and dreaded from her schooldays.

"Mother, I don't intend to get married. The idea is repugnant to me."

"But, Muriel dear, you'll forgive me for saying that you cannot possibly know unless you're married if marriage is repugnant. I can assure you that it's impossible to say anything about it beforehand. Now I was brought up in complete ignorance of facts that I know you consider the merest commonplace of knowledge. I did have a few qualms, I admit; but in my case those qualms were due to ignorance."

Muriel thereupon sprang her mine.

"I hadn't intended to say anything about what I'm going to tell you until next autumn; but it doesn't seem fair to let you give dinner-parties under the delusion that you're likely to make a good match for me by doing so. Mother dear, I've decided to become a sister-of-mercy, and so marriage is utterly remote from my thoughts."

Mary stared at her daughter in amazement.

"Muriel! You extraordinary girl! I thought you hated Christianity. I thought you abominated clergymen. Why, I thought you were only interested in Socialism. I'd no conception that you were giving your mind to religion. The two things seem poles asunder."

"Do they, mother dear?" said Muriel with a smile. "But now I can't imagine any socialism worth having unless it is based upon religion. Equally I can't imagine any religion that isn't the inspiration of a true socialism. I've been thinking about this for a long time now--ever since I went to Midnight Mass last Christmas Eve. It reached me like an inspiration. The truth of it, I mean. My mind is absolutely made up."

Mary had never been so completely astonished in her life. She herself during these last months had wished once or twice that she had thought more about religion, so that now in her loneliness she might have possessed what was evidently to many women an absolute consolation for everything. But it was too late to begin, she had decided. And now here was Muriel wrapped up in religion apparently and taking it so seriously that she intended to become a sister-of-mercy.

"But how could you become religious just by going to a service at an unusual time?" the mother asked.

"I haven't become religious now," Muriel pointed out. "I hate religious people. Though that's a silly thing to say, because I am very 'religious' in a different sense. I tell you, I suddenly believed that Christianity was true; as soon as I believed that I wanted to devote myself to the service of Christianity. I thought that the life of a sister-of-mercy was the life for a Christian woman. I realized that all my theories about human nature were worth nothing without Divine grace to achieve them."

Mary had a flash of illumination.

"Then it was from religious motives that you suddenly became so much quieter and sweeter. I was congratulating myself on effecting that change. Dear child, I wish that I could be given an assurance like yours."

"I always pray that you may receive it."

"Thank you, dear child. That is very kind and thoughtful of you. Of course, I can't argue with you about your resolve. I have really no right to argue on such a subject. I only hope that you will find as much happiness in the life you have chosen for yourself as you might have found in marriage. Which I'm sure you would have found," her mother added.

In the autumn Muriel entered the Community she had chosen, and the widow was left alone in the big house on Campden Hill.

_Chapter Seven_

THE GRANDMOTHER

_Chapter Seven: The Grandmother_

Mary's visitors had left early that December afternoon, and when François came in to turn on the light and draw the curtains, she told him that she would ring for him presently, because she had a slight headache and preferred to sit for a while quietly _dans la crépuscule_. The butler, who had a grave, ecclesiastical dignity, bowed and left Madame to her choice. In the door he turned for a moment and in a tone which deprecated anything that might savor of officiousness in the suggestion begged leave to ask if Madame would like her maid summoned. She shook her head, and he withdrew with another bow that sought to express his perfect comprehension of Madame's desire to be left entirely alone.

Paris was unusually still this afternoon, so still that one seemed to hear the twilight falling upon the world in blue waves of silence. Usually at this hour the _salon_ was crowded with voluble women drinking tea or with men sipping port wine and nibbling ratafias. It was lucky that this afternoon when she had a headache they should all have gone so early. What was the time? Only a little after four. She ought to have told François that she would not be at home to anybody else who called. She made a movement to ring the bell; but even so slight an action was seeming a bore, and she sank back again in the arm-chair, telling herself that François, most accomplished of servants, would know instinctively that she desired to receive no more this afternoon. She hoped that the headache would vanish before dinner, because it was so difficult to have a satisfactory _séance_ unless one was feeling in just the right mood to concentrate. Madame de Sarlovèze had been so emphatic about the abilities of the new crystal-gazer who with remarkable predictions of her clients' futures and even more remarkable knowledge of her clients' pasts had deeply impressed all Paris this autumn. The success of a personality like this Sicilian fortune-teller helped one to realize that the war was over. Not that fortune-tellers had not flourished during the war. Indeed, they could never have been so prosperous; but it was like old times to hear one's friends talking about the latest crystal-gazer, the latest dancer, the latest tenor, the latest nerve-doctor as if until one had fallen in with the fashion and succumbed to their performances one was hopelessly _démodée_.

From some shadowy corner of the inner _salon_ a Siamese cat advanced with outwardly an air of the most supercilious indifference, which was contradicted by miaows of greeting that were to the miaows of ordinary cats as a violoncello to a violin.

"Pierrette!" Mary exclaimed gladly.

The small cat flirted her kinked tail in response, but lest she might seem to have displayed too much dependence upon a poor human being at once sat down and began to clean a slim chocolate paw.

"Pierrette! Aren't you coming to talk to me?"

The answering miaow was almost too deep for a violoncello's capacity. Indeed to call it a miaow was an insult to the jungle noise it was.

"The people have gone, Pierrette. Do come and talk to me. I'll give you all my attention."

Pierrette looked steadily at her friend from large round eyes, the pupils of which distended by the approach of night glowed in the firelight. Presently she drew near to Mary's chair, upon the brocade of which she defiantly sharpened her claws before jumping up with a trill on the black silk lap to which she had been invited. Here she settled down couchant to regard the fire.

"Dear little cat," Mary murmured.

Pierrette's ears twitched back to take in the endearment; the faintest quiver of her tail showed that she had heard, understood, and agreed with the description of herself.

"I was saying to myself that it was getting quite like old times in Paris."

The cat began to purr in approbation of European peace.

Mary stroked Pierrette's back, which was the color of _café-au-lait_, soft and glossy as chiffon velvet. Contact with the small and shapely creature upon her knee was soothing. The grace and youth and vitality of the cat were so superabundant that the human being whom she had decided to favor by making use of was refreshed. It was impossible to feel old with this pulsating life so near to one. Mary patted her affectionately.

"Darling little cat!"

Pierrette's tail really wagged in response to such genuine admiration and love, and because her tail could not express quite all her appreciation she dug her claws into Mary's knee and pressed her warm body closer than before, purring now with a steady monotony of pleasure.

The dusk had deepened, and Mary's head drooped in meditation upon those old times. Had the move to Paris been a success? Or was not her enjoyment of life here an illusion caused by the stimulus of the war? Had her activity, her ceaseless activity during these last six years, in which her hair had grown white, been genuine or artificial? She had seen so many women pretending--not wilfully, but mesmerized into supposing that they really desired to be useful--yes, so many women pretending an activity that was only another aspect of a woman's lust for what was the fashion. Had her Red Cross work been anything more than that? Yet, after all, did the motive matter if the action was good and useful? Questions these that were unanswerable, questions that would never be asked if she were not suffering from the reaction. Thanks to the war her move to Paris had been a success, a great success. She might have found it hard otherwise to have passed these last years. When in 1913, bored with the big empty house, she decided to give up Woodworth Lodge, her imagination had seized upon Paris as the place to live, because she was already beginning to exist only in the past. That meant old age. Youth lives in the future; middle-age stagnates in the present; old age lives again, but alas, in the past, lives with only the ghost of its former life, always in the past. Her first year in Paris had been occupied in furnishing the house and preparing it to be a suitable place in which she might for the rest of her time here sit by the fire and dream of the past. Then the war had happened, and for a few years she had felt so much younger, but now, when it was finished, so much older than the years spent by the war justified her in feeling. She had made many friends. Indeed, she had never possessed so many as now. But these friendships formed late in life had little value. Friendship needed the future. There must exist in any friendship worth having a kind of physical exultation. She was fonder of this little cat than of all her Paris friends, much fonder. Pierrette was young. Youth! Youth! It was not that she longed to be young again herself. That would be foolish and indeed an undignified repining; but to be surrounded by youth, that was surely a legitimate desire.

"And it's that of which fate has robbed me," she sighed aloud.

Pierrette wagged her tail. The sound of her friend's voice was so pleasant to hear, and the silken knee was so delicate a resting-place for a royal cat. This soft-spoken human being deserved a little attention. Her hands were tactful. Not like Célestine's hands. Célestine was the maid who had taken the place of Adèle, dead before her mistress returned to Paris, a move which would have given Adèle so much pleasure. Pierrette did not care for Célestine, who was always lifting her off delightful nests of lace and silk. Célestine, in Pierrette's opinion, had the hands of a butcher rather than of a lady's maid. The thought of Célestine gave her a _fisson_, and she yawned in disgust.

Mary held Pierrette so that the cat's equilibrium should not be disturbed while she leaned over to ring the bell. It was morbid to sit here in the twilight thinking about youth. But when François had arranged to his satisfaction the folds of the brocaded curtains and when he had turned on the lights and left the room in a radiancy of rose, Mary could not think about what she called practical things, which meant the _séance_ she had arranged for to-night. Her headache was gone; but the shadows of the past which had crept out of their lurking-places in the twilight were still in the _salon_, not visible indeed, but all the more hauntingly insistent because they were not visible. The room seemed vaster and lonelier now that every corner of it was illuminated. Mary felt infinitely small and utterly deserted. It was only the company of the small cat which kept her from getting up and hurrying away in panic. "_Le demon du midi_," she found herself repeating. What specter begotten of gloom and shadow could outlive the horror that existed in a desert of light? Her nerves were upset. Perhaps she was indulging too frequently in these spiritualistic experiments. But what else was there to do? If she were to renounce all activity, she would just sit shriveling slowly before the fire. After all, sixty was not such a great age. One would have to be at least seventy before one really considered oneself old. And probably even at seventy one would find that seventy was by no means the great age it had formerly seemed. Even eighty? Grandmamma had been eighty when she died. She had looked very old; but had she really felt old? Did anybody ever really feel old? What seemed so bad about the arrangement of human life was the amount of time wasted at the beginning and the end. The first ten years, for example, what were they worth? Mary was watering her nasturtiums in that abandoned room of the warehouse in Paternoster Row. "Old stock!" She could hear the very tones of Mr. Fawcus' voice. And the sunlight on the golden cross of St. Paul's. It flashed upon her inner eye more vividly than all the sunlight of the last twenty years put together. A sudden pity seized her for the two old people who had fostered her and from whom she had been so abruptly snatched. She saw Mr. Fawcus with his big bandana handkerchief wiping away the tears and waving his farewell from Dover Quay. How little she had understood what it cost them to lose her! How gayly she had set out for Paris! She ought when she was older to have visited them. It was wrong of her grandmother to forbid all intercourse. Suppose she should be given the guardianship of Geoffrey's little daughter, should she try to keep her away from her mother? Mary tried to think that she would not, although it was hard to be charitable about Geoffrey's wife. When he was killed early in 1915, it surely ought not to have been impossible for his wife to forgive. She had written to her so anxiously. Perhaps it had been a mistake to inclose another check. A woman like that might have supposed that she was trying to buy her. Still, to send back the check torn in half, that surely was not justifiable after so many years. She had not suggested that the little girl should be handed over to herself entirely. She had only asked for a few months every year. Would Geoffrey really have wished that his mother should be debarred from helping her granddaughter? Had it really been Geoffrey replying the other evening through the medium of _la planchette_? _Mary must go to her grandmother._ Nobody except herself knew anything about Geoffrey's little girl, and she herself had certainly not guided the pencil. It was all very well for skeptics to say that one guided the pencil unconsciously. Anything could be explained by auto-suggestion; but it was not reasonable to explain the inexplicable by something every bit as inexplicable. If it was auto-suggestion, why had she never succeeded in getting a communication from Richard's spirit. If ever anybody desired with all her heart and soul to speak with one dead, she desired to speak with Richard. Yet he was silent. With all the will she had to believe that he would come to her out of that immense world of death, she had never received any message that could possibly be ascribed to him. How hard she had often tried to twist those unintelligible scrawls into words of hope and assurance from Richard! If auto-suggestion could have done it, surely auto-suggestion would have done it. All theories about the world of spirits were no doubt inadequate; but it seemed natural to suppose that year by year the dead moved farther and farther away from the earth, and therefore that Richard was already beyond her reach. Geoffrey, on the other hand, died comparatively a short time ago. Moreover, without being ridiculous one might imagine that the number of people killed every day during the war would produce---- Mary paused. She could not help feeling that the picture of a crowded railway junction which her ideas of the confines of eternity implied was rather absurd. Perhaps the Sicilian crystal-gazer would throw some light upon the problem this evening. She would make a great effort to put out of her mind the notion of being given the guardianship of Geoffrey's little girl. She would concentrate upon something entirely different. Pierre for instance. He too had been killed out in West Africa early in the war. It was the end he would have chosen for himself. It was a fine death for a man over sixty to be killed in action, a fine death for the boy who fifty years ago had followed the drum-taps along that white road of France. It had given her a thrill of pride to read of his career since he and she parted forty years ago. He was one of those who had helped to prepare his country for the effort she had to make to save herself from the ancient enemy. Thus had they written of him who had loved herself as well as his country forty years ago. Such a little time ago really. If she shut her eyes and thought for a moment, she could reconjure every moment of that last meeting in the drawing-room of the King's Gate house.

"I wonder what you would have thought of Mac?" she asked, stroking Pierrette, who accepted the caress with a purr that showed how far she was from grasping the insult of such a question.

"Mac was a dog, you know. And you don't much care for dogs, do you, my dear?"

Pierrette continued to purr when Mary patted her, laughing.

"Conceited little cat!"

And then once more her consciousness was flooded with the apprehension of how much Pierrette meant to her. Those fragile paws soft as flower-buds with thorns for the unwary, that foolish tail not much bigger than a small cigar and of the same color, and most of all those big blue eyes indifferent as chalcedony, supercilious as a prince of Siam, and for a ball of wool sent rolling across the floor wild as a leopard that waits to spring upon a sheep, how much they represented in her lonely existence.

"Pierrette, would you like to be married?"

The little cat put out her claws with the air of an affronted virgin.

"Wouldn't you like to have a nice husband to play with when I'm too busy to play with you? Wouldn't you like to have dear little snow-white kittens? Because your kittens would be snow-white when they were born, you know. Would you be a good mother?"

Notwithstanding Pierrette's lack of interest in the suggestion, Mary was much taken up by the notion of obtaining a mate for her. It came to seem of the utmost importance that Pierrette should hand on her charm to kittens like herself. The search for a Siamese male as well-bred, as beautiful, and as intelligent as herself occupied Mary's time more successfully than spiritualism. It happened that the crystal-gazer recommended by Madame de Sarlovèze was, at any rate so far as Mary's _séance_ was concerned, a complete failure and unable to perceive anything except various indeterminate shapes which she most dubiously likened to pigeons. When nobody present could muster up the faintest interest in pigeons, the charlatan (thus already Mary characterized her entertainer) suggested even more dubiously that they might be swans.

"Or geese," Mary had muttered sharply, whereupon Madame Diana had turned sulky and complained that she could not hope to have any success with the crystal when scoffers were present.

"The woman's an obvious fraud with her pigeons," Mary declared; and she turned her attention to a husband for Pierrette, a commodity which was unprocurable in Paris. A friend assured her that the best European strain of Siamese cats was to be found in Vienna, and in spite of the difficulties of traveling Mary would have set out for Vienna if another friend had not suggested that the famous strain would by now probably have succumbed to the effects of the war. In the end, she went to England, accompanied by Pierrette, for by now nothing else mattered except that Pierrette should have kittens.

Mary took rooms in the Victoria Palace Hotel overlooking Kensington Gardens, where with Célestine and Pierrette she settled down to spend Christmas. The gayety of the golden shops in High Street reminded her too poignantly of Christmastides when the boys came home from school for the holidays; and when Muriel who had heard of her mother's arrival in England wrote to suggest that she should spend Christmas as the guest of the Community, it seemed a wise way of escaping from the sadness of memory.

The house of which Muriel was sister-in-charge was in a remote Gloucestershire village and was used as a home for old women whom the Order befriended. Mary felt rather like one of those old women herself when she attended vespers in the little chapel on the evening of her arrival. It did not seem credible that the capable sister of whom everybody, including herself, stood so much in awe was her own daughter. Muriel appeared not a day older than when she entered the Order ten years ago.

"I was wrong, dear," her mother said, when she was sitting in the parlor with Muriel during recreation on Christmas Eve. "I was quite wrong, dear, to oppose your becoming a nun. Your intention took me so completely by surprise that I never had time to imagine the lines on which you might develop. It is only now when I see you mistress of your own house, as it were, that I realize how perfectly the life suits your temperament."

And that night when after Mass the old women, flotsam from life's seat at last forever still, knelt round the crib where lay the image of the infant Saviour, Mary began to apprehend that there was in the Christian religion something more satisfying than the ambiguous promises and performances of crystal-gazers, than the always to be suspected rappings and tappings of mediums. Her mind went back to hours spent with Mademoiselle Lucinge in her gray room at Châteaublanc when the garden was melodious with autumnal birdsong and above the notes of robin-redbreasts Mademoiselle spoke to her about God. This summer she would revisit Châteaublanc, and perhaps in the little church where her old school-mistress had prayed for the woes of France to be lightened she should find that perfect assurance of something beyond which had been denied to her grandmother, but granted to her own daughter. She looked across to where in the flickering candlelight Muriel knelt praying, her eyes turned heavenward and full of tears. Tears for what? For the mere imagination of the reality of that Divine Infant in the manger of Bethlehem. To Muriel's limpid faith had been granted all that motherhood could confer on woman. To her kneeling there belonged a baby that would never grow up to compass her disillusionment, a baby that promised to all who believed in Him immortal life. Hers, hers by the gift of faith.

Yet when Mary tried to give herself what she was able to understand had been given to Muriel, she could only perceive the image and miss the reality it tried to express. The faces of the old women kneeling round the crib appeared as meaningless as a row of pippins on the shelf of a store-room. For the sake of a comfortable bed and plenty of food they would have been every bit as willing to kneel round _la planchette_.

"Do you believe, dear child, in the possibility of communicating with the dead?" Mary asked her daughter at the first opportunity she was given of talking to her in private.

"If you mean, do I believe in spiritualism, I certainly do not," said Muriel severely. "And if there _is_ anything in it, I should say that it was controlled by the spirits of evil. I wish you wouldn't practice such a wretched substitute for worship," she continued. "I cannot understand why people who profess to believe in such hocus-pocus do not submit themselves to the demands of a true religion. It is surely just as easy to accept the doctrines of Christianity as the frauds of mediums."

"There are some people, Muriel, who think that real religion has been ruined by ecclesiastical bigotry. Personally I have never been able to accept a man-made religion. You see, dear, I have been so much in the world. I have suffered so many disappointments and disillusionments that the notion of a man standing between myself and the hereafter is repugnant."

"My dear mother, if you will forgive me for saying so, you are really talking nonsense. All your life you have been accustomed to rely upon yourself instead of upon God. You cannot expect to receive faith if you do not ask for it."

"Auto-suggestion!" Mary exclaimed. "When I receive a direct communication from the world of spirits, I am told it is auto-suggestion. But surely to receive a belief that you expect to receive can only be called auto-suggestion. Mind, I do not say that what you believe is not true. I am perfectly sure in any case that it is highly suitable for you to believe it, for I have never seen you looking better. Nothing could have given me greater delight than to behold your happiness in the life to which you have dedicated yourself. I am only trying to suggest that there may be other ways of approaching the unseen and, however inadequately, of solving the great problem that lies before us all, a problem which I am likely to solve, I hope, many years before you. I hold no brief for spiritualism. In fact, the more I see of its practice the less I am attracted to it. I envy you your faith, dear child. I envy and respect it. And I've greatly enjoyed my little visit."

"It is very peaceful down here," Muriel agreed with a smile.

"And old age will have no terrors for you," her mother murmured. "Because I understand so well that for you old age will simply seem a slow and tranquil drawing nearer to God. Happy little girl of mine!"

"Yes, I am happy."

"And that makes me happy, for it helps me to realize that so far as my children are concerned I have not been a complete failure. I wish I could stay here longer, but I've left my little cat in London with only my maid to look after her, and I think I ought to be getting back."

Mary perceived that an obligation to a cat was something utterly incomprehensible to her daughter, and when she kissed her good-by, kissed those cheeks cold and faintly flushed like the petals of a Christmas rose, she felt that she was parting from a creature more remote than either of her dead sons.

"Flesh of my flesh," Mary thought. "And yet my little cat is nearer to me. Those are the kind of puzzles that really do make human life a riddle."

Mary remembered how sometimes her grandmother had tried to draw near to herself, because the two of them were all that was left of a family.

"She must have supposed that my remoteness came from my mother's blood. But it probably would not have made much difference if I had been her own daughter. I suppose that we all grow to resent those first years of dependence upon other people. I suppose we all care only to think of ourselves as complete personalities. And is there anything more to come? Is there? Is there? Or do we instinctively know that this life is the whole of our individual life and for that reason do we cling so hard to being ourselves while we live it? And when we are growing old, do we crave for the contact of youth in order to delude ourselves with the belief that we shall grow young again in death?"

When Mary reached the hotel, she was met by Célestine with a grave and frightened countenance.

In a moment Mary guessed what had happened. "Pierrette is ill."

The maid burst into tears.

"Very ill?"

"_Madame, Pierrette est morte. J'ai télégraphié ce matin. Le medicin était très brave pour elle, mais la grippe, Madame, la grippe! Elle a souffert beaucoup, la pauvre petite!_"

The manager of the hotel drew near to express his condolences and to explain that he had assisted Mrs. Alison's maid in every way by telephoning for the best veterinary doctor in Knightsbridge. He had advised Mrs. Alison's being communicated with by telegram as soon as the animal's serious condition was obvious. Yesterday it had seemed unnecessary to summon Mrs. Alison back from the country. Of course, if he had known then that the illness was likely to terminate fatally he should have done so. He appreciated what the loss of such a pet meant. Only this summer his wife had lost a pet cockatoo, and she had been quite inconsolable for two days. One did not expect a cockatoo to die suddenly. One always thought of them as living forever. He was sorry that it had not been possible to keep the dead cat in the hotel, but Mrs. Alison would understand that it might be liable to create an unpleasant impression upon the other guests. So many people dreaded influenza in any shape. It was with the deepest regret that he had ordered the remains to be taken away; but he was sure that the sight of the poor little dead animal would have been a grief for Mrs. Alison. Could he send anything up to her room? It was early for tea; but, after her journey and the sad news, perhaps Mrs. Alison would like her tea early.

"We shall return to Paris to-night," said Mary. "Go and pack my things, Célestine. I do not wish to go upstairs to my room. I shall take a little walk in the Gardens by myself. By myself."

It was an afternoon of silver frost and sunshine under a pale blue December sky. The walks of Kensington Gardens were thronged with children whose vivid laughter made Mary feel of less account in the human scene than one of the skeleton leaves lying on a bed of last year's flowers. She tried to escape from the sounds of youth and merriment; but wherever she walked the air was full of laughter, the crystalline air tinkled with laughter.

Had Pierrette wanted her at the end? Had she failed the one living creature in the whole world that might have looked to her? Question for evermore unanswerable, regret for evermore unquenchable, longing for evermore unappeasable!

She had not felt able to revisit the room where she had left Pierrette sitting so cosily by the fire, when she set out to Gloucestershire; and yet she had been able to decide to go back to the house in Paris which without Pierrette would seem emptier, vaster, lonelier than ever.

If now she could pray!

For what?

For mercy upon her old age.

For something to lead her out of the shadows.

Darling little cat! Not ever again to feel those silken chocolate paws. Not ever again to hear that deep miaow, nor behold those unyielding eyes of blue, nor watch that absurd tail respond to her lightest murmur on the assumption that any sound uttered in an empty room was intended for herself.

An empty room? Empty indeed now, a thousand times emptier now that Pierrette was dead.

If she could only pray!

Would that serene daughter of hers be able to pray if she found herself alone like this under the trees that looked not a day older than when forty years ago she had walked beneath their boughs with Mac? Would not Muriel suffer a dismay? Would not she doubt the value of her prayers?

There would be no communication with the spirit of Pierrette. There would be no deep-voiced miaows scrawled by _la planchette_, not with the help of all the auto-suggestion in her being. She was irrevocably vanished, as irrevocably as a flower.

The little cat was not. Her grace and beauty were lost; her lithe and shapely form was destroyed. Her memory would endure for a little while until her friend died; and when she died there would never have been a cat called Pierrette. She would be less than one of the crushed shells among these myriads of crushed shells that were strewn upon the walks of Kensington Gardens. How heedless was the laughter of the children all around her, and yet there were few of those children who would not themselves know sorrow before they were old. Would they hear then the echo of their youth's heedless laughter?

When Mary came back to the house in Paris she found a letter waiting for her.

92 Carminia Road, Balham, S.W., _December 26, 1920_.

_Dear Madam_,

_This is to inform you that last week Mrs. Alison, your
daughter-in-law, died of the influenza very suddenly the week before
Xmas. As I understood from her who was her sister that you were
anxious to have the care of her little girl, and as me and my husband
cannot undertake the responsibility we are taking the liberty of
asking if you would kindly accept delivery of the little girl as per
this letter. My sister, Mrs. Alison, kept your address in her writing
materials and I have taken the liberty to write to you direct hoping
I may be pardoned for the intrusion. She is a very nice well-behaved
little girl and my husband and me are very sorry to part with her
which we wouldn't want to do if we hadn't six of our own which
makes it a bit difficult in a small house and not being very rich
people. The little girl could be dispatched to Paris to suit your
convenience if you would kindly remit cost of sending her as per your
instructions which we duly await._