Chapter IV: The Braxhall Frescoes (3)

Each had a vision of the other lying awake in those long haunted hours when the valley echoed to strange cries and a low mist from the stream lay over the fields. They resumed their climbing and did not pause again until they had reached the topmost terrace of all and stood close beneath the walls of Braxhall. Then Gerald spoke impulsively, in obedience to a decision which he had just reached:

“I suppose lunch to-morrow will be over by three o’clock? I must get away by the three-forty.”

“Oh, Gerald! You aren’t going? Not to-morrow?”

“Yes.” He spoke a little unsteadily this time and did not look at her. “I think I ought to be getting back.”

She stared at him, an icy terror spreading over her, so that she shivered in spite of the strong sun.

“I really oughtn’t to be away at all, just now,” he added. “But I wanted to see—to see those frescoes, you know.”

He regarded his mushrooms unhappily. He had made up his mind that another night of listening to the Braxhall owls would be as much as he could bear. To himself he repeated in mental reiteration:

“Too risky! Altogether too risky!”

They moved on into the house. When they reached the marble corridor she had collected herself sufficiently to remark: “Oh, yes. I suppose you oughtn’t to leave your work for long.”

He nodded and began to mount the wide, shallow stairs. She watched him until he had turned the corner. He was still carrying his hat reverently, like a chalice.

4

He was scarcely out of sight before Lois came hurriedly through the folding doors of the banqueting hall. She advanced in the greatest agitation, calling softly to her sister-in-law. The pallor of her tear-stained cheeks roused Agatha, for a moment, from the stupor of misery which had overtaken her.

“What is it? What is the matter?” she cried.

Lois sank on to the bench beside her and began in a low voice:

“Oh, Agatha! It’s so dreadful! Listen! Hubert is come—and——”

She paused to give a loud sob.

“Dearest Lois! Tell me what it is. What can have——”

“Can you come into the hall for a minute? No, wait! I’d better tell you first what has happened.”

“Have you had bad news?” asked Agatha, wondering if Hubert had been speculating.

“No! No! He came, and I took him to see the frescoes. Oh, dear! Oh, Agatha, did you see anything wrong with them?”

“My dear, I know absolutely nothing about pictures.”

“But you don’t need to, to see this. How can we have been so blind? It’s incredible! I saw it directly he pointed it out to me. And you can’t think how angry he is. He says I am absolutely incapable of looking observantly at anything.”

“But what is it? What is wrong with them?”

“Oh, it’s perfectly wicked of James. It really is. He’s put in Tom and Cynthia.”

“Put in?”

“Into the fresco. They are quite unmistakable. Hubert says he doesn’t know when he’s seen anything more savage. He saw it the moment——”

“Oh, it can’t be. I don’t believe it. I saw the frescoes myself. Where are they?”

“In the centre panel, over the dais. Don’t you remember those people reclining at a sort of banquet—absolutely gorging?”

Agatha reorganized her memory and recalled with a shock of alarm an incredibly aldermanic figure, which she had set down for Silenus, taking his ease, if she remembered correctly, in the arms of a slender, blonde hussy. . . . A horrible doubt was born in her mind.

“Let me look!” she cried, and then asked: “Who is in the hall?”

“Only Hubert. He’s the only person that knows, so far, except John. John saw it at once when we told him, and he just wants to murder James. And he said we’d better find you and consult what’s best to be done. So we both went to look for you. I don’t know where he’s gone; up to your room, I expect. I—I don’t think he knew you had gone out with Mr. Blair. But I happened to look out of the window and saw you coming up the hill. So I ran out to stop you.”

“I see,” said Agatha, too much preoccupied to notice that Lois was blushing. “Let’s go into the hall.”

She followed Lois through the big doors. They discovered Hubert, in a transport of fury, pacing up and down and viewing the unspeakable paintings from every part of the room. Agatha looked at the panel over the dais and turned pale. It was quite undeniable that the central figures of the piece were more than reminiscent of Sir Thomas and Lady Bragge.

She looked for a long time in shocked silence and then said faintly:

“I suppose it’s having no clothes on that makes one slow to recognize them.”

“I suppose so,” said Hubert grimly. “But I found no difficulty in seeing it the moment I came into the room.”

“But then, you know, the first time I saw it they were both here, with their clothes and everything—it distracted one’s attention a certain amount.”

“I see it more strongly every minute,” broke in Lois. “I’ve seen Cynthia look like that a dozen times, when she is a little anxious what Sir Thomas will say next. Late on in dinner, you know, when he’s rather . . .”

“I’ll go down to Bramfield to-morrow and kill James,” said Hubert.

Agatha was looking intently at the piece and now asked: “What are all those people doing on that little hill behind the group? What are they building?”

“A temple?” suggested Hubert uncertainly.

“It’s Braxhall,” she vowed. “It’s this house as you see it from the valley.”

“Perhaps,” he agreed. “But it doesn’t signify. It isn’t nearly so obvious as these people in the foreground. Among all these bosky hillocks and leafy groves it will pass unnoticed very probably. The other can’t.”

“I don’t think there are any other portraits,” said Lois, who had been looking anxiously at the other panels. “Not of people we know, anyhow. That’s some comfort.”

“I shall go round and kill him,” repeated Hubert with gathering venom.

“I wish you would,” muttered Lois.

“When you think it was on my recommendation. . . . Of course, I ought to have known that he wasn’t to be trusted. I knew he was getting riled with the way Sir Thomas went on, and I half suspected that he had some dirty trick up his sleeve. But I depended on Lois to let me know if anything was wrong. I ought to have known that she is about as much use as a sick headache. I ought to have known, after all these years. . . .”

“But Lois wasn’t the only one,” interrupted Agatha. “We’ve all been blind. Look at John! And my mother, and Lady Clewer, and the Bragges themselves! You are the first person to notice it, Hubert, as far as I know.”

“Well, I can’t understand it. You simply can’t have looked at the thing.”

“No. I don’t think we did. That’s it. At least, it is in my case. There is always something in James’s work which makes me very reluctant to look at it. I couldn’t say why.”

“Of course,” said Hubert bitterly, “anybody could be excused for not recognizing their own portraits; and I suppose that the rest of you were so steeped in the Bragge atmosphere, don’t you know . . .”

He broke off with a shrug. He could not forgive them for not having warned him. His taunt was directed at his wife but it stung Agatha intolerably. Convinced that her cousin was fleeing from Braxhall because he could endure it no longer, she resented any implication which would put her in such a galley. It was an insult to say that she was steeped in Bragge atmosphere. Confronted with this epitome of it, she found it all as detestable as anybody could. Neither James nor Gerald could hate it worse.

“But what about the party?” Lois was saying. “That’s what we wanted to consult you about. What are we to do? Can it be put off? What shall we say to the Bragges?”

“Couldn’t we persuade them to have lunch in the panelled room?”

“It wouldn’t hold half the people. Besides, the whole thing is got up especially to exhibit the frescoes.”

“Well,” said Agatha, thinking swiftly, “we must let things take their chance. I would suggest that we say nothing to any one. Not till after the party. It can’t be put off now.”

“But supposing people see . . .” began Lois.

“Can’t we trust that the majority of the guests will be as unobservant as we have been? I don’t see why not. They won’t expect it, you know; and most people don’t see things they don’t expect. And they will all be eating lovely food; food good enough to absorb their attention completely. Besides, a lot of them will have their backs to that particular panel.”

“I shall give myself away,” said Lois. “I shall blush whenever I look at the thing.”

“If ever I do anything for that fellow again,” said Hubert, “I’ll be boiled alive!”

“And for relations too!” cried Lois. “It’s simply disgusting! When we have all been so . . .”

She was disconcerted by something in the faces of the other two, and did not attempt to specify what his family had always been to James. Instead she added:

“I’m sure we all recognize, now, that he is justified in his claims as an artist.”

“I never heard him make any,” murmured Agatha.

Hubert was studying the fresco again and now commented: “I always did think that Sir Thomas looked like a satyr. I remember it struck me the first time I saw them sitting together under a tree. A satyr and a nymph! Oh, yes—but it wasn’t Cynthia though, it was you, Agatha.”

“Cynthia or me!” thought Agatha. “It doesn’t matter which. We are both the same type to James—and Gerald.”

“But even if we get through this awful lunch safely,” demanded Lois tearfully, “what then?”

“We’ll have to see,” said Hubert. “I think I agree with Agatha. Since we can’t postpone the lunch we must go through with it, and in that case the fewer people who know the truth the better. Your mother doesn’t know, Lois?”

“No. And what she’ll say when she finds out, I don’t know. She will make James sorry.”

“What about your mother?” went on Hubert, turning to Agatha. “Should we tell her? Would she help us to carry things off?”

“Heavens, no! On no account! She’s the very last person to tell. Though she’s generally so quick that I can’t think why she needs telling. But she would be so frightfully amused—you must forgive me for saying so, Lois. It wouldn’t be safe. She wouldn’t be able to help telling people, or at least prompting them to guess.”

“Oh well, then, in that case . . .”

“We must try to keep her very busy and animated all through lunch so that she simply doesn’t look at the thing. . . .”

The dismayed trio stared at the thing and wondered how any one could possibly be prevented from looking. They started guiltily as John flung open the door at the end of the hall and slammed it behind him. He joined them without a glance at the frescoes and addressed himself to his wife.

“I didn’t know you had gone for a walk. I was looking for you.”

“I went over to Bramfield to see Dolly and James,” she replied in some surprise.

His face, at the mention of James, grew a shade blacker. “Oh, yes? I thought I saw you walking across the valley field just now.”

“We got out of the car by the footbridge and walked up the garden.”

“I know. I saw you from the staircase window.”

Hubert and Lois looked at each other, and Lois broke in:

“I found Agatha in the hall, John, and brought her in here. I didn’t know you were still looking for her.”

“I wasn’t. I was coming down to fetch her when I met Sir Thomas, who began to talk about his peach-house. I couldn’t get away.”

“About these frescoes . . .” began Hubert timidly.

“Eh? The frescoes?” asked John vaguely. Then he recollected himself and exclaimed: “Oh, damn the frescoes. Do what you like about it. They are no business of mine.”

And he turned again upon his wife a regard which said that here was a business which touched him too nearly. Hubert seized Lois by the arm and almost ran her out of the hall.

“Well, but,” she whispered as soon as the door had closed behind them, “Agatha shouldn’t walk about in front of the windows with Mr. Blair just when poor John is so ill.”

“She doesn’t know he’s ill,” returned Hubert violently. “It’s—it’s unfair not to tell her. It’s——”

“Hush! Somebody will hear. Wasn’t it awful? I never saw anybody look so angry. His face was quite blue. It must be very bad for him.”

“It’s not our business,” said Hubert firmly.

They stole away.

John, left alone with his wife, turned upon her furiously. “You went to see Dolly and James, did you? Well, you won’t go again.”

“John! What is the matter with you? You’ve no business to lose your temper like this. What do you mean? I shall certainly go if I please.”

“I won’t have it. I forbid you to go there again. You are not to see James any more, or his wife. You must drop them, see? It’s the encouragement you give them that lets us in for this sort of thing.”

He waved a hand at the frescoes.

“But I’m very fond of him,” she protested vaguely, still at a loss.

“You are fonder than is prudent of several of your relations, aren’t you?”

She started, stared, and grew very pale. He was, indeed, appalled at what he had said, and repented instantly. He had been stung beyond endurance by the sight of that slow, intimate ascent through the Braxhall gardens. He was determined to end, one way or the other, a situation which was becoming intolerable. The irrevocable words now lay between them like a flung gauntlet. Nothing could unsay them; but Agatha, after a moment’s consideration, made a visible attempt to ignore them.

“We’ll discuss James later,” she said. “The business before us now is the frightful party to-morrow.”

But he thought that he might as well go on as he had begun. “The party to-morrow won’t concern us,” he told her, “because we shall not be here.”

“John?”

“We leave here first thing to-morrow morning.”

Her eyes questioned him and he flung the reason at her. “I won’t have you driving about the country with that—that fellow. You will leave Braxhall to-morrow and I won’t have you seeing him again.”

“Do you mean Gerald Blair?”

“I do.”

She considered this for a moment and then asked:

“And what makes you take this line? What cause have I ever given you? What have I done?”

“You’ve lost your head over him. It’s perfectly obvious to any one. And it’s enough. I’m not taking any risks.”

She opened her lips for a denial which would not come. Instead she cried out:

“Risks! What risks? Do you want to insult me?”

“This sort of thing has got to stop,” he said doggedly.

“What sort of thing?”

“Your whole behaviour. I tell you I’m tired of it. You treat me like a discarded lover.”

“Do I? Do I? Well, so you are!” she cried, her voice rising.

Disgusted at her loss of self-command and the vulgarity of such a scene, she added in a lower voice:

“You are. You’ve never been anything more. Never a real husband. Not more than Tom is to Cynthia. Our relationship may be legal, but it isn’t marriage. Nothing can make it that.”

“Really? And what is it then?”

“It’s been my fault,” she conceded earnestly. “I ought never to have married you. We have no ideals in common. I’ve never been a real wife to you. Nothing more than a mistress; nothing more.”

“It’s a pity you feel like that,” he said bitterly. “But I’m afraid you’ll have to put up with it.”

Then he burst out again:

“Oh, hell, Agatha! Can’t you speak the truth? Can’t you think straight? You married me and you’ve got tired of me. And you’ve invented all this humbug about common ideals to justify your infidelity. That’s the long and short of it.”

At the word infidelity she swung round, her conscious innocence flaming in her face.

“Never for a moment——” she began, and then broke off. “But it’s horrible to have to make denials—to exculpate oneself! If you can believe——”

Tears, the first he had ever seen her shed, choked her speech. Smarting under a sense of undeserved insult, she stood before him weeping silently. He beheld her beauty and her grief with a fierce throb of satisfaction. To make her suffer was at least a reassertion of power. He became dominant and calm.

“We go to-morrow,” he repeated.

She answered, very low:

“We needn’t—for the reason you mention. . . . He is going away immediately after lunch.”

A spasm of anguish shook her and he heard himself saying coldly:

“Oh, I see. Is that why you are crying?”

His heart had begun to do strange things and it occurred to him that this interview, if prolonged, might prove fatal to him. He had no wish to die at Braxhall. Glancing at her from the door, before he left her, he saw that she had not moved. She was still standing on the dais step, both hands pressed to her bosom, while the fresco panel flamed above her stricken head.

* * * * *

Gerald, upon reaching his room, had, in a thunderclap of energy, sat down and written the opening pages of a paper upon “The experiments at Nancy” which had been simmering in his brain for some time. He was wonderfully relieved by his sudden decision to quit Braxhall upon the morrow and to see his cousin no more. Anguish it might be, but it was at least a termination of the conflict. He was able, for the first time in many weeks, to lose himself in his work. He wrote, absorbed, for nearly an hour, and then, pausing for an instant’s relaxation, recalled idly the mysterious utterances of James about the fresco. He remembered that he had meant to visit the hall immediately upon his return, and accordingly he set off, descending by a small staircase, close to his room, which gave him access to a door opening immediately on to the dais. He was, therefore, precipitated within a few feet of Agatha before either was aware of the other.

She was seated upon one of the chairs set round the dais. Her elbows were on the table and her face in her hands. Her whole attitude bespoke an abandonment of grief. She had evidently failed to hear his approach over the thick dais carpet.

He stood poised for flight. Prudence inwardly counselled a prompt withdrawal; passion impelled him forward. Lingering, he was lost, for she raised her head and saw him. She betrayed no surprise, but fixed upon him a regard of infinite sadness, and sat motionless in her chair, the slow tears still rolling down her cheeks.

He was inured to women’s tears; he had seen too many of them. But all his experience had never shown him a creature who could weep so beautifully. No sobs shook her; she was composed, mistress of herself, save for these silent, persistent signals of woe. He had, among his patients, a reputation for complete immunity; no nervous collapse could soften or alarm him in Harley Street. Had she brought her tears there it is possible that he might have checked the flood with a few bracing words and a glass of water. But affection had undone him, as it has betrayed better men, and, instead of resorting to professional advice, he was moved, he hardly knew how, to fling himself at her feet, to call her by every endearing name which occurred to him, and finally, with a sense of foundering rectitude, to clasp her to his heart and entreat her to tell him her trouble.

Of the subsequent conversation neither retained any very clear impression. It was an affair of mutual declarations, and in a very short time they arrived at the conclusion that a further separation would be impossible to them. They must defy all the forces which had divided them ten years earlier, and this must be done at once. Agatha’s misery appeared to both of them as something no longer to be borne, and they believed that their immediate union would be almost certain to abate it.

“We must get married,” Gerald stated. “We ought, of course, to have got married ten years ago. We’ll go abroad somewhere until Clewer divorces you, and then we will be married.”

“But do you think that will be right?” demanded Agatha hopefully.

He looked surprised, and a little put out.

“Right? What do you mean exactly? I think it’s the wisest thing we can do under the circumstances. And anyhow we are going to do it.”

“I mean, can you do it with an absolutely free conscience?”

“N—no, not exactly. I couldn’t say that.”

Agatha did not like this at all.

“You can’t do what you think wrong,” she said doubtfully.

“Oh, yes, I can,” he assured her.

“But it must be right,” she argued. “We were meant for each other. It was my marriage that was wrong.”

He agreed, but said that he would, he thought, condemn behaviour like theirs in any one else. He reminded her, a little shamefacedly, that he had accepted John’s hospitality and was returning it by stealing his wife. But she insisted that they were justified. He thought it rather tactless of her thus to harp upon the most painful element in their situation. He had overlooked, for a moment, a woman’s capacity for sanctifying her passions by an ideal. She had succeeded in persuading herself that flight from her husband was the only remedy for an enormous wrong, the only means whereby she could release her better self for a life of austere endeavour. Her natural aptitude for symbolism had led her to perceive a deep significance in the events of the afternoon. The impression of the fresco was strong upon her, and she believed that in renouncing her married life, with all its luxuries, she was pledging herself to a very noble path. She could only repeat, rather resentfully:

“It seems right to me.”

“Well, that’s a good thing,” remarked her lover.

He took a short turn down the hall and returned to the dais step, looking up at her.

“I don’t want you to deceive yourself,” he said anxiously. “I don’t want you to be rushed into any course which you might afterward regret. I should be a scoundrel if I took advantage of what appears to be a slight confusion in your mind. I wish I knew what to do!”

“I thought we’d settled what to do.”

“Yes, but I want you to be quite sure. Think it over! Don’t decide now. Tell me to-morrow. Remember I’m ready to take your word as final. I’ll take you off at any moment if you like, or I’ll go away and never see you again if you’d rather. But it must be either one way or the other. I’m not going on like this: it’s unendurable. Think it over and tell me.”

She realized that the abruptness of his speech was calculated. He was deliberately trying not to appeal to her emotions, but to summon to their aid those rational faculties still left to them. He tried to leave her without further speech, but she called him back.

“Gerald! Are you quite sure that you want me to come? You aren’t being a good Samaritan, are you?”

“Want you? Of course I want you! I always have. But that isn’t the point. I’ve done without you up till now, and I can doubtless go on doing without you, if I have to. But I won’t stand seeing you unhappy like this. It’s more than any one could bear, loving you as I do.”

“But you could get on without me if you had to?”

“Why—yes—I suppose so.”

“Then I’ve no business to come. My justification——”

“Oh, Agatha dearest, can’t you think straight?”

At this point Mrs. Cocks burst in through the door at the end of the hall. She glanced at the cousins, her eyes sparkling with instant displeasure.

“Agatha!” she exclaimed. “Do you know that it is five minutes to eight? Are you never going to dress this evening? I’ve been waiting for you, upstairs, for at least three quarters of an hour.”

“Is it really so late, Mother?”

“Yes! Yes! Hurry, child! Hurry, Gerald!”

She swept them from the hall and carried her daughter upstairs. Dismissing the maid, she declared that she would supervise the hasty toilet herself.

“Pauline would be much quicker,” maintained Agatha.

“Perhaps. But I want to do some plain speaking which can’t be accomplished before Pauline. What were you and Gerald quarrelling about when I came in?”

“We weren’t quarrelling,” said Agatha after reflection.

“Weren’t you. You looked as if you were; you were looking defensive and he reproachful. And, by the way, may I ask if you and he have been in that hall ever since you came in this afternoon?”

“Oh, no! I was there with Lois and Hubert. And then John. Gerald had only just come.”

“Oh, really? That’s not as bad as I thought. Still, you know, Agatha, when I saw you coming up through the garden . . .”

“Good heavens!” cried Agatha impatiently, “how many more? Did everybody in the house see me coming up through the garden?”

“I expect so. That’s where you are so silly, dear.”

“I never knew it was such a monstrous thing to do.”

“Now you are being even sillier. Tell me, who else has seen you?”

“Oh—Lois and Hubert—and John.”

“John! What did John say?”

Agatha made no reply, but dabbed powder on to her nose with shaking fingers.

“You’ve put on too much,” observed her mother critically, and she fetched a damp sponge and removed it all. “Now begin again. Tell me—is John annoyed? Have you quarrelled with him?”

“He blames me,” began Agatha, and stopped with a gasp.

“What for?”

“For the same reason that Gerald blames me.”

“Oh!” Mrs. Cocks was at a loss. “But I thought you said you had not quarrelled with Gerald.”

“Nor have I.”

“But you have quarrelled with John?”

“Yes. They both want to know if I can’t think straight.”

“What shoes will you wear? Is John jealous?”

Agatha was silent.

“It’s only natural,” continued her mother, as she folded up discarded garments. “You can’t have it both ways. I’ve never seen a more devoted husband. You wouldn’t like it if he got tired of you?”

“I shouldn’t mind.”

“Well, of course, if that’s your line, I don’t blame him if he does resent it a little. In fact, I think he’d be justified in consoling himself elsewhere. Do consider the possible consequences of such behaviour, child. With a man like John, you can’t afford to run risks.”

“Thank you, Mother, I’d rather not discuss it.”

“Try to look at things a little more from his point of view. What, after all, did he marry you for?”

“Oh, please, Mother, would you mind going? Will you please leave me alone? I want to be by myself. I—I won’t come down to dinner, I think.”

“Good heavens! Child! Are you ill? Don’t go that colour! Sit down and let me get you some sal volatile.”

“No. I’m all right. I’m perfectly all right. I only want to be by myself.”

“But if you are too ill to come down to dinner, you are too ill to be left alone. I shall stay with you and make it clear that you are really unwell. I’m not going to have Marian saying that you are sulking after a scene with John. Are you sure you can’t come down? It would look much better if you could.”

“Well, yes,” said Agatha, whose colour was returning. “I will come. Could you find my Spanish comb? And I’ll have that black lace shawl. It’s somewhere in the wardrobe.”

“You are still very white. I should put on just a very little touch, if I were you. You don’t want to go down looking conspicuously pale. Of course, John is such a paragon of a husband. . . .”

The gong, heralding another of the endless Braxhall meals, reminded Mrs. Cocks of the need for haste. She turned to the wardrobe without another word.

5

Toward four o’clock upon the following afternoon Lois stood on the topmost garden terrace, watching a car which sped along the valley road. It contained the last of the guests who had lunched at Braxhall. She stood attentive until it had turned the corner and then heaved a great sigh of relief.

Hubert had been instructed to take Mrs. Cocks to some retired place and keep her there. He had evidently done his duty, for nothing had been seen of the pair of them for more than an hour and a half. Lois thought he should be released and set off in search of him. She found them in the sunken garden: they were sitting upon a stone bench by the fountain, absorbed in animated conversation. Hubert, though sprightly, was, to the practised eye of his wife, at the point of exhaustion; but his companion was enjoying herself vivaciously.

“The guests have all gone,” said Lois, joining them.

“Gone? No! It must be very early!” cried Mrs. Cocks. “Nearly four? I couldn’t have believed it! I’m afraid I’ve been very uncivil; I do hope Cynthia won’t think so. I never meant to stay here so long. But your husband has been telling me such killing stories, Lois.”

“Cynthia has gone up to rest, and Sir Thomas is having a cocktail somewhere. I heard him calling for it.”

“But are they all gone? How annoying! There are several people I particularly wanted to talk to. Why were you so amusing, Mr. Ervine?”

Hubert, who had been amusing because told to be so by Lois, said that he was very sorry for it.

“I wanted to find out how many people have noticed that the Bragges have set up a portrait gallery. Most original, I call it. I hear that you all discovered it yesterday, and I think it most unkind of you not to point it out to me.”

“Dear lady,” began Hubert, “we meant for the best.”

“Oh, I know you did. And you were perfectly right. But you see I never noticed it until the middle of lunch. I pointed it out at once to Mr. Chaytor, who was sitting next to me. But he was very crushing. He merely said that he had already observed a resemblance, and changed the subject. I think he was rather scandalized. And the man on my other side was deaf. I was longing to find someone to laugh with about it. Do you really mean to say that the Bragges don’t know?”

“Not yet,” sighed Lois. “But they’ll have to be told, I suppose.”

“James is really a wag. When will you tell them?”

“Oh, Mrs. Cocks,” interrupted Lois, “Agatha was looking for you everywhere. She wanted to see you before she went. She told me to tell you she’d left a note for you in your sitting room on the mantelpiece.”

“Went? Went where?”

“Away from here. Back to London, I suppose. She went by the three-forty.”

“But they aren’t going till Saturday. We all go up to Scotland together.”

“Oh, John hasn’t gone. Only Agatha. She went in a great hurry just after lunch. She didn’t even have time to say good-bye to Cynthia. I met her on the stairs taking leave of Sir Thomas, and she told me she had to run because her car was round, and asked me to give you her message about the note.”

“This is very strange!” exclaimed Mrs. Cocks, jumping up. “I can’t understand this. I must find John.”

She hurried off toward the house, and Lois sank upon the stone bench beside her husband and felt in his pocket for a cigarette. He lighted it for her, and another for himself, remarking as he threw away the match:

“I suppose we can now say ‘Nunc Dimittis’ and what not.”

“You did nobly, dear! I felt that our only hope was to keep her away from people. When I glanced across the table and saw by her expression that she had seen, I thought all was lost. But your skill in keeping her in seclusion has saved the day. What did you tell her stories about?”

“Oh, the Jews mostly. We began with the frescoes, of course, and I propound my theory that art is in for a golden age because all the profiteers are going to patronize it. This, I say, is due to the prevalence of Semitism. Formerly the Jews pretended not to be Jews and spent their money on baronial halls and portraits of Norman ancestors. Nowadays, when the whole world is run by ’em, nobody’s ashamed of being a Jew. They build their own houses and don’t waste money on second-hand stuff. They patronize contemporary art. From that we got on to swapping stories about our Jewish acquaintances.”

“But Sir Thomas isn’t a Jew.”

“No. But he meekly follows the beaten track of the leading profiteers who mostly are. But tell me, how did this affair go as a whole? What was the impression you got? How many people would you say spotted it?”

“Oh, a good many. But most of them were too well mannered to show it. They were too much shocked and embarrassed to be amused.”

“Then on the whole it was better than it might have been?”

“I don’t know! It was pretty grim. I hope I’ll never have to live through such another day.”

“So do I.”

“In the beginning I thought it was going off better than I could possibly have supposed. I was astonished.”

“I know. When the thing was so blazingly obvious to me, I could not see how they could miss it. And when we got to the joints without a hitch, I began to be positively elated.”

“There is a good deal in what Agatha says. I think his work repels most people. They have a sort of instinct not to look at it, and they don’t.”

“They certainly don’t. The lady on my right put up her lorgnettes and had a very brief squint and then put them down with a click, and said: ‘I hear Mr. James Clewer is a great Socialist.’ I thought that this was a new phase in Brother James, and said I didn’t know anything about his political opinions. And she said wasn’t it true that he had married a working-class woman and lived like an artisan? I said that I believed that it was. She said that was what she meant, and that she detested Socialists. I said I did too. Whereupon we talked Bolshevik atrocities, and I don’t think James or the frescoes were mentioned again.”

“One of my neighbours asked me if Mr. Blair was James,” said Lois. “I said no, and asked him why he thought so. He said because he looked so miserable and out of it.”

“Blair certainly looked sorry for himself. And so, by the way, did M. le Mari. But Agatha seems to thrive on it. I don’t know when I’ve seen her looking more magnificent.”

“Perhaps she enjoys keeping two men miserable. She was in splendid spirits—so very animated. She was laughing and talking away all through lunch. Generally she leaves that to other people.”

“Well, to do her justice, I think she was making a genuine effort to keep the family flag flying. She was the greatest support to us. No one in her vicinity had eyes or ears for the frescoes.”

“That is so,” admitted Lois, “Yes, I really thought we were safe until that awful moment when I caught sight of Mrs. Cocks’s face. It was lucky that we had short-circuited her by putting her between the proper Mr. Chaytor and the deaf Sir Nigel.”

“I know. And almost immediately afterward I became aware that a horrid silence was stealing over the nearest of the trestle tables. And there was Clewer, sitting perfectly mum, and not attempting to keep up the conversation. He was a broken reed!”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever known him fail in his social duties.”

“Yes. He’s pretty cut up about Agatha, I really believe. I suppose there was slaughter after we left them in the hall last night.”

“How long ago it seems!”

“Yes, we’ve lived through a lifetime of care and anxiety since, haven’t we? It was quite a game to watch it spreading. It would have been funny if it hadn’t been so grim. That look of incredulity dawning on one face after another! Still we got off better than I expected.”

“Oh, but Sir Thomas’s speech was terrible! I thought it would be the last straw. The manners of the English are incredible, as you say. One can’t overstate their sense of decency. They just all looked a little uncomfortable, for the most part. Very few exceptions.”

“And any one would look uncomfortable at any of Sir Thomas’s speeches. His articulation was so uncommonly thick that I began to think of strokes, didn’t you?”

“Oh, but when he proposed James’s health . . .!”

“Still he was so maudlin and incoherent by that time that most people couldn’t have heard much of it.”

“Well, one or two who had behaved beautifully up till then began to get a little hysterical. Is that Mother calling?”

Marian had come to the end of the terrace and was hailing them. Her tones were significant and peremptory. When they joined her she inquired in lowered accents:

“Have you heard?”

Lois nodded.

“It’s wicked! It’s monstrous!” broke out Lady Clewer. “Such a thing has never happened in the family before.”

Lois and Hubert could well believe this.

“We shall never be able to hold up our heads again.”

“Very few people know as yet,” consoled Hubert. “And perhaps something can be done?”

“I should hope that very few people did know! May I ask how you did? Who told you?”

“As a matter of fact,” hesitated Lois, “we knew yesterday?”

“Yesterday!” shrieked Marian. “You knew yesterday?”

“Yes, but we thought it would be better not to distress you by speaking of it until after the lunch party. We discussed it with Agatha. . . .”

“You discussed it with Agatha.” Marian was so much taken aback that she could only whisper. “How could you discuss it with Agatha?”

“Well, we thought she would be a good person to talk it over with.”

Marian stared at them with her mouth open. At last she managed to ask:

“Did you begin on it, or did she?”

“We did. And she advised us to say nothing about it until after lunch to-day.”

“I’ll be bound she did. But I simply cannot understand such disloyalty in either of you. It was bare-faced connivance! You should have come to me at once. And think of poor Tom and Cynthia having such a thing happen in their house! It’s disgraceful! And now it’s probably too late to do anything, though Mrs. Cocks is going off at once to see what she can do.”

“Mrs. Cocks!” exclaimed the other two. And Lois added: “What can she do? Where is she going? Not to James, surely?”

“To James? Of course not. Why should she? Lois! Hubert! You don’t mean to tell me that James has had any hand in this affair?”

Lois and Hubert looked at each other, and Hubert said cautiously:

“Please, Lady Clewer, what are you talking about?”

“Why—this step of Agatha’s! Don’t you know? She’s gone away—run away—with her cousin. With Mr. Blair. She has left John.”

It was now their turn to be speechless.

“She left a note, a wicked, cruel note, for John,” went on Marian with rising indignation. “And one for her mother. Of all the horrible things. . . . But what were you saying about James?”

“That’s nothing. Something quite different,” said Hubert. “This frightful news—I can’t believe it. It can’t be true. There must be some mistake.”

“I insist upon knowing at once,” said Marian sharply. “Lois, I command you to tell me; what has James been doing?”

“Oh, Mother! That can wait! Are you sure that this about Agatha isn’t all a frightful mistake? I knew they left by the same train; she made no secret of it. But that doesn’t prove . . .”

“The note she left for John was perfectly unambiguous. He showed it to me.”

Lois, to her extreme surprise, burst into tears. She was fatigued and bewildered. Hubert and Marian, remembering her condition, became alarmed and consoling, blaming each other for having subjected her to the shock. She sobbed noisily upon Hubert’s shoulder for a few minutes, and then collected herself sufficiently to ask:

“What did John say?”

“He said nothing. He was so frightfully moved that he couldn’t speak. He just handed me the note and walked out of the room. He’d written on the back of it, ‘I shall make no attempt to follow her, I am going down to Lyndon to-night.’ This was just after the last of the guests had gone.”

Lois collapsed again.

“Oh . . . Oh . . .” she wailed. “Why must all this happen?”

“Lois, my darling, my precious, don’t. You’ll make yourself ill.”

“Oh, Hubert! I can’t bear it! After this awful day with James’s horrible frescoes . . .”

“James? Will you tell me what this business of James is, please? Hubert! You are evading me. I won’t have it!”

“Oh, well, it’s got to be,” sighed Hubert, and told her.

Her incredulity protected her for some time. Even after they had revisited the hall and inspected the paintings she insisted that they must have been changed since she last saw them. She maintained that she could not have failed to recognize them. When, after long argument, the truth assailed her, she became too deeply shocked for any demonstrations. Lois and Hubert waited for a torrent of vituperation, but she said nothing. In silence she left the hall and stumbled down the marble corridor into the drawing room. They followed her, literally clinging to each other in terror of what she would say when she once began. She had sunk on to a chesterfield, and Hubert, really alarmed by her gray colour, went in search of restoratives. She had barely reached the point of interjections and gasps when Mrs. Cocks, a Bradshaw in one hand and a fountain pen in the other, stormed into the room.

“There’s this five-fifty-five,” she began, and then exclaimed with some commiseration: “Good heavens, Marian! How ill you look!”

“James . . . these frescoes . . . Tom . . . Cynthia,” began Marian faintly.

“Oh, the frescoes? Oh, yes! I’m very sorry for you all about that affair, indeed I am. But, listen, Marian. Can I speak to you privately for a moment?”

“You needn’t mind Hubert and Lois. They know all about Agatha going, if that is what you want to talk about.”

“Oh, indeed? I’m very sorry for it. Of course,” Mrs. Cocks turned to them, “I know you will be discreet. It’s very important that this affair should go no farther. I’m hoping to find Agatha in town this evening and to bring her back with me. I beseech you, Marian, to say nothing of it to any one else. Is it necessary to tell the Bragges?”

“They ought to know what has been going on in their house,” began Marian firmly.

She was beginning to feel a little better.

“At least say nothing till we have seen what can be done,” entreated Mrs. Cocks. “For John’s sake, I should have thought you’d wish to keep it quiet. Just listen! If I take this five-fifty-five, I get to London—let me see—I’ve lost the place. It’s quite tolerably early in the evening, anyhow. I shall go straight to Harley Street and find out where he is staying. They know I’m his cousin, so they’ll probably give me his address if I’m a little pressing. Then——”

“But I must go over to Bramfield immediately! Immediately!” cried Marian, starting up. “I must make James change that horrible thing. He must paint it out. He must do a new one. I’ll make him. It’s disgraceful. Hubert! can you order a car for me at once? . . .”

“Oh, Marian, do listen to me for a moment! What do the frescoes matter, after all, compared with this? Could you see John for me and find out if he . . .”

But Marian burst out afresh:

“Oh, why couldn’t you have told me yesterday? We could have hung a curtain over that back panel.”

“Good God!” cried Hubert in horror. “You couldn’t have done that. It’s the best panel of the lot. You can’t hide away work like that.”

“Don’t speak in that cynical way, Hubert!”

“I’m not being cynical, Lady Clewer. There are some things you can’t do, and——”

“Can’t I? You wait and see what I can’t do! I tell you, if James won’t alter that horrid thing I shall strongly advise Tom and Cynthia to distemper it over.”

“Well, then, I wash my hands of it,” said Hubert furiously.

“It’s a pity you ever had anything to do with it, Hubert. It was you persuaded them to have James. I was always against it.”

“Oh, Mother, how could Hubert know?”

“Marian, I don’t believe you want me to bring Agatha back. Can’t you see that my business is urgent? Urgent! It can’t wait; I’ve no time to lose. You can distribute the blame about the frescoes at your leisure after I’m gone. You have no sense of proportion.”

“I’m sorry for you, Ellen. I pity you deeply. I see that it must be a great shock to you . . . for you never would see. . . . Of course, it’s less of a blow to the rest of us simply because we did recognize. . . . But what do you want me to do?”

“I want you to speak to John and tell him I’ve gone after her. Tell him I’m convinced it’s all nothing: all a mistake. Do try to persuade him to be a little kind, if . . . when I bring her back with me. However much he feels he has been in the right, do beg him to be generous! I expect I shall take her back to South Kensington to-night, and to-morrow we will come back here.”

“I will see him, Ellen, but I doubt if he will ever forgive her.”

“But perhaps he may find that he has not so very much to forgive. Do entreat him to keep an open mind.”

“Very well. But it’s no use your bringing her back here to-morrow. He is going down to Lyndon to-night, and I shall probably go with him.”

“Oh? Then we’ll come to Lyndon.”

“Oh!” cried Marian, wringing her hands. “When I think of my poor Cynthia! So horribly insulted! Other people have scandals and divorces—but this! It’s so unusual! Nobody—nobody ever had anything like this in their family. And Cynthia of all people! She deserves it so little. She has always been such a discreet child. Tom will be beside himself. Unless—unless I can make James alter the thing before they find out. Don’t tell them, any of you! Do be careful what you say to them.”

“I will say nothing! Nothing!” said Mrs. Cocks, perceiving her advantage, “if you will promise not to speak of this exploit of Agatha’s until I have been to town. Please, Marian! Wait at least until to-morrow.”

“If you like, Ellen. Though mind you, I don’t expect you will be able to do much. But I must go to Bramfield and see James. Then I’ll go to Lyndon. I needn’t tell Tom and Cynthia I’m going via Bramfield.”

“And I must pack if I’m to catch the five-fifty-five.”

Both matrons hurried from the room, their excited voices dying away as they ascended the stairs. Hubert picked up the half-finished glass of brandy and water which he had fetched for Marian. He offered it to Lois and, when she resolutely refused it, drank it up himself.

“Do you think,” Lois whispered, “that Agatha really has . . .?”

“I’m afraid it looks hatefully like it,” he said gloomily.

“It’s a pity she didn’t know how ill John really is.”

“She ought to have been told.”

“I don’t believe she’d have gone if she knew, do you?”

“Oh, she couldn’t! A woman would have to be an absolute devil to be as heartless as that. And she has a kindly nature, I think.”

“Yes, she is kind.” Lois was still too much shocked to be conventional. “Poor Agatha! I’m very sorry for them all. Aren’t you, Hubert?”

Hubert was on the point of saying that he wasn’t particularly sorry for Gerald Blair. But he had the wit to refrain, and remarked instead:

“Perhaps her mother will be able to bring her back. Look here, Lois! If she’s going to town to-night, and your mother and John are going to Lyndon, we shall be left alone with the Bragges. I bar that. I couldn’t stand another meal in that hall. We’ll go too.”

“But, Hubert, where? We can’t go home to-night. They don’t expect us, for one thing.”

“We’ll stop somewhere in town to-night, and go home to-morrow. We’ll get that five-fifty-five Mrs. Cocks goes by. Look sharp and see to our packing! We’ve just time. I’ll find Bragge and make our apologies.”

“But it’s so rude.”

“We’ve done enough for ’em for one day. I’m going, anyhow. If you like to stay by yourself you can.”

“We’ll never have time.”

“Yes, we will, if we are quick. Do run, Lois. Just get together our things for the night, and your woman can follow us with the rest of the luggage when she’s packed it. I’ll give you dinner in any pub you like, and you can choose your show afterward. I’ll take you to hear Wagner if you want. Only do hurry!”

Lois yielded and ran upstairs to harry her maid through a hasty packing. Hubert found Sir Thomas and manufactured a sufficiently credible excuse for their sudden departure. In a very short time Braxhall was emptied of its guests. The long table was removed from the dais in the hall and replaced by a smaller one, suitable for two diners. There, in spacious magnificence, Sir Thomas and his lady devoured their evening meal, solemnly, slowly, and for the most part in silence. Occasionally the owner of Braxhall broke into a monologue.

“Odd thing they all had to hurry off like that. But they were very sorry to go. They said so. Hard luck on them, having to go. We sha’n’t have any bridge to-night. However! I think they enjoyed themselves. I-think-they-enjoyed-themselves. But we sha’n’t have any bridge to-night. No! No bridge! You and I will have to get out the cribbage board, Cynthie.”

Lady Bragge helped herself to iced asparagus.

“Went off very well indeed, the lunch did. Very well! Quite a new thing in these parts, I should say. A unique experience for everybody there. That’s what it was. A unique experience. I never heard before of an American lunch in honour of a work of art. No more did any one else, I’ll be bound. No! Quite a new thing. Pity James Clewer wasn’t there. He’d have enjoyed it. I like to see people enjoying themselves. But I proposed his health. I didn’t forget that. A good sort, James! I like him. I-like-him. Blood is thicker than water, when all’s said and done. I said so in my speech. A decent fellow. Weoughttoamadeimcome. . . .”

Tears stood in Sir Thomas’s eyes as he repeatedly averred how much he liked his brother-in-law.

Cynthia said nothing but went on eating her dinner. Occasionally she stared idly about her, at her food, at her husband, at the frescoes, with the same exquisite, enigmatic contempt.