Chapter I: The Virtuous Stepmother (2)

The fond pair passed to points of greater interest to them, conversing always with sufficient decorum but never without a disturbing suggestion, on his part, of ardour temporarily restrained. As they crept into Agatha’s street, however, she reverted to James:

“He seems to be very good-tempered,” she said.

“Oh, yes, quite. In a way. He’s perfectly harmless. I don’t think he’ll give us any real trouble. I take it he’ll fall in with any plans we make for him. He’s got no particular views of his own, you see.”

4

John was mistaken. In after life it seemed to Agatha that the whole of her wedding day had been filled with commotions about James and his inconvenient, unexpected views. It was entirely typical of him that he should have seized such a moment to launch them on his family. Wind of the trouble came to South Kensington the night before the wedding, when a note from Lois was brought in to Agatha:

“My mother forgot to say to yours that a large slice of wedding
cake and a photograph of you and John ought to be sent to:

Mrs. Job Kell,
Old Forge Cottage,
Little Baverstock,
Tiverton.

“She’s a superannuated housekeeper or something, who ran Lyndon
in the interval between John’s mother and mine, and J. is the
apple of her eye. Incidentally, I may add that James is even
more of an apple, she having ‘reared him from a babby,’ when
even his own nurse had given him up. Indeed, she will never
admit that there is anything the matter with him! Fact!!!

“_Apropos_ of James, we are all in such a way about him. Nothing
very unusual in that, you’ll say; but wait till you hear! This
is something quite new and too appallingly funny and unexpected.
He has got the most extraordinary idea in the world into his
head. I, for one, sympathize with him entirely. But, then, you
know I often do. No time to tell you now, but I will to-morrow
if I get the chance. . . .

“(Almost) your affectionate sister,
“LOIS.”

Agatha showed this letter to her mother, who was interested and perplexed.

“I do hope he hasn’t had any kind of a fit,” she said. “But anyway, it’s better to-day than to-morrow.”

“Lois says an extraordinary idea. That doesn’t sound like an illness of any kind.”

“Oh, dear!” complained Mrs. Cocks. “They have James on the brain. You mustn’t catch the habit when you are one of the family.”

“He’s rather dreadful, but I think he’s much nicer when he isn’t trying to conform to their ideals of good manners. When he is on his best behaviour he is so painfully nervous and makes such dreadful faces that it’s almost unendurable. When he’s left to himself he isn’t at all bad. He has a wonderful smile, when he’s really smiling and not grinning. I must say I don’t think Lady Clewer does very well with him.”

“You are the first person I’ve met who thought so. I remember, when Sir John died, everyone used to say: ‘Poor Lady Clewer! So good and kind, and so nice to that peculiar little stepson! She’s quite broken-hearted.’ It was almost a catchword.”

“But he isn’t little any more,” argued Agatha. “That is where she is mistaken. I should like very much to know what Gerald would make of him.”

She said this with a splendid detachment. If she could not mention Gerald on the eve of her marriage with John, when could she? Mrs. Cocks, not to be outdone, took this once dangerous name with the utmost calm. She replied easily:

“I thought Gerald was studying nerves rather than mental cases. Hasn’t he gone to America especially to study nerves?”

“Yes. But Aunt Hilda says that his next move will be to Paris to work in a clinic for mentally deficient children.”

“Of course,” said Mrs. Cocks, “all this special study must be very interesting, and will get him a better position in the end, I suppose. But he seems to be taking a very long time about it. I never knew a young man so slow in getting started. It’s a pity, in a way, that he has independent means. What he has isn’t enough to be any good, though it’s enough for him just to live on. He might have done better if he’d had to support himself.”

Agatha, who knew that having “enough to be any good” was a periphrasis for matrimonial eligibility, was moved to protest:

“But specialists are badly needed. And it’s seldom possible for a man to specialize who hasn’t got private means.”

“I know, dear. But I feel he might have done better for himself in another career. But perhaps America may do him good. He may acquire a more commercial spirit.”

Agatha tried to think of Gerald with a more commercial spirit. She was unable. Instead, she stumbled dismayingly upon a vivid recollection of his old self—of the friend whose love she had once accepted. She thought of his quick, clever hands, the nervous composure of his gestures, and remembered how eagerly and brilliantly he had talked. She saw afresh his incongruities, his storms and indecisions, and recalled the tenderness which they had awakened in her.

And, remembering this, she was invaded by a tide of devastating, insupportable sorrow. To ease herself she rose and moved about the room, tormented by an anguish so sharp, so sudden, that she almost groaned aloud. Mrs. Cocks, placid and handsome upon the sofa, continued her friendly conversation:

“You don’t realize your luck, child, living in an age when girls are sensibly brought up.”

“Don’t I?” asked Agatha inattentively.

“Oh, my dear! If you only knew what one used to have to put up with. I remember the night before I was married I had a most gruesome interview with my old step-aunt, my mother being dead. She came into my room, just when I was getting sleepy, and said the most upsetting things. It was done in her day. Fortunately she said nothing which I did not expect. Girls weren’t such fools as they were supposed to be, even in those days. And I wasn’t so very young, either. But it was all most disagreeable and you can’t think how I resented it. What’s the matter? Have you got toothache?”

“No.”

Agatha had almost subdued her trouble and sat down by her mother, saying:

“I can quite imagine how you resented it. You’d find me very chilly, Mother dear, if you tried any treatment of the kind on me.”

“But you have got toothache! You are perfectly green!”

“I had just one sharp stab, but it’s gone now.”

It had. But she was feeling strangely exhausted.

“You’d better go to bed. If you look like this to-morrow I shall go distracted. As stony as a gorgon!”

“The gorgons weren’t stony. It was the other people——”

“They were very plain, and so are you at the moment. But, _apropos_ of what I was saying of my step-aunt, there is nothing I ought to say to you, is there?”

“Nothing, thank you!” replied Agatha hastily. “You’ve given me solid good advice for the last six weeks. I couldn’t absorb any more.”

“That is so,” agreed Mrs. Cocks placidly. “But I wouldn’t like to feel I hadn’t done my duty by you.”

To the bride the future yawned like a precipice almost at her feet. Light cast by her mother’s experience upon the abyss could but disincline her for the inevitable plunge. She clung rather to the reflection that, by every standard known in her world, she was marrying a man whom she loved. The plunge ought not, in these circumstances, to turn out so very bad.

Mrs. Cocks kissed her tenderly and bade her good-night. “I shall let you sleep late to-morrow,” she said, “and you shall have your breakfast before you get up. Come to me if you have any return of that toothache in the night, and I’ll give you something for it.”

Then, with a recollection of the sentiment due to such a moment:

“Have you said good-night to your father?”

Agatha shook her head.

“I don’t think I’d better. I never do. And it might disturb him.”

“Perhaps it would look rather silly.”

“After dinner I played that Scarlatti he likes. I thought it would be rather touching on my last night at home. But he went away in the middle.”

“Did he? Oh, well. . . .”

* * * * *

The underground trains, passing the end of the garden, punctuated the night with their intermittent rumbling. Agatha lay awake listening to them and awaiting repose. Her feverish fatigue held sleep away from her and she was still frightened and shaken by that violent, intolerable pang which had rent her when she thought of Gerald Blair.

It was terrible, to know that her heart still concealed such weapons, for she was almost certain, now, that she had never loved her cousin. His wooing, though it had moved her at the time, had been a boyish, inexperienced affair. It was John who had roused her to the possibilities of emotion; from him she had learnt the subtleties of guarded speech, the contagious fire which can lie hidden in a glance. For him her heart beat quicker.

She had never known any of these things before. Gerald had been no more than a friend; but a friend in whose company she had found, inexplicably, perfect happiness. It was not for him but for the memory of this contentment that regret assailed her. She believed that she yearned after a mental completeness, once captured and then lost for ever. There had been an intensity of sensation, a full current of life transcending the sorry measure of normal existence. For a little time she had perceived creation as a unity. It had been this abounding of the spirit, this marvellous clarity of mood, this apprehension of profound significance in everything which had driven her to her career of folly at Canverley Fair. She had escaped, for a moment, from the isolation which binds us; she was no longer a detached figure upon an unfocussed background, but part of a gay and simple pattern.

This exaltation had vanished soon enough, but the memory could still hurt her when she thought of it, or when she thought of Gerald who had shared it with her. She knew that she could never hope to find it again in the conscious, deliberate life upon which she was embarking.

For her consolation, in this endless oppressive night, she turned to the image of her lover. But he evaded her; he was blurred by the mists of romance. She wanted to see him sharply and clearly, as she had seen her cousin, but she could only recall, vaguely, the brief ecstasy of her interviews with him. She began, in despair, to catalogue his qualities; he was dark, he was prosperous, he was experienced and determined. Everything, in fact, that poor Gerald was not.

At last, when London sparrows chirped to the dawn in the plane trees and milk carts rattled in the street below, she fell asleep, to dream neither of John nor of Gerald, but of the frightening, mysterious James. He pursued her through countless, shifting scenes, led her to the altar, and climbed snowy mountains with her. They were lost in the endless glare of blinding glaciers. And when, still in her dream, she rose and leant from her window for air, his large face grinned up at her from a menacing street, all empty and heavy with a strange gray dawn. The vision so terrified her that she could not shake off the horror of it when she woke. The day took on the vague, poignant qualities of a nightmare in which nothing seemed real save the sense of impending doom. She did what she was told, listened to her mother’s rapid, authoritative voice, ate an intolerable number of small meals brought to her on trays, and submitted to an excited toilet. The silence in which she drove with her father to church was lovely and comforting.

John, handsome and competent as ever, waited for her at the chancel steps, and at the sight of his cheerful self-possession she became more collected. While the clergyman was haranguing them about those carnal lusts of which the bride is supposed to know nothing, she reflected composedly that John ought really to be married as often as possible, he did it so well. He was obviously enjoying himself. She was aware that he had deliberately removed his thoughts from her in order to be able to concentrate on his part. This was the right way to do it; being married was, after all, a duty to one’s neighbour and not a personal affair. Fired by his high standard of social exertion she threw herself into the business with energy and gave a very pleasing and stately performance. By the unusual stillness of the church behind them she divined that they were getting it across. As she returned down the aisle Mendelssohn’s triumph seemed to epitomize her own satisfaction in her beautiful behaviour. She had quitted the maiden state becomingly.

They were no sooner bestowed in the car than John burst out: “Have you heard about James?”

“Not in any detail. Lois said there was trouble in a note last night. But she didn’t say what it was.”

“It’s the most extraordinary affair. Desperately annoying, just when we are going away. They’ll have to settle it without us, that’s all. We can’t be bothered.”

“But what’s the matter with him?”

“It’s unheard of! The fellow wants to go to Paris. Says he is going, in fact.”

“Paris! Paris!”

“Yes. Paris, my child!”

“But—oh—why?”

“Heaven knows! To work at his painting, he says. He has quite an obsession for that kind of thing, you know. He always had, even when he was a kid.”

“But does he want to be an artist?”

“God knows what he wants! He seems to have got the idea from someone who’s been teaching him drawing. It would be funny if it wasn’t so idiotic. James going to Paris! Good Lord!”

“But does he draw well? How well does he draw?”

“Not so badly. He caricatures rather well.” There was an irritable reminiscence in John’s tone. “Mamma got him jolly good lessons when she saw he was keen on it. I believe it’s not uncommon for that sort of chap to have a purely mechanical turn of the kind, don’t you know. But it’s not as if any one was stopping him from doing it here. He can do it all day for all we care. We don’t interfere with him.”

“Poor James!”

“Poor James, does she say? Poor James be —— well, perhaps I’d better not say it till I’ve been married a little longer. It would be rather shocking on one’s wedding journey. But, do you know, Agatha, we can’t really stop him going if he wants to. It sounds incredible, but there it is. He’s of age, and he has a small independent income, inherited from our mother. Of course, we’ve always taken it for granted that he’ll be guided by us. But now . . .”

“Surely you can do something?”

“Oh, if the worse comes to the worst, we could, I imagine, get a doctor’s certificate or something. But it would be very awkward. We ought to have done it before. You see he can behave so sensibly when he likes; and if, just to spite us, he showed up at his best with the doctor, we might have quite a job to get him certified. Still, he can’t be allowed to go.”

“Would it really be impossible if he wants to very much?”

“Why just think of it! James in Paris! A place like Paris!”

“It isn’t so different from any other place.”

“No, but he is different from any other person. There’s no knowing what mischief he mightn’t get up to. It all comes from taking this scrubbing and daubing too seriously. I was against it from the first. But Mamma had all these ideas about manual education. However! I’ve told him I won’t sanction it. As head of the family I’ve put my foot down. And he needn’t think I’ll help him if he gets into difficulties.”

“What did he say to that?”

“Nothing. He’s as obstinate as a mule. . . . Hullo! Here we are!”

They had drawn up before the Cocks’s door, triumphant with its gala awning and crimson carpet. It was flung wide by beaming maidservants, and John handed Agatha and her lilies, her pearls, her satin train and lace veil, out of the car. In the hall the bride dispensed a little of her mild sweetness to her father’s servants. She was already rather tired of hearing her new name. She had been called Lady Clewer a hundred times in the vestry while she signed herself, for the last time, as Agatha Cocks. But she submitted smilingly and had pleased, happy glances for everyone.

John began to grow impatient. He liked watching his wife do the right thing, but he was unwilling that she should waste too much time among sooty cook-maids. She knew that he was fidgeting on the stairs behind her, and turned to join him. They had scarcely reached the drawing room before other taxis were heard outside, and there were voices in the hall. John twitched her train into becoming folds round her feet and assumed the posture of happy groom at her side. She felt that she quite hated James for spoiling the romance of her wedding drive. It was the first expedition she had ever made with John that had no flavour of adventure. They had been all absorbed in domestic discussion. It was very disappointing, for they could never be married again. This unique occasion was gone—lost!

“I’ve not crushed your flowers,” he murmured in her ear as a bevy of bridesmaids flocked into the room. “Isn’t that exemplary in a bridegroom?”

This interesting point was immediately marked by the youngest of the Clewers. There was only one quality which Cynthia found admirable in her sister-in-law, and that was her exquisite neatness. Mrs. Cocks also recorded with pleasure the immaculate freshness of Agatha’s lilies, and added another mark to John’s credit. She might have known he would take care; there never was a man who knew better what was expected of him in a public position.

The outer world poured in, flooding the house of Cocks with a jubilant tide. Agatha gave herself to the embraces of countless women and heard them congratulating her mother upon getting rid of her. In the midst of all this clamour the sight of the troublesome James advancing to greet her had a calming effect. She decided that his new ambitions became him, however impossible they might be in themselves. He wore a look of sulky obstinacy which was a great improvement upon his earlier manner. His very walk was more purposeful. He shook hands with her and scowled at John. Cynthia, however, who had followed him, was determined to exhibit him a little.

“Why don’t you kiss her, James?” she drawled. “You ought to. She’s your sister now, you know.”

He remained cool.

“I’d better not,” he said to Agatha. “You wouldn’t like it and I shouldn’t like it.”

“Oh, what a gentleman!” mocked Cynthia. “You’ll have to learn better manners before you go to France. Did you know James was going to France, Agatha?”

“I had heard something of it.”

“Did John tell you about it in the car coming back from church?” demanded James with interest.

“Er—yes.”

“There, then!” He nodded at Cynthia, and explained: “She wondered what you would talk about. I said it would be me.”

“You do think a lot of yourself, don’t you?” retorted she. “He’ll have to hurry up and learn French, won’t he?”

“I know French,” he asserted.

This was true, for he had shared several French governesses with Lois and Cynthia and had become quite as articulate in the tongue of these poor ladies as in his own.

“It doesn’t make much difference,” said Cynthia, tired of baiting him. “John says you aren’t to go, so you won’t be allowed to.”

They all looked at John, who was ably defending himself against the congratulations of an hysterical old lady.

“I don’t mind what John says.”

“He’ll have to mind, won’t he, Agatha?”

“I really don’t know what will be settled,” replied Agatha coldly.

She disliked Cynthia.

James turned away to one of the windows where he spent the remainder of the reception absorbed in the constant arrival and departure of taxis in the street below. Agatha noticed that the other window was occupied by another solitary watcher—her father. He was looking extremely small and shrunken and was making no attempt to fulfil his duties as a host. The isolated bleakness of these two figures, withdrawn amidst the babble, struck her strangely. They brooded in the background like skeletons at the feast.

An hour later, when she came downstairs erect and slim in her blue travelling suit, she glanced into the drawing room to see if they were still there. Varden Cocks was gone, but James was at his post. Sunlight and emptiness filled the room, and a great clamour of conversation, an enormous rattling of spoons and forks in the dining room below proclaimed the whereabouts of the wedding guests. Anew she felt most anxious to be nice to poor James; to bring balm to that lonely, mutilated mind. She felt indignant with the Clewers for scorning him. It was as if they were all determined to deny to him that dignity and self-respect which is the birthright of the lowest. His sorrowful eyes turned upon her were an accusation.

She advanced into the room.

“They are all downstairs eating ices,” he told her.

“I know. Aren’t you coming?”

“No! I don’t like them.”

“Well, James, it’s good-bye for the present, then. You’ll come and pay us a long visit, won’t you, when we get back from Norway.”

“I shall be in Paris then,” he stated.

Without conscious readjustment she began to accept his point of view. Of course he would be in Paris. How stupid they all were!

“We may be stopping in Paris before the end of our honeymoon,” she said. “If you are there, we must meet and go about to things.”

“What things?”

“Oh—theatres and things.”

“But I’m going to paint,” he objected.

“But you don’t want to paint all the time, surely? You’ll go round and see the sights, I suppose?”

He thought it over and then said conclusively:

“I don’t here.”

She felt baffled and wondered what else she could say. There were fresh sounds of a car in the street, and he looked out of the window.

“It’s yours,” he said. “They are putting your luggage on to it.”

Agatha yawned.

“What are you yawning for?” he asked sympathetically.

“I don’t know. I keep on doing it. It’s silly. I can’t help it.”

“I know,” he averred.

There were cries for her downstairs, and she thought she heard John’s voice. She stood still, gaping. James, surprised at her rigidity, looked into her face exclaiming:

“Here! What are you frightened of?”

Turning to rebuff his foolishness, she was silenced by his expression. In that ugly countenance she perceived so much gravity, indignation, and concern that she was mute.

“Look—you woman—Agatha,” he said urgently, “—don’t go if you don’t want to!”

“Agatha! Are you ready? Agatha!”

People were coming upstairs.

“Don’t listen to them,” muttered James, catching her arm. “I don’t. They are very silly, you know. You shouldn’t let them——”

A shrill laugh wrenched itself out of her throat. She shook off his hand and admonished him:

“Don’t talk like that! It’s you who are silly, James!”

For a moment he stood as if barring her way. Then the horrified penetration died out of his eyes and he let her go, indifferently. She ran down to her husband.

5

Marian Clewer prided herself upon the regularity with which she conducted her household. There was no variation in her iron laws. Immediately after the wedding, therefore, she flogged her family back into the routine of everyday life, sternly checking any attempt to prolong the feast. Upon the return of the Clewers to Eaton Square she demanded whether Lois had read Italian with Miss Barrington. Lois, who resented her Italian lessons more deeply than any of her other shackles, replied sulkily that she had not. She had supposed that John’s wedding would be a holiday.

“That has nothing to do with it,” replied Lady Clewer coldly. “Go and take off your frock and give it to Peters to put away for you. Put on your green dress and go into the schoolroom for your reading. You can have your tea there to-day as I want to talk business with Major Talbot and Mrs. Cocks.”

The schoolroom was a nice sunny place at the top of the house, well equipped with all the paraphernalia of modern education. Miss Barrington, the notable woman who had succeeded in teaching James to read, was sitting comfortably in a rocking-chair by the window. She also had hoped for a holiday and was engaged upon one of those endless letters to her cousins at Cape Town which occupied her infrequent leisure hours. But when she saw Lois she sprang to her feet with an eager display of activity such as Marian liked to see in her subordinates. She was a sensible, apple-cheeked young woman, with high academic qualifications, a morbid conscience, and great personal humility: an ideal governess for the Clewer household. She belonged to that type of energetic worker for which Marian had a positive cult. There were squads of them down at Lyndon; secretaries, lady gardeners, dairywomen, and the like. Lady Clewer was uniformly generous to them, bullied them, nursed them when they were ill, paid for their false teeth, kept them continually on the run in her employ, and, in short, scarcely allowed them to call their souls their own. All that she required in return was loyalty.

Miss Barrington was very loyal. She even thought it necessary to display enthusiasm over the mild pages of “I Promessi Sposi,” which book it was her duty to read with Miss Martin. She said sometimes that she thought it an interesting story. She looked very unhappy when Lois exclaimed:

“I suppose it’s because Mother can’t even speak her own language properly that she thinks I ought to know four!”

“She has a very high ideal of education,” said the governess.

“Most people idealize what they haven’t got.”

“Lois!”

“Well? I was only generalizing. Where’s the wretched book? Let’s get it over!”

“Lois! You know quite well that you oughtn’t to talk like that.”

“I can’t help it. It’s too irritating. Here’s Agatha, two years younger than me, allowed to go to Norway with a strange man she hardly knows——”

“Let me see! Where did we leave off?” said Miss Barrington hastily.

“I don’t want to be married, goodness knows,” stormed Lois. “Except to get a little peace and freedom and quietness. But I never shall, anyway. I never get the chance. I never see any man to speak to.”

“You go to balls and things. You’ve been presented,” put in Cynthia from the sofa.

“What earthly good does being presented do? I’m not going to marry the Prince of Wales. And as for dances, Mother scares away any man who attempts to be at all friendly. I never get the chances other girls do.”

“Lois! I’ve found the place!”

“Well, why didn’t you marry John?” asked Cynthia. “I should have, in your position. You could, you know. You aren’t really related. And you’ve had plenty of opportunities.”

Lois, to whom this was a new idea, gasped. So did Miss Barrington.

“Well, but John didn’t want to marry me.”

“That’s your fault. You could have made him. I think you missed an excellent chance. Just think what fun it would have been taking Lyndon out of Mother’s hands!”

“Cynthia! I can’t have you talking like that. It isn’t very nice,” exclaimed the agonized Miss Barrington.

The two girls laughed.

“How do you mean, I could have made him?” pursued Lois.

“Oh, well! If you don’t know that much!”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. You couldn’t, at your age. Why, you’ve not even been confirmed!”

“I don’t see what that has to do with it.”

“It shows what a baby you are.”

Cynthia needed occasional repression, but it seldom had any effect on her. She smiled mysteriously and examined the ends of her finger-nails.

“Well, all things considered,” she said, “I think I’ll get married before I come out.”

“Nonsense! You won’t be allowed to. Nobody does.”

“Well, I expect I shall. You see! As for you. . . . There’s still James. You’d better take him.”

James, seated at the table, was drawing in a small sketch-book. He was, as usual, absorbed in his work, and did not look up when his name was mentioned. Lois could not avoid an expressive grimace at the idea of marrying him.

“Lois and Cynthia! You really mustn’t talk in this way. Not in the schoolroom. Cynthia, get something to do! Your mother thinks you are too indolent. It’s nonsense to lie on the sofa doing nothing in the middle of the afternoon.”

“I’m not doing nothing. I’m polishing my nails.”

“Lois! Hadn’t you better get on with your Italian?”

The two girls took no notice and calmly continued their argument. Under the eye of their mother they were civil to their governess, but not otherwise. They had, naturally, no idea of obligatory courtesy toward dependents. Marian’s own demeanour to her subordinates, for all her benevolence and generosity, was not calculated to instil such a principle into their budding minds. Lois, who prided herself upon her interest in James’s work, leant over his shoulder to inspect the drawing. It was, she perceived, a pencil study of the Cocks family, presented with the unpleasing bleakness of outline peculiar to James. Mrs. Cocks, seated in a magnificent amplitude, more than suggested Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse. Behind her chair hovered two shadowy creatures, types of death and despair. Executed by any one else, the intention of the piece must have been deliberately malicious. But Lois, from long experience, had come to believe that James was incapable of malice. He had too little grasp of situation; too little comprehension of human character. Sketches which looked like caricatures were, for him, a simple exposition of the subject as he saw it.

“I like the way you’ve put Mr. Cocks and Agatha in the background,” she commented. “But you’ve made them too tragic. Agatha does look a little _triste_ sometimes, but in quite a placid way. She never has that crucified sort of look. And Mr. Cocks may be ill, but he isn’t dying.”

“Isn’t he?” asked James.

“Not that I know of.” Lois began to wonder why she had been so sure about it. “It may be because his wife looks so lively,” she concluded. “What a splendid creature she is! And just like Mrs. Siddons. I love it when she piles up all her hair on that coronet comb. You’ve done it justice, James!”

“You’d better show it to her,” advised Cynthia. “It may make her speak for you this afternoon.”

“What’s that?” exclaimed Lois.

“Well, she’s having tea in the drawing room this minute with Major Talbot and Aunt Edith. That’s why you aren’t allowed there. They are settling what’s to be done with James.”

“But how do you know?”

“She listened at the door,” James asserted.

Miss Barrington exclaimed, but Cynthia only laughed. Lois became impassioned:

“Oh, isn’t it too bad? They’ve no right to do it. No right at all. When you aren’t there! As if you were a child!”

“It makes no difference,” said James calmly.

“But suppose they say you aren’t to go?”

“Well, they can. I shall go all the same.”

“It’s doing it behind your back which is so disgusting. They ought to let you speak for yourself.”

“James isn’t much of a speaker,” observed Cynthia. “Why don’t you do it for him?”

“I’ve a good mind to. Shall I, James?”

“You can if you like,” agreed James absently, as he returned to his drawing.

Lois bounced out of the room and burst like a whirlwind upon the astonished party in the drawing room.

“It’s very unfair of you to decide about James without consulting him,” she stormed. “Why should you insult him like that? If you don’t take care he’ll go just to spite you.”

Lady Clewer became crimson.

“I never heard such a thing in my life!” she cried. “Considering that for sixteen years I’ve done nothing but study his welfare——”

“You don’t study his feelings.”

“Will you hold your tongue, Lois?”

“You’ve no right to discuss him when he can’t speak for himself!”

“How did you know we were discussing him, my dear?”

The high drawl of Mrs. Gordon Clewer cut into the dispute with deadly power. The shrill, angry tones of the mother and daughter subsided. Marian had been so furious that she had overlooked this obvious retort. She now proceeded to make use of it, in her own thorough way, speaking about an octave lower.

“Yes! You young people think yourselves so important, don’t you? You can’t imagine that we ever have anything else to discuss, can you? But, my dear Lois, when we do discuss James we sha’n’t ask your advice. We may summon him, but we won’t need to consult you. Have you finished your Italian reading?”

“No.”

“Well, then, pray go and do so.”

“All the same,” exploded Major Talbot, when Lois had retired in disorder, “something’s got to be done about the lad, I suppose.”

He spoke so seldom that the three ladies jumped.

“We’d better settle it, one way or the other,” he went on. “How, exactly, do you stand, Lady Clewer? I mean, how much legal control have you over his movements?”

“That’s the difficulty. He’s of age: twenty-one three weeks ago. He seems to have had this extraordinary plan for two years. But he kept it to himself because he had got it into his head that he could do as he liked as soon as he was twenty-one. I don’t know who can have told him that.”

“Then this isn’t a new idea, this Paris scheme?”

“It’s the first we’ve heard of it. But he says that he always meant to go when he was twenty-one. It’s been very deceitful of him. And then he has this money of your sister’s. About £400 a year, doesn’t it come to?”

“But have you—er—no medical certificate?”

“No. Nothing that really quite justifies——”

“When did he last see a doctor?”

“When he was about fifteen, I think,” said Marian, after reflection. “They all had measles, and I suppose he saw one then.”

“He hasn’t been having special medical treatment?” asked Mrs. Cocks, in surprise.

“There was no call for it. Physically he was always very strong and healthy. I took him to a specialist when he was very little, of course. He said that the child was very abnormal.”

“Quite!” said Major Talbot judicially. “And I suppose from time to time some qualified doctor has had a look at him?”

“N-no. Where was the use?” said Lady Clewer in distress. “So little can be done for that sort of thing when once you’ve accepted it.”

“D’ye mean to say you’ve never definitely established what’s wrong with the boy?” cried Major Talbot.

“Really!” Marian became flustered. “I should have thought it was obvious to any one looking at him. It always has been. Directly, the first time I saw him, I guessed that there was something very wrong. But, of course, I never foresaw that he would get these foolish ideas into his head, or I would have been more careful to get the whole thing cut and dried before he came of age. Only I shrank from it. Having these things in the family is so awkward. It’s so painful! I’m not accustomed to it.”

“Poor Marian!” murmured Mrs. Gordon Clewer.

“Of course, if you think I’ve been mistaken, I’ve no more to say. I acted for the best, as I thought. It hasn’t been easy; I don’t expect you can realize what a difficulty it’s been. He didn’t even learn to read properly till he was past sixteen. It’s been impossible to teach him civil manners. We couldn’t send him to an ordinary school, or even let him be very much with other children.”

“Oh, quite! Quite! Quite!” soothed Major Talbot, who was overwhelmed by this flow of rhetoric.

“I kept him at home with my girls. It’s often been a little trying for them. But I thought he would be happier. If you think he should have been sent to some institution, I’ve nothing more to——”

“Oh, no, indeed!” protested Major Talbot. “I’m sure you did all that was best. It’s only the question of preventing him from making a fool of himself now. This idea of going to Paris! What’s to be done about it?”

“Of course,” suggested Mrs. Cocks, “I suppose it would be better for him to have something to do? Something that really interests him, and gives him an object in life.”

“Oh, yes! That’s why I have done everything in my power to encourage his drawing. But why Paris? Why not here?”

“Well,” said Mrs. Gordon Clewer, “I think it might have been very much worse. It’s quite respectable to want to draw in Paris. He might have wanted to draw battle-ships and sections of salmon in crayon on the pavement.”

“But Paris is such an impossible place.”

“He’ll have to be looked after wherever he goes, won’t he?” asked Mrs. Cocks. “If you gave in on the essential point, and let him go, perhaps you could induce him to stay with people who would look after him a certain amount.”

“Exactly, Mrs. Cocks,” exclaimed Major Talbot. “Exactly! I quite agree with you. It would be much easier to let him go, under proper supervision, than to get a medical certificate to prevent it. Doctors are uncommonly careful who they certify, you know, especially when there’s any money in the case.”

“Then you all think I should let him go?” asked Lady Clewer dubiously.

The general opinion seemed to be that James should go if a suitable establishment could be found for him. Presently an idea occurred to Lady Clewer.

“Somebody now . . . who was it? . . . Somebody told me the other day of a family who takes paying guests. Young girls, generally, and there is a certain amount of chaperonage. An old lady and her daughters I think it was. I wonder if they would take a young man! And they were strict Protestants.”

“French Protestants are always strict,” said Mrs. Gordon Clewer. “But it’s a point. We don’t want our James going over to Rome. If he did, he would undoubtedly want to become a Trappist monk, and I don’t know but what the vocation wouldn’t suit him.”

“It was Mrs. Temple told me,” recollected Lady Clewer. “I was wondering if a little time in Paris wouldn’t be nice for Cynthia. But I rather gathered that these people were a little”—_bourgeois_ had been the word used by Mrs. Temple, but Marian shied at it and substituted: “middle-class.” “So I did not think it would quite do.”

“It would be a pity for Cynthia’s tone to be contaminated,” said Mrs. Gordon Clewer sententiously.

“Yes,” agreed Cynthia’s mother. “She’s at such an impressionable age. I wouldn’t like to send her among second-rate people. But it would be different for James. Mrs. Temple says they often have girls who are studying music or art, and they will take them about to their lessons. I daresay they would take James every day to the studio, or wherever it is he will work.”

“But would that quite do, in this case?” protested Mrs. Cocks. “I mean, a young man can’t be escorted quite like a girl can. It puts him in such a ridiculous position.”

Mrs. Gordon Clewer shot an amused look at Major Talbot, but he had evidently failed to find anything ludicrous in the prospect of James under daily escort to the Latin Quarter. Concealing her joy, she innocently remarked:

“But in France, you know, Mrs. Cocks, things are very different. You see quite big boys taken to school by _bonnes_ in white aprons.”

Marian took this in perfectly good faith. She rejoined tranquilly:

“Yes. France is quite different.”

“But you can’t!” Mrs. Cocks was beginning to think that Agatha had been right. “The thing’s impossible! Can’t you see? You can’t treat the poor boy like that! It’s cruel! Think how he will be laughed at, taken about by a nursery maid!”

“But,” urged Marian, “he must have somebody to look after him.”

“Well, then, don’t let him go at all. But don’t expose him to the universal derision of every boy of his own age!”

“Don’t you see, Mrs. Cocks,” said Major Talbot, “it’s a rash step letting him go at all? It doesn’t alter the fact that he can’t look after himself. He must go under peculiar conditions.”

“He can choose,” said Marian. “He can go if he will accept the arrangements we make for him. If he doesn’t like them, he needn’t go. Of course,” she conceded, “it needn’t be a nursery maid. No! That would look foolish. But there must be someone.”

Mrs. Gordon Clewer rose, preparing to depart. She kissed Marian on both cheeks with the utmost affection.

“Good-bye, my dear,” she said. “I’m glad you’ve come to so satisfactory a conclusion. You are inimitable; you never disappoint me. But I’m very much afraid you are only at the beginning of your troubles. You’ll never find that he really settles down. Never! It’s heredity, my dear; environment is so much overrated. You’ve done what you can, I’m sure, but you’ll never alter his heredity. With those parents he is bound to give trouble.”

“I never met his mother,” said Marian in some surprise. “But from what I know of his parents, I should have thought——”

“You knew neither of them, my dear,” said the old lady unexpectedly.

Everyone felt that she must have forgotten that Marian had been married to James’s father for two years. Old age was beginning to tell upon Mrs. Gordon Clewer. She sometimes said these odd, disconcerting things. She nodded thrice, very emphatically, clucked at them and ambled away under the attentive escort of Major Talbot.

Mrs. Cocks took her leave, hoping that the unfortunate James would have the sense to give up the Paris idea. She underrated his tenacity. James never wasted energy over non-essentials. Provided that he might go to Paris and paint he agreed calmly to any arrangements his stepmother might like to make. Lois, however, felt for him all the indignation that was proper.

It was a fine evening, and Mrs. Cocks walked most of the way to South Kensington. As she turned into her own street she saw a taxi drawn up before the awning and crimson carpet which still decorated her door. Upon the steps was a young man, talking to the parlourmaid. Before she could make out who he was, he ran down again, jumped into the taxi and drove off.

“Who was that, Meadowes?” she asked.

“It was Mr. Blair, madam.”

“Oh! I didn’t know he was in England. Did he want to see me?”

“No, madam. He asked for Miss Agatha. Lady Clewer, I mean. He said he’d only got back from America this morning. He didn’t seem to know that she had been married to-day.”

“Oh. Did he say he’d come again?”

Mrs. Cocks had no objection, now, to seeing her young kinsman about the house.

“No, madam. When he heard Miss Agatha was gone out of town on her honeymoon, he said he wouldn’t wait. He said he was just going to France.”

“Oh! Oh, yes!”

“If you please, madam, Mr. Cocks has gone to bed and sent for the doctor. I thought I’d better tell you at once.”

“Gone to bed? I’d better go up. Thank you, Meadowes.”

As she climbed the stairs, Mrs. Cocks reflected that her husband’s collapse was not very surprising. He had been looking ill all day, and she had meant to take him in hand as soon as the wedding was over.

This visit of Gerald’s was very odd, and just like him. An invitation to the wedding had been sent to him in America, in case he should return to England in time for it. But it must have missed him. On the whole, she was not sorry that it had. Agatha was now safe.

Mrs. Cocks smiled a little grimly, remembering his hasty departure from her house along the crimson carpet spread for his successful rival.