Chapter XI: Part 11

His tone was so extremely matter-of-fact that its very normalness arrested Philip. As he had said, it was perfectly true that nothing was further from his thoughts than melodrama, and the interest he felt in Tom's attitude, as thus revealed, towards life and death and fear was a fresh sign, and he himself felt it to be such, of his reawakening interests. Hitherto it had not, however remotely, concerned him as to what anyone else might think of it all.

"You talk of fears," he said; "what do you know of them? Surely you, at any rate, are free from fear. Oh, talk, Tom, interest me in anything; talk about yourself, or birds, or beasts. You have given me so much: give me more. Give me the foundation of my new house, since it is you--yes, you, you dear fellow--who have made me turn my back upon the ruins. I have got to begin again; I have nothing to begin with. I am bankrupt. I beg you to give me a bit of that which you have so abundantly."

His voice again half-failed him, but he recovered it in a moment.

"We were talking about fear," he said; "what have you got to fear? You don't depend on men and women; you don't love. There is nothing in the world to be afraid of except love. I have found that out. Yet people seek it, the fools. They call it by sweet names: they say it is love that makes life worth living. My God, I should be so content if I had never known what it was. Damn her! I could have lived exactly like you--no, that is not true; I could never have been even remotely happy without loving her, just as, if I had never loved her, I should never have known what misery was. But you among your birds and beasts and trees, what on earth have you to fear? You won't fall in love with a beach-tree and find that it elopes with an elm. Tell me about your bloodless Paradise, and how the serpent, which is fear, can enter into it."

Tom Merivale had grown rather grave during this sudden outburst. Nothing in the world, so he believed, had power to ruffle his temper: only it was difficult to explain to such a child as Philip had shown himself to be. But before the pause was on his side the other spoke again.

"I am sorry," he said, "but it was a sort of baffled ignorance that spoke. I don't understand you; and for that reason I had no business to call your happiness, which is maddeningly real to me, a bloodless Paradise. But, for God's sake, show me anything approaching Paradise, at the door of which there is not an angel with a sword, not flaming, but cold and convincing. And where, above all, is your fear? How can fear exist for you? What is there to be afraid of unless you love and can be betrayed?"

Philip's servant came out from the house, bringing a tray with glasses and bottles. He paused by his master a moment.

"What time will you be called, sir?" he asked.

"Usual time; you can go to bed."

The pause lasted till the man had entered the house again. Then Merivale spoke.

"I fear all I have not learned," he said. "I fear the revelation of what people suffer, of what you have suffered, of what Christ suffered. I fear that all suffering, in its degree, is atonement. I don't believe it, mind you, but I am afraid it may be true, and that somehow I shall have to believe it. I am not a Christian, and so I put it that a man who was as infinitely above the rest of mankind as Shakespeare is above the child which is idiotic from its birth and has never felt the warmth of the slightest spark of reason, found it necessary to die, and believed that his death atoned for the sins of the whole world. Ah, if I only believed that he was right, how instinctively I should believe that he was God. No one but God could have thought of that."

He paused a moment.

"But I am beginning to think that I shall not die without believing it," he said. "I don't think that even the death of the body could come to this body of mine unless I became convinced of the necessity for suffering and for death. Why am I beginning to think that? I can't possibly say; there is never any reason for one's believing anything, except the conviction that it must be so. Evelyn, I remember, once talked to me about it. At that time I was satisfied with my own reasoning; now I am not. I said to him then that my _métier_ was the realisation of joy. Well, at present I know nothing that invalidates that belief. But I see clearly now the possibility that he was right, in which case it is possible that my fears, about which you asked, are right also. Mind, I am not afraid in any case. I would sooner see all the sorrows of the world, and realise them, as far as I am able, than turn aside. But my fear is that I may be called upon to realise them. I shall not like it, but if that is to be, I can assure you that I shall not attempt to turn back. Not one step of the way which I have gone along would I retrace. I will meet them all, I will realise them all. And, in my own language, that means that I shall see Pan, the god of all Nature, of the suffering and sorrow of Nature as well as the illimitable life and joy of her. And to tell you the truth, I think it quite probable that I may have to do so."

The rain had stopped, and a sudden sough of the wind in the bushes sounded as if some animal had strayed there. Twigs creaked as if broken; small branches swayed. Also, so it seemed to Philip, the wind brought with it some faint, indefinable aroma, evoked no doubt by this rain from some shrub in the garden. But for all his horticultural knowledge, he could not give a name to it; it was pungent, of an animal flavour to the nostrils, and reminded him, with the instantaneous evoking of memory which scent possesses above all the other senses, of a _châlet_ in which he had once taken refuge from a sudden mountain storm in some Alp above Zermatt. Tom, too, just then threw back his head, and seemed to sniff for a moment in the air. But he made no comment, and continued--

"Yes, it was Evelyn who suggested that to me," he said. "His idea, I think, was that somehow and somewhere the balance is struck, that if one is overloaded with joy, some compensating pain has got to be put in before one is complete. It may come in a moment, so I conjecture, or one may have to suffer the agony of months and years, but of this I am sure, that the balance is in favour of joy. If I have to suffer, my suffering will be quite certainly less than the joy I have had. If the sorrows of death come upon me, they will weigh--I am certain of this--less than the ecstasies of life that have been mine. But, dear God, I have a long bill to settle."

The mention of Evelyn had roused black blood again.

"He too will have a bill to pay," said Philip.

Merivale took this quite impersonally.

"Yes, Evelyn is extraordinarily happy," he said. "I have scarcely ever known him otherwise. If he is right about me, he will have to be right about himself. Poor chap! What a good thing it is that neither you nor I have to be his judges, or have to apportion to him the dose of misery which will suit him. How could one tell when a man has had enough to make him whole, complete?"

He got up quickly and looked out into the night.

"Ah, we have all got to be made perfect," he cried. "I take it that no man in his senses can have any doubt of that. The thing which is you, that essential, vital flame, has got now or at some future time to burn its best. I have to do the same; we shall all be strung up to perfection either through joy, or, perhaps, if we are approaching it from the other side, through some blinding pain. We all have to attempt to approach perfection to the best of our abilities. Our abilities may make a mistake; very likely they do. But I, when I attempt to approach the best of me through the pleasant ways of joy and simplicity, I would not go back one step to save myself from the pangs that may follow. I am very likely blind, but, as far as I know, I do my best. Perhaps--who knows, since my life has been an extraordinarily useless one, as the world counts 'use,' the world may be right, and I shall have to embark on a career of work in an office. But I don't think that is likely."

Again he paused a moment, taking a deep breath of the night air into his lungs. Then he turned round.

"You told me not to pity you," he said, "and I tacitly agreed not to, and fully intended not to. But the time has come when my pity cannot hurt you. For I pity you from the same plane as that on which I perhaps some day may be glad of your pity. You have suffered, and you are suffering. Well, I pity you, as God pities you, supposing that suffering does happen to be necessary. I would not spare you one pang of it, if this is so, but I just put out my hand to you, saying that I am there, and watching and worshipping, I may say, for if suffering is necessary it is certainly sacred. I don't know that it is necessary; but if it is, there am I, if that will do you any good, and there also are all those who have suffered, watching you with the pity that cannot help healing a little, and the sympathy that lightens. But if I were convinced, even for the winking of an eye, and to save a woodlouse from the absence of its dinner, that suffering must be, I should accept it all, and take not only my share of it, but the share of anybody else who would be so good as to shoulder me with it, for it is impossible to have enough or too much of anything that is right. At present I have not seen--so as to know--the necessity of it, though I have long known that all Nature groans under it. Everything preys on something else--you prey on the animals you eat, and the folk you make fools of on the Stock Exchange. And Evelyn preys on you. Yes, yes. And I--I try to prey on nobody, but perhaps this law of preying will some day be brought home to me. My joy, which so weighs down the scale, may have its compensating burden of suffering given to it. And whatever blackness of horror awaits me, I won't turn back. My way of approach is this: to others there is the rough-and-tumble of the world, to others the ascetic life. But I believe that joy and life are the predominant factors; that is why I have chosen them, it has been my business to get acquainted anyhow with them. But what I absolutely refuse is the horrible mean, where one makes no ventures, and but paddles on the shore of the eternal sea. Let the breakers leave me high and dry and smashed on the shingle, or let me steer through them and see the unimagined islands of myth and fable. But I will not just pull my shoes and stockings off, and shriek when the water comes up to my knee. Something, whatever it is, must infallibly be so much better than nothing."

He walked up and down the verandah once or twice with his long, smooth step, moving with that peculiar grace and ease which denotes great physical strength. He had forgotten about Philip, and Philip for the first time had forgotten about Philip too.

"But during these last years," he went on, "I have consciously and deliberately turned my back on pain, because it is hideous, because it is a foe to joy, and because I have not and do not now realise its necessity. All I can say is, with Oliver Cromwell, it is just possible I may be mistaken, and in that case I am sure I shall have to--ah, no, be allowed to--learn my mistake. A child crying seems to me a dreadful thing, a beggar by the wayside with a broken tobacco-pipe, and not a penny to get another, the shriek of the rabbit when the stoat's teeth fasten in its throat; they are all dreadful, and enemies to joy. But I am no longer convinced, as I used to be, that pain is unnecessary; I am beginning, as I said, to hold an open mind on the subject, and only say that I believe I can realise myself best and bring myself best into harmony with Nature, with the whole design, by avoiding it. Yet for me also pain and suffering may be necessary. If so, let them come; I am quite ready. I only hope that it will be soon over, that it will be so frightful that I can't stand it. I should prefer that, some blinding, dreadful flash of revelation, to any slow, remorseless grinding of the truth into me. That, however, is not in my hands."

Philip's mind had gone back again on to himself.

"But how can it possibly be any good that those two should have behaved like this to me?" he cried, speaking directly for the first time. "What monstrous image do you make of the controller of the world and all our destinies, if it is by his will that this is done to me which turns all that may have been good in me into hatred and bitterness? Is that the lesson that I am meant to learn--that those whom one loves best are one's bitterest foes, and will hurt one most?"

Tom stopped in his walk and sat down on the edge of the table by Philip.

"My dear fellow," he said, "Oliver Cromwell will help us again. Is it not just possible that you too are mistaken when you assume that your trouble was sent you _in order that_ your love might be turned into hate? That it should have happened so may (just possibly again) be in some measure your fault. Could you not have done otherwise, and done better? I don't want to preach, you know."

Philip sat silent, but his face hardened again.

"If I could have done better, it would not have been I," he said. "It would have been altogether another man."

Tom got down off the table.

"Ah, you repudiate moral responsibility for your own acts," he said.

"Not exactly that. I say that there may be circumstances under which one's will is crumpled up like a piece of waste paper, and one's powers of resistance are paralysed. Don't you believe that?"

Merivale shook his head.

"No, I don't believe that the power of choice is ever taken away from one while one remains sane," he said. "The moment one cannot choose, the doors of Bedlam are opened."

Philip got up.

"They are still ajar for me," he said. "But they were more widely open when I came here. For pity's sake, Tom, go on helping me. It is only you, I think, who can get them closed for me."

He paused a moment, looking out into the still blackness of the garden, and again something stirred and creaked in the bushes, and the drowsy wind was tainted with some sharp smell. He turned to Tom--

"I wonder if all that you have been saying is a fairy tale," he said, "and whether I have been taking it literally, so that I imagine that things which are only, and can only be, allegorical and mythical are true."

"You mean the Pan-pipes, for instance, which I heard for the first time at Pangbourne, and which I hear so often now?" asked Merivale.

"Yes, that among other things. Pan himself, too. I begin to think of Pan as a real being, the incarnation of all the terror and fear and sorrow of the world. The crying child you spoke of is part of Pan, the shriek of the rabbit is part of him. All these things, as you say, you have turned your back on. What if they should all be shown you suddenly, they and the huge significance and universality of them?"

Merivale looked quite grave; anyhow it was no fairy story to him, whatever it might be to others.

"Yes, that is all possible," he said, "and that will mean that I shall see Pan. What a wonderful mode of expression that is of the Greeks. For Pan means 'everything,' and to see everything would be clearly more than one could stand. And so to see Pan means death."

Once again the strange, pungent odour was noticeable.

"Where are you going to sleep to-night?" asked Philip suddenly.

"Oh, in the hammock," said Tom. "I hardly ever sleep in the house."

Then a more definite, though utterly fantastic, fear seized Philip.

"No, sleep in the house to-night," he said, feeling that his fear was too childish to be allowed utterance.

At that Merivale laughed; there was no need for Philip to utter his thought, for he knew perfectly well what it was.

"I know what you mean," he said, "but do you think that if Pan is going to visit me he will only come into the garden, and not into the house? You are mixing up the fear of Pan with the general sense of insecurity about sleeping out of doors, which comes from unfamiliarity with that delightful way of spending the night. And I know another thing you felt; you heard an odd rustling in the bushes, as I often hear it, and you smelt a rather queer smell, something rather pungent, and it reminded you of a goat. Of course Pan used to appear, so the Greek myth said, in goat form, and your inference was that Pan was in those bushes. But he is just as much in this verandah, and, for that matter, in Piccadilly, poor thing! There is quite certainly no getting away from him; I am as safe here as I should be if I was locked into the strong-room in the Bank of England. For it is not just to this place or that that he comes, but to this person or that."

They parted after this, Philip going upstairs to his bedroom, while Tom, after changing into a sleeping suit, went out with a rug over his arm into the dusky halls of the night. Sleep, when the time for sleep had come, visited him as quickly as it visits every healthy animal; and if it kept aloof, he no more worried about it, or tried to woo it, than he would take appetising scraps of caviare or olives to make him hungry. And to-night he lay for some time, not tossing or turning in his hammock, but with eyes wide open, looking through the tracery of briar and leaf above him into the sombre darkness of the clouds overhead. So dark was it that the foliage was only just blacker than the sky, and to right and left the trees were shapeless blots against it. But all that mattered was that sky and clouds and trees were all round him, and that he could sink and merge himself in the spirit and the life with which they were impregnated. He lay open to it; just as his lungs were filled with the open air and his body vivified by it, so his soul and spirit drank in and breathed that open, essential life that ran through all things, the life that day by day he more fully realised to be One thing, expressing itself in the myriad forms of tree and beast and man. And though still that curious rustle and stir went on in the bushes, and though once he thought he heard the tap as of some hoofed thing upon the brick path of the pergola, he did not stir, nor did any sense of dismay or fear come to him. He had followed the path which he believed was his, striving to make himself one with the eternal harmony of Nature, and if the revelation of her discords was to come to him, come it would; the matter was not in his hands. But in whoever's hands it was, he was content to leave it there.

Philip meantime fared less easily in his bed indoors. The talk this evening had brought back to him with a terrible vividness all he had been through, the bitterness and hatred of his own heart all blossomed poisonously again, now that Merivale had gone, and he was left alone in the darkness and quiet of the night. That there was some subtle and very powerful influence which surrounded the Hermit like an atmosphere of his own he felt fully; in his company he knew how strong a sense of healing and serenity was abroad, but to-night, at any rate, all his foes, which he had almost dared to hope were being vanquished and left for dead, were rising about him again in ghostly battalions. He had, so he dimly hoped, begun to slay them, but it seemed for the moment that he had been but smiting at shadows that took no hurt from his blows. For a little while he had been able to set his face forward, to fancy that he was beginning really to make way, but now, as he glanced back over his shoulder, the enemy pursued undiminished after him. Again he felt his lips were quivering with sheer hatred of those who had so hurt him, and his hands were clenched in passionate desire to strike. And thus for hours he tossed and turned, until his window again, as in Jermyn Street, began to "grow a glimmering square," and the tentative notes of birds to flute in the bushes, and he was back again in those darkest hours he had ever known.

Then his bed became intolerable, and he rose from it and walked about the room, until the huelessness of the earliest dawn began to be touched with colour. Never since the blow had fallen upon him had he been able to pray; his bitterness and hatred had come like the figure of Satan himself between him and prayer.

Philip suddenly paused; another dawn was beginning to break, a dawn yet remote and far off in the Eastern skies, but a faint, dim streak of light was there. It was indeed true; it was his own hatred, his own bitterness, not what others had done to him, which had stood in his way, and, as Merivale had said, the power of choice was in possession of every man who was fit to move about the world. He had accepted that when it was stated to him; he knew it to be true, and thus choice was still his. He had to choose, and to choose now. Did he want to hate and be bitter? Did he deliberately, in so far as he could choose, choose that?

So, though no word crossed his lips or was even formed in his brain, he prayed.

SIXTEENTH

The elder Lady Ellington had never yet in the whole course of her combative life been knocked out of time by the blows of adverse circumstances, and she did not intend to begin being knocked out now. That Madge's marriage was a frightful disaster she did not deny or seek to conceal, but her admirable habits of self-control and her invariable custom of never letting anything dwell on her mind or make her worry, served her in good stead now. She considered that Madge and Evelyn had both behaved quite unpardonably, and though she had no thought of pardoning either of them, she had no thought of dwelling on the matter. When the thing was done, it was done, and, like David, she, so to speak, proposed to go and oil herself--in other words, to pay her customary round of summer and autumn visits, carrying with her all her old inflexible firmness and readiness to advise. For Philip, finally, she hardly felt pity at all; a man really must be a fool if he could lose his wife like that at the eleventh hour. It was impossible to acquit him altogether of blame, though it would have puzzled her who had so nearly been his mother-in-law to say exactly where the blame lay. General incapacity to keep what was morally one's own perhaps covered it, and incapacity of all kinds she detested.

These visits took her up to Scotland about the middle of August, since this was on the whole the easiest way of not getting out of touch with people. Scotland, if one went to the right houses, she considered to be a sort of barometer as to the way people would behave, and the general trend of affairs go, when the gatherings began for the autumn parties in England and people came up to London in the spring; and though she could not have been considered exactly a conventional woman, she very much wanted to know what kind of line society in general would take about Madge. For with all her hard shrewdness, she had not what we may call a sensitive social touch. When Society beat time she could follow it with scrupulous exactitude, but she was not capable of conducting herself. And this concerted piece was rather complex, and though Society had been so unanimous in its condemnation at the time, Lady Ellington, knowing it pretty well, did not feel at all sure that the sentence it passed on July 28th would not be reprieved, whether, in fact, Society would not say that there had been a miscarriage of justice, and that Madge--and Evelyn, for that matter--were entirely innocent and even laudable. For if Philip had wealth, which he undoubtedly had, and Madge had thrown that overboard, she had at any rate picked up, as one picks up a pilot, a man with extraordinary charm and extraordinary gifts, about whom Society was even now on the point of losing its head. Evelyn, in fact, if he continued to be as gay as he always was, to enjoy himself as thoroughly, and also continued to paint pictures which really furnished Society with conversation to quite a remarkable degree, promised well to be as desirable a husband as the other. Also Philip's stern attention to business during the month of August had done his cause, as has been mentioned, no inconsiderable damage. Indeed if he had married old Lady Ellington instead it perhaps would have been more suitable. But having failed to secure the rose, he had not shown any inclination to be near it, and had gone to the City instead.

It was all this which Lady Ellington hoped to pick up in Scotland. She wanted, in fact, to know what would be her most correct attitude towards Madge. Her own personal attitude she knew well enough; she was still quite furious with her. But (she put it to herself almost piously) it is better sometimes to sink the personal feeling in the deep waters of the public good, just as you drown a superfluous kitten. However she felt privately, it might be kinder and wiser to conceal and even eradicate that personal grudge. She went, in fact, in order to see whether Society was possibly taking a more Christian line about her daughter than her daughter's mother really was. Strange as the fact may sound, this was the fact, for it would never do that Madge's mother should on the one hand be estranged from her daughter, while all the world embraced her; nor, on the other, that Madge's mother should continue to embrace her daughter while all the world discreetly looked the other way and said "That minx!"

Now, as has already been briefly stated, the country verdict about Madge, the verdict, that is to say, of London gone into the country, had reaped the benefit of country air and early hours. The personal inconvenience and the necessary incidental chatter had died down; nobody really cared about it; the stern condemnation originally made was felt to be but a hollow voice, and Society, which, whatever may be said about it, is really rather indulgent, just as it hopes individually for indulgence, in that most unlikely contingency of indulgence being desirable, was already, without the slightest sign of embarrassment, executing a _volte-face_. For if the _volte-face_ is general, the only embarrassment arises from not executing it. And Lady Dover's house, which, so to speak, kept social Greenwich time without error, was the first place that Lady Ellington visited.

It was only this strong sense of duty--duty towards Madge--that drew her there; otherwise nothing would have induced her to go. There was a night in the train and a day in the train, and at the end of that a thirty-mile drive starting from a spot called Golspie. Her experience of Golspie was that it rained, and that an endless road stretched over mile after mile of moor, where it rained worse than in Golspie. But in Scotland it is officially supposed never to rain; the utmost that can happen in the way of moisture is that it should be "saft." She arrived at Golspie, an open motor-car was waiting for her, and it was "saft." Also the motor could not take all her luggage; that was to follow in a cart. The cart, so she mentally calculated, if it did not stick in a bog (not a wet one, only a "saft" one) might arrive about midnight. Another passenger also alighted at Golspie; the present bearer of her husband's title. He too was going to Lady Dover's, and the motor was to take them both. He hazarded that this was "awfully jolly," but he seemed not to have said the right thing.

The softness grew softer as they breasted the hills, and Lady Ellington really wondered whether this was worth while. But the conclusion must have been that it was, otherwise she would have had no hesitation in turning back even now and sleeping at Golspie, if sleep could be obtained in so outlandish a spot. She knew well too what her week there would be; a Scotch breakfast, the departure of the male sex to the hills, with fishing "in the burn" probably for those who remained; the return of the male sex about six, their instant dispersal to baths and their own rooms; dinner, no bridge, but conversation, and the final dispersal of everybody about half-past ten. Yet it was worth it; from here, goodness knew why, ticked out the "correct attitude." Lady Dover's opinion, not because she was clever, so said her guest to herself, but because she was completely ordinary, would be an infallible sign as to what the rest of the world would think about Madge. Assembled at her house too would be those who, right and left, would endorse Lady Dover's opinion, not because she had intimated it to them, but because they would naturally think as she did. It was, in fact, the bourgeois conclusion of the upper class that she sought.

Bourgeois conclusions of all sorts she got on her drive.

"Devilish evening, eh?" said Lord Ellington. "Makes one wonder if it's worth while. Thirty miles of this, isn't it, shofer?"

"Yes, my lord; thirty-two miles."

"Well, let's get on a bit; don't you think so, Lady Ellington? Put your foot down on some of those pedals, and turn some of those handles, eh? And how's all going, Lady Ellington? Rum thing; there'll be two Lady Ellingtons in the house. Gladys arrived three days ago. I couldn't. Detained, don't you know. I always say detained, eh?"

All this anyhow was a kind of olive branch. It continued with but short replies on her part, to wave in the wind.

"Awful smash, wasn't it?" continued he. "Gladys and I were very sorry. Good fellow, Home, he put her--me--up to an investment or two that turned out well. But there's no telling about girls; kittle cattle, you know, eh? I daresay she's awfully happy--what? And of course the man doesn't matter. Men are meant to go to the wall. Lord, how it rains!"

Lady Ellington did not really mind rain; she knew too that even this man, whom she detested, had his vote in public opinion, and, what was more, he reflected public opinion, like some newspaper. What he said other people would say. She did not in the least want the vote of bohemian circles, any more than she wanted the vote of bishops; what she wanted to know was the general opinion of her class. A most elusive thing it was, and one on which it was intensely rash to risk a prophecy. For one person would be found with a stolen halter in her hand, and yet no one would say that the halter was dishonestly come by; another would but look over a hedge, and the whole world would say that the design was to steal horse and halter too. To which class did Madge, with her calm eyes, belong in the world's opinion?

"Yes, of course, it has been terrible," she said. "My poor girl has gone so utterly astray. What could have been nicer than the marriage that was arranged?"

"Well, she seems to have found something she thought nicer," said her companion.

"Yes, but from the sensible point of view. Supposing you fell in love with a match girl----"

Lord Ellington gave a loud, hoarse laugh.

"Trust Gladys for hoofing her out of it in double quick time," he remarked.

Yet this, too, was what Lady Ellington sought; vulgar, hopeless as the man was, he yet reflected the opinion of the average person, which it was her purpose to learn. For the votes of the "Moliere's housemaids" will always swamp those of the most enlightened critics, and the popularity of the play depends on them. And Lady Dover's house was a sort of central agency for such opinions; smart, respectable, and rich people congregated there, who were utterly conventional, not because they feared Mrs. Grundy, but because they were Mrs. Grundy--she herself, and no coloured imitation of her. The good old home-brewed, national, typical, English upper-class view of life might here really be said to have its fountain head, and to have stayed in the house was a sort of certificate that you were all right. Scandal might, just possibly, twitter afterwards about some one of Lady Dover's guests; but these twitterings would be harmless, for the knowledge that he or she about whom it twittered had stayed at Glen Callan would convince all right-minded people that there was nothing in it.

It was after eight when they arrived, and when they emerged into the light and warmth of the hall, hung round, as was suitable in the Highlands, with rows of stags' heads and sporting prints, dinner had already begun. But Lady Dover came out of the dining-room with her husband to welcome them.

"Dear Lady Ellington," she said, "what a dreadful drive you must have had. But no one minds rain in Scotland, do they? How are you, Lord Ellington? So nice that you could come together! Gladys arrived two days ago. Mr. Osborne calls her the fishmonger, because she really supplies us all with fish; we are now eating the grilse she caught this afternoon. Take Lord Ellington to his room, will you, Dover? Pray don't make anything of a toilet, Lady Ellington; it is the Highlands, you know. We went in to dinner because I felt sure you would prefer that we should. It is so much nicer to feel that one is keeping nobody waiting, is it not?"

There was only a small party in the house, so Lady Ellington found when she joined them in the dining-room. Mr. Osborne, whose brilliant _sobriquet_ for Gladys has already sparkled on these pages, was there; he was a very wealthy man, who had married Lady Angela Harvey, the daughter of a Duke, and was one of the main props and pillars of English Protestantism. Lady Angela was there too, thin-lipped and political, sitting next Seymour Dennison, the Royal Academician, who had painted and exhibited so many miles of Sutherlandshire scenery that, were all the ordnance maps lost, it might almost have been possible to reconstruct the county again from his pictures without any fresh survey. His wife, of course, whom he had only lately married, was also of the party; Lady Dover had not previously met her, for she had lived in Florence, and though there was a certain risk about asking to the house someone who was really quite unknown, still to ask Mr. Dennison without his wife would have been to stigmatise her, which Lady Dover would never do without good reason. Harold Aintree, a first cousin of Lady Dover's, completed, with Gladys and her husband, the party of ten. He, too, was eminently in place, for he was a great traveller in out-of-the-way countries, which is always considered an enlightened pursuit. Moreover, you could read all his published accounts of them without having any sensibility or delicacy offended. Savage tribes, so his experiences showed, and Australian aborigines, had a true and unfailing sense of propriety.

Lady Ellington's place was next her host, and as she ate the grilse, Lord Dover told her about it. Gladys was his cousin, therefore he referred to her by her Christian name.

"Gladys caught that grilse only this afternoon," he said. "A beautifully fresh fish, is it not? Mr. Osborne calls her the fishmonger. Lady Fishmonger Ellington, was it not, Osborne?"

Mr. Osborne paused in his conversation with Mrs. Dennison to bow his acknowledgments.

"But Lady Ellington fishes too," he said. "We shall get into terrible confusion now."

"Ah, you must find another name for her," said Lady Dover. "Is it not a beautiful fish, Lady Ellington? The flesh is so firm. Dover says it could not have been up from the sea more than a day or two."

Mr. Osborne resumed his talk with Mrs. Dennison, whom he was questioning about the churches in Florence. Otherwise there was a moment's pause round the table, which was unfortunate, as she just then referred to the Catholic churches, meaning the Roman Catholic churches. She corrected her error, however, on seeing the questioning look in his face, and the general conversation was resumed.

"Yes, the sunset was one sheet of intolerable glory," said Seymour Dennison to his hostess, "and how little one expected that this rain was coming. What a wet drive Lady Ellington must have had."

"I did not see the sunset," said she. "I returned to write a few letters. You must describe it to us, Mr. Dennison, not in words but in colours. The sunsets here this year have been quite remarkable. They have been so very varied; no two alike, so far as I have seen."

Seymour Dennison was always in character as the poetical interpreter of Nature. His words, in fact, were generally as highly coloured as his canvases.

"And yet perhaps the finest sunsets one ever sees are at Hyde Park Corner," he said. "Is it not a wonderful thing how Nature takes the foul smoke of our cities, and by that alchemy of light transmutes them into those unimaginable spectacles which even the eye, much less the hand, cannot fully grasp and realise? Light! Where would the world be without light?"

Lord Ellington had a moment's spasmodic desire to answer "In the dark," but he checked it. It was as well he did.

"That dying cry of Goethe's is so wonderful, is it not?" said Lady Angela, turning to Harold Aintree, and picking up this thread. "'More light, more light,' you know."

Harold cleared his throat; he seldom spoke except in paragraphs.

"It is extraordinary how the most savage tribes have a deep sense of natural beauty," he said. "I remember entering a settlement in Zambesi at evening, and finding all the inhabitants sitting in rows watching the setting of the sun. It appears to be a religious ceremony, akin to some way to the sun-worship of the Parsees. Even the most rudimentary civilisation--this particular tribe of the Zambesi, I may remind you, are cannibals--show traces of some appreciation of the beauties of Nature. Indeed one almost thinks that perhaps civilisation obscures that appreciation. Else how do we in England consent to live in the sordid ugliness of the towns we build?"

He turned half-left as he spoke, to pick up Lady Ellington, so to speak, for Lord Dover had crossed over to Gladys, with whom he was again discussing the grilse she had been so fortunate as to catch that afternoon.

"Ah, but we don't all live in cities, Mr. Aintree," she said, "and I think that there is a great return to simplicity going on. Don't you remember last July how we all took to lentils and no hats? And think of Mr. Merivale, who lives in the New Forest, you know, and makes birds come and sit on his hand. We went down there, you know, Madge and I, and saw it all."

The simplification of life, therefore, took the place of sunsets, and spread slowly round the table, moving with a steady sort of current; there was nothing that flashed or sparkled, Mr. Osborne only suggesting that if we all went to live in the country it would become as bad as a town, and if we all lived on lentils, the price would go up so much that few could afford it. Lady Ellington, however, cleared those small matters up, gave it to be understood that Mr. Merivale owed a good deal to her suggestions, and rather congratulated herself on having got Madge's name introduced.

Dinner over, a variety of innocent pursuits occupied the party. Mr. Dennison, with a good deal of address, did some conjuring tricks (the same as he had done last night and the night before, and would do again next night and the night after), Lord Dover continued to discuss Gladys' grilse (it was such a fresh-run fish) with various members of the party, and at ten o'clock was held what was called the "council of war," though why "war" was not quite clear, since the purposes of it were wholly pacific, and merely consisted in the discussion of plans for the next day. Lord Ellington, it was settled, should try for a stag, Mr. Osborne and his host were to go grouse-shooting together, Mr. Dennison would be amply occupied in recording the upper beauties of the Glen--he had not as yet painted more than three-quarters of a mile of it--Lady Angela and Mrs. Dennison were to drive over and see some friends in the neighbourhood, while it was universally acclaimed that Lady Fishmonger Ellington should again exercise her remarkable skill on the river. And on old Lady Ellington's saying that she would like to fish too, Mr. Osborne rose to the occasion.

"We already have Lady Grilse Ellington," he said, "and I am sure to-morrow evening we shall have Lady Salmon Ellington."

This brought the council of war to a really epigrammatic ending, and Lady Dover rose with her customary speech.

"We all go to bed very early here, Lady Ellington," she said. "Being out all day in the fresh air makes one sleepy. What is the glass doing, Dover?"

"Going up a bit."

"Then let us hope you will have a fine day to-morrow for your painting, Mr. Dennison. I shall come up the Glen with you in the morning, if you will let me, and go down to the river after lunch to see what the fishmongers--I beg their pardon, it is Lady Salmon and Lady Grilse, is it not?--have done."

Before half-past ten therefore all the ladies were in their rooms, and since breakfast was not till a quarter to ten next morning, it might be hoped that they would all sleep off the effects of being out all day in the fresh air. And though Lady Ellington did not feel in the least inclined to go to her room, and almost everyone else would have sat up as long as she chose, obliging, if necessary, her hostess to sit up too, she never at Glen Callan found herself equal to proposing any other arrangements than those which were made for her, or indeed of criticising anything. For there was a deadly regularity about everything, against which it was useless to rebel, and to dream of suggesting anything was an unthinkable attitude to adopt. She knew, too, exactly what would happen now, just as she had known speeches about the barometer would precede their going upstairs. Lady Dover, since it was her first night, would come with her to her room, ask her if she had everything she wanted, poke the fire for her, and say, "Well, I am sure you must be tired after your journey. I will leave you to get a good rest. Breakfast at a quarter to ten, or would you sooner have it in your room?"

But Lady Ellington felt she would probably be equal to facing the world again after eleven hours of retirement, and said she would come down.

"It is a movable feast, dear," said Lady Dover, as she went out; "in fact, we do not think punctuality at all a virtue at breakfast."

And a small but certain suspicion darted into Lady Ellington's mind that her hostess had said exactly the same thing to her just a year ago, when she came to Glen Callan. She wondered how often she had said it since.

* * * * *

Breakfast was a very bright and cheerful meal at Glen Callan; everyone was refreshed by his long night after the day in the fresh air and ready for another one. Lady Grilse and Lady Salmon were already spoken of by the very clever names that Mr. Osborne had found for them, and he further seemed inclined to christen Lord Ellington as Lord Stag. But the dreary amazement in that gentleman's face when Mr. Osborne made soundings on this point prevented its total success, though Dennison considered it excellent. He himself, though he had to walk but half a mile along a nearly level road to the particular point where he was painting, had so keen a sense of local colour, that, in deference to the fact that this road was in Scotland, he had put on knickerbockers, a Norfolk jacket, and thick shooting-boots. The Norfolk jacket also had a leather pad on the shoulder, so that the cloth should not be soiled by contact with possible oil on the barrels of his gun. But since he never carried nor had ever used a gun, this precaution was almost unnecessary. Still there is no harm in being prepared for any contingency, however unlikely.

The morning was cloudy but fine, and the clouds were high. In front of the windows of the dining-room the ground fell sharply away into the glen, through which brawled the coffee-coloured water of the river where the two ladies were to fish, and Mr. Dennison, as he walked about eating his porridge, a further recognition to the fact that this was Scotland, drew attention to the beautiful contrasts of green and russet in the glen. He also mislaid the spoon with which he had intended to eat his porridge, and after drawing attention to his loss, apparently drew the spoon out of Mr. Osborne's breast pocket. He was accustomed to be the life and soul of the party, and had equal command over the flowers of language and the easier feats of sleight of hand. The flowers of language were his next preoccupation, for Lady Dover had hoped that there would be enough sun for him to work at his picture.

"We landscape painters," he said, "are terribly at the mercy of the elements. We may perhaps half-grasp a conception, a cloudy effect, it may be, and then we are given a fortnight of bright and blazing sunshine. What are we to do? Begin another picture? Ah, that is to let the first conception fade. I spent a month once in Skye watching for an effect I had seen ten years before. Not a stroke of the brush did I make all that month; I waited. Then one morning it came."

He shrugged his shoulders.

"Quite a small picture," he said, "and I sold it for a song. But my reward was the fact that I had waited for it. That was my imperishable possession; my character, my artistic character, was at stake. And I won; yes, I won."

Lady Dover broke in upon the sympathetic pause.

"But a portrait-painter, Mr. Dennison," she said; "surely he may have to wait also for the same look to appear on the face of his sitter. Is not the sitter as fickle as the clouds or the sun?"

Dennison had finished his porridge, and was seated on Lady Dover's left. He drew with his long white forefinger a few imagined lines in the air.

"No, I don't think so," he said. "There are the features; the light can be adjusted. You have but to awake again the train of thought that was in the sitter's mind, and the expression, which after all is only a matter of line, becomes the same again. Look at Dundas's pictures, for instance. I do not deny their merit; but what is there? Five sweeps of the brush is the face, literally no more. A piece of mere scene-painting is the background, a bunch of bananas is the hand, I assure you, a bunch of bananas. That would not be my scheme if I was a portrait painter. I should study my sitter till the very finger-nails were an integral part of the picture, so that the picture would be incomplete without them. Poor Dundas, I think we have heard the last of him. This terrible----"

The silence that succeeded this unfortunate speech was one that might, like darkness, be felt. Mr. Dennison, intoxicated by his own voice, had "forgotten." The silence made him remember. But the silence, though pregnant, was of almost infinitesimal duration, for Lord Dover immediately resorted to the grilse caught the day before, which was now kedgeree; his wife from the other end of the table, and without consultation, recommended Mr. Osborne to try it, and Lady Angela looked forward in anticipation to the lovely views that she and Mrs. Dennison were certain to enjoy during their drive. But this instinctive buzz to bury what had gone before died down, and the dead subject seemed like to have a disconcerting and resurging silence. But Lady Dover, whose mind was already made up on this subject, indicated her attitude. She turned to Lady Ellington, who sat three places from her, and in her quiet voice the social oracle thundered prophecy and promise--

"And how is dear Madge, Lady Salmon?" she said. "I wonder if we could induce her and Mr. Dundas to come for a week or two before we go south? It would be such a pleasure. She would enjoy these beautiful walks, I am sure, and Mr. Dundas must be so very hard-worked that I am certain a little holiday would do him good."

That was the _pronunciamento_ for which Lady Ellington really had come here, weighing light all the discomfort of travel and the dulness of the days that she anticipated. It had been forced, squirted as it were, out of her hostess, but nobody had ever squirted out of Lady Dover anything insincere. She often, in fact, refrained from saying all she meant, but she never said what she did not mean. Her word was as good as the bond of anybody else's; it was trustworthy coinage, sterling in its own dominions. And Lady Ellington accepted it as such, not ringing it or testing it in any way. That it was given her was quite enough.

"I am sure Madge would love to come," she said, "if she can only tear"--she could not help hesitating a moment--"tear dear Evelyn away from his work. He is so busy; everybody wants to be painted by him. And I'm sure I don't wonder. His portrait of Madge! It is too extraordinary! You expect her to get down from the easel and say something characteristic. The hands, too, surely, Mr. Dennison, you don't think the hands are like bunches of bananas in Mr. Dundas's picture of my daughter?"