Chapter I

The voluntary swelled, it rose, it rushed to its climax. The organist tossed back his head with a noble gesture, exalted; he rocked on his bench; his feet shuffled faster and faster, pedalling passionately.

The young girl who stood beside him drew in a deep, rushing breath; her heart swelled; her whole body listened, with hurried senses desiring the climax, the climax, the crash of sound. Her nerves shook as the organist rocked towards her; when he tossed back his head her chin lifted; she loved his playing hands, his rocking body, his superb, excited gesture.

Three times a week Wilfrid Hollyer went down to Lower Wyck, to give Effie Carroll a music lesson; three times a week Effie Carroll came up to Wyck on the Hill to listen to Hollyer’s organ practice.

The climax had come. The voluntary fell from its height and died in a long cadence, thinned out, a trickling, trembling diminuendo. It was all over.

The young girl released her breath in a long, trembling sigh.

The organist rose and put out the organ lights. He took Effie by the arm and led her down the short aisles of the little country church and out on to the flagged path of the churchyard between the tombstones.

“Wilfrid,” she said, “you’re too good for Wyck. You ought to be playing in Gloucester Cathedral.”

“I’m not good enough. Perhaps—if I’d been trained—”

“Why weren’t you?”

“My mother couldn’t afford it. Besides, I couldn’t leave her. She hasn’t anybody but me.”

“I know. You’re awfully fond of her, aren’t you?”

“Yes,” he said shortly.

They had passed down the turn of the street into the Market Square. There was a plot of grass laid down in the north-east corner. Two tall elms stood up on the grass, and behind the elms a small, ivy-covered house with mullioned windows, looking south.

“That’s our house,” Hollyer said. “Won’t you come in and see her?”

They found her sitting by herself in the little cramped, green drawing-room. She was the most beautiful old lady; small, upright and perfect; slender, like a girl, in her grey silk blouse. She had a miniature oval face, pretty and white: a sharp chin, and a wide forehead under a pile of pure white hair. And sorrowful blue eyes, white-lidded, in two rings of mauve and bistre.

She couldn’t be so very old, Effie thought. Not more than sixty.

Mrs. Hollyer rose, holding out a fragile hand.

Presently she said: “I wanted to see you; after all you’ve done for him.”

“I? I haven’t done anything.”

“You’ve listened to his playing. He can’t get anybody to do that for him in Wyck.”

“They hear enough of me on Sundays.”

“Then they haven’t heard him. He plays much better on week-days, when he plays to me,” said Effie.

“So I can imagine,” Mrs. Hollyer said.

“She thinks I’m better than I am,” said Hollyer.

“Go on thinking it. That’s the way to make him better.” She was smiling at Effie as if she liked her.

All through tea-time and after they talked about Wilfrid’s playing and Wilfrid and Wyck, and the people of Wyck, and how they knew nothing and cared nothing about Wilfrid’s playing.

Twilight came, twilight of October. He was going to walk back with Effie down the hill to Lower Wyck.

As the house door closed behind them he said: “Now you know why I’m nothing but an organist at Wyck.”

“Wilfrid, she’s the most beautiful thing I’ve seen yet—your mother. No wonder you can’t leave her.”

“It isn’t that altogether. I mean we’re tied here because we can’t afford to leave; and because I’ve got this organ job. I should never have had it anywhere else.” He paused. “And you know, I couldn’t live on it—without mother. She’s got the house.”

Effie said nothing.

“So here I am. Thirty-five and still dependent on my mother.”

“Oh, Wilfrid, what will you do when—when—”

“When my mother dies? That’s the awful thing. I shall have enough then. There’ll be the house and her income. I hate to think of it. I don’t think of it—”

“You see,” he went on, “when I was a kid I was so seedy they didn’t think I’d live. So I was brought up to do nothing. Nothing but my playing. They gave me this job just to keep me quiet. And now I’m strong enough, but there’s nothing else I can do.”

He hung his head, frowning gloomily.

“You know why I’m telling you all this?”

“No. But I’m glad you’ve told me.”

“It’s because—because—if I had a decent income, Effie, I’d ask you to marry me. As it is, I can only hope that you won’t ever care for me as I care for you.”

“But I _do_ care for you. You know I do.”

“Would you have married me, Effie? Do you care as much as that?”

“You know I would. I will the minute you ask me.”

“I shall never ask you.”

“Why not? I can wait.”

“My dear, for what?” He paused again. “I can’t marry in my mother’s lifetime.”

“Oh, Wilfrid—I didn’t mean that. Your dear, beautiful mother. You know I didn’t.”

“Of course, darling, I know. But there it is.”

He left her at the gate of the cottage where she lived with her father.

As he went back up the hill he meditated on his position. He was right to make it clear to her, now that she had begun to care for him. He would have told her long ago if he had known that she cared. Yesterday he didn’t know it. But to-day there had been something, in her manner, in her voice, in the way she looked at him in the church after his playing, that had told him.

Poor little Effie. She would have nothing either, unless her father—and Effie’s father was a robust man, not quite fifty.

Well—he mustn’t think of it. And he mustn’t let his mother think. He wondered whether he was too late, whether she had seen anything. He tried to slink past the drawing-room and up the stairs. But his mother had heard him come in. She called to him. He went to her, shame-faced, as if he had committed a sin.

Her large, gentle eyes looked at him, wondering. He could see them wondering.

“Wilfrid,” she said suddenly, “do you care for that little girl?”

“What’s the good of my caring? I can’t marry her. I’ve just told her so.”

“It’s too late. She’s in love with you. You should have told her before.”

“How could I if she didn’t care? You can’t be fatuous.”

“No—poor boy. Poor Effie.”

“Mother—why couldn’t I have been brought up to a profession?”

“You know why—you weren’t strong enough. It was as much as I could do to keep you alive.”

“I’m strong enough now.”

“Only because I took such care of you. Only because you hadn’t to go out and earn your own living. You’d have been dead before you were twenty if I hadn’t kept you with me.”

“It would have been better if you’d let me die.”

“Don’t say that, Wilfrid. What should I have done without you? What should I do without you now?”

“You mean if I married?”

“No, my dear. I’d be glad if you could marry. I don’t want to keep you tied to me for ever. If you can get better work and better pay by going anywhere else, I shan’t mind your leaving me.”

“I shouldn’t get anything. I’m not good enough. I shall never be worth more than fifty pounds a year anywhere. We can’t live on that.”

“If you could live on half my income, I’d give it you, but you couldn’t.”

“No. We’ll just have to wait.”

“I hope for your sake, my dear, it won’t be too long.”

“What do you mean, mother?”

“What did _you_ mean?”

“Why, I meant we’d have to wait till I heard of something.”

“You _might_ have meant something else.” She smiled.

“Oh, mother—_don’t_.”

“Why not?” she said cheerfully.

“You know—you know I couldn’t bear it.”

“You’ll have to bear it some day—I’m an old woman.”

“Well, I shall be an old man—by then.”

He tossed it back to her, laughing, as he left her to wash his hands and brush his hair. He laughed, to shake off her pathos and to hide his own.

When he talked about waiting, he hadn’t meant what she thought he meant. He was simply trying to dismiss a too serious situation with a reassuring levity. Waiting to hear of something? Was it likely he would ever hear of anything? Could he have made a more frivolous suggestion?

It was she who had faced it. She had made him see how hopeless their case was, his and Effie’s. He saw it now, as he saw his own face in the glass, between two hair-brushes, a little drawn, even now, a little sallow and haggard. Not a young face.

He would be an old man—an old man before he could dream of marrying. His mother, after all, was only sixty, and she came of a long-lived family. Her apparent fragility was an illusion; she had never had a day’s illness as long as he could remember. Nerves like whipcord, young arteries, and every organ sound. She would live ten—fifteen—twenty years longer, live to be eighty. He was thirty-five now, and Effie was twenty-five. Before they could marry, they would be fifty-five and forty-five; old, old; too old to feel, to care passionately. He had no right to ask Effie to wait twenty years for him.

He must give up thinking about her.

His mother was still in her chair by the drawing-room fire, waiting for him. She turned as he came to her, and held up her face to be kissed, like a child, he thought, or like a young wife waiting for her husband. She put her hands on his hair and stroked it. And he remembered the time when he used to say to her: “I shall never marry. You’re all the wife I want, Mother.”

And now it was as if he had been calculating on her death.

But he hadn’t. He hadn’t. You couldn’t calculate on anything so far-off, so unlikely. He had done the only possible, the only decent thing. He had given Effie up.