Chapter D: Appleton and Company (9)

“Boy, I can’t let you go.” Human weakness fell upon the old man like a shadow; this second blow was even more terrible than the loss of the Van Roon which was still a nightmare in his thoughts. “I’m old. I’m getting deaf and my eyes are going.” He who had had no spark of pity for others did not scruple to ask it for himself.

William was a rock. Primitive as he was, now that he could respect his master no more, he must cease to serve him. The revelation of that master’s baseness had stricken him to the heart; for the time being it had taken the savour out of life itself.

One hope, one frail hope remained to S. Gedge Antiques, even when he knew at last that his assistant was “through” with him. In times so difficult the young man might not be able to get another job; yet he had only to mention it to discover it was not a staff on which he would be able to lean.

William, it seemed, had got another job already.

“At how much a week?” Habit was so strong, there was no concealing the sneer in the tone of surprised inquiry.

Three pounds a week was to be William’s salary. The old man could only gasp. It brought home to him, as perhaps nothing else could have done, the real worth of the treasure he was about to lose. It was four times the rate at which he had thought well to reward these priceless services.

“Who is being fool enough to give you that money?” he sneered, the ruling passion still strong in him.

“Mr. Hutton, sir, at the top of the street,” was the mournful answer.

S. Gedge Antiques dug a savage tooth in his lower lip. Joseph Hutton was a young and “pushful” rival whom on instinct he hated. “Fellow’s a fool to go spoiling the market,” he snarled.

Alas, the old man knew but too well that as far as William was concerned, it was not at all a question of spoiling the market. That aspect of the matter would never arise in his mind.

LV

EVERY day for a fortnight William went to the Hospital, only to be denied a sight of the patient. June was fighting for life. And even when the crisis was passed and it began to appear that the fight would be successful, she had to face an issue just as critical and yet more terrible, for the fear remained that she would lose her reason.

In this time of darkness William was most unhappy. But as far as he was concerned, events moved quickly. He said good-bye to his master, removed his belongings from Number Forty-six, New Cross Street, and entered the employ of a neighbouring dealer, a man of far more liberal mind than S. Gedge Antiques; one who, moreover, well understood the value of such a servant.

For William, it was a terrible wrench. He was like a plant whose roots have been torn from the soil. With the ardour of a simple character he had loved his master, trusting and believing in him to an extent only possible to those endowed with rare felicity of nature. In spite of himself he was now forced to accept the hard and bitter truth that the old man upon whom he had lavished affection was not only a miser, but something worse. When the passion which ruled his life was fully roused he was tempted to anything.

Life, felt William, could never be the same again. There was still the beauty of the visible universe, the pageantry of the seasons to adore; the harmony and colour of the world’s design might still entrance the senses of an artist, but not again must he surrender his being entire to the joy of abounding in these wonders. It was the duty of every man who dwelt upon the earth, however humbly, to learn something of the hearts of others. One could only live apart, it seemed, at one’s peril.

While in the lower depths and beginning to despair of seeing June again, he called as usual at the Hospital one afternoon, to be greeted by the long-hoped-for news that the patient had taken a turn for the better. Moreover she had begged to be allowed to see him; and this permission was now given.

Carrying the daily bunch of flowers, by means of which June had already recognized his care for her, he was led along the ward to the bed in which she lay. The change in her appearance startled him. Little remained of the whimsical yet high-spirited and practical girl who had mocked his inefficiency in regard to the world and its ways. To see those great eyes with the horror still in them and that meagre face, dead white amid the snow of its pillows, was to feel a tragic tightening of the heart.

Tears ran down June’s cheeks at the sight of the flowers. “I don’t deserve your goodness,” she said. “You can’t guess how wicked I am.”

As she extended to him her thin arms he found it hard to rein back his own tears. What suffering he had unwittingly brought upon this poor thing. But it was impossible to keep track of her mind which even now was in the thrall of an awful nightmare. God knew in what darkness it was still plunged.

Shuddering convulsively at the memories his voice and his presence brought to her, the words that came to her lips tore his heart. “Am I struck? Am I like the Hoodoo? Am I like Uncle Si?”

To him, just then, this wildness was hardly more than a symptom of a mind deranged. His great distress did not allow him to pursue its implication, nor could he understand the nadir of the soul from which it sprang. Yet many times in the days to follow he was haunted by those words. They came to him in his waking hours and often in lieu of sleep at night.

Returning from this short and unhappy interview to his new home at Number 116, New Cross Street, he found a surprise in store. A visitor had called to see him and, at the moment of his arrival, was on the point of going away.

His late master, looking very grey and frail, had come to beg him to return. He declared that he was now too old to carry on alone. Sight and hearing were growing worse. He had another quarrel with the char and had been obliged to send her permanently away, although the truth of the matter was that an oppressed female had risen at last against his tyranny and had found a better place.

S. Gedge Antiques was now a figure for pity, but William, fresh from the lacerating presence of the niece whom he had so cruelly thrown out of doors, had none to give.

The whine and snuffle of their last meeting, at whose remembrance rose the gorge of an honest man, were no more. Instead of the crocodile tricks were now the slow tears of a soul in agony. The truth was, this childless and friendless old man, who in the grip of the passion that had eaten away his life, had never been able to spare a thought for his kind, simply could not do without the one human being he had learned to love.

Their relations, as the old miser had discovered, were much closer than those of servant and master. William stood for youth, for the seeing mind, for cheerful, selfless giving, for life itself. The tones of his voice, his kindly readiness, his tolerance for an old man’s megrims; even the sound of this good fellow moving furniture in the next room and the sense of him about the place had grown to mean so much that, now they were withdrawn, all other things grew null.

The old man felt now that he could not go on, and at any other moment, the force of his appeal might have touched the gentle nature to whom it was made. But the stars in their courses fought against S. Gedge Antiques. He was a figure to move the heart, as he stood in the shop of a rival dealer, the slow tears staining his thin cheeks, but William had the shadow of that other figure upon him. The wreck of youth, of reason itself, seemed infinitely more tragic than the falling of the temple upon the priest of Baal whose wickedness had brought the thing to pass.

William denied his master. And yet hearing him out to the bitter end, he was unable to withhold a little pity. All feeling for the old man was dead; the bedside from which he had just come had finally destroyed the last spark of his affection, yet being the creature he was, he could not sit in judgment.

“I’ll pay you twice what you are getting now if you’ll return to me,” said the old man. “As I say, I can’t go on.” He peered into that face of ever-deepening distress. “What do you say, boy?” He took the hand of the young man in his own, as a father might take that of a beloved son. “I’ll give you anything--if you’ll come back. I haven’t long to live. Return to-night and I’ll leave you the business. Now what do you say?”

Had it been human to forgive at such a moment, S. Gedge Antiques would have been forgiven. But William could only stand dumb and unresponsive before the master he had loved.

“I’m a warm man.” The voice of the old dealer who had made money his god, sank to a whisper becoming a theme so sacred. “My investments have turned out well. There’s no saying what I _am_ worth--but this I’ll tell you in strict confidence--I own property.” The hushed tone was barely audible. “In fact I own nearly half my own side of this street. Now what do you say? Promise to come back to me to-night and I’ll go right now and see my lawyer.”

The young man stood the image of unhappiness.

“Only speak the word and you shall inherit every stick and stone.”

It was a moment to rend the heart of both, but the word was not spoken. For the second time that afternoon William was hard set to rein back his tears; but he had not the power to yield to this appeal.

Overborne by the knowledge that the hand of Fate was upon him, S. Gedge Antiques, leaning heavily on his knotted stick, moved feebly towards the dark street.

LVI

WILLIAM continued his daily visits to the Hospital, but he was not allowed to see June. Life itself was no longer in immediate danger, but she had had a relapse and the doctors were still afraid that the mental injury would be permanent. Time alone could prove if such was the case or no, but the mood induced by the interview with William, and the strange words she had used to him, which seemed to belong to some fixed and secret obsession, were not a good sign.

Following his visit there had been a rise of temperature. And this meant further weakening of a terror-haunted mind. Even if the need for anxiety was less acute, full recovery at best would be slow and more than ever doubtful.

June was still menaced by the shadow when an event occurred which intensified William’s distress. One morning, about a week after he had rejected his master’s last appeal, an inspector of police came to see him. Neighbours of S. Gedge Antiques had called attention to the fact that the shop had remained closed for several days, and as it was known that the old man had lately been living alone, the circumstance had given rise to a certain amount of suspicion. William’s name had been mentioned as lately in his employ and he was asked to throw what light he could on the mystery.

“The neighbours think we ought to enter the shop and see if anything has happened,” said the police inspector.

William thought so too. Remembering the last meeting with his master, which had left a scar he would carry to the grave, a kind of prophetic foreknowledge came to him now of a new development to this tragedy.

It was not convenient just then to leave the shop as he happened to be in sole charge of it, therefore he was unable to accompany the inspector down the street. But half an hour later, on the return of his new employer, curiosity forced him to put on his hat and go forth to see if the thing he feared had come to pass.

The police, already, had made an entry of Number Forty-six. Moreover a knot of people was assembled about the familiar door, which was half open. Its shutters were still up, but two constables were guarding the precincts. William caught the words “Murder--Suicide--Robbery” as he came up with the throng.

In a state of painful excitement, he made his way to the door.

S. Gedge Antiques, it seemed, had been found lying dead on the shop floor. The young man wished to pass in, but the police had instructions to allow no one to enter. A doctor summoned by telephone, had not yet come.

William was still discussing the matter, when the inspector whose acquaintance he had made already, hearing voices at the door, came from the shop interior to see if it was the doctor who had at last arrived. He recognized William at once and invited him in.

Outside was a murky November day, but with the windows still shuttered, it was necessary for three rather ineffectual gas-jets to be lit in the shop. The light they gave was weird and fitful, but it sufficed to enable the young man to see what had occurred.

As yet the body had not been touched. In accordance with custom in such cases, it had to lie just as it was until viewed by a doctor, for if moved by unskilful hands, some possible clue as to the cause of death might be obliterated.

The old man was lying supine, before the Hoodoo. One glance at that face, so drawn, so thwarted, and yet so pitiful in its ghastliness, was enough to convince William that death had come directly from the hand of God. With a shiver he recalled the words of a strange and terrible clairvoyance, of late so often in his ears. “Am I struck? Am I like Uncle Si? Am I like the Hoodoo?”

As the old man lay now, in all the starkness of his soul, with only the essence shewing in that tragic face, William was overcome by his likeness to the image. It was as if, at the last, his very nature had gone out to some false god who had perverted him. That splay-footed monster, so large of maw, an emblem of bestial greed, was too plainly a symbol of the mammon of unrighteousness to which the master had devoted his life.

Consumed by pity, William turned away from a sight which he was no longer able to bear.

LVII

SPRING came, and June who had had to fight for life and then for reason, won slowly to a final sense of victory. This came to her on a delicious April day, when the earth waking from its long sleep, was renewed with the joy of procreation. Her own nature, which had passed through so many months of darkness, was quickened to response in this magic hour.

The force of the emotion owed much, no doubt, to the spirit of environment. Life had begun again for June under conditions different from any she had known. Powerful friends had been gained for her by a singularly romantic story. Of certain things that had happened she could not bring herself to tell; but when as much of the truth came out as could be derived from facts precariously pieced together, she became a real heroine in the sight of Sir Arthur Babraham and his daughter.

But for her courage and keen wit a great work of art might have passed out of the country without anyone being the wiser. These staunch friends were determined that justice should be done in the matter, and kindly folk that they were, did not spare themselves in the long and difficult task of restoring her to health.

The middle of April saw her installed in the gardener’s cottage at Homefield in the care of a motherly and genial housewife. Here she almost dared to be happy. The phantoms of the long night were being dispersed at last in an atmosphere of sunny and cordial well-being.

Miss Babraham, who walked across the park from the house every morning to see her, had become a sort of fairy godmother whose mission was to see that she did not worry about anything. She must give her days and nights to the duty of getting well. And she was going to be rich.

Riches, alas, for June, had the fairy godmother but known, were the fly in the ointment. They could only arise from one source, and around it must always hover the black storm clouds. She had no real right to the money which was coming to her, and although she had no means apart from it, she felt that she must never accept a single penny. It was morbidly unpractical perhaps, but there the feeling was.

When June had been at Homefield about a week, Miss Babraham found her one morning in the sunny embrasure of the pleasant little sitting room improving her mind by a happy return to her favourite “Mill on the Floss.” In passing out of its mental eclipse, the angle of June’s vision had shifted a little; her approach to new phases of experience was rather more sympathetic than it had been. Before “that” had happened, she had been inclined, as became a self-respecting member of the Democracy which is apt to deride what it does not comprehend, to be a little contemptuous of “Miss Blue Blood,” a creature born to more than a fair share of life’s good things. But now that she knew more about this happy-natured girl, she felt a tolerance of which, at first, she was just a little ashamed. Envy was giving place to something else. Her graces and her air of fine breeding, which June’s own caste was inclined to resent, were not the obvious fruits of expensive clothes; in fact, they owed far less than June had supposed to the length of the purse behind them.

The kindness, the charm, the sympathy were more than skin deep. In the first place, no doubt their possessor had been born under a lucky star; much of her quality was rooted inevitably in the fact that she was her father’s daughter yet the invalid could not gainsay that “Miss Blue Blood” had manners of the heart. Now that June saw her in her own setting among her own people this golden truth shone clear. And in the many talks June had with her good hostess, Mrs. Chrystal, the wife of Sir Arthur’s head gardener, one radiant fact rose bright and free: there was none like Miss Babraham. Her peer was not to be found on the wide earth.

No doubt there were spots on this sun as there are spots on other suns, but June agreed that as far as Miss Babraham was concerned these blemishes were hidden from mortal eye. And each day gave cogency to such a view. This morning, for example, the distinguished visitor was brimming with kindliness. She talked simply and sincerely, without patronage or frills upon the subjects in which June was now interested. She had read _all_ George Eliot and gave as the sum of her experience that the “Mill on the Floss” was the story she liked best, although her father preferred “Adam Bede” or “Silas Marner.”

“Before my illness,” said June, “I was getting to think that all novels were silly and a waste of time. But I see now that you can learn a lot about life from a good one.”

She was in a very serious mood. Like most people who have not the gift of “taking things in their stride” new orientations were a heavy business. At school, as a little girl, she had shed many tears over her arithmetic. The process of mind improvement was not to be undertaken lightly. She could never be a Miss Babraham, but her ambition, in the words of her favourite song, was to be as like her as she was able to be.

Like true poets, however, Miss Babrahams were born. Such graces came from an inner harmony of nature. All the best fairies must have flocked to her christening. One minor gift she had which June allowed herself to covet, since it might fall within the scope of common mortals; it was the way in which her maid arranged her hair. June’s own famous mane, which indirectly had brought such suffering upon her, had mercifully been spared; it had not even been “bobbed,” and with careful tendence might again achieve its old magnificence. As shyly she confessed this ambition, which sprang less from vanity than simple pride in her one “asset,” Miss Babraham assured her that nothing could be nicer than her own way of doing it.

From hair and the art of treating it they passed to other intimate topics; frocks and the hang of them; the knack of putting things on, in which Miss Babraham’s gift of style filled June with envy since that, alas, she would never be able to copy; and above all, her friend’s wonderful faculty of looking her best on all occasions.

As the good fairy, after a stay of a full hour, rose to go, she said, “If to-morrow morning is as fine as this morning, do you think you could come over to us? You know the way. It’s an easy walk of less than half a mile.”

June was sure she could.

“Please do, if you won’t find it trying. Come about eleven. And I hope,” said the good fairy, casting back her charming smile as she was about to pass out of the sitting-room door, “there may be a pleasant little surprise for you.”

During the last few weeks June had known in abundance the agreeably unexpected. And though at intervals during the rest of the fair spring day, her mind toyed with this new “surprise,” she was not able to guess what it was going to be.

LVIII

ELEVEN o’clock the next morning saw June, dressed very carefully indeed, before the portals of the House. She had come well. Excitement had made her feel quite strong again; moreover she had been promised a reward for the effort she was making. Apart from that besides, it was the biggest feat of her social life, so far, to press the bell of such a noble door.

The servant who answered it was not too proud to shew by his air of prompt courtesy that her coming was anticipated. She was led across a glorious hall--all black oak, family portraits, heads of deer and suits of armour, with an open gallery running round the top, like a scene on the movies--up a wide staircase, laid with a carpet thick and subtle to the tread, along a corridor into a room of great length whose glass roof gave a wonderful light. Many pictures hung upon its walls. June was thrilled at the moment she found herself in it, for this she felt sure, was the famous Long Gallery.

The thrill was not confined, however, to the room. When she entered, June thought it was empty, but a look round disclosed at the far end a tall young man in a familiar attitude of rapt absorption. Only one person since the world began could have been so lost to the present in sheer force of contemplating a mere relic of the past.

It was a rare bit of contrivance, all the same, on the part of Miss Babraham. Here, before June, was the Sawney, raised to his highest power. The fairy godmother had made a pass with her magic wand and William the amazing stood before her in the flesh.

He was too far from the door and too rapt in adoration of the masterpiece at which he was gazing, to have heard June come in. And so, before he saw her, she had time to grow nervous and this was a pity. For so effectively had the mine been sprung that she had need just now of all her courage.

A good deal of water had recently flowed under the bridge. It was as if a hundred years had passed since she had dared to label him a Sawney. He had grown up and she had grown down. So far away was the time of their equality, if such a time had ever really been, that she was just a shade in awe of him now.

Many hours had he spent by her bed. It was perhaps due to him that she had emerged at last from the chasm which so long and so grimly threatened to engulf her. His royal yet gentle nature had a true power of healing. The look in his eyes, the music of his voice, the poetry of his thoughts, the charm of his mere presence, had borne him to a plane far above that of common people like herself. If Miss Babraham was a fairy godmother, this young man was surely the true prince.

Beyond anyone she had ever known he had a perception of those large and deep things of sky and earth, which alone, as it seemed to her now, made life worth while. He was the prophet of the beautiful in deed as in word. During the long night through which she had passed, the sense of her inferiority had been not the least of her sorrows.

That sense returned upon her now as she stood timidly by the door through which she had come, watching the beams of an April sun, almost as shy as herself, weave an aureole for him. Here was the god of her dreams; she who lately had known no god and who long ago had taught herself to despise all forms of dreaming.

At last he turned and saw her.

“You!” He sprang towards her with an eager cry.

Brilliant stage management. But by fate’s perversity, the players, somehow, were not quite equal to their parts. June’s shy timidity communicated itself at once to this sensitive plant. There was not a ghost of a reason why he should not have taken her in his arms, for he had come to love her tenderly. The act had been devised for him, the deed expected, but this young man was less wise in some things than in others. Deep as he could look into hidden mysteries, there was certainly one mystery whose heart he could not read.

June’s odd confusion summoned a mistaken chivalry. Broken in spirit, poor soul, by what she had been through, she could no longer defend herself; he must be, therefore, very gentle. It would have been easier to tackle the Miss June of New Cross Street, the rather imperious and sharp-tongued niece of his late employer, than this quivering storm-beaten flower.

With all his genius it was to be feared he would always be a Sawney.

“How are you getting on Miss June?” he said lamely. “You look very thin, but you’ve got quite a colour.”

Something of the gawklike New Cross Street manner, which compared ill with Miss Babraham’s tact and finesse was in this greeting. Phœbus Apollo took a sudden nose-dive. He came, in fact, within an ace of a crash.

June’s cheeks grew flame-colour. An idiot less divine would have given her a kiss and have had done with it, but in some ways he was a shocking dunce.

“I expect you are surprised to see me here, aren’t you?”

She could but stammer that she was very much surprised.

“Sir Arthur has asked me to re-hang some of these.” A rather proud wave of the hand towards those august walls shewed that he was human. “And he has commissioned me”--She heard again that dying fall which always touched her ear with ecstasy--“to go over this Jan Vermeer most carefully with warm water and cotton wool.”

June knitted her brow in order to accompany his finger in its mystical course.

“A Jan what?” she said, achieving a frown. Had it been possible at this early stage of convalescence to achieve a note of reproof, that authentic touch would not have been lacking.

William’s the blame for a lost opportunity. But life is full of _gaffes_ on the part of those who ought to know better. The ability of William was beyond dispute. Miss Babraham had acclaimed it, whereby she was no more than the mouthpiece of her father, that famous connoisseur who said openly that the discoverer of the Van Roon was a genius. To Sir Arthur it was miraculous that a tiro should expose the treasure to the view in a fashion so accomplished. It hardly seemed possible to remove the burdens of overgrowth laid by time and the vandal fingers of inferior artists upon that delicate surface without damage to the fabric. Yet experts had declared the thing to be not a penny the worse for all the processes it had been through; and on the strength of this amazing skill, the owner of Homefield had decided to entrust to those inspired hands, one of his cherished Vermeers.

LIX

TOGETHER they went round the Long Gallery, gazing at the treasure on its walls, which to him meant so much, to her so little. She tried to see it with his eyes or if this could not be, at least get some clue to the quality which made quite ordinary looking objects the things they were.

Who could have believed that an old and dirty thing which she had heard even Uncle Si describe as a daub, would turn out to be a fortune? Other fortunes were here to gaze upon, but why they were so precious would always be for June a mystery of mysteries. Even with William’s help it was a subject on which she could never be really wise. She had now a great desire to reach out after Culture; the “Mill on the Floss” was most stimulating to the mind; but just now she felt, in Blackhampton phrase, that already “she had bitten off more than she could chew.”

Perhaps it was the presence of William which had induced a mood of great complexity. Old unhappy things were flooding back. And as they walked slowly round the Gallery, an object at its extreme end suddenly sprang into view, which brought her up with an icy gasp. The Hoodoo was grinning at her.

In its new setting the monster was merely grotesque. Retrieved from the morose interior of Number Forty-six, New Cross Street, which it had darkened so long with its malice, it was no longer an active embodiment of evil. The force of its ugliness was less, yet for June, in a subtle way, the implication of its presence was more.

It was as if the Fates were saying to her: “We are watching you, my girl. This young man, whom now you dare to love, have you not tricked him out of his patrimony by your pretended worship of beauty? Share his ecstasy, if you please, of his Peter This and his Mathew That, but don’t forget that Our eye is still upon you. What you have already received you will long remember, but you may get another dose if you are not careful.”

Hearing words to this sinister effect in the secret places of her soul, June could only shiver. William, now as conscious of the invalid’s frailty as of the imperious challenge of beauty, led her at once to a seat without seeking the cause of her distress.

He saw she was still very weak and hastened therefore to set her down on a chair of the Empire, heedless of the fact that she was almost cheek by jowl with the Hoodoo.

“Mustn’t tire yourself,” he said in a voice of rare sympathy which did but add to the feeling of misery that crept upon her. “I’m afraid you’ve walked a bit too far.”

Again June shivered. The old unhappy things were threatening once more to submerge her. “How I wish That had not come here,” she said dismally. There was no need to point at the Image; she was sure that he knew what she meant.

But amazing young man that he was, this was trying him a little too highly.

“Oh, you mean the James,” he said pointing to a windmill opposite. “He isn’t a Mathew, is he? I’m so glad, Miss June, you think that too, because with you to back me, I may be able to break it to Sir Arthur, that this isn’t quite the place for him.”

Divine humility! Mad confusion! Had she but felt a little stronger, a little less unhappy, she really could have shaken him.

“I mean the Hoodoo,” she said woefully.

Her wild bird’s heart went quick and high as she saw him turn casually and enfold That with a slow smile. “Right again,” he said, his head a little to one side in pure connoisseurship, a trick she had learned to watch for. “I quite agree with you--the old fool swallows more than his share of this beautiful light.”

June was not thinking of the beautiful light. She was trembling in spirit; but one of his nature could not be expected to know what demons from the abyss were invading her. “How I wish it was somewhere else.”

His laugh of gay agreement was suddenly checked as he caught the look in her eyes and in the next instant he saw the old man lying dead at the foot of the Hoodoo.

It was like the passing of a cloud across the sun. Life for him, also, had found another notation in these terrible months. He had been through a hard school. Certain lines in his face were deeper and there were hollows under his eyes. Never again must he allow the ideal to run so far ahead of the real. Yet in this harsh moment the power of his nature kept him up.

He was able to pierce to the true reason for June’s deadly pallor. It was not wholly due to the fact that she was still weak or that she had walked too far. Trolls even now were in her brain. With his instinct for healing he must do his utmost to cast them out.

“We’ll try to persuade Miss Babraham to have him put in the garden.”

Scarcely had he spoken the words when the fairy godmother, accompanied by Sir Arthur Babraham, entered the Long Gallery.

LX

“SO here you are!”

But the light note of Miss Babraham’s greeting changed to a quick concern as a feminine eye saw at a glance that June was looking “done.”

“Now don’t get up, please. I am going to be quite angry with myself if your walk has made you over-tired.”

June, a new shyness upon her, which the presence of Sir Arthur made much worse, found it very difficult to speak.

“I hope you are cultivating a taste for chicken and new laid eggs,” said the kindly gentleman. “And for a glass of wine to your meals--which I always say is what has made Old England the country she is.” Finding his jolly laugh was less effective than usual, he pointed to the Hoodoo in the tactful hope of putting an embarrassed girl at her ease. “There’s an old friend I’m sure you recognize.” June’s distress, however, grew rapidly worse and Sir Arthur made a fresh cast. “I’m not sure all the same,” he said to William in a laughing aside, “that the old fellow can be allowed to stay here. Tell me, what is your candid opinion?”

“We’ve been wondering, sir, if he wouldn’t look better in the garden.”

Miss Babraham caught gaily at the suggestion. “The very place for the jar of Knossos. And perhaps Miss June and Mr. William will plant a myrtle in it.”

“A myrtle,” said Sir Arthur. “In that chap--a myrtle?” He plucked at his moustache and looked at the laughing Laura. “Why--pray--a myrtle?”

“Papa, how dense you are!”

A hit clean and fair, which after a very little thought Sir Arthur was man enough to own. His one excuse, and a poor one, was that in certain things the sex to which he had the misfortune to belong, was notoriously “slow in the uptake.”

It was now William’s turn to acclaim the idea. Blushing deeply said that quaint and whimsical young man: “Yes, Miss Babraham, with your permission we will plant a myrtle in the jar of Knossos.”

In the laugh which followed June did not share; just now her feeling was that she would never be able to laugh again.

Sir Arthur, still tactful, now conceived it to be his duty to cheer the poor girl up. “By the way,” he said, “has my daughter told you what we propose to do with your Van Roon? Of course with your permission.”

June simply longed for the power to say that it was not for her to give the permission as the Van Roon was not hers. But she was living just now in a kind of dream in which action and speech had no part. The only thing she could do was to listen passively to the voice of Sir Arthur, while it leisurely unfolded a tale of fairyland.

“I must tell you,” he said, “subject to your approval--always, of course, subject to _that_--we have formed a sort of committee to deal with this picture of yours. It has given rise to a rather curious position. We think--three or four of us--that it ought to be acquired for the nation; but of course there’s the question of price. If the work is put up at auction, it may fetch more than we should feel justified in paying. Sentiment of course; but nowadays sentiment plays a big part in these matters. On the other hand, having regard to the obscurity of its origin, it might be knocked down for considerably less than it is intrinsically worth. All the same we are quite convinced that it is a very choice example of a great master, and that the place for it is the National Gallery, where another Van Roon is badly needed. Now I hope you see the dilemma. If the nation enters the market a definite buyer, the thing may soar to a preposterous sum. At the same time, we don’t want the nation to acquire it for less than its real value. So the question in a nutshell is, will you accept a private arbitration or do you prefer to run the risk of getting comparatively little in the hope of obtaining an extra ten thousand pounds or so?”

June followed the argument as closely as she could, and at the end of it burst into wild tears.

“The picture is not mine,” she sobbed. “It doesn’t belong to me.”

It was a moment of keen embarrassment. Sir Arthur, who had doubted from the first, was hardly to be blamed for beginning to doubt again. Such an outburst was the oddest confirmation of his first suspicion, which conspiring Circumstance had enabled him perhaps too easily to forget. But Laura’s faith was quite unshaken. For her the question of ownership had been settled once and for all. The poor thing was overwrought, overdriven; it was so like the tactless father of hers, to worry the girl with all kinds of tiresome details when he should have known that she was not strong enough to grapple with them.

“Come, papa,” said Laura Babraham with reproof in a clear grey eye. “If we don’t go at once and look at that herbaceous border we shall certainly be late for luncheon.”

LXI

LEFT to themselves once more, it became William’s task to comfort June’s distress. Like Sir Arthur, he too, it seemed, could be tactful. Instead of discussing the question of the Van Roon’s ownership or the unlucky presence of the Hoodoo, he began gently to discourse of Mathew Maris.

As far as June was concerned he might as well have discoursed of the moon. In the first place she had never heard of Mathew Maris; and in the second she was consumed by a desire to settle forever the question of the Van Roon which was now tormenting her like a fire. This was a dynamic moment, when great decisions are reached with startling abruptness and half a lifetime may be lived in half a minute.

Mathew Maris was not for June just now. Suddenly she broke again into wild sobs.

“I cheated you, I tricked you over that picture.”

Again, good honest fellow, he tried to change the current of this mind distraught. But it was not to be.

“You gave it me, didn’t you, because I made you think I had fallen in love with it? But I hadn’t. It meant nothing to me--not in that way.”

He stood an image of dismay, but he had to listen.

“Why do you suppose I did that? I’ll tell you. I overheard Uncle Si talking to a dealer. You remember, don’t you, the funny crooked little man in the knitted comforter and the brown billycock whom I used to call Foxy Face? One morning when you were out he offered Uncle Si five pounds for it and Uncle Si said it might be worth a good deal more. That’s why I decided to get hold of it if I could, before Uncle Si got it from you. And that’s why I cracked it up and made you think I could see all sorts of wonders in it, when all the time I saw no more beauty in it than there is in That.” And she pointed to the Hoodoo.

William gave a little gasp. June heard the gasp. And in the mad unhappiness of that moment she determined to spare herself nothing. She would strip herself bare so that the whip might be better laid on.

“Beauty means no more to me than it does to that Thing there. All your talk about Hobbemas and Marises and Vermeers and Cromes are to me just sloppy. They bore me stiff every time. I hate the sight of all these things.” The wave of a wildly tragic hand included all the masterpieces in the Long Gallery. “I hate them! I hate them! So now you know the mean and dirty liar that I am.”

No longer able to bear the sound of her strange and terrible words he turned sickly away. It was almost as if they had opened a vein in his heart. He remembered again the cry that had haunted him after his seeing her first at the Hospital. “Am I struck? Am I like Uncle Si? Am I like the Hoodoo?”

Poor soul! It was not for him to judge her. He could only think of her sufferings. And it was cruel indeed to realize what they must be now.

“That’s why I don’t want the money. And that’s why I don’t mean to have it. I burn when I think of it. Now you know how low down I am. I hope you like the way I’ve cheated you.”

He sought to take her hand, but she withdrew it fiercely. His very goodness almost made her hate him.

LXII

BY the advice of Miss Babraham they planted a myrtle in the jar of Knossos. Some days later the Hoodoo was haled into a convenient corner of the Italian garden. Here, by the marge of a tiny rock-strewn lake, the momentous rite was performed with a high solemnity. Much displacement of mould and a considerable wheelbarrowing of the same was necessary and Mr. Chrystal, the head gardener, had to advise in the use of the trowel, an art in which neither June nor William was quite so adept as they might have been. But at last, after some honest digging and shovelling on the part of William who was not afraid to take off his coat to the job, and timely help from Mr. Chrystal’s George who was uncannily wise, although to be sure he had the experience of a lifetime and a fairly long one to bring to bear on such matters, the thing was done.

June and William then retired to the fragrant shade of a budding lime, feeling rather hot, yet not dissatisfied with their labours. It was a perfect morning. Larks were hovering in the bright air. Blackbirds and thrushes were trying out their grace-notes, and once June thought she heard a nightingale.

For a little they reclined in poetic comfort in two wicker chairs. Fauns in marble, and Cupid, complete with bow and arrows lurked hard by. At last June broke a delicious silence.

“You must put your coat on,” she said suddenly.

“But----” said William who really had delved and shovelled to some purpose.

June was not to be Butted--not this golden day.

“If you don’t you might get a bad chill,” she said severely.

William rose and did her bidding. And in the midst of that simple act, a certain piece of confidential information, which Sir Arthur and Miss Laura had been kind enough to supply at frequent intervals during the last few days, recurred forcibly to his mind. It was to the effect that “Miss Gedge was so practical she would make an ideal wife for an artist.”

As far as the major premise was concerned it was less irrelevant than at first it might seem, for William had recently decided that an artist was what he was going to be. In the very act of putting on his coat he now recalled the high and sacred mystery to which his life was vowed. And further he recalled that before entering the garden he had taken the precaution of slipping a neat little sketching book and pencil into his coat pocket. Thus, upon sitting down, in solemn silence he took them forth and proceeded to draw.

June it was who broke the silence, after some little while.

“If you are drawing that myrtle,” she said, “it looks a bit potty to me stuck up there. There’s nothing to it.”

She was more her true self this happy morning than for many a tragic month.

“It’ll grow,” said the artist.

“Won’t seem much if it doesn’t in that great jar. It was Miss Babraham’s idea to stick it there, so it’s all right of course. She said it was an emblem of what was it?”

“Of marriage,” said the artist with an air of innocent abstraction.

“Then she ought to have planted it herself--if she _is_ going to be married.”

“On the first of July. They’ve fixed the day.”

“Oh,” said June. “Have you seen her young man?”

“He came to lunch yesterday.”

“Who is he?”

“The Honourable Barrington, a gentleman in the Blues.”

June frowned portentously. “I hope he’ll be good enough for her.” But she didn’t sound very hopeful.

“He’s a very nice gentleman.”

“Ought to be if he’s going to marry _her_. But what I should like to know is, why was she so set on you and me planting that myrtle when she ought to have planted it herself.”

“Don’t know, I’m sure, Miss June,” said the artist, not so much as glancing up from his work.

Once a Sawney always a Sawney. Perennially, it seemed, was she up against the relentless workings of that natural law. Marriage, money, commonsense, the really big things of life, meant so little to him compared with windmills and myrtles, and things of that kind. Like her beloved Miss Babraham, this dear and charming fellow was almost too good to be true, but day by day the conviction was growing upon her that he really did need somebody practical to look after him. And she was not alone in thinking so. Miss Babraham, who knew so much about everything, had already expressed that opinion to her quite strongly.

Here he was, in the middle of a perfect morning, with all sorts of really beautiful things about him, and larks and blackbirds quiring, and the sun on the water and the Surrey hills, wasting his time seemingly, by drawing that rather paltry looking little plant stuck up there on the top of the Hoodoo. Even if it was the emblem of marriage she could not help a subtle feeling of annoyance that he should not use his precious time a bit better.

However, the cream of the joke was to follow.

The artist it was who quaintly burst this fresh bubble of silence. “Talk as much as you like, Miss June,” he said with something a little odd, a little unexpected in his manner, “but I hope you’ll keep your hands in your lap just as they are now, and if you don’t mind will you please bring your chin round a bit--on to a level with my finger.”

“Please get on with that myrtle.” Before, however, the fiat was really pronounced, she abruptly stopped. Could such a thing be? Was it possible that he was not drawing the myrtle at all?

It was more than possible.

And that was the cream of the whole matter!

LXIII

“I’M not half as good looking as that,” said June.

“All depends, don’t you know, on the angle at which one happens to get you,” said William.

It was the tone of a gentleman in the Blues speaking to Miss Babraham. Yet it came so pat and so natural from the lips of an artist, that in spite of herself, June could not help being a little awed by it. She didn’t agree, yet she didn’t disagree; that is to say, as Miss Babraham would have done, she agreed to disagree without contradicting the artist flatly.

Besides it is the whole duty of an artist to know just how people look in all circumstances. Everybody looks better at some moments than at others. June had no pretensions to be considered an artist herself, but at that moment she knew just how William looked. In his new suit, neat rather than smart and smart rather than neat--all depends don’t you know on the angle at which one happened to get it!--with his mop of fair hair brushed away from his fine forehead, and his yellow tie, and the curves of that sensitive mouth, and those wonderful eyes and those slim fingers, he looked fitted by nature to marry a real lady. Indeed, in the course of the last few days, a suspicion had crossed June’s mind that Miss Babraham thought so too; thus the apparition of the Honourable Barrington and the definite fixing of the day had taken a load off her mind.

For all that other loads were still upon it. Since her nerve-storm in the Long Gallery a week had passed. She was feeling much better now, day by day she was growing stronger; nevertheless she was troubled about many things.

Foremost of these was the question so vital to a practical mind, of ways and means. They both had to live. And if William had really made up his mind to be an artist, he would need money and plenty of it for leisure and study and foreign travel. She was rather glad, if only for this reason, that he had been able to take such a bold decision. He would be the more likely to accept that which really belonged to him: the price of the Van Roon.

Sir Arthur had now informed her that the sum the committee proposed to offer for the Van Roon could be invested to produce a thousand a year free of tax, and he strongly urged its acceptance, as she would be relieved of all money difficulties for the rest of her life. To June it sounded fabulous. She knew in her heart, besides, that she would never be able to take this income for her own use. Every penny was William’s and the task now before her was to bring home to him this fact.

It did not take long to prove to her this morning that she was attempting the impossible. The thousand a year, he declared, was hers and nothing would induce him to touch a penny. Yielding in some ways, in others as she had discovered already, for all his gentleness he was a rock.

Desperation now drove June to confess that she had never intended to take the money. Even at the moment she had filched the Van Roon from him with her wicked pretences, at the back of her mind had been the wish to save him from himself. Always she had regarded herself as the Van Roon’s trustee, so that he should not be victimized by the cunning of Uncle Si, just as Sir Arthur was its trustee now, so that neither of them should be robbed by the cunning of the world.

She found all too soon, however, that it was vain to argue with him. What he had given, he had given. As far as he was concerned, that was the end of the whole matter.