Chapter X: White Roses

I

IT was the first of many amazing adventures, to which Matthew Boyce supplied a calculated and cynical commentary, watching Edwin as though he were the subject of a physiological experiment—as indeed he was. But lack of sympathy in one quarter was scarcely likely to worry Edwin when he had found it so overwhelmingly in another. In a few days Miss Latham, the most tactful of duennas, had withdrawn from the scene. On the first night of their acquaintance Edwin had taken the hazel-eyed Miss Beaucaire back to her lodgings in Prince Albert’s Place at the back of the theatre, where the pantomime was in rehearsal. All the way through the squalid, lamp-lit streets they had talked of things that were entrancing, simply because they had to do with her. Edwin thought that no companionship in all his life had been so natural and so easy; and this was not surprising, for the young woman, in addition to physical charms that were armoury enough in themselves, had developed the faculty commonly acquired by ladies of her profession, of devoting herself entirely to the companion of the moment and giving the impression that she had never known, and would never want to know, any other person in the world. Rosie was only twenty-four, but had given at least the last third of her life to studying male of the species of which Edwin was a peculiarly ingenuous example. At the door of her lodgings she had conjured an atmosphere of mysterious intimacy. Speaking in a voice that was low and of a thrilling tenderness, she had said:—

“I mustn’t ask you to come in to-day. It’s a dreadful shame; but mother has one of her headaches, and the noise might disturb her. You understand, don’t you?”

Edwin, with a vision of an elderly and delicate version of Rosie herself lying on a sofa with a handkerchief dipped in eau-de-cologne over her eyes, assented. He thought it a very beautiful consideration on Rosie’s part. A small black and tan terrier came dancing into the hall with a friendly yelp.

“Be quiet, Imp . . . oh, _do_ be quiet! Isn’t he a duck?” she said. “Now, I must really go.” She held out her hand. A moment before she had taken off her glove, and Edwin, who had scarcely ever touched the hand of a woman before, thought that her fingers were the softest and most delicate things on earth.

“You’ll come and have tea with us, won’t you? I should like you to meet mother.”

“Of course, I’d like to. When?”

“Oh . . . quite soon. Any day this week. Promise me you won’t forget . . .” As if he could ever forget! Her exquisite humility quite bowled him over. When she had closed the door behind her he walked away dazed with an unfamiliar emotion that made the mean street, with its uniform row of mid-Victorian houses on one side, and on the other the blank wall of the theatre and huge, sooty warehouses, seem a holy place. The Halesby Road, with its streaming traffic, shared the same transfiguration. The speed and strength of the horses enthralled him; the faces of men and women walking homeward from their work in the city seemed triumphantly happy; the smooth wood-pavement, polished by the rolling of innumerable wheels, shone like a street in heaven. It seemed to Edwin as if the whole world had somehow been uplifted by a secret knowledge of his own experience. A night of wonder. . . .

“Well, what is the young woman’s name?” asked Boyce, when he returned to Easy Row.

“Beaucaire. She’s principal girl in the pantomime at the Queen’s.”

“H’m. . . . Attractive little piece. But she can’t be up to much if she’s a pal of the Latham woman’s. I’ve seen her there several times.”

“Oh, that means nothing,” Edwin explained. “I don’t think she’s at all keen on her. They acted together somewhere years ago. You can’t drop people when they’ve been kind to you. I don’t think she’s at all keen on her. She’s quite all right. Lives with her mother in Prince Albert’s Place.”

“Pretty rotten sort of street. Got a bad name, you know. I believe, as a matter of fact, it’s considered rather the thing to lug an official mother about with you.”

“You don’t mean—” Edwin began, going very white.

“Of course I don’t. I don’t know anything about her. Only, for God’s sake, take care of yourself. A young woman of that kind generally has a fair share of experience, and you . . . well, you _haven’t_ exactly. Besides, it’s just as well to remember that the final’s coming off in ten days.”

The less said about the final the better.

“She isn’t a chorus girl, you know. If you’d met her I think you’d admit that she’s a lady. She told me that her mother—”

Boyce chuckled.

“As a matter of fact,” said Edwin, clinching the argument, “her father was a country parson in low circumstances.”

“I understand they usually are,” said Boyce with a yawn.

Their night was complicated by two new cases. Next morning they appeared at breakfast with slightly ruffled tempers. They sat at opposite ends of the table, Edwin reading, without understanding, one of Oldham’s caustic critiques on a symphony concert the night before, his friend glued to his beloved anthology.

“What did you say her name was?” said Boyce, apropos of nothing. “Rosie, wasn’t it?”

Edwin grunted.

“Have you ever sampled the _Sortes Virgilianae_? I sometimes try that trick with the anthology. There are plenty of generalisations, so it often comes off rather well. How’s this for last night?”

“H’m—”

“Are you listening?”

“Yes, fire away.”

Boyce quoted:—

Ή τὰ ῥόδα, ῥοδόεσσαν ἔχες χαῤίν, ἀλλὶ τί πωλἔς
σαντήν, ἢ τἃ ῥόδα, ἠὲ συναμφοτερα;

“Rather neat, isn’t it? While I was hanging about that case in Craven Street, I made a translation for you. Tell me what you think of it.

‘You of the roses, rosy-fair,
Sweet maiden, tell me whether
You or the roses are your ware,
Or both of them together.’”

“Damned rotten, anyway,” said Edwin. “Maiden’s the wrong word . . .”

It comforted him, none the less, to find that Rosie did not revisit Miss Latham, though this lady pointedly rallied him on the doorstep, suggesting that his intimacy with Miss Beaucaire had reached a stage to which he had not yet attained but aspired devoutly. The work at Easy Row, that had slackened for a few days, came on with a rush; and though the image of this delicate creature now filled his nightly vigils, being even more precious for the squalid surroundings in which it came to him, he found it impossible to visit the lodgings in Prince Albert’s Place, to which his thoughts with tantalising regularity returned.

The flood of work held until their fortnight was out, leaving them both washed-out and irritable. To speak frankly, the last few days of their comradeship had not been a success. Although Edwin made it clear that he didn’t wish to discuss the affair of Rosie with Boyce, the incident of the Greek epigram rankled. He found it impossible to take the matter lightly, feeling that it was necessary to convince himself at all costs that he wasn’t making a fool of himself, and finding it difficult to do so.

On the Monday next before the final examination he found himself a free man. It was a questionable liberty, for its enjoyment really depended on the result of this ordeal. He had definitely severed his connection with Dr. Harris, intending to devote all his spare time at Easy Row and the week after to preparations for the exam. A big gamble. . . . Ten pounds and a few shillings was all he possessed in the world, except a problematical degree in medicine which, in another seven days, might make him certain of four guineas a week as long as he chose to work. The margin seemed so small and the chance so desperate that he burned the last of his boats, selling his microscope to a pawnbroker for twelve pounds. Twenty-three pounds. . . . One could do a lot with twenty-three pounds . . . supposing nothing went wrong.

He found a cheap bed-sitting-room in a quiet street at the back of the University buildings. Here, and in the museums, he would be able to put in a week of intensive cramming. He found that he couldn’t do it. He had reckoned without the unreasonable quantity of Rosie. The first night on which he settled down to read in his new lodging the thought of her would not let him rest. It was ridiculous. What he wanted was a hard walk. He would go up to Alvaston and rout Boyce out of his study for a tramp in the moonlight towards Southfield Beeches. He would apologise to Boyce for his bearishness during the last few days. Hadn’t they assured each other on one of their ambrosial evenings at Overton more than a year ago, that the friendship of two men was a more precious and lasting experience than anything that the love of a woman could give? The whole thing was just the result of physical staleness: a symptom of the monotonous fatigue of the last year. He was going to get rid of it at all costs. He turned out the gas and went downstairs.

It was a discouraging night. A soft winter drizzle had set in from the West, and in the jaded Halesby Road nebulous street lamps were reflected in a layer of black slime that covered the wood-pavement. The shop windows were misted with rain, and the few people who had ventured out into the street trod carefully as though they were afraid of slipping. A brutal night if ever there was one. Plodding up the street with the rain in his face he found that he was passing the end of Prince Albert’s Place. He passed it by twenty paces, and then, almost against his will, turned round again. It was no good. There she was, for certain, within forty yards of him. If he were to walk along the road on the opposite side under the blank walls of the warehouses, he would be able to see the very room that held her exquisiteness. He did so. There was a light in the front room of the lower story, but the blinds were down, and he could not see any one inside. He crossed the road boldly and stood for a moment on the doorstep. It gave him a peculiar stab of happiness to feel so near her. He railed against the combination of shyness and convention that held him; for if he were to do the thing that was reasonable and downright, he would have walked straight into the house and told her the thousand things that choked his heart—he would have kissed her soft hands and gazed into her shy, adorable eyes. Yes, he would have kissed her eyes too. No doubt it would rather have taken the mother’s breath away. Probably Rosie had never given him another thought since he left her on the doorstep. That was the funny part of it. He laughed at himself, and the sound of his laugh must somehow have penetrated the hall, for the black and tan terrier barked shrilly. “Really, I’m off my head, you know,” he said to himself, and wandered off again into the wet streets, walking, until the small hours, those unimaginable slums in which his labours of the last fortnight had lain. “God . . . it’s ridiculous!” he thought, “but a man can’t help falling in love.” It seemed to him that the phantom of Dorothy Powys regarded him seriously.

II

Next afternoon he presented himself at Prince Albert’s Place. A landlady who might well have been Mrs. Meadows’s sister took in his card, and after a little buzz of conversation that might have been explained in a dozen sinister ways, he was admitted to the little room, whose lighted windows he had surveyed the night before. Rosie came forward to meet him. Once again, trembling, he took her hand. He even fancied—divine flattery!—that she blushed.

“This is my friend Dr. Ingleby, mother,” she said.

“Very pleased to meet you, I’m sure,” said Mrs. Beaucaire. “Won’t you come and sit over here?”

In the shadow of Mrs. Beaucaire Edwin took his seat. She was a large woman with a husky voice and a big, dissipated face that had once been handsome. If she had any place in the scheme of things it was surely as a foil to the fragile grace of her daughter. Rosie, with an occasional sideways glance, was busy talking to a little man with a blue shaven chin and an immense mobile mouth, who looked like a bookie.

“I suppose you know Mr. Flood?” said Mrs. Beaucaire.

Edwin confessed that he did not.

“_The_ Mr. Flood, you know. Bertie, this is Mr. Ingleby. . . . I beg your pardon, _Dr._ Ingleby,” and the great comedian shook hands with Edwin and hoped he was well.

The atmosphere of the lodgings was very easy and familiar. Bertie Flood, the Mirth-maker of Three Continents, as the newspapers described him, devoted himself in an easy paternal manner to Rosie. It became apparent to Edwin, overshadowed by the bulk and impressiveness of Mrs. Beaucaire, that whenever Mr. Flood could make an opportunity of handling Rosie, he did so, and also that Rosie did not in any way resent the process. It even seemed to him that she invited Mr. Flood’s attentions.

“We’re very unconventional people, you know, Dr. Ingleby—quite Bohemian,” said Mrs. Beaucaire in a thick voice.

Edwin agreed that the relation was delightful. It was only by an effort of concentration that he could hear what the mother was saying. All the time his eyes were on Rosie, so divinely fragile in her white muslin blouse. He shuddered when Bertie Flood touched her. Nothing but the delightful innocence of the girl could have induced her to suffer the presence of this satyr. And yet it seemed to him that she was doing all that she could to please him. . . .

“Yes, my poor husband: the vicar I always call him—habit, you know—had a small parish in the North of England. I have a son in the church too. Both he and Rosie really take after the father.”

“Yes. . . . Exactly,” said Edwin. In that moment Rosie had smiled at him, and the smile was enough. God, what a woman!

“The vicar came from a very old family. In the North it is recognised, but in a place like North Bromwich it is very difficult for us to meet the right sort of people. I have to be very careful for Rosie’s sake. The child is so trusting. I was so glad, you know, when she told me that she had met you at Miss Latham’s. One feels so safe with a doctor. You’ll be able to look after her a bit . . . see that she don’t get too tired. Pantomime is very tiring, you know. I myself suffer agonies from indigestion. What with that and my headaches, I’m afraid I’m a poor companion for her. As I say, both the children take after the dear vicar. Rosie isn’t a bit like me.”

“No,” said Edwin, still dazed by the memory of her smile; but, as he spoke, his eyes met those of Mrs. Beaucaire, and he saw to his amazement that they were really the eyes of Rosie, that her discoloured nose had once been of the same shape as her daughter’s, that the sagging, sensual mouth was in fact a degraded version of Rosie’s too. It was a revelation, blasphemous but prophetic. He would not consider it. He dared not look at her.

A moment later Bertie Flood left them. Tea wasn’t much in his line, he said, and his complexion confirmed the assertion. Mrs. Beaucaire saw him to the door. Edwin and Rosie were alone.

It was a wonderful minute. He felt that she could never seem more beautiful, more delicate, more exquisite than at this moment standing in her pale loveliness against the grimy lodging-house wallpaper, with her hands clasped before her.

“I had to come,” he said.

“I had been expecting you. I’m awfully glad you found time.”

Found time! . . . He wanted to tell her of his strange adventure of the night before: how he had stood in the dripping rain beneath her window, hungry for the sight of her, unsatisfied. She stood as though she would be glad to listen; but there was no time. Mrs. Beaucaire, after a noisy and pointed demonstration in the hall, re-entered. It seemed that there was nothing left for him but to take his departure.

“Surely you’re not going so soon?” she said.

And he stayed. It was all delightfully intimate and domestic. These people seemed to possess the rare faculty of putting a visitor as shy as Edwin at his ease. Mrs. Beaucaire did most of the talking, enlarging on Rosie’s devotion to the parson brother, regretting that circumstance, and possibly the unreasonable prejudice of country people against theatrical connections, had deprived him of the family living: and Rosie listened quietly, more compelling in her demure silences than Mrs. Beaucaire at her most impressive.

Once or twice in the afternoon that lady tactfully left them, returning, each time with a renewed vigour and a scent that suggested the combination of eau-de-cologne and brandy. These solitary moments were very precious to Edwin. Neither of them spoke more than a few words, but the air between them seemed charged with emotion. It was six o’clock when he left Prince Albert’s Place.

“You won’t forget us, will you?” said Mrs. Beaucaire with enthusiasm. “It will be so nice for Rosie to have some one to take her to rehearsal. I don’t like her mixing with the boys in the company. It isn’t the thing. And we don’t happen to have any really nice friends in the Midlands. In the North it would have been quite different.”

A delirious week slipped by. In spite of every resolution Edwin had found it impossible to work. His new lodging was not inspiring; but this was only one of the excuses that he invented to salve his conscience. He knew the real reason for this divine, unreasonable restlessness. Even if it were to wreck his chances in the final examination it could not be avoided, and there was no reason why it should be excused. He knew that he was in love, and before this unquestionable miracle he abased himself.

Mrs. Beaucaire, now satisfied that she could indulge a “headache” and take to her bed as often as she chose, did not question his presence at Prince Albert’s Place: she was even ready on occasion to treat it with a mild facetiousness. Rosie, who lapped up adoration as naturally as a kitten takes to milk, treated it as a matter of course. Edwin rather wished that she wouldn’t take as a matter of course the most wonderful thing in the world. There was a passivity in her acquiescence that filled him with a fear that she was used to this sort of thing or even a little bored by it. She mopped up his devotions with an ease that would have been disconcerting if he had not always been bemused by her beauty. Surely it was enough that she should be beautiful!

In the morning—Mrs. Beaucaire always had a headache of another kind next day—Edwin would escort Rosie to her rehearsal at the theatre. He became familiar with the frowsty box in which the lame stage-doorkeeper sat like an obscene spider guarding the baize-covered board on which the company’s letters were kept. The man came to know him and would pass him in through the swinging doors with a peculiarly evil leer. Sometimes, at the stage door they would become involved in a mass of patchouli-scented chorus, and Edwin would thrill at the dignity and refinement with which Rosie, in her white fox furs, would slip through this vulgar tumult.

So to the stage with its vast cobwebbed walls, its huge echoes and the mysterious darkness of the flies, where looped ropes and grimy festoons of forgotten scenery hung still as seaweed in a deep sea. There, in the sour and characteristic odour of an empty stage, Edwin would wait for her in a little alcove of the whitewashed wall in which iron cleats were piled, and the unmeaning murmur of the rehearsal would come to him mingled with the shrill voice of the producer, who ended every sentence with the words “my dear,” or “old boy,” and the noise of the carpenter hammering wood in the flies. His original acquaintance, Miss Latham, discreetly avoided him, but the comedian, Bertie Flood, seemed inclined to be familiar. One morning he dragged Edwin off to his dressing room for a smoke. He sat with his legs on either side of a chair, his fawn-coloured bowler on the back of his head, looking more than ever like a bookie.

“Well, old boy,” he said, “how goes it? How’s the little Beaucaire?”

“She’s all right, as far as I know,” said Edwin, who was inclined to resent the description.

“Ma had any headaches lately? I know what ma’s headaches will end in. Cirrhosis of the liver. You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Well, I know all about that. Had it myself. Just realised in time that it didn’t pay. Now I never touch anything but gin. Do you want a word of advice?”

Edwin thanked him.

“May seem funny from a chap that gets two hundred a week for making a damn fool of himself.”

“Not at all,” said Edwin politely.

“Well, if you’ll take my advice, you’ll go easy in that direction. Treat it as a business proposition. Ma’s a bad old woman . . . only don’t tell her I said so. You see I’m a friend of the family. Dear little girl, Rosie, too. _Verbus Satienti_—I always let ’em think I was at Oxford—Good for business.”

It was rather disturbing; for though it was no news to Edwin that Mrs. Beaucaire’s headaches were euphemistic, the fact had done no more than contribute to the ideal qualities with which he had invested her daughter. There was something romantic as well as pitiful in the idea of Rosie’s contrasting innocence: the rose that has its roots in foulness is not less a rose. It had even seemed to him that the complete collapse of Mrs. Beaucaire might throw Rosie into his arms: a situation that would be full of romantic and tender possibilities; and the girl’s inimitably virginal air was enough to convince him that Bertie Flood’s other suggestions were no more than the natural products of a mind degraded by the atmosphere of the music-hall. He was convinced too that he had no cause for jealousy. Ever since he had first visited her, Rosie had never spent more than a few hours of daylight out of his sight.

On the last day of the week before the examination his confidence suffered something of a shock. It was a raw winter morning, but he had set his heart on taking her into his own hill-country, and she, with her usual sweet submission, but without a hint of enthusiasm, had consented. He had planned to avoid the Halesby side of the range and to approach it from the southern escarpment. Early in the morning he paid a visit to Parkinson’s, the florist’s, in the Arcade, where he bought a bunch of pale, exotic roses: white roses, that should match her own sweetness and fragility. Once she had expressed a general liking for flowers, and since then it had been his delight to give them to her. She mopped up his flowers and his passion with the same dreamy passivity.

From the corner of the Place he saw a weedy, black-coated figure in front of Number Ten; and as he approached, the figure entered and the door closed behind him. Edwin wondered vaguely if it might be the parson brother. The landlady opened the door in a flurry. It almost seemed as if she wanted to conceal something.

“I don’t think Miss Beaucaire can see you for a bit,” she said. “Won’t you call later in the morning?”

He told her that he would wait, as they had an appointment, and a train to catch.

“Then will you kindly wait in my room. You mustn’t take any notice of the state it’s in,” she said, still on the defensive.

The state of the landlady’s room was not inspiriting. On a dirty table cloth lay the remains of last night’s supper. On the window sill stood a chevaux de frise of empty brandy bottles that Edwin couldn’t help associating with Mrs. Beaucaire. The arm-chairs, covered with dirty chintz overalls that suggested a layer of more ancient dirt beneath, were not inviting. He preferred to stand. The house was as quiet and secretive as usual; but from the next room he heard an irritating rumour of voices. One of the voices, he could have sworn, was Rosie’s. A little later he heard a laugh, and the suspicion became a disquieting certainty, for the laugh was one that he knew well—with a difference. It was as if Mrs. Beaucaire had laughed with Rosie’s voice. He found it difficult to restrain himself from bursting into the room and settling the matter once and for all. Again the laugh—and then a long silence. He heard steps in the passage, a whispered conversation with the landlady, and then Rosie came in to him, flushed, and with her fair hair disordered. He could not speak. He only gave her the roses.

“Thank you, Eddie,” she said, scarcely noticing them. Her lips were parted and her eyes shone with excitement. She had never seemed to him more beautiful, but there was something frightening in her beauty.

“Whatever is the matter with you?” she said. “Why do you look so serious?”

“Who was your visitor?”

“Oh, that’s it, is it? You silly boy! You surely don’t mean to say you’re jealous?”

“Please tell me—”

“It was only a priest. I had to make my confession.”

“A priest? I thought your people belonged to the Church of England.”

“That doesn’t prevent me from being a Catholic. It’s much better for professional girls to be Catholics. They look after you when you’re on the road.”

He could not say any more about it. It seemed to him that her eyes were anxious as though she were not quite sure how much he had heard.

“You believe me, don’t you?” She spoke in a frightened whisper.

“Of course I do. We’ve just time for our train. You are coming, aren’t you?”

She said: “Of course I am,” and ran upstairs singing to put her hat on.

The roses lay neglected on the sideboard where she had placed them. In five minutes she returned, thoroughly dressed for her new role of country girl with brogued shoes and a short skirt of Harris tweed.

“I’m ready,” she said gaily.

It was a wonderful day. They walked together under dull skies that made the berries in the hedgerows and the waning fires of autumn glow more brightly, and even ministered to the girl’s own beauty. The cool air and the walking made her cheeks glow with a colour that was natural and therefore unusual. Edwin was so entranced with her companionship that he forgot his anxiousness of the morning; so lost in the amazing beauty of her hazel eyes and her cheek’s soft contour that he did not notice that she was limping. Halfway to the summit of the hills she stopped, gave a little sigh, and sat down on the bank of a hedge.

“I’m awfully sorry, Eddie. My foot hurts. I think this shoe’s too tight.”

“They look simply splendid.”

“I know. I only bought them yesterday—just specially for to-day.”

“But it’s ridiculous to go for a long walk in new shoes!”

“Do you mind if I take them off for a minute?”

“Of course not. Let me undo the laces.”

He knelt at her feet. It was a wonderful and thrilling experience to loosen the laces, to feel her small feet in their smooth silk stockings. His hands trembled.

“I wish you wouldn’t touch my feet. I’m awfully sorry: it’s one of the things I can’t bear. You don’t mind, do you?”

“You mustn’t blame me. They’re so beautiful.”

She smiled. Her modesty delighted him.

Sitting there together, so miraculously alone, he began to talk about his future. “I shan’t see you for a whole week. It will be unbearable. But when the exam. is over and I’m qualified it will be such a relief. I shall feel able to say the things that I want to say to you.”

For a long time she was silent. Then she said: “What are you expecting to do?”

“I think I shall go in for one of the services. What do you think of the Indian Medical? It would be wonderful to see India. I’ve always thought that I should like to know something of the world. I think it’s a good life. Women generally love it. What do you think about it?”

“I should think it would be rather nice. But wouldn’t it be awfully hot? I’ve known one or two boys in the Indian Army. There’s lots of dancing and that sort of thing, isn’t there?”

He laughed. Dancing wasn’t his strong point, as Professor Beagle could have told her, and in any case India didn’t mean dancing to him. She did not seem at all anxious to pursue the subject.

“I think we could walk back to the hotel now,” she said. “I’m simply starving.” They walked down the hill together, almost in silence. When they reached the hotel, she disappeared in the company of the barmaid, leaving Edwin to wait for her in the coffee-room. He almost resented her absence. He felt that he couldn’t spare her for a moment. Waiting at the table he picked up a week-old copy of the _North Bromwich Courier_. Gazing idly at the front page, he caught sight of his own name. It was the announcement of a wedding.

INGLEBY: FELLOWS. On the tenth of December, at the Parish Church,
Halesby, John Ingleby to Julia, elder daughter of the late Joseph
Fellows, of Mawne, Staffs.

He was overwhelmed with a sudden indescribable emotion that was neither jealousy, anger, nor shame, but curiously near to all three. He sat bewildered, with the paper in front of him. Rosie returned to find him blankly staring.

“Why, what’s the matter with you? You look as if you’d seen a ghost.”

“Yes. . . . I think I have. It’s nothing, really. Nothing at all.”

He drank more than he need have done of a villainous wine that was labelled _Château Margaux_, but had probably been pressed on the hot hill-sides of Oran. In the train, on the way home, he felt flushed and sleepy, but, all the time, divinely conscious of the warmth and softness of Rosie sitting beside him. They were alone in the first-class carriage. “I’m sleepy too,” she said. He drew her gently to his side, and she rested, content, with her head on his shoulder. In the wonder of this he forgot the newspaper and its staggering contents. As they neared North Bromwich she stood up in front of the mirror to arrange her hair, and Edwin, pulling himself together, saw that his blue coat was floured with a fine bloom of powder.

She still found it difficult to walk, and so they drove in a hansom to Prince Albert’s Place, very grimy and sinister in the dusk.

“You needn’t ring,” she said, taking out a latchkey and showing him into the narrow hall. “Let’s be very quiet, so as not to disturb mother.”

“I don’t think I’ll come in,” he said. He knew that he must make an end somewhere.

“Not even to be thanked? I’ve enjoyed myself most awfully.”

She stood before him in the gloom of the hall as though she were waiting for something. It felt as if the dark space between them must break into flame. Their lips met.

“Good God! . . . how wonderful you are!” he said.

“Next week,” she whispered.

III

Edwin had arranged to spend the following day with the Boyces at their house in Alvaston. He found it difficult to contain himself, for the delicious memory of their parting the night before swamped his efforts at conversation with the persistency of waves that follow one another in a rising tide. It seemed to him impossible that his state should not be evident to the whole household, and particularly to Matthew, who knew him so well.

In the afternoon, when they sat smoking together in Boyce’s study at the top of the house, he felt that he was on the brink of a confession. The only thing that restrained him from it was the memory of the epigram and of his friend’s translation. He felt in his bones that Boyce would not be sympathetic and though his infatuation suggested that he wouldn’t much care whether Boyce were sympathetic, or suspicious, an intuitive dread of suspicion and its possible effects on his own reason made him hold his tongue. It was in the nature of Boyce, who didn’t happen, for the moment, to be in love, to be critical, to sweep away Rosie’s perfections in a generalisation: and the appeal of a generalisation to the mind of youth is so strong that Edwin was afraid to hear it. Somewhere in his submerged reason he admitted that Boyce’s judgment on the matter would probably be sound, and reason was the last tribunal in the world before which he wished this exceptional case to be presented. An unsatisfactory day. For the first time in their lives, the relations of the two friends were indefinitely strained.

He left Alvaston early in the evening. On his way to his lodging he passed the gloomy entrance to Prince Albert’s Place. It would have been easy, so easy, to call at Number Ten, but he had determined, once and for all, that the examination week should be free from distractions, and pride in his own strength of mind held him to his course, though he realised, almost gladly, that even if he were master of his feet he could not control his thoughts. He wondered if he would dream of her . . .

Next day the rigours of the final examination overtook him. This was the supreme ordeal in which every moment of his professional life from the day when he first entered the dissecting room to the night of the last midwifery case, would stand the test of scrutiny. He was not exactly afraid of it. He knew that his knowledge and technical skill were at least above the average of his year, and felt that with ordinary luck he would be among the first four of a field of twelve. The year was not one of exceptional brilliance, and comparisons were therefore in his favour.

On the first day, in the _viva-voce_ examination on surgery, he did, for one moment, lose his head, but when once he had pulled himself together and accustomed himself to the conditions of the test, he settled down into a state of fatalistic equanimity, taking the rough with the smooth and deciding that, on the whole, he was not likely to make a hopeless fool of himself.

On the first night he went to bed early, but on the second, feeling that his mind would be clearer for some diversion, he went to a music-hall with W.G. and his wife. Drinking beer in the bar with his friend, he suddenly heard his name called, and felt a tap on his shoulder. He turned to find himself in front of a face that was curiously familiar, and in a moment found that he was shaking hands with Widdup, a small and rather chastened Widdup, who spoke to him with the slow, precise voice that he had known at St. Luke’s.

“I thought it was you, Ingleby,” he said. “I wondered if I should run across you.”

Avoiding a hair-raising display on the slack wire, they stood talking. Widdup, it appeared, had been destined for an engineering career in North Bromwich, when his mathematical genius had won him a scholarship at Cambridge.

“A pity, in a way, for I should have seen more of you. I suppose that sort of thing always happens to school friendships.” At present he was visiting a firm of iron-founders on business. They talked together of old times: of the day when Edwin, greatly daring, had seen the Birches run: of the languid Selby, now head-master of a small public-school in Norfolk, and of old fat Leeming. Between the conscious effort of remembering St. Luke’s and the unbidden image of Rosie, Edwin’s head was in a whirl.

“And old Griffin,” said Widdup. “That’s another funny thing. I ran slap into him in the lounge of the Grand Midland to-night. Up to the same old games, you know. Yes . . . he had a girl with him. Rather an attractive little piece: something to do with the pantomime, he told me. What was her name? The old brute introduced me, too! Yes . . . I think I’ve got it. Beaucaire . . . Rosie Beaucaire. Rather a rosy prospect for old Griff, I should imagine. Why, what the devil’s the matter with you?”

“I’m all right, thanks,” said Edwin. “It’s this exam., you know. Let’s have another drink.” He called for whisky and soda.

“Chin-chin,” said Widdup.

Edwin polished off a couple of drinks and then told Widdup that he must rejoin his friend, leaving him staggered at his abrupt departure. He didn’t rejoin W.G. He walked straight out of the theatre and off up the Halesby Road. He had determined to go straight to Rosie’s lodgings and thrash the matter out; but by the time he reached Prince Albert’s Place he had thought better of it.

It was the most natural thing in the world, he reflected, that Griffin should know the Beaucaires, for Griffin was constantly in touch with theatrical people. It was even natural that Griffin, knowing her, should take Rosie to the Grand Midland. It was the obvious thing to do if you had money to spend, as Griffin had. It would be just like the irony of fate, he reflected, if Griffin should afflict him with unhappiness in this case as he had done in so many others. He remembered the bitter sufferings of those early days at St. Luke’s that Widdup had so clearly recalled. He remembered Dorothy Powys and the dance at Mawne: his suspicions, his agonised resentment. Even more darkly there came to him the memory of a voice in Dr. Harris’s surgery, a conviction, never yet established, that Griffin had no right to know any woman. This reflection, he knew, implied a doubt of Rosie’s innocence: an imputation that he could not possibly admit. And yet . . . and yet . . . He remembered the warning that Bertie Flood had given him in his dressing room. He remembered the visitor in the black coat four days before. His mind was in hell.

In this purgatory of doubt and horror, he lived for the rest of the week. In the daytime the progress of the examination engrossed him, but at night he always found himself hanging about the darkness of Prince Albert’s Place, hoping against hope, that his suspicions were unfounded, not daring to put them to the test, lest they should be confirmed.

On Friday night, when the last of his medical ordeals was over, he went straight to Number Ten. It was a wonderful moment. Now, with a clear conscience he might see her again; now, once more, he could know the ecstasy of her kisses and forget the ungenerous nightmare in which he had lived through the later stages of the exam. He approached the dirty doorway with his heart beating wildly. At first his ring was unanswered, but a little later the landlady came to the door with a red, suspicious face, opening it jealously, as though she feared to let him in.

He inquired for Miss Beaucaire. Miss Beaucaire was out. Did the woman know when she was expected to return? She hadn’t the least idea. Was Mrs. Beaucaire in, then? Mrs. Beaucaire was in, but invisible. Mrs. Beaucaire had one of her headaches. Edwin suggested that he should wait in their room. Impossible. Mrs. Beaucaire was lying down there. He hung upon the doorstep as if he were waiting at the gates of paradise. At last the landlady took it upon herself to close the door.

She must have thought he was mad. Perhaps he was mad. . . .

For an hour or more he waited in the rain. It occurred to him that at least the woman was speaking the truth, for there was no light in either of the front rooms. The Grand Midland. . . . It was there that Widdup had seen them. He walked to Sackville Row at a great pace and straight into the hotel, where waiters and elderly commercial gentlemen stared at his wet clothes and his haggard face. He went into each of the dining-rooms and down the stairs to the Turkish lounge. Nowhere was Rosie or Griffin to be seen. A search of this kind was ridiculous, but every moment that the agony was extended made him more desperately anxious.

He walked back in the drizzle to Prince Albert’s Place and paced the pavement under the black walls of the warehouses. The road was deserted. There was no sound in it at all but the dripping of water from some neglected spout. He walked up and down in the shadow, and as he walked he became conscious of something like a personality in the faces of the long row of lodging-houses, something sinister, as though their shuttered windows concealed a wealth of obscene experience like the eyes of ancient street-walkers. The souls of those squat Victorian houses were languidly interested in him. Another victim. . . . That was what he must seem to them. And still the windows of Number Ten were unlighted.

He heard the clock in the Art Gallery chime eleven: a leisurely, placid chime muffled by gusty rain. Perhaps the woman had lied to him. Perhaps, at that very moment Rosie was sleeping peacefully in the unlighted upper story. He was overwrought with the strain of the examination on the top of this devastating passion. He had better go home.

He turned to go, and at that very moment he saw two figures approaching from the Halesby Road. The street lamp, at the corner, threw their shadows on the shining pavement. One of them was Rosie—he would have known her anywhere—and the other, beyond doubt, was Griffin. He was seized with the same blind passion that had swept over him in the big schoolroom at St. Luke’s ten years before, an impulse to murder that he could only control by digging his finger nails into his hands.

He stood there trembling in the shadow of the blank wall, huddling close to it for support and for protection. They passed him, and he heard Rosie’s quiet laugh. Her laugh was one of the things about her that he had loved most. They stopped at the door, and Rosie took out her latchkey. It was almost a repetition of the scene in which he had shared a week before. Now, perhaps, she would kiss him. He felt that if he saw her kissing Griffin he could have killed them both. Murderer’s Cross Road. . . . A hundred thoughts came swirling through his brain. They entered, and closed the door behind them. Griffin: the old Griffin: the human beast of St. Luke’s. The new Griffin: the gross North Bromwich womaniser: the Griffin of Dr. Harris’s surgery. . . . Edwin saw himself upon the edge of a ghastly, unthinkable tragedy. He must prevent it. At all costs. At the cost of life if needs be.

He crept quickly across the road. The houses watched him. The window of the lower room bloomed suddenly with a yellow light. He stood with his hands clutching the window-sill, listening. Once again he heard Rosie’s laugh, and a rumour of deeper speech that he knew to be the voice of Griffin. The shadow of Griffin’s shoulders swept the window, swelling gigantically as it passed. The light was turned down, but not extinguished. Rosie’s laugh again. He could have killed her for that laugh, for it mocked him. The faint shadow of the man’s shoulders retreated. He guessed that they were standing at the door. The door of the room closed softly. Now there was no sound except the heavy breathing that one hears in the neighbourhood of a pigsty at night. Was Griffin still there?

Another beam of light fell on the shining street. Some one had lighted the gas in the room upstairs. Was Griffin still below? Panic seized him. He must know. At all costs he must know. Dr. Harris’s surgery. . . . If he had to break in the front door he must know. As he reached it he tripped over an iron boot-scraper. The step barked his shin. Of course the door was locked, but—wonder of wonders—Rosie had left the latchkey outside. He opened the door softly and went on tip-toe into the hall. In the room on the right he still heard the grunting noise. Thank God, Griffin was still there! At least he could tell him that he knew!

He opened the door. In the half-light he could see that the room was empty except for Mrs. Beaucaire, who lay stretched on the sofa, snoring heavily with her vile mouth open. On the table stood an empty brandy bottle. The place stank of brandy.

Now he knew the worst. He stumbled upstairs in the dark and knocked frantically at the door of the front bedroom. Rosie answered: “Who is it?”

“It’s I. For God’s sake, let me in.”

“Who the devil is it?” said the voice of Dr. Harris’s consulting-room.

Rosie answered him in excited whispers.

“You can’t come in, Eddie,” she said. “How on earth did you get into the house? Please go away. I can’t see you. I can’t, really.”

“I’m coming in, I tell you. If you don’t open the door, I’ll smash it. I mean what I say.”

“Ingleby—?” the voice muttered. “What the devil has Ingleby to do with you? All right. I’ll go. I’ll chuck the fellow downstairs.”

“Oh, don’t . . . please don’t. . . . Let him go quietly.”

Griffin unlocked the door. He stood facing Edwin in his shirt-sleeves. Rosie, still dressed, clutched at the mantelpiece. The vein in the middle of Griffin’s forehead bulged with anger. His short neck was flushed.

“What the hell—” he began—and then they closed. Edwin’s heel ripped up the corner of the carpet as they swayed together. Suddenly Griffin’s grip slackened. His face blanched, and in a moment Edwin was letting down a sheer weight upon the bed.

“What’s the matter?” Rosie screamed, and flung herself beside him. “What’s the matter?”

“Good God! . . . He’s gone.”

“No . . . No—” she cried.

Edwin tore open Griffin’s shirt, listening for an impulse that was not there.

“He’s gone,” he said, panting. “He’s dead. . . . Heart. . . . He always had a rocky heart. He’s dead.”

The awful word seemed to pull Rosie together. They stared at each other blankly with wide eyes. “Are you sure?” she whispered.

“Yes. . . . Of course—”

She rose to her feet, speaking in a voice that was quite new to him.

“Eddie . . . for God’s sake, go . . . now! . . . quickly!”

“I can’t go.”

“Go quickly, I tell you. Don’t be a damned little fool. You don’t want to be mixed up in this. Eddie, for God’s sake. . . . It’s ‘natural causes,’ Eddie.”

He blundered down the dark stairs and out into the street. He could not walk. He cowered under the warehouse wall opposite, gazing, as though fascinated, at the yellow square of window. The discreet Victorian houses surveyed him as if the horror that the yellow blind concealed were an ordinary occurrence in their dingy lives. They were used to death. And death did not change them. A rubber-tyred hansom rolled smoothly up the Halesby Road, past the mouth of the Place. At the corner, under the gas-lamp, Edwin saw the figure of a policeman with rain shining on his cape. The sight recalled him to a sense of awful possibilities. For the moment he dared not move. He flattened himself against the warehouse walls and did not realise that he was standing directly under the dripping waterspout. In the western sky rose the baleful glare of an uncowled furnace. The policeman strolled away, and Edwin, cautiously emerging, set off through the rain up the Halesby Road towards the hills. He felt that he needed their solitude and darkness.

IV

Next day, a haggard and desolate figure, he appeared in the cloak-room of the University where the examination results were displayed. In a dream he realised that he was now a Bachelor of Medicine, but in the realisation there was none of the joy that he had anticipated. He stood before the board bewildered, until W.G. came up behind him and wrung his hand.

“You look as if you’d been making a night of it, my boy,” he said. “Come and have some coffee at the Dousita.”

W.G. was on the top of himself. “It was a pretty near thing. The external examiner in Medicine gave me hell; but it’s all right. God! . . . it’s difficult to believe, isn’t it? What are you going to do?”

“I don’t know. A voyage, I should think.”

He hadn’t thought of it before.

“That’s not a bad idea. Bit of a rest cure, eh? That’s the only disadvantage, I don’t mind telling you, of being married. I couldn’t leave the missus.”

W.G. babbled on happily. “Did you see the evening paper?” he said. “I see that fellow Griffin’s done for. I always said he’d come to a nasty, sticky end. Some woman or other. . . . I remember your saying that he couldn’t play footer because of his heart. Ah, well . . . that’s one swine the less, poor devil!”

When W.G. left him, Edwin called for a timetable and looked out the trains to Liverpool. There was one that started in half an hour. He caught it, and next morning presented himself at a shipping office in Water Street.

The medical superintendent received him.

“You want a ship? Well, you know, you look very young. When were you qualified?”

“Yesterday,” Edwin confessed.

“Very young. Still, you won’t be stale. You don’t _drink_, by any chance?”

“I’m practically a total abstainer.” The man scrutinised Edwin’s haggard eyes.

“H’m. . . . Well, as it happens, one of our men has failed us. I’ll give you a ship, the _Macao_, if you can sail to-morrow. Rather short notice, eh?”

“I think I can do it. What about equipment?”

“Oh, we don’t go in for brass-bound uniforms on our ships. Ten pounds a month and bonus. What?”

“Where is she going to?”

“China. You may call at Japan for coal with luck. See the world, you know. That’s what most of you fellows are after. You’ll have to go aboard to-night. Birkenhead Docks.”

“I’ll he there.”

And with trembling hands he signed his contract.

In a wintry evening he crossed the Mersey ferry. A salt wind from the west boomed up the channel. Edwin, in the bows, felt his face drenched with spray. “It’s clean,” he thought. “It will make me cleaner. That’s what I need. I don’t believe I shall ever feel anything again, until I’m washed clean. I’m old . . . old and numb. I’ve lost my sense of enjoyment. I wonder if it will ever come back to me!”

As he stood there in the salt breeze, some words of Traherne, his mother’s countryman, came into his mind:

“You shall never enjoy this world aright till the sea itself floweth
in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens and crowned with
the stars.”

Perhaps they were true. He wondered.