A DELIVERANCE by ALLAN MONKHOUSE CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Joseph Whitmore Barry dramatic library the gift of two friends of Cornell University n 934 Cornell University Library PR 6025.O57D3 A deliverance. 3 1924 013 648 831 The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924013648831 A Deliverance 'By the same Jluthor. BOOKS AND PLAYS: A Volume of Essays, by Allan Monkhouse, com- prising papers on George Meredith, George Borrow, Turgenieff, Ibsen, R. L. Stevenson, W. E. Henley, and The Politics of Dramatic Art. Cr. $vo. 5s. net. f 'It is evidently the work of a man who has taken the trouble to think ; it reveals more than an ordinary knowledge of English literature."— Academy. " We hasten to give welcome to * Books and Plays/ by Mr. Allan Monkhouse. The book provided us with an enjoyment for which we are grateful." — Literary World. "Often suggestive, and invariably interesting." — Scotsman. JOHN LANE, LONDON AND NEW YORK. A Deliverance BY ALLAN MONKHOUSE " He may entreat, aspire, He may despair, and she has never heed. She drinking bis ixiarm sweat ixiill soothe his need, Not his desire." Earth and Man. JOHN LANE, THE BODLEY HEAD LONDON AND NEW YORK ■m — ;\&Sf3£> 1 .1.1 .Hi v.o.i v.! is li n'HHJ A DELIVERANCE URSULA Ursula Harland Was the only child of a Manchester yarn agent, and had spent her child- hood in a suburb of the city. Her mother died when she was a baby, and the father, who looked upon women as inferior beings, incapable of " business," left her very much to herself. His affection took the forms of exaction and pro- testation, rarely or never of sympathetic vision. After a succession of ill-chosen governesses, his narrowing income and the girls's own preferences induced him to consent to her attending a public High School, where she obtained a sound general education and made some friends. Her home life was relieved from barrenness by her books and her meditations. Through many by-ways of sentiment and affectation she B 2 A DELIVERANCE progressed towards some knowledge and love of beauty. Her circumstances had early developed self-reliance, and a wayward temper was perhaps the precursor of an original mind. A lonely childhood is a pitiful thing, yet in after years Ursula looked back on that period with a kindly wistfulness; with something of affedtion, with a touch of envy for the remote, brave, hopeful girl to whom life appeared overflowing with interest and romance. The ideal world in which she lived had poets for its heroes, and not always the best of poets. It was a nebulous world, sadly wanting in the warmth of human fellow- ship, but it saved her from dependence oh the coarse comforts and trivial concerns by which the imaginations of girls of her class are so often smothered. There are large sections of English society in which the children find their best chances for a spiritual life in the negledt or cruelty of their parents. Mr. Harland's business had declined for some years, and depression and anxiety, coupled with habits of intemperance, hastened his death. Ursula found herself, at eighteen, alone in the world. Her income, small, but sufficient for simple needs, was controlled by a trustee, an old URSULA 3 friend of her family. Mr. Broxap was a kindly and accommodating old gentleman, and made little difficulty with regard to the proje&s of travel on which she had set her mind. She was, in the first instance, attached to an English family and, by all reports, efficiently chaperoned, but, as a matter of fadt, she soon assumed the control of her own movements. The easy- going Mrs. Fletcher satisfied her conscience with an enumeration of Ursula's qualities; her self- reliance, her discretion, her perspicacity. Indeed she declared that they had much more need of Ursula's protection than she of theirs, and, on her return to England, ridiculed Mr. Broxap's faint protests, assuring him, it is to be feared on no stronger authority than Ursula's own, that no woman's education could possibly be con- sidered complete without six months in the peculiarly stimulating atmosphere of the Latin Quarter. Mr. Broxap had his misgivings, but a certain delicacy of respedl for his ward kept him from aftive interference. He contented himself with writing some rather vague exhortations, con- scious as he was that advice, to be fruitful, should bear more definite relations to knowledge B — 2 4 A DELIVERANCE than his could assume. He obtained the most proper and reassuring replies, and was startled all the more when he received from Ursula, at Paris, a telegram requiring his immediate pre- sence there. To an elderly gentleman whose habits are the ripe fruit of a well-spent life, such a summons is a serious matter, and the hurried journey, the bad crossing, and all the harassments of arrival hardly fitted him for the business on hand. For he was met with an immediate and impetuous demand from Ursula for money — for large sums of money — for a considerable portion of her fortune. Bewilderment contended with indignation, and there crossed his mind a faint regret that he was a gentleman, or at least that he was a gentleman of his particular kind, for really he could almost have enjoyed giving this young person a sound rating. He was confronted with an impecunious young French painter — a genius he was assured — whose desperate plight had roused Ursula to this preposterous action. " I have sent for you," she said, " because I know I can depend on you to do what is right, and the appeal I make to you is only possible here. I know that in England, in cold blood URSULA 5 you couldn't listen to me; to bring you here will convince you how much I am in earnest." Mr. Broxap was a man of humour, and this appealed to him. She continued: — "This is a great man, his possibilities are boundless, he will found a school, initiate a movement, — this is the chance of our lives; all he requires is freedom, scope. You don't know much of art, but you are a man of liberal and enlightened views." Mr. Broxap bowed. "Ask anyone who knows." She paused and he said : " I wonder if we could get the art critic of the Times over ? " "You don't take me seriously," she said quietly. " My dear, you achieve serious results, but as for your project, do you know what it means ? " " It means this," she said, " that I want my money — some of it, enough to make him inde- pendent, to give him a chance; he's painting mere pot-boilers — even those he can't sell, and he's in debt — there's no sort of outlook for him. All the students in Paris — the clever ones — look to him, but they're all as poor as he is ; he hasn't caught on yet, and no one ever buys his real work." A DELIVERANCE " Does one come to Paris to acquire American slang ? " said Mr. Broxap severely. He submitted to a strenuous but quite fruitless attempt to put him into right relations with modern French art. Ursula found herself work- ing on virgin ground and volunteered a hasty- sketch of the history of painting. She found herself receding further and further from her immediate object. They failed to find common ground in a definition of art. " Pm a dull old man," he said. " No," she said, reflefting, and added, " Do 1 seem to you a reasonable, intelligent person ? " " Rather a clever young lady." She looked at him doubtfully and said : — • " What right have you to . keep my money ? You can't judge in this case; I am better qualified, you acknowledge that. Your legal control is only an accident; you will not insist on it as a right." But he remained inflexible, finding a certain pleasure in his own firmness, conscious though he was that the alternative was sheer lunacy. He reasoned with her, and she was good enough to say that she respedted his scruples, while implying that he had failed to reach an ideal. URSULA 7 However, he bought one or two of the man's piftures, rejecting the pot-boilers regretfully in favour of the curious works of genius. His good humour was rewarded with several very pleasant days in Paris, and he obtained some glimpses of the life of the Latin Quarter foreign to the experience of the majority of staid English visitors. It speaks for his liberal confidence in his ward that he made no demand for her immediate return to England, satisfying himself with the knowledge that she had what he called some decent people for friends and companions. The day before his proposed return, Ursula asked him for a small sum of money, her allow- ance being some weeks less than due. He men- tioned a condition — that none of this advance should go to the needy genius. After considera- tion she declined to accept the condition, but ultimately made what she described as a " sport- ing offer" to go back to England with him if he would buy yet another pidture. He accepted the offer, but stoutly held out for a pot boiler, groaning in anticipation of his wife's reception of those other surprising additions to their home decorations. Ursula recognised his trust in her in his not stipulating for any promise as to 8 A DELIVERANCE her future movements. They travelled home together very pleasantly, and she paid him a long visit, glad of the sweet humdrum English life after the strain and ferment of Paris. She corresponded with the Frenchman for some time, and Mr. Broxap noticed, with spnxe vexation, that she maintained an extreme eco- nomy in her personal expenses. It was long after that she confessed to him that her expec- tations were disappointed, and she even shrugged her shoulders over the pictures he had bought in Paris. " But you told me to buy them," he said. " Ah, well," she answered, " it's a test to live with them, and besides, I'm not standing still." So no more was heard of the chance of their lives. For the next two or three years Ursula ranged through Italy and France, sometimes alone, sometimes with casual companions. Like most clever girls brought up in provincial towns, her ideals were literary; and even during her stay in Paris, where she had drawn for some months at a studio, she had carefully defined the limits of this particular training. Her ambi- tions were, perhaps, less crude than those of some URSULA 9 young literary aspirants. Her impulses became subjected to that great qualification — at once purifying and enriching — a constant familiarity with great works of art. Upon these her intel- ligence and her sympathies fastened, till she presented the unusual example of a youthful enthusiasm for criticism, the eager desire for assimilation and comprehension, for that ordered sympathy which is of the best that life can give. A visit to an old schoolfellow at Manchester led to her introduction to a sub-editor and leader writer on a principal Manchester paper. Through him she obtained some slight review work, to which she applied herself with strenuous care. Her .work was approved, although she was pained sometimes to find her elaborate searchings sub- dued by the editorial touch to the casual omni- science of the profession. Meanwhile she took rooms temporarily in Manchester, and after a succession of experimental excursions, she thought herself lucky to secure a cottage at Darley, that most picturesque of Manchester environs. When this narrative opens she had occupied it for about four years, and was nearly twenty-five years old. If she had few friends in Darley, she was at least friendly with most, and she believed in her own IO A DELIVERANCE capacity for friendship, perhaps for something more. In her travels abroad she had met many clever and interesting women, and had been intimate with some who had a serious hold upon life and an insight into it. It seemed strange to her at first to find the ladies of this suburban village, with opportunities of wealth and leisure, content with what seemed to her so meagre a life. For many of them she had a genuine liking, a genuine respeft. She did not thank God that she was not as those other women were, but sometimes she wished that their eyes might be opened a little wider. Her superiority was so far founded on the due reverence for what was above her — was indeed so relative — that she had no difficulty in maintaining a befitting humility, in striking a note void of offence. Perhaps she permitted herself a touch of irony, for the fine shades of irony, little more than personal reservations, are hard to resist. It amused her to observe the naivete of their attitude towards art, their idea of it as something extraneous and unnecessary, an elegance, an expensive ornament, a branch of decoration. She had no inclination to prose- lytise among her own class ; and an attempt URSULA 1 1 which she made upon the village people failed from her inflexible determination to exclude the mercenary taint. She declined to recognise any impulsion towards the practice of such art as she endeavoured to teach other than an ideal one, and refused offers of assistance from well- meaning friends, who proposed to make her classes useful and educational. She rejefted all compromise, and saw the classes dwindle to two or three young men, to whom, on the final severance of formal relations, she became some- thing of a guide and friend. They had gained an idea, and henceforth they too belonged to the band of visionaries. Nevertheless, her vagaries took somehow the shape of a practical understanding. The fer- vours of sentiment were not hers, and she was sometimes pronounced to be unimaginative and materialistic. Actually, it seemed that this world was good enough for her, but she went deeper into it than some of the aspirants to a better. II AN ENVIRONMENT Darley is a Cheshire village with most of the characteristics of Derbyshire, upon which it borders. It is traversed by two roads, which cut one another almost at right angles in the heart of the village ; the old road between Manchester and the South, which descends abruptly to debouch upon the open space fronting the " Boar," and rises again steeply through Higher Darley ; and the newer, duller, commoner, more convenient highway which runs its course on the valley levels. Darley, in these latter days, has become a suburb of Manchester, from which it is distant a dozen or more miles. Red brick villas, at the best unsuited to the country, are fast converting beautiful places into eligible sites, and the march of civilisation is only delayed by a defective train service. Great is the power of the railway company. AN ENVIRONMENT 1 3 If they run a sufficient number of trains to a wilderness or a swamp, the city man will cheer*- fully follow their suggestion. Beauty, healthi- ness, interests are good, but what is the train service ? The pioneers who made their way to Darley, submitting to ignominious shunting and changing for the sake of a place unspoilt, scarcely preyed upon by the builder, clamoured for more trains, and got them, to their loss. But Darley has the perennial beauty and variety of distant hills. Perhaps its most characteristic aspect is seen on a clear sunless autumn day — a landscape of cold intentness, of grey stone hamlets, high undulating horizon, peaceful slopes, long har- monious lines. But the glories of sun ahd mist bring the exuberance of common life that tran- scends the intimate and particular. The newcomers to Darley were little troubled by curiosity about what was old and indigenous to the place. They assumed, so far as the matter occupied them, that they represented a higher standard of enlightenment and progress. They were the outcome of acute commercial competition, and did indeed represent a kind of accomplishment, a kind of success; if not an advance, at least a difference, In the English 14 A DELIVERANCE middle class the point of honour of a military aristocracy, the note of revolt of the labourers, are misunderstood and scorned. Its own function should be to substitute a worthy commerce for a sordid commercialism, and it has not yet even realised the distinftion. Its finest individuals are produced by some process of detachment which removes them from its influences. Here, in Darley, Mr. Millington might stand as an epitome of a class. If he disturbs little the current of this narrative, he may have his uses as a background, a circumstance. At his best he was a thin reflex of the newspaper, for he read a morning and an evening paper, and at the end of the week he bought two illustrated periodicals and a society journal. These con- stituted his main literary provender, but occa- sionally he read a book that was in vogue ; one of those of which Mr. Mudie circulates five hundred copies. A Liberal in politics, he con- demned every new idea and every social move- ment, but he accepted them when they prevailed. It is impossible to conceive of any process of social growth that he would not condemn, or of any social disease that he would not accept. He took the liberal side in past controversies. AN ENVIRONMENT I 5 It was something of a misfortune to him that he had been born into the Liberal party, for he found himself pulled two ways — the desire to be on the gentlemanly side being counterbalanced by disinclination to change his morning paper, to which he was attached as much as such a man can be attached to anything. Besides, he placed great value upon consistency, lapses from which he was keen to dete£L Fortunately the Home Rule split gave him an opportunity, and he became a Liberal Unionist. He did not change his paper, but he was compelled, with some derangement of the routine of his life, to make some effort to assimilate the Conservative Daily also; for it was a necessity of his position that he should be able to assert the current dogmas of his party. He held strong views on some social questions; he called them strong views, and he certainly gave them utterance in a voice of imperfeft modulation. Sternly he discountenanced any tampering with the laws relating to marriage, or with those unwritten rules which help to preserve inviolate the inno- cence of young woman, her most marketable charm. Millington had led a "moral" life; that is to say, he had lacked courage or oppor- 1 6 A DELIVERANCE tunjty to transgress, though in some societies that he affgfted he would never have acknow- ledged this. The remarkable plainness of Mrs. Millington, a lady of some fortune, and quite well-conne£ted, seemed to give him a touch of austerity. Nevertheless he was a man of the world, and in the smoker-room could be depended upon for the fouJe6t version of the last foul story. He made an excellent churchwarden, and his immediate ambitions were to be a county magis- trate, and to be asked to dine at the Hall. If his charities were somewhat ostentatious, it is fair to remember that the secret giver conveys nothing by example. A particular a& of charity had no value to him, for charity was not an impulse, but a branch of statistics. Indeed with Millington, charity had less of humanity about it than tipping, for he could be genial with his inferiors if they did not presume upon his con- descension. In short, Millington was a very decent fellow. He never had a friend, and to be his enemy was like hating an inanimate thing — a force in nature. Millington governed the world as surely as the world governed Millington, His personal appearance was not, of course, of much account, but he was considered a hand-. AN ENVIRONMENT 1 7 some and gentlemanly man. In the absence of Mrs. Hay Forwood, who struck a more forcible and, as he considered, a coarser note, he com- monly led the conversation at Darley dinner parties. As to Mrs. Forwood, she was frankly herself, and rather a loud and , bustling self. She had forced her friendship upon Ursula, who liked and valued it. " Peggy," she called her, " not because you are in the least like a Peggy, but I want to push you just a little in that direction ; Ursula keeps me at a distance, and there's no shortening it." She groaned at revelations of Ursula's "cleverness." "But don't build too much on it, my dear. I once went to a very seleft dinner in London ; the kind of thing where they jerk out smart little things all round the table. My hostess had asked me by mis- take, but never mind that. Well, I couldn't understand a bit; it was like Hunt the Slipper with me always in the middle. I had either to . be mum or to assert myself, so I started talking — I can talk you know; don't laugh- — and I believe it amused them a good deal more than their own little snippity sayings. ' After all,' one little man sighed out — I heard him — ' to be. c 1 8 A DELIVERANCE effective.' I was effective, I can tell you; and didn't my hostess look black ? Afterwards, up- stairs, this man came to me — a wizened little creature; he thought he could get some sport out of me. I didn't know what he meant, but I understood the people's faces. Never mind what I said to him; he went off pretty soon. You see a clever person is at a disadvantage with me. You can't afford to hold me in contempt." " I regard you with terror and admiration." " No you don't, but I tell you there's a kind of marking -time cleverness that you young people think too much about." " But what's the use of progressing if you're in a nice place ?" " That's it — that's what I mean — that's how you cheat yourselves." " And what do you advise — what do you want me to do I" " I want you to make a friend of me, to over- look " — Mrs. Forwood had lost her fluency. "I shall overlook nothing. I want you as you are." Ill A DINNER PARTY When there was a dinner party at Darley the carriage from the " Boar " had a busy time of it. It could not deposit everyone exaftly at eight o'clock, and Jimmy the coachman was hard beset to get them all in by a decent quarter past. However, the circumstances of the case were well understood, and if Jimmy insisted on setting down his first fare ten minutes too early, expla- nations were frankly given and accepted. If the distance was not great, some of the ladies tucked up their skirts, put on overshoes, and marched boldly through the winter mud. Ursula was one of these when, on a fine night in mid winter, the roads beginning to stiffen with frost, she set out for Mr. Millington's. At his gate she stopped, reluflant to lose the exceeding beauty of the stars. Orion was brilliant, high in the heavens ; following the line from Aldeboran C— 2 20 A DELIVERANCE through the belt, she looked for Sirius through the trees that obscured the horizon ; it was one of her delights to watch his splendid steely glitter. Moving a few steps into the garden she found him, emerging from the mists, not yet at his brightest. Steps were heard approaching along the road. She had not much inclination for the party, and lingered a little longer, unwilling to exchange the solemn exaltation of the night for what awaited her within the house. This great im- pression — at once of power and peace — was ■more than a mere antidote to what is trivial and .garish in social life, but to her now it took colour from the light of her anticipations. She stared up at the Pleiades and began to count them — .seven, eight — a childish triumph of clear sight. She .felt almost light hearted again. After all the dinner might be amusing, though, being a sincere young woman, she wished frankly for some new r an4 interesting men. The fpotsteps were close at hand, and as she turned ,to gp they stopped at the gate. Un- willing to ceveal herself and ignorant of the identity of her fellow guest, she waited for him fo pass into the house. But he, having closed A DINNER PARTY 21 the gate, leaned over it in silent contemplation. She was in shadow and remained motionless, anxious to avoid the slight embarrassment of detection. She could not distinguish either his face or his figure. To lean over a gate and watch the stars when a dinner was in near prospeft seemed an unlikely proceeding for any of the men whom she might have expe£ted to meet. As she hesitated whether to stay or to withdraw, she was startled to hear him speak. The first words were audible but indistinguish- able until the whole speech shaped itself : — " Ay but — to die, and go we know not where ; To lie in cold obstruftion, and to rot." The lines were delicately spoken, beginning with a cadence exquisitely querulous, and falling to the levels of acquiescence and despair. Ursula was full of wonder, interested and curious, even agitated. She feared to play the eavesdropper, and was moving away quietly over the grass when she heard the gate open again, and, turning, saw him pass out. As she waited for admission to the house she saw him pace up and down before the gate. It was curious ; it was almost comic. The faint light from the sky fell on his face upturned. 22 A DELIVERANCE It is a good trait in a man to like his own fireside, and Millington constantly gravitated towards his hearthrug. There he enunciated his platitudes with an added convidtion; there at least the social structure seemed firm. When Ursula entered the drawing-room she found him happily posed in his familiar attitude, and as she spoke with Mrs. Millington she overheard some words of his conversation. " Searle — S earl e — yes, taken rooms at the "Boar" — very well connected — Surrey I think, — all dead — and his only sister within a week — some little time ago — sad, oh ! very sad — clever man — I believe literary and that sort of thing — solicitor — yes." Mr. Searle entered the room with self-posses- sion, and showed no sign of having recently communed with the stars. He seemed about thirty; to Ursula's trained eye he was hand- some ; his expression was gracious and frank — frank yet with a certain reticence, an unknown quantity, a personal reservation. He moved with the gentle precision of a man accustomed to society. Mrs. Hay Forwood had already met him, and now rapidly improved the acquaintance : " Now A DINNER PARTY 23 Mr. Searle, you mustn't expedt too much from us. Darley is an out-of-the-way, poky little place, but we have our feelings ; don't be too superior." " My dear Madam, I'm not superior. I'm a most ordinary person." " Oh ! we don't want that. I like a man with a little devil in him ; don't you, Peggy ? " " Perhaps it's more interesting with the devil somewhere about," said Miss Harland. Mr. Searle looked at her : " Don't you think good people are more interesting than bad ones ?" "Are safe people more interesting than those in danger ? " " If safety gives the opportunity for a natural expression." " Oh ! this is capital," cried Mrs. Forwood " I see you're an acquisition." "A conquest," said Searle, bowing. "Well, you must really take Miss Harland in. Where's Mr. Millington ? Miss Harland is our show young lady, and we must try to make the best impression possible." Mrs. Forwood succeeded in provoking a misun- derstanding, and Searle found himself hesitating whether to offer his arm to Miss Harland or to a Mrs. Brayshaw, to whom he had been intro- 24 A DELIVERANCE duced. It was no assistance to him to receive an audible assurance from the departing Mrs. Forwood that Miss Harland was their "bright particular star." "One can but be blinded," he said, looking toward Mrs. Brayshaw deprecatingly. "Miss Harland will make you open your eyes," said that lady, taking the arm of another hesitating gentleman. Seated at the table, he congratulated himself on the accident that had put him in Mr. Grafton's place — Mr. Grafton's name was on the card opposite to him — yet, catching Mrs. Brayshaw's eye, and glancing at Mr. Grafton, he had his compunctions, even regrets. He turned to Miss Harland : — " Does Mrs. Forwood often say awkward things?" "Shs says so many things, that some of them must be awkward." "A nice woman, nevertheless?" "She is my greatest friend in Darley." It gave him food for reflection. Mrs. Forwood seemed hardly the ideal friend for a woman of Miss Harland's quality ; yet, as he reflected, the more intimate appreciations penetrate beneath the A DINNER PARTY 25 superficial affinity that makes common friends. Nevertheless the avowal of particular friendship for the good-natured lady struck him with a sense of isolation. He was not a man of quick observation, and as he glanced at her profile he tried to gather his recollections of her face. Her beauty — already he thought of her as beautiful — seemed to him to have a pathetic quality, not of weak- ness or insufficiency, but of endeavour, of tension, of a personal dignity, pathetic to him in his state of brooding dulness which he took for disillusion. With a vague sympathy there came a revival of old feelings, a taste of the old interests and ex- citements, of the world of man and woman. When his mind slipped back again into the familiar groove of memories and regrets, he was conscious of a change. At Miss Harland's prompting, he realised that Mr. Millington was addressing him, and to the twice-repeated enquiry whether he was comfort- able at the " Boar," he replied in the affirmative, adding that the trippers were sometimes rather noisy on Saturdays and Sundays. " Hateful people," said Mrs. Brayshaw, " why can't they be exterminated ? " 26 A DELIVERANCE "Don't whisper a word of it," said Miss Harland, " they are much more likely to exter- minate us." " Us ? I thought you professed to belong to the democratic party." " Merely an instincT: of self-preservation." Someone asked whether Miss Harland was to be exterminated. " Oh ! Miss Harland is quite irrepressible," said Mrs. Brayshaw pleasantly. " You can't even hurt me," said Ursula. The trippers were roundly condemned on all hands. "After all," said Searle, "people have a good deal of the unexpected about them. I saw not long ago a very mouldy street-corner kind of man, and came very near to despising him. Imagine my confusion when I heard that he was the champion of the world." "What at?" " Carrying a brick." "What nonsense is this?" cried Mrs. For- wood, " anyone could carry a brick." "This idol of democracy carried it between his finger and thumb." "Ha! well—" said Mr. Millington, "in the A DINNER PARTY 2 7 domain of athletics records are constantly beaten. No doubt someone has out-distanced your friend by this time. The athlete is never really great, for no athlete is unique." He was really quoting from a recent article in his weekly paper. "W. G. Grace is unique," said Searle. "We shall as soon have another Shakespeare as a repetition of him. I defy you to frame a defini- tion of greatness that will exclude him." The challenge was not taken up, and the conversation again became particular. " You know the theory," said Ursula, " that genius is a form of mental dislocation ? " " Yes, it's ingenious ; yet I suppose it is not the well-balanced men who have moved the world." " The movement is perhaps less difficult than the control." " True," he said, " but whether in control or movement, the admirable Crichtons have had small share." " Yes, we women are finding that out. A few years ago, a decent all-round education seemed an end worth achieving. Now we all want to be specialists." "And you want to move the world?" — he 28 A DELIVERANCE approached the great subject lightly — "what about your influence over us — through us ? I am indicating the conventional view; you regene- rate the world, you save the world, through us." " Is that your view ? " "Will you pin me down to an opinion? Not quite that, but take it that I hold it." " If you simply vote as we tell you, we might as well do it at first hand." " I assume the influence to be general, in- stinctive, not a result of detailed knowledge." " Apparently, then, we save the world through lack of knowledge of it ; or it's an accident of instinct, like the geese saving Rome. It seems unlikely." Mr. Millington's voice was heard denouncing the " new fiction " — " Heroines who make open advances." His wide open eyes encountered Searle's, who said: "It's the covert advances that would frighten me." " This dreadful knowingness ! " came from a lady opposite to Searle, who said, not without the consciousness of Miss Harland's approval : " Yes, we can't keep you ignorant, but we do invite you to cultivate the art of ignoring." A DINNER PARTY 29 Mr. Millington was innocent of the perception of irony, and said with concurrence : " These refinements, these delicacies, are where women excel." It was a gracious speech, uttered in his best manner, with a vague inclination in the nature of a bow. Miss Harland's voice sounded a little hard : " A healthy woman cannot live on delicacies." " Ah ! Miss Harland, I am sure that you appreciate the necessity of keeping inviolate the sanctities of life." Ursula smilingly withdrew from the general conversation, which was turned by Mr. Mil- lington to subjedts less abstruse. Searle turned to her with laughter in his eyes: " The sanftities of life ? " he said. " He means the sanctities of the smoke room ?" "What do you know of the smoke room V " A woman's knowledge is largely inference. Women approach some subjects in a different Spirit from men — most men. Their associa- tions with them are not the nod and wink and the stifled laugh." " You claim power as well as knowledge ? " 30 A DELIVERANCE " Surely they should bear some relation to one another." " One does not often meet women who can help." The speech seemed almost a considered rude- ness, and Ursula glanced at him in surprise ; but he had spoken ruminatingly, and she decided that she liked the frankness of it, She said : " At least you should prepare us for emer- gencies. Soon or late they come to all." " Emergencies ! " " I suppose there is no pose that man enjoys so much as that of the strong and ready." " We shall abandon it relu&antly, no doubt." " And what a lot of fine sentiment will be- come antiquated." " You believe in an equality of the sexes ? " " I acknowledge differences." "At least the possibility of an equal friend- ship?" Only a sideways meeting of the eyes was possible to them. It seemed to Ursula that they had taken a sudden step towards intimacy. She answered : " The balance can always be redressed by our devotion." It struck him that her irony had the colour A DINNER PARTY 3 1 of truth. Decidedly there was something that touched him in the strong, aspiring woman. The thought, not unfamiliar to him, recurred, that the fulness of strength and life has more of pathos than their failure and abandonment. IV A TEA PARTY For some time Ursula saw little of Searle. He seemed to avoid the parties with which the Darley people combated the long dull winter. He was considered to be eccentric, and was cer- tainly pre-occupied. Once he called at the house of an acquaintance in response to a general invitation to come in and smoke a cigar any evening. The occasion was unfortunate, for a dinner party was in progress, an invitation to which he had previously declined. The story got about, was distorted into a deliberate affront, magnified into habits of discourtesy, contra- dicted, disbelieved, half believed, misunderstood, leaving an impression. He was thought to be "sarcastic," and, as he was not an habitual boaster, "conceited." Nevertheless the Darley ladies were grateful for a subjedt, and in their hearts were touched by his isolation, by what in A TEA PARTY 33 their expansive moments they called his air of romance, even by the crude fa6t that he was an eligible bachelor. Mrs. Webster entertained a seledt party with curious details of his pro- ceedings at the " Boar." Her housemaid had a friend in service there, and fresh instances of Mr. Searle's peculiarities were constantly forth- coming. On one occasion he had had in to dinner John Bateson, a carpenter in the village, a man notorious for his free tongue, a Socialist, and it was believed, an Atheist ; and he had given directions for a good dinner too, with claret and port — not champagne — and, indeed, John took beer. " But think of my waiting on John Bateson, just as if he was a gentleman," said Eliza. Sometimes he did not touch his own dinner for half an hour after it was ready, and it growing cold, but sat in his chair staring " hard-like " before him. He rarely dined out or had anyone in, yet his hours were irregular. He would say he was going out for a walk before dinner, and be away for hours. Eliza acknowledged that he was a real gentleman, and felt a bit sorry for him, though sometimes he was impatient with her, and had asked her pardon afterwards. D 34 A DELIVERANCE Mrs. Webster did not, of course, encourage this news, " but servants will talk, you know." " Well," said Mrs. Hay Forwood, « if there is nothing more against him than all this — " " Ah ! but what a temper he must have," struck in Miss Pope. " Did you hear about his smashing the golf clubs ? " The ladies had not heard, and craned with attention. Ursula, who was present, frowned, but listened. " Well, my brother heard it from the caddie yesterday. Mr. Searle's only a beginner, you know, and he couldn't get over the wall at the fifth hole ; so he went up and broke his club over it. Then he said something about a tiger tasting blood, and broke another, and then another, saying: 'This is no game for me.' When there was only one club left, the boy said : ' Please sir, may I have it ? ' and he said : ' Why didn't you speak sooner, my boy j it's only the putter : ' but he gave it to him, and all the balls he had in his pocket. He seems to have been pretty cool over it ; but isn't it childish?" "What a lack of self-control," said Mrs. Webster. A TEA PARTY 35 " It was not altogether absent," said Ursula. Mrs. Brayshaw had listened with a smile, and glanced now at Ursula : — " I think it delightful of him," she said, " and so sensible. What do they find in that golf? I was up there the other day, and saw two men coming in; they seemed weary and dejected to the last degree; but such was their infatuation, that they were starting for another round, and they glared at me like wild beasts because I walked across their line of fire. I stopped to look at the landscape, and I could hear their cursings. And such a curious ambition — to go round in 80 or to be 5 up — to attain precision — there's an ideal ! It's as bad as always having to do what's right. At golf there's no pleasure in doing wrong; it's a moral exercise ; you try to become a machine." " But what a splendid thing to be a conscious steam-engine," said Ursula. " I should always be wanting to blow up." Mrs. Webster brought them back to facts— " He sends his washing to Mrs. Bennett now." "Indeed," said Miss Pope with interest, "I thought it was Mrs. Armstrong." " It was, but he found young Armstrong wore his things. Jane says he met him and recognised d 2 36 A DELIVERANCE a coloured shirt. He made him take it off there on the road, and carried it home over his arm." " But that was not right," said Miss Burford, " it was not respectable." " I am sure Miss Harland despises us for all this gossip,'' said Mrs. Webster. " But why not gossip ? " cried Mrs. Brayshaw — " the proper study of womankind is man." " It all depends on the quality and the temper," said Ursula. " You are. twice blessed — you listen and you condemn us." " Then I condemn myself too, for I'm quite interested." She was more interested than she realised. The foolish irritation over the golf clubs made less impression upon her than the saving kind- ness to the boy, which was perhaps, in reality, little more than the affectation by which a mad- man convinces himself of his exceeding sanity. She liked him none the less because he was evidently riot impeccable — certainly it increased her curiosity. She left with Mrs. Brayshaw, who said: "As things go in this dead-alive place, this man A TEA PARTY 37 promises to be interesting. Have you seen any- thing of him ? " " Not since " — "Since you cut me out? Well, he's the kind of man that one of us might marry." Ursula frowned and turned away : " I dislike these rashnesses of speech," she said. '• I know — it's very wrong of me. You pro- voke me to it. Humdrum and rashness; there's my life. The rashness is to come. You, on the contrary, are as safe as the Bank." " There comes a run on the Bank." " Oh ! you'll come out all right." " How easy it is to acknowledge the virtues which one despises." " My dear girl, they're my chief envy." "Assume them, then." " I am as God made me." " He leaves room for a few finishing touches." " Oh, well. I hate straight lines." "Art — art should be your vocation — put morals aside." " Is that your advice ? " " If you want me to speak seriously — I think that you are capable of a high standard of taste." "Thanks." V A WALK ON THE HILLS It was April by the almanac, but March ruled the elements. Searle, escaping from his rooms, strode fast up the old Buxton road. He left Darley behind, and had almost cleared the hamlet of Higher Darley, when he saw, with- out marking, a woman on the road before him. As he passed she turned, revealing Miss Harland, and he acknowledged her bow. When he was twenty yards ahead she saw him stop suddenly. He came back to her : " May I walk a little way with you ? " She smiled assent, and they went on together. Presently she said : " What a splendid day." It was raining in gusts, blowing hard and cold ; the blue sky came and went. " It is far enough from the conventional splen- did day." " Oh, if you prefer conventions—" A WALK ON THE HILLS 39 " They sometimes shield us from bare realities." " But this a reality — this is life. Mists and doubts are blown awayj this, at least, is ours. Out here we are not mere commentators on life ; we have a part in it." " To me this is only a wild day." He said it with the doggedness of one who accentuates a half truth, knowing it to be half a lie. " I'm afraid your case is a bad one." He was startled at the readiness with which she accepted what was, in truth, a confidence. He was by habit reticent, and yesterday it would have seemed incredible to him that he should speak freely to a woman who was almost a stranger. But to-day, on these bare heights, life seemed to him, too, simplified and elemental. Inti- macies outrun the slow progress of time, and an urgent impulse possessed him, a craving for sym- pathy, long repressed, a desire to escape from the dull and maddening monotony of his thoughts, at least to qualify them with another's comments. It is rare to find the sympathy of a woman united with the reticence that makes a confi- dence possible. He knew this, and told himself that this woman was an exception. 40 A DELIVERANCE " It's a singular thing that I should wish to talk about myself. I pay you the compliment of giving myself away completely. Do you ever have black fits ? To-day I'm suicidal* homicidal. I've not spoken an intimate word to anyone for months, and I'm sick of myself. I'm thankful that I turned back, that I'm not on ahead alone. Don't pity me. It's castigati/>n that I want." She was moved by the simplicity of his appeal, repressing the easy gush of pity which, in the reality of his need, he dreaded. " With health of body and the earth at hand things come right," she said. He quoted : " ' This goodly frame the earth seems to me a sterile promontory.' " " Then there is art — ' for dulness, our modern malady, Art is the specific' I quote from one just a little lower than Shakespeare ; and confess that that phrase 'sterile promontory' thrills you." "No — not thrills ; but it is wonderfully exaft." " You have his sympathy then ; but how un- Shakespearean to rest on the sterile promontory." Presently he said, "There's something for everybody in Shakespeare. I remember an old toper who was delighted with FalstafPs 'I would A WALK ON THE HILLS 4 1 I might never spit white again.' Perhaps you don't like Falstaff?" "That's a test question, I suppose." She was pleased even at this slight diversion. They had reached the highest part of the road, which stretched before them for a few hundred yards before descending to the lower levels. On the right an unkempt plantation of firs obscured the hill side. A stone wall, bor- dering the left side of the road, separated them from the slopes that ran down to the nearest valley. Searle's eye picked out a shapen stone let into the wall : "What's this i" They stopped before it. " The Murder Stone." They read the inscription. "Why perpetuate such an ugly thing ? What do you know of it ? How was it done ?" " I have never heard a full version. The man was followed for a long way — from Stock- port I think. They set upon him here. As you see, it's a long time ago. It strikes one's imagination — the murderers (there were two of them I think) coming doggedly along, tired perhaps, footsore, thirsty." " No, no ; placid, patient, mechanical ; waiting 42 A DELIVERANCE for the time and place. My God ! It's an allegory of Death himself following." " I prefer my realism," she said. They stared together at the stone and, by a common impulse, looked round at the wood and back along the road. She moved on and he followed. He said : " I have a great horror and a great terror of death." " I suppose that underlies all our fortitudes." "It gets the better of mine." She looked at him with steady, questioning eyes. " Since I was a child I have had this horror upon me — intermittent, frequently recurring. My father died of a lingering illness. He was partly paralysed — sat in a chair in a grey dressing gown. He wasted gradually away. He wished, I believe, to take part in the family life as long as possible, but he was sunk in gloom, and rarely spoke — not undignified. I watched him for hours, and I had thoughts that were not for a child. We were Church people — professedly at least — and when he died a great deal was told us about the soul and the kingdom of Heaven. I believed none of it, and I am sure that he did A WALK ON THE HILLS 43 not. Why ! I'd seen him die. Have you seen the approach of death, the gradual breakdown of the body, the decay of the mind ? With me it spoilt all this flimsy talk about the soul, and angels, and a happier life. I saw that they were described without convi&ion, and they were in- credible in themselves. I was miserable for a long time, but I was glad that I was young and had many years before me. Then a playmate died, and it terrified me beyond measure. My sorrow for him was swallowed up in my own apprehensions. I thought every little stomach- ache a mortal disease, and I became abjedtly cautious about everything. I was afraid to cross a road lest I should be run over. Do you think our tendencies are already developed at birth ? " " I think the first few years count for a great deal. The world should be regenerated by making children happy by habit. They should be happy and fantastic. It shouldn't be a con- crete world to them." " In short, they should begin life on a sound basis of delusions." She nodded approval. " You have more to say." 44 A DELIVERANCE " What do you think of a boy who was afraid to go to sleep lest he should die without awakening ? " " I'm sorry for him." " Perhaps it wasn't altogether that. , Some- times I felt that I had nothing to look forward to on the morrow, and then I was snug and warm. But chiefly it was that mysterious hiatus. I used to rouse myself as I was dropping ofF to sleep. Did you never do that ? " " I often long for rest. I have faith in it, too." " Well, this mood didn't last for ever, but it recurs. I suppose that many people would call me a materialist, but isn't it rather absurd for a materialist to be the prey of apprehensions ? Lately — you've heard perhaps — my mother — my sister — " " I know." " Why do I tell you all this ? I'm under a spell, like the Ancient Mariner. I suppose it's unmanly and egoistic." The bursting of the dam of reticence threa- tened an uncontrollable flood of speech. She interrupted him : " You must fight against it, and endure till it passes." A WALK ON THE HILLS 45 They turned out of the road, taking a pathway that climbed high on the hill-side. " Yes," he said, " that's the right line to take. It's not exaftly sympathy I want." " You have my sympathy." " I know that." " I am honoured by your confidence." " You happen to be here." " Then anyone would have done as well ? " " No — no, I beg your pardon, I knew — I thought that you would be my best friend here. Now I've risked it, and let me assure you that such an outburst is not characteristic." " Is not habitual." Her coolness braced him. " You correct me." "You will not be offended if I say that I think there is something of egoism in your state of mind." "Well, what must I do?" " You must resolutely pursue your most fruit- ful interests." " Good advice, no doubt, but a little vague — what are they ? " "I shall hope to find out, as I know you better." " I'm sure of one fruitful interest, then ? " 46 A DELIVERANCE She liked his wit and frankly gave him her eyes : " Yes, you must come and amuse me sometimes." " Amuse you ? " He looked doubtfully at her. . " I don't intend to let you weigh on my spirits. You are too serious to be taken quite seriously. Shall we go back by the Murder Stone and swear eternal friendship ? " His laugh had not quite the ring of conviftion. She continued. "We have had a serious conversation, but the key need not be maintained. I have good, spirits naturally, and would rather be happy than not." " I wouldn't see you again if I should make you unhappy." For the remainder of the walk they talked mainly of what they saw. It seemed to Ursula that, until he was aroused, he was curiously unobservant, and that his temper improved as his faculties were exercised. He agreed willingly to her proposal that he should have tea with her. As they reached the gate, Mrs. Brayshaw came down the hill, card-case in hand. " I must call at the Wel'bys," she said, when Ursula asked her to come in. " I shall be only a few minutes ; I know they're out." Ursula divined, an inter- A WALK ON THE HILLS 47 rogation in Searle's mind. " You want a diver- sion," she said. Indeed Mrs. Brayshaw enlivened him. She was easy, approachable, impenetrable. By any casual judgment she was handsomer than Ursula, and her talk had the effectiveness of a half cynical effrontery, melting, on occasion, to something more genial. In her presence, a man might try to surpass himself, but he would hardly be his best self. They spoke of the walk, its direction, and the obvious characteristics. "You went by the targets, then," she said. "The targets? " said Searle, hesitating. "What an interesting conversation it must have been." "Yes," said Ursula, "about reflex action and the immortality of the soul." "The Murder Stone as a provocative, no doubt. And what was the conclusion as to the soul?" " That a mortal soul sufficed for such a day as this." " Miss Harland is sadly heterodox, Mr. Searle. So are you, of course? Or do you hold with some fashionable reaction? A friend of mine in town assures me that Roman Catholics are 48 A DELIVERANCE coming in again. I am orthodox. I am under the wing of the Vicar and Mr. Millington. So much more comfortable if they're right, you know; and if not, there's no harm done. I always feel so thankful to have escaped those mediaeval times — to have to be so much in earnest, and to burn at the stake, and so on." " There have been Laodiceans in every age," said Searle. "Perhaps the Laodiceans are not such weak people, after all; they follow their own bent; they don't shout fervently with the crowd." " Nor against it." "What is intense in life is particular. It is not to be held in common. Preaching is for coarse people." She verged on seriousness, and Searle was for the moment at a loss. Ursula intervened : " Art, art : I must insist on your becoming an artist. You will be quite disagreeable if you don't." " But I can't paint or write, and I'm too lazy to learn." "Well then, you'll have to 'work in life.'" " For which your technique is already so ad- mirable," said Searle. "How delightful to have a man in Darley A WALK ON THE HILLS 49 who can make a pretty speech, isn't it, Ursula ? You see, I am melted to the point of using your Christian name." "Yes, but is it a friendly inspiration or part of the design ? " "The design?" " Into which we are all to be worked." " The best art is inspired, is it not ? " " The sources of inspiration are so many." "You are a very clever girl, Ursula; too clever, I fear." " I must try to rise to the occasion." *' I lie open to your instincts, and you think to get at me by your wits." Ursula rose and approached her, regarding her with a whimsical scrutiny : " Have another cup of tea," she said, smiling broadly. "Yes, I will, and a piece of this nice soft greasy muffin." " Happily we return to materialism," said Searle. " But see what lurks in the nature of the woman," said Ursula, " muffins oughtn't to be soft and greasy." " Ah ! but look at this one, my dear." " The artist must idealise." E 50 A DELIVERANCE "He must keep his hold on the solids," holding out the muffin. " All I can say in defence of Betsy is that this isn't a muffin country." " This is considered a healthy village, Mr.. Searle, and digestion is very much a matter of course." "Are these home-made muffins ?" said Searle. " They are," replied Mrs. Brayshaw, " and they illustrate a great principle which Miss Har- land will frequently explain to you at length. No bakers' muffins will do, nothing mechanical. William Morris and the middle ages, you know. The hand of the workman. You perceive. Betsy's idiosyncracy." " Yes, I see that they are something to be remembered." " Now this is nice of you both," said Ursula, " it is really friendly to grumble like this." Mrs. Brayshaw rose, mentioning the necessity of another call. She shook hands with Ursula and looked at Searle. He said that he intended to stay till Miss Harland turned him out. " How simple and unaffected we are getting now-a-days," said Mrs. Brayshaw. "I believe that people sometimes really do what they like A WALK ON THE HILLS 5 1 now. Miss Harland is rather a find isn't she ? The worst of staying an abnormal time is that one goes at last because one is tired of it. Well, I must be offj though really I don't want to make this call, and care nothing if the people drop me. Why I go I can't imagine. It's a duty, I suppose — all disinclination and no virtue." She nodded to Searle and went out. " One doesn't know whether to like her or not," said Ursula. " She slips in something of what she means among the rest." " Yes, she has not the virtue of precise speech, but she gives an impression." " An attractive woman." " Perhaps something of the attraction of danger." " You are friendly with her ? " "We don't exactly quarrel, but we're not always amiable together. We give each other a certain value. Really there's something natu- ral in our relations. She says cruel things some- times, but I don't think she bears malice." "Her husband?" "It was a loveless marriage, I think." Her gentle speech seemed to reveal a nature pitiful E— 2 52 A DELIVERANCE for others, proud for itself. His critical ear held the sad inflexion of her voice, and it seemed to him to express something of an exquisite sensi- tiveness. It struck him suddenly that she was tired, and he rose to go. They shook hands cordially. " Don't you keep a dog ?" she said. ,c No, I like dogs, but I don't shoot, or rat, or keep house, and I don't care for a dog as a supe- rior toy. It doesn't seem respectful to the dog." "As a companion ?" " Well, it hasn't come yet, and I can't go in cold blood to a dealer, to buy a companion. I suppose these are mere finical excuses j but you haven't a dog ? " "I had one but he died. The pity is that they die and one can outlast several generations of them. I don't like it. I shall get another when I'm sixty and then our chances will be more nearly equal." " Sixty ! — it's a long way off. I wonder whether I shall know you at sixty." " Oh ! yes, we shall be the cheery old friends of the optimistic novel." " Sixty ! — it's a great, weary way off. I can't do it ; I can never do it." A WALK ON THE HILLS 53 " It excites me — the thought of all that life to come." " I can't look so far ahead. I wish that the summer were here." "I don't think you wish for the summer quite in the right way." "How?" " You want it as a relief — a distradtion." "Well?" " You should love the summer for itself." VI AN EVENING AT THE RED COTTAGE Searxe returned to his dinner with some appe- tite. The " diversion," as Miss Harland had called it, had stimulated him. As to the walk that had preceded it, with its strange confidences, he found it difficult to marshal his thoughts. Now that the black cloud had partly lifted from his spirits it seemed strange that he could ever have been impelled to such abandonment. Yet in his present relief, he recognised something of wisdom in the instinft that had precipitated him. He told himself that the avowal was no casual one, that he had fixed unerringly on the friend that could help him. He recalled her gravity of attention, the sympathy that braced rather than dissolved, and his rash impulse became a wise in- spiration. In stress of spirit or of body a man may appeal to his friend. Her image, as the friend to whom such an appeal could be made, AN EVENING AT THE RED COTTAGE 55 became glorified to him. What might have seemed an unmanly weakness began to take the colour of judgment and resolution. It is a wooden kind of man who believes im- plicitly in his own strength, and Searle knew too well the elements of his weakness. And to suffer in silence — is not such reticence oftener from weakness than from strength ? The strength that controls, he reflecled, may seem great when it copes with impulses of little force. So he persisted in offering to himself, or to the ' typical humanity in him, reasons and excuses. He could not consent to sink to a lower level of self-control, and he was oppressed by the re- curring question as to the quality, the meaning, of his unburdenment — whether it was wisdom or luck that had given him relief, and gained, as he believed, a friend. And what would that friend think of him ? A man does not willingly accept pity from a woman except the pity be largely diluted with admiration. Yet he was not so mean as to resent a woman's help. His line of thought had one inevitable result. It exalted Miss Harland to a place apart in his imagination. If she were less than noble-minded, his confidences were more than indiscreet, they 56 A DELIVERANCE were fatuous. Against his will he recalled in- stances that he had known of strange confi- dences; he passed to Lucy Snowe's confession in "Villette," to the man in the "Kreutzer Sonata" who forced his terrible story upon a stranger. Here the impulse was everything, the auditor nothing. The Ancient Mariner, too, poured out his history to a mere block of a Wedding Guest, who gave, and could give nothing in return. He recalled Ursula Harland's bearing, her few words aptly spoken in which encouragement went before sympathy, respedt before pity. She was a woman to get the best out of a man by her grave acceptance of him at his worst. A man is less than a man if he can think long of such a woman's mental qualities alone. Searle found himself musing on the picture rather than on its meaning. She was a good English type, she had started fairly with features not amiss, but, as with the best faces, her beauty owed most to its acquired expression. The gravity of good thoughts was in her eyes, but it was a gravity that could break into gaiety. Her laugh was a relaxation ; it expressed her ; but under a new condition. It took nothing from AN EVENING AT THE RED COTTAGE 57 her gravity, but it qualified it. He tried to recall the colour of her hair. He remembered something of a charm in its slight disorder, and considered whether this was an accidental quality or the effecl of a conscious art. He preferred the simpler explanation. The next morning he opened a letter addressed in an unfamiliar hand, and read : " Dear Mr. Searle, Yesterday you gave me a kind of hold upon you and I mean to insist upon it. I think we may have much in common, and I wish that we might be friends. I am nearly always at home on these winter evenings, and I am free any time after eight. If you would call to see me sometimes it would be a great pleasure to me. If such a proposal is unusual, you have brought it on yourself. Sincerely yours, Ursula Harland." That evening Searle stood for a moment in the road watching the lighted windows of the Red Cottage, as one gazes at the envelope of a letter that promises interest. He saw her shadow large upon the blind as she passed between the 58 A DELIVERANCE lamp and the window. Eight o'clock was striking as he groped vainly for bell or knocker. Then he knocked with his knuckles upon the door. She opened it, and he saw, her face dimly in the moonlight as she stood with her back to the brighter interior. He was conscious of an excited interest, the turning of a new page in the book of life, as they passed from the little porch direftly into her sitting-room. " You see I didn't give you time to change your mind." " You are welcome." " I had not to knock very long." "Or your knuckles would have been sore. Well, I get a lot of character out of people who come to that door." " And what did you think of my knock ? " " I thought that you fully intended to come in." He stood in the middle of the room, looking round with critical approval. He had been in this room before, but he had not noticed it. She said, " I'm afraid it doesn't show a corredl: taste." " A keen interest is better.'' AN EVENING AT THE RED COTTAGE 59 Her voice rang pleasantly : " I hope you will find plenty with which to disagree." " I have a lot to learn from this little They sat down by the fire in comfortable chairs, and smiled at one another without embar- rassment. He thought well of the world for holding a woman so pleasant and sensible. She took her needlework and asked him to mend the fire. "Are you a specialist in any way," he said, " or is it an all-round culture ? I don't know much of pictures, but I see that these are good. A lot of nice books, but isn't there a prepon- derance of modern novels ? " " Well, I can't pretend to be a specialist, but I read a lot of novels because I review them sometimes. I get some work from the Man- chester Herald. I've begun to learn Latin, and some day I hope to try Greek. Do you believe in people taking themselves seriously ? Well, I want to be as good a critic as I can. I think it's possible to exaggerate the need of Latin and Greek, but you know everything is urged against a woman. . We are supposed to be incapable, so they raise the standard for us." 60 A DELIVERANCE " So you're a critic." " That's the ideal — actually a reviewer." " And you have a set of principles ? " " In solution. My criticisms are not yet dropped from above. Don't you think that the best critic is he who has the most sympathy ? " "Sympathy — yes, an author approves of that naturally. I've written a novel." "Oh!" " It was reviewed in the Manchester Herald.'' She dropped her work — " What is it called ? " "'A Starless Night.'" Her close scrutiny of him became almost a scowl. " Searle ? — yes, — you wrote that ? " They broke together into a laugh. " You hadn't a good word to say for it." " I took it seriously." " I thought it was a veteran reviewer. What was it that you said ? — ' Greedy of sensation, the young writer sets down horrible mishaps and calls it tragedy.' " " That's what the young writer does." " You are younger than I." " A critic ages fast." " You said that I halted between an idea and a plot, that my minor characters were irrelevant, AN EVENING AT THE RED COTTAGE 6 1 and that my principals frittered themselves away in choppy dialogue." " You remember it wonderfully well — most flattering to me." "You're quite old-fashioned. You want a plot." " A design." " Yes, you said that even the minor characters should help the aftion. A design — yes — but you may place a character to get a contrast — a value." " In the stricT: economy which is the aim of art, he should help the aftion. A novel is a stream with contributory rills as well as rivers." " It may be a journey along a road." He cited classical instances in his support, and they discussed the question with interest, happy temper, and the approach to a common view which is usual between sincere and sympathetic disputants. He returned at last to the personal point. " Don't you feel very much embarrassed?" "Oh! but I'm sure I said something that you liked." " Yes — you said that you believed that there was one difference between me and the ordinary 62 A DELIVERANCE green pessimist — that I did seem to have the capacity for making myself miserable." " That was clever of me." " It was a gross infringement upon my private life." "But you are that sort of person, aren't you?" "That's the woman reviewer; it comes to personalities sooner or later." "Well, your next book must be a brighter one." " I must take the large Shakespearean view of life, I suppose." " Perhaps the middle-sized Shakespearean view would do for a commencement." " Why should I conform to a particular stan- dard of optimism ?" " Why should your critics conform to your particular standard of pessimism ? " " My work must express myself." " Your best self — your healthy self." « Myself." "Then we come tp the question of publica- tion. If art is unmoral, publication certainly comes within the moral region." " But who's to be the censor ?" AN EVENING AT THE RED COTTAGE 63 " Yourself, I suppose. You must divide your- self into several persons. When the creative impulse is on, the others must get out of the way. Very well ; but this being over, and the god or the monster born, the moral judgment steps in and takes command. Your artist dis- claims moral control now-a-days. His fine frenzy continues until he has struck a bargain with his publisher." "Well, I can't stand these fellows who take up morality as an artistic phase." " Oh ! such phases are not for an artist ; he must develop. Sincerity is everything." " And do you think that such books as mine do any harm ? " " Perhaps not much to the readers." " Well, you reviewers are a supercilious lot." " You like the old sledge-hammer style ? " " What I complain of is that the cultivated person is a little too frigid. He rates reticence too highly." " Art is a matter of control." " Yes, control, control, but not too much control." " It's driving the chariot of the sun." 64 A DELIVERANCE " Or delving in a dark hole." " Of course some suns are small, with broken down horses in the chariots." " Then it's not all control. The whip as well as the curb. But these metaphors are mislead- ing. What remains is that you are a cold- hearted reviewer. I once knew a reviewer of novels who was invariably favourable. He said it did no harm, and he was sorry for the poor devils. It was good for the publishing trade, good for the review trade, and it contributed to the greatest happiness of the greatest number ; also that it would be all the same a hundred years hence." " Quite different." " Control, in life too, I suppose." " Yes, a clever man thinks he has the world at his feet, but it's as difficult to be a good man as a good novelist, and quite as interesting." " And if a man is a sincere pessimist he should attempt the key of the Cheeryble brothers ? " " He may be as sincere and as pessimistic as he pleases in his own back garden. If he goes out into the world, he must consider the world." " Do you believe in getting on ? " " For some men ambition is a virtue. Your AN EVENING AT THE RED COTTAGE 65 fine-spun inwardness may need a qualification — even a gross one. I'm speaking for the man j his work in the world is another consideration." "Yes, but there's a good kind of egoism surely. Don't you find a subdued self-conscious- ness in the best people ? " " Yes, it's not enough to know, to express. One must hold oneself — reduce oneself to the right proportions." " Morality is, then, the sense of proportion." " To fill a place, to do what's wanted." " Not to get on ?" " The world must get on. Nothing oppresses me so much as the thought that we may all be marking time, or retrogressing." " Of course you are a Democrat ?" " Hardly a sound one. It's the individual that interests me. I'm not stirred easily for a class except through him." " Well, none of us are excited by statistics." " You think me rather a prig, don't you ?" " You are wise beyond your years." " Don't let me frighten you away by my moralising." " No ; if you make it a condition of my coming here, I shall try to be moral too." F 66 A DELIVERANCE " I shall insist on your being happy, which is half the battle." " I don't anticipate much difficulty while I'm here." " You must keep it up." " I shall be looking forward to my next visit." VII A MODERN TOURNAMENT During the summer the social life of Darley centred in the tennis ground. Here were exer- cised the fine shades of exclusion which, in a suburban village, make up much of the art of life ; and here, on certain afternoons, assembled most of what aspired to rank and fashion in Darley. Even the golfers, whom English social conditions have not yet finally assimilated, some- times shortened their rounds that *they might call in at tea-time. It was an afternoon in early June when Searle found himself assisting at what had been described on his card of invitation as a " tournament on the American system." He was presented to a young lady whom the fortune of the draw had made his partner, and learnt, with some dismay, that the conditions of the conflict precluded a F — 2 68 A DELIVERANCE decent retirement at the end of the first round ; it was necessary to meet the whole of the dozen or so of competitors who contended for Mrs. Hay Forwood's silver cream jug, this being the special feature of the American system, charac- teristic of a young and vigorous nation. Searle was an unpractised and indifferent player, to the evident disappointment of his partner, who ac- cepted his apologies with tragic resignation. She herself served four faults consecutively, and was on the point of tears. A smart shower intervened, driving players and spectators to shelter in the little wooden hut, which soon became chock: full. Here Mr. Millington held forth on the advan- tages of lawn tennis, and its superiority to golf. " It is a higher development," he said, " neces- sarily more difficult to play." " Why more difficult ?" was asked. Mr. Millington had expected the enquiry. u If for no other reason," he said, " because there is a moving ball to be struck j in golf the ball is stationary." There was no reply to this until Ursula said, reflectively: "Yes, just as conversation is so much more difficult than literature." A MODERN TOURNAMENT 69 By the majority of the company this was ac- .cepted as a serious remark. Millington, always suspicious of Ursula, looked doubtful, but con- tinued : " Then in the double game such varieties of combination are possible. A game which permits of combination must be better than one without it." " Then should you say," asked Searle, " that the value of a game rises in proportion to the combination that it permits ? If so, football and lacrosse must be preferred." A lady here observed that football was very rough. "Football must be a fine game to the two captains," said Ursula. " They are generals, and they fight hand to hand too." "But if you come to fighting," said Mrs. Brayshaw, "the duel is best. Why was the duel abolished?" " Because," said Mr. Millington, with a re- assuring look round upon the ladies, " sentiment, moral sentiment, rebelled against it as iniquitous. The march of civilization ." " It only means that you got frightened," said Mrs. Brayshaw. " Moral sentiment travels a little behind the event in real life. The middle JO A DELIVERANCE classes got the upper hand, arid they like to be safe." "Is it possible," said Searle, "to conceive a civilisation — rather, a development — that is nothing more than the perfecting of the duel ? If we come from wild beasts mightn't we have chanced to evade this altruistic cross ? As it is, all ' civilised ' life is a competitive struggle." " Life is to the observer now rather than to the actor," said Ursula. "Now I begin to understand you," said Mrs. Forwood, " you mean it will be like the case of the ten special correspondents who went to the races third class, in order to study character, and all got into the same compartment." " And all the great posts will go a begging," said Ursula, " and quiet old gentlemen will be forced to become "cabinet ministers and to lead armies, and the Prince of Wales will abdicate if he can find a successor." "There would be a reaftion," said Mrs. Brayshaw, " we should want to be kings and leaders again." " Imagination would supply all that." " Imagination wants food like everything else. A MODERN TOURNAMENT 7 1 Your bourgeois poets would want rousing with the clash of steel." Mr. Millington had vainly attempted to follow all this. " Then do I understand," he said,iwith feeble assertion, " that you favour the retention of the duel ? " " We must have duels of some kind while we can still hate as we do," said Mrs. Brayshaw, " and the sword and pistol kind seem the most harmless. A little flesh wound and they em- brace and swear eternal friendship. Our quiet duels don't come to such a happy crisis." " But mayn't even duels of the wits be con- dueled without malice ? " said Ursula. The rain had abated and the "tournament" was resumed. Mrs. Brayshaw, called upon to take her place in the court, suavely declined to wet her feet. She and Ursula remained alone in the hut. " What is fighting without hatred for a mo- tive?" she continued; "and one can't hate an army or a nation. Hatred or emulation, they can only exist, at their best, between two. Don't you think so, Ursula ? " " At their worst, yes." "Ah!, yes, the moral standard. I shall be J 2 A DELIVERANCE afraid to hate you. It will seem a kind of impiety." "It would show a want of proportion — to break a butterfly on the wheel." "Do yourself justice, my dear Miss Harland; you are a woman that one could hate." Ursula wondered at the bitterness of her speech. "I know you," she continued. "You are liberal and independent ; it gives you freedom Of adlion. You believe in a generous emulation, but that is easy when you are successful. You have charity for all beneath you ; pray what is the difference between charity and contempt." " What have they in common." "It's a great game that we can play but once. We theorise about our motives when we have nothing better to do. I like a bold player who takes the risks." " I don't see the application." Searle approached the hut, and the two women seeing him glanced at one another. Their eyes met, but Ursula resolutely repressed an answer- ing intelligence. As he entered, Mrs. Brayshaw cried briskly : " Ah ! Mr. Searle, we are just quarrelling about you." A MODERN TOURNAMENT 73 Searle made a gesture of deprecation, as she continued : " I tell her that she has no right to monopolise you. You are to her giving up what was meant for mankind — or womankind. I speak for the slighted Darley ladies, who are left desolate at their tea-parties." " You see tea makes me so nervous." "And you want to keep an appetite for your supper. I speak figuratively. No doubt it's a purely intellectual seance — on equal terms of course. As for me, I tremble when Miss Har- land calls. Knowing how good and thoughtful she is, I fear there's something wrong with me, that I have become an object for charity, am visibly on the decline." Searle smiled grimly. "I'm always glad of help," he said. Here's Mrs. Forwood," said Mrs. Brayshaw. " Mrs. Forwood, don't you think that monopoly heads the vices ? " " Heads what vices ? " " I can't enumerate them, there are so many now-a-days ; they come out like the new shades for the spring." " And you choose what harmonises with your character, said Ursula." 74 A DELIVERANCE " Yes. I think a very delicate shade of green jealousy will suit me." " What are you talking about ? " asked Mrs. For wood. " About Miss Harland's wickedness. She has cut us all out. Mr. Searle was a new excite- ment. We were all scheming to get at him, especially as he was so unapproachable. How to capture him — it was quite a problem, like the Gordon, or is it Gordian, knot. Ursula cut it. Most unfair I say. I don't think our knives would have been sharp enough though. She said: 'Come in every evening until further notice.' Now I should never have thought of that. Would you?" " I think that even Mr. Searle every evening " — " That's what I say. He ought to be distri- buted." " Is it my punishment, then, to be torn limb from limb ? " said Searle. " Like a Christmas cracker — yes, and who's to get the heart ? " " I am greatly flattered by all this," he said. "Then the dislocation is beginning, for we have turned your head." This talk seemed to Ursula somewhat forced A MODERN TOURNAMENT 75 and wild. She had been startled at Mrs. Bray- shaw's tone, the cause for which she now seemed to reveal obscurely. It was impossible to explain the reason of her sudden intimacy with Searle. From the possible result of that intimacy she would have turned her thoughts away. It had begun in charity — she shrank from the applica- tion of the word to him. Yet if it lay in her power to bring a third into their friendship, she knew that her will would rebel against it. Rivalry — conscious and militant rivalry — in affairs of the sexes had always seemed to her particularly odious. A recollection — seemingly irrelevant — came to her of some trait or story of the late Mr. Brayshaw. It drew her eyes to a scrutiny of his widow. In the human face we see very much what we bring. That firm, hard beauty, confessing so little of the soul within, struck her to a sudden pity. When they were again alone she touched the other's hand in a momentary caress. "I wish that we might be friends," she said. Mrs. Brayshaw started, and her face lost its rigidity in a waver of obscure emotion. But from outside, Mrs. Forwood's good- humoured rattle broke upon them, and she rose 76 A DELIVERANCE with a smile: — "Your consideration does you credit. Perhaps some day I may pity you." " My own needs " — " Oh ! we are very good friends." Ursula bowed and left the hut. She felt to the full the chagrin that attends the repulse of a sentimental advance. VIII TENTATIVE Adelaide Brayshaw's husband, a Lancashire manufacturer of substance and repute, had died three years before the time at which this narra- tive begins. Their married life had been not unsuccessful — the contract had been fairly carried out between the rich middle-aged bourgeois and the poor governess, and Mrs. Brayshaw, finding herself still young and eminently "well left," could look back upon her married life with equanimity, almost with regrets. She " really rather liked the man," as she said in one of her bursts of indiscreet confidence. She assumed the proper degree, which was the extreme degree, of mourning, and wore it for very nearly the pre- scribed time. Mr. Brayshaw's relatives had nothing to complain about, save that, as was natural, she had inherited the bulk of a fortune which, under other circumstances, might have 78 A DELIVERANCE been more widely distributed. Indeed, for some little time they beset her with attentions, and it had taken a year or two to shake them off. Her husband had been a dull companion, but rarely an irritating one ; he had permitted her to choose her own friends, to come and go pretty much as she pleased, and, within the necessary limits, to live her own life. Such a life was certainly circumscribed, but to an indolence that checked ambition she united an alertness of mind that found much with which to occupy itself in her surroundings. There was now no particular reason for her to remain in Darley save that there seemed no particular reason for going away. Occasionally she went to London, but, like most people of some local importance, she felt that the widening of the horizon hardly atoned for what seemed like a shrinkage of her personality. Nevertheless, the accumulated ennui of the winter in Darley caused her to regard the arrival of Searle as a welcome stimulant. She was a young woman ; she had never loved ; and the vague hopes that animated her sometime? sought to justify their existence. Searle was, by all available standards, a man of distinction and account, and she was sufficiently enlightened to TENTATIVE 79 rate him highly. That he should be so suddenly annexed by Ursula Harland chagrined and excited her. She was accustomed to measure herself against Ursula, but hitherto, in the strife of wits, she had been worsted only by Ursula's gracious- ness. A young, handsome, and rich woman of a contentious mind cannot readily see limits to her powers of attraction. Adelaide Brayshaw had the confidence of a woman who has attempted little. Searle's indifference, quite inoffensive in its expression, and united to an amiability that seemed sometimes too finely expressed to be merely general, helped to magnify his personal charm. He was surprised one day to receive a visit from her at his office in Manchester. She consulted him about a small matter of business, and stayed a little on his assurance that he had nothing to do. She mentioned the name of her regular lawyer, and said : " I suppose I oughtn't to throw him over for you ? " " Much better not." " I suppose yours is a very disinterested pro- fession ? " " There have been sacrifices in it." She looked round the office, — "And so you come here every day. What extraordinary crea- 80 A DELIVERANCE tures men are. Don't you hate the place ? And yet I was a governess once, you know. I oughtn't to stop here like this, ought I ? "Why not?" " Isn't it very unconventional ? " " I disregard conventions systematically." " I know you do. But here is a new system." " Governed by the same laws. " But there is not the same attraction." " It is difficult to measure." Searle had the thought that such dialogue as this, evading the plain word, might carry one to unintended depths. He added: "I'm glad to see you." It sounded a little crude when she replied: " It is kind of you to give me the assurance." It struck him that he was dealing with a variety of jealousy — an attenuated and irrelevant jealousy — for he was no coxcomb, and did not readily conceive himself to be a provocative of the pure passion. His friendship for Ursula, or at least his visits to her, were no doubt a subject for the Darley gossip. Perhaps Mrs. Brayshaw aspired to the undisputed lead in Darley society, and the ludicrousness of an ambition that could be satisfied with such a domination provoked the TENTATIVE 8 1 contrast of Ursula's endeavour to govern and express herself. Certainly, if Mrs. Brayshaw wished to reign in Darley, he had failed in his homage. It might be possible to regard her as a queenly woman, and if, in these days, the queenly woman is only a splendid survival, the modern man is many- sided in his appreciations, or at least in his weaknesses. As he dismissed these remote inchoate specu- lations, he became conscious of her curious regard. " Have you made it right with your con- science ? " she said. "Conscience is supposed to have had its day, hasn't it ? My own impression is that we are discarding it too soon. We are still liable to a few crude impulses that are not quite matters for the police." " I took you for a conscientious man." "You happen to have seen me when the good impulses predominated." " Well the good people are being badly treated now that the theories of exquisite selfishness have come in. First they were deprived of their pros- pect of reward in the next world j now they get no thanks in this." 82 A DELIVERANCE " I daresay we shall want them again." " You think me an idle, useless person, don't you ? What shall I do to be saved ? What ought we to do, we people with incomes, who don't work ? " It's a matter of small consequence except to yourselves. You can't last for ever." " Goodness ! what is to be done with us ?" " You'll be shouldered out." " It'll last my time, won't it ? " "Are you content to exist as a survival ?" " What I could do would be on such a small scale. It wouldn't be exciting enough unless I could have a good big millennium all to myself. To sacrifice oneself seems possible, but I couldn't be always drilling myself. Don't infer that I'm a bad woman, but I haven't the benevolent itch. I always give myself the benefit of the doubt. I don't deny myself anything" — she paused a little and met his eyes — " and not much to my friends." Searle felt a little flattered by this visit, but he wished that it would end. She continued : " Don't you think that there is something nice in people being good to you because they like you ? " He assented to this artless enquiry. TENTATIVE 83 " Some geople are good merely by way or creating a record — the pride of never giving in. But it must be pleasant to feel that you are one of the eleft. They haven't the excitement of wondering how they'll turn out though. A.s the world becomes virtuous, isn't there a danger of its being a little dull ? By-the-bye, how is Miss Harland ?" « You find Miss Harland dull ?" She laughed : " No, that's what annoys me ; she isn't ; her virtues are picturesque and aggres- sive." He began to wonder what she was driving at, , and by a natural coincidence a similar thought crossed her own mind. The uselessness, the aimlessness of this interview were evident to her — perhaps to him. He met her eyes calmly, sometimes curiously she imagined. She was powerless — forestalled. She had a moment's glimpse of her dreary life and what it might have been. Looking at her watch: "It's too bad of me," she said, " I've just time now. So much pleasanter than waiting at the station." When he was alone he wondered idly whether this woman would have attracted him if he had not met Ursula. He was not quite indifferent G — 2 84 A DELIVERANCE to her ; for some reason rather sorry for her ; and with a certain delicacy of consideration he refrained from a direct comparison with Ursula; but his thoughts turned with a wistful impulse to the Red Cottage, to its clean and spare beauty, its rich homeliness, and presently they rested without reserve on its mistress. IX A SUMMER DAY Searle was not usually a very early riser, but On this morning of early June he was awakened by the sun, which shone blindingly upon him. For some time he rebelled against the necessity, apparent at once, of rising to adjust the curtains. When at last his inertia was overcome and the movement accomplished, he lingered to look out into the village. It wore the aspect of glorified peace that belongs to a still, sunny morning. Opening wide the window, he breathed deeply of the fresh keen air. His languor fled in a delicious shudder, and, turning from the window, he glanced regretfully towards the, bed and made for his bath. Outside the house, he heard the church clock chime the half-hour — half-past-six — two minutes fast by his watch. He had a clear hour before breakfast, an hour won, as it seemed, from the 86 A DELIVERANCE deeps, precious, full of happy chances; no common hour. He had no hesitation about dire&ion, nor did he pretend to himself that he had. Half-way up the hill he saw something moving in the garden of the Red Cottage, and his heart gave a great bound, but when he got to the gate there was no one to be seen, the door was shut, and the world seemed suddenly empty and cold. But as he walked past very slowly, looking over his shoulder, she came round the corner of the cottage carrying a flower-pot and a kitten. She saw him and the flower-pot dropped with a crash on the walk. He opened the gate and walked towards her, smiling broadly : " I'm afraid I startled you," he said. " Oh ! no — nothing startling in a man walking up the hill." "A man ? " "Well, I suppose that on such a morning a man feels very like a god." " You were not startled, then ? " " Certainly not." " I wonder why you dropped the pot." " Er — well — I meant just then to put down the kitten, and I dropped the wrong one." A SUMMER DAY 87 He laughed out freshly and delightfully. "Oh ! how glad I am that I got up." " Yes, why did you get up so early ? " " Rather why do I ever get up late ? " " Well this is a morning, isn't it ? To tell the truth, I'm not always up so soon. It was a bird — a thrush — I had the fancy that it was calling me to come into the garden — me — me in particular — I wasn't satisfied with my general share of it all, and I made believe so hard, that it got me up. I didn't want to get up, but some- how I had to." " And I was awakened by the sun." " Oh ! how grand ! What it is to be a man." They looked at one another smiling, then round upon the flowers, down the road, up into the sky; again their eyes met. They stood in happy silence in a perfect world, joyously at peace. The church clock chimed. " Oh ! leave us alone," said Searle. " It's only a poor mechanical clock." "It reminds us that there is a past and a future." "Ah! the future." " The immediate future. In an hour or two I must go to that beastly town." 88 A DELIVERANCE "Take a holiday." " A holiday ?" he cried, " that's an idea, let us have a holiday." "Us?" "Why what kind of a holiday would it be without you ?" " Pm your serious friend, your safe, serious friend." " Then you want a holiday too. Safe ? Serious ? Yes, and something besides. Will you be unconventional ? We'll go for the day. How stupid not to have thought of this before. This comes of lying abed." He plucked out his watch. " There's a train Buxton way about this time. We can just catch it, and we'll breakfast — where ? Are you ready ? Do come ; really, really I mean it. There's no time to lose." " How delightful it would be ; and are you sure you've not gone mad ? " " Mad ? I never was so sane. I'm brilliantly sane." A bell rang. " There it is," he cried, " there's the bell ; not a moment to lose." He seized her hand and pulled her down the walk. A SUMMER DAY 89 " Oh ! but it won't do," she said. " All women are conventional at heart." " No, they're not," and she began to follow him. As they hustled through the gate she looked apprehensively at the cottage opposite, and had a fleeting relief from its close-drawn blinds. " But I must tell Betsy." " Too late," and they were running down the hill. " It's my garden hat and I've no gloves, nor sunshade, and I have to go out to tea, and Betsy will be alarmed ; and what will people say ? I must go back." He released her hand and slackened speed. " You are free." < She looked at his face and ran past him, say- ing: "Don't let us miss it." They arrived panting and scrambled, without tickets, into an empty carriage as the train moved off. He said : " What I like about you is that you can be a child." There were, tears in her eyes. " I can be a baby, too, she said. I'm not going to spoil the expedition, but it takes a little time to get the 90 A DELIVERANCE right note. I feel a kind of loneliness; yes, I seem isolated. I'm conventional I suppose. It was such a hurry and I've had no breakfast, and I hadn't time to decide whether it was right. Yes, I'm a child. I try to fancy myself a strong woman. I look down on the people who havn't wills. Now I'm afraid of being hysterical. Don't mind me. Oh ! yes, help me." She sank back. He leant forward and took her hand : " What does a little hysteria matter ? I'm not lonely nor isolated now. No man had ever a better friend." She flushed, and breathing quickly said : " "I did help you?" " You save me." " There is no happiness like serving a friend." " Yes : to accept a service, a great service from a lover." "A lover!" " You have rendered the service. Now will you make me happy ? " , The rumble of the train was his excuse for crossing to her side. She said faintly : " You want me then just to complete a sen- sation ? " " Oh ! you always have your wits about you." A SUMMER DAY 9 1 She laughed : " You seemed to be putting it rather neatly too." " You want a rough sincerity ? " " Sincerity, certainly." "Must a man take no pains over his love- making ? " " Unhappy modern young man — always on the stretch." " To blurt out things — is that sincerity ? To reach after an ideal — to be a little better than one's best — that's falsehood ? " " No, I should want my lover to be a highly interesting moral study." " Love, then, is to be a kind of glorified inves- tigation." " To include that — I'm a critic, you know — that's my work, and I must love with the best of my faculties." " Poor modern young woman ! Always on the watch. I thought that love was blind." She turned a little, and glancing at him, shook her head. He continued: — "But you'll know too much; you'd find him out; criticism is science, isn't it ? " " Well — science only reveals new infinitudes. It's the sword lopping off the heads of Hydra." 92 A DELIVERANCE "To be your lover is a great and difficult ambition." "I would have it so." " I foresee that it will be a great mental strain. I must be constantly on the alert. Indolent as I am, the idea fascinates me. When I come home" — He stopped suddenly, as he caught her widening eye. " You seem to foresee a great deal." " I beg you to pardon me." He touched her hand. " Now the plain word." " Oh ! no, this is a holiday — an irresponsible holiday — no plainness, no seriousness. Who is being conventional now? Why, you want to save the situation." " I want an answer to a plain question." "You can't have it. I require time for re- fleaion." "Be serious." " I'm so serious, that I'm afraid of being heavy." " Cross the Rubicon." " No — I like dabbling about in it." "Well, I'm rather glad that you are not an entirely sensible woman." " A man likes a woman for her faults." A SUMMER DAY 93 " The dimples in her character — yes." " And if she has none, she must assume a few.'' " Otherwise her virtues might seem a little crude, certainly." " To the man of the world who has taken the edge off all his qualities." " A gibe at the man of the world can't hurt me. I'm far out of the world now." " In Purgatory are you ? " " But very near to Paradise." They got out at a wayside station, paid their money, and set off down the road towards the village. Searle went back for a moment to speak to the porter. "Now why do you look so shame-faced?" she said. " Do I ? I was only asking for a telegraph office?" "Oh! and you wouldn't let me tell Betsy., I see you manage your rash exploits carefully," " The fact is, I had an appointment with a client." "And you'll be thinking of him all day in- stead of — " "Of you — well, I thought of him through you." 94 A DELIVERANCE " How so ? " " Well, I was thinking of you — if it is think- ing — and then — well, I was considering that I must keep my connection together now, and work hard " — " Oh ! this will never do. Where's your light- ness of touch ? " " I'm afraid I'm getting serious." " Send your telegram — send your telegram." " You think I'd better do that ? " " I suppose so." " Yes, we must be careful now." "Now?" " I'm so glad that you counsel me to send it." " If you didn't you would have a gloomy far- away look in your eye all day." " Certainly gloomy if far away." He despatched his telegram, and soon they were breakfasting in the best parlour of the village inn, a musty little room decorated with portraits of local magnates, stout gentlemen in hunting dress for the most part — prints of fat cattle, Rebecca at the Well, and an idealised representation of the Prodigal Son in top-boots. They regarded their surroundings with satis- faction. It was still early, and the brightness of A SUMMER DAY 95 the morning was upon them. They looked at one another with frank and joyful eyes. Their talk became slower, and from time to time they fell into silence. Their hands touched in the offices of the table, and they realised a fellow- ship even in sharing the common food. Presently they went into the sunlight and wandered down the road. They were enriched as though by some glorious legacy. The earth was theirs, firm beneath their feet, yet mysterious and fantastic, always beautiful. The day un- rolled itself in a great harmony, yet Nature's own strange evolutions went on as ever. The strong and voracious preyed upon the weak, perfections of tree and flower tended inevitably to decay; but to-day the world was subjedt to their emo- tions ; it had produced them ; soon it would engulf them ; the moment was theirs. Their eyes rested, with satisfied possession, on long stretches of the dusty road, the sight of which had depressed many a weary wayfarer. Their destination was unknown or forgotten ; the road was enough. They talked of what they saw and heard, of birds and beasts, of the hills and trees, but with an appreciation that was instinctively limited. Of change and death in 96 A DELIVERANCE connexion with the life they saw, they thought as little as of the geology of the hills; while their per- ceptions deepened, their intelligences slumbered. The sun rose high in the heavens and the heat of the day approached. The noise of insefts sounded to them like the whirr of the distant world's machinery. He touched her hand and held it; it was moist with sweat like his own. Hand in hand now they walked beneath the blazing sun, strong and elated. Far down the road a figure appeared, recalling them to the ignoble social world, powerful even here, and they disjoined hands. Nature was in their confidence, but not mankind. Indeed the old bent labourer who approached, and passed them with an incurious " Good-day," seemed to have more affinity to the trees and fields than to the world they knew. Strong as they were in the union of their youth, this old solitary man brought to them the remembrance of loss and change. When they joined hands again they were lovers, but they were helpmates too. They dined gaily at one o'clock off roast beef and apple pie. Then they explored a famous cavern, and from its delicious cold depths they came forth to revel again in the blinding, burning sun- A SUMMER DAY 97 shine. They sat on the hill-side and watched the little fleecy clouds till they felt hungry again, and went back to the inn for tea. They walked back in the cool of the evening. In the solitary valley, traversed by the long shadows of the hills, he stopped and turned to her : — " It has not been said." " What need to say it ? " He kissed her hand and drew her to him. She, too, met him with a frank embrace, and he felt about him the strong sustaining clasp of her arms. Seated again in the railway-carriage, their thoughts ran on before them to Darley. Some- thing of their escapade must be known, and few people are quite impervious to opinion. How- ever, as Ursula said, " it's all right now, and it will save a formal announcement." " You must confess," said Searle, " that though such an excursion as we have had to-day might iroperly be taken by any two friends" — she aughed — " you wouldn't like to face Mr. Mil- lington if you couldn't flaunt our engagement." " Ah ! Mr. Millington ; how far ofF he has been to-day, and I dreamt of him the other night." H 98 A DELIVERANCE "Of him?" " Yes, and of Judgment Day. Do long-lost impressions ever come back to you in dreams ? I think my notion of it came from an old pifture of my childhood ; great vistas of angels trumpeting ; there was an outer darkness too, and a formidable rumbling in my dream. Do you know, I had a feeling of regret that I shouldn't be able to play lawn tennis that afternoon. There was a great wind, and I wished it wouldn't blow my skirts about ; and I thought that if I could get nearer to the throne, it would be quieter and perhaps safer. Suddenly I saw the face of the figure enthroned, and it was Mr. Millington's. I knew I was lost, and I cried out that it wasn't fair — he didn't understand — but I was borne away." "And how would you have felt had I been on the throne?" "I should have had to admit that it wasn't any fairer." « Well, you're a delightful child." "And do you know, you can be nice in a light way ; it's not every man that can be happy gracefully." "No, I generally like people less as their spirits rise." A SUMMER DAY 99 " That's the way with you miserable people. You want to drag us all down." " We English are too busy to cultivate gaiety, and we do it badly." " The man who is cheerful from convidtion is worst of all, but for you it's a dreadful mistake to be so gloomy." "We are cast for the wrong parts in this world." " But an artist is always interesting in a foreign medium." " You find he has curious limitations though." " They are an aid to friendship." "How?" "Well, one can't feel friendly toward a man who is infinite in every dire&ion." " Then it is the weaknesses and faults of our friends that we love." "As you said earlier in the day. At least there must be a touch of pathos in love." " I am pathetic to you ? " "And I to you?" " If you love me — yes." "Well, let us hope that there are faults on both sides." " That's what is said at a later stage." h — 2 100 A DELIVERANCE w We are not that kind of people." "Yet how ordinary one is, — You may not believe it, but I should really like — and one cannot embrace an infinitude." " Oh ! try tp preserve your dignity." " I will — rl'll keep it for another day." So they degenerated to nonsense. Speech was inadequate, and they rejected it as an expression to use it as a plaything; but these trivialities were, they knew, but as bubbles on the face of a stream that ran deep and pure. Thankfulness and peace were ip their hearts while gaiety rioted on the surface. They walked up the hill together and found the anxious IJetsy peering out for them. Ursula said : " Well, Betsy, we've had a fine day for it." " For it, Miss, ? " Are ye married ma'am ? " " Good heavens ! What do you mean Betsy ? " *'Fine day for what, Miss?" " For our — walk." " Now Betsy," said Searle, " you're all right. You're a very smart girl; we're going to be married. Stupidly, we never thought of doing it to-day; but then we should want you to be there." " Oh ! Betsy, and I was thinking what a A SUMMER DAY 101 surprise it would be to you. What made you think of such a thing ? " " Well, Miss, I saw you a running down the hill, and then Mrs. Brayshaw put it into my head." " Mrs. Brayshaw ? Has she been here ? " "She called, Miss, and somehow she got it out of me about your going off. I didn't mean to tell ; I didn't think I was telling, but — " " And what did she say ? " " She said something about a runaway match." Searle followed Ursula into the sitting room. She sat down and looked about her rather blankly. " I don't like change," she said. " This is not a great change." " It marks one. It's something of a disap- pointment." " Don't say that." " Our friendship was such a good thing. There was something high and fine about it. Now it's gone ; it's swallowed up." " But it's contained ; it's enriched ; it's a glorified friendship." " Not the same." " Ursula." " Oh ! far better, but there is an oppression in 102 A DELIVERANCE too much happiness, an