PR 
 
 CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
 GIFT OF 
 
 Mrs. Rossell Hope Robbins 
 
M\\\ Cornell University 
 WE Library 
 
 The original of tliis book is in 
 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924007801354 
 
THE CLASH 
 
THE CLASH 
 
 By 
 STORM JAMESON 
 
 ■^ ;^'"\ \ 
 
 f/i << ' 
 
 ; r^ 
 
 
 ,1' 
 
 BOSTON '■ ' ,uiU\^ 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY 
 1922 
 
Copyright, ig22. 
 By Margaret Stohm Jameson. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 Published August, 1922 
 
 d^l 
 
 Printed in the United States of America 
 
TO MY 
 
 HUSBAND 
 
FOREWOED TO THE AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 The future of the world is written in the future 
 of your nation and mine. On what you think of us 
 and on what we think of you, on your acts towards 
 us and ours towards you, all depends, of happiness 
 and unhappiness, of good ways and ill. 
 
 It were foolish and undignified to deny the occa- 
 sions of offence between us. They exist, and noth- 
 ing can set us free from them except the will of 
 your people and of mine saying — "We will not 
 let these things break us." Statesmen in confer- 
 ence, presidents, premiers, generals, diplomats, are 
 straws to dam Niagara if your wiU is set away 
 from us, or ours from you. 
 
 It is not even necessary that you should love us 
 or we love you. It is only necessary that we should 
 understand each other a little, since understanding 
 breeds tolerance and tolerance peace. 
 
 It is certain that we understand you as ill as you 
 understand us. Before this War we thought of an 
 American as a more ruthless and less gracious 
 Englishman, and you — who am I to say what you 
 thought of us? But is it not true that though you 
 admired and sometimes even envied our Past, you 
 believed our Future to be negligible? 
 
 If in this book I have thought it well to throw 
 into strongest relief those qualities of the American 
 character which seem strangest and most hostile 
 
viii FOEEWOED TO AMEEICAif EDITION 
 
 to us, it is because I believe that there is no hope 
 of peace between us save a hope grounded in the 
 most fearless understanding. I have not, could not, 
 show to you an American of the Americans as he 
 appears to you, his countrymen. I have tried only 
 to show him as he might appear to us, and that not 
 to criticise him nor to measure him, but because in 
 this way you and we are both revealed, in our 
 strength and our pride as in our weakness and our 
 shame. 
 
 It is for no lowering of national pride that we 
 who desire peace plead, nor for any withholding 
 of respect for the dead who in all ages have died 
 to glorify their country. Eather let us magnify 
 our pride of race until it becomes a greater thing 
 than it has ever been. No purer flame burns in 
 men's hearts than burned in the hearts of men con- 
 cerning whom it was said : 
 
 "For even those who come short in other ways may 
 justly plead the valour with which they have fought for 
 their country; they have blotted out the evil with the 
 good, and have benefited the state more by their public 
 services that they have injured her by their private 
 actions. None of these men were enervated by wealth 
 or hesitated to resign the pleasures of life. . . . But, 
 deeming that the punishment of their enemies was 
 sweeter than any of these things, and that they could 
 fall in no nobler cause, they determined at the hazard 
 of their lives to be honourably avenged, and to leave the 
 rest. . . . Eeflect that this empire was acquired by 
 men who knew their duty and had the courage to do it, 
 who in the hour of conflict had the fear of dishonour 
 
FOEEWOED TO AMEEICAN EDITION ix 
 
 always present to them, and who, if ever they failed in 
 an enterprise, would not allow their virtues to be lost 
 to their country, but freely gave their lives to her as 
 the fairest offering which they could present at her 
 feast." 
 
 "And therefore" — an Englishman, Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert, speaks — "to give me leave without offence, al- 
 ways to live and die in this mind. That he is not worthy 
 to live at all, that for fear or danger of death, shunneth 
 his countrey's service and his own honour: seeing death 
 is inevitable and the fame of vertue immortall." 
 
 "We cannot dedicate — ^we cannot consecrate — ^we can- 
 not hallow — ^this ground. The brave men, living and 
 dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above 
 our poor power to add or detract. The world will little 
 note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can 
 never forget what they did here." 
 
 Honouring the dead who died for their country, 
 Athenian, Englishman and American burn with 
 one flame. God forbid that it should sink and die 
 in our hearts. 
 
 Yet it would dishonour their words, dishonour 
 us, dishonour you, if now we made such words a 
 cover for poor jealousy and mean pride. That we 
 should wUfully exalt ourselves above you or you 
 exalt yourselves above us would be shameful and 
 evil. Your dead and ours did not die for that. 
 
 It is hard for us to understand you who are 
 young and little touched by sorrow. It is hard for 
 you to understand us whose soil is the grave of dead 
 centuries. The blood of our dead cries from the 
 desolate fields of Europe. Our streets and our 
 
X FOREWOED TO AMERICAN EDITION 
 
 country places, our homes, our restaurants and our 
 ballrooms are thronged witli new ghosts hardly 
 forgotten by the earth they trod. Youth, dead, ac- 
 cuses us. 
 
 On you and on us is laid a task from which 
 neither your splendid youth nor our old grief ex- 
 cuses us. Let the Athenian speak again : 
 
 "Because of the greatness of our city the fruits of 
 the whole earth flow in upon us. . . » Our city is 
 thrown open to the world. . . . "We rely not upon 
 management and trickery but upon our own hearts and 
 hands. . . . We alone do good to our neighbours 
 not upon a calculation of interest, but in the confidence 
 of freedom and in a frank and fearless spirit. . . . 
 For in the hour of trial Athens alone among her con- 
 temporaries is superior to the report of her. ... I 
 would have you day by day fix your eyes upon the 
 greatness of Athens, until you become filled with the 
 love of her." 
 
 If for Athens we say — not London nor Washing- 
 ton nor any other city of any other country — but 
 the City of God, buUded on earth, is it a dream? 
 
 Friends, no poorer dream is worthy you and us. 
 
PAET I 
 SEED-TIME 
 
THE CLASH 
 
 CHAPTEE I 
 
 Helen de l'Abbayb was allowed intelligence as 
 a French habit. She was French only by virtue 
 of an unhappy marriage, but her English friends 
 felt that five years in Nimes must have blunted 
 the edge of her English breeding. They forgave 
 her much for her excellent dinners. 
 
 She was more fortunate than she knew. At the 
 close of the nineteenth century ignorance of affairs 
 was still required of virtuous Englishwomen. The 
 discussions round Madame de I'Abbaye's table were 
 regarded as delicately audacious — to be savoured, 
 but not to be taken seriously. It was impossible 
 to take them seriously without violating the prin- 
 ciples beneath the whole structure of Victorian 
 morality, a neat cosmos in which everything was 
 in its proper place — woman in the home, unless 
 she happened to be needed in mines and places 
 where they spin, the lower orders industrious be- 
 low, the upper orders benevolent above, God in His 
 Heaven and the Devil in Hell with the Eadicals 
 and Mr. Bradlaugh. 
 
 Widowhood had readjusted Helen's outlook on 
 marriage, and she grieved over her unmarried 
 friends. Filled with pity she had invited Caroline 
 Manners to stay at hf r house in Queen's Gate. 
 
4 THE CLASH 
 
 But Helen's young politicians felt that a wife should 
 bring money or influence as dowry. The young 
 girl was disdainfully aware that they weighed and 
 found her wanting. Her defensive indifference 
 pricked one or two of them to interest, and when 
 the Honourable Jim fell in love with her profile, it 
 inflamed his ardour. He needed neither money 
 nor influence : arriving at the Foreign Office by way 
 of Eton and Magdalen, he served his country well 
 by leaving her affairs severely alone. He pursued 
 Caroline Manners with a single-minded enthusi- 
 asm. Caroline hesitated. He raved and Helen 
 argued. The young girl regarded her friend mourn- 
 fully and repeated, " He is a fool and his ears are 
 too big." 
 
 She had none the less made up her mind to ac- 
 cept him, when Eichard Marwood received one of 
 Madame de I'Abbaye's capricious invitations. He 
 came to dinner and was shyly attentive to Caroline. 
 He called. They walked twice in the Park, and 
 Caroline took comfort for her unhappiness in his 
 whimsical deference. Sitting in Helen's crowded 
 drawing-room, she forgot to listen to an old diplo- 
 mat who, secure in his withered limbs, was permit- 
 ting himself to admire her beauty. Her eyes rested 
 on young Marwood's bent head, and a strange ten- 
 derness expressed itself in the unconscious move- 
 ment of her hands. She wished to have been his 
 mother. At that moment he looked across at her. 
 Without understanding how, they found them- 
 selves together in the alcove of a distant window. 
 Their hands touched. Caroline waited tremulously 
 
SEED-TIME 5 
 
 for his words. " I love you. I have nothing to 
 offer you." She leaned against him with closed 
 eyes. Behind the heavy folds of the curtain he took 
 her in his arms. He was very gentle. She felt a 
 vague dissatisfaction. 
 
 Helen de I'Abbaye was irritated and alarmed, and 
 Caroline pleaded with her in vain. 
 
 " The man has nothing — not even breeding. He 
 has written a novel, two novels. Doubtless he will 
 write another. An estimable career. But one does 
 not marry such men, my Caroliue. Not in our 
 world, at least. Let him marry in his own." 
 
 Caroline had been timorous : she became fiercely 
 resentful. Helen laughed. 
 
 " You have always been poor? Doubtless. But 
 the poverty you have known eats dry toast ofE 
 Sevres. You will discover another meaning to the 
 word when you see him content with poverty, tram- 
 pling on your little devices for avoiding its crude 
 edges. Your gentle bourgeois will thrust poverty 
 into your bosom, and without the least ill will in 
 the world. Also you will suffer because you can 
 never be sure of him. Jim is a fool, but he speaks 
 your tongue. He will always say the just right 
 thing and do the thing you expect. Intellectual 
 inertia, no doubt, but how restful ! You will bring 
 the other into the company of your friends and all 
 the time you will watch him. So." She narrowed 
 her eyes. " He will not eat with his knife — oh, 
 no. One could mend that. But it is subtler. He 
 will say the wrong things and in the wrong way. 
 He has never been taught the rules of the road, you 
 
6 THE CLASH 
 
 see. You'll begin to keep away from your friends. 
 You'll be lonely. My God, bow lonely you'll be." 
 Helen caugbt ber breatb and paused. " If be were 
 ricb so tbat you could buy tbe tbings be ougbt to 
 want. . . . He will never be ricb: be is not 
 even tbe ambitious bourgeois." 
 
 Caroline yawned. 
 
 Sbe married Eicbard Marwood a montb later. 
 Tbey bad lived togetber two years wben Eicbard 
 became infatuated witb revolution. He stalked 
 about London witb would-be rebels in sbabby coats 
 and sat up o'nigbts writing pbilippics for editors 
 wbo could not pay tbeir contributors. In tbe de 
 I'Abbaye drawing-room be talked loudly and at 
 terrible lengtb on tbe rottenness of tbe age. Helen 
 was bored and annoyed. Sbe saw notbing patbetic 
 in bis fierce young indignation. His earnestness 
 was ia poor taste and it alarmed ber guests. Sbe 
 protested to bis wife. Caroline suffered ber bumili- 
 ation. Wben sbe could suffer it no longer, sbe 
 persuaded ber busband to leave London. Tbey 
 went nortb to tbe sea-coast village near ber bome, 
 and Eicbard grew moody and irritable. He ac- 
 cused ber of spoiling bis career for a wbim. Ab- 
 sorbed in ber own unbappiness, sbe did not notice 
 tbat Eicbard's sboulders bad become tbose of a 
 discouraged man. He walked witb dragging feet 
 and an odd difidence crept into bis manner. Tbere 
 were moments wben be came to ber witb renewed 
 tenderness. Longing for caresses, sbe repulsed 
 bim, witbout knowing tbat sbe did so because be 
 bad not bumbled bimself sufftciently. Tben sbe 
 
SEED-TIME 7, 
 
 would cling to him in a passion of self-reproach.: 
 his gentle response soothed without satisfying her. 
 Their child was born in April and the week be- 
 fore its birth Caroline witnessed a terrible scene. 
 A gale had raged for two days. The waves rushed 
 between the treacherous rocks and were sucked 
 back screaming. In the harbour mouth the grey 
 waters surged ceaselessly, a maelstrom of cross 
 currents. Disregarding Richard's entreaties Caro- 
 line wrapped herself iu a thick cloke and went 
 down to the pier end. The brief daylight had 
 shrunk into one livid streak. A darkened arch of 
 slfy narrowed and drew down above the unbridled 
 sea. Caroline clung to the lee side of the light- 
 house; the blown spray pricked her eyelids, blot- 
 ting out the small cliff -fast houses, and icy streams 
 of water ran past her feet. She was afraid, and 
 when Richard ran down the pier shouting her name 
 she clutched at him, trying to hear his voice above 
 the thundering verge. " Trouble." He hurried her 
 along. And whUe she looked vaguely for it to 
 crash upon her from the sea, it leaped out of the 
 hidden town, with broad-tongued cries and the 
 rush of feet. The wooden quay was filled with an 
 angry crowd — the huge, fair-haired fishermen and 
 their women, a violent and suspicious people, with 
 no religion but a savage patriotism that denied 
 virtue to all other English towns, and humanity to 
 all other countries. Surging about the narrow 
 stage, they were intent upon something in their 
 midst. Through the pallid gloom Caroline saw 
 briefly a face of stupid anguish. 
 
8 THE CLASH 
 
 " They are killing John Ramsden," she cried, 
 
 A woman caught up the words. " Kill him. for 
 his leaky boats : kill him. for his leaky boats." 
 
 Richard spoke iu Caroliae's ear. " They have 
 always said he sent out rotten boats for the iasur- 
 ance. One of his trawlers went down this morning 
 off Hull. She took with her five men out of one 
 house. Their mother has roused the town — like 
 Hamlet's ghost, crying revenge — and Ramsden 
 came down to the pier at an unlucky moment." 
 
 They were launching a cobble boat. It tossed 
 in the comparative quiet of the harbour, and as 
 they thrust the inert man towards it, his wife 
 ran with wild hair and stricken face to fling herself 
 upon him. A woman dragged her away : strapped 
 and helpless, Ramsden was thrown into the boat. 
 " Send her wi' him." They hurried her in. A 
 woman's voice rose high and mocking. " In a soft 
 bed ye lay wi' him last night. Lie wi' him now. 
 
 Lie close and loving " The crowd laughed as 
 
 a man drew out the jest. 
 
 Towed to the harbour bar, the boat was set 
 adrift. It went to pieces against the pier and was 
 gone so quicldy that the straining eyes of the 
 avengers peered unsatisfied into the darkness. 
 
 Caroline fainted. Richard, swaying under her 
 weight, tried desperately to force a way out. A 
 huge hand pressed on his shoulder, and one of the 
 jesters, taking Caroline gently from her husband, 
 strode with her through the crowd. 
 
 When the child was bom, Caroline became ab- 
 sorbed in her daughter. They had called her Eliza- 
 
SEED-TIME 9 
 
 beth. Caroline pored over tlie small soft limbs, 
 searching for minute flaws in the perfect skin. At 
 night, in the shadowed room, she bathed her child 
 with an intent passionate care, lifting up the 
 glistening body in the firelight. The babe stared 
 at the flames, a tiny fire-worshipper with folded 
 arms and drooping head. 
 
 Eichard turned schoolmaster to the new school 
 where the huge-limbed children looked through 
 shut windows at the arc of the sea. He wrote an- 
 other novel — his sixth — and started his seventh. 
 It went slowly and poorly, and in dread lest he 
 was beginning to write by rote and not by inspira- 
 tion, he shrank from finishing it. He told Caroline 
 of his failure and begged her not to withhold love 
 from a wretch who had nothing else. She pitied 
 him, gathering his thin body in her arms and mur- 
 muring incoherent phrases of tenderness. 
 
 Unconsciously she began to punish him for his 
 weakness by demanding a deeper abasement of his 
 wiU. She turned from him to her daughter, trying 
 to fill up the measure of her cheated emotion by a 
 savage maternity. During the frequent quarrels 
 of her parents, the child looked at them both with- 
 out wonder or disquiet, as if she had been aware 
 of their discord always, and understood it in the 
 secret recesses of her heart. 
 
 During Elizabeth's seventh year a ship came 
 ashore below the eastern cliffs. Kichard Marwood, 
 annoying the rescuers by his iueffectual aid, em- 
 barrassed them further by drowning, with inex- 
 cusable clumsiness. They carried the dripping 
 
10 THE CLASH 
 
 body to his wife, concealing from her the full tale 
 of his incompetence. 
 
 A year later Caroline fell into a strange weak- 
 ness. In the certainty of death, she sent for Helen 
 de I'Abbaye. When Helen would have pitied, Caro- 
 line shook her head. She had not been unhappy, 
 only dissatisfied. "Pity Eichard. I found our 
 chairs and china intolerable, and tormented him 
 because his fingers did not itch, as mine did, for 
 originals. Yes, pity Eichard. He did not satisfy 
 me and I tormented him." 
 
 Elizabeth would go to Caroline's father. " It is 
 only a matter of two miles." 
 
 " I heard he had taken a gipsy into the house," 
 Helen said abruptly. 
 
 The dying woman smiled. " She is his sister. 
 At sixteen she married the old Marquis who was 
 their only neighbour, and ran away with one of his 
 farmers — mad as herself. They tramped Europe 
 for ten years, and were in Sedan in '71. He 
 laughed at the wrong moment and got himself sum- 
 marily shot. After that she was starved in a po- 
 tato famine in Eussia, seduced by a Bulgarian dur- 
 ing a little war, and married to a Levantine who 
 beat her, A strange woman." 
 
 " Let us hope that she found married life more 
 satisfying than you have done," Helen said drily. 
 "When this damaged Artemis has brought your 
 daughter to marriageable age I will take her in 
 hand myself." 
 
 " That is what I wished," Caroline murmured. 
 " Perhaps she will give less trouble than I did." 
 
SEED-TIME 11 
 
 Madame de I'Abbaye looked out of the window. 
 
 "Elizabeth has an odd nature," the mother 
 added. "I think sometimes that my heart's dis- 
 content became a discontent of her soul. She de- 
 sires things so fiercely, and when she gets them, 
 desires them no longer. She seems almost to look 
 for disappointment." Caroline smiled. " I did not 
 do that," she said. " But Elizabeth does not suffer. 
 Nothing ever touches her: she allows nothing to 
 touch her. Try to hurt her, and you will break 
 your fingers on something stolid and unflinching." 
 
 " The bourgeois stock." 
 
 " Perhaps." 
 
 A month later, Caroline's friend came to bury 
 Caroline. She did not take Elizabeth to the grave- 
 side, and when she came back to the house, found 
 her lying in the garden. The chUd looked up; in 
 the small perfect face the mouth had the tragic 
 petulance of the sculptured Greek. Madame de 
 I'Abbaye had seen no tears. A malicious impulse 
 tempted her to probe. " Are you grieving? " she 
 asked softly. 
 
 Elizabeth shook her head. " I am not thinking 
 of her," she said. "I shall never think of her 
 again." 
 
 " You have happier thoughts? " Helen suggested 
 and was immediately ashamed of her irony. 
 
 " I was thinking of the strange things there are 
 in the world. I shall get all of them when I am 
 older." 
 
 " There was a man lived in a tub and said that 
 he had therein all the happiness in the world." 
 
12 THE CLASH 
 
 " He was a fool," said Elizabeth calmly. 
 
 In the evening of the same day, Helen took the 
 child up the narrowing valley to her grandfather's 
 house. Behind it a path climbed between yellow 
 gorse and bracken to the crest of the moor. The 
 garden sloped to a stream that ran over sunken 
 reeds towards the harbour and the sea. Above the 
 valley, rounded hills hung in the translucent dusk. 
 Soft relentless night flooded the earth with silence. 
 Madame de I'Abbaye knocked on the door. The 
 woman who opened it held a lamp above her head. 
 The light flung grotesque shadows on the stiff crim- 
 son folds of her gown and on her fierce ravaged 
 face. She did not ask Helen to come in. Elizabeth 
 stepped silently over the threshold and vanished 
 into the shadows of the hall. The door shut, and 
 Madame de I'Abbaye stumbled along the field path 
 to the road. As she walked towards the little town, 
 pity took her by the throat and she wept. She 
 wept for the dead woman and the living child. And 
 since pity is the most treacherous of the emotions, 
 in a little while she was weeping for herself. 
 
CHAPTEE n 
 
 Elizabeth had been taught nothing. Caroline, 
 who liked to read aloud, had read to her. The 
 child had an extraordinary memory, and would 
 listen to Caroline until the mother's voice failed 
 from weariness. Then she repeated all that she 
 could remember, passing almost without knowing 
 it from the English of Milton to the French of 
 Eacine, which she imitated with Caroline's pure 
 stilted accent. Caroline delighted secretly in the 
 incongruity of the high sweet voice rising and sink- 
 ing, burdened by the passion of Ph^dre. Elizabeth 
 cared nothing for Phfedre, whom she did not un- 
 derstand, but the words stirred her to a terrible 
 ecstasy, chastising her with their pitiless rhythm. 
 Her voice faltered, and she wept. 
 
 In the same way she began now to learn Greek 
 and Latin. Always it was the words and not their 
 content that possessed her mind. As her grand- 
 father read his way through the doom of Atreus' 
 sons, the child seized on those phrases of winged 
 light and they became for her pure and changeless 
 forms, shielding her from the immensity of the 
 sky. She hid behind them as behind a hedge of 
 upthrust spears, and the colours of life were re- 
 flected from that dazzling surface. 
 
 The rest of the child's education fell to her great- 
 aunt. That gaunt woman did not wish to shirk 
 
14 THE CLASH 
 
 her duty. She made Elizabeth read for herself: 
 contrary to the modern notions of education, she 
 allowed the child to understand that the world is 
 real, and full of strange but tangible things. Eliza- 
 beth revealed an insatiable hunger for facts, and 
 Miriam, who had but two textbooks, was embar- 
 rassed to satisfy it. The world of prisoning sounds 
 into which Elizabeth entered when others read to 
 her, was shut away from her own eyes. To the 
 things she read herself she brought a placid and 
 literal habit of mind. " Everything must have a 
 body and two legs for Elizabeth," Miriam said. 
 Phrases of her reading that remained obstinately 
 bodiless, Elizabeth cast out of her mind. 
 
 One of old Miriam's textbooks was a monstrous 
 Bible. Elizabeth began to read it through. She 
 found some of it sufficiently stupid and lacking in 
 grace, but she woke to read it in the chill dawn and 
 pored over it by candlelight. The engravings of 
 which it was full delayed her progress through the 
 text. She studied them with infinite care and con- 
 ceived a deep affection for Daniel, standing in knee 
 breeches and a ruff before a throne flanked by 
 winged lions. The man on the throne had a thick 
 beard which rippled stiffly over his breastplate. 
 His legs were bare from the knees and their huge 
 muscles were bound with strips of leather. A 
 black slave Imelt beside the throne and a page boy 
 walked over the tiled floor with a thin-necked de- 
 canter in each hand. Two jewelled daggers hung 
 from his belt, and his eyes turned towards a ship 
 whose masts thrust up behind the columns of the 
 
SEED-TIME 15 
 
 courtyard. Elizabeth, remembering certain En- 
 glish, traders who had defied tyrants and outwitted 
 Moguls, was moved by an obscure pride, and con- 
 ferred upon Daniel the heritage of Elizabethan ad- 
 venturers. She disliked David, whom she con- 
 nected in her mind with the Wesleyan butcher in 
 the village, and pitied sincerely that Queen whose 
 painted face the conqueror trod into the ground, 
 so that none might say, " This is Jezebel." 
 
 But the engraving that faced the stoty of Crea- 
 tion stirred in her a painful emotion. It depicted 
 Paradise, and the forgotten artist had imbued it 
 with a childlike simplicity, filling in its details with 
 charming patience. Flowers starred the ground: 
 their petals and the blades of the grass were drawn 
 in with separate strokes, imparting to the blessed 
 lawns a stiff delicate elegance. In a deep grove a 
 marble boy with rounded limbs stood poised, a flute 
 ever at his lips. One heard the music of the old 
 serene world. Between pleached hedges saints 
 with folded wings paced in rapt converse. In the 
 middle distance rose the terraces of the eternal 
 city, shining in the afternoon haze. White clouds, 
 a little browned and curling at the edges, floated 
 across the placid sky. Over all was a dimness as 
 of yellowed ivory ; flowers, grassy banks, city walls 
 and gentle streams merged into a serene and faded 
 harmony. Elizabeth found in the scene an intense 
 and melancholy beauty. Her thoughts followed 
 the sandalled feet of saints down many a cool and 
 ordered alley. She imagined a thousand secret 
 arbours, and walled gardens where small creeping 
 
16 THE CLASH 
 
 plants thrust between flagged paths, and heavy- 
 lidded flowers swam on the quiet lakes. A strange 
 longing shook the child's thin body ; she pressed her 
 cheek against the patterned grass, and desired pas- 
 sionately the scent of its flowers and the murmur 
 of its ribbed streams. 
 
 Miriam's second textbook was a certain Child's 
 Guide to Knowledge. From between its marbled 
 covers Elizabeth drew an astonishing store of 
 knowledge. She caught brief delicious glimpses 
 of foreign lands and learned the quaint habits of 
 foreigners. Every corner of the world became as- 
 sociated for her with some one of its products. 
 She learned that the pinna-marina lived on the 
 rocks of the Calabrian coast and in search of food 
 threw out a beard of a most silky and brilliant 
 appearance, like liquid gold. She knew that the 
 lion accompanied Britannia to denote the mag- 
 nanimous character of her hardy sons. " God," 
 said the Guide, " has made England the most pow- 
 erful of all nations, and we ought, therefore, to 
 govern with mercy and justice, because if we do 
 so. He will continue to bless and prosper us." She 
 learned the mourning colours of all the nations and 
 that kings and cardinals mourn in purple. Black 
 signifies the privation of life, white the purity of 
 the freed spirit, yellow, which is the colour of dead 
 leaves, signifies the death of hope, brown the en- 
 wrapping earth, blue the happiness of the dead, 
 and purple a sorrow touched to faith. She knew 
 the names of jewels and perfumes, amethyst, topaz, 
 sardonyx, chrysoprase, turquoise, and Frangipanni, 
 
SEED-TIME 17 
 
 myrrh and bergamot. And thrust among the rec- 
 ords of kings' intrigues and empires' greeds she 
 found that saying of Charles V of Germany — 
 " What an egregious fool must I have been, to have 
 squandered so much blood and treasure in an ab- 
 surd attempt to make all men think alike, when I 
 cannot even make a few watches keep time to- 
 gether." 
 
 Elizabeth was only halfway through the Old 
 Testament when she made the discovery that its 
 chief protagonist was not, in the world, on the same 
 footing as other gods. In a cottage of the village 
 a peasant and his wife lived with two children. 
 The fame of their beauty had spread far beyond 
 the valley. The girl was fair and round-limbed, 
 like the daughters of the gods, but her brother had 
 the ardent colouring of the South : under the noon 
 sun he climbed like a goat up the steep slope to the 
 moors and lay there on a burning slab of limestone, 
 gazing wide-eyed at the colourless sky. The mother 
 had no life except in her children : she brooded over 
 their beauty with a sombre passion. One day in 
 the late summer a thunderstorm crashed down 
 among the hills. The children were crossing the 
 open moor and lightning struck them both. In the 
 peace of a drenched earth, some shepherds found 
 them lying on a bed of asphodel. The lightning 
 had not marred them; on the face of the girl was 
 a serene gravity, but the boy lay frowning with 
 outflung arm and clenched fingers. Through the 
 brief summer night mother and father sat between 
 their dead. The man, made foolish by grief, chided 
 
18 THE CLASH 
 
 the little lass for sleeping with her mouth open. 
 " Silly bairn," he repeated gently, and then with a 
 bewildered look at his wife, said loudly, " But hoo's 
 dead : hoo can't mend it : us should ha' tied it up." 
 The woman sat in stiff tearless silence, hearing 
 nothing. At dawn, rousing her, came a beat of 
 wings about the low-hung eaves. She stood up and 
 shut the window. " They be gone," she said, and 
 went downstairs to rake out the ashes of the fire. 
 
 Her great-aunt sent Elizabeth down to the cot- 
 tage with an armful of roses and white jasmin. 
 The child went reluctantly, but when she laid her 
 flowers in the shadowed room, forgot her fear. 
 Beauty, caught in its swift passing, lay stUl and 
 undying on the pillow not so white as it. Eliza- 
 beth looked at the dead girl and remembered the 
 lawns and city walls of Paradise. 
 
 The vicar of the parish came into the room. He 
 had entered the house without the formality of a 
 knock on the shut door. It cannot be denied that 
 the holy duty of consolation brooks no delay. 
 "God gave and God has taken." With infinite 
 condescension the deity had interested Himself in 
 this humble household. "It might be," the vicar 
 said, "that you had too much pride in your chil- 
 dren. And lest He should be offended by your 
 weakness, in His great mercy He has removed from 
 you the occasion of sin." 
 
 It was not thus that he had consoled them at the 
 Castle for the death of the heir. He may then have 
 reflected that God, who is infinite in all His attri- 
 butes, must have an infinite sense of the decencies, 
 
SEED-TIME 19 
 
 and would not presume upon the conscience of 
 well-bred people. 
 
 Tlie vicar turned to go, and Elizabeth stepped 
 out of the shadow of the bed curtains. " He is a 
 beast, that God," she said. 
 
 The vicar was a conscientious man, in whose im- 
 agination the hard faith of the elder God over- ' 
 shadowed that of His gentler Son. Some days later 
 he called at the lonely house. Elizabeth was por- 
 ing over the Bible. He explained that the capri- 
 cious Power who intrigued so vigorously in its 
 pages, executing swift vengeance, was the ruling 
 God of this world. " What, that one? " Elizabeth 
 said incredulously. 
 
 The vicar entered upon the tale of divine punish- 
 ments. It was a long one, and Elizabeth, who re- 
 membered many of them perfectly, lost interest. 
 She had, moreover, esteemed lightly enough the 
 deity of whom it was said that it is not strange He 
 has so few friends. " He punishes the stiff-necked." 
 Elizabeth, escaping with difficulty from the literal 
 sense of the word, conceived some dislike of a god 
 who hated defiant beauty and prepared a burning 
 rod for straight-limbed youth. 
 
 " If I were a god," she said abruptly, " I would 
 send my lightning to all ugly things." 
 
 Swept away by the divine fire, the vicar forgot 
 Elizabeth's age and preached the sinfulness of car- 
 nal love. The child listened in uncomprehending 
 silence. 
 
 On Miriam's shrunken knees her withered hands 
 twitched stifly. 
 
20 THE CLASH 
 
 He went at last, that faitMul servant, and Eliza- 
 beth, turned back her Bible to look again at the 
 Blessed City. Its lawns lay stupidly under a flat 
 sky. The shady groves led nowhere. The walls of 
 the City itself were shrunken and mean. Elizabeth 
 looked at it for a moment and then shut the book. 
 She never looked at the engraving again. 
 
 Elizabeth wished to attend the small private 
 school in the town. She stayed a day and refused 
 to go again. The children had at first been at- 
 tracted by her beauty. " La, how I love you," cried 
 the shipowner's daughter. Elizabeth smiled, but 
 when the girl flung both arms round her neck, 
 thrust her violently away. " Don't touch me," she 
 said fiercely. " I hate people to touch me." 
 
 The other girl fiushed with surprise and anger. 
 She recalled fragments of her elders' talk. " You 
 are monstrous proud," said she, " for one that lives 
 with a grandfather who is mad and a great-aunt 
 no better than she should be." The playground 
 was filled with the sharp laughter of children. 
 Elizabeth pressed her hands against the pain that 
 beat in her throat. A dozen hands mocked the ges- 
 ture. Two children with a long skipping-rope flung 
 it suddenly round her ankles and twisted it as they 
 ran round her. She shook with a sick fear. They 
 would drag her down ; her face would be bruised on 
 the cobblestones of the yard. Her cheeks burned 
 with the anguish of a child who is humiliated. At 
 the swooning height of terror the rope was slack- 
 ened and she stepped stiffly out of its loops. Walk- 
 ing towards the gate, she turned and faced them. 
 
SEED-TIME 21 
 
 " I would like to torture you with knives," she whis- 
 pered, and before their laughter could break out 
 and sear her, added dispassionately, "You would 
 bleed like pigs." 
 
 She walked out of the playground and went 
 home. Through the long evening she lay in the 
 garden pulling absently at the grass. Her face 
 was distorted as she elaborated the details of death 
 by torture. . . . 
 
 Elizabeth dreamed. She had curled up in the 
 bronzed grass of the meadow and bent a tall mar- 
 guerite against her face. The ribbed stalk thrilled 
 her fingers: she touched the milky petals and the 
 thrill ran through her body. The life of the flower 
 throbbed under her hand. 
 
 She was wide awake, but she dreamed so deeply 
 that a word in her ear would not have roused her. 
 She was going over again an adventure imagined 
 before, adding new glories to her own part in it. 
 During the long hours when she was left to herself, 
 she had dreamed her way through a thousand and 
 one romances, intricate past belief. All her read- 
 ing went to swell their content. A tale of the In- 
 dian Mutiny led to an astounding series of South 
 American adventures, in which Sir Henry Have- 
 lock and General Outram were her admiring com- 
 panions: on one occasion General Outram burst 
 into tears because Sir Henry had been favoured by 
 her praise. At the moment, she was that Queen- 
 mother whose trembling limbs bore her too slowly 
 through the palace, death on her heels, wearing a 
 son's aspect. But always in Elizabeth's dream the 
 
22 THE CLASH 
 
 Queen turned on her murderer a face of tragic 
 beauty, so that his hand faltered and she was saved. 
 She pardoned her son, but to Elektra said firmly 
 — " Get thee to a nunnery, terrible virgin." 
 
 The dream halted: the dreamer had arrived un- 
 accountably at one of those walls which sometimes 
 barred her way. She got abruptly to her feet and 
 set out across the moors. In a small soundless 
 bay of the desolate shore she dreamed undisturbed. 
 The sun caressed her body : she slept under a limpid 
 sky, her single garment dripping from the sea. 
 
 Wherever the cliffs could somehow be climbed, 
 Elizabeth contrived to climb them, crawling on 
 hands and knees, clutching at the tough stems of 
 the rest-harrow, slipping sometimes down a gully 
 of red clay to fall bruised and scratched into a 
 narrow bog where rank grasses and sea lichens 
 covered the ground between the pools of acrid 
 water. In the summer she gathered milkwort, blue 
 and white, and Grass of Parnassus, heavy purple- 
 white buds standing stifly on their slender stems. 
 In winter she hugged the edge of the cliff, peering 
 through the sea mist at the upflung spray. The 
 unseen ships answered each other, and the gulls 
 wheeled screaming across a dead land. Without a 
 tremor she took frightful risks, hanging by her 
 fingers from a ledge of rock while her bare feet felt 
 for a foothold in the cliff which dropped sheerly to 
 the rocks a hundred feet below. But at night she 
 was haunted by a terrifying dream. She walked in 
 the dusk along the cliff edge, hearing the loud thud- 
 ding of the unseen surf, and as she walked she 
 
SEED-TIME 23 
 
 struggled with, an impulse that drove her ever 
 nearer and nearer the edge. She woke always be- 
 fore the catastrophe, trembling and sick with 
 dread. 
 
 Her great-aunt hated the sea, not for its restless 
 fret of change, but for the indifference of its depths. 
 She disliked in Elizabeth a certain odd mimicry of 
 the sea's qualities. The chUd had rare outbursts 
 of grief and anger that came without warning and 
 left her shaken and pathetic. Miriam was con- 
 temptuous. " Oh, ay," she said, " terrible storms. 
 But they don't touch bottom." 
 
 Once a curious bad faith showed itself. A cer- 
 tain prosperous farmer had a daughter whose ad- 
 miration for Elizabeth was without measure. 
 Elizabeth tolerated her for several weeks. She 
 even repaid with a cautious affection Bertha's un- 
 compromising worship. Then she grew weary: 
 Bertha had no imagination and interfered with her 
 dreams. Elizabeth disliked the sight of pain and 
 an obscure vanity made her find reproaches intol- 
 erable. She decided to get rid of her friend by the 
 indirect method. They set out on a long walk and 
 she horrified Bertha by stepping knee-deep in bogs, 
 tearing her dress on fences and scratching her arms 
 on the bramble bushes and the gorse. At the end 
 of the afternoon she presented herself before her 
 great-aunt in rags, bleeding and filthy, and when 
 Miriam asked angrily where she had been, said, 
 " With Bertha." 
 
 After the gardener had carried a note to Bertha's 
 mother forbidding her daughter to see Elizabeth, 
 
24 THE CLASH 
 
 the child was haunted by a vision of Bertha's grief- 
 stricken face. Miriam put her to bed, and she 
 brooded over it until the tears soaked her pUlow. 
 Bertha was like an engaging little dog whose 
 clumsy caresses have been brutally repulsed. 
 Elizabeth stifled her sobs until she fell asleep over 
 her remorse. She woke in the morning to an ex- 
 hilarating sense of relief. She reflected joyously 
 that Bertha would never interfere with her again. 
 She had forgotten her own vision of Bertha's tears 
 and sang loudly as she dressed. Then she ran down 
 into the garden to practise somersaults on the 
 
CHAPTER m 
 
 Elizabeth loved her grandfather without reser- 
 vation. Gilbert Manners and his sister were the 
 surviving members of a family that had played the 
 role of proud commoner through four centuries, 
 during the last of which it had become steadily 
 poorer and more obstinate. When young Gilbert 
 and his sister Miriam received the family heritage 
 it had dwindled to a Tudor house of incredible 
 inconvenience and a thousand acres of grazing land. 
 Gilbert decided to adopt a profession. Then as 
 now there were only four professions in which 
 capacity was an adornment without being in the 
 least necessary. Gilbert considered them in turn. 
 
 WMle he hesitated, Miriam carried ofP her 
 Marquis, and a half-cousin emerged from the ob- 
 scurity to which the elder Manners had compelled 
 aU relatives not of the pure blood. He suggested 
 Trade. Gilbert's father would have called him out : 
 Gilbert was inclined to listen. He went to stay in 
 his cousin's new stone mansion, built on the west- 
 ern slope of the Pennines above a green valley 
 changed and saddened by low-roomed factories and 
 clustering hovels where the weavers herded their 
 misery. The strangeness of a new world exhila- 
 rated him. He felt the vaUey throbbing with a 
 life that ran out over the whole earth. In this 
 darkened place power moved. He visited at other 
 
26 THE CLASH 
 
 stone mansions, fascinated by the uncouth ambi- 
 tions of their owners, and paid court to the buxom 
 over-dressed daughters with a delightful sense of 
 insecurity, a stranger in a strange harem. 
 
 Eeturning from one of these houses at three of 
 a cold morning, he took his mare slowly down the 
 hill road. Below him misshapen buildiags squatted 
 beside the defiled stream. His excited brain re- 
 volved the schemes he had discussed : he dozed and 
 woke jerkily from a dream of a monstrous Ethiop, 
 hands full of unpolished jade and black neck en- 
 circled by the large white arms of his host's daugh- 
 ter. The mare was trotting along the low road. 
 As he reached the cobblestones of the factory street, 
 Gilbert drew reiu and peered ahead. What crowd 
 of shadows was he driving before him? In the 
 darkness a silent host flitted dimly, like unhappy 
 shades blown forever along the barren shores of 
 some Stygian ditch. Gilbert shouted, and a mur- 
 mur answered him, passing like a breath across 
 the hurrying darkness, where here and there a 
 white face glimmered towards him and then sank 
 back into the gloom. He rounded the corner and 
 slipped from his mare. In the yellow light from 
 factory windows, small twisted beings hurried, 
 dragging their limbs, and lifting to him eyes that 
 peered incuriously, and bloodless lips, whose un- 
 spoken and melancholy accusation rose from the 
 murdered valley to the immobile skies. 
 
 The children entered the factory and Gilbert 
 galloped madly away. He rode until the sun, leap- 
 ing above the hills, poured into the valley a shaft 
 
SEED-TIME 27 
 
 of flue-spun gold. Then lie returned to his cousin's 
 house. " Cousin," said he, yawning elegantly, " I 
 have bethought me. This is no place for my fa- 
 ther's son. Last night your worthy partner served 
 me champagne with the salmon." He waved his 
 hand. "And I will tell you of a great truth that 
 came to me in solitude — in this valley you under- 
 estimate the beauty of solitude, my dear cousin — 
 Trade will always stink in the nostrils of gentle- 
 men so long as your firms continue to say ' Our 
 Mr. X will call on your Mr. Y.' The insignia of 
 servitude, cousin, galling the noble soul." 
 
 " Puppy," shrieked his cousin. 
 
 Gilbert bowed and returned to his Tudor house 
 and his shrimken acres to contemplate afresh the 
 nature of politics. 
 
 He contemplated it with a different vision. 
 Wretched, unhandy weapon that it was, he would 
 turn it against the image that followed him into 
 dreams. He entered the arena in the train of a 
 worthy lord, who had fagged at Eton for the elder 
 Manners and become Minister of War by the aid 
 of his wife's charming shoulders. 
 
 GUbert was not ingenuous, but he had not been 
 prepared for an insensate bitterness, meeting him 
 at every turn. For three years he fought against 
 apathy, crushing and hostUe. He gained a few 
 adherents, chiefly from that party which had come 
 into being some thirty years before, together with 
 the new notion of governing by a statement of prin- 
 ciples, a fashion called Liberalism. Apathy became 
 rage. His friends had themselves denied to him by 
 
28 THE CLASH 
 
 insolent footmen. In the upper House a Bishop 
 spoke against him in the name of Christianity, 
 showing from the undoubted presence of children 
 among those who strewed palm branches before the 
 entry into Jerusalem that our Lord approved of 
 child labour. The Commons cheered while a 
 brewer proved that child labour fed the sacred fire 
 of Family altars. A lawyer upheld it in the name 
 of justice and a financier in the name of England's 
 greatness. Both showed thereby great moral 
 perspicacity, since neither had so much as a nod- 
 ding acquaintance with the ideals they hymned. 
 
 The Ministry fell, and in the chaos of a General 
 Election Gilbert Manners found himself awk- 
 wardly famous. Deputations waited on him — 
 ill-dressed, uncouth men with the hands of slaves. 
 Gilbert was embarrassed by his following, the 
 greater part of which was voteless. He was re- 
 turned by a narrow majority. Wary now, he 
 added to his friends. He was invited to dine with 
 Euphrosyne, the presiding genius of Liberalism, 
 who made and unmade Ministries between a smile 
 and a smile. The nymph favoured him with an 
 hour's intimate conversation: he leaned over the 
 dizzy brink of her glances and glimpsed an under- 
 secretaryship. The doors of great houses opened 
 to him again. He married a daughter of the noble 
 lord who had sponsored his entry into the House, 
 and understood that if he served his party well, 
 he would be rewarded by consideration of his 
 whims. A Minister precipitated a political crisis 
 to ruin his wife's lover. The timidity that afiUcts 
 
SEED-TIME 29 
 
 brave men before the battle fell now upon the 
 party leaders. They heard rumours of discontent. 
 Eevolution was on the doorstep and the franchise 
 but lately extended to a landless riff-raff. Gilbert 
 was courted and consulted. He flung his influence 
 and his unimpeached honesty on the side of the out- 
 going Ministry, staking his honour on their prom- 
 ises. They were everywhere successful: flushed 
 with insolence and victory, they forgot their fears 
 and threw Gilbert over almost without being aware 
 of the deed, bred to that adaptability which is a 
 proud virtue of our race. 
 
 At the same moment the bulk of Gilbert's patri- 
 mony was lost to him. Carried away by one of 
 those periodic industrial fevers of which the symp- 
 toms are known to history and the cure to faith, 
 he had placed his realisable wealth in Eussian 
 manganese. The manganese was indeed in Kussia, 
 and there it remained, unresponsive. Gilbert's 
 wife returned to her father's house, glad to escape 
 from a husband who made demands upon her heart 
 which she had long siuce wearied of meeting. Gil- 
 bert let her go without protest. He was filled with 
 a loathing of his kind. Without daring to face the 
 haggard men whom he felt himself to have be- 
 trayed, he resigned his seat in the House, and sold 
 his estate. With the little Caroline, he moved rest- 
 lessly about England. Coming upon that moor- 
 land valley, he conceived the idea of settling there, 
 and built himself a house, and a garden terraced 
 above the stream. He began to read, with the in- 
 tention of writing a universal history, that he 
 
30 THE CLASH 
 
 might forget men in man, and found himself 
 plunged in an endless tale of violence, treachery 
 and greed. In the humble men who lived and died 
 uncounted by history, he saw a confusion of slaves, 
 the perpetual instruments of jealousy and strife. 
 He saw that faiths arose that men might make a 
 mock of them in temples, and knowledge that they 
 might destroy each other with the greater ease. 
 He saw that the world is governed by an incompre- 
 hensible malice. He devoted himself to his garden. 
 
 When Elizabeth came to the quiet house, he felt 
 for her an unwilling affection and regretted the 
 swift passing of her sexless grace. Imagining in 
 the child a candid simplicity, he dreaded the time 
 when it would no longer look at him through the 
 woman's eyes. 
 
 One day he shut the book from which he was 
 reading to her and began to talk. 
 
 " Priests and poets have deceived man with a 
 false idea of his destiny. So that his life is noth- 
 ing but a thwarting of life's purpose. He strives 
 against his destiny without understanding. 
 
 " Throughout slow ages, herds of men roamed 
 over the world, pricked on by cold and heat and 
 drouth, in all but cunning weaker than the other 
 animals whose wretchedness they shared. Jeal- 
 ousies more subtle than the short-lived jealousy 
 of the brutes, thrust up families within the tribe. 
 Some of them, coming upon the valleys of great 
 rivers, escaped from under the whips of necessity 
 to bow their backs before priests who chastised 
 them with scorpions. In the fertile slime of the 
 
SEED-TIME 31 
 
 Euphrates annies of slaves built temples and pal- 
 aces, planted gardens, quarried mountains, bridged 
 and walled rivers under the lash of their drivers. 
 They toiled, and feared the gods, whose servants, 
 jealous of barbarian conquerors, created round 
 themselves a fantastic culture. So in the valley of 
 the Nile, fear and jealousy hid in the grotesque 
 magnificence of temples and dogged men's steps 
 through the fields of the dead. A captured hand- 
 ful of savage tribesmen, confronted with the Baby- 
 lonian splendour, were moved to fling across their 
 blood-stained altars an uncouth dignity. Yaweh, 
 narrow-minded and jealous, waited sullenly his do- 
 minion over an unborn age. 
 
 " Carried from Ionian islands to Attic mainland, 
 the seeds of a terrible beauty bore one pure blos- 
 som. But human thought, escaped from the tem- 
 ple, could not escape the himian destiny. Athens 
 perished through her jealousy, and the greedy 
 traders of Rome, conscious of their stiff-necked vir- 
 tues, built themselves an Empire which the virtues 
 forsook and the barbarian discovered. Europe 
 tossed through a night of bad dreams. On the 
 southern slope of a hill in Gaul, barbarians came 
 upon a Eoman villa. Below the terraced garden a 
 stream ran through ordered vineyards to the grove 
 of the god. Decked with violet leaves, his limbs 
 gleamed in the shadows of the foliage. The bar- 
 barians, treading his mutilated body into the 
 ground, flung the wreathed head among the tram- 
 pled vines. Smiling, it lay between the dead Ro- 
 man and his dying slave. Everywhere through 
 
32 THE CLASH 
 
 Europe the wolves took back the forsaken fields 
 and in the atria of ruined vUlas savages built their 
 huts. Man submitted to his destiny. 
 
 " In the barbaric courts and in the castles of 
 brigand nobles, Jealousy sated itself with slaugh- 
 ter and treachery. Perilously enthroned in Eome, 
 it trafficked with the sluggish-minded victors of 
 dynastic feuds. In the monasteries it scraped the 
 manuscripts of Greece and Eome to cover them 
 with saintly legends. 
 
 "Nurtured in ancient cradles, a flame swept 
 across Southern Europe from Arabia, burning with 
 a swift beauty in the Sicilian court of that king, 
 che fu d'amor si degno. Jealousy, hidden in a 
 monk's cowl, worked unceasingly to its quenching. 
 So, pitting Pope against Emperor, king agaiast 
 baron, burgher against king, rich against poor, 
 Jealousy has woven the destiny of man in blood 
 and tears. The priests were its most cunning and 
 faithful servants, fighting its battles with hidden 
 guile and unhid sword. Fear served them in the 
 shadowed temples of the great Eivers. Fear 
 served the sullen god of Israel when he confronted 
 a dying Paganism. Fighting in its own name or 
 authority's, Eeligion ravaged Europe to feed its 
 treacherous brood, choking with blood the singers 
 of Provence, drawing its hatred of man's free spirit 
 from man's own heart. Solitary figures, like that 
 Jesus whom the priests killed, drift across the torn 
 earth. Ignorant that man's destiny is the sport of 
 warring jealousies, they dream of brotherly love. 
 Men hesitate, dazed by the white light of that 
 
SEED-TIME 33 
 
 dream, and strive against their destiny. In 
 vain. 
 
 " Tlie priests no longer sway the issue, but it has 
 not changed. Jealousy rules, unsated. The vine- 
 yards of the Eoman are spread over the world, but 
 the wine is pressed for a few to savour. Men scar 
 the sea with prows and traverse the earth in search 
 of beauty, that silk and jade may adorn a few 
 white bodies. Greed and jealousy, treacherous 
 slaves of the few, whisper revolt in the ears of the 
 many. Father is jealous of son, brother of brother : 
 sex arms itself against sex, class against class. So 
 rushes to its end the life of this planet, briefer than 
 the breath of the wind that bends the burnished 
 grass of the meadow, troubling the universe less." 
 
 Gilbert Manners glanced through the open win- 
 dow. The hillside drowsed under a noon sun. Dis- 
 tilled in the heavy air, the pungent scent of gorse 
 bushes drifted across the valley. 
 
 " Under a limpid sky, men suffer without under- 
 standing, destroy each other without understand- 
 ing. They look in each other's hearts and hate 
 what they see." 
 
 Elizabeth was asleep with her cheek pressed 
 against the grey oak of a monk's trestle table. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 An old friend had come to see Gilbert Maimers. 
 He was a famous pianist, more famous than the 
 isolated household knew. The grand was opened 
 and put in order. Elizabeth had never heard any 
 music except the droning murmur of the church 
 organ when the wind blew up from the valley ; she 
 shivered with excitement and locked together her 
 cold trembling hands. 
 
 Miriam herself prepared the dinner. A young 
 turkey had been roasted. His brown body glis- 
 tened among tiny sausages flavoured with herbs. 
 The succulent pink slices of his breast fell under 
 Gilbert's knife and lay upon the plates, side by 
 side with the divine whiteness of young pork, of 
 a creamy tenderness, dying upon the palate like 
 the breath of a god. With all proper rites the dual 
 divinity was sacrificed, and the table reflected 
 the dull crimson of jellies, to make which late rasp- 
 berries had been distilled in slow heavy drops. 
 Yellow cream poured lovingly out of thin silver 
 jugs, their radiance blurred by a multitude of un- 
 seen lines, like fine wrinkles veiling the old age of 
 beauty. Saffron-hued pies crumbled into a fra- 
 grant memory, and Miriam made the coffee. It 
 showed honey-coloured through the low wide 
 cups. 
 
 The pianist ate like a schoolboy, and Elizabeth 
 
SEED-TIME 35 
 
 twisted her fingers. The gardener's boy was dis- 
 covered under the window waiting for the music to 
 begin, and brought into the house. Sitting on the 
 edge of an oaken settle in the shadows of the door- 
 way, he was like a primitive statue graven in red 
 and brown, stiff and uncouth, breathing of the 
 earth from which its lineaments were barely dis- 
 tinguishable. 
 
 The great man played. He played Bach to 
 please Gilbert Manners, and Elizabeth was stirred 
 by an emotion which she felt vaguely to be un- 
 pleasant. He played Beethoven to please himself, 
 and as the music surged against the walls of the 
 room Elizabeth knew that she hated it more than 
 anything she had ever known or imagined. She 
 shook uncontrollably, huddled in her chair. The 
 room was filled with a barbaric splendour. 
 
 Miriam leaned towards the player. Her dark 
 eyes burned with a flame kindled among dead 
 ashes. Youth ran like wine through her rounded 
 Umbs. The sun scorched the hard earth and played 
 on knives and glittering bridles. Ai, the proud 
 horses ! She touched the gleaming necks. In the 
 evening the women danced on the burnt grass, 
 while the mountains turned black against the sky, 
 jagged like the teeth of a saw. Her limbs were 
 stiffening: she looked with dull eyes upon her 
 shrunken hands and withered neck. She was dead, 
 dead. 
 
 In the doorway the gardener's boy sat stiffly up- 
 right. He watched a spider that swayed on one 
 thread in the open window. A small field mouse 
 
36 THE CLASH 
 
 crept through the room, pressing itself against the 
 wall, and sat on its tiny haunches beside the play- 
 er's feet. As the room' darkened the boy's eyes, 
 bright and round, saw it filled with small creatures 
 of the woods. They folded their furry paws and 
 watched with unwinking eyes. He was suddenly 
 afraid of their fascination. The sleek-bodied cat 
 rose from the hearth: her body rippled under its 
 fur as she leaped on to the sill and vanished into 
 the garden. The boy looked after her, jerking him- 
 self from the brink of unseen danger. The famUiar 
 scents of the garden came through the window : his 
 attention wandered from the music, and he heard 
 no more of it. 
 
 The young overworked scullery maid sat in the 
 kitchen with her red hands folded placidly in her 
 lap. She listened to the music and dreamed of 
 green fields at dusk: hands pressed her body 
 and she shivered, with grave eyes and parted 
 lips. 
 
 The player stopped. Gilbert Manners leaned 
 forward. " We have no right to ask for more and 
 no grace to thank you for that which thanks cannot 
 repay." 
 
 His friend smiled. " I will play anything you 
 wish." 
 
 "My desires are conventional. Play me the 
 Moonlight Sonata." 
 
 The musician looked at Elizabeth, and she 
 thought his chubby face with its halo of white hair 
 had become sinister. He turned again to the 
 piano. 
 
SEED-TIME 37 
 
 The first notes fell heavily. They became lashes 
 under which she lay quivering. Cold and pitiless, 
 they dropped on her nakedness. The faces round 
 her had grown alien, and there was nothing be- 
 tween her and fear ; without realising it, she under- 
 stood that men were all defenceless behind their 
 poor barrier of flesh. 
 
 An obscure unhappiness reared its head in the 
 depths of her heart. With awkward fingers it tore 
 at its bonds. Ifot knowing what she said, Eliza- 
 beth repeated soundlessly, "Mother, mother, I 
 want you, I want my mother." With smiling face 
 and gentle hands, Caroline Marwood came through 
 the shadows. In her daughter's eyes was no wel- 
 come, but an unfathomable anguish. " She would 
 not smile so if she had indeed come to me." Mak- 
 ing a terrible effort, the child shut the doors of 
 her memory against the smiling shade. Tran- 
 quil and untroubled by the poor grief of hu- 
 manity, the mother suffered herself to be thrust 
 back; the tender hands fluttered a moment 
 in farewell and no regret marred the delicate 
 face. 
 
 Elizabeth looked at the pianist. She saw his 
 fingers stretch over nine notes to make a frightful 
 sound. Low deep notes filled her with a sick emo- 
 tion. They rose, and her senses rose with them in 
 reluctant excitement. Eising and falling, they 
 touched a note that slit the shadows. He repeated 
 the terrible ninth. She fixed dilated eyes upon his 
 cruel hands, and thought they reached again for 
 that intolerable sound. She cried out and ran 
 
38 THE CLASH 
 
 from the room. Before the player's hands had 
 dropped from the piano, she had crossed the hall 
 and was running towards the stream. 
 
 Her grandfather's apology was interrupted by 
 the gardener's boy. He stood up and straightened 
 himself awkwardly. " I know," he said, and lum- 
 bered out into the garden. 
 
 Elizabeth reached the stream. Its reeds shook 
 harshly in the darkness. She began to walk beside 
 it up the valley. She was calm now and her cheeks 
 burned when she considered her graceless flight. 
 She could not bear to think of it, and began instead 
 to think that she was setting out upon some lonely 
 quest. The fascination that drew Samuel Baker to 
 the sources of the NUe was drawing her up the 
 moorland stream. She dreamed as she walked. 
 The stream narrowed between rising banks and the 
 walls of the valley pressed upon her. She left the 
 fields behind, and scrambled along a crumbling 
 slope between the crowding birch trees. The water 
 ran noisily over its shallow bed. The trees were 
 thicker and the slope more abrupt: she turned 
 away from them and emerged upon the dark face of 
 the cliflf. Covered with heather, it stretched to- 
 wards the skyline, with sparse bowed trees and 
 faces of sheer rock. Elizabeth twisted her fingers 
 in the woody stems of the heather: slipping and 
 climbing, she reached a stony ledge that thrust out 
 from the shoulder of the hill. On the western hori- 
 zon a clear green pool of light lay between the 
 brown fringes of the dusk. Three bird notes, far- 
 off and high, came across the valley. They died 
 
SEED-TIME 39 
 
 upon the night, and Elizabeth sat alone in Mickle- 
 gard, enchanted city of the South. 
 
 She fell asleep. • . . 
 
 Ann of Tom's was coming home along the single- 
 track railway that ran inland down the valley. 
 She was very drunk, and as she stumbled along ob- 
 served with dislike the sinister air that trees have 
 when the moonlight shines through their branches. 
 Under that remote light the earth wore an ominous 
 aspect. A goods train clanked towards the coast : 
 black wraiths of smoke twisted upwards. Wakened 
 with a start Elizabeth sprang to her feet on the 
 overhanging crest and Ann of Tom's, following the 
 thin spirals with a wavering eye, had the blas- 
 phemies stifled upon her lips at the sight of a small 
 figure silhouetted against the pale sky. 
 
 If she had not been drunk she would have crossed 
 herself and run from a devil with goat's legs. But 
 she was uncommonly drunk and she scrambled up 
 the cliff side, the luck of the drunkard keeping her 
 feet. The discovery of a terrified child sobered her 
 somewhat. Elizabeth was stiff with cold, and Ann 
 of Tom's realised a little vaguely that to carry her 
 down the precipitous slope was a folly impossible 
 to old shaking legs. She wrapped her coat round 
 Elizabeth and squatted down upon the rock. Dawn 
 and the searchers found the child sleeping in the 
 hag's stiffened arms. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 GiLBEET llANNEES had become reconciled to Ms 
 cousin during the brief zenith of his political ca- 
 reer. WTien Gilbert fell, the mill-owner was al- 
 ready preparing to enter parliament. Later, he 
 acquired a coalfield, three newspapers and a large 
 interest in Scandinavian wood pulp. His news- 
 papers were designed to appeal to the feminine in- 
 tellect, trousered or petticoated. In a day when 
 the make-up of newspapers was still in the age of 
 innocence — close-packed columns marching six 
 abreast in monotonous formation — he employed 
 editors who did not write at all, but arranged each 
 page with the cunning of expert advertisers. His 
 newspapers became thus so easy to read that no 
 effort of thought was necessary, and they were de- 
 servedly popular. They evoked the emotion of the 
 ideal in the bosoms of their readers, keeping ever 
 before them the vision of an England toiling in all 
 her looms to clothe the nations of the world in En- 
 glish shirtings even though Englishmen should go 
 shirtless in the white light of that philanthropic 
 dream. A million readers, swept away by the 
 thought of so much patriotic zeal, followed its pos- 
 sessor through all the vagaries of his domestic and 
 foreign policy, cherished the Good Queen and exe- 
 crated France, cursed Chinamen and Boers, depre- 
 
SEED-TIME 41 
 
 cated the existence of foreigners and thanked God 
 for the hope of taxing them, blessed France and 
 execrated Trusts, blew hot one day and cold the 
 next, but always obediently blew for the greater 
 honour and glory of Lord Weaverbridge, made a 
 peer in recognition of services rendered. During 
 the Boer War he had clothed half the army in khaki 
 at an inconvenience to his export trade for which 
 the accident of enormous profits could not compen- 
 sate him. We have all of us our ideals, more pre- 
 cious than riches. 
 
 AVhen Elizabeth was eighteen she was the guest 
 of Lord Weaverbridge at one of his country houses. 
 The house was given over to his eldest grandchild, 
 a girl of Elizabeth's age. The girl was lame and 
 bitterly self-conscious: she hid her mortification 
 under a sarcastic habit of speech that had alienated 
 her family. The two cousins were to study to- 
 gether for a year until Madame de I'Abbaye re- 
 deemed her promise. Elizabeth rode and learned 
 to dance, and concealed her pity for the fierce 
 young cripple under an inspired brusqueness. 
 
 Their nearest neighbour was the Keverend Greg- 
 ory Burrows, a priest whose incorrigible charity 
 was the despair of his wife and six daughters. He 
 carried his dinner out to tramps and gipsies, and 
 was discovered before morning service removing 
 worms from the churchyard path to save them from 
 the feet of his parishioners. He had withal an intel- 
 lect of uncommon power, and would have been the 
 most subtle and brilliant of heretics if he had not 
 been the most indolent of saints. His son inherited 
 
42 THE CLASH 
 
 Ms father's charm and the austere beauty of his 
 face, but from his mother he received a docile and 
 practical mind. He was preparing for ordination 
 at an Anglican college, created to draw a supply of 
 priests from impoverished middle-class families. 
 In a building of monastic austerity, fifty of these 
 young men were given a superficial culture and im- 
 bued with an intense and dogmatic loyalty to the 
 straitest tenets of the Church. Their underfed 
 bodies offered no resistance to the spiritual dis- 
 cipline that moulded them with a gentle and relent- 
 less fanaticism, and their adolescent minds received 
 from the ritual ordering of their days the most deli- 
 cate of sensual pleasures. Sometimes a student of 
 tougher nature than the rest broke away and left 
 the college after receiving his education. Many, 
 crossed the narrow borderline that separated them 
 from the Eoman source of their faith. 
 
 Young Burrows, home on vacation, rode and 
 walked with Elizabeth, and read with both girls. 
 Elizabeth appreciated his charm without troubling 
 to analyse it. Eoger Burrows, conscious of his 
 poverty, was determined not to fall in love with 
 her. He was, moreover, a faithful son of his 
 church in that he responded instinctively to its 
 obscurer influences. The Church has never wholly 
 given up its belief in the ess'ential sinfulness of 
 woman: when it decided in solemn council that 
 women have souls, it went against a deep-rooted 
 impulse of its own ascetic nature. It was not only 
 Roger's poverty that resisted Elizabeth but his 
 soul. Like those hermits who plunged into icy 
 
SEED-TIME 43 
 
 water to escape the tormenting vision of fair 
 women, he resented her assault upon the chastity 
 of his thoughts. Elizabeth, divining his resistance 
 without divining its cause, thought herself in love 
 with the young neophyte. 
 
 She was nevertheless irritated by his assumption 
 of intellectual superiority. She attacked his faith 
 and he smiled at her. " Why do you refuse to argue 
 about your beliefs? " she asked hotly. " Is it that 
 you dare not? " 
 
 " I don't argue about them," lie said, " because 
 they do not lend themselves to argument. There 
 are truths about which it is foolish to argue. Such 
 are the dogmas of the Church." 
 
 " Dogmas ! " 
 
 " A dogma," Eoger said calmly, " is the expres- 
 sion of a sublime abstraction. Women have never 
 been able to appreciate abstract conceptions. That 
 is why clever women scoff at them." 
 
 " Then," said Elizabeth, " to prove my possession 
 of a mind I must accept the Athanasian creed in its 
 entirety, and the dogmas of hell and eternal damna- 
 tion." 
 
 " To accept a dogma is not to understand it," he 
 retorted. 
 
 " That's clever of you, Eoger. And do you be- 
 lieve in the devil and the Garden of Eden? " 
 
 " If I did not believe in the personality of evil 
 how could I believe in the personality of good? No 
 Devil, no God. The dogmas of the Church stand 
 and fall together. Some are higher than others, 
 but all are eternally true." 
 
44 THE CLASH 
 
 "Roger," Elizabeth said, "do you really think 
 that the heads of your faith believe ta the everlast- 
 ing fire so charmingly depicted in my great-aunt's 
 Bible and enshrined in the Athanasian creed? " 
 
 " The Athanasian creed is a sublime poem," he 
 answered. " If God had written it, it might have 
 been differently expressed, but then we should not 
 have understood it. We understand as men and 
 must, therefore, believe as men." 
 
 " Even when science contradicts dogma? " 
 
 " Science, like the dogma of the Church, is the 
 work of human minds, but of minds uninspired by 
 contact with divinity. It is, therefore, less worthy 
 of respect. Dogma is the imperfect reflection of 
 inspiration. And since God reveals Himself differ- 
 ently to different minds. His aspects have some- 
 times an appearance of conflict which is without 
 any basis in truth." 
 
 " God and the politicians," Elizabeth murmured, 
 " have then one sublime attribute in common, that 
 both can ignore their self-contradictions without 
 loss of self-respect." 
 
 Roger's eyes darkened. " That is unworthy of 
 you." 
 
 Elizabeth laid her hand lightly on his wrist. " I 
 am sorry," she said. 
 
 She felt that he trembled and a triumphant de- 
 light flUed her. Suddenly afraid, she drew back. 
 "Let us leave your faith and talk of the world. 
 But I forget. You are not interested." 
 
 He answered her harshly. "Why should I be? 
 
SEED-TIME 45 
 
 If the "world "were arranged as it should be, a united 
 Holy State under the one true Church, men would 
 be answerable for their conduct to the representa- 
 tive of God Himself." 
 
 " Grracious," said Elizabeth, " I hope you would 
 not appoint the Chief Engineer of your Holy State 
 for his beautiful theology." 
 
 " I would establish the Kingdom of God upon 
 earth." 
 
 "Alas, my poor friend," said Elizabeth, "you 
 should have been a Jew : they will achieve the Uni- 
 versal Dominion of which your Jesuits did but 
 dream." 
 
 Eoger regarded her sombrely. "Every ill of 
 modern society can be traced back to man's rebel- 
 lion against the only true authority. Jews? Eevo- 
 lution? An unfettered and supreme Church would 
 have known how to deal with all such things." 
 
 "And what would it have given us in return for 
 our filched freedom? " 
 
 " Freedom under God." 
 
 " I should view it with the less apprehension if 
 I knew which God you meant. Now, your father's 
 God is a charming Deity under whose benign rule 
 even I might shelter. But I am not sure that yours 
 
 would approve of me " Elizabeth broke off 
 
 to laugh at his averted face. Again she was filled 
 with that delightful excitement. Hardly con- 
 scious of her impulse, she took his face between her 
 hands to compel him to look at her. " You shall 
 not turn away from me," she said breathlessly. 
 
46 THE CLASH 
 
 He turned upon her the face of a tortured saint. 
 Her hands dropped to her side and she swayed to- 
 wards him. He pressed his head against her cheek 
 with an incoherent cry. 
 
 Elizabeth stood passively in his embrace. The 
 dream-like ecstasy had dropped away from her. 
 At the touch of his passion hers had vanished. He 
 was conscious of nothing but her nearness and her 
 beauty: she stood outside the circle of his emo- 
 tional abandon, conscious above all of her disap- 
 pointment, bafled and angry. 
 
 " What have we done? " he said. " What shall 
 we do? " 
 
 She concealed her resentment under a pretence 
 of overwrought feeling. " I don't know," she said, 
 and freeing herself, fled from the room. 
 
 In her bedroom at night, she went again through 
 the scene : her cheeks burned, and the emotion she 
 had missed in Roger's arms came to shake her in 
 his absence. She stretched out her arms and mur- 
 mured his name. 
 
 The door opened abruptly and her cousin stood 
 on the threshold. Switching on the light, she 
 stepped into the room. Elizabeth blinked at her. 
 Beneath a heavy fur gown the girl shivered wretch- 
 edly: her thin body was convulsed and her eyes 
 made ugly with tears. She was grotesque and piti- 
 ful. " I hate you," she said. " I hate you because 
 you are straight and beautiful. I hate you for tak- 
 ing Eoger. You don't want him. You wouldn't 
 marry him, you know that you would not." She 
 gave way to the awkward ^rief that had broken 
 
SEED-TIME 47 
 
 down her habit of reserve. The sight of her tears 
 angered Elizabeth. 
 
 " I'll send Roger away," she said. " I'll go away 
 myself. Now will you leave me? And please don't 
 turn the light out. I want to read." 
 
 She read for several hours. When, for weari- 
 ness, she laid down her book and turned off the 
 light, the lame girl re-emerged, a plaintive ghost. 
 Elizabeth argued, taking both sides in the debate. 
 She showed herself so generous and so wisely gentle 
 that the cousin knelt for gratitude and kissed her 
 hand. But the thought of that savage young crea- 
 ture turned suppliant offended even the greedy 
 vanity of Elizabeth's dream-self. She laughed 
 softly, shamefaced in the darkness, and began in- 
 stead to think of Roger. Behind her closed eyes 
 she saw him as St. Sebastian pierced with many 
 arrows, and was filled with regret for her promise. 
 
 She woke with the sense that something pleas- 
 antly exciting would happen. It was quite true 
 that she did not want to marry Roger. He was 
 poor and his spiritual conceit jarred upon her. 
 But she was not willing that he should despise her, 
 and she could not rid herself of his appealing 
 charm. 
 
 She thought remorsefully of her cousin's grief. 
 
 Roger came and she regarded him calmly. His 
 beauty was after all a little insipid, and he was 
 not clever, poor Roger. He was unhappy, and seiz- 
 ing upon that, she told him that they must re- 
 nounce each other. It annoyed her that she could 
 not even share with him the perverse delight of 
 
48 THE CLASH 
 
 suffering. Through an exhausting scene she re- 
 mained quite cold behind her tragic show, but when 
 he had gone, she wept in bitter self-pity and 
 thought she wept for love. For the moment, she 
 was very unhappy. 
 
CHAPTER VT 
 
 The strike at tlie Weaverbridge mines annoyed 
 Lord Weaverbridge. It did more. It revealed to 
 him and his two million horrified readers the 
 spectre of Revolution gibbering in their midst. 
 
 George Trubert, strike leader, picked his way 
 through the mining village. He walked down the 
 narrow flagged street between the back-to-back 
 houses, squeezing past the common ashbin and 
 skirting the common latrine at the end of the street. 
 
 He reached his committee room and pushed open 
 the door. At a small deal table a man wrote and 
 stopped to cough and bent again to write. He was 
 the branch secretary of the Trade Union. He 
 pushed the hair off his glistening forehead and 
 pressed a hand over his lips. George Trubert sat 
 down at the table and began to open letters. " How 
 are you, Collings? " he asked indifferently. 
 
 "Well enough," the other answered without 
 looking up. " I wish you would tell them up in 
 town that it is useless to send us speakers who 
 know less of mining than the babe playing in that 
 gutter. Our people are not fools." 
 
 George Trubert bent over his letters. Men and 
 women came into the room, talked a little and 
 drifted out again. A woman tapped the strike 
 leader on the shoulder. " When ye go back to Lon- 
 don," she said, "tell them about me. I've a man 
 
50 THE CLASH 
 
 and two lads in the mines and each, of them work- 
 ing on a different shift. I ha' to get three break- 
 fasts and three suppers and clean up after three 
 baths, besides cleaning and cooking for bairns that 
 never see their father." 
 
 The woman beside her laughed loudly. " 'Tisn't 
 much I want," she said, "except to sleep alone 
 before I come to my narrow bed. Dost a' think 
 they'll send us houses from London? " 
 
 John Collings looked up. " Hold your chatter- 
 ing," he said briefly. A fit of coughing shook him. 
 He leaned forward, gasping and pallid. 
 
 George Trubert pushed back his chair. "I'm 
 going up to the house," he said, " I've to meet 
 Weaverbridge at twelve." A chorus of ironical ad- 
 vice followed him out of the room. 
 
 Up at the big house he waited half an hour in 
 the library, until a charming young man opened 
 the door. " The directors will see you at once," he 
 said and smiled. Trubert followed the secretary 
 to a room that an experienced playgoer would have 
 known at once to be more like a study than any 
 study ought to be. 
 
 Five men, sitting round the mahogany table, 
 looked up as he entered. Lord Weaverbridge 
 greeted him cordially. " Mr.' Trubert, gentlemen. 
 My fellow directors, Mr. Trubert. Sit down, Mr. 
 Trubert." 
 
 The strike leader sat down and composed his 
 features into a passable imitation of those of Lord 
 Rosebery, whom he had been told he resembled. 
 
 " Mr. Trubert," said Lord Weaverbridge, " let us 
 
SEED-TIME Ci 
 
 understand each, other. I believe in straightfor- 
 ward methods, as I am sure that you do. Your — 
 clients, shaU we call them? — demand an increased 
 wage, a housing scheme and the right to elect fore- 
 men. We will take the last first. I am speaking 
 to you now not in your capacity as leader of a 
 strike, hut as one man of affairs to another. You 
 are well aware that in the direction of any busi- 
 ness everything depends on the ease with which it 
 can be administered. The ideal business would be 
 one in which a man in a central oflice pressed a 
 button and set every wheel turning and every de- 
 partment in motion. Any change in administra- 
 tion that does not bring us nearer this ideal is a 
 step back and not a step forward. But you under- 
 stand all this." 
 
 George Trubert considered carefully. He was 
 determined not to be talked off his feet. He did 
 not think that Lord Weaverbridge could do that, 
 but it was best to go slowly. He saw quite well 
 that poor CoUings would be at a hopeless disad- 
 vantage in these intimate consultations. They 
 were up to all the tricks, these capitalists: they 
 would lead CoUings by the nose without his being 
 once aware of it. He saw, too, that in the admin- 
 istration of a mine CoUings and his like would be 
 a real hindrance. One did not wish to hinder 
 progress. Neither did sane men wish to progress 
 with headlong haste: that was revolution. He 
 must assert the dignity of Labour by showing him- 
 self able to grasp affairs in a broad-minded way. 
 
 " I see your lordship's point," he said cautiously. 
 
52 THE CLASH 
 
 " Quite, quite," the other said briskly. " Let us 
 pass on to the second demand." 
 
 George Trubert stiffened himself in his chair. 
 His voice deepened indignantly. " Gentlemen," 
 said he, "the men are housed like beasts." The 
 discomforts of his morning walk were vivid in his 
 mind. He became brusque. 
 
 Lord Weaverbridge made a sympathetic gesture. 
 " There shall be an inquiry," he declared, " and 
 we offer the men two-thirds of the increase they 
 ask. Can you guarantee acceptance of our com- 
 promise? " 
 
 " I think I can," Trubert said slowly. " And I 
 must thank your lordship for the spirit in which 
 you have met us." 
 
 Lord Weaverbridge pressed a bell. "Will you 
 have some lunch with us? " he said. 
 
 In the dusty committee room John CoUings con- 
 tinued to write. When Trubert had gone he cleared 
 the room of the talkers and for a few minutes 
 worked in silence. His wife entered. " John Col- 
 lings," she said harshly, "you went out without 
 your breakfast." She set a can and a basin down 
 on the table, pushing off a bundle of papers to make 
 room. " There was a deal to do," her husband said, 
 and I felt no hunger." 
 
 She bent her haggard face close to his. " Hun- 
 ger," she said. "Decent folk eat their meals at 
 decent hours. What good does it do you working 
 to your death for a crowd of foul-mouthed men 
 and their sluts of wives?" She flitted angrily 
 about the room and stopped to grip his arm. 
 
SEED-TIME 53 
 
 " Listen to me, Jolin Collings. You and your com- 
 rades! Do you know what life is, you image of 
 death? A blind animal struggling in a trap. Do 
 you mind when the motor-car killed Mary Garth's 
 little lad that was fetching water for me? I would 
 ha' killed myself to get him back, but in my heart 
 I was glad, glad that her lad was dead. Why 
 should she ha' four sons and I never a child to my 
 arms? You talk of love and freedom. Underneath 
 is nought but hate and a thing in prison. Eat, you 
 fool." 
 
 " I can't eat," he said gently, " and you must let 
 me finish." 
 
 She left him, drawing her shawl across her face, 
 and scurrying along the street like a withered leaf. 
 
 When she had gone he leaned back in his chair. 
 He was so exhausted that he began to think instead 
 of working. Indifference was the unforgivable 
 crime. There were lukewarm members in the 
 branch. He wished they might suffer for their 
 treachery. He thought of himself as a child, stum- 
 bling on thin legs through the darkness of the mine. 
 His father said that the State must alter all that. 
 The child understood nothing. Had a State legs 
 and arms and eyes? He, John Collings, had never 
 seen one in all the nine years of his life. 
 
 Things had changed since then. There was a 
 terrible gulf between masters and men — always 
 widening. The old owner of the Weaverbridge 
 mines lived in a house on the edge of the moor: 
 he was always at the pit mouth when disaster had 
 struck out of the darkness. The new owners were 
 
54 THE CLASH 
 
 different. They were themselves a kind of State, 
 without legs or arms or eyes. An exultant sense 
 of power surged through the weary brain. Neither 
 had the coal legs or arms or eyes, save those the 
 miners gave it, working cheek by jowl with death. 
 And since that was so, the day would come when 
 they would take what was their own : the users of 
 the tool would direct the tool : the creators would 
 order their creation. His father had not lifted 
 eyes to that vision. Men were still in the pit where 
 injustice had thrust them, but they had looked over 
 the edge. They were gathering their forces in the 
 pit. 
 
 A shadow fell across the table: George Trubert 
 had come back to announce the result of his nego- 
 tiation. 
 
CHAPTEE Vn 
 
 The strike had been over a week when Elizabeth 
 left the Weaverbridge house. On her first evening 
 at home, an impulse prompted her to speak of 
 Bertha, long forgotten. " She had a child," Miriam 
 said abruptly, " and would not give the father's 
 name. She was sent away and they say that she 
 came back a week before its birth and knelt all 
 night on her father's doorstep. He stepped past 
 her in the morning without look or word." 
 
 Elizabeth stared at her great-aunt. The memory 
 of Bertha's cringing affection was dreadful to 
 her. . . . 
 
 " Elizabeth," said her grandfather, " you will go 
 to Madame de I'Abbaye because my daughter de- 
 sired it so. And you will return here at your own 
 desire. You may marry. . . ." 
 
 The words rang a troubled echo in her mind. 
 Elizabeth had thought about her future. Her 
 thoughts had a habit of falling apart into dreams 
 from which she jerked herself angrily. "I must 
 think." She must think coldly and clearly about 
 herself and her future. With a flash of its peacock 
 tail the dream was back and the dreamer smiled 
 over secret pleasures. 
 
 There was indeed very little on which that cold 
 clear thinking could fasten, in the rare moments 
 when she achieved it. Gilbert Manners had been 
 
56 THE CLASH 
 
 able to share with her his profound knowledge of 
 the Humanities. He had not been able to answer 
 for her the question, " What are you going to do 
 for yourself with your culture and your tempered 
 intellect? " He was not aware that modern civi- 
 lisation has no other question to ask of culture. 
 
 Elizabeth was aware of it, though vaguely. She 
 repeated, " I must do something." "Visions came 
 of Elizabeth doing something very clever and 
 scholarly or very splendid and courageous. They 
 lent her a little warmth, and when they vanished 
 she felt cold and bewildered. She drew up lists of 
 books she would read and began a diary in order 
 to think clearly, " Determined that I would study 
 thoroughly the Eastern philosophies in translation, 
 and afterwards learn to read the Vedas in the 
 original." Her studies were constantly dulled by 
 an irking dissatisfaction. " What are you going to 
 do with it? " For all answer came the dreams. 
 
 She was subconsciously aware of a confused 
 pricking desire to be fine and good. In her dreams 
 she was always fine and good. She could not bring 
 herself to recall that childish betrayal of Bertha, 
 and at last forgot even the name of the lost girl. 
 She would not think that her dismissal of Eoger 
 had been disingenuous and came to believe that 
 loving him passionately she had given him up for 
 the crippled cousin's sake. 
 
 This involuntary worship of the good and the 
 beautiful prompted her to grotesque sacrifices, re- 
 corded shamefacedly in her diary. " Eesolved that 
 I would give Great-aunt Miriam my old oak coffer 
 
SEED-TIME 57 
 
 tliat slie likes so much." Miriam had the coffer 
 and the diary offered a lying comment, " I do not 
 really like it myself." The same impulse that set 
 Simon Stylites on his pillar lay behind the next 
 recorded sacrifice. "Eesolved that I would take 
 cold baths instead of hot ones, and read for an 
 hour before breakfast." She took a deliberate 
 sensuous joy in the hour between waking and ris- 
 ing ; her mind slept and her body thrilled to an ob- 
 scure bliss. It was hard to give this up, but the 
 new consciousness of sin drove her into headlong 
 renunciation. " Eesolved that I will not lie awake 
 in bed at night to make up tales about myself." 
 Elizabeth would have been puzzled to account 
 for her new-got conviction that these romances, in 
 which she played so many heroic parts, were evilly 
 self-indulgent. But she did not question it. She 
 knew that they were Sin, and she strove fiercely 
 to keep her drowsy thoughts from slipping into 
 that familiar country where the other Elizabeth 
 dwelt, and did wonderful deeds and inspired sub- 
 lime passions. Mocking eyes darkened and 
 changed as they looked into hers. " I did not know 
 there was a woman in the world like you." She 
 shivered under the imagined caress. . . . 
 
 Oddly enough she found it easy to dismiss the 
 dreams when she set herself to think of marriage. 
 She sent for and read a number of books on the 
 independence of woman and came in the end pain- 
 fully to believe that in marriage no independence 
 was possible. " When I marry," she thought, " I 
 shall have children. And then I shall be no longer 
 
58 THE CLASH 
 
 free. A mother is dependent of necessity. There 
 should be pay for mothers. Not State Endowment. 
 That would be detestable, with prying insects of 
 ofO-cials everywhere." Elizabeth found the thought 
 of dependence very disagreeable. She sighed, and 
 refused to admit an absurd vision of herself as a 
 modern Eoman matron. She was quite sure that 
 marriage without children was somehow ugly. The 
 diax'y recorded her awkwardly decisive conclusions. 
 " If I wish for a lover but do not want his children 
 I shall not marry him, and then I shall be free to 
 leave him when I no longer care for him. I think 
 that would be very soon. I can understand Tristan 
 and Iseult swept away by a madness of love. That 
 is quite natural. But Tristan and Iseult, clutching 
 each other through years of desire, wilfully barren 
 — that is not love ; it is the itch. It is like those 
 ascetics who flog themselves into an unnatural 
 ecstasy." Afterwards she was rather ashamed of 
 these particular gestures of her groping intellect 
 and destroyed the diary in order to forget that she 
 had so revealed her nakedness. 
 
 " You may marry," Gilbert said. Elizabeth had 
 an instant vision of herself married — to a husband 
 who rather leaned upon her. This vision was 
 labelled — Splendid Gracious Womanhood. On its 
 heels came another. She sat at a desk in a big 
 room; all the threads of the business were in her 
 hands : she was ruthless and decisive. A confused 
 idea that she might do Something Splendid for 
 women elbowed the Effi.cient Business Woman out 
 of the way. 
 
SEED-TIME 59 
 
 She opened her mouth, to tell her grandfather 
 that she must really do something, and to her sur- 
 prise heard herself say mildly, " I do not think I 
 shall marry." 
 
 "If you wish to be trained for a profession," 
 Gilbert said, " I will of course train you, but I 
 should regret the necessity. Could you not write? 
 Your father had a delicate talent." 
 
 Elizabeth smiled at him. " In the matter of writ- 
 ing books," she said, " I share the opinion that 
 it is a pity so much energy is spent to feed the 
 second-hand bookstalls. I had rather make bridges. 
 I shall come back, and then I shall study engineer- 
 ing." 
 
 She thought, " I shall probably be the only 
 woman engineering student in the University. 
 That will be uncommon. I shall work very hard. 
 Famous Woman Engineer. A Splendid Achieve- 
 ment." 
 
 She was suddenly very angry with herself. 
 "How ridiculous I am. I must be honest and 
 natural. I will be honest and natural." 
 
 When she had gone to bed, Gilbert Manners sat 
 thinking. He could not fit Elizabeth into his uni- 
 versal history and his failure troubled him. 
 " Women are incalculable." 
 
 "You are a fool, Gilbert," his sister said. 
 " Women are very like men, with desires like men, 
 and the same human habit of reasoning about their 
 desires in order to make them appear more im- 
 portant. For many centuries, you have trained 
 women to be ashamed of desire. You have bred 
 
60 THE CLASH 
 
 them in fear and so perverted them that chastity 
 is their only honour and to be safe their only 
 morality. I have heard fools talk of the woman 
 question. There is no question. There is only fear 
 with its mean face and the lie in its soul, clutching 
 at its safety. But the eyes, the eyes — behind the 
 treachery and the cowardice, behind the dull con- 
 tent, if you look often you will one day see in them 
 a strange look, the look of a slave who has imagined 
 freedom." 
 
 " But Elizabeth," the old man murmured. 
 
 "I do not profess to understand Elizabeth," 
 Miriam said. " But you may be quite sure that she 
 will marry, and that she will be unhappy. She is 
 one of those to whom the bloom is everything and 
 the fruit nothing. She is sensuous, how sensuous 
 she is not herself aware, with senses so delicate that 
 satiety will always wait upon satisfaction." 
 
 "Miriam," her brother interrupted, "how is it 
 that you did not bring up the chOd to a happier 
 state of mind? " 
 
 Miriam twitched her shoulders. " I did not 
 bring her up," she said. " I was kinder than that. 
 I did not interfere with her." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 Helen db l'Abbaye had become a spiteful old 
 lady. Her home was still a political storm centre, 
 but Helen could no longer believe that she rode 
 the whirlwind. She had become an institution. 
 Men and women came to her dinners to meet each 
 other and little eddies of excitement ran t3ut from 
 their meetings to her hesitant feet. She enjoyed 
 a vicarious activity and since she could no longer 
 make under-secretaries, she made mischief. Eliza- 
 beth shrank from her and pitied her. In that house 
 whose very walls had the air of remembering old 
 intrigues, the young girl endured a frightful lone- 
 liness. Madame de l'Abbaye repeated scandalous 
 tales of her dead and living friends : they stretched 
 out interminably, broken by the old woman's cack- 
 ling laughter. Elizabeth walked about London and 
 tried to make plans against the end of her visit. If 
 she had been compelled to work for her living she 
 would not have needed to plan. But she had es- 
 caped that slavery only to find herself imprisoned 
 in her own uselessness. She had many talents but 
 no talent for interference : that unhappy lack closed 
 to her all the avenues by which the intelligence of 
 idle women is released to work for humanity. She 
 might of course have endowed a theatre or started 
 a review, but she had not the money for that. 
 
 "You are charming, my dear," Helen told her. 
 
62 THE CLASH 
 
 " with your face of a meditative Puck, but I shall 
 not invite a novelist to meet you. I do not intend 
 you to repeat your mother's error. You had better 
 marry a vested interest: there is nothing so safe. 
 When your mother was living with me, these peo- 
 ple came to my house on sufferance. They paid 
 their money into the party and were humbly con- 
 tent with their reward. Now they are the party, 
 and those of my old friends who have not made 
 truce with them are being squeezed out of their 
 seats and their estates. There is no society : there 
 is only an extraordinary confusion into which 
 someone dropped a Jew, so that the whole mixture 
 has tasted of him ever since. The old women 
 occupy themselves with tame poets and beauty cul- 
 ture. Their daughters have no morals and what is 
 far worse, dear child, no wit. They are a little 
 vulgar, too. There are no longer splendid audaci- 
 ties ; we have become too self -critical. An infallible 
 mark of decadence." 
 
 A young man had entered and was bending over 
 her hand. She chuckled unkindly. " Ah, Jamie," 
 she said, " have you come to take your orders from 
 Weaverbridge? There he is, conspiring with your 
 chief. You had better talk to Elizabeth instead. 
 Your father tried to marry her mother, don't you 
 know, but she found his ears too big and married 
 an honest bourgeois who starved her. That is why 
 Elizabeth has so many of the sterner virtues. I 
 don't think your ears are big, but you wear your 
 hair too long, so that it is really impossible to say." 
 
 Jamie Denman had followed his father into the 
 
SEED-TIME 03 
 
 Foreign Office. He worked very hard. He knew 
 more tlian most Englislimen about Eussian indus- 
 try, but his knowledge was never called upon. He 
 consoled himself by adopting Guild Socialism and 
 spent his spare time organizing an intelligence de- 
 partment of the Labour party on the grounds, 
 Helen said, that no pai'ty needed it more. He was, 
 in truth, obsessed with the spectacle of England 
 drifting towards inevitable disaster. He saw her 
 torn apart between the conflicting greeds of the 
 haves and the have-nots and while all his sympa- 
 thies were with the have-nots, he shrank from the 
 chaos that he foresaw if they were driven to a vio- 
 lent trial of their strength. He came of a class 
 which has kept its tradition of compromise, but 
 lost the reins of power, and must stand aside while 
 new powers work out the country's destiny. 
 
 "There is discontent and menace everywhere," 
 he said, " but it is not the aristocrats who are to 
 blame for it. Our friend Weaverbridge will answer 
 to posterity." 
 
 He was interrupted by the arrival of Telford- 
 Smith, editor of a weeldy paper which had united 
 the extremists of every radical party under the 
 cry of " Proletariat, arise ! " Telford-Smith had 
 studied at that Anglican college where Eoger Bur- 
 rows was now approaching ordination. His turbu- 
 lent intellect had shaken off the fetters of a priestly 
 dogma easily enough, but he retained a superb be- 
 lief in the infallibility of his convictions. He had 
 arranged to be expelled the college, and within 
 three years of his arrival in London had made him- 
 
64 THE CLASH 
 
 self the centre of an organisation that drew its 
 brains from the middle classes, its fervour from 
 the young workers who had joined its ranks be- 
 cause they distrusted George Trubert more than 
 they disliked Telford-Smith, and its money like 
 manna from Heaven. Helen said that it was the 
 dispensation of a Jewish deity, but Telford-Smith 
 kept his counsel. He was a swarthy young man, 
 with a really devastating understanding of mass 
 psychology, and a latent pompousness in speech 
 and manner which infuriated his opponents far 
 more than his ideas alarmed them. This was a 
 pity in that it led them to underestimate his powers 
 of mischief. 
 
 He spoke with an exaggerated drawl. " Poster- 
 ity will not trouble about any of you," he said. 
 " The human race is driven by two impulses, the 
 selfish and the altruistic, the will to power and the 
 will to serve. There can be no doubt which is the 
 stronger. The egoistic impulse has created society 
 as we know it, hindered and distracted by the feeble 
 promptings of the other. We have arrived now at 
 a parting of the ways. Society is ruled by the 
 moneyed classes. They will give way a little, but 
 the limit of their complaisance will soon be 
 reached. That struggling instinct towards altru- 
 ism which no doubt exists everywhere will raise its 
 stifled voice unheard. We shall come then to the 
 chaste vigour of a class struggle in which numbers 
 will inevitably tell. The present rulers will be re- 
 placed by rulers emerging from below, and the 
 world will be governed in the interests of the pro- 
 
SEED-TIME 65 
 
 letariat. No doubt the bourgeoisie, which now 
 holds to Weaverbridge, will change sides when the 
 issue is decided, but there will be no mercy for 
 traitors." 
 
 He walked away and Jamie Denman looked after 
 him with distaste. "'No doubt he's very nearly 
 right," he said, " but what a swine ! " 
 
 He turned as another man touched him on the 
 shoulder, and his face cleared. " I heard you were 
 busy learning to be rich," he said affectionately. 
 
 Cecil la Mothe Howard smiled. He had a face 
 of absurd innocence, made freakish by the ironic 
 curves of his mouth. He towered above his friend, 
 obliterating Jamie's slighter figure. " That's not 
 the way to put it," he said. " I'm learning about 
 Empire. Weaverbridge didn't invent the British 
 Empire, but he patented it, and as his secretary 
 I feel that he has done it very thoroughly. While 
 you fellows run about after us with flags and trea- 
 ties and my brother Andrew gets fever administer- 
 ing justice in a swamp to a lot of natives who 
 simply loathe the idea, we — Weaverbridge and I 
 — squeeze oil out of the treaties and rubber from 
 the niggers to the greater security of our island 
 supremacy. The race is to the strong, you know: 
 and without lots of oil and rubber England would 
 be beaten and then where would you be? Or your 
 worthy Minister either, whom Weaverbridge has 
 pinned in that corner to hear a lecture on foreign 
 policy. You'd lose your job. By the way, Andrew 
 is back in England; did you know? " 
 
 "Don't let Andrew Howard invite you to din- 
 
66 THE CLASH 
 
 ner," Helen thrust in. " He persuaded me to dine 
 with hini last night because he sat on my knee 
 when he was a pretty little boy, and he gave me a 
 curry so hot that it was almost in eruption. Do 
 you hear me, Andrew? " 
 
 She twisted her neck around to greet the new- 
 comer. 
 
 Andrew Howard seated himself beside her. "Are 
 you discussing my sins? " he asked. He looked up 
 at his brother. " Cecil, I'm told that your noble 
 master is going to build a theatre and keep him a 
 company of players with a Master of the Revels 
 and the latest in scenic artists. The days of 
 Lorenzo the Magnificent are come again. The arts 
 will revive under the patronage of the triumphant 
 traders who rule us, and the Weaverbridge Players 
 will present The Merchant of Venice with a Pro- 
 logue in praise of Usury." 
 
 Cecil drew Elizabeth across the room. " Andrew 
 hates my going into trade," he said, "but what 
 were we to do? We've let the castle to a brewer 
 because we can't afford to live in it. Andrew's a 
 dear, really, and he's bitter because we're poor. 
 I think it's all rather stupid, don't you know? Of 
 course the brewer's a frightful creature, but he's 
 got the money, so why shouldn't he have the castle? 
 He's got a daughter too, but Andrew won't marry 
 her and she doesn't like me." 
 
 Elizabeth laughed at him. "Would you have 
 married her for her money? " 
 
 " Oh, she's pretty and quite good fun, you know. 
 I believe Andrew is quarrelling with Weaver- 
 
SEED-TIME 67 
 
 bridge. I wish tlie dear fellow wouldn't : it makes 
 it awkward for me." 
 
 Lord Weaverbridge was regarding tke lean dark 
 man with, distaste. " You simply don't understand 
 tlie East," Andrew said, " or you would bave sent 
 tbem opium instead of missionaries. I tell you I 
 bave a borror of an awakening East. I wake up 
 at nigbt from dreams of a world over-run by bordes 
 of brown and yellow devils. Not content witb pre- 
 venting tbem from drugging themselves to deatb, 
 you're trying to take away tbeir mental opiates 
 and to replace tbeir own placid faitbs by Chris- 
 tianity, backed by typewriters and steel rails. 
 Christianity, the faith with the bloodiest record of 
 any religion ! A Christianised China might devas- 
 tate the world to prove its acceptance of the Cath- 
 olic tradition." 
 
 Lord Weaverbridge frowned. " Civilisation is 
 founded on friendly competition between nations," 
 he observed and returned to his conversation with 
 the Minister. "I shall put up an enormous new 
 plant," he said. " I am, of course, in the hands of 
 my bankers, but I anticipate no trouble." 
 
 The Eight Honourable George Duchesne smiled. 
 " Lord Weaverbridge of the Weaverbridge Textile 
 and Shipping Combine approaches Lord Weaver- 
 bridge, director of the Northern Counties Bank, 
 and asks for a loan. No, I am sure you will bave 
 no trouble." 
 
 He smiled again as Lord Weaverbridge went into 
 details. There would have to be concessions in the 
 near East. The matter could no doubt be arranged 
 
68 THE CLASH 
 
 without too much, trouble. George Duchesne had 
 a profound contempt for militarists, the contempt 
 of a philosophic diplomat for clumsy brawling. He 
 played dexterously with the crossed threads of in- 
 ternational finance and built delicate intrigues as 
 a chUd breathes patterns upon a frosty pane. 
 
 Helen bent to Denman's ear. " Duchesne is the 
 most charming of men," she said. " As a Minister 
 of State, however, he has every virtue that a faith- 
 ful dog should have, except that of dumbness." 
 
 Jamie Denman glowered across the room at the 
 engrossed pair. " Diplomacy leaning on the bosom 
 of finance," he murmured. " At home, we drive on 
 revolution so that the Weaverbridge mines may 
 turn out more and yet more profits: abroad we 
 drive on war so that there may be cheap wool for 
 the Weaverbridge mills and anxious niggers all 
 looking to Weaverbridge to supply them with 
 trousers and typewriters and rejecting the trousers 
 and typewriters of every other accursed nation, 
 while Duchesne smiles and smiles and keeps his 
 portfolio." 
 
 Cecil Howard flung back his fair head and 
 laughed. " I'm sure you're frightfully right," he 
 said. "Weaverbridge would wring humanity's 
 neck to compel it to wear the collars he makes. 
 But you're quite wrong if you think he does it out 
 of malice. He does it because everyone else is do- 
 ing it. Besides, it's for England, don't you know? 
 We mustn't drop behind. It's no use, Jamie. You 
 can't dam Niagara with a treatise on communistic 
 Guilds." He turned to Elizabeth. " Don't you 
 
SEED-TIME 69 
 
 love Jamie? " he asked. " He's so earnest. We're 
 all sliding down tlie precipice together, and Jamie 
 lectures us on the ratio of weight to velocity as we 
 go." 
 
 "Well," said his brother grimly, "that might 
 be better than grinning about it." 
 
 Elizabeth smiled at Jamie Denman. 
 
 As the weeks passed she saw him often. His 
 whimsical sincerity pleased her. She found herself 
 looking across Helen's crowded room for Jamie's 
 narrow face with its dark eyes and the dark hair 
 that was never quite tidy. The touch of his hand 
 stirred in her a strange emotion, at once sweet and 
 painful. It belonged somehow to her childhood; 
 Eichard Marwood, that thwarted dreamer, 
 stretched out vague hands towards his living 
 daughter. The cheated desires of his wife woke 
 in the obscurity of their child's heart. Elizabeth 
 felt herself hungry for some fulfilling emotion. 
 She knew that Jamie would not satisfy her hunger, 
 and she desired the perverse happiness of discon- 
 tent without being aware of the desire. 
 
 Meanwhile she quarrelled with Andrew Howard. 
 A curious attraction drew the two together. To 
 Andrew Elizabeth showed her most unpleasant 
 face. Andrew told himself that he disliked and 
 despised her ; she was intolerably selfish and intol- 
 erably self-assured. There were strange interludes 
 in their hostility when Elizabeth became suddenly 
 gentle and Andrew drew out to her gaze the shy 
 ideals that his bitterness masked. And shortly 
 Elizabeth would be mocking at him and them, while 
 
70 THE CLASH 
 
 a bitter-tongued Andrew gave her scorn for scorn. 
 Desiring nothing so much as his good opinion, she 
 was driven to destroy herself in his eyes. 
 
 One evening Jamie Denman came to the Queen's 
 Gate house an hour before dinner. Elizabeth was 
 sitting alone. She thought he looked tired, and his 
 slight limp, the legacy of a childish accident, was 
 very marked. She found him pathetic, and would 
 have liked to hold the dark head against her breast. 
 He talked a little wearily of his work and fell si- 
 lent. Abruptly he stood up. " Elizabeth," he said, 
 and when she did not move, repeated it harshly. 
 She came and stood beside him. "Are you so 
 tired, Jamie? " she asked, and lifted her hands to 
 caress his bent head. There was no wild surge of 
 desire, but an overwhelming tenderness in her 
 heart. She took his kisses with a passive joy. 
 
 When he had gone, to keep a dinner engagement 
 with Duchesne, Andrew Howard rang her up, of- 
 fering one of his rare invitations. " Can I persuade 
 you to dine with me, Elizabeth? I'll take you to 
 see Juliette Delfourge dance." 
 
 Elizabeth found that she did not want to think 
 about Jamie. A hundred confused thoughts and 
 feelings struggled without guidance in her mind. 
 With an effort, she refused to regard any of them. 
 "I have no time," she repeated, as she dressed. 
 "I'll think it out afterwards." She thrust them 
 away, turning instead to the thought of Andrew. 
 At the moment he appealed to her as a sharp drink 
 to a palate surfeited with sweets. When she sat 
 with him at the dinner table she was thrilled by 
 
SEED-TIME 71 
 
 the nearness of his dark face. She smiled at him 
 with embarrassed tenderness. He was gentle and 
 considerate : she was extraordinarily happy. They 
 talked very little and in the pauses an intimate 
 understanding expressed itself in their glances. 
 Elizabeth felt that there was something important 
 she must say to him. When she had said it, every- 
 thing would be quite clear and pleasant. She 
 would understand what life was. She would under- 
 stand Andrew, and he would understand why she 
 had striven against him so bitterly and now strove 
 no longer. She waited for the moment of revela- 
 tion. Her lips parted. The joy in her heart made 
 her tongue-tied and stupid. Andrew was smiling 
 at her. 
 
 " What were you going to say, Elizabeth? " 
 " I don't know," she stammered. " There was 
 something. Something important. I've forgotten 
 what it was." She sought forlornly for words. 
 Her joy was ebbing from her. She had lost a pre- 
 cious thing and she could not find it, because of 
 her stupidity and her dumbness. 
 
 But Andrew laughed softly. " It doesn't matter, 
 dear child," he said. " I'll tell you afterwards 
 what it is you have forgotten." 
 
 Her mind repeated his words without compre- 
 hending them. She wished that he would talk 
 again, and when he did talk, the tones of his voice 
 stabbed her with their tenderness. She tried to 
 evade it. Andrew shook his head. 
 
 " I'm not going to quarrel with you, Elizabeth. 
 I'm too happy." 
 
72 THE CLASH 
 
 She was glad when they stood outside. Light 
 poured itself out over the pavement, and hung like 
 a net between the dark bloom of the sky and the 
 road filled with scurrying shapes. The faces of 
 the pedestrians were distorted by sharp changing 
 shadows as they twisted their way between the 
 taxis and the motor-cars, and past the shuttered 
 shops. 
 
 " Will you walk, Elizabeth? " 
 
 They made their way slowly along Piccadilly. 
 
 " When I was in Africa," Andrew said, " I never 
 dreamed of London. I used to dream that I was 
 lying face downwards in the long grass at the edge 
 of a stream, trying to catch tadpoles in my fingers. 
 I used to try so hard to catch them like that when 
 I was a small fat child. Can you think of me as 
 a small fat child, Elizabeth? I wore petticoats 
 until I was five. Once I slipped in the stream, and 
 my petticoats billowed out all round me, so that I 
 floated down past the lower terraces of the garden, 
 bawling like Ophelia, not mad, but damnably hu- 
 miliated." 
 
 Elizabeth tried to laugh, and her laughter 
 sounded so graceless in her ears that she stopped, 
 startled. 
 
 " They took the petticoats off me after that, and 
 I walked round in breeches, swollen with pride, and 
 oppressing Cecil until he bit me. He bit very deep 
 and the sight of the blood so interested us both 
 that I forgot my majesty and he forgave me it." 
 
 Juliette Delfourge's dancing anticipated the 
 loosening customs of a war-drunk world. She had 
 
SEED-TIME 73 
 
 danced her way through a Europe that was even 
 then lying under an imminent doom. Her nervous 
 sensitive body responded to forces whose existence 
 she did not suspect and there passed into her danc- 
 ing a madness which infuriated those who watched, 
 so that once in Budapesth, she had been almost 
 crushed under the embraces of a crowd that rushed 
 on to the stage and would have buried her under 
 their gifts. She was like some young wild ailimal 
 that smells blood for the first time and, without 
 lonowing why, abandons itself to an overmastering 
 excitement. 
 
 Elizabeth sat at the back of their box, conscious 
 of nothing except that Andrew was kind to her. 
 As she leaned back in her chair she imagined that 
 she was in his arms. The sense of contentment re- 
 turned, filling her with happiness. She looked at 
 the stage and saw nothing but Andrew's hand on 
 the edge of the box. Juliette Delfourge was danc- 
 ing before a faithless lover. Pointing with furious 
 fingers, she enumerated all her charms of breast 
 and thigh. 
 
 " She has made us an offer for the castle," An- 
 drew said suddenly. 
 
 " Juliette Delfourge? " 
 
 " Yes, I know her quite well. She wants to buy 
 it. She is prepared to outbid the brewer who rents 
 it. I'm rather afraid we shall have to sell. My 
 mother would sooner burn it than see given over 
 to a dancer the room where her marriage bed stood 
 and the room where all the Howards come to be 
 born — such a jolly room, Elizabeth, full of gloom 
 
74 THE CLASH 
 
 and ghosts. So would Cecil, for all Ms much 
 talk." 
 
 " And you? " 
 
 Andrew hesitated. " Sometimes I think that 
 it is only right these things should pass out of our 
 hands. We have had them so long. They have 
 given us their soul. They are in our blood. 
 They've made us. If I want to live in a slum I'd 
 still have in me the grey quiet spaces of the 
 castle, and the incredible softness of its lawns. 
 Just as I had them in Africa, sitting in front of 
 a hut in a land of flies and beastliness. Don't you 
 see? " 
 
 "Juliette Delfourge came from some slum, I 
 think." 
 
 "Yes. From the people who have never pos- 
 sessed anything and so have still to find their way 
 through the husk of material possessions to the 
 bitter-sweet beauty at their heart." 
 
 When the interval came, Andrew stood up. 
 " Wouldn't you like to come and see her? " 
 
 Elizabeth felt an obscure resentment. " Will she 
 see us?" 
 
 " But of course." 
 
 Behind the stage Andrew made straight for Del- 
 fourge's room. He knocked, and getting no answer, 
 pushed open the door. The dancer was lying flat 
 on a narrow couch with a shawl wrapped round 
 her naked body. A woman standing over her 
 turned an anxious face as Andrew walked in. 
 " Oh, Mr. Howard," she began. 
 
 Delfourge swung herself off the couch. " Go 
 
SEED-TIME 75 
 
 away, you old idiot," she said to the woman. 
 " Your sour face depresses me." 
 
 Elizabeth looked at the dancer with pity. Drops 
 of sweat shone on her forehead : the bare arm that 
 held the shawl round her was pressed convulsively 
 against her body. At the base of her throat a pulse 
 leaped under the tawny skin. 
 
 When Andrew sat down, Delfourge flung herself 
 on to his knee. " You never came to see me dance 
 before. Do you like it? Am I as clever as Pav- 
 lova? Am I beautiful?" She bent herself back- 
 wards to look at Elizabeth and the shawl slipped 
 off her childish breasts. " Did you like it? " she 
 said. 
 
 " I thought you were very beautiful," Elizabeth 
 murmured, struggling with a sharp disappointment 
 at the sight of that thin body lying across Andrew's 
 arm. 
 
 "Except that you are white and she was black 
 as night you are exactly like a beautiful African 
 I once knew. She had a passion for murdering 
 her husbands. After she had made away with six- 
 teen in one month I had to interfere. I told her 
 that if she persisted I would write a poem about 
 her in the modern manner, describing all her beau- 
 ties, which would thereupon vanish, as in the mod- 
 ern manner. She thought I was talking black 
 magic and immediately became very virtuous. 
 Afterwards she married herself to a chief who beat 
 her." 
 
 " As I should like to beat you," the dancer said 
 angrily. "Insolent, callous, detestable that you 
 
76 THE CLASH 
 
 are." She hammered his shoulder with her small 
 strong hands and scolded him until a fit of cough- 
 ing stopped the furious voice. Her woman hurried 
 across the room, but Andrew gathered Juliette Del- 
 fourge in his arms and laid her on the couch, cover- 
 ing her with the shawl. " Be quiet," he said. " Be 
 quiet, silly child." 
 
 They did not go back to their box. Elizabeth 
 said that she was tired and would go straight home. 
 In the taxi Andrew did not speak to her. When 
 he had rung Madame de I'Abbaye's bell, he said 
 abruptly, " May I come in? I'd like to talk." 
 
 Elizabeth had not lied when she said that she was 
 tired. Her body ached and she felt incapable of 
 thought. She had lost her sense of Andrew's near- 
 ness ; even his voice sounded unreal. He was talk- 
 ing of Juliette Delfourge. 
 
 " I think that I don't grudge her anything except 
 the stream and the tadpoles. She won't even know 
 they're there. They'll grow fat and multiply with- 
 out ever being chased by a small boy's perfectly 
 futUe fingers. That is what matters." 
 
 " If you were to have children of your own " 
 
 Andrew wheeled round upon her. "D'you be- 
 lieve it's possible for a man and a woman to speak 
 the truth to each other? It's hard enough, I Imow, 
 for two human beings to be truthful. But truth 
 between men and women — oh, unthinkable." 
 
 Elizabeth twisted wearUy in her chair. " I don't 
 understand." 
 
 "If I told you that the Delfourge's body at- 
 tracted me like — like a bitter fruit, you'd be hurt. 
 
SEED-TIME 77 
 
 Probably you'd feel outraged, as if I'd insulted 
 you. And suppose I'd married you, and I told you 
 such things, you'd think I'd ceased to love you or 
 that I was wantonly cruel. You'd think anything 
 except the truth. And so I — who'd die rather 
 than hui't you, having married you — would tell 
 you anything except the truth about that one 
 thing." 
 
 Elizabeth was filled with pity for herself. She 
 fought her ridiculous emotion without mastering 
 it. Andrew stood looking down at her. 
 
 " It's not possible, is it, that women will ever be 
 truthful to men? Oh, of course, you, adorable 
 child that you are, never tell the truth if a para- 
 phrase will do as well. You have the most indirect 
 mind I've ever met, in woman or man." He 
 stopped. "Now how do I know that about you? 
 I didn't know that I Imew it." 
 
 He laughed gently : she saw him lift the dancer 
 on to her couch, and she shivered. 
 
 " Isn't it frightful to think that perhaps oneself 
 was born of a lie — of a forced acquiescence? 
 That's it. One wearies ' even of a beloved body. 
 Oh, not for always, perhaps. But there are moods, 
 sudden repulsions, odd lassitudes. But what 
 woman would be honest about them — or what 
 man? Eather than utter the words under which a 
 lover would shrink, hurt and ashamed, they pre- 
 tend. And so it is always, one lie breeding a hun- 
 dred." The even drawling voice hesitated. " I've 
 thought that it might be possible for a man and a 
 woman to be so much of a mind, one unto another 
 
78 THE CLASH 
 
 as the old books have it, that they'd not need to lie. 
 They'd know each other so well that one would 
 answer the other's inexpressed moods. D'you be- 
 lieve in a marriage like that, Elizabeth? " 
 
 He laid his hands on the arm of her chair like 
 a caress. Elizabeth turned her eyes away from 
 them. 
 
 " I don't know," she said. " I'm going to marry 
 Jamie Denman." 
 
 He looked at her and laughed. While she 
 averted her face to hide the tears that poured over 
 it, he laughed, rocking with mirth. 
 
 " Oh, Elizabeth, my Elizabeth," he said, " how 
 perfectly splendid of you. You are like a beautiful 
 picture. In a moment I shall almost believe that 
 you are real." 
 
 Elizabeth jumped to her feet. " Oh," she cried, 
 " I understand why Juliette Delfourge wanted to 
 
 beat you. Insolent, callous, detestable You 
 
 are, you are." 
 
 He laid his hand gently across her lips. "No, 
 dear chUd," he said earnestly, " I am not really any 
 of these things. I am always your devoted friend, 
 Andrew Howard, at your service." 
 
 On his way downstairs he laughed again. 
 " Upon my soul," he murmured, " I believe she 
 wanted me to take out my heart and say, ' See how 
 beautifully it pumps the blood through my veins.' 
 Women really are too absurd." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Elizabeth turned her head to look tlirougli the 
 window. Dawn like a grey moth spread her wings 
 in the east. The hills leaned together above the 
 empty fields, and the river lay between them, a 
 bright sword quenched in the long grass. She 
 raised herself cautiously to bend over her husband. 
 He slept with flushed cheeks, and lips parted by a 
 light breath. He was helpless, a child held be- 
 tween her breasts. She possessed him utterly; she 
 had given him life, and sleep for a benediction. 
 Fulfilled of his love, she bore him as a mother her 
 child. The fierce passion of the mother lapped her 
 round with fire. He stirred, a faint movement of 
 lashes above the shadowed eyes. She bent lower 
 to keep the dawn from that negligent sleep. 
 Through his wakening eyes would look the 
 stranger she had married. Her chUd would be 
 separated from her, life ebbing from her body to 
 become an alien life, hostile to her. 
 
 His eyes opened and for a moment, like pools 
 beneath the careless face of night, looked unseeing 
 into the brooding eyes above them. Thought woke 
 in them and he turned his face to the whiteness 
 of her breast. She touched the dark hair with piti- 
 ful fingers and her pallor flushed into radiance 
 against his warmth. 
 
CHAPTEE X 
 
 Elizabeth found herself the mistress of two 
 houses on the Kentish weald: one a large oak- 
 panelled cottage, and the other a Georgian house 
 of terrifying size. It stood in the centre of a park, 
 and avenues of trees radiated from the lawns round 
 the house to the field-bound circumference. Jamie 
 had let it after the death of his parents, and now 
 prepared to take it back. Elizabeth asked 
 nervously if he preferred it to the cottage, which 
 stood in its oAvn large gardens between the park 
 and the village of Felshott. He did not, and tried 
 to discover what was in her mind. But Elizabeth, 
 who could never approach anything directly, 
 hedged for some days. Then she asked abruptly if 
 she might use the Georgian mansion but not live 
 in it. She wanted it for babies and mothers. 
 
 " Babies with no fathers," she explained pain- 
 fully. " A place where they can come to be bom, 
 and the mothers be happy for a while. You see," 
 she added quickly, " it's your house and your 
 money, and so I feel unhappy in asking it." 
 
 " The money is an accident," her husband said. 
 " Some of us, like my father, were lucky, and made 
 money out of the nineteenth century and some of 
 us were unlucky, like your grandfather, and were 
 ruined by it. It doesn't belong to me : it just hap- 
 
SEED-TIME 81 
 
 pens to be in my hands. My father could not do 
 anything with it, you know, and neither can I. 
 We do not belong to the people who understand the 
 money trick. It is like our estates and our castles : 
 we shall keep it untU someone takes it away from 
 us. .We can't use it, as Weaverbridge can, to rule 
 the world. We can't fertilise it, I mean. We can 
 only spend it. But are you sure you want to spend 
 it in just this way? " 
 
 " It will cost a lot." 
 
 "Elizabeth," Jamie shouted, "will you never 
 answer a question directly? Do you want to grow 
 babies at Felshott Hall? It will mean you your- 
 self doing with comparatively little, you know." 
 
 She nodded. "I could do all the secretarial 
 work," she said. 
 
 She had her way. The transformation of Fel- 
 shott took some months : it had only just been com- 
 pleted when Jamie began to talk guardedly of a 
 European crisis. Elizabeth, absorbed in her work, 
 regarded him very little. War came. Jamie was 
 working eighteen hours a day. One morning Eliza- 
 beth found him sleeping on a chair in his dressing- 
 room. He had been too exhausted to undress. She 
 made him more comfortable, and then stood look- 
 ing down at him. His pallor and his weariness 
 stirred in her, as always, a profound emotion. She 
 reproached herself that she had not loved him 
 enough ; when he woke she would make him under- 
 stand that she adored him. 
 
 Kneeling by his chair she murmured a hundred 
 gentle phrases. He opened his eyes and looked 
 
82 THE CLASH 
 
 at her. "I'm damnably tired, Elizabetlu" She 
 slipped an arm under his head. 
 
 " Then rest." 
 
 He smiled, turning to press his cheek into the 
 curve of her arm. " I can't rest in this confounded 
 chair, you know." 
 
 " Need you work so hard? " 
 
 " Work? Don't, my dear. I've an old Brigadier 
 in my department and every morning he brings out 
 a little air cushion and proceeds to blow it up. 
 He's scant of breath and he hoots into it for nearly 
 half-an-hour. ' Hoo, hoo, damn it, there ought to 
 be someone to do this for me — hoo. Lard save us, 
 hoo, hoo . . . the Crimea . . . the Cape 
 . . . hoo.' My work? That's what it's like. 
 Writing and talking and filing — like hooting into 
 an air cushion. Until my brains melt in my head. 
 We had a young of&cer in this morning. He 
 watched the Brigadier chasing flies with a large 
 silk handkerchief — hooting violently all the time 
 — and then he said, 'D'you know what I simply 
 can't stand? The sight of flies crawling about in- 
 side a man's mouth when he's lying dead in the 
 sun.' You know, Elizabeth, I can't look these 
 young offtcers in the face." 
 
 Elizabeth took his head pityingly between her 
 hands. He freed himself. " No. I really don't 
 want to be soothed just now, even though you do it 
 so charmingly." 
 
 She winced. He was instantly remorseful. 
 "Forgive me. I'm an ungracious wretch." He 
 added cheerfully, " I limp along after you like a 
 
SEED-TIME 83 
 
 lame dog. Why did you marry a lame dog, Eliza- 
 beth? " 
 
 She bent to caress Wm. Jamie grinned. " Pat 
 the faithful creature," he said ruefully, and drag- 
 ging himself out of his chair, limped away towards 
 the bathroom. Elizabeth looked after him. The 
 futUe pity in her heart had a forked tongue. She 
 knew that her thought of Jamie as an unhappy 
 child would not bear scrutiny. She could not com- 
 fort him. And if she could? Pity was an inso- 
 lent gesture. A feeling that was half resentment 
 and oddly half guilt troubled her. 
 
 She sighed, and went to see Madame de I'Abbaye. 
 Helen, become suddenly very old and querulous, 
 complained that her drawiug-room was nothing but 
 a railway station, with people saying good-bye and 
 waving excited arms everywhere. Andrew How- 
 ard had already gone to Prance and Cecil was 
 training at an O. T. C. camp. Lord Weaverbridge, 
 in violent eruption, appeared once. He was moved 
 profoundly by the spectacle of an England swept 
 by a flame of loyalty. Young men hurried from 
 every corner of the world to her defence, and his 
 miners had foregone a threatened strike. He pre- 
 pared to become a watchdog on the glorious ram- 
 parts lest the England that bore him should perish. 
 
 Early in 1915 Jamie succeeded in escaping from 
 the Foreign Office into the Eoyal Plying Corps. 
 He entered it on the Equipment side, where his 
 lameness was no matter, and the late summer 
 found him on a desolate station in the south of 
 England. Elizabeth stayed at Felshott. 
 
84 THE CLASH . 
 
 She was in town, and sitting alone in Helen's 
 library, when Cecil Howard came. In three days 
 he would be in France. He looked astonishingly 
 youthful and he laughed, he said, for the same rea- 
 son that young colts lie on their backs kicking. 
 Elizabeth kept back tears by an effort that left her 
 shaken. She spoke abruptly. 
 
 " Do you want to fight? " 
 
 " Why no," he said cheerfully, " I simply loathe 
 blood and filth. Weaverbridge, the old villain, 
 clutched my hand and said, ' My boy, live for En- 
 gland if you can, but if you die, we know that 
 you die gladly.' I said, ' Certainly, sir, a splendid 
 idea of yours.' I believe he thought I was drunk. 
 Why, Elizabeth, don't. I'm frightfully disap- 
 pointed in you." 
 
 Elizabeth wept bitterly, with an arm across her 
 eyes, like a child. The boy's voice changed. " Do 
 you care so much? " he said, and then, " Elizabeth, 
 my darling, it's not fair. For God's sake, don't." 
 
 She was quiet, and turning blindly, seated her- 
 self in a corner of the couch. Cecil stood over her. 
 " You linow I love you," he said quietly, " and you 
 love me, and it would be so splendidly easy to for- 
 get everything but that. Isn't it so? " 
 
 She loved his careless youth and the unconscious 
 contempt that edged his sweetness. Hesitating 
 over the sense of innumerable things unsaid, she 
 answered him — 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " If you had married me, my dear," he added 
 gravely, "I could have given you something you 
 
SEED-TIME 85 
 
 want very much. Do you know what I mean? I 
 mean the satisfaction of being gloriously and beau- 
 tifully mad. You've never known that, have you, 
 Elizabeth? But you've thought of it." 
 
 He caught her outstretched hands and then put 
 them gently back. " It would be so easy," he said, 
 " and somehow so utterly right." 
 
 She watched him walk away from her: at the 
 door he turned and strode back. " You love Jamie, 
 don't you? " he demanded. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I know you do. I don't ask you to love him 
 less. And you are never to think of all this and 
 reproach yourself. I'm entirely satisfied to know 
 that in your heart you've made a mad involuntary 
 answer to my mad desires." He laughed and kissed 
 her on the mouth. " No, that's ridiculous. I'm 
 entirely dissatisfied, but you are not to mind." 
 
 He went with a smile on his lips and Elizabeth 
 heard him calling to someone on the stairs. 
 
 She sat and thought. In three days he would be 
 in France. He had gone away now, asking noth- 
 ing, not even to be remembered. She knew beyond 
 possibility of doubt that she could have kept him. 
 There would have been three days. It was even 
 now not too late to send for him. And he would 
 come. He would open the door and cross quickly 
 to her. She would be crushed in his strength, and 
 see the laughing mouth grow grave and tender. 
 What was life worth to the cautious heart and the 
 tired body? 
 
 She stopped herself abruptly on the huri-ying 
 
86 THE CLASH 
 
 verge of that madness, and her habit of intellectual 
 detachment asserted itself. Listening to the speech 
 of her blood, it was easy to think of herself and 
 Cecil as lovers. There was nothing mean or ugly 
 in the fierce desire of youth for swift youth. It 
 had been made to seem so, but that was a treachery. 
 She would not have hidden it from Jamie. She 
 was sure that he would have understood. 
 
 It was not Jamie who made it impossible, but a 
 foreknowledge of regret. In contemplating it, she 
 endured already the sense of a despoiled heritage. 
 There might have been lost only something that 
 women had been tricked into cherishing, but though 
 she could think that, she could not feel it, and 
 Elizabeth understood that one paid heavily for a 
 disregarded feeling. She had thought, too, that 
 love was the simplest of the emotions. It was in- 
 deed very complicated. She was resentful, and 
 abruptly, the thought of CecU returned. She closed 
 her eyes against that laughing appeal. 
 
 Three hours later she was on her way to Hollow 
 Down. Jamie met her at the little station. He 
 was embarrassed. The squadron was on the edge 
 of a burnt-up plain. The nearest village was three 
 miles from the station and he reflected unhappily 
 on the discomforts of the inn. 
 
 The inn bedroom was certainly bare, but it was 
 clean and the windows opened on to a garden. The 
 fragrance of late stocks filled the room. Jamie 
 took Elizabeth in his arms. " Why have you come 
 down? " he asked softly. A smile curved his mouth. 
 " You have been in mischief, Elizabeth." 
 
SEED-TIME 87 
 
 Tlie tears filled her eyes. " There was Cecil 
 Howard," she murmured, " and he was going away. 
 I was unhappy. I went a little mad. They are so 
 young " 
 
 Jamie held her more closely. " Do you Imow," 
 he answered her, " that your happiness ought not 
 to hang on Cecil Howard? You are mine." 
 
 She closed her eyes, yielding herself to his 
 urgency. 
 
CHAPTEE XI 
 
 During the winter of 1916 Elizabeth was caught 
 in a London air raid. Madame de I'Abbaye had 
 sent for her. Throughout the raid Elizabeth sat 
 beside the old woman's bed. 
 
 Helen was dying. The crash of the bombs came 
 upon her ears through a mufBlng darkness. She 
 was back in France, and once a soft laughter came 
 from those twisted lips, and once she cried terribly, 
 " I am old, old, and they are murdering youth." 
 Elizabeth held the twitching hands, and at every 
 crash endured the heart-sickening fear of death. 
 Helen died in the breathless quiet before dawn. 
 
 Elizabeth's son was born a month later and lived 
 three weeks. He had rested quietly beside her 
 since his birth. With a foreboding of ill Elizabeth 
 had refused to lay him in his cradle. She kept him 
 with her: on one white breast he laid his tiny 
 hand, outspread like a flower. He slept very little, 
 and one day fell asleep and did not wake. 
 
 Elizabeth was tearless. Jamie bent over her, 
 and she turned away her head. 
 
 Her mind had no opiates to offer this anguish. 
 She hid in silence from the intolerable flick of pity. 
 Her thoughts were a grave in which they had 
 buried the flower-like face and the small perfect 
 body. 
 
 After a while she began to build herself a wall 
 
SEED-TIME 89 
 
 round the grave. She taught her feet to forget the 
 paths that led to it, and so came back into life. 
 
 She stayed on at the Felshott cottage, and 
 wearied herself with completing the arrangements 
 of Felshott Hall. One day Jamie came on leave. 
 She found herself regarding him as a slightly trou- 
 blesome intruder. Towards dusk they walked from 
 the Hall to the cottage. The ice on small pools 
 crackled under their feet and a black tracery of 
 boughs hedged them from the rimed fields. They 
 walked in silence, and Elizabeth was conscious of a 
 change in Jamie's attitude. He had waited plac- 
 idly while she wrote letters and compared accounts, 
 and had listened as placidly to the small pieces of 
 information that she paused to throw him. He had 
 the air of waiting now for some other and more im- 
 portant revelation. She roused herself to ask ques- 
 tions. 
 
 " Why not come back to Hollow Down," Jamie 
 said suddenly. " This place can run itself without 
 you, I think. We might take a house there . . ." 
 
 Elizabeth was startled, as if he had made an 
 absurd suggestion. " But why not? " she mur- 
 mured vaguely. Jamie was sUent. 
 
 Two hours later he came into her room. She 
 turned in the firelight as he came. He pushed her 
 gently into a chair and knelt beside it. He forgot 
 what he had meant to say. He pressed his face 
 against her firm small breasts and wound his arms 
 around her. He felt a soft touch on his hair. 
 " Elizabeth," he stammered, " Elizabeth, my love." 
 His brain reeled a little. He waited with a strange 
 
90 THE CLASH 
 
 anguish for her to speak. Her gentle touch mad- 
 dened him. He held her fiercely, crushing her. 
 Then she seemed to waken, moving restlessly in his 
 arms and looking at him with a hovering smile. 
 He was conscious of a faint resentment. There 
 was something ridiculous in the hunger of his body. 
 Unhappiuess seized him. He bowed his face to her 
 knees. 
 
 Elizabeth felt only an immense pity. No an- 
 swering emotion shook her. She slipped down be- 
 side him and with hands and lips flung over him the 
 warmth of her pity, so that he was content, and 
 took her, being content. 
 
CHAPTEE XII 
 
 Cecil Howard writing from France to Jamie 
 Denman. 
 
 " Did I tell you that they had given me a decora- 
 tion? I believe I did. I tried to find out why, 
 but had the correspondence returned. I've had a 
 strenuous day. With a rifle in No Man's Land at 
 midnight looking for wire and trouble : then round 
 the posts, and so to bed at dawn. All the morning 
 I have been collecting Biblical prints in the ruins 
 of this town. We are living in the cellars of an old 
 brewery and across the road is the garden where 
 D'Artagan murdered somebody in an honourable 
 quarrel. In the twelfth century market-place a 
 stone stands to say * Here Sir Paladin and Sir 
 Saladin fought and afterwards embraced, like chiv- 
 alrous knights.' 
 
 " Some of this is true and the rest is atmosphere. 
 Choose for yourself, my dear. 
 
 " I see that you've hanged Casement. God bless 
 my soul, this is a wretched little planet. Cannot 
 a man to-day back his fancy in kings without being 
 hanged in a mediaeval fantasy? 
 
 " This morning I found a child wandering about 
 the market-place in serene contemplation of death. 
 We kept her for a few hours and then I took her 
 home. She led me to a hole in the ground, from 
 which rose a frightful and indescribably stale 
 
92 THE CLASH 
 
 odour. Here she disappeared, and I followed down 
 steps choked with bricks and rubble, into the cellar 
 of a wrecked house. The mother displayed no joy 
 at her return, and listened indifferently to my 
 warnings. She seemed equally indifferent to the 
 filth and disorder round her. With delicate folded 
 hands, she sat in the middle of that foul place like 
 a woman already dead, careless of lost children, 
 ruin and dirt. Later I learned that she and her 
 husband had been the great people of the place, and 
 for some reason that gently-bred woman had not 
 fled, but remaining, had become as I found her, 
 neither woman nor mother, but just a mute gesture 
 before the indecent folly of war. 
 
 " We entered this place last week. The Germans 
 have been in it nearly six months, and of course 
 our guns long since made a ruin of it. I went 
 round with a Belgian offtcer, who regarded the 
 desolation in silence. At last I could stand it no 
 longer, and said to him, 'When you look at the 
 work of our guns, you must find it difficult to feel 
 properly grateful to your allies for their defence of 
 your country.' 
 
 " He answered out of his silence, ' Have you ever 
 known what it was to love a town — your birth- 
 place perhaps — with a love so passionate and so 
 intimate that it is in your heart like a beloved per- 
 son? Its cobbled streets are for you the tender 
 gestures of a lover and its little houses are holy, 
 like thoughts. If you have known that terrible 
 affection, deeper and more lasting than any a man 
 can feel for his kind, then you know what I feel 
 
SEED-TIME 93 
 
 when I look at this, and yon will not misunder- 
 stand me if I say that you are all the enemies of my 
 country. All, all, the German who has defiled her 
 and you, my friend, who 'have defended her, re- 
 deeming her virtue with her blood.' 
 
 " To this, I think, there is nothing to add. 
 
 " We have with us a mad priest who spends his 
 scant leisure wi'iting a philosophic history of man 
 upon odd scraps of paper, which the wind snatches 
 out of his hand and the mud engulfs. I asked him 
 once whether he had discovered the end of wars. 
 His researches, he said, had confirmed him in his 
 belief that all other planets are uninhabited. He 
 could not think that living creatures are devouring 
 each other in a universe of moribund life. He ob- 
 served, too, that wars would cease when all men 
 had developed that sixth sense now possessed by a 
 few — the sense of each other's thoughts. This, 
 said he, would give hands and a tongue to the mute 
 crippled instinct to sympathy which exists in all 
 men and is articulate in none. But he thought that 
 the race would cease at the same time, since love 
 and marriage would become impossible to beings 
 endowed with such delicate perceptions. Yester- 
 day I found him writing feverishly on an uncom- 
 monly clean piece of paper. ' Ah, the history, fa- 
 ther,' said I. He answered me absently, 'I am 
 writing to my sister to felicitate her on the death 
 of her child in infancy.' 
 
 " You would know that Andrew has sold the cas- 
 tle, though not to the brewer. He has sold it to 
 Juliette Delfourge, and the dancer's beautiful body, 
 
94 THE CLASH 
 
 which has delighted so many men and so many au- 
 diences, will now rest on the bedstead of the Virgin 
 Queen. 'Not so inapt, I fancy. 
 
 '* I sent out a party to a saphead : it has just re- 
 turned and the sergeant in charge reports the sap- 
 head full of Boches. I am sure it can't be, because 
 I was up there myself yesterday and found it full 
 of water. Unless they are drowned Boches. It 
 behooves me to go and see. Afterwards I shall 
 quarrel with Higher Authority about office routine. 
 I myself have acquired great wisdom in the use of 
 Eoneos, Stollwercks and cross-index files, and I re- 
 gret the leisurely atmosphere that is creeping into 
 the correspondence of Higher Authority. . . ." 
 
 Extract from one of the letters that ordinary, 
 uninspired men found themselves writing in the 
 years between 1914 and 1918. 
 
 " To the Honourable Mrs. la Mothe Howard : 
 
 "Any grief of ours must be an impertinence in 
 the eyes of yours. But I would like to say to you 
 that those of us who knew him have not lost the 
 sense of your son's presence. He was always joy- 
 ous, and when we laugh he still laughs with us, and 
 when we are cold and wet and short-tempered it 
 seems certain that we shall in a moment hear him 
 laughing at us out of the shadows. It is not I who 
 can write of immortality or of souls, to a mother 
 from whom has been taken the body of her son. 
 And yet it is true that Cecil will never now die or 
 grow old and uninterested " 
 
PAET II 
 HARVEST 
 
CHAPTER I 
 
 America had been at war for six montlis. Cap- 
 tain Jess Cornish, officer commanding an American 
 Aero Squadron, stood on the declc of a troopship 
 and looked round him as the ship moved slowly up 
 the Mersey. Both banks were shrouded in a thick 
 fog and he listened gloomily to muffled shouts from 
 the landing stage. Some hours later, he and his 
 men were entrained for Hollow Down, by way of a 
 rest camp in the south of England. They were 
 depressed, and inclined to regard the unfamiliar 
 train as a wanton slight. 
 
 Eather more than a century and a half before, a 
 certain Jess Cornish, of English peasant stock, set 
 sail for the colony of New England. Here he had 
 been able to indulge a Cato-like passion for moral- 
 ity which satisfied itself in burning witches and 
 flogging incautious lovers. He added to a moder- 
 ate income by turning entrepreneur in the traffic in 
 negroes, for whose souls, rescued from African bar- 
 barism, he gave praise to God. Late in life, he 
 quarrelled with his son and threatened him with 
 the pillory as a loose liver. The second Jess Cor- 
 nish thereupon set out across the AUeghanies, tak- 
 ing his wife and a family of six children. During 
 the hardships of that trek, three children died and 
 were buried by the way. The rest reached a fertile 
 
98 THE CLASH 
 
 valley of Kentucky, and unltnown to themselves, 
 discovered America. Between those vast horizons 
 the parochial customs of the seaboard colony faded 
 out of mind. The pioneers looked out upon their 
 heritage with new eyes, behind which a new mind 
 stirred. It was the mind of America. The shadow 
 of England fell across its flushed dreams and it 
 woke to find itself afire with a jealous love. The 
 third Jess Cornish hated England, and when revolt 
 had ended in victory, he felt the future in his bones 
 and was filled with an exultant joy. 
 
 His son, drawn by the hunger of insatiable 
 spaces, went still further west, to Tennessee. Sav- 
 age man on one side and savage beast on the other, 
 demonstrated to him the Equality of Man, en- 
 shrined already in the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence. By man, he understood white man. He rode 
 with genius and shot with all necessary despatch. 
 The Cornish records of his life are scanty, but 
 somewhere about 1830 he appears in Texas, then 
 still an independent State. He is growing cotton, 
 taking advantage of the sudden expansion in the 
 cotton trade, and has married for the second time 
 a Spanish woman of great beauty. This fourth 
 Cornish is the prototype of Captain Jess Cornish, 
 and to be a little regarded. There is a letter of his, 
 written to a younger brother, which must be very 
 like the man. He wrote: "I have had to get rid 
 of my Yankee manager. He'd read in the Bible 
 that the children of Ham were doomed to slavery 
 in expiation of their sins, and he was making my 
 niggers expiate the sins of the whole Hammish 
 
HARVEST 99 
 
 race. I told him I didn't liold with beating nig- 
 gers, and he insisted on proving to me that God had 
 sent him to be a scourge among them. He did it 
 from Genesis, I think, but I'm adrift among these 
 theological arguments. You can work them both 
 ways. There was a man down here from Massa- 
 chusetts who told me it was better in the sight of 
 God to be an adulterer than a slave owner. I asked 
 him how he knew. He got me roused, and I re- 
 minded him that Boston made its money out of 
 niggers before it saw light. And then there was 
 just light enough to see those godly men dumping 
 their slaves on us before they flung up holy hands 
 and talked about a Covenant with Death and an 
 Agreement with Hell. But the cotton trade is go- 
 ing to the devil, and won't be fit for gentlemen if 
 many more of these moralising, ledger-mad nigger- 
 drivers get hold of it." There is a copy of Cal- 
 houn's famous State paper covered with approving 
 comments in the old cotton-grower's heavy scrawl. 
 Calhoun, defending the institution of slavery as 
 good in itself, anticipated the trend of modern re- 
 form. Cornish did not know this, but Calhoun 
 pleased him. He concealed a cool, practical genius 
 under a somewhat extravagant humour. He made 
 jokes to cover his passion for making money. His 
 jokes were not seldom held to be in poor taste. 
 Someone has preserved, with displeasure, his ob- 
 servation on John Brown : " another of those poor 
 weak-headed drunkards who swallow God neat: 
 whiskey would do them less harm." 
 
 There were several younger brothers of his still 
 
100 THE CLASH 
 
 in Tennessee, and the numerous children of his first 
 marriage had either been left there or had gone 
 back. The imagination of three or four genera- 
 tions of the Cornish men was ridden by the thought 
 of those illimitable acres. They disappeared into 
 the west; some of them came back, lean-faced, 
 moneyless adventurers. Both branches of the fam- 
 ily intermarried, and always one Cornish stayed 
 in Texas, turning cotton into dollars. When the 
 North made Mr. Lincoln President, the son of the 
 Spaniard was filling this part. He had a quality 
 of indolence which the Texan family kfept hence- 
 forth, and he cared for State sovereignty as little as 
 he cared for the philosophic merits of slave owning. 
 He wanted nothing but to be left in peace to grow 
 his cotton. He did, however, dislike a Yankee al- 
 most as much as he disliked an Englishman, and 
 fought in the war with courage, lapsing once or 
 twice into a fiendish cruelty. His slaves remained 
 loyal, but it was some time before the Cornish for- 
 tune was restored. After the terrors of " Eecon- 
 struction ", a Texan Cornish is again employing a 
 few negroes. They are no longer of his family but 
 he treats them with a contemptuous kindliness, 
 which is quick to show a face of rage at the whisper 
 of black discontent. 
 
 Captain Jess Cornish is the eldest son of a rich 
 man. At twenty-five he has already, at least in his 
 own sight, done everything worth doing. He is 
 squarely built, and it is easy to see what will hap- 
 pen to him if indolence ever masters the restless 
 
HAEVEST 101 
 
 passion driving him in and out of adventure, repu- 
 table and not reputable : it is all one to Jess Cor- 
 nish. The sun does not tan him, but his skin will 
 never be white in any climate; it has developed a 
 protective swarthy pigment. His mouth is small 
 and arrogant, widening into a smile of unexpected 
 charm. He walks with a swing from the hips, 
 which is itself unconsciously arrogant. He learned 
 to handle a gun as soon as he learned to handle a 
 deck of cards, and both at a time when English 
 boys of his age were going first to school. He went 
 to a military school and escaped education, except 
 for some fragments on which his uncertain interest 
 seized. These included, oddly enough, an intimate 
 knowledge of the Letters of Junius. But at six- 
 teen he was already a man of the world — a man 
 of his world. He has a single-minded passion for 
 making money and a single-minded admiration of 
 the heroic virtues, as he understands them. These 
 conflicting ideals he keeps in different compart- 
 ments of his mind, and so escapes any paltry mis- 
 givings on either score. This, which in an English- 
 man would be hypocrisy — per fide Albion — is in 
 him only the charming disingenuity of a young 
 nation. 
 
 The plainest difference between this Cornish and 
 his first Texan ancestor is a certain narrowing of 
 mental audacity. The earlier Cornish had been a 
 natural sceptic, yet with a sharply conceived mo- 
 rality, as bold as his speech. Captain Jess Cornish 
 has no morals but he has a number of very com- 
 mendable sentiments, and he exacts from women 
 
102 THE CLASH 
 
 of his own class a morality of the strictest and most 
 conventional order. 
 
 What he was thinking of England, as that de- 
 spised train carried hiin through her little fields 
 and past her manor houses hidden in ancient trees, 
 may be found in a letter to his father, whom he 
 adored. 
 
 " They call this an express," he wrote, " and I 
 will say the boys have expressed themselves about 
 it very freely. We shall probably arrive on the 
 scheduled time but it will be just one day behind 
 time. We were met on the quay by an Englishman 
 who must at one time have worked for the German 
 Government; he had more nerve and less diplo- 
 macy with it than anyone I ever saw. He said: 
 ' You'll have to get twelve of your men in each of 
 those compartments.' I said : ' If you mean by 
 compartments those little boxes, why, the boys 
 won't stand for it.' Then he asked me if I'd all I 
 needed. I told him that I needed a bath, a turkish 
 towel, nine fried eggs and a quart of whiskey. He 
 discovered a sense of humour and some whiskey 
 both about the same time. 
 
 " No wonder the ideas of these people are limited. 
 Sixty millions of them all huddled together on a 
 little island, living by rule of thumb. They cling 
 to their traditions because tradition is the only 
 heritage they have. I think they know they are at 
 an end but they don't admit it yet." 
 
 He had only been in England some few hours, 
 but he had a fine instinct. 
 
 Three weeks later he reported the arrival of him- 
 
HAEVEST 103 
 
 self and his squadron to the English officer com- 
 manding Hollow Down. He had been anticipated. 
 The day before, an American airman, making a 
 forced landing on the aerodrome, had found his 
 way to Staff Headquarters hut and walked in with- 
 out waiting to knock. He chose the most dignified 
 of the English officers therein present, a Colonel 
 with an Indian record. Shaking him violently by 
 the hand, he said joyously, " Say, are you the main 
 guy round here? Because if you are, I've just 
 spread my gasoline kite right out on your lawn." 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Jamie Dbnman conceived a liking for Captain 
 Cornish. Behind the American's defensive cour- 
 tesy, he suspected a violent hostility. He set him- 
 self to break through the other's reserve. The day 
 on which he succeeded was one of the most painful 
 in his life. Behind his sceptical dislike of a Weav- 
 erbridge civilisation he had yet, unknown to him- 
 self, cherished the vision of a kindly English race, 
 loved and revered by all other nations. He suffered 
 in seeing his dream dragged into the light of day 
 and covered with a harsh and bitter mockery. 
 
 He had come upon the American crushing down 
 his rage after an interview with the English Major 
 in command of the station. " There was what the 
 newspapers call an incident," he said shortly. 
 " Some of my boys and some of yours had an argu- 
 ment. Your Major sent for me to say that I wasn't 
 co-operating. I told him that so far as I had been 
 able to see, the Englishman's idea of co-operation 
 is to do anything that damn well comes into his 
 head and leave the other fellow to think up a way 
 to fit in with it." 
 
 " Was he — impressed? " 
 
 Cornish smUed with his odd charm. "I can't 
 honestly say that he saw the idea," he answered 
 softly. "But one wouldn't expect it. If this 
 
HARVEST 105 
 
 nation ever gets hold of an idea it will probably 
 blow up." 
 
 Jamie laughed. " The Major has been too much 
 for you." 
 
 " He's too much for the whole world," the other 
 retorted, " but he doesn't know it." 
 
 Jamie was halfway to the door, flinging over his 
 shoulder a soothing phrase. A savage exclamation 
 halted him there. 
 
 Jess said — " You cert'nly are a liberal and 
 peace-loving nation. I should thiuk that you in- 
 vented liberal sentiments. We have all heard you 
 talking of the beauty of holiness. An Empire of 
 more than four hundred million people has a loud 
 voice. Sure you want peace ; having got away with 
 everything that wasn't tied down you'd like to sleep 
 over it. You want an Empire but you want* it to 
 give as little trouble as possible. You've one policy 
 for India, Egypt, and all the rest — ' Is that a head 
 above water? Let's throw something at it.' I'll 
 agree you're apostles of freedom. Freedom under 
 the fat British thumb. You've run all over the 
 world bringing liberty and light to them that sit in 
 darkness, and isn't it quaint you found someone 
 had tied nineteen million square miles of it on to 
 your tail? " 
 
 Jamie's resentment was pathetic. He thought 
 with a sudden and ardent sympathy of Andrew 
 Howard, who had never been able to understand 
 the state of a mind that could withhold reverence 
 from the Navy. He thought also, and was oddly 
 moved by the thought, of those weary Englishmen 
 
106 THE CLASH 
 
 toiling in all the strange corners of tie earth, to fit 
 justice to the crime of Empire. They stood guard 
 over a volcano and pretended, with the most charm- 
 ing nonchalance, that it did not exist. 
 
 He found that he could not answer Jess Cornish 
 because the other man spoke a different tongue. 
 He curbed an instinctive desire to talk nonsense 
 " Other nations have blundered in their colonies 
 far more cruelly than we," he said at last. 
 
 " They don't call it bringing light," Jess retorted. 
 
 He added, " Neither are they so darned superior 
 minded about it." 
 
 The Englishman sensed an enox'mous resentment. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 GiLBBKT Manners died suddenly in. the June of 
 that year. Elizabeth, waited with him through the 
 short night before his death. He did not speak to 
 her, nor to Miriam. When the first light was mov- 
 ing over the cool grass below his window the old 
 woman stood beside him, " He could speak if he 
 liked," she said angrily. " He is obstinate. It is 
 because I would not let him walk in the garden 
 after nightfall." She bent over the bed. " You 
 need not speak," she said fiercely. 
 
 Her brother opened one eye. It regarded her 
 with malice. A little cackle of laughter came be- 
 tween his lips and then a convulsion shook him, 
 terrible to witness. He fought for breath, staring 
 with dying eyes at the gaunt face above him. Like 
 death itself, Miriam stood between him and the 
 light that ran widening across the world. 
 
 Elizabeth arranged the funeral. Her great-aunt 
 sat brooding in a corner and took no interest in 
 anything save the details of her immense baldng. 
 She had bidden to the funeral farmers and their 
 wives from many miles round. The day broke 
 with a heat mist veiling the hills. When the sun 
 rose the valley was filled with a luminous haze. 
 Long before noon the funeral guests were at the 
 house, surrounding the laden tables. Twelve hams 
 had been baked, together with a dozen chickens and 
 
108 THE CLASH 
 
 half as many rounds of beef. All these were cold 
 and over the hams Miriam had poured old sherry. 
 There were also vast gooseberry pies, with the fruit 
 lying close under the golden crust, and beside them 
 lemon tarts covered high with beaten white of egg, 
 honey cakes, angel cake, dark rich fruit cake, 
 golden rice cakes, sponge cakes made with duck 
 eggs, and almond cakes made with crushed 
 almonds, double cream and thrice-sifted sugar. 
 Dishes piled high with early strawberries stood be- 
 side bowls of cream. In the slender-necked decan- 
 ters were raisin wine, five years old and rich with 
 the richness of old port, orange wine made with old 
 brandy, and cold mulled ginger wine, odorous with 
 spices. Small black cherries that had soaked for 
 two years in fine French brandy lay in small dishes 
 beside plates of crisp wafers. 
 
 It was two o'clock when the guests, turning re- 
 luctantly from the gargantuan fragments of that 
 feast, started on their long walk to the church. 
 Six farmers, breathing stertorously, carried the 
 coffin along the field-path to the village and across 
 a plank bridge over the stream. Here they rested 
 it to wipe dripping foreheads and crimson necks. 
 The road up the far side of the valley was a narrow 
 twisting lane, high-hedged and stony. Panting and 
 groaning the bearers toiled upwards. Elizabeth 
 and Miriam walked behind them. The men's feet 
 loosened stones, which rattled slowly down through 
 the grunting, sweating company below. One of 
 the nobly-fed guests had a violent bout of hic- 
 coughs. 
 
HAEVEST 109 
 
 Elizabeth looked from tlie ground to the hedge- 
 rows. Tiny insects scurried over the burnt earth. 
 Heavy with wild roses, the branches feU across the 
 path. The honeysuckle broke in blossom over the 
 crest of the rose bushes, with flies droning in its 
 tawny clusters. No breath of air came between the 
 thick leaves, but when a gateway broke the hedge, 
 Elizabeth saw a field riotous with buttercups and 
 yellow broom. Her head swam in that air, heavy 
 with the scents stored between the murmurous 
 thickets. Thin lines of heat danced before her eyes. 
 The cofln wavered, slipped back a little, and jerked 
 forward again. 
 
 They emerged from the lane into the fresher air 
 of the hillside. 
 
 In the graveyard of the church a cool wind blew 
 from the moors. Elizabeth stared at the leaning 
 stones. The nearest was already almost illegible, 
 and a fine creeping moss joined the grey stone, so 
 faintly touched with purple and yellow shadows, 
 to the short-cropped grass of the graves and the 
 deep ivory of mountain ash flowers on the slope of 
 the moor. " Sacred to the memory of Nathaniel 
 Welham, Master Mariner, who died at sea. Also 
 of Hannah, his wife. Also of John Fox Welham, 
 their son, who was drowned at sea. Also of Francis 
 Welham, Master Mariner, who died of a fever at 
 Buenos Ayres." 
 
 Elizabeth thought with a fierce pity of those 
 sailors, whose dying ears had strained to catch the 
 sound of a Yorkshire stream bubbling between the 
 tough stems of the heather, and whose eyes, shut- 
 
110 THE CLASH 
 
 ting beneath, strange skies, had seen the small 
 church and the quiet stones that looked across the 
 valley to the folding hills. 
 
 She sat with Miriam in the cool of the evening. 
 The old woman had agreed, grudgingly, to come 
 away with her. Miriam was nursing a savage re- 
 sentment against life, which had led her such a 
 dance. She, who had asked nothing but to have 
 her roots in English ground, to have been all her 
 life a wanderer and a dweller in other men's houses. 
 She recalled her marriage and the terrible disgust 
 with which that old man, her husband, had inspired 
 her when she saw his nei"veless arms and twitching 
 ilanks. She remembered the secret meetings with 
 her lover and the passion that had wrapped them 
 round in one flame, and their flight through the 
 stilled flelds to the sea. Their wanderings in Eu- 
 rope returned to her. They had known cold and 
 hunger, the vagrant jealousies and the pricks of 
 love, and happiness. She tried to warm herself at 
 the word, but no warmth crept through her dried 
 veins. She remembered that day when men rushed 
 into their room as he slept in her arms and stood 
 him against the closed door. She had writhed on 
 the floor in her anguish, imploring with clutching 
 hands. Her eyes could not see through her tears 
 and her head was full of blood. He had crumpled 
 up against the wall, with arms stretched out and 
 one choked breath. She tried to recall the nights 
 when she had wept the heart-sickening tears of 
 widowhood. 
 
 That suffering had been real. But no pang tore 
 
HARVEST 111 
 
 at lier heart now. Like her happiness, her grief 
 had vanished, a curl of smoke in the vista of the 
 years. Nothing came to disturb her in this end of 
 her days. Nothing was left of all she had endured, 
 but an unlovely body and a mind that dwelt on 
 little things. She could have welcomed grief, be- 
 cause to feel grief one must be alive. She thought 
 with a blind anger of that tortured woman who had 
 cried to his murderers to spare her husband. Fool, 
 fool. She had done better to rejoice in her suffer- 
 ing. If she had known then what it was to grow 
 old and unable to suffer ! 
 
 Miriam cast a furious glance at her great-niece. 
 "Because you are young," she said, "you think 
 that life holds something for you. You are a fool. 
 There is nothing, I tell you. Nothing remains. 
 Nothing, nothing. Should I have been happier if 
 I had been a comfortable woman, bearing children? 
 I thought so once, but now I know that in the end 
 it is all one. That old malice we buried was right. 
 Yes, he was right. It is all a mockery." 
 
 Elizabeth stood in the doorway and looked down 
 the valley. She looked at the stars, outborne on 
 the great breath of the universe, and it seemed that 
 her youth shrivelled and slipped between her fin- 
 gers like fine dust. She, too, would be old and 
 nothing. But Miriam was wrong. If one had chil- 
 dren that was something. She had wished for 
 another child, but the wish remained without ful- 
 fillment. 
 
 She turned and went back into the house. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 The Denmans had taken a furnished house near 
 the aerodrome. Thither Elizabeth returned with 
 Miriam. She kept open house to please Jamie, and 
 to please herself managed, even in absence, to keep 
 in her hands the secretarial and accounting work 
 of Felshott. 
 
 It happened just now that a friend of his father 
 offered Jamie a chance to become something more 
 than the compiler of unwanted information about 
 Russia. It meant a complete change in his work, 
 wide responsibility, and the making of quick deci- 
 sions. It meant also going back to the department 
 almost at once. Jamie hesitated for a week. Eliza- 
 beth was surprised to discover how much she 
 wanted him to take the offer. Following her in- 
 stinct, she tried to get away by the indirect method. 
 She did not argue with Jamie. Even when he 
 asked her advice she told him with transparent sin- 
 cerity that he must act as he thought best. At the 
 same time her anxiety made its way out in an un- 
 wonted irritability. She opposed Jamie in little 
 things, apologised remorsefully, and was moved to 
 fresh annoyance by his irresolution. 
 
 Andrew Howard, on sick leave, came to stay with 
 them. When Elizabeth, openly triumphant, told 
 him of the offer, Jamie smiled. " Elizabeth cher- 
 ishes a vision of herself as the charming helpful 
 
HAEVEST 113 
 
 wife of a rising young diplomat. It would be too 
 frightful if he faUed to rise." 
 
 He went oif to the aerodrome. 
 
 " Shall you be disappointed if Jamie refuses the 
 offer? " Andrew said. 
 
 " I shall be bitterly disappointed," she told him. 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 Elizabeth hesitated. She found it difficult to 
 put into words her discovery that she had always 
 wanted Jamie to be a man who did things and not 
 merely the pleasantly competent official he would 
 irrevocably become, losing this chance. She caught 
 Andrew's watchful regard. 
 
 " Does Jamie know how you feel about it? " 
 Andrew said suddenly. 
 
 " I think so." Elizabeth hesitated again. When 
 Andrew laughed she flushed guiltUy. 
 
 " No you don't, my dear," he said. " You don't 
 think anything of the kind. You have just let him 
 guess enough to make him conscious that you are 
 criticising him. But as soon as he becomes acutely 
 conscious of it, you cannot stand the sight of his 
 unhappiness. So you soothe him and rock him to 
 sleep. And then of course you start to prick him 
 awake again. Isn't it so, my Elizabeth? " 
 
 Elizabeth smiled at him affectionately. " What 
 odd things you think of me ! " 
 
 " I think you're a woman." 
 
 " You know so much about women," she retorted. 
 
 " I know quite a lot about you," he said. " I 
 have a touchstone." 
 
 She looked away from him. 
 
114 THE CLASH 
 
 Jamie refused the offer. When lie told Elizabeth 
 she listened with an expressionless face. "You 
 mean," she said slowly, " that you don't want to 
 leave the Air Force. Did you tell them that? " 
 
 " I'm afraid," he told her, " that I had to make 
 it more definite than that. I said I didn't care for 
 the work." He crushed down the pain he felt in 
 confessing it to her. " To be perfectly frank, my 
 dear, the thought of so much responsibility rather 
 unnerved me." 
 
 Elizabeth lost her composure with startling sud- 
 denness. " Oh," she cried, " I knew. I knew. 
 The chance was too big for you." 
 
 " I suppose so," her husband said quietly. 
 
 Elizabeth struck savagely at his debonair indif- 
 ference. " Why are you so weak? You will never 
 do anything now. You can't do anything. You 
 can only talk and talk." She stopped abruptly. 
 Ashamed and horrified, she stared at him. " Oh, 
 forgive me, Jamie. I'm talking nonsense. Of 
 course I don't meant that." 
 
 After a long pause Jamie observed flatly, " But 
 of course you do. I guessed you would feel like 
 that. Don't think I haven't considered you. But 
 do you think you'd have liked it better if I had 
 taken the offer and then made such a hopeless fool 
 of myself that even the Government couldn't help 
 seeing it? That is what would have happened, you 
 know. You're quite right. I'm not big enough for 
 the chance. And I'm not quite small enough to 
 pretend that I am. Oh, don't think I'm trying to 
 excuse myself " 
 
HAEVEST 115 
 
 "You don't have to excuse yourself to me," 
 Elizabeth stammered. 
 
 Jamie turned and left her. 
 
 She made no direct effort to remove from his 
 mind the memory of her sudden candour. But she 
 was very affectionate. Jamie, smiling ruefully to 
 himself, took what the gods gave him, and tried to 
 be content. He was indeed content, being at all 
 tunes placidly ready to take Elizabeth at her face 
 value. An instinct of reluctance and a certain per- 
 sonal indolence kept him from peering beneath her 
 adroit gentleness. 
 
 She found herself at times regarding him as she 
 might a stranger, and an uninteresting one. The 
 roots of this feeling went much deeper than his 
 avoidance of the great chance. They stretched 
 back somehow to the birth and death of her son. 
 Her mind, shut against that, recoiled painfully 
 from any probing of her attitude to the dead child's 
 father. She would not think of it. And in some 
 curious fashion she did succeed in keeping her mind 
 from any but the most superficial thought of Jamie. 
 She thought of his comfort and his health. She 
 did not think of the hidden alienation; it persisted, 
 unseen. 
 
 When she lay in his arms her mind turned wear- 
 ily the wheel of her wandering thoughts. Her body 
 quiescent, she yielded herself without desire or dis- 
 taste. Sometimes, moved by the sight of his emo- 
 tion, she simulated a passion she did not feel, and 
 taking his face between her hands, kissed it with 
 remorseful tenderness. 
 
116 THE CLASH 
 
 Her great-aunt observed her sardonically. Tlie 
 knowledge of Elizabeth's discontent, which she 
 discerned easily enough, seemed to fill her with 
 satisfaction, until at last she could no longer resist 
 speaking. 
 
 " Jamie bores you," she remarked. 
 
 Elizabeth yielded to an impulse. The old woman, 
 smiling maliciously, appeared to her hardly real. 
 She sat there like a monstrous idol. Elizabeth saw 
 her in the gloom of a vast building, with bowed, 
 cunning priests. Outside the temple a river moved 
 sluggishly under a brazen sky. She tore her mind 
 away from the contemplation of Miriam's face, on 
 which, since the day of her brother's funeral, a 
 strange and terrifying placidity had fallen. 
 
 " It is not Jamie who bores me," she said with an 
 effort. " You don't know what a dear he is. If he 
 were my brother or my — son, I should adore him. 
 Oh, you mustn't think I don't love him." The 
 vision of Jamie's face, pale in the darkness, grave- 
 eyed and intent, came and vanished. " It is this 
 stupid business of marriage," she said suddenly. 
 "It is monotonous. I am tired of being desired 
 and pretending to desire. It is I who am to blame. 
 There is something missing in me." 
 
 Miriam's eyes gleamed with delight. 
 
 " How like you," she said, " to have a charming 
 vision of yourself as too delicate for this gross 
 world, enduring a weariness of the flesh which a 
 less sensitive spirit would never feel." 
 
 Elizabeth flushed painfully. Her great-aunt 
 chuckled. "As if all women did not endure in 
 
HARVEST 117 
 
 marriage the same deadly monotony of the body. 
 A woman's passion for her husband lasts a year — 
 perhaps longer, perhaps not so long. After that, 
 it is a quiescence and a placid dullness." She 
 added contemptuously, "Women think too much 
 about their bodies in these days." 
 
 The malice died in her grotesque face. "My 
 dear," she said, " there are so many other things in 
 life. Laughter, and adventure, and friendship and 
 children." 
 
 Elizabeth cried out in her pain. " There is also 
 cruelty. And screams out of the darkness. Life 
 is cruel. Life is cruel to children. How can you / 
 forgive it the maimed, hurt children, enduring hun- 
 ger and blows and wretchedness? If there were 
 only one — one child that was hungry and suffered 
 in its tiny body a misery it did not understand, the 
 stones would cry shame on us. But there are so 
 many." She stopped helplessly. " It cannot be 
 borne." 
 
 Miriam regarded her grimly. "If you were 
 iiappy yourself, you would be as complacent as the 
 rest." She paused. "You can always vary the 
 monotony by taldng a lover, you know. Of course, 
 you will pay for that amusement in the loss of your 
 personal dignity. And since you wish to see your- 
 self always as noble and charming, that would be 
 for you a real loss." 
 
 Elizabeth had recovered her self-assurance. 
 " Possibly it would," she observed cheerfully. 
 " But I shall not make the experiment." 
 
 Miriam regarded her curiously. "You have a 
 
118 THE CLASH 
 
 perfectly healthy body," she said, "and like all 
 healthy bodies, it has vast impulses of energy, 
 which "will drive you out to seek all kinds of satis- 
 factions. Women used to find their satisfactions 
 at home. ]5fow they look for them in the world. 
 It is all very proper and interesting and most 
 stimulating to the mind." 
 
 She sat chuckling to herself. "Most stimulat- 
 ing," she murmured. " If only one's mind could 
 go out alone while one's body sat at home and 
 cultivated the virtues." 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Captain Coenish spent most of his leisure time 
 in tlie Denmans' house. It was only here that he 
 allowed himself to forget the ironic courtesy behind 
 which he sheltered from England. He rarely for- 
 got it when Elizabeth listened. She could not 
 prick him into argument with her by any sarcasm. 
 After her first dislike of it, she took a whimsical 
 pleasure in his imperturbable self-assurance. 
 
 One evening he came to the house with a story 
 over which he was humorously indignant. 
 
 " The other day," he said, " I had an invitation 
 from the noble lord who owns the ground you chose 
 for your aerodrome. Real clever of him, I think, 
 to sell you a landing ground with a bog at one end 
 and a ditch at the other. The last time I landed 
 in that bog and nearly broke my neck I thought 
 reverently of great men. But that isn't what I'm 
 telling you about. He invited me to bring my men 
 and visit his house and the Park. So this morning 
 I put all the boys into lorries and we went to see 
 him. His lodge gates were shut, and after a while 
 a very old man tottered out and opened them. 
 'You mustn't bring all those things in here,' he 
 said. 
 
 " ' I'd fold them up and tuck them under a blade 
 of grass if I could,' I told him, ' but I daren't leave 
 
120 THE CLASH 
 
 them in this death-trap of a lane.' So he let us 
 drive just inside, but the wheels rolled over his 
 heart. I saw it quiver. We walked about a mile 
 up to the house and there the Lord's secretary was 
 waiting on the doorstep. He said, ' You can walk 
 about the Lord's park and look at the Lord's swans, 
 but you mustn't touch any of the Lord's flowers. 
 You can look at the outside of the Lord's house, 
 too, and when he comes the Lord will take you in- 
 side.' I thanked him in my crude way, and I told 
 him that in my country when I'd asked a man to 
 come and see me I took care that I was waiting to 
 welcome him as soon as he came. And then I 
 turned the boys round again and packed them into 
 lorries and brought them right back home." 
 
 Elizabeth smiled. " Someone will reprimand 
 you. Captain Cornish." 
 
 " I got all worked up on the way back about Ire- 
 land and India," he observed. " I thought what a 
 shame it was you should bully all those poor mikes 
 and dagoes the way you do. However, that's only 
 Irishmen and niggers, but when it comes to treat- 
 ing Americans as if they weren't there — well, you 
 surely have got a hard lesson in front of you." 
 
 She laughed outright. " I think that's what you 
 really resent, Captain Cornish. It's our bad man- 
 ners and not our bad morals that annoy you." 
 
 He smiled delightfully. " I've been talking too 
 much, Mrs. Denman. Are you cross with me? " 
 
 " It's rather an odd experience," Elizabeth said. 
 " Like having someone come to the house and sud- 
 denly begin to exclaim against the furniture." 
 
HAEVEST 121 
 
 "We're hardly your guests, are we?" lie said 
 quickly. 
 
 She answered Mm with a deliberate indifference. 
 " No. No, you're not. You seem to have come in 
 the capacity of judges. But you hang the criminal 
 first and find him guilty afterwards. How charac- 
 teristic. I believe you call it lynch law, don't 
 you? " 
 
 Jess regarded her unmoved. " I knew you were 
 mad at me," he said calmly. " I'd better go." He 
 had dropped his voice, and the drawling Southern 
 speech took on an intimate charm. Elizabeth was 
 vaguely disquieted. She looked up at him as he 
 stood before her. 
 
 " I don't think I want you to go just yet, Captain 
 Cornish." 
 
 " Is that because I amuse you? " he asked 
 abruptly. He walked away from her and stood 
 looking out of the window. She watched him in 
 smiling bewilderment. He turned round, saw the 
 smile, and decided that the bewilderment was an 
 affectation. 
 
 " You find me uncouth, Mrs. Denman," he said. 
 
 " I find you quite — stimulating." 
 
 " Like a new drink. Thank you." 
 
 "Oh," said Elizabeth. "I wasn't laughing at 
 you, Captain Cornish. But you are so very sure 
 of yourself and your country." 
 
 " Aren't you sure of yours? " he asked. 
 
 Elizabeth shrugged. " We don't talk about it 
 in that way," she told him, half conscious of the 
 arrogance. 
 
122 THE CLASH 
 
 He strode across to her. " Of course you don't," 
 he said. "And I'll tell you why. It's because 
 you're not sure. It's because your people are half 
 afraid of us and half tired. Even you. You're 
 not alive. Do you know what I should like to do? 
 I should like to see you breathing an air that would 
 be wine in your throat. Oh, make you mad. You'd 
 wake up. These little boxed-in fields suffocate me. 
 They are suffocating you and all your people. 
 Don't you know it? " 
 
 Elizabeth regarded him ironically. "You have 
 your countrymen's enthusiasm for fine gestures, 
 Captain Cornish." 
 
 His excitement disappeared instantly. "You 
 surely have a great past," he remarked smoothly. 
 " So perhaps you won't grudge us the future." 
 
 She was hesitating over a retort when Andrew 
 came in. He greeted the American briefly, and 
 turned to Elizabeth. 
 
 " I expected you and Jamie home to dinner," she 
 said. 
 
 "We dined in mess. Your wretched husband 
 can't get away. When I left him he was trying, 
 without the least success, to persuade the Great 
 White Lord from the Area that he hadn't mislaid 
 four perfectly good Leyland lorries and an odd 
 Bessoneau or two." 
 
 " It wouldn't be the first time a trifle of that sort 
 had been mislaid on the station," Jess remarked. 
 " Believe me, Mrs. Denman, there was only one 
 honest man in the Air Force and he was court- 
 martialled for incompetence." 
 
HARVEST 123 
 
 "You have a marvellous judgment," Andrew 
 said politely. 
 
 Tke American stood up. "Mrs. Denman has 
 just been telling me so," he observed pleasantly. 
 " I guess your combined flattery would be too much 
 for me. I'll go. Good-bye, Mrs. Denman. Thanks 
 for the coffee." 
 
 He went. Elizabeth looked at Andrew. 
 
 " You don't like him, do you? " she said. 
 
 " I do not." 
 
 "I find him charming," she murmured. "A 
 charming barbarian. When Jamie first brought 
 him here I didn't like his violence and his self- 
 confidence, which nothing can shake. But it be- 
 comes rather refreshing." 
 
 " It has gone to your head, my dear. You won't 
 believe me if I tell you that he is violent not be- 
 cause he's young, but because he's never been dis- 
 ciplined. It's hysteria and not strength. Young 
 America was born old." 
 
 Elizabeth was not listening. " He's not really 
 very clever, you know," she reflected. " And he's 
 not cultured at all, in the meaning of the word. 
 But I never get the whip hand of hitn." 
 
 " That's because he doesn't believe iu you," An- 
 drew said. " Englishmen have been better trained. 
 We know that women are better and wiser and — 
 oh, much cleverer — than men. But your charm- 
 ing barbarian hasn't been told it yet, and wouldn't 
 believe you if you did tell him." 
 
OHAPTEE VI 
 
 Elizabeth kept open house. The young English 
 pilots on the station wandered in and out with an 
 unembarrassed certainty of welcome. When she 
 could not get anything, else for them to eat, she 
 bought dozens of eggs from the nearest farms, and 
 under Miriam's guidance made superb omelettes. 
 She built fires in the vast open range, and with 
 stores illicitly bought from the canteen, baked huge 
 cakes, which disappeared in a meal. Jess Cornish 
 made journeys to Winchester and brought her 
 sugar and dried fruit and ice for her freezer. She 
 would cheerfully have stolen to feed her guests. 
 Their youth hurt her, and the nonchalant courage 
 which they hid with an awkward and boyish 
 naivete. They helped her to beat eggs, they hulled 
 strawberries and whipped cream, and filled her 
 rooms with their joyous irresponsibility. They 
 were preposterously irresponsible. 
 
 The oldest of them were very yoiing. These told 
 her gloomily that the Air Force was going to pieces. 
 " It's not like the Flying Corps," they mourned. 
 " Those were the days. Before they sold us to the 
 naval men." And a moment later they were chuck- 
 ling over the idiotic exploits of a new-fledged pilot. 
 
 Elizabeth found a quiet amusement in watching 
 the young Texan among these casual, incalculable 
 boys. He was at once older and unbelievably 
 
HAEVEST 125 
 
 younger. He hesitated between scorn of their 
 naivete and dislike of the self-assurance which they 
 never displayed and which revealed itself in every 
 gesture. Elizabeth watched his polite amazement 
 during an impromptu party where the English 
 officers amused themselves enormously with a jazz 
 band made of fire-irons and kettles. The marks 
 of four years' warfare dropped away from them 
 and they played the fool with childlike zest. 
 Americans, she thought, never forget that they are 
 grown-up, and they cannot play the fool without 
 shooting someone or smashing things. 
 
 He was just as out of focus when the kettles and 
 fire-irons gave place to conversation. Listening 
 through his ears, Elizabeth was for the first time 
 aware that her guests did not talk. They played 
 with words, throwing and dropping them with a 
 rather bored dexterity. A phrase was held. It 
 hung iu the air like the scarlet and yellow stars 
 of a rocket, naUed agaiost the night in the instant 
 of their disappearance. Someone observed that the 
 Victorian morality which condemned sin, and the 
 new aesthetic morality which condemns ugliness, 
 are born of the same attitude of mind. The Ameri- 
 can remarked sombrely : " I fail to see that you can 
 argue about it. Surely morality is morality in any 
 time or place." 
 
 There was a brief, dismayed silence, "He is 
 rather heavy, my barbarian," Elizabeth said to her- 
 self. Aloud she remarked, "Dear me, I'd quite 
 forgotten for the moment that you were an Ameri- 
 
126 THE CLASH 
 
 His glance was unequivocal. " Ma'am? " 
 
 " Heaven forbid that I should disturb your sim- 
 ple faith," Elizabeth murmured. 
 
 He looked at her with a direct contempt, in- 
 stantly veiled. Elizabeth was able to assure herself 
 that it had not existed. 
 
 One afternoon she was dawdling over a solitary 
 tea when Captain Cornish was announced. The 
 unexpected visit surprised her a little and he of- 
 fered no explanation. He began instead to tell her 
 about himself and his home in Texas. From his 
 words she conjured up the vision of an intense and 
 feverish activity. The men became easily brutal, 
 with occasional lapses into a tactless and uncouth 
 sentimentality. The women revelled in a frightful 
 conjugality. 
 
 She listened to his pleasant voice and made 
 funny comments so that she might watch his smile. 
 It was delightful. 
 
 After that he came several times. Elizabeth 
 surprised herself trying to avoid asking the wives 
 of Jamie's brother ofdcers to tea on days when the 
 American might come; she disowned the impulse, 
 rather annoyed with Captain Cornish. 
 
 They climbed the steep hill to the downs and 
 Jess amused her with the more reputable of his 
 adventures and romanced when truth failed him. 
 
 He had been in the recent Mexican expedition. 
 " It was very dull," he said. " I don't think that 
 anyone was killed, but some of the boys were snake- 
 bitten and one got himself knifed in El Paso." He 
 was lying face downwards on the fine short grass. 
 
HARVEST 127 
 
 Suddenly he sat up and looked round him at the 
 avenue of beech trees and the distant woods. 
 " This is like a park," he said. " If you could but 
 see the annihilating solitude of the desert that lies 
 between two seas in my country." He added ir- 
 relevantly, " I came out of Mexico burnt black and 
 all my bones sticking through the cracks iu my 
 sldn." 
 
 He glanced at her with a masked diffidence. 
 " One queer thing happened to me there," he said. 
 "And that wasn't really a happening, but only 
 something I thought. There was a Scotchman 
 called Angus in my tent, and one night, when we 
 were still camping near the border, Angus declared 
 to me that he knew there was liquor within a mile 
 of us. He felt it, he said, in his bones. So we went 
 off to look for it, and owing to my following Angus 
 instead of looking where I was going, and his fol- 
 lowing a whiskey bottle that didn't exist, we lost 
 ourselves on the way back, after he had given up 
 all hope of drinking like a Christian in a country 
 of heathens. Angus had begun to talk about his 
 soul when we came upon a 'dobe hut that looked 
 like it stood alone. I couldn't see any others my- 
 self, and Angus said he didn't care if we'd struck 
 the capital of Mexico, he was going to capture it. 
 It was empty. We went to sleep with Angus still 
 groaning about the spirit, which might have meant 
 anything with Angus. He woke me up just before 
 dawn and told me in a violent whisper that he 
 thought we were surrounded. There must have 
 been all of two hundred greasers outside and we'd 
 
128 THE CLASH 
 
 only one gun between us. Angus had left his in a 
 cactus patch. He said he'd go back for it when 
 he wasn't so tired and he'd know the place again 
 because it was prickly. We considered a bit, and 
 another thought came into my head. I had no time 
 to turn it over, because Angus had taken my gun 
 and burst out of the hut with a heathen yell. He 
 rushed at those scared greasers, with me running 
 after him like a fool, shouting for my gun, and 
 believe me, Mrs. Denman, we were more than half 
 a mile away before they thought to shoot." He 
 paused and looked at her. " I had plenty of time 
 to think after we got back to camp," he observed. 
 
 Elizabeth waited. He was staring through nar- 
 rowed eyes at the bronze barrier of the trees. 
 Filled with the last level rays of the sun, they hung 
 motionless in a quivering golden haze. 
 
 " It looked like we were as near death as the 
 door of the hut," he said. "We were dead — if 
 that Scotchman hadn't been a plain raving lunatic. 
 And all I could think of was once when I was about 
 four I stole a dollar from my cousin and spent it ; 
 that same afternoon my mother was brought in 
 dead, and I forgot about the dollar. She'd been 
 thrown, and her beautiful body was all twisted and 
 broken." 
 
 He was silent for a time. " It was queer to me," 
 he said thoughtfully, at last. " Because I'd never 
 remembered the dollar since that afternoon. 
 Maybe," he added with a smile, " I'd have been a 
 better boy if she'd lived to give me a few more 
 hidings." 
 
HARVEST 129 
 
 Elizabeth spoke impulsively. " I had a son who 
 died when he was three weeks old." 
 
 As she said them the words called up no image 
 of the lost child. She found herself dwelling 
 curiously on the arrogant grace of the man at her 
 side. The line of his eyelids drooped at the outer 
 corners of his eyes, adding an indolent brooding 
 charm to the serene face. His eyes were desert 
 eyes, narrowed against the light, gravely direct. 
 
 " That surely was too bad," the American ob- 
 served softly. 
 
 Elizabeth said surprisingly, "You're rather a 
 dear, you know." 
 
 " That is the first compliment I have received in 
 this country," he assured her gravely. And added : 
 " Generally speaking, I'd rather be knocked down 
 by an Englishman than complimented by him. I 
 feel more certain of his meaning." 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 A THUNDERSTOEM had threatened throughout the 
 day. The sun set and a pall of heat hung over the 
 downs. The air in the valley was stifling. Under 
 the bronzed sky the tents of the aerodrome showed 
 chalk white. The leaves of distant trees were 
 shari)ly vivid, and a heavy tool had etched in the 
 line of the hills. In the sombre light familiar 
 things wore an air of unreality. Ab Elizabeth 
 watched, the tone of the dusk altered ; fields, trees, 
 stream and cottages took on the quaint distinctness 
 of a mediteval painting. 
 
 Restless and disturbed, Elizabeth wandered 
 about her garden. Fragrance poured from the 
 flowering privet, saturating the heavy air. The 
 laughter of her guests had a strange echo. She 
 went into the house and lit the lamps in every 
 room. Behind the dull globes wan flames strug- 
 gled, half extinguished in the louring light from 
 the sky. As she crossed the lawn again a young 
 pilot was trying to make himself heard above the 
 clamour of voices. He wanted to play Blind Man's 
 Buff. Someone did hear him at last and caught up 
 the words. " The house is yours," Elizabeth said. 
 
 The French windows of the sitting-room opened 
 on to the garden. With the furious abandon of 
 grown-up children, her guests rushed from the 
 lawn into the room and back through the twisting 
 
HAEVEST 131 
 
 passages of the old house into the garden. A crazy 
 gaiety possessed them. It grew wilder and more 
 furious as the game set free a lurking excitement 
 that swept through them like a wind. A fair-haired 
 boy ran past Elizabeth. His breath came in gasps 
 through his parted lips and he stretched out both 
 ai'ms to catch a flying girl. He looked, though 
 Elizabeth did not know it, much as he had looked 
 when it became necessary to chase and kill a 
 German with the heavy end of an empty Webley. 
 
 He caught the girl on the steps of the porch and 
 kissed her fiercely. She pushed the hair off her 
 flushed cheeks and lifted her face to his. 
 
 The players eddied about the blindfolded man. 
 With burning cheeks and gusts of broken laughter 
 they ran round him and from him. The walls of 
 the house gave back their shouts and breathless 
 cries. 
 
 The luminous gleam died out of the sky and the 
 stifling darkness of the garden swallowed up the 
 light that poured through the windows. Thunder 
 rolled across the downs but no rain fell. Flying 
 from the house into the blackness outside the 
 revellers became grotesque phantoms. 
 
 Elizabeth pressed her hands against her throb- 
 bing head. The blind seeker touched her in the 
 darkness and with a frantic rush she eluded his 
 groping arm. Her breath came shaken with laugh- 
 ter. Pursuer and pursued swept past her, and as 
 she swayed dizzily against the hedge a crash of 
 thunder tore apart the air. It was so near and so 
 loud that the sky seemed dissolved in a tidal sound 
 
132 THE CLASH 
 
 rolling between heaven and eartli. Elizabeth, 
 turned with a stifled cry, and flung herself blindly 
 against Captain Cornish, seizing him with both 
 hands. For a moment she was conscious of the 
 pressure of his arms. His eyes darkened as they 
 looked down at her. 
 
 Almost before she recovered her self-control he 
 had stepped back, loosening his hold. " That 
 cert'nly did startle you," he said steadily. " You 
 jumped like a wild thing." 
 
 He smiled in swift amusement. Elizabeth saw 
 the smile and a strange delight filled her. She 
 laughed, looking up at him with joyous frankness. 
 
 "You queer little thing," the American said 
 softly. She caught his hand in hers and ran with 
 him into the house as the rain came through the 
 trees like a rush of startled wings. 
 
CHAPTEE VIII 
 
 In July the American officers on the station gave 
 a dinner. They gave it as a house-warming, to 
 celebrate the building of their new quarters, which 
 covered the eastern half of the aerodrome in a vast 
 and geometrically efficient pattern of uralite and 
 concrete. Captain Cornish proceeded to make a 
 neat little garden round his hut. His orderly 
 planted several rows of flowers, but the English 
 part of the station remained the more picturesque 
 and nearer nature. In particular, the cookshop 
 resembled in its odours the huge cauldron which 
 the Portuguese navvies on the aerodrome kept 
 boiling day and night, flinging into it dead birds, 
 unskinned rabbits and live cats. 
 
 Two enormous recreation rooms were covered 
 with flags, and an ex-Senator who happened to be 
 wandering in England at the moment presented 
 himself as guest of honour. The English officers 
 were formally invited. They came and stared, 
 frankly curious, at orderlies in white ducks, and 
 at the long trestle tables covered in fine linen and 
 splendid with glass and silver. Their low-toned 
 comments were in the manner of their kind. 
 
 " If they'd take down the bloody flags it would 
 look like a jolly old Grill." 
 
 "Where did they get the money from? Their 
 daddies took it off the Allies, dear boy, and gave it 
 
134 THE CLASH 
 
 to these pretty soldiers to buy Yurrup. ' I've just 
 come over to have a look at this little war of yours 
 and if I like it I'll buy it.' " 
 
 The dinner became a riot of courses. Jamie, 
 drinking with caution, viewed with horror the ar- 
 rival of yet another course. It came with the 
 coffee, a large plate unpleasantly full of boiled 
 chicken which rested on layers of pancake lyiag 
 dormant in a sea of syrup. Jamie stared at it. 
 The thing was incredible. Jess Cornish leaned 
 across the table. " You assured me that America 
 had no institutions," he said maliciously. " This 
 is one of them." Wretchedly, Jamie tried to find a 
 piece of chicken which the syrup had not engulfed. 
 
 He turned to the English pilot at his side. The 
 boy had impaled a piece of waffle on the end of his 
 fork and was watching it drip syrup in a wavering 
 pattern round his plate. " See that? " he said to 
 Jamie. " It's a map of the United States. You 
 can't see Chicago for the treacle, but that bit of 
 bone is New York. I think I'm going to be sick." 
 
 Jamie regarded him grimly. " You are down 
 for four o'clock flying to-morrow morning," he ob- 
 served. 
 
 Young Nethers lifted a flushed face. " Flying? " 
 he said. " If I took my feet off the ground I should 
 fly this moment, dearie. Just spread my arms. 
 Oh, I'm well away. But the concrete isn't dry and 
 my feet are stuck to the floor. So like America. 
 I had an aunt once who asked a New York police- 
 man which car to take, and he ran her in, just to 
 learn her not to be a toad." 
 
HARVEST 135 
 
 Jamie warned liini viciously. 
 
 The boy raised his voice. "It's no use your 
 kicking me, Denman," lie said distiuctly* " I tell 
 you that's "vrhat America is lite. It's because of 
 the mixed breeds. You can't tell what cross- 
 breeding is going to do until you've tried it. Some 
 of the children are fine, and some are just rotten 
 and beat orphans out of their money and stun poor 
 old aunties and burn niggers for fun. They do, 
 they do. My aunt saw them. She says it takes 
 about two thousand Americans to kill one nigger. 
 They chase him through the town and then they 
 hang liim until he's half dead and then they cut 
 him down and bum him." 
 
 Jess Cornish had been drinking steadily through- 
 out the evening; his eyes were slits in an impene- 
 trable face. Jamie watched him as he talked to his 
 English flying instructor. Major de Wend was a 
 famous pilot. He flew drunk rather than sober 
 and he flew always with genius. He was swarthy 
 and dark-browed, a giant with the ankles and 
 wrists of a dancer. Women adored him for his in- 
 solent courtesy and for his eyes, which were the 
 blue of rain-wet hyacinths. He was indeed that 
 Englishman whom Jess Cornish believed himself to 
 hate. His least gesture expressed the unconscious 
 certitudes which four centuries of de Wends had 
 folded in his careless hands. But the American did 
 not hate de Wend. He surrendered himself to the 
 Englishman's brutal charm. He admired the su- 
 perb s kill in that wrist of living steel. Probably 
 he did not know by what quality of character the 
 
136 THE CLASH 
 
 Englishman dominated him. Certainly he ■would 
 not have acknowledged the dominance. But it ex- 
 isted. 
 
 "You'd make a mighty fine American if you 
 weren't an Englishman," he told de Wend. 
 
 The other regarded him sombrely. " Tou would 
 never make an Englishman if they skinned you 
 and grew you again all pink and fluffy, like young 
 Nethers, whom I perceive to be beautifully drunk. 
 You have American bones. Tell them to bring me 
 something fit to drink." 
 
 Cornish leaned back in his chair. "Boy," he 
 shouted, " bring Major de Wend a bottle of whis- 
 key." 
 
 " And tell him," de Wend added solemnly, " to 
 take off that nightshirt before he comes back. It's 
 not decent." 
 
 He watched Cornish drink a glassful of raw 
 spirit. " You are a bloody fool," he said calmly. 
 " That will play hell with your nerves." 
 
 "You'd better talk to yourself," Cornish re- 
 torted. " You're as drunk as I am." 
 
 " I'm probably twice as drunk," de Wend agreed. 
 " But I'm not drunk on raw whiskey. That's the 
 worst of a savage. He adopts all our vices with- 
 out adopting any of our wily restraints." 
 
 The American's face darkened. De Wend flung 
 an arm across his shoulders. "I'm drunk, dear- 
 est," he said sadly. " I know I'm drunk. I'm not 
 responsible for anything I say. Any more than 
 you're responsible for America. God sent it for a 
 rod to our backs." 
 
HAEVEST 137 
 
 The ex-Senator was swaying on his feet. His 
 benevolent smile embraced the company. With 
 upraised hand he summoned the spirit of Liberty 
 from her home in Washington. "We have come 
 to be with you in your hour of trial," he said. He 
 made a splendid gesture and clutched at the table. 
 " We have not come to win your war for you. We 
 have come to take our part in the glorious game. 
 To draw closer the bonds between two great na- 
 tions. For it cannot be denied that the great are 
 more prone to take offence than the small and 
 humble. Almighty Providence, recognising this 
 truth, which must, since it exists, be part of the 
 universal divine plan, has laid power and greatness 
 in the hands of those nations best fitted to use these 
 sharp gifts. Let us give thanks to the divine 
 artificer, whose unworthy instruments we, at this 
 moment, are." 
 
 He drew a perilous breath. 
 
 " Especially we have come to help France. We 
 love France. France, the breeding nest of freedom. 
 France, the mother of the arts, or at any rate the 
 aunt. The American love for France is a great 
 and holy flame. . . ." 
 
 Young Nethers had caught one word. He lifted 
 his head from the tablecloth. " That's because you 
 can't understand what the French say about you," 
 he observed. 
 
 The speaker, exalted by the gods, raised his glass 
 to the crossed flags behind his chair. " America," 
 he cried, "is filled with the new spirit of a new 
 age — the Spirit of Community. America is all 
 
138 THE CLASH 
 
 Liberty and all Community. Community. Lib- 
 erty." 
 
 A string of flags fell down upon him and from 
 their muffling folds he waved a lean arm. " Com- 
 munity," he repeated faintly. He became hope- 
 lessly entangled, and while the orderlies strove to 
 extricate him, he wrapped the flags round him 
 with frantic gestures. He disappeared, and from 
 the surging multi-coloured heap came choked 
 disjointed words, smothered untimely in the 
 growing uproar. " Liberty. Love. Service," 
 and at last, in a dying voice, " God defend the 
 right." 
 
 The guests wandered into the second room and 
 stood in groups round the small tables. Through 
 open windows, Jamie saw the black shadows of the 
 hangars like stagnant pools in a ghostly field. The 
 earth swung in an inhuman radiance. 
 
 He had decided to make his way out, when Jess 
 Cornish seized him by the arm. He offered Jamie 
 one of his thin biting cigarettes : they were packed 
 in small bags and smelled of brimstone. Jamie 
 choked over it while Cornish dragged him across 
 the room towards a group of Americans. He 
 shouted at an orderly. One of the young ofB-cers, 
 clumsily dropping a decanter, murmured — " I'm 
 sorry," and half a dozen voices told him sharply — 
 "The drinks are on you; you're fined for saying 
 ' I'm sorry,' like a fool Englishman, instead of ' Ex- 
 cuse me,' as a decent American should." The 
 Englishman's presence restored a formidable 
 courtesy. 
 
HARVEST 139 
 
 A lusty chorus chanted solemnly and mourn- 
 fully: 
 
 She was poor but she was honest, 
 Victim of a rich man's whim; 
 First he loved and then seduced her, 
 Then she had a child by him. 
 
 Jamie stumbled over the boy Nethers, asleep on 
 the floor. He had taken off his uniform and hung 
 it carefully on the back of a chair. His fair hair 
 was wringing wet, and he slept with an arm 
 crooked under his head. The other arm embraced 
 an electric light bracket wrenched from the wall. 
 Two English pilots were talking loudly while they 
 tugged at his boots. " Did you hear about poor old 
 Enfield's crash? Oh, I love de Wend. He saw 
 Enfield spinning down over Tytherly, and rushed 
 off with the crash party. Frightful wreck, of 
 course. Poor little Enfield all mixed up with the 
 engine. When our party got there, they found a 
 couple of Ac Emmas from Tytherly Corner pinch- 
 ing the petrol from the machine and cursing En- 
 field for getting in the way. De Wend was on them 
 like a madman. 'What in hell d'ye think you're 
 doing? ' he yelled. ' Damn it, that's our petrol.' " 
 
 It 's the rich what 'as the pleasure 
 It's the poor what 'as the blame. 
 It's the same the whole world over. 
 Ain't it a bleedin' shame? 
 
 In another corner of the room, the ex-Senator, 
 freed from his cerements, sat on the edge of a table, 
 drinking with two Scotch pilots. Stiffly upright, 
 
140 THE CLASH 
 
 with his face of a placid owl, he reproved them for 
 their intemperance. When he paused for breath, 
 one of the Scotchmen slipped mortified and speech- 
 less to the floor. The American regarded him 
 blandly. " Poor boy," he mui*mured, " poor brave 
 boy." With a gentle smile, he closed his eyes and 
 slid off the table. A solemn contentment spread 
 across the face of his remaining adversary. He 
 pushed the table over the bodies and began to sing 
 in a cracked voice. 
 
 Why should he with all his money 
 Go with her what is so poor, 
 Bringing shame on her relations, 
 Making her in 
 
 He stopped as a high voice split the air. Like a 
 flame it sucked everything into its vortex: the 
 frightful clamour of the room rushed towards it 
 and was swallowed up. The four angry young men 
 in the middle of the room fell awkwardly apart; 
 three of them were English and abashed by their 
 sudden isolation. Jamie, standing beside Jess Cor- 
 nish, saw the Texan's eyes grow sharply watchful 
 under their heavy lids. 
 
 The young American spoke again. He was be- 
 side himself with rage. "Liar," he repeated, and 
 choked over the word. 
 
 Jamie looked at him with apprehension. " You 
 are going to make a fool of yourself," he murmured. 
 " How stupid of you." 
 
 " You can't even win your own dirty wars," the 
 boy stammered furiously. "You can't fly. You 
 
HAEVEST 141 
 
 can't fight. You can't do a thing without whining 
 for help. Hell to you, I say. . . ." 
 
 He reeled under a blow. Jess Cornish stood over 
 him. " Be quiet," he said softly. " You fool. My 
 God, I'll kill you for this." 
 
 He turned a disconcerting regard upon the com- 
 pany. " I ought to apologize," he drawled. 
 
 De Wend laughed. He laughed with the tears 
 running down his face. He threw his anns round 
 Jess Cornish, struggling with his wild laughter. 
 " Darling," he said, " we can fly, can't we? Let's 
 show 'em how to fly. Let's show them now. It's 
 a full moon, darling. Lighter than day." He had 
 the air of coaxing a cross child, and the Texan's 
 face changed. He smiled affectionately at de 
 Wend. 
 
 With arms round each other's shoulders they 
 stalked out. The others rushed after them in a 
 frenzy of excitement. Shivering in the night air, 
 they crowded round the hangar while American 
 mechanics wheeled out a machine. In the moon- 
 rays they made grotesque movements like the ges- 
 tures of marionettes. One man tried to make a 
 book on the chances of the flight. He went round 
 taking odds and scribbling frantically on his cuffs. 
 
 " They're drunker than lords." 
 
 " Oh, absolutely blotto." 
 
 " What a lovely crash it'll be." 
 
 De Wend climbed unsteadily into the machine 
 and the American followed him. 
 
 " Switch off, petrol on." De Wend settled him- 
 self in his seat. " Suck up," he ordered. 
 
U2 THE CLASH 
 
 A huge-limbed American walked over to the pro- 
 peller. He swung it round two or three times and 
 waited. " Contact/' de Wend called. 
 
 " Contact, sir." 
 
 The mechanic swung untU the sweat poured 
 down his face. His labouring breath came in gasps, 
 whUe de Wend sat cursing in his seat. 
 
 Jamie pushed his way through the crowd and 
 spoke to Jess Cornish. " Don't play the fool," he 
 said uselessly. " It's not worth it." The Texan 
 did not even look at him. Leaning over the side of 
 the machine, he beckoned the mechanic. He spoke 
 to the man with the deliberation born of much 
 whiskey. " If you don't start this machine up, I'll 
 know how to deal with you," he said. " I may be 
 as drunk as the devil, but I'm not so drunk you 
 can play the fool with me. Now go to it." 
 
 The mechanic saluted. He spoke to de Wend. 
 
 " She's not firing at all, sir," he said carefully. 
 " Is the petrol on? " 
 
 The Englishman roared at him. " What the blue 
 blazes d'you think you're doing? " He bent to ad- 
 just the throttle. 
 
 " Swing her up again, you fools. Contact." 
 
 " Contact, sir." 
 
 The spluttering of the engine deepened into a 
 vibrant roar. Chocks were drawn aside. 
 
 They took off badly, in a steep climbing turn, and 
 Jamie felt sick with dread. " De Wend's too drunk 
 this time," he said aloud. The man beside him 
 laughed. "Don't you think it, dearie. Look at 
 him." 
 
HAEVEST 143 
 
 The aeroplane climbed steadily. Sharp with the 
 steel-sharp beauty of a scudding bird it stabbed the 
 white phantasy of the sky. More vehement than a 
 taut flying bird-body, swifter than edged wings, it 
 swooped and rose. Black ripples in a moon-filled 
 pool, agate-black sweep of wings — the night was 
 filled with its beauty. 
 
 Twice de Wend circled the aerodrome and then 
 he went mad. Jamie caught his breath : it tore at 
 his throat, choking him. Why did he care whether 
 the American lived or died? 
 
 " There is death against your mouth, against 
 your smiling arrogant mouth. ... I must be 
 drunk." His thoughts slipped away and an exul- 
 tant thrill ran through him. He tasted a brief sav- 
 age joy ; it was in his mouth as sweet as honey and 
 bitter in his belly. 
 
 " Damme if the old bus isn't drunk too," a man 
 murmured. 
 
 " Oh, what a man, what a man." 
 
 " Look at him. Hell, he's crazy." 
 
 Jamie stared at the aeroplane. It answered the 
 mad genius of de Wend in monstrous lunatic ges- 
 tures. It was light, molten quivering light, pour- 
 ing into frozen steel. It was the white crest of a 
 wave bared suddenly in black waters. Swinging 
 like a leaf it swirled on the unfathomable winds of 
 space. 
 
 It banked steeply, and as de Wend pulled it out 
 a shout went up from the ground. Jamie, straining 
 his eyes, saw Jess Cornish climb out of his seat and 
 crawl on to the starboard plane. Crawling slowly 
 
144 THE CLASH 
 
 back, lie disappeared for a moment and came out 
 again on the other side. 
 
 In the sudden silence that followed the Ameri- 
 can's second appearance, Jamie became aware of 
 young Nethers, danciag half naked on the fringes 
 of the crowd. Shouting like a madman, he hurled 
 insults at the tiny crouching figure on the wing. 
 
 " Oh, shake him off. EoU him. EoU him, I tell 
 you. Drop the bloody Yank." Jamie knocked him 
 down. He doubled up on the ground, whimpering 
 softly. 
 
 Jess was back in his seat. Less than a thousand 
 feet above the ground, de "Wend pulled out of a 
 spin and dived straight at the crazy mob below him. 
 It broke and scattered in frantic rout before the 
 roaring death. Jamie's wild backward glance saw 
 the machine flatten out just not too late. The un- 
 dercarriage skimmed the ground, and the machine 
 seemed to bounce up. De Wend had switched his 
 engine on : he zoomed, came round in a wide sweep, 
 and gliding down, made a perfect landing. Pilot 
 and passenger, completely sober, climbed stiffly out 
 and surveyed their assembled countrymen with tol- 
 erant contempt. 
 
 Jamie found the spectacle of Jess Cornish, rock- 
 ing gently on his feet, legs apart and hands on hips, 
 intolerable. He swung round and limped away. 
 
 Two hours later, young Nethers was carried to 
 the American quarters, and there deprived of the 
 remnant of his clothes. At the sight of a borrowed 
 nightshirt he became truculent, and swore that the 
 whole American army should not put upon him the 
 
HARVEST 145 
 
 disgrace of a nightgown. He fled from their hands, 
 mother-naked but for the collar band of the night- 
 shirt round his neck. CJomish, utterly weary, let 
 him go. Some time before morning two American 
 sergeants found him wandering about the aero- 
 drome, with grotesque hair and teeth chattering in 
 his head. "Don't touch me," he said peevishly. 
 "I'm all goose flesh, and your hands are cold." 
 They knocked up the English adjutant, and receiv- 
 ing his curses with impassive dignity, gravely 
 handed over the dazed young man, saluted and 
 withdrew. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Jess had a passionate faith in the coming of 
 American supremacy. " The future is to the 
 Pacific," he told Elizabeth. "We've been asleep, 
 dreaming of oui* riches. After this we shall rouse 
 ourselves. We have everything, and we are not 
 burdened by old men with crowns; we're not 
 weighed down by the accumulated taxation of a 
 thousand years of conquest. You don't understand. 
 We're young." 
 
 His father sent him the plans of a new Cornish 
 Cotton Mill, of twenty thousand spindles. He 
 showed them to Elizabeth. 
 
 " America is going to cut you out all along the 
 line," he said. " We'll beat you to the trade of the 
 world. I'm telling you. We've a new line of oil 
 ships coming on. . . . You're tired over here. 
 Your people are tired. Your men won't work 
 harder to get more. They want it for nothing. Oh, 
 I lie awake at night thinking of all that easy money 
 lyin' around waiting for me to pick it up. You're 
 beaten before you begin. You're too tired to stand 
 up to us. We're young, I tell you." 
 
 He spoke with a suppressed exultant delight, 
 feeling, like an earlier Jess Cornish, the future ia 
 his bones. 
 
 Elizabeth caught again the vision of an intense 
 
HARVEST 147 
 
 and feverish, activity. The imagination of Jess 
 Cornish saw the whole world a market-place, to 
 feed which, the wheels of American industry must 
 be turning night and day. His eager ambitions 
 ran in every direction. From the brain and muscle 
 of the American race he desired to forge a weapon, 
 marvellously tempered, with which to take the 
 world's trade by the throat. 
 
 Elizabeth made pictures from Ms words. Oil 
 welling up slowly, black, turgid, as if the earth had 
 melted in the heat and was astir, half alive, menac- 
 ing. The flung spars of derricks, slender shadows 
 in the heavy night. Light beating on an elfin city 
 of towering houses : walls that rose from the green 
 waters and pliinged into fantastic canyons of con- 
 crete and steel. Mile after mile of a desolate land, 
 red-brown, terrifying, emptied of life. 
 
 She thought that there must be more in the an- 
 tagonism between the Americans and her country- 
 men than the jealousy of rival traders. It might 
 be the instinctive jealousy felt by dying gods for 
 a young triumphant faith. Russia was being sacri- 
 ficed to save humanity. Was that England's des- 
 tiny? It would be fitting that England, which has 
 progressed through the crucifixions of her sons, 
 should herself become a monstrous sacrifice to 
 purge the world. 
 
 She shrank angrily from that betrayal. Passion- 
 ate thoughts rose to beat it back. 
 
 They are not England who speak for her, mask- 
 ing greed under fair words, facile traitors who 
 drive shameful bargains in her good name, defam- 
 
148 THE CLASH 
 
 ing in tlie market-place a tradition which had long 
 since died in their inhospitable hearts, if their 
 hearts had been its sole abiding-place, and it so 
 poor that it could die of a mean thought. 
 
 "You know nothing!" she stammered. "You 
 understand nothing." 
 
 England, with the asps of politicians at her 
 breasts. Surely he could see. " Give me my robe, 
 put on my crown, I have Immortal longings in 
 me." . . . No, he understood nothing. 
 
 " We made you," she said. " England made you 
 of her body." 
 
 He frowned a little. "That's nonsense. The 
 blood bond and all that. Nonsense. It meant 
 something once, but it means nothing now. We're 
 not your brothers. There's nothing in my blood 
 that answers yours, though I have English ances- 
 tors. Nothing, nothing," he repeated violently. 
 
 " That's a lie. You are lying to yourself." 
 
 " There was a Cornish came out from England. 
 He was the only Englishman among us. Listen. 
 That Englishman's son took his wife and his chil- 
 dren and trekked out westward in a wagon. You'd 
 never understand that trek. The children died and 
 were buried along the road. The oxen sickened 
 and had to be killed. Famine and Indians and 
 drouth. Torture of sun and torture of cold. There 
 was a child bom in the wagon, in the blistering 
 merciless heat. He was the Englishman's grandson 
 and he was an American, Don't you understand? 
 He was no kin to you. We shall never again be 
 kin." 
 
HAEVEST 149 
 
 "You may be right. You must be rigM, of 
 course. But — you need us." 
 
 " Need you? " He laughed without malice. 
 "We need nothing you have. You have nothing, 
 except your past, and your dying tradition." 
 
 The tradition did live. In the little towns whose 
 kindly streets remember the spaces and the hills, 
 in the sea-coast towns where birth and death are 
 borne on the breath of the sea, it lived, nursed at 
 warm bosoms, running on the eager feet of youth, 
 held in small strong hands. 
 
 She would have cried it aloud, but the words 
 faltered on her lips. With the passionate blown 
 ecstasy of a trumpet call, it rang in her heart. 
 England! Girdled by the grey sea, set apart in 
 that mother-deep like a favoured child, England! 
 
 But even as the words halted on her tongue, she 
 was swept by a desolating sense of her unworthi- 
 ness. The vision faded, and in the pitiless light 
 of its passing, she saw herself, greedy, dissatisfied, 
 standing empty-handed before the altars of life. 
 With a swift bitter pain she thought that her chUd 
 had been taken because the fruit of her body could 
 only be death. Life wanted none of her. She was 
 a symbol of shame, houseled in the barren beauty 
 of a spent age. 
 
 Neither could she speak for England, who was 
 dead and of no account. She listened to the Ameri- 
 can in silence. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 Jess Coknish had made enemies in England, and 
 most of these he contrived to punish. He caiTied 
 out his vengeance with much ingenuity, imagining 
 devices that would not have occurred to Jamie 
 Denman. Jamie was puzzled to reconcile them 
 with his lildng for the other man. He thought one 
 day — " When Cornish dislikes a man, he acts as 
 a skittish woman might." Having conceived a 
 feminine weakness in Jess, he was satisfied, and 
 listened with interest to the American's complacent 
 tales of intrigue. 
 
 There was another Texan among the Americans 
 at Hollow Down, He was the last and poorest of a 
 family of Southern aristocrats, lean, sunburned 
 and extraordinarily beautiful. He sat in silence 
 while Jess Cornish talked of Texas and of himself. 
 Frowning, he considered the flippant chatter of 
 the young Englishmen. He could not despise 
 them, but he was compelled to despise the nonsense 
 they talked. Jamie Denman said of him — " Shar- 
 man is so entirely straight and simple and sweet 
 that it is almost shocking to discover in him a 
 watchful subtlety : nO/ one ever scores off him. I 
 suppose he's that chivalrous Southern gentleman 
 of our old imagination. But the real test of Henry 
 Randolph Sharman would be what he thinks of 
 Jess Cornish." 
 
HAEVEST 151 
 
 No one ever knew what tlie other Texan thought 
 of Jess. He remained an enigma to the English- 
 men, who nevertheless liked him without knowing 
 or caring whether he returned their liking. 
 
 Henry Randolph Sharman not only understood 
 Jess Cornish better than Denman could ever un- 
 derstand him. He forgave Mm less readily. For 
 a certain adventure he never forgave him at all, 
 and his anger against the other Texan was the 
 fiercer that he hid it under an impassive respect, 
 working and lying for Cornish with suave loyalty. 
 
 Cornish, thus aided by his Ground Officer, car- 
 ried on a ceaseless feud with the English com- 
 manding officer. Major Merral was an infantry- 
 man pitchforked into the Air Force agajnst his 
 will. His adjutant bullied him and his squadron 
 commanders disliked him. His pilots cheerfully 
 despised him. They called him Maud and lam- 
 pooned him with zest. 
 
 When Maud was born his mother sighed 
 His father cursed and Handle cried. 
 His father swore "That's not my brat." 
 His mother said "What were we at?" 
 
 The other verses dealt faithfully with Maud's 
 infancy and upbringing. They were exceedingly 
 vulgar and shamelessly lucid on the question of 
 Maud's gender. 
 
 Once a week Major Merral summoned Captain 
 Cornish before him and solemnly warned the 
 American that he was not co-operating properly 
 with the English squadrons. Jess, soothing him 
 
152 THE CLASH 
 
 as best he could, regarded the affair as a passing 
 annoyance. Later he discovered that Merral was 
 sending bitter complaints of his conduct through 
 the tortuous channels of English official corre- 
 spondence. Chance put in his way an elaborate 
 revenge. 
 
 Major Merral had a brother in one of the squad- 
 rons. Young Merral conceived a passionate ad- 
 miration of Captain Cornish and spent his leisure 
 time iu the American mess. Cornish tolerated him 
 placidly. He came one day with an invitation 
 which he offered with shy insistence. " I want you 
 to come home with me for the week-end," he said. 
 " My mother is so keen to know you. I've talked 
 about you." 
 
 Cornish made amiable excuses. 
 
 " Do come," the boy urged. " There will only 
 be a few of us, but we can give you some good 
 dancing. My sisters dance well enough and my 
 brother's girl dances like an angel. Damned if I 
 could tell you what she sees in Maud ! " 
 
 The Texan drawled gently. " And do I have to 
 swallow Maud together with his angel and your 
 charming sisters? " 
 
 " Maud won't be there, thank God," said Maud's 
 brother. 
 
 Cornish accepted. 
 
 Young Merral's mother was touched by the 
 American's slow courtesy of speech. Young Mer- 
 ral's sisters found him entirely charming. 
 
 " His smile is adorable." 
 
 " His mouth is even more adorable." 
 
HARVEST 153 
 
 " It is a little insolent." 
 
 " Tliat is what makes you like it, dear old thing. 
 But you can't have him, because I want him my- 
 self. Besides, he's faithless. He'd lie to you in 
 that soft voice of his with the easiest conscience in 
 the world." 
 
 " He's so different." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 Major Merral's girl regarded the American with 
 an aloof interest. She drew back when the others 
 surrounded him, aware that his eyes followed her, 
 and acutely conscious of his suppressed tigerish 
 vitality. On the last evening she walked with him 
 in the garden. The grass was wet and the leaves of 
 the plane trees gleamed faintly in the darkness. 
 They brushed against overhanging branches and a 
 shower of cold drops fell on the girl's head and 
 bare shoulders. She had rounded beautiful shoul- 
 ders and beautiful hands which she used with con- 
 scious grace. As they walked, she lifted her chin 
 and looked away from the American because she 
 knew that her profile had pure attractive lines. 
 She felt the rough surface of his coat against her 
 arm and shivered with pleasure. 
 
 The American thought that she would be charm- 
 ing if her mouth were less pale and long. He knew 
 why she turned her profile to him, and paid a silent 
 ironic tribute to her skill. 
 
 " I shall be in London next week," the girl said 
 abruptly. 
 
 " Tell me where you will be." 
 
 He wrote the address in his notebook. 
 
154 THE CLASH 
 
 " This grass is too wet for your tMn slip- 
 pers," he said softly. "I'm going to take you 
 back." 
 
 He laid his hand on her shoulder and turned her 
 towards the house. She walked beside him, her 
 bare arm pressed to his side. Her quick wits de- 
 serted her and her words, if she could have spoken, 
 would have been more foolish than the speech of 
 her blood. 
 
 On leave in London Jess Cornish slept all day 
 and indulged his nights in every curious extrava- 
 gance that a restless imagination could suggest. 
 Going on leave shortly after his week-end in the 
 Merral house, he sought out Major Merral's girl. 
 He had planned a vengeance on the Englishman 
 with childlike savagery, a vengeance he was mean 
 enough to conceive and naive enough to carry 
 through. Jamie Denman, who never heard this 
 one story, might have reflected that none of us are 
 over-flne to imagine a mean vengeance, though 
 civilisation has spoiled our pleasure in carrying it 
 out; the game is no longer worth the candle to 
 really ennobled instincts. Captain Cornish re- 
 flected on the details of his romantic invention. 
 
 He showed the girl how fantastically luxurious 
 life may be, and was amused to see her become 
 fastidious, taking as her right a luxury to which 
 she had not been used. 
 
 Obeying a quite sincere impulse he took some 
 pains to guard her from herself. She would have 
 told him all the secrets of her heart and invented 
 new ones to interest him. He did not allow her 
 
HAKVEST 155 
 
 to prepare for herself that regret. She did not 
 appreciate his delicacy because she was not aware 
 of it. She was vividly aware of his absorbed solici- 
 tude for her. 
 
 " Americans are very nice to women," she mur- 
 mured. 
 
 " In America," he assured her, " we think that 
 every woman ought to be treated as you treat a 
 princess." 
 
 She raised her eyebrows. " But how trying." 
 
 "You are much cleverer than the American 
 women," he said adroitly, " and much more placid. 
 We find you very charming." 
 
 Jess danced with an instinctive grace, like a 
 sophisticated savage. The girl's response to the 
 negroid music was less ready and less controlled. 
 He held her body close to his, and felt it sway to 
 the broken rhythm. When the music paused her 
 Iroibs relaxed against his. He tightened his hold 
 and looked down at her with a caressing smile, 
 so that her brain reeled. 
 
 He thought that since she danced so well he 
 might forgive her the long mouth and the pale 
 lips, parting too readily. He would have danced 
 with the ugliest woman in the world if she had had 
 supple limbs. 
 
 " I must go back to the country to-morrow," she 
 said, " My visit is over." 
 
 " That's a terrible pity," he remarked. " Can't 
 we do anything about it? " 
 
 " I suppose I could get a room in an hotel." 
 
 " Why not? " 
 
156 THE CLASH 
 
 She hesitated. "Is there room in yours?" she 
 said abruptly. 
 
 He considered her. " Steady, old son," he cau- 
 tioned himself. " This is England. You're talking 
 to a Mce English Girl. Yes, I'll swear you are. 
 You don't want to make a bad mistake," Nor had 
 he contemplated making the girl his mistress. 
 " Perhaps that is what she wants." His curiosity 
 awoke. 
 
 " Sure," he said easily. " I'll book one for you." 
 
 " I must pay for it," she told him quickly. 
 
 *' That is as you please." He smiled at her. 
 " You quaint child." 
 
 A disturbing excitement possessed her through- 
 out the following day. In the early evening she 
 came to the hotel. Her luggage had been carried 
 upstairs. She found that her room and the Ameri- 
 can's were connected by an inner passage running 
 parallel with the corridor. She looked at the flow- 
 ers that filled her room and tried to collect her 
 thoughts. She did not know why she had come, 
 nor what would happen to her. An unnatural 
 calm shackled her will. 
 
 After the theatre Cornish contrived to have an 
 illicit supper served in his room. They drank tea 
 and ate boiled eggs. The girl talked with a flushed 
 gaiety and the man watched her out of humorous 
 eyes. She stood up abruptly. " I'm tired." With 
 a nervous gesture she stooped to kiss his forehead 
 and went quickly away. 
 
 Jess Cornish sat smoking. He stretched out his 
 legs and yawned, contemplating the tips of his 
 
HARVEST 157 
 
 quite beautiful field boots. Though three days of 
 his leave were left to him, he decided to go away in 
 the morning. The evening had been amusing, but 
 two more such evenings would be unnecessary and 
 dull. 
 
 When the girl knocked at Ms door he was truly 
 startled. She hesitated in the doorway. " I'm 
 restless," she said. "Need we go to sleep? 
 Couldn't we do something? A night club? A real 
 night club, I mean. You must know them all. 
 Don't scold me." 
 
 " Come in," he said, " I shan't scold you." 
 
 He put cushions in her chair with a grave 
 courtesy that masked a sudden fuiy of his blood. 
 
 " Have you ever been to a night club? " 
 
 " No. Never. Jack will not take me. He says 
 it is not suitable." She laughed at him nervously. 
 
 " Then I can't take you," he told her. " Since 
 Major Merral feels like that about it. Moreover, 
 I agree with him." 
 
 He was entirely sincere. He persisted in his re- 
 fusal while she used every art at her command. 
 When she coaxed, he looked at her with unsmiling 
 eyes. She grew angry and he laughed. 
 
 "You are adorable when you are angry," he 
 assured her. " Your eyes flash dnd you forget to 
 be English." 
 
 Anger choked her speech. She was no longer 
 nervous. She was furious that he sat there and 
 cared for nothing. His flowers were at her waist. 
 She tore them off and stamped on them absurdly. 
 Tears filled her eyes. 
 
158 THE CLASH 
 
 He stood up and pushed her gently back into 
 her chair. "Now, darling child," he said softly. 
 " Don't be angry with me." He dropped a cushion 
 at her feet, and settled himself on it, his head rest- 
 ing against her knee. " Let's talk, instead." 
 
 She was trembling. Her fingers were cold. 
 Shaken by a perilous joy, she forgot even to pose. 
 She touched his hair, his eyes, and bent to kiss 
 him on the mouth. She wished to keep him so 
 forever, his head below her hand, his lips curved 
 in the smile of a mischievous child. When he 
 turned and caught her round the body she shut ker 
 eyes, feeling him cruel now, and dangerous. Terror 
 seized upon her limbs. 
 
 He was bending over her. Into his impassive 
 gaze had come a gleam at once terrible and grave. 
 She shuddered, and her nerveless hand slipped over 
 the arm of the chair. She was helpless before this 
 stranger. Half inaudible, she spoke against his 
 mouth. 
 
 " Let me go now." 
 
 His lips moved. " You came to me." 
 
 "No. No." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Her mad terror cracked her voice. 
 
 " Oh, I shall hate you. Aftei-wards, I shall hate 
 you." 
 
 He lifted his head and looked at her with that 
 void annihilating stare. 
 
 "My God, girl," he said, "don't you see what 
 this means to me? " 
 
 Her strength failed. Ceasing to strain away 
 
HAKVEST 159 
 
 from him, slie began to cry : dreary sobs sbook her 
 body. 
 
 He stood away from her -witli a savage move- 
 ment. Tlien he Kfted her out of the chair and car- 
 ried her into her room. " You can lock your door," 
 he said briefly, and left her. 
 
 In his own room he gave way to a cold anger. 
 He did not want her, but he hated to be fooled. He 
 flung up the window and leaned out. London 
 stretched away to the east, a shadowed city of 
 domes and fretted roofs. In the farthest distance 
 he caught a sombre gleam, a whisper of water in 
 the brooding silence. He dropped the blind and 
 turned back into the room, " Hell to her," he said 
 aloud. "What makes women think their bodies 
 are so precious? Or so desirable? " 
 
 He woke in the morning filled with virtuous sat- 
 isfaction. He had never meant to do the English- 
 man that injury, and he thought kindly of the girl 
 because she had saved him from it. They met at 
 lunch and he was very cheerful, wishing that she 
 would not look at him with so tragic an air. She 
 ought to see that it was over. In the afternoon he 
 went back to Hollow Down. 
 
 A week later the girl wrote to him. 
 
 " Mt Dear : 
 
 "Now that I am sane and can see a little 
 clearly both myself and you, I send you this letter, 
 useless because you and I talk a different tongue. 
 I shall be ashamed for this folly. But now, to- 
 night, caution seems a poor thing beside the tor- 
 
160 THE CLASH 
 
 ment of my thoughts. If I tell you that I love 
 you, you will think that I regret my cowardice. I 
 regret nothing. Beneath passion, beneath this 
 longing that makes heavy my limbs, I find a pride 
 that is glad I went free of you. Do not think I for- 
 get that you let me go. 
 
 " You are selfish, a liar, and an'ogant. As you 
 grow older you will grow harder and more selfish. 
 But you are alive, more alive than anyone I have 
 ever known. You are like life, a fire that sucks 
 everything to itself. You are life, cruel, greedy, 
 blind life. You speak to what in me is savage and 
 bad — and to what is adventurous and splendid in 
 me too. 
 
 " Oh, I have been hurt at your hands. You will 
 never hurt me again. You will not remember me. 
 I was not alive : I did not know until now that liv- 
 ing was intensest agony. And I too shall forget. 
 I shall forget that your eyes were narrow and 
 audacious, alien watchful eyes. I shall forget the 
 touch of your hands, the arrogant swing of your 
 body. I shall forget even your mouth that I have 
 kissed, your adorable mouth. 
 
 " But I shall not forget the harsh bitter joy of 
 you. I shall seem content, but there will be a de- 
 stroying knowledge in my heart. 
 
 "You know that I can never now marry Jack 
 Merral. I have already told him so. I am spoilt 
 for him. You have spoilt me for any half life. 
 
 " Oh, I want you, I want you. You do not un- 
 derstand. You cannot hear my voice. I shall 
 never have you. I shall go unfulfilled all my days." 
 
HAEVEST 161 
 
 Jess Cornish, read the letter through quickly. 
 He was a little moved and a little resentful. Ke- 
 sentment and a prick of vanity made him indis- 
 creet. Sitting on the edge of his bed, he told Kan- 
 dolph Sharman what he had done. Sharman lis- 
 tened in sUence. He looked absently out of the 
 window. " Those plants cert'nly do want water," 
 he observed. And a moment later, " Let's play." 
 
 He gathered three Americans and one unfortu- 
 nate Englishman into a poker game that lasted 
 until the hour of early morning flying. 
 
 Then Captain Cornish went to bed and his 
 Ground Officer carried on. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Elizabeth and Jess Cornisli sat on a slope of the 
 downs. The path twisted down past bramble 
 hedges to the fields and the upper road. Thin and 
 remote, like a murmuring under eaves, the sounds 
 of the village came to them, troubling the evening 
 a little, as the shadow of wings troubles a quiet 
 water. Behind them, a hill rose to the crest of 
 the downs, disturbed with trees. The night flowed 
 violet down the hidden valley, and as they watched 
 a few stars rode out. 
 
 Elizabeth sat at the foot of a tiny hillock. The 
 American lounged at her feet, his head resting on 
 one hand. He was watching the intense blue of her 
 gown become slowly purple black. Her hands 
 gleamed in its folds. 
 
 He was so silent that Elizabeth, who would have 
 been silent too, if she had not believed Americans 
 impatient of silence, roused herself to talk. He 
 listened with brooding intentness. Elizabeth felt 
 it as a new demand upon her. She began to give 
 him back silence for his unfathomable silence. 
 
 " How still you sit," he said abruptly. 
 
 She looked down at him. The outline of his face, 
 which the darkness made at once remote and inti- 
 mate, woke a poignant emotion. She did not try to 
 understand it, thrusting it away and steadying her 
 
HAEVEST 163 
 
 voice. " I was taught to sit still. My great-aunt 
 believed that Englishwomen were too tall and too 
 long in the leg to be vivacious. Their secret, she 
 said, was placid grace. And so she made me sit 
 rigid for an hour every day. It became a habit. 
 I sat upright and stiff as a poker for hours by my- 
 self, dreaming dreams and seeing visions. You 
 don't allow dreams in Texas, do you, Captain Cor- 
 nish? " 
 
 He ignored the challenge. "What did you 
 dream? " he said. 
 
 She hesitated, and he saw her smile become 
 faintly mischievous. " You wouldn't believe me if 
 I told you." 
 
 " I'll believe anything you tell me." 
 
 "How splendid of you," Elizabeth said softly. 
 He did not look at her. She touched his hand with 
 swift fingers. " I wasn't laughing. Indeed I was 
 not. Listen then. I sat and dreamed that I was 
 the most heroic person in the world, and the best 
 loved. It was part of my burning desire to be 
 good." Her voice mocked gently the child Eliza- 
 beth. " You don't know how much I wished to be 
 good. To be so pure that evil thoughts could not 
 come to me. I imagined myself a saint, with a 
 narrow beautiful face and bare white feet. When 
 I died an odour of roses came from my dead body, 
 over which people wept. Sometimes I was not a 
 saint, but a sort of Eoman matron, with a very 
 large family of round-limbed beautiful children. 
 But always I was good. You are laughing at me." 
 
 " No," he said. 
 
1G4 THE CLASH 
 
 " There were other dreams. Once I thought my 
 mother came back. I was so wild with joy that my 
 heart leaped in my body. I could not speak to her 
 for its mad beating : I ran to touch her and hold 
 her and never let her go. She laid a finger on her 
 lips and smiled at me, such a smile that I stood 
 still, sick with vain longing. A smile of inhuman 
 beauty, a kindly gentle smile that was yet not for 
 me. I knew that she didn't care. She was kind 
 because she was happy, but it was not for me that 
 she was happy. She was happy because of some- 
 thing else. She didn't care about me. She stood 
 there smiling tenderly and I couldn't touch her. 
 I couldn't touch her. She didn't care." 
 
 Tears fell on her hands. 
 
 Jess Cornish did not spfeak. He had listened, 
 desiring passionately to understand her. Now, 
 when her voice ceased and her tears stabbed him, 
 he could not speak to her. A strange regret con- 
 fused his thoughts. 
 
 When he looked at her again she was still and 
 tearless. The warm darkness lay between them, 
 made sharp with wandering scents of meadow- 
 sweet and pine. He saw the white stem of her 
 throat, lifting gallantly, like a brave gesture. The 
 beauty of the night was in her flawless throat. 
 
 He wanted to draw her into himself, to hide her 
 in his heart so that there was nothing of her which 
 he could not read. Her aloofness hurt him, the 
 soul of her beauty that he could not touch. She 
 who meant everything to him yet meant nothing. 
 He suffered because he could not make her real to 
 
HAEVEST 165 
 
 himself. She held herself apart in an ironical si- 
 lence. 
 
 He had learned that her endurance was almost 
 equal to his own; she was very strong, and lithe 
 and slender with her strength. She had swayed 
 lightly in front of htm as they climbed the steep 
 slope. In his arms she would thrill, her soft young 
 body shrinking from his touch like the body of a 
 frightened bird. 
 
 He could not speak to her, nor touch her. Her 
 loveliness became an intolerable thing. He would 
 have said, " You burn me." 
 
 She was a story he had known once and forgot- 
 ten. Ages ago, her beauty had been in his heart. 
 It had called him, even when he had shut his ears 
 to it. if ow that he could not understand it, it tor- 
 tured him. 
 
 He heard her cool laughter, " You are very 
 bored," she said, "and I am cold. Shall we go?" 
 
 He stood beside her on the path. " I was not 
 bored," he said deliberately. "I am honotired to 
 have you talk so to me. Do you believe that? " 
 
 " Indeed I believe you," she answered impul- 
 sively. 
 
 They walked slowly down towards the village. 
 In the thick hedge a bird wakened at their foot- 
 steps. Shrill cries followed them through the 
 honied night. They heard its wings beating in the 
 fastness of the hedge. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Elizabeth called the next day on the wife of the 
 Colonel at the Wing, a lady itching with virtue 
 and station scandal. Her virtue did not allow her 
 to repeat a scandalous story without first investi- 
 gating it. Fortunately, she had a good nose. 
 
 The American officers had given a dance and in- 
 vited to it the American nurses from a nearby hos- 
 pital. Elizabeth and Jamie had not been there, 
 but the Colonel had, and his wife was heavy laden. 
 She told Elizabeth that one of the American nurses 
 danced superbly. " I can't remember her name, 
 my dear. It was un-English and elusive; no one 
 tried to remember it. They called her Oregon be- 
 cause she came from that State. Everyone wanted 
 to dance with her, but early in the evening she got 
 furiously drunk and disappeared with Captain 
 Cornish : she spent the rest of the night in his hut. 
 So odd. One knew of course that they had that 
 kind of person even in America, but one hardly ex- 
 pected to meet it at a dance. Surely co-operation 
 can be carried too far. My husband says that Cap- 
 tain Cornish will come to grief. He is so indis- 
 creet. The walls of his hut could tell strange 
 tales." 
 
 "Need you — speak for them?" Elizabeth 
 drawled. ' 
 
 The Colonel's wife was unabashed. 
 
HAEVEST 167 
 
 " Oregon," slie repeated. " So quaint, don't you 
 think?" 
 
 Elizabeth, smiled. 
 
 When Jess next came to the house she was for 
 the first time conscious of his exotic fascination for 
 her. She showed him a delicate indifference. 
 Shortly he got up. " You're not pleased with me 
 this afternoon," he said calmly. He stood before 
 her, and she shrank from her sense of his consum- 
 ing vitality. 
 
 A humorous smile lifted the corners of the Amer- 
 ican's mouth as he turned away. Behind the smile 
 was not a little uncertainty and a growing excite- 
 ment which he refused to acknowledge. 
 
 When he had gone Elizabeth wrote to Andrew 
 Howard. She wrote of Jess Cornish at elaborate 
 length, and added that she found Hollow Down 
 very dull. The letter reached Andrew during a 
 time of intense strain and discomfort. He misun- 
 derstood it and sent a bitter reply. " If you want 
 to run away, my dear Elizabeth, why not do so? 
 You're not a soldier, and I'm sure Hollow Down 
 is a miserable place. By the way, why doesn't the 
 man join the army and come out to France? There 
 really are Americans out here fighting; I've seen 
 them. He could demonstrate the art of Texan high 
 life, before a different audience every day, until 
 someone got bored and shot him by mistake." 
 
 Elizabeth read the letter with burning cheeks 
 and a resentful sense of shame. 
 
 She was still holding it when her husband came 
 into the room. "We're ordered to France," he 
 
168 THE CLASH 
 
 said. He kissed her affectionately and added, " It's 
 been so very good of you, my dear, to stay all these 
 months in this absurd place." 
 She looked at him stupidly. 
 
CHAPTEE XIII 
 
 Since Gilbert Manners' death Ms house had been 
 shut. Elizabeth determined now to go north and 
 make it habitable again. The place held her with 
 powerful fingers. In those times when the fret of 
 life drops strangely away, leaving the spirit alone 
 and quiet, it was to no personal love that Elizabeth 
 turned for shelter. There in the depths, the moor- 
 land valley lay cradled, serene under the changing 
 sky. In spring the white flowers of the blackthorn 
 gleamed against black slender boughs; the early 
 coltsfoot covered the river edge, and below the 
 trees, listening to their secret pulse, the primrose 
 lifted her cool face. Days lengthened, and under 
 an ardent sun the sombre hedge-stachys thrust be- 
 tween campion and birdseye. The narrow lanes 
 were filled T^ith a warm heady scent. Purple and 
 yellow, the vetches trailed over the banks and the 
 dusty bindweed was crushed under the feet of the 
 hay-makers. 
 
 It lay quiet, that valley, between the moor be- 
 loved of slumbrous bees and the sea, ancient nurs- 
 ing mother of our race. Her feet knew its paths as 
 the roots of the trees know the cool earth. 
 
 She made her preparations to go in the week fol- 
 lowing Jamie's departure. They were finished. 
 When Jess came, late in the afternoon, she resented 
 an intruder. He knew it, and a heavy obstinacy 
 
170 THE CLASH 
 
 kept Mm in his chair. For the first time they quar- 
 relled openly. He picked up a pamphlet from the 
 table and held it disdainfully. " This country is 
 rotten with socialism," he observed. " Your tradi- 
 tions are about to be strangled and turned 6ut of 
 their old home by a gang of sexless, immoral eaters 
 of filth. To me a Socialist is a ci'oss between a 
 rattlesnake and a damn fool. And to all decent 
 Americans. If we had the writer of this — inde- 
 cency — over there we'd know how to deal with 
 him." 
 
 Elizabeth mastered a passion of indignation. 
 
 " I expect you would lynch him," she said. " He 
 was killed two years ago in a war of ours. You 
 may have heard of it when you came picnicking to 
 Europe." 
 
 He flushed, not at the foolish words, but at the 
 intent. 
 
 " That's not fair," he said slowly, " if you were a 
 man, I should " He paused. 
 
 " You would what? " Elizabeth mocked. 
 
 " I'd thrash you." 
 
 " Oh, you don't mean a man ; you mean an Ameri- 
 can," she stammered. 
 
 He stood over her terribly. She stared fasci- 
 nated at the spectacle of an anger that distorted his 
 face into a mask "of hate. He did not speak. A 
 subtle change came over the mask. The difficult 
 flush ebbed under his dark skin. Almost before 
 she had lifted a shaldng hand to touch him he had 
 stooped and caught her to her feet. His mouth was 
 on hers, that hard arrogant mouth. She could not 
 
HAEVEST 171 
 
 meet the eyes that sought her eyes. The blood in 
 her veins was a consuming fire : she was crushed, 
 she was nothing. She was in his arms swooning. 
 His desire had sucked up her life. The fierce pres- 
 sure of his body annihilated her. 
 
 At the moment when the breath had almost died 
 in her panting throat revulsion came upon her. 
 She wrenched her head free and a harsh voice spoke 
 for her. " You think that this is your hut and that 
 I am Oregon," it said in his ear. 
 
 He loosed his hold so suddenly that she reeled, 
 feeling awkwardly for support. He caught her by 
 the arm and bent an expressionless face to hers. 
 " Stand up," he said. 
 
 She went blindly to the door. He held it open 
 for her. 
 
 For a moment after she had gone he stood in the 
 middle of the room. He lifted his hands and 
 looked at them as if they were not part of him. 
 He caught sight of himself in a glass and at the 
 sight his face twisted violently with distaste. 
 
 Laughter tore its way through the motionless 
 body. " I have always heard," he said aloud, " and 
 do now know that the real test of an English aris- 
 tocrat is her ability to say vulgar things with ease." 
 
 Back in his hut he took a revenge. Her body lay 
 before him and he regarded its white limbs without 
 emotion. He said — " She meant to go through 
 with it, and at the last moment was afraid." He 
 rejected that; it did her too much justice. She 
 had not been worth his brief agony. She was a 
 cold wanton. 
 
172 THE CLASH 
 
 He could not have acknowledged an unexpressed 
 gliame, one of his commendable sentiments taking 
 its revenge. He confounded Elizabeth with the 
 English race in a vast contempt; phrases of vitu- 
 peration remained unsaid behind his shut lips. 
 
 Beneath shame, hatred and contempt, she pos- 
 sessed his imagination as an old, chance-stirred 
 memory fastens on the mind. She laid delicate 
 fingers on that in his being which did not belong 
 to him, but to one long dead. He thrust her sav- 
 agely out of his thoughts, and like the echo of dead 
 music, her cadence lingered in a shuttered room. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 Elizabeth had not lost her cMldisli horror of 
 music, but she had learned to reason concerning it. 
 She said that music was a subtle treachery which 
 man worked against himself, and against the in- 
 hibitions he had painfully built up. She agreed 
 entirely with those mediaeval Churchmen who cre- 
 ated a special hell for musicians. 
 
 As she lay sleepless, it was with something like 
 the old fear that she heard the first notes of a violin 
 played on a nearby lawn. The air was at first 
 aloof, with a chord repeated gently like a melan- 
 choly warning. It was interrupted by sharp stab- 
 bing notes that preluded a monstrous ecstasy of 
 sound. Elizabeth sat up among the pillows and 
 held her hands over her ears, but the music pierced 
 between her fingers ; it tore and burned its way into 
 her heart. She could not escape its terrible inti- 
 macy; it thrust itself upon her like the body of a 
 lover. 
 
 She had not known herself capable of this mad- 
 ness. She shook with a sick, dizzy humiliation. 
 Desire consumed her. Her mind shuddered away 
 from her body as from a destroying fire. She 
 crushed her arms across her breasts and bowed her 
 head above them. 
 
174 THE CLASH 
 
 The unseen player was silent. Eain fell upon 
 the quiet leaves round the window. 
 
 Elizabeth slipped out of bed. She began to write 
 a letter. 
 
 " You are not worth loving so. I think you are 
 only a half-civilised barbarian, distinguished from 
 your fellows in that you are richer, more selfish and 
 more arrogant. 
 
 " I think of you like that and I love you. . . . 
 
 " My mind is a malicious egoist which destroys 
 its world. But since it is unpleasant to live among 
 ruins, it forthwith builds a makeshift world and is 
 again goaded to destroy it. Would you care to be 
 tied for life to a companion who halted you with a 
 mocking — Fool that thou art — whenever passion 
 should have swept away your heavy-footed sanity? 
 No emotion has ever hidden from me the irksome 
 vision of myself as a ludicrous little creature in the 
 grip of ludicrous passions and vanities. 
 
 "What is more laughable than the obsession of 
 love? I have been compelled to smile at the ridicu- 
 lous spectacle of a lover even when that lover were 
 my own and I quiescent. My thought destroys for 
 me everything but the destructive malice itself. I 
 have wished to know ecstasy — that is, madness, an 
 escape from the surveillance of my mind. . . . 
 
 " I doubt whether you have a mind at all, if by 
 mind we mean an intelligence able to regard itself. 
 You have clamorous impulses and much experience 
 in gratifying them, but to think is to suffer and 
 you are too selfish to suffer. . . . 
 
 "You belong to a half -barbaric country and I 
 
HAEVEST 175 
 
 inherit an old subtle civilisation and respond to 
 feelings that do not touch you at all. The gulf be- 
 tween us is too deep, . . . 
 
 " I have to thank you that for a few moments at 
 least I forgot to laugh at myself. . . ." 
 
 She tore the letter across, not without a faint 
 complacent feeling that it was rather a good letter, 
 and turning down the lamp, drew back a curtain. 
 
 The murmuring darkness slipped past her into 
 the room. There was a scurry of leaves in the 
 beech trees and a startled bird fled on narrow 
 wings. She felt the cold prick of the rain on her 
 hands. 
 
 What madness had made it possible to forget 
 Jamie? 
 
 She was sorry for Jamie. The other face of that 
 pity was a yearning admiration for her vision of 
 Elizabeth the lonely dreamer mated to a sweetly 
 ineffectual Jamie. With an odd lucidity, she rec- 
 ognised this and laughed at herself. 
 
 Even as she saw herself in the repellent mirror 
 of self -ridicule, her mind played her an old trick. 
 She began to imagine a scene in which she told 
 Jamie that she loved the American. She was pale, 
 facing him with courageous eyes. She said, " I 
 have a lover, but I do not love you the less. I 
 tried to do without him, but I could not. Is there 
 virtue in suffering? Would you have had me suf- 
 fer? It is for you to say what is to be done." His 
 mouth was fixed in a grimace of pain. She could 
 not bear it. She held his body to hers, comforting 
 him. This did not advance things much, and she 
 
176 THE CLASH 
 
 imagined instead a sterner Jamie, very wise and 
 patient. " Do as you like, but come to me when 
 life has hurt you." Or perhaps he said, " Go, 
 child." Years with Jess fled through her mind. 
 Confused barbaric colours of wine-bright dawns 
 and seas purple with southern dusks. Then a 
 tragic rent in the pattern. She was back in Eng- 
 land, pleading with an older Jamie, outfacing his 
 distrust with her strange serenity. He seemed not 
 to believe in her, but when she had ended her story 
 and with a weary gesture turned away, he came 
 and took her in his arms. Infinitely tender — 
 " You poor chUd." She lifted her face to his. And 
 afterwards the delight of consoling him for the 
 lonely years. 
 
 The dream cracked and the dreamer turned upon 
 herself in a passion of mortification. " Oh, fool 
 that you are," Elizabeth stammered, " to imagine 
 such futile, such incredibly fatuous things." She 
 flushed crimson with humiliation. "Are all women 
 such secret fools? " 
 
 Jamie would be neither heart-broken nor patient. 
 He had an indolent irony that would mask his hurt. 
 But she would have spoiled for ever his image of 
 her. She would have spoiled not the present only, 
 but the kindly gracious past. 
 
 " I'm tired," she said aloud. "And none of these 
 things matter. No, nothiug matters." 
 
 The desire of the body was a cheat, the mind 
 cheating the body. In the tortured mind passion 
 burned into an ecstasy that the body would never 
 know. The body could not know. At its touch 
 
HAEVEST 177 
 
 ecstasy became a flicker of the senses, a little 
 flicker, a mockery. Deceived by a fire their own 
 minds lit and fed, men sacrificed life itself to enjoy 
 that brief flicker. Fools. Fools. 
 
 Even while she mocked herself with wisdom, a 
 flame wrapped her shrinking body. Her spirit died 
 within her. She was faint for remembered kisses, 
 thrusting out parched lips for the bitterness of that 
 anodyne. 
 
 She found herself shamed by an odd thought that 
 she had meditated a treachery to CecU la Mothe 
 Howard, an Englishman dead in Flanders. 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 • 
 
 " Chastity/' Miriam said, " is a tradition, but so 
 is honour and so is gentleness. The world itself is 
 a tradition. We do not know that we exist, but we 
 have always believed that we do. 
 
 " There are women who theorise about chastity," 
 she said. " They have yellow necks and thin 
 flanks. Their chastity is above reproach and not 
 likely to be menaced. 
 
 " I brought you up very well," she added com- 
 placently. 
 
 Elizabeth smiled at her great-aunt. Miriam had 
 wished to pretend that Elizabeth was still a little 
 girl and Elizabeth, with pity in her heart for the 
 capricious old woman, had submitted to be un- 
 dressed and bathed by the thin hard fingers. 
 Miriam, remembering the child's angular grace, 
 regretted its disappearance. She surveyed the 
 slender curves of Elizabeth's body and frowned. 
 
 " The finest sculpture has always been of mascu- 
 line beauty, because men are better proportioned 
 than women. A man is broad above the waist and 
 carries his strength with grace, like a tree swaying 
 on a strong thin stem. The eye follows the line of 
 his body upwards. A woman's body curves down- 
 wards, like a rounded vase — or a jug. Have you 
 ever seen Lady Verschott pretending to be a jug, 
 
HARVEST 179 
 
 my dear? She does it with, all the grace in the 
 world. They say that Lord Verschott was most 
 embarrassed when he first saw her dance. He said 
 he had never seen her with so little on before and 
 that she did not look in the least as he had ex- 
 pected. She is reported to have a beautiful leg 
 and the soul of a wood nymph. So far as I can 
 judge — but I do not understand modern customs 
 — her idea of dancing is to take off everything but 
 a pendant and waggle her stomach at the audience. 
 Perhaps she believes that her soul is in there." 
 Miriam paused. " I do not Imow why a woman's 
 body should have been regarded as a noble symbol. 
 It is not the Good, which may include woman but 
 is certainly not included in her. l^or the Beauti- 
 ful, since man is more beautiful than she is. Nor 
 the True, seeing that woman's body offers every- 
 thing, contentment, happiness and perfection, and 
 gives none of these things. Perhaps it is wor- 
 shipped as the chiefest human symbol. It is the 
 forever Unfinished, the eternal Imperfect. It is 
 therefore human life. The earth is figured as a 
 woman for her fruitfulness. But it is woman's 
 provocative unsatisfying curves that are a true 
 symbol of life, and not her fruitfulness, which is 
 capricious." 
 
 Elizabeth was kneeling before the fire. In her 
 white bathrobe she looked like the child of Miriam's 
 regretful imagination. The eyes she lifted to Mir- 
 iam's were heavy and mournful. Miriam was re- 
 minded of the child's deceptive air of fragility, 
 when a violent outburst of rage or grief had left 
 
180 THE CLASH 
 
 her pale and drooping. It had always been a trick, 
 for Elizabeth was as strong as a young colt, and it 
 had never failed to irritate Miriam. She was irri- 
 tated now. A gleam came into her eyes. 
 
 " Mrs. la Mothe Howard came to see me to-day," 
 she said. " We agreed that Cecil had been in love 
 with you. But perhaps you linew? " 
 
 Elizabeth looked at her with an ironic smile. 
 She recognised her great-aunt's tone and stiffened 
 herself to take the punishment it threatened. The 
 child had winced under Miriam's malice. Eliza- 
 beth knew that she would not wince now. She con- 
 cealed her pity for the fierce old woman. 
 
 " He told me so before he went away," she said. 
 
 "And you, perhaps, played the solicitous 
 mother? " 
 
 Elizabeth acknowledged the thrust. "I might 
 have done that," she murmured, " if I had thought 
 of it. But I fell in love myself, with Cecil Howard 
 — oh, only for an hour — and it rather spoiled my 
 judgment." 
 
 Miriam looked at her with interest. " You are 
 frank," she observed, " and so I am sure you have 
 nothing to confess." 
 
 Elizabeth laughed outright. " That, too," she 
 said, " is something of an accident. I should have 
 flung myself into Cecil's arms if I had been per- 
 suaded that I was hurting neither myself nor 
 Jamie." 
 
 " Oh, Jamie. You were not wUling to outrage 
 his sense of possession? " 
 
 " I don't think he has any." 
 
HAEVEST 181 
 
 "Admirable creature. Perhaps he is the new 
 man for whose birth women have waited. If only 
 he had a little more energy. No, I do not thinli he 
 is that new man of whom advanced souls dream, a 
 magnificent animal with the mentality of a garden 
 suburb reformer." 
 
 "It was not only Jamie," Elizabeth reflected. 
 "It was for myself that I hesitated. What do 
 women lose with their virtue? " 
 
 " I do not know, my dear," Miriam said grimly. 
 "Though I should know, having lost mine more 
 times than I care to remember. It is quite possible 
 that all this reverence for chastity — which has to 
 its credit a perfect holocaust of corpses — is an 
 ancient trick, played upon women so long ago that 
 they have forgotten how they learned their lesson. 
 So that now all that is really fine and good in a 
 woman, all her rarest instincts, are enlisted in the 
 service of a cheat. And perhaps, after all, it is not 
 a cheat. The most soulless reformer hides in her 
 heart a dream. It is a veiy fine dream, in which 
 man and woman, husband and wife, are kind one 
 unto another, and sacrifice gladly all lesser desires 
 to the glory of their great joy in each other." 
 
 The harsh old voice stopped. Elizabeth did not 
 move, sitting huddled in her bathrobe at Miriam's 
 feet. 
 
 " Then you don't know whether it is a dream or 
 a cheat," she said at last. 
 
 Her great-aunt laughed. "Good God, child," 
 she said cheerfully. "Did you think I was in- 
 spired? Who am I to say whether it is a beautiful 
 
182 THE CLASH 
 
 vision or a treacliei'y? The world is full of clever 
 women — and not everyone of them is yellow- 
 necked and thin in the flank — who write books to 
 prove that they are justified of all their vagrant 
 desires. They call freedom what I was taught to 
 call wantonness. So that I have been a free woman 
 all my life, only I didn't know it, and thought I 
 was the other thing. For my part, I do not know 
 whether they are right or wrong. But I do Imow 
 this. When they have persuaded themselves that 
 self-respect has nothing to do with chastity they 
 have done very little. Even when they have writ- 
 ten a book about it, they have done very little. 
 There remains a great thing. Having made sure 
 that they respect themselves, they have still to per- 
 suade men to respect them. And that is quite a 
 different affair and much harder to compass. It is 
 so like clever women to forget that the man counts 
 also in this affair of their chastity, over which they 
 are as concerned as were their grandmothers, but 
 with a different vision. My grandmother was 
 proud of her chastity but my grandniece may at 
 any moment write a book in scorn and repudiation 
 of hers. The times have changed, though I dare 
 swear that women are still peiTerse and men are 
 still stupid." 
 
 Elizabeth scrambled to her feet and stood hold- 
 ing her gown with an arm flung across her breast. 
 She wanted to prick the bubble of Miriam's elo- 
 quence. 
 
 "What you mean, with all these words," she 
 said doucely, " is that one must be very sure of 
 
HABVEST 183 
 
 Or so passionately in love tliat it does 
 not matter." 
 
 "And that will never happen to you," her great- 
 aunt retorted. "You may he a voluptuary, hut 
 you will never be passionate, except in your mind. 
 You had hetter go to bed, before you catch cold in 
 that ridiculous gown," 
 
CHAPTEE XVI 
 
 Chance^ in the form of a sick maid, kept Eliza- 
 betli at Hollow Down for another week. She came 
 face to face with Jess at the dinner given by a local 
 brewer-baronet to the little colony of officers and 
 officers' wives. He came very late. She looked up 
 from her coffee to see him greeting his hostess. 
 Released, he surveyed the room through half -closed 
 eyes. Elizabeth met his glance. A sombre flame 
 leaped into the man's steady gaze. So for a mo- 
 ment they looked at each other, and then the Amer- 
 ican crossed the room and bent to her hand. 
 
 The bones and sinews of Elizabeth's strength 
 melted. She looked at him; he smiled down at 
 her, and she was content. 
 
 She made an effort against the lassitude that 
 pressed heavily on her limbs, filling her with a 
 fierce secret pleasure. 
 
 " What do you want of me? " she said. 
 
 " Nothing that you find yourself able to with- 
 hold," he answered, smiling at her again, as if she 
 had been a beloved child. 
 
 She tried to escape from her unwilling weakness. 
 
 " Do you ever think? " she said lightly. 
 
 " When I must. When I am in danger." 
 
 " That is not what I mean. Do you ever think 
 of life? Do you ever think of yourself as one man 
 
HARVEST 185 
 
 in a world of men and women each, desiring a dif- 
 ferent tMng? " 
 
 " I think of "what I want and whether I can get 
 it." 
 
 The words made her afraid. She looked at him, 
 trying to see through his steady gaze to the thought 
 behind. When the mask dropped what would It 
 reveal? She had imagined in him a steadfast 
 serenity. But suppose she found herself facing 
 only the frightful and stupid serenity of an abyss. 
 
 "When your desires are wrong?" she stam- 
 mered. " When they will hurt other people? Do 
 you never think of these things? " 
 
 He found her earnestness amusing. 
 
 " Since the world is full of greedy men and 
 women," he answered, "and since no man can 
 achieve more than a little of his desire, I find it 
 simpler to take what I can get in the struggle." 
 
 " Is that your philosophy? " 
 
 " I haven't got one." 
 
 Her mood changed swiftly and she gave him a 
 mischievous smile. 
 
 " You are not a thinker? " 
 
 " I do not understand philosophy," he drawled. 
 " To me it is just words talldng themselves. You 
 yourself make words to cover your doubts and your 
 ignorance." 
 
 He bent his face to hers. " Why are you talking 
 now, my dear? " he demanded. " Shall I tell 
 you? " 
 
 " No, no," she said, lifting eyes that did not meet 
 his. 
 
186 THE CLASH 
 
 "I can make shift to out-talk you," he said 
 softly, " but you try my patience — and my pulse." 
 
 " Let me try it a little longer. I have a philos- 
 ophy that perhaps means nothing. It is that men 
 and women have the right to do anything that they 
 can bring themselves to do. They may be punished 
 by the social forces or broken by a force from 
 within themselves. But after all it is not a ques- 
 tion of punishment. It is a question of what a 
 man can bear to see himself doing. It is all part 
 of a tale about a Dream and a Cheat. You do not 
 know it and I do not propose to bore you with it. 
 But suppose there were no jealousy and no pos- 
 sessive greed " 
 
 " You are talking of angels — who can suffer no 
 torments of the body." 
 
 " A world not made frightful for youth," 
 
 " Heaven perhaps." 
 
 " Or Utopia? But Americans are too well settled 
 to dream of Utopias, I think." 
 
 " Utopia has been bounded in one man's brain 
 before now, but only one man dwelt therein and 
 had bad dreams." 
 
 She was startled. What had lent him wit? 
 
 She did not know that he felt himself to be fight- 
 ing desperately. For the first time since he came 
 into the room despair seized him. He had failed. 
 Aloof and mocking, she eluded him. 
 
 In his very despair, an exultant power woke in 
 him, so that he had to choke back the laughter in 
 his throat. Now he understood that desire of her 
 body was the least of his desires and that they 
 
HARVEST 187 
 
 could not be withstood. She could not withstand 
 them. 
 
 " Love itself might be different in such a world," 
 she said. " But that is no use to me, who belong 
 to this world, and cannot take love lightly — as 
 Olympians do and Utopians perhaps may." 
 
 " I am not asking you for a light love," he said 
 coolly. 
 
 She glanced at his face and laughed. " In 
 another minute," she said softly, "you will be 
 telling me that it is not fitting to argue about 
 morality." 
 
 " One can argue about anything," he said, " but 
 it is foolish. Argument about things that should 
 be taken for granted is destroying your race and 
 your people." 
 
 " Isn't it better to look for truth, even if the 
 search be dangerous, than to rest yourself and your 
 civilisation, as America does, upon conventional 
 sentiments?" 
 
 "I don't know," he told her stolidly, "but I do 
 Ifnow that the truth will kill you. And it is noth- 
 ing worth dying for. It is better to have good 
 sentiments and keep your energy for growing cot- 
 ton." 
 
 " In your country," she mocked him, " a faithless 
 wife would be condemned not for her poor morals 
 but for her bad sentiments." 
 
 " In my country," he retorted, " the women are 
 still barbarians and when they marry do not have 
 lovers." I 
 
 " In the country of the Unwritten Law ! " 
 
188 THE CLASH 
 
 " You will take no lover when I am your hus- 
 band," he said. 
 
 They were again antagonists, but behind the hos- 
 tile show an unseen force threatened to submerge 
 distrust and fear alike. 
 
 Their hostess had started her guests dancing 
 upon the lawn and was bearing down upon their 
 corner. " Shall we go too? " he asked hastily. 
 
 He danced with a slow deliberate grace. Eliza- 
 beth held herself stiffly in his arms and when they 
 reached the far side of the lawn he stopped. " You 
 can't dance," he told her. " I only knew one En- 
 glishwoman who could." 
 
 A grassy terrace ran below them. He offered his 
 arm to help her down the narrow steps, but she 
 hesitated, looking back at the house. " Don't you 
 want to see Muriel Verschott in her famous Doul- 
 ton Dance? " 
 
 " What is her dance? " 
 
 " She does it at matinees for the wounded. She 
 wears an Egyptian dress and imitates a jug with 
 a curved handle, and a cup, and all the rest, you 
 know." / 
 
 He looked at Lady Verschott, gesticulating in 
 the middle of the over-lighted room before retiring 
 to disrobe herself. " She is very flat," he observed 
 dispassionately. " I should think her body was as 
 suitable for a jug as for anything." 
 
 On the narrow terrace Elizabeth shivered. 
 " You are cold," he murmured. 
 
 She shook her head, but he made her walk rap- 
 idly, until they reached the rose garden and stum- 
 
HAEVEST 189 
 
 bled against a seat. He was very gentle; nursed 
 against him, slie abandoned herself to a serene joy. 
 The sky stooped above them a wine-dark bloom, and 
 the night unfolded its store of scents. 
 
 She shuddered involuntarily at the touch of his 
 hands ; her mind lay crushed and asleep under the 
 burden of her ecstasy. 
 
 " You see, my dear," he said against her mouth, 
 " you see? " 
 
 From the house came a sound of applause. 
 Muriel Verschott had been a jug again with enor- 
 mous success. 
 
CHAPTEK XVn 
 
 Elizabeth took Miriam with her to the Felshott 
 cottage. It was not easy to find servants for the 
 Hall and she sent her own there. She and Miriam 
 lived alone. When Jess came, the old woman 
 greeted him with unwonted pleasure. She found 
 him charming, and prepared for him astonishing 
 dinners which she refused to share. " I should like 
 to stay and talk to you," she told him once, " but if 
 I don't go to bed I should fall asleep in my soup. 
 I do not suppose either of you would notice my 
 disappearance, except to say — ' Didn't there use 
 to be an old woman at the end of this table? ' And 
 then you'd forget all about me." 
 
 Captain Cornish held the door for her. " I shall 
 see you before I go back to-morrow?" he asked 
 gravely. 
 
 " But of course," she retorted. " You shall tell 
 me lies about Texas and I'll tell you lies about my 
 youthful triimiphs and we'll be enchanted with 
 each other. Good-night, Elizabeth." 
 
 She lifted her chin and smiled at the American 
 with sardonic affection. Her grand-niece, left 
 alone with her lover, felt extinguished. 
 
 Who was Elizabeth the secret dreamer? Shut 
 off from dreams, Elizabeth sought in a kind of 
 frenzy for her lost self. " It is cursedly humUi- 
 
HAEVEST 191 
 
 ating," she said, in luminous self -mockery, "to 
 have dwelt for twenty-four years with a vision of 
 oneself as serene detached spirit, and to discover 
 that one is neither serene nor detached nor spirit." 
 Her thoughts were lethargic and confused. She 
 scurried about behiad them like a man building 
 in the darkness with his back to advancing floods. 
 The murmur of the waters was in her ears, but she 
 would not look, flying from abandoned defences to 
 farther ones, driven and senseless. 
 
 She was shocked to find the thought of telling 
 Jamie quite intolerable. With unconscious cun- 
 ning, she persuaded herself and Jess that the thing 
 could not decently be told to Jamie in France. He 
 was resentful, and puzzled to account for a sense 
 that he was being cheated. 
 
 At times he gave way to an impatient anger. 
 She soothed him, offering a surrender that dazed 
 his senses. The beating of his heart drove the 
 blood through his body in an agonising rhythm, 
 and he let himself be soothed to get ease of his 
 pain. 
 
 She felt herself uncertain of him, and the knowl- 
 edge that he was dangerous became a smouldering 
 obsession in the confusion of her thoughts. Jamie 
 was safe. He did nothing unexpected nor out- 
 rageous. He fitted into life with a whimsical 
 grace, asking little and giving little in return. He 
 left her spirit free and untouched. The American 
 took all. Passion, answering his, shook and tor- 
 mented her. When he had gone, she was effaced. 
 His violence, which might at any moment break 
 
192 THE CLASH 
 
 the bonds she had imposed upon him, drove her 
 back and back into a chaos where nothing remained 
 but a quivering point of malice. And that, though 
 she knew it there, she evaded. 
 
 He looked down at her as she leaned against 
 him, and the sense of subtle treachery returned. 
 He did not know how he was betrayed, but he knew 
 that in some way she had cheated him. Appearing 
 to give everything she yet withheld some part of the 
 gift. He bent her head back on her throat and 
 thought along how narrow a channel her life 
 flowed. He felt her life throbbing below his hand; 
 secret and forever solitary, it ebbed from him. 
 
 She lifted her face to his caress, and mind and 
 spirit were strangers to the joy of her body. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 Elizabeth^ carrying her morning tea to Miriam, 
 stood at the bedside, looking down upon the sleeper. 
 The raddled face, sunk between two pillows, was 
 grotesque and flat. It was not possible to believe 
 that life waited behind its yellow eyelids. The 
 gaunt body was a husk ; the real Miriam had with- 
 drawn from it and hidden herself in the room : in 
 another minute her head, balanced on a puppet 
 neck, woiild jerk up between bed and wall, nodding 
 and smiling its inhuman malice. Elizabeth put a 
 hand on the sleeper's shoulder. She did not see the 
 dark eyes open, but became aware, with a repressed 
 horror, that they were fixed on her face in unwink- 
 ing scrutiny. 
 
 " Your tea," she murmured. 
 
 Miriam sat up, and Elizabeth, handing a wrap, 
 saw her shrink into a thin old woman, huddled 
 against the morning air and querulous. 
 
 She went downstairs and found Jess Cornish ar- 
 ranging cups on the table in a fashion of his own. 
 " I want to get away," she said abruptly. " Need 
 you go to-day? " 
 
 He looked at her reflectively. 
 
 "Aunt Miriam watches us," she added. " I don't 
 mind. There is so little else for her. But I would 
 like to be free of her for once." 
 
194 THE CLASH 
 
 "Your great-aunt is a wonderful woman," lie 
 said gravely. " She can sit in a room full of the 
 younger generation and not only hold her own but 
 reduce them to pulp. And that without asking 
 them to respect her grey hairs. I daresay she's a 
 witch," 
 
 " We could go north." 
 
 They went the same day to Gilbert Manners' 
 house. For six long summer days storms of wind 
 and raia had swept England, and when they 
 reached the little town a bitter wind raged through 
 the narrow streets and black waters tossed in the 
 harbour. Towards night the thunder of the sea 
 filled the valley. Restless and excited, Elizabeth 
 persuaded Jess to walk back to the town. They 
 struggled along the cobbled pier towards the nar- 
 row gully that led down to the shore. The wind 
 snatched the breath out of their mouths and tear- 
 ing Elizabeth from the American's grasp flung her 
 against the ancient wooden railing at the edge. 
 Jess caught her with a cry, and she laughed up at 
 him. He saw her laughter though he could not 
 hear it. 
 
 A little sheltered in an angle of the wall, they 
 stood peering into the guJly. Drifts of foam filled 
 it, depth upon living depth of sombre white, blown 
 of the wind and shaken of the surf that clashed and 
 fell against the circling wall below. The wind 
 leaped between the steel-bright waters and the sky. 
 Darkness, drawing down the desolate heavens, left 
 one thin gleam of light above the sea's rim, a cro- 
 cus-yellow flame between the sundering clouds. 
 
HARVEST 195 
 
 Elizabeth, stood on tlie slope of the gully, ankle- 
 deep in. the foam. The spray was sharp against 
 her eyes and on her lips. Sky and sea rushed down 
 between the narrow walls. She was crushed be- 
 tween them, and in the thunder from white- 
 throated waves her blood heard the voices of old 
 gods. Jess, standing with legs apart and body 
 braced into the wind, held her against him. He 
 felt her shaken by old daemonic mysteries, and a 
 tide of joy, resistless and exultant, stirred in him. 
 Unleashed and naked in the pitiless wind, his spirit 
 sought hers. There was no division between them ; 
 they stood together in the shallow night, and the 
 spirit that tore apart sky and sea was one with the 
 spirit that died on their lips and set free their limbs 
 to bodiless ecstasy. 
 
 Abruptly he loosened his hold and stooped his 
 head against her breast. He felt her shudder. The 
 spirit returned to her numbed body and remem- 
 brance slipped between them like a sword. In the 
 bitterness of frustration she tore her body out of 
 his grasp. He caught her as she flung herself with 
 outstretched arms into the treacherous drift of 
 foam above the cloven waters. Her hands were 
 bleeding from the rough stones when he lifted her 
 up. Her torn dress dripped with the icy water, 
 and as he carried her up the slope, he halted once 
 to kiss her mouth, salt with the sea foam. 
 
 " I know why you did that," he repeated. " I 
 know why you did it. But you must not feel like 
 that. You must not think like that. Elizabeth, 
 my heart, my heart. . . ." 
 
196 THE CLASH 
 
 Towards morning she stirred, and turned to him 
 in fear. He woke at her touch and lifted her so 
 that she lay against him. "What is it, darling 
 child? " he said softly. " What hurt you? " 
 
 She struggled for self-control. 
 
 " Do not leave me." 
 
 " You are my life." 
 
 She raised herself in his arms. " No, I am not 
 your life," she cried. " Your life is more than 
 that. I am alone. I am alone." 
 
 She clung to him in a passion of weeping, and 
 he soothed her, gently, stroking her hair with fin- 
 gers that shook for tenderness. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 " Lard save us," said Miriam, " the poor young 
 man is mad. It is true that his mother had no 
 brains. She wrote me when he was born — * Dere 
 cousen Miriam, I have got a boy Pray God I rear 
 him but Alfred would have him circumcised which 
 furiously alarms me and is an UnCristian and un- 
 womanly act.' Sadly misspelt, but one could have 
 forgiven her that, had there not been also so serious 
 a misconception in the affair." 
 
 Elizabeth laughed softly. "Would you like to 
 go now, Great-aunt Miriam? " she said. 
 
 " I would have gone an hour ago," the old woman 
 retorted, " if I had wished to give Muriel Verschott 
 the pleasure of saying — 'Ah, must you go so early? 
 But it is kind of you to make the effort at your age.' 
 She once told her guests, on another such mon- 
 strous occasion as this, that it was thirty years 
 since I had dandled her on my knee. ' Dandling is 
 a disgusting habit,' said I. 'And you were a great 
 lanky schoolgirl thirty years ago, my dear — many 
 stages past the dandling.' She hadn't the grace to 
 blush. Well, thank God that is over." 
 
 The young man had finished the recitation of his 
 poem on Afternoon Tea with two lines in the new 
 manner : 
 
 Flies . . . 
 Connubial on a cake. 
 
198 THE CLASH 
 
 Conversation submerged him, with. Muriel Vers- 
 chott, like a large thin bird, brooding insolently 
 over the abyss. 
 
 Miriam was tired and irritable. "You heard 
 from Jamie this morning," she remarked. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 The old woman chuckled. " How you must de- 
 spise him." 
 
 " It is myself I despise," Elizabeth said abruptly. 
 "I — respect Jamie." 
 
 " There is nothing quite so destructive of self- 
 respect as a secret love affair, my dear. But do 
 not delude yourself. You do not respect Jamie. 
 It is impossible to respect a person one is deceiving, 
 more especially when one's lies are successful." 
 
 " Jamie will have to be told." 
 
 Miriam's face altered. "Do you care so much 
 then for the other? " she said queerly. 
 
 Elizabeth averted her eyes. The bond that held 
 her to her great-aunt was rooted in an obscure pain. 
 She could guard herself against the fierce crea- 
 ture's malice, but sight of her affection was hard 
 to endure. Elizabeth shrank from her, 
 
 " It is not love," she said painfully. " I am not 
 in love with Jess Cornish. I — I am on fire with 
 him. He is a flame in me. I do not know what 
 I thought to find in his love. But I have not found 
 contentment — or happiness. 'No, that is not true. 
 I am indeed happy. Only it is not the happiness 
 one knows. It is more terrible." 
 
 Miriam looked at her with eyes from which the 
 kindliness had gone. She wished to hurt her. 
 
HAEVEST 199 
 
 " Love," she said harshly. " Flame. What a folly. 
 Well, my dear, you should know best, but for my 
 part I have always felt sure that these barbarians 
 were less amusin' than they seemed. In any event, 
 it is so easy to fall in love : one has but to set one's 
 mind to it. It is the faUing out again that cannot 
 be controlled. 
 
 " Besides," she added, " you do not know what 
 passion is, my child. It is your imagination that 
 inflames you. In another age you might have been 
 an ascetic and taken your imagination into the 
 desert to torment you with vile thoughts. The 
 ascetics were wrong, of course. For your type, it 
 is better to throw the imagination a few bodily 
 thrills now and then to keep it quiet. The pleas- 
 ures of love. Bones to a dog." 
 
 "Great-aunt Miriam," Elizabeth said smoothly, 
 " you talk better than is considered quite fitting in 
 a democratic society." 
 
 " That is because I was brought up to think my- 
 self able to say anything I wanted to say," the old 
 woman retorted, " and have, thank God, none of 
 the finer feelings. Fine feelings are the monopoly 
 of the bourgeoisie and are practised only by 
 them." 
 
 " Is there nothing you believe in then? " 
 
 Miriam lifted her eyebrows. "What do you 
 mean, m'dear? " she demanded. " I believe in God 
 and the story of Creation. Belief is a question of 
 good taste. So is good behaviour. I behaved badly 
 in my youth, but I do not propose to justify my ill 
 manners by talking of passion and flames." 
 
200 THE CLASH 
 
 Elizabeth flushed. " You loved and had a lover," 
 she said softly. 
 
 " Don't be impertinent," Miriam told her sharply. 
 Her voice softened. " It is all words, my dear," 
 she said quietly. "We spend our lives inventing 
 splendid "words for our mean deeds and meaner 
 thoughts. No one could bear to live unless he con- 
 ceived himself to be finer than his achievement. 
 What is love but a cheat of the senses? Or friend- 
 ship but an echo of our egoisms? Or honour but 
 vanity? Or fame but a little shouting in an ante- 
 room? Of all the things we hunger for, of all the 
 torments of desire, there are none that last. None. 
 None. Nor any beauty that is not at the last 
 spoiled and made shameful, torturing our hearts 
 with pity. Nor any heart that has not suffered the 
 mortal anguish of regret." The thin old voice 
 paused. " There is so little happiness and such a 
 deal of pain in life that if we had not the habit of 
 cheating ourselves life would show entirely intoler- 
 able — the flesh a burden and the spirit a senseless 
 goad." 
 
 Elizabeth sat still, choking back a revolt that 
 rose in the springs of her life. The old woman was 
 wrong. She must be wrong. She was the arch- 
 denier. She was age forgetting youth. 
 
 Protest died in her throat. The passionate spirit 
 that gave Miriam the lie might be itself a cheat. 
 It might be only youth that cheats itself. She felt 
 discouraged and stupid. 
 
 A girl was singing in the music-room. She had a 
 curious voice, sweet and thin, but with a ringing 
 
HAR'S^ST 201 
 
 cadence. She was singing Manon's last solo when, 
 dying, her small heart pours forth sweetness such 
 as filled the leper's house where a woman broke a 
 shallow alabaster box. Her voice feU slowly 
 through the silence as if the notes were loth to die. 
 
 Je me hais et maudis en pensant 
 A ces douees amours par ma faute brisees, 
 Et je ne paierais pas assez de tout mon sang 
 La moitie des donleurs que je vous ai causees. 
 Pardonnez moi. Ah, pardonnez moi. 
 
 A violin took up the burden of Des Grieux' an- 
 swer. Elizabeth sat with rigid fingers twisted in 
 her gown. Beauty died in all men's hearts, a frail 
 dream, " leger et volage." It died shamed by its 
 betrayal, and sad because the heart which betrayed 
 it thereby lost all. Elizabeth stared with unseeing 
 eyes. Pity choked her. 
 
 "Ah." Manon's last broken cry of bliss lingered 
 and ceased. 
 
 Elizabeth seized Miriam's hand in a fierce clasp. 
 " If one had not to kill the shy dreams. If one 
 could take happiness without stabbing another's 
 heart. TeU me that I can. Tell me that I am too 
 mean a thing to hurt Jamie." 
 
 Miriam looked at her out of eyes harsh with pity. 
 "There are none of us so mean that we cannot 
 bring suEEering or humiliation on something finer 
 than ourselves. A great soul can be made to bleed 
 to death from pinpricks. That is how we little 
 souls avenge ourselves." 
 
 Elizabeth took the thrust with muted face. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Theoughout the summer and autumn of 1918 
 tlie burden of Felshott Hall grew and grew. Eliza- 
 beth invented economies in running and cut down 
 her own expenses to bare minimum in a vain at- 
 tempt to keep within the bounds that Jamie set for 
 its upkeep. Prices mounted with nightmare leaps. 
 Miriam told her one day that the county talked of 
 Denman's miser wife. Elizabeth laughed. " They 
 shouldn't invite themselves to dinner if they shrink 
 from the poverty of my larder," she said. " Twen- 
 ty-eight babies and their mothers eat a lot of food." 
 
 At the same time she found it difficult to keep 
 her staff up to a proper size. She was by turns 
 kitchenmaid and nurse. The cooks left, and dur- 
 ing three weeks Elizabeth cooked alone for a family 
 of seventy. The laundry staff departed in a body, 
 and under Miriam's sharp-tongued guidance Eliza- 
 beth washed and wrung and ironed until help was 
 got in from the village. Miriam wasted no sym-- 
 pathy, well aware that the girl was glad of a bodily 
 exhaustion that dulled her mind. She watched 
 carefully, however, and when an incident had 
 brought Elizabeth to the edge of breakdown, inter- 
 fered. 
 
 Elizabeth had taken a girl of sixteen into the 
 Hall. Miriam first saw her standing on the upper 
 lawn, her thin gown blown across her burdened 
 
HAEVEST 203 
 
 body, lier face uplifted, more beautiful than the 
 vision seen of Botticelli. But when Miriam spoke 
 to her, the girl did not answer, and from the star- 
 tled loveliness of her eyes a crazed wandering spirit 
 peered at the old woman. 
 
 Miriam sought Elizabeth. " Who is your beau- 
 tiful half-wit? " she asked. 
 
 Elizabeth told her that the girl was the adopted 
 daughter of two old ladies living in a neighbouring 
 village. They had tended the exquisite body with 
 lavish care. They clothed her in silks and fine 
 linen, and brushed the pale gold of her hair until 
 it made a radiant aureole about her neck. If it 
 had occurred to them to bathe her in asses' mUk 
 they would have done that too. She could not be 
 taught and would not stay in the house, and they 
 walked with her about the countryside reading 
 aloud to her poems and old histories, as if to coax 
 a soul into that rare casket. She was gentle and 
 docile,, and spent hours in the forest beyond the 
 villagel The country people saw her lying on the 
 pine needles with her hands behind her head, star- 
 ing up through the flung spars of the trees. Some 
 of them heard her talking to birds and insects, and 
 one man saw her sitting on a hUlside in the dusk 
 surrounded by wild rabbits that leaped across her 
 feet and played on her hand. It seemed impossible 
 that harm could befall her, until one evening she 
 did not come home. Near midnight the distraught 
 old ladies, returning from a search, found her 
 standing in the shadows of the garden. As they 
 came up the path she moved into the moonlight and 
 
204 THE CLASH 
 
 stood among the ghostly flowers, more ghostly fair 
 than they. The white skin of her neck and breast 
 was marked across with fine scratches. She said 
 the faery folk had caught her in the heart of the 
 woods and tormented her, beating her with briars 
 and tearing her clothes. She did not seem much 
 distressed, but cried a little and then laughed and 
 could tell them nothing more. After that they did 
 not let her walk alone, but one or other went with 
 her and listened to her cooing laughter for birds 
 and brooks and butterflies. 
 
 When, five months later, the village doctor told 
 them she was with child their agonised thoughts 
 went back to that night of fear. They took her 
 away and as her time drew near sent her to a home 
 in the city. She escaped and wandered back. 
 Smiling and footsore, she stood in the doorway and 
 wept only when she knew they meant taking her 
 back to the home. Twice she ran away and then 
 Elizabeth, hearing of the affair, offered to shelter 
 her in Felshott. There, pleased with the gardens 
 and the park, she seemed content to stay. 
 
 She did one strange thing. Seeing a tiny waxen 
 doll in the hands of a baby, she asked to be given 
 three or four small waxen dolls. Elizabeth got 
 them for her, and two days later the child wan- 
 dered down into the village with the dolls in a bas- 
 ket : they were laid on cottonwool stolen from the 
 medical stores and half covered with sprigs of ever- 
 green. She went from door to door showing the 
 dolls and singing in a little voice. She sang the 
 same verses everywhere : 
 
HAEVEST 205 
 
 God a-rest you, merry gentlemen, 
 
 Let nothing you dismay, 
 
 Eemember Christ our Saviour 
 
 "Was born on Christmas Day 
 
 To save our sins 
 
 From Satan's power; 
 
 Long time we've gone astray; 
 
 To bring tidings of comfort and joy. 
 
 God bless the master of this house 
 
 And the ,mis-ter-ess also 
 
 And all your pretty little child-er-en 
 
 That round your table go, 
 
 And all your kin and kind-er-ed 
 
 That dwell both far and near 
 
 And so I wish you all a Merry Christmas 
 
 And a Happy New Year. 
 
 The song over, she laughed and hurried away. 
 
 Elizabeth and Miriam, sent for from the village, 
 met her coming slowly down the lane. Elizabeth 
 drew the girl's arm through her own. 
 
 " You mustn't run away," she said. " What 
 were you doing with your pretty dolls ? " 
 
 The girl smiled at her. " I sang vessel cups," 
 she said. 
 
 "Vessel cups?" 
 
 A frown drew down the delicate brows. " That 
 is what I sang." 
 
 " She means wassail," Miriam said abruptly. 
 
 The girl smiled and nodded. " Yes, vessel cups," 
 she repeated. 
 
 " You must promise me not to go out of the 
 park," Elizabeth said gently. 
 
206 THE CLASH 
 
 The lovely face saddened. " I see in througli the 
 bapk doors," she said slowly. "You see only 
 through the front doors. When I look in at the 
 back I see strange things. I saw a kind old man 
 turn into an ugly dog and I saw a woman take her 
 heart out and put it away in a little chest. And in 
 that house," she nodded back towards the village, 
 "is a woman who hides a hundred small birds about 
 her house. She clips their wings and makes them 
 blind. Their little glancing wings. I heard much 
 weeping through the back doors." 
 
 Elizabeth discovered a touch of malice in the 
 girl's clear-eyed simplicity. Once she told Eliza- 
 beth, " I don't like that brown-eyed one. She 
 pinches me in my bath every morning." 
 
 The young nurse looked at Elizabeth with tears 
 of mortification. 
 
 " It's not true, Mrs. Denman," she said earnestly. 
 
 " No, it's not true," the girl repeated, " but it 
 makes her cry when I say it. I like her to cry." 
 
 Her hour came upon her the same day. Eliza- 
 beth stayed with her while the hot afternoon passed 
 into evening and evening into night. Towards 
 dawn the girl became exhausted. She had borne 
 her pain with courage. Once she lifted her hand, 
 wet with anguish, to a large white moth. It flut- 
 tered away from her, and tears filled her eyes. It 
 was high morning when her self-control broke. 
 Hoarse inhuman cries tore her shuddering body. 
 Twisted into a frightful shape, she flung herself 
 across the bed. The nurse gasped with the effort 
 of holding her. 
 
HARVEST 207 
 
 " Surely it has gone on too long," Elizabeth said 
 desperately. 
 
 " Too long, too long," the child repeated. 
 
 The doctor was an old man. Elizabeth had ac- 
 cepted him when the second of her two doctors had 
 followed the first to France. She had not wanted 
 him, but it was not easy to get doctors then. 
 
 He shook his head and Elizabeth felt a loathing 
 for the absurd white curls that hung above his 
 wrinkled neck. Even the eyebrows curled over his 
 small grey eyes. 
 
 " Couldn't she have chloroform? " Elizabeth per- 
 sisted. 
 
 He frowned. " Certainly not," he said sharply. 
 " There's no need. I never give it if I can help it. 
 Pain's natural. Does "em good. You distress 
 yourself needlessly, dear lady." 
 
 At that moment the creature on the bed wrenched 
 itself out of the nurse's grasp and would have 
 rolled upon the floor if Elizabeth had not caught it. 
 
 " Is there any reason why she shouldn't have 
 chloroform? Her heart? Anything?" 
 
 "No reason except that I am tu charge of this 
 case, Mrs. Denman." 
 
 The room swam before Elizabeth's eyes. Pain 
 rolled against the walls. The air quivered with 
 pain. She forgot the decencies of etiquette, and 
 regardless of the nurse, bent her face to the bland 
 pink face beside her. Her mind cleared and she 
 reflected that the old man had been pitifully glad 
 to come to the Hall. 
 
 " I am aware that you are in charge," she said 
 
208 THE CLASH 
 
 carefully. " I am also aware that it will be diffi- 
 cult to replace you. But it could be done, I 
 think . . .» 
 
 The odour of chloroform lingered in the room. 
 Elizabeth lifted the child from the dying mother. 
 With a little happy laugh the fool of God turned 
 aside her head and died. 
 
CHAPTEE XXI 
 
 Elizabeth and Jess rode in the shadow-bound 
 sunligM of the woods. Elizabeth rode in front. 
 She watched the light dappling the mare's neck. 
 A shallow brook ran beside them, and the mare's 
 feet sank in loam and fine moss. Tiny brown pools 
 welled up along the path. Scents of earth and 
 wild garlic came down the wind, and through the 
 sparse trees they saw yellow fields and rounded up- 
 lands asleep under the limpid sky. Elizabeth was 
 filled with a dizzy joy. " England is beautiful," 
 she murmured. She laughed over her shoulder at 
 the American. 
 
 The path broadened between the last trees, and 
 Jess drew level with her. They rode in silence, 
 content to be together. In front of them a broken 
 fence marked the edge of the woods. Jess put his 
 hand on her arm. They stopped in the middle of 
 the path and she lifted her head to look at him. 
 "Are you happy, my heart? " he asked softly. 
 
 " Oh, very happy." 
 
 " Do you like to have me for a friend, Elizabeth? 
 Or am I only needed as a lover? " 
 
 "You are a perfect friend," she answered him 
 simply. " Shall I tell you why? " 
 
 " Tell me." 
 
 "Because you make no demands. You are so 
 
210 THE CLASH 
 
 alive — so gloriously alive — that one does not 
 have to feed you from one's own life. Because you 
 have no need of me, I can live beside you in free- 
 dom. You do not want me to give you my 
 thoughts. You do not want to alter me. Ah, you 
 do not know what joy that is." 
 
 He laughed at her, the delightful laughter that 
 made him altogether boyish and charming, 
 
 " We are friends, then? " 
 
 She held out her hand and he shook it gravely^ 
 taking off his soft broad-brimmed hat. 
 
 " Darling child," he said, " I like you." 
 
 She smiled joyously, loving him for the defiant 
 grace of his body and the mischievous assurance of 
 his glance. 
 
 " Did I ever tell you about Cap'n Bill McTavish 
 of the Texas Kangers?" he said. "They had a 
 race riot in Fort Worth between the blacks and the 
 whites. The mayor called frantically on the Gov- 
 ernor for a company of Rangers to quell the riot. 
 Next morning the mayor and all the city officials 
 met the train to welcome the Rangers. 'No one got 
 off the train but Cap'n Bill. The mayor said, 
 ' Bill, where are the Rangers? ' and Bill replied, 
 ' Hell, is there more 'n one riot? ' " 
 
 " Did you make that up? " 
 
 " I'm not sure," he said gravely. 
 
 The gate hung loosely on one hinge. They rode 
 through it into the lane. High banks topped by 
 uncut hedges shut them in on either side. Yellow 
 spikes of agrimony pushed up through the grass, 
 beside the purple scabious and the small brittle 
 
HAEVEST 211 
 
 pods of tie yellow-rattle. The glamour of high 
 noon lay over the parched earth. 
 
 Elizabeth pulled down the brim of her hat and 
 the American rode with eyes narrowed against the 
 sun. He glanced at her with smiling affection. 
 
 " In breeches," he said, " you are sixteen years 
 old. And I will tell you why I love you. I love 
 you because you have a boy's strength in your girl's 
 body, and because even when you move slowly you 
 give me a sense of swiftness, like a bird scudding 
 down the wind. And because you are frank. I 
 thought once that all women — even the good ones 
 — were cocottes. But you are not that. You are 
 very beautiful," he added irrelevantly. 
 
 " I am not very frank," Elizabeth said slowly. 
 "I twist things in my mind." She looked away 
 from his sidelong gaze. "Andrew Howard asked 
 me once if I thought that men and women would 
 ever find it possible to speak truthfully to each 
 other. I do not know. There is so much lying in 
 marriage. One is always lying — out of pity, per- 
 haps." 
 
 " Shall you lie to me when we are married? " he 
 said ironically. 
 
 She frowned in vague displeasure. "You will lie 
 to me. You will lie to me about your mistresses, 
 and I shall be bored by your lies. You wUl never 
 believe that I do not care. Yet there are so many 
 things I want from you more than I want faithful- 
 ness of the body." 
 
 " There won't be a — mistress." 
 
 " But suppose that there is, shall you tell me? " 
 
212 THE CLASH 
 
 " No," he answered steadily. " No man would." 
 He added abruptly, "At least, I do not think I 
 should tell you. But you are in my head as well 
 as in my heart and I am not sure of things as I 
 used to be sure. Perhaps I should find myself tell- 
 ing you. I don't know." He laid a hand on her 
 shoulder. "Listen to me, Elizabeth." His eyea 
 looked hotly down at her. " Ours is not going to 
 be a marriage like that." 
 
 " I have talked much nonsense of love and moral- 
 ity and right," she said in a strange clear voice, 
 "but I know in my heart that there is no more 
 beautiful thing than love that is faithful to death, 
 having one beloved and sacrificing all lesser desires 
 to that one perfect love and supreme desire. Do 
 you believe in a marriage like that? " 
 
 " That is a fine ideal," he said gravely, and 
 added, " But it is not natural. Men are not like 
 that." 
 
 " Ideals are never natural," she said swiftly. 
 " They are dreams which come to men from God 
 and which they strive to make real. But in doing 
 that, they are striving against nature, and if they 
 succeed they have destroyed the old forms of life 
 and the old desires and created new ones." She 
 paused. "I have betrayed my own ideals," she 
 said harshly, and rode away from him. She took 
 the mare through the gate and galloped across the 
 open heath. He rode leisurely after her over the 
 grass and sparse burnt heather. 
 
 "Ah ! " 
 
 The mare, stumbling violently, had thrown Eliza- 
 
HAEVEST 213 
 
 betli across the narrow track. When he reached 
 her she was brushing leaves and small twigs off her 
 breeches. He dropped beside her. 
 
 " Elizabeth." 
 
 She looked at him in faint surprise. 
 
 " My dear Jess." 
 
 " Are you hurt? " 
 
 " Oh, a little jaded, perhaps. I'm so sorry to 
 have looked a fool." 
 
 She quieted the mare and prepared to remount. 
 He offered a hand, but she swung herself up un- 
 aided. 
 
 " I beg your pardon," he drawled at last. " I 
 surely did forget my words. I ought to have said 
 — My dear old thing, what the blazes are you do- 
 ing? " 
 
 She laughed delightedly. " I should have felt 
 less of a fool if you had," she said. "And yester- 
 day, when I nearly ran the car over that stone wall 
 you said never a word. Yet we were much nearer 
 being killed than I was to-day." 
 
 " I was filled with admiration of your inspired 
 driving. You were too cool." 
 
 " That is just it," she said ruefully. " I wasn't 
 cool at all. I was terrified. But I had a vision of 
 myself — ' She sat at the wheel with an impassive 
 face.' And so one is impassive. I told you I wasn't 
 frank." 
 
 He laughed. " Most of my own tales are lies," 
 he said. " Or if they are not quite that, they are 
 lies the way I tell them." 
 
 "And now that you know I pose and I know that 
 
214 THE CLASH 
 
 you lie, we are well on the way to candour," she 
 observed drily. 
 
 The heat had become oppressive. The sky took 
 on the sheen of tarnished copper and a green sullen 
 haze spread slowly from rim to rim. Elizabeth 
 slipped oflf the mare. " Let us rest," she said. 
 
 Jess lay on his back and watched her. Sitting 
 with knees drawn up and hands clasped round 
 them, Elizabeth dreamed with open eyes. 
 
 The shimmering heat parted like a wave rolled 
 back and she walked the dim ways of a forest. A 
 child walked at her side. He was four or five years 
 old, and when she smiled at him her own eyes 
 looked gravely up from the small sweet face. He 
 put his hand in hers, and she understood that it 
 was to help her and not because the gnarled path 
 wearied a boy's legs. They did not speak, but once 
 he stopped to watch a rabbit vanish with flick of 
 white tail, and a smUe curved his mouth. When he 
 loosed his hold and left h^r sharp sorrow thrust to 
 her heart. But he had not gone. Only the forest 
 had gone. She stood at the top of a cliff and 
 watched him scramble up to her from the shore 
 below. It was the first time he had climbed the 
 cliff and his feet slipped on the sheer crumbling 
 path. Still a hundred feet below her, he lost hold 
 altogether and slipped down several feet, clutching 
 with small hands at the brittle reeds. He looked 
 up in sudden anxiety. She hid her agony of fear 
 and smiled at him, knowing that it would not do to 
 offer help. " Hands and knees, son," she called to 
 him. "You're doing so well. Use your knees, 
 
HARVEST 215 
 
 little love." Her heart ached for his round knees 
 on the hard r«d clay. But still she smiled and he 
 smiled back, now unafraid. The exultant joy that 
 filled her was like pain. It throbbed below her 
 heart, the secret ecstasy of a mother who watches 
 her son's dariug. " Brave little son," she repeated 
 softly, "oh, brave sweet little body." Almost at 
 the top now, he would not be helped, but scrambled 
 up alone and stood for a moment balancing on heels 
 and toes. His eyes were fixed on a vision beyond 
 her head and with outstretched arms he ran past 
 her and was gone. 
 
 A chill wind, shaking the poplar trees behind 
 them, struck across her cheek and ran under the 
 quivering grasses. The eyes she turned on Cornish 
 were dark with the shadow of her dream. That 
 faded, and her heart, more desolate than a ruined 
 city, turned from contemplation of its barren 
 grief. 
 
 " I didn't care to disturb you," Jess drawled. 
 " But you don't want to be caught in a thunder- 
 storm? " 
 
 Elizabeth got swiftly to her feet. She looked 
 at the arc of sullen sky, and at the earth, grown 
 sullen too, and sour-faced. 
 
 " I think we could reach the burnt mill," she 
 said and added vaguely, "It's not burned now, 
 you know." 
 
 They rode through a faery country, wan and 
 desolate in the storm-light. The hills drew in, 
 evilly askew, and the wind came fitfully from the 
 sunken heavens. They skirted the wood, and the 
 
216 THE CLASH 
 
 mare, edging away from the distressed trees, 
 danced until she infected the American's horse with 
 her mad excitement. He began to behave as wick- 
 edly as he dared, and Jess, sittiag with impassive 
 face, dug in his heels until the frantic animal bolted 
 across the heath. He was back in three min- 
 utes, nervously subdued. " Believe me," Cornish 
 drawled complacently, " if you punish a horse 
 quick, you don't have to punish him twice or too 
 much." 
 
 An aeroplane rode the clamant air. They heard 
 the roar of its engine. Then thunder, treading on 
 the heels of the wind, swallowed up all lesser 
 sounds. 
 
 The granary of the old mill was not altogether 
 roofless. At least it sheltered the horses. Jess 
 and Elizabeth, sitting on a heap of withered 
 bracken, were dry enough. Trickles of rain, com- 
 ing through the thatch, ran in thin streams across 
 the dusty floor. A musty fragrance pricked their 
 nostrils. 
 
 Jess talked of America. He drew for Elizabeth 
 the picture of a country without horizons. Already 
 she felt herself dwarfed and lonely under illimit- 
 able sides. His burning glance sought hers. 
 "You will be happy, Elizabeth," he said. She 
 hardly heard him. She was looking at a root of 
 heather just beyond the door-sill. It was not the 
 tough springing heather of the northern moors, but 
 pink bell-heather, thin-stemmed and delicate. 
 Elizabeth shut her eyes. She saw the stretch of 
 upland moors above her grandfather's house, and 
 
HARVEST 217 
 
 herself, a tranquil solitary child, seeking every- 
 where for the stray patches of bell-heather along 
 the brown stream and round the edges of the bog. 
 The heart-breaking scent of the moorland drifted 
 back to her, and peewits wheeled in familiar skies. 
 She saw too, the farmhouse at the moor edge and 
 the peat stacked outside and herself standing in 
 the huge flagged kitchen eating hot turf cakes and 
 answering the red-armed wife in the soft drawling 
 speech of the dales. She lay on the heather and 
 saw the ships go by on the rim of the sea, and 
 caught the flash of white gulls' wings. 
 
 " I could not live in America," she murmured. 
 
 " Why could you not? " Jess demanded. 
 
 " I am too English. But you do not know what 
 it is to be English," she added, unconscious of ar- 
 rogance. 
 
 " I know what it is to be American." 
 
 He watched her in silence. Suddenly he bent 
 his face to hers. " You need not cease to be En- 
 glish," he said half inaudibly. " I don't want that. 
 You Imow what I want of you. I want to have 
 children by you." 
 
 She put up her hand to draw his head to her 
 breast, and he took her in a grasp so vehement 
 that she shrank from him, eluding him with a des- 
 perate movement. She was cold, and a strange 
 tremor passed through her. Her mind was numb, 
 but she Icaew, in that moment when her flesh shud- 
 dered away from its thought of housing an alien 
 seed, that the body also thinks. 
 
 She looked Jess in the face. " How suitable of 
 
218 THE CLASH 
 
 you," she said deliberately. " Americans do so love 
 a moral gesture." 
 
 Jess answered nothing, but his black stare dis- 
 concerted her, and when the pressure of his arms 
 tightened, she lay still. Her mouth stirred under 
 his, and he did not know whether he kissed her 
 for hate or love. 
 
 They rode home in the cool after rain. A little 
 wind, blowing through hedges a-f oam with meadow- 
 sweet, filled that English lane with gentle airs. 
 The drenched earth was alive with pleasant sounds, 
 of birds that stirred in tangled hedgerows, of leaves 
 leaning to the dusk, and insects hurrying through 
 the green ways of the grass. Hills, belfry, and 
 tall trees sang together for thankfulness of respite 
 after storm. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 Cornish, sitting half -asleep on tlie upper terrace 
 of tlie garden, roused slowly. He had been listen- 
 ing to the voice without gathering the import of 
 its breathless speech. It was a soft husky voice, 
 through which broke now and then a note ringing 
 like the inhuman cry of a violin. 
 
 Now that he was awake, he heard it clearly. 
 Came a sound of weeping and Elizabeth's voice, 
 most childlike voice that ever grown woman had, 
 making her lover catch his breath for love and 
 compassion. 
 
 The hurried speech began again, and Cornish 
 moved uneasUy in his chair. He was wedged in a 
 corner between the hedge of the rose garden and 
 the open door of the garden room : if he stood up 
 to walk away he would certainly be seen from its 
 windows and the unseen speaker shamed by his 
 eavesdropping. 
 
 He sat still, and from being ill at ease became 
 monstrous indignant. 
 
 " I know I'm bad, Mrs. Denman. You don't need 
 to tell me." 
 
 " I wasn't telling you," Elizabeth said quietly. 
 
 " They shouldn't have made me soft and then 
 sent me back into that hell. It wasn't fair. It 
 didn't give me a chance. Why do you think I had 
 to suffer like that? I never hurt anyone. I never 
 
220 THE CLASH 
 
 did anyone harm. Oh, I know I might have done 
 better; some were kind to me when I went back, 
 but what good does kindness do when you're in 
 hell? I couldn't eat their food ; I was sick with the 
 smell of their bodies and their houses; I couldn't 
 get into my bed until exhaustion made me blind 
 and deaf and senseless. You've been cold some- 
 times, Mrs. Denman, but you were never flayed 
 with a wind that made the flesh cleave to your 
 bones. The first time I went with a man I went 
 because I wanted warmth and decent food. That 
 doesn't mean anything to you, does it? " 
 
 The breathless husky voice stopped and Cornish, 
 catching sight of a gap in the hedge, flung himself 
 recklessly through it. 
 
 Late in the evening he was crossing the park be- 
 tween the cottage and Felshott Hall, A knot of 
 ribbon caught his eye. He picked it up, wet with 
 the night's dew, and held it absently. His eyes 
 had become suddenly alert and he stood motionless 
 in the narrow pathway. 
 
 A girl walked out between the trees. She bore 
 herself with an elfin air and her eyes challenged 
 his. He held the ribbon between his fingers. She 
 put out her hand. " It's mine," she said in her soft, 
 husky voice. " But you don't know where it came 
 from." 
 
 With an engaging simplicity she showed him. 
 
 He stared at her wildly for a moment, a tragic 
 weeping lingering iu his ear, and then he laughed 
 and walked away. 
 
 Elizabeth told Jess that the girl was a Bethnal 
 
HARVEST 221 
 
 Green foundling, taken by an old man and brought 
 up by him in careful ease. She was taught to think 
 herself his heiress and when his sudden death 
 startled her did not at once understand the weight 
 of her loss. He had left no will, and the unhappy 
 child was flung back into the degradation she had 
 escaped and the dubious protection of her first 
 foster-mother. She was then fifteen and of a dark 
 slender beauty. She had that innocence which is 
 a charming privilege of the well-bred and the for- 
 tunate, and preserved with their white skins from 
 undue ravage. Back in Bethnal Green, she found 
 it a quality of weakness. The gutter corrected the 
 defect. 
 
 In her seventeenth year she passed some months 
 in a place of correction, the matron in charge of 
 which reported her to be of a vicious and unruly 
 habit. The matron was almost certainly right: 
 the girl showed a lamentable unreadiness to con- 
 duct herself discreetly in the kennels whereunto 
 she was born. 
 
 "Muriel Vershott found her," Elizabeth said, 
 " on one of her drives in darkest London. She 
 sends down couriers to beat up the game before 
 she goes, and she was enchanted with the girl, who 
 was drunk and afforded more sport than Muriel's 
 attendants thought suitable." 
 
 " Lady Verschott," Cornish said smoothly, " is 
 a person for whom there is no polite name. She is 
 an admirable witness to the truth of your great- 
 aunt's belief that nothing on earth is so vile as the 
 mind of a virtuous woman." 
 
222 THE CLASH 
 
 Elizabeth, smiled. " Great-aunt Miriam is teach- 
 ing the girl to cook; she calls her a hard name and 
 says she is subtle of heart and impudent of face 
 and will lie in wait for you to entreat you." 
 
 "And there," he retorted, "that old witch is 
 probably right. . . ." 
 
 The girl waylaid him in the garden and offered 
 herself with a passionate urgency. " I'll come to 
 London. I'll come anywhere you say." Her throat 
 quickened with sighs and her hands held him. 
 
 Cornish stepped back and surveyed her with a 
 gentle smile. " You surely are a pretty little 
 thing," he drawled. " But I don't care for things 
 that are flung at me. I prefer them a little hard 
 to get." 
 
 He swung on his heel and saw Elizabeth waiting 
 with a faint mocking smUe. But before he could 
 speak the girl had flung herself across the space 
 between them. She stood beside Elizabeth and 
 struggled for speech. Words came in a spume of 
 hate. 
 
 " Who made you mistress over me? " she cried 
 at last. " I could spit on you and tear you with 
 my hands. I've hated you. I've laughed at you 
 behind your back. I've dreamed of hurting you. 
 Don't think I can't see into your heart, your mean 
 cold heart. You've tried to quiet your own bad 
 thoughts with charity. Well, I don't take it. You 
 can't feed your conscience on me or with my grati- 
 tude fill out your swollen pride. You made me, 
 you and your people, and I'll stay the rotten thing 
 I am because my rottenness is yours, and in my 
 
HARVEST 223 
 
 degradation you are degraded and in my vUeness 
 you are vile. Is it your pride I cannot reacli? I'm 
 proud to be that I am. Mine's an honourable life. 
 What's yours? " 
 
 She began to laugh, and Cornish, disregarding 
 Elizabeth's cry of protest, thrust her away. Then 
 he went to comfort Elizabeth, but she turned from 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 The girl fled that night and Miriam rejoiced to 
 be rid of her. Elizabeth said little, but went to 
 Bethnal Green in search of the unhappy thing. 
 
 She walked down a narrow street at high noon. 
 A frightful heat rose from the pavement and 
 scorched her. Dust thick with flakes of dried or- 
 dure blew in her face, and the mingled smells of 
 petrol and excrement overpowered a smell more 
 peculiar to man. A woman leaned in a doorway, 
 folding mottled arms over her pendulous belly, and 
 in the gutter a small boy cherished a decayed cat, 
 pressing its reluctant face and his own into an 
 apple rotten with flies. 
 
 Elizabeth passed between them: the child lifted 
 its unchUdlike face and the woman watched 
 through uncurious resentful eyes. There were 
 other women in the doorways of the houses, flaccid 
 with overmuch childbearing, dragged to death and 
 emptied of all joyous gallant things. 
 
 Two days earlier an eminent divine had walked 
 along the street. Following a great exemplar, he 
 came upon its people in the form of a man, and 
 they, witless wretches, had jeered at the shape of 
 his ungaitered legs. A sublime patience lent his 
 spirit wings and as he went he communed with 
 himself, moved by the spectacle of human fruitful- 
 
HARVEST 225 
 
 ness. " The mother of God," thought he, " lay in 
 a manger and should the mother of Man look for 
 a better thing? She travails as a beast with none 
 to help her and from her exhausted womb issue 
 armies and the glory of nations. By her the eartli 
 is filled and the great are lifted up. She is unclean 
 that we may be clean, and degraded that our horn 
 may be exalted among the peoples." 
 
 At this point his meditations were rudely inter- 
 rupted by a false step which precipitated him 
 among the worst evils of the gutter, and that day 
 he prophesied no more. 
 
 Elizabeth, dazed with heat and sick at heart for 
 her fruitless search, had not the consolation of 
 eminent divinity. Her spirit fainted within her 
 and she saw everywhere death and corruption 
 which cried to heaven that an end might be put to 
 it. For this street was the full flower and crown 
 of civilisation, the measure of our greatness and 
 the glory of our blood and state. Its stale-smell- 
 ing houses, its young children in whom was nothing 
 childlike but their stature, its women to whom was 
 lacking all grace of womanhood, and its defrauded 
 men, were the frightful symbols of a doom long 
 overdue and violent. . . . 
 
 She turned jealously from Jess Cornish, talking 
 of his country. 
 
 " I will not envy you. I will be sorry for you," 
 she told him. " You are too sure, too proud." 
 
 "Age is always sorry for youth," he retorted. 
 "What you dislike in us is just our youth, that 
 boasts itself, talks too loudly, wearies of its own 
 
226 THE CLASH 
 
 ideals, and spends its prodigious wealth with, reck- 
 lessness. Our hearts are warm where yours have 
 grown cautious, our desires are fickle because the 
 blood runs madly in our veins, and yours are fixed 
 in the lethargy of age. We can be violent and 
 prodigal and mean and generous by turns and all 
 at once. Your subtleties sicken us. We have not 
 learned to play your game as you play it, but it 
 will avail you nothing to trick us." 
 
 " You are wrong," Elizabeth said violently. " It 
 is not your youth we dislike nor your generosity 
 nor even your shallowness. It is that we do not 
 understand you and you do not understand us. 
 How should you? The world is cruel, and Ameri- 
 cans go about with a monstrous cheerfulness sing- 
 ing — Let us then be up and doing. You come and 
 sing it in our ears that are dulled with old tales, 
 and before eyes sore with long weeping. And al- 
 ways you forget — you do not care — that this 
 Europe which is old in sin is old also in suffering. 
 You have never suffered and you do not under- 
 stand. And since it is in suffering that the soul is 
 born, you are soulless, and talking to you we talk 
 to ears that hear not and show our wounded sides 
 and pierced hands to eyes that see not." 
 
 Her voice failed and she looked at him. pitifully. 
 " Do not leave me," she said again. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 A TOITNG of&cer, Andrew's cousin, came to Fel- 
 shott. Binkie Howard was a pilot who had crashed 
 twice in France. He had taken Jamie's place at 
 Hollow Down and the duties of equipment officer 
 weighed heavily on his twenty years. The Air Min- 
 istry sent him fifty girls as fitters and riggers : they 
 tempered their respect for him with a contemptuous 
 affection, tricked him, lied to him, worked over- 
 time for him with cheerful goodwill, and even, in 
 one instance, pressed upon him the highest favours, 
 so that he cursed them and the day he was born. 
 
 " They're nice girls," he told Elizabeth earnestly, 
 " but you couldn't keep some of them good if you 
 sat up all night to watch them. I've done every- 
 thing I could devise, short of tucking them up, and 
 hearing their prayers. I've done that too," he 
 added. " They come to me with the most amazing 
 tales. But they run wild and they get all-night 
 and week-end passes out of me and the devil him- 
 self couldn't see through their tricks." 
 
 " Binkie," Elizabeth said, " what are you trying 
 to tell me? " 
 
 He blushed violently and hunted in his pocket- 
 book for a letter, which he offered with a gesture of 
 embarrassment. 
 
 Elizabeth read it. "Dear Mr. Howard, Please 
 
228 THE CLASH 
 
 forgive my writing to you, but I know you'll help 
 me if you can. After old Mother Harker got me 
 sent away from Hollow Down they kicked me out 
 of the Air Force for what is called disciplinary 
 reasons, and I've no redress ; they took care of that 
 when they called it discipline. Besides, I don't 
 know for sure who is to blame. I know I've no 
 right to bother you, Mr. Howard, but it would help 
 me at home if you came down and talked to them. 
 They don't understand anything, and I can't make 
 them." 
 
 " She was a nice little thing," the boy said. 
 "And I'd like to help her, I linow she hopes I'll 
 do more for her than just talk to her father, though 
 she doesn't say so. I thought of you. If you'd 
 offer to take her in — later." He hesitated. " I 
 can't show the letter to anyone else," he added. 
 " They'd think the worst." 
 
 " If you'll leave it with me," Elizabeth said, " I'll 
 go myself to see them." 
 
 Binkie's relief was so intense that she felt a 
 moment's doubt of him, noting suddenly his 
 nervous hands and strained face. He blushed 
 again when she glanced at him, and doubt grew 
 into certainty. Yet Binkie was guiltless enough, 
 and his blush had been for her; he was recalling 
 that Hollow Down talk had her the American's 
 mistress, and wondering miserably whether he 
 might have said some unpardonable thing. 
 
 They looked at one another in a constrained si- 
 lence, and without warning the boy began to tell 
 her of a crash at Hollow Down. The dead pUot had 
 
HARVEST 229 
 
 been his friend. His face twisted and he stumbled 
 over Ms words. " It happened yesterday," he said. 
 " I .was outside my stores tent, when a machine 
 dived straight for me. As I ran for my life I could 
 see Bill's face, and if ever a man spoke with his 
 eyes. Bill spoke to me. It was just as if he had 
 said — ' Don't be afraid : I won't touch you.' He'd 
 lost control, but he jerked her rudder round and 
 swung her clear of me. She was in flames a second 
 later and we heard old Bill's voice screaming, ' Oh 
 Christ Oh hell.' Nobody could get at him." He 
 twisted his hands and began again in a high excited 
 voice. " He oughtn't to have been flying at all, I 
 tell you. It was a filthy morning. Only a mur- 
 derer would have made him do his first solo in a 
 gale of wind. It was old Fly-or-Die sent him up. 
 Oh curse him to hell. The swine. The bloody 
 swine." 
 
 He turned his face aside and cried bitterly. . . . 
 
 Elizabeth went to see the writer of the letter. 
 The girl came of a middle-class family, and Eliza- 
 beth found it hard to talk to her parents. They 
 suffered, and their daughter resented their suffer- 
 ing. "It's my trouble," she repeated sullenly. 
 "Why need you sit there hurting yourselves with 
 thinking? Why must you make me out twice a 
 sinner? " 
 
 "It is the first time you have owned to being 
 that," her father said. 
 
 " I don't own it," she retorted hotly. " I've done 
 nothing that girls aren't doing every day. Why 
 will you go on pretending that life is the same? 
 
230 THE CLASH 
 
 It's not. It's not. It's changing under your eyes 
 and you won't see it. I'm not bad. I wanted a 
 good time and you can't get that out of men with- 
 out paying for it. I didn't mean to pay lilie this, 
 but I'm not bad, I tell you. Haven't I the right 
 to do what I like with myself? What have I done 
 wrong? " 
 
 Her father lifted his head. " It's wrong to bear 
 a child in shame," he said in a voice of thunder. 
 
 " That's just ill luck," the girl persisted. " It 
 needn't have happened." 
 
 They faced each other, father and daughter, and 
 for a moment the man's face changed. " You don't 
 know," he said gently. " You don't know. You 
 think it's a poor thing, a slight worthless thing, 
 that a man and a woman should look back at their 
 life's end and say — 'We were one flesh and one 
 spirit: we kept faith each with the other.' You 
 poor child. You've put away from you the most 
 precious chance life offered. You think that be- 
 cause I'm old I can no longer understand. Do you 
 think youth was never hot before? " 
 
 His daughter's glance wavered. She looked from 
 her mother to Elizabeth. Her mother's eyes filled 
 with tears, and seeing them the girl's eyes dark- 
 ened. Defiance made sharp her voice. 
 
 " You thought too much of your bodies." 
 
 The man spoke harshly. " You fool. Ages ago 
 your folly was judged. 'He that committeth for- 
 nication sinneth against Ms own body. Know ye 
 not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost 
 which is in you? Know ye not that your bodies 
 
HARVEST 231 
 
 are the members of Christ? Shall I then take the 
 members of Christ, and make them the members of 
 an harlot? ' You fool. It is to your soul you will 
 answer. Oh, you are spoiled and unclean, you that 
 we brought clean into the world." 
 
 The mother's cry went unheeded. With a bitter- 
 ness sharper than his, the girl laughed in his face. 
 "If I am to be judged," said she, "I will judge 
 myself. I am myself. Your beautiful old world 
 doesn't exist. If it ever existed it's gone, with all 
 the other dreams." She looked round. "All the 
 other dreams," she repeated, and coming suddenly 
 to her mother, began a tired weeping. " I will not 
 give in to you," she said faintly. " You are old 
 and I am young and you understand nothing." 
 
 Elizabeth got to her feet. " I'll write," she said, 
 and went blindly away. 
 
 Disturbed and unhappy, she told the story to 
 Jess Cornish. He listened in silence. 
 
 " Those girls throw themselves at my boys," he 
 said at last. " And at yours, too. Over in America 
 it was the women of the town we had to keep out 
 of camp. Here, it's decent girls, of decent birth. 
 That makes it harder for the boys; they feel like 
 conquerors in a dissolute city." 
 
 He stopped, recoiling from the abyss of his con- 
 tempt. He held Elizabeth in his arms and she took 
 pleasure in his arrogance, until her spirit woke 
 from its abasement and she tried to slip away. But 
 he dared not let her go lest the abyss should swal- 
 low both of them. 
 
CHAPTEE XXV 
 
 A FEW days later Cornish, motored to Felshott 
 from Hollow Down. He came in the late evening, 
 when dusk was almost swallowed up in night. 
 Elizabeth heard his car and came across the garden 
 to meet him. He would not come into the house. 
 " I can stay less than an hour," he said, " and I 
 want you here, outside." 
 
 She took a cloak and walked with him down the 
 lane behind the house. It had been raining and 
 the grass was heavy with dew. There was no sound 
 save their footsteps on the uneven road and the 
 sleepy stirrings of birds, the small familiar spirits 
 of an English lane. The sky stooped to the end of 
 the road, full with the promise of rain and cloudily 
 dark. 
 
 Jess looked at Elizabeth, walking beside him in 
 sUence. His heart was heavy with pity, and fear 
 smote him out of the darkness. Twice he essayed 
 to speak and twice his voice failed him. Like a 
 flower her face showed white and remote, and bent 
 like a flower on its stem. He did not know what 
 he feared, nor why for pity his tongue clave to the 
 roof of his mouth. 
 
 " I came," he said at last, " because there is 
 something I must say to you before I go to France. 
 I have tried before this to say it, but you have 
 made me dumb and blind, and my heart has burned 
 
HARVEST 233 
 
 with the things I could not say, and I have taken 
 you — sometimes when you did not want me. I 
 think I have shamefully entreated you." 
 
 She lifted her head and murmured, "Oh, my 
 love." 
 
 But " Hush, sweet," he said, " I cannot talk to 
 you if you look at me. And I am grieved that I 
 have seemed to hold your body above the dear soul 
 of you. For indeed it is not so." 
 
 He paused and when she would have spoken, si- 
 lenced her gently. " Do not think," he said again, 
 "that there is any bitterness in my regret. And 
 yet it is true that I regret the choice you made be- 
 tween honesty and lying. It has not given me, my 
 dear, much chance. Love nursed by stealth be- 
 comes hot and desperate, and if I have hurt you 
 it is that must be blamed for it. My hands and my 
 love should have been kinder. ... I am not 
 asking you now to alter your decision: have it as 
 you wUl, it is you and you only who have the right 
 to say it shall be so or so. Do but remember that 
 this love will be simpler when it is not furtive and 
 half -ashamed. I will gentle my desire of you. I 
 will make life pleasant to you. Elizabeth. Eliza- 
 beth, my heart, say that you understand me." 
 
 She kissed him on the lips. But she did not an- 
 swer him. He seemed less real to her than the 
 darkness in which they stood. She was aware of 
 his pity, and she supposed that he pitied her be- 
 cause he saw more clearly than she some sorrow 
 threatening her. She did not know when it would 
 strike nor from what side. She was heavy, as if 
 
234 THE CLASH 
 
 she carried her doom within her now. Did not 
 woman hide the future in her womb, all the future 
 with her own? 
 
 Outside the shadowed house, he kissed her and 
 sent her in. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Ftnx of years and weighted with the cares 
 of governance, Lord Weaverbridge had taken to 
 himself a second wife. She was very young and 
 concealed enormous ambitions. Having made a 
 good marriage for her elder sister and settled five 
 brothers, she determined to become a political 
 force. 
 
 Captain Cornish looked round her drawing-room 
 with interest. In the eclectic taste of his hostess 
 he recognised an advance on the rigid period deco- 
 ration that his mother and his mother's friends 
 achieved by money and prayers. In this vast room 
 a dozen periods of taste were represented. The 
 effect was of a wonderful and quite charming 
 mosaic in which the Victorian colour predominated. 
 
 The talk bored him. He preferred the custom 
 of his own country, which relegated the art of con- 
 versation to women and writing men. 
 
 He quarrelled suavely with Weaverbridge, who 
 disapproved of him. Interfering rashly in a talk 
 of oil ships, he observed — " Believe me, sir, oil is 
 a horrid inflammable thing and catches fire quicker 
 than anything I know." 
 
 " The name Cornish stands for cotton, I think," 
 Weaverbridge retorted. 
 
 Cornish was imperturbable. " It does," he 
 
236 THE CLASH 
 
 agreed. " And for oil, too, perhaps. My father is 
 very interested in oil." 
 
 " We are all interested in oil, sir," Weaverbridge 
 told Mm. " The next war will be fought over oil. 
 Take my word for it." 
 
 " The world knows your word in these affairs 
 to be final," Cornish said blandly. " But I hope 
 you will not come to my father for oil. Lord 
 Weaverbridge. He was thinking of building oil- 
 driven ships himself. Kash of him, no doubt. Lo, 
 the poor savage, and all that sort of thing." 
 
 Weaverbridge smiled. "Friendly competition," 
 said he, " is the keynote of the future, but I shall 
 get my oil nearer home." 
 
 The American was unmoved. " Wait until we've 
 cleaned up Mexico," he said cheerfully, " and then 
 I'll talk oU to you." 
 
 He was betrayed into making quite a speech 
 about Mexico. At the end a middle-aged diplomat 
 of cosmopolitan reputation said — " So far as I 
 can understand, Mexico seems to be built on oil. 
 I cherish a vague hope that one day it will drop 
 in. Some fool on the border is sure to let a lighted 
 cigarette fall into the hole, and then what a splen- 
 did sensation in that country of sensations." 
 
 The American wondered whether this were 
 British humour or merely British idiocy. 
 
 He acknowledged to himself that he had entirely 
 failed to get these people. Their habit of sayiug 
 serious things in an offensively flippant way baffled 
 him; was it a pose or softening of the national 
 brain? 
 
HAEVEST 237 
 
 Elizabeth said maliciously — " You mustn't try 
 to fit England into this room." 
 
 Andrew Howard was with her, gaunt, ill-tem- 
 pered, and barely recovered from frightful wounds. 
 He regarded Jess with polite hostility. " Are you 
 looking here for the great heart of the British peo- 
 ple? " he asked. 
 
 The American resented Andrew's manner. " I 
 should prefer to think better of your people. The 
 great middle classes," he added firmly, "are the 
 backbone of every country." 
 
 Andrew laughed gently. "True, oh, too true," 
 he said. " And the worst of it is they are begin- 
 ning to get so frightfully conceited about it. 
 They're enormously well-educated, usually at one 
 of those other Universities where you do get edu- 
 cation, simply bristling with information about 
 things, and so earnest. One doesn't want to seem 
 captious, but don't you think that perhaps they are 
 just a little too earnest? They are so inclined to 
 make speeches. They keep coming to tell me about 
 men they loiow who are doing things, writing great 
 books, and discovering land values and rising from 
 the gutter to afluence. I don't know why they as- 
 sume that I ought to know about these prodigies, 
 unless they feel I need humbling by the contrast 
 with my own ineffectual existence. There's some- 
 thing almost indecent about doing things so strenu- 
 ously, don't you think? And in any circumstances, 
 making speeches at one's friends is a habit that I 
 really do deprecate. I wonder if it is the influence 
 on us of your wonderful country. Americans talk 
 
238 THE CLASH 
 
 in speech form, of course, and they are always very 
 earnest. I shall suggest a scare headline to our 
 host: Growing Americanisation of British Middle 
 Classes. What do you say, Elizabeth? " 
 
 Jess stared at him with an arrogant contempt 
 that matched the other's smile. "I think your 
 country has no hope except in its middle classes," 
 he observed. 
 
 " I'm sure you're right," Andrew said sweetly. 
 "And of course they do actually rule us. We — 
 I should say I — don't count. We can't adapt, 
 don't you know? I am sure it is good to be Ameri- 
 canised and so survive." He turned wickedly to 
 Elizabeth. "A monstrous eflcient nation, my 
 dear. We have some of Captain Cornish's country- 
 men in mess. They all knew ' God Save the King ' 
 before they arrived and it took us weeks to learn 
 * The Star-Spangled Banner.' " 
 
 The American turned and walked away across 
 the room. 
 
 Elizabeth looked at Andrew. "Why did you 
 talk like that? " she said hardly. 
 
 Andrew hesitated. " I'm sorry if I've hurt you, 
 my dear," he said at last, " but I do so dislike the 
 man. In another minute he would have been talk- 
 ing about his flag: they all do." He paused and 
 began again a little wearily. " I dislike his coun- 
 try. It stands for everything I detest." 
 
 " Does the future belong to it? " 
 
 "God forbid. I believe that if we could stop 
 immigration to America, we could smash her. She 
 doesn't breed. And she has no discipline. She has 
 
HAEVEST 239 
 
 the suspiciousness of a savage and the spendthrift 
 extravagance of the decadent. If all our big men 
 were suddenly swept away we should rest on our 
 institutions. Our traditions would run us. 
 America has no traditions and no respect for in- 
 stitutions. She relies on her big men; if she lost 
 them at a crisis she would fall into anarchy." 
 
 He laughed. " You think I spend my time elab- 
 orating hopes for the decline of America. I don't 
 quite do that. But I'm glad, I tell you, glad when 
 I see in her every mark of the violence and unbal- 
 ance of hysteria. I am glad when I see her for- 
 getting the only tradition she ever had — the tra- 
 dition of liberty. In the day on which she loses 
 the last shred of her faith tu the Declaration of 
 Eights she will collapse utterly. She won't just 
 die. She'll fall suddenly into putrefaction." 
 
 " You are bitter, Andrew." 
 
 "I am frightened," he said gravely. "Look at 
 the two of them, Weaverbridge and Jess Cornish. 
 Is there a conscience between them? What do 
 you think will befall a world left to their friendly 
 competition? What will be the end of it? Hell, 
 my child, a hell of ruin unparalleled. The next 
 war will make this one look like a Mexican Expedi- 
 tion. Their words are a mockery. They make of 
 our sacrificed dead a laughing-stock for devils and 
 of the thought of our grandsons they make a horror 
 beyond bearing." 
 
 He stopped abruptly. " Now would you like to 
 hew me in pieces to avenge your Texan friend? " 
 
 " Oh, we be of one blood, you and I," Elizabeth 
 
240 THE CLASH 
 
 said. She spoke so bitterly that Andrew was 
 startled. He stifled an impulse to tell her that he 
 knew Cornish to be her lover, and asked instead 
 — " When did you hear from Jamie? " 
 
 " Not very long since," she answered, looking at 
 him a little pitifully. She was asking for his for- 
 bearance; he turned from the thought of it. He 
 was sick at heart and savagely resentful. " She is 
 spoilt," he repeated to himself. " Spoilt. The pity 
 of it. Oh, Elizabeth, your pride in the dust." 
 
 But aloud he said gently, " I never understood 
 why you married Jamie, my dear, though at the 
 time I thought I did." 
 
 " Did you think I married him to please Helen? " 
 she asked hardily. 
 
 " I thought you were sorry for him." 
 
 " I was not so insolent." 
 
 He looked at her gravely. " I should have found 
 it hard to forgive anyone but you for pitying Jamie 
 Denman. He deserved better." 
 
 " He deserves everything," she said wretchedly. 
 
 "Do you regret your marriage, Elizabeth?" 
 
 Her courage rose to the words. " I regret that 
 I have not made a better thing of it." She faced 
 him. " I have failed, and you know it, Andrew. 
 I wanted to be everything to Jamie, mother, wife, 
 everything." 
 
 "Men don't like to be mothered by their wives, 
 Elizabeth. Some of them think they do, because 
 they have been told it so often. But in the end 
 thsy find it irksome and humiliating. Jamie is too 
 fine and too much in love with you still to avenge 
 
HARVEST 241 
 
 himself by taking a mistress to supply the passion 
 and the respect you have ceased to show him." 
 
 " Do you think I don't respect Jamie? " 
 
 " Mothers don't respect their children," he said. 
 " They are indulgent, perhaps — but what man can 
 tolerate that contempt in his wife? " 
 
 " If I had had children of my own," she said 
 softly and desperately. " I wanted children, An- 
 drew. I have enough mother in me to love a dozen 
 sons. Jamie should have been their father, and not 
 a substitute for them." 
 
 " There is goodness and beauty in a marriage 
 that makes sons," Andrew agreed gravely. 
 
 " We were both cheated." 
 
 " Yes," he said. 
 
 " Do not think that I am making light of my ^— 
 my failure. There is more in it than that: more 
 than my frustration." 
 
 He waited a moment, but she added nothing 
 and he said gently — "Jfeed it have been a fail- 
 ure? " 
 
 She looked up with a swift smile. " I should like 
 to have married you and Jamie and Jess Cornish 
 all in one man. Am I what Great-aunt Miriam 
 calls a wanton? " 
 
 "A wanton? You. My God, no," he said 
 sharply, and added, " You are not happy." 
 
 " I am useless," she said defiantly. " It is not 
 easy for a woman of my upbringing to be anything 
 but useless." 
 
 He raised his eyebrows. " Felshott Hall, Eliza- 
 beth? " 
 
242 THE CLASH 
 
 " Oh, that," she said indifferently. " One does 
 what one can." 
 
 He looked at her absently. " Why are there so 
 many unhappy wives and unsatisfied husbands? I 
 have the conceit to think that my marriage would 
 not be unhappy." 
 
 " Women ask more and give less," she told him 
 at last. " Men ask as much as ever they did and 
 give no more. So both are unsatisfied. We are 
 changing quickly and men slowly, and neither one 
 of us will set the other free to grow. We hurt each 
 other with jealousies and demands." 
 
 " I should demand from my wife the good faith 
 I gave her," he said quickly. 
 
 " You would get it." She flung out her hands. 
 "Faithfulness is best. Oh, I know it. It is sim- 
 pler and brings contentment. It is the spirit be- 
 coming flesh and the flesh becoming spirit. But 
 men and women have lost simplicity. What can 
 they do to get it again? " 
 
 " They might give up lying to each other," An- 
 drew said. 
 
CHAPTEE XXVn 
 
 Lady Wbaveebeidgb was dining an Asiatic states- 
 man. He sat beside her in the drawing-room. His 
 face, appearing over her shoulder, mocked her vivid 
 beauty. With downcast placid eyes he assented to 
 all she said. The chatter of the guests eddied 
 through the room; he regarded it as little as he 
 regarded the gestures of his hostess. 
 
 There was a soldier dramatist who wished to dis- 
 cover a modern equivalent for the Shakespearian 
 method of eluding the realism of real life. " This 
 war," Andrew said, "has proved that ninety-nine 
 sane men out of a hundred have the courage of a 
 mad fanaticism. But you can't put on the stage 
 that superb and nonchalant heroism. There will 
 never be another great tragic dramatist. Tragedy 
 to-day wears a feather in its hat. There was an 
 airman crashed behind our lines. When we 
 reached him he had staggered out of the wreckage ; 
 he was frightfully sick and bloody, and he laughed 
 in our faces and said, ' Oh, damn good, they can't 
 kill me,' and died on the jest." 
 
 " There'll be comedy," said the dramatist 
 thoughtfully. "And perhaps a younger theatre 
 will keep up the heroic tradition. But as for us, 
 we shall have a new comedy. It will be written 
 by the little Cockney who stood beside three of your 
 
244 THE CLASH 
 
 hefty countrymen, Captain Cornish, and heard 
 them discuss the war. When they stopped to spit, 
 he said suddenly, 'Who told you there was a 
 war? ' " 
 
 Jess achieved a laugh. 
 
 A face of anxious self-assertion peered round An- 
 drew's shoulder. George Trubert, labour Member 
 of Parliament, was "sleeker than in the days of the 
 strike. He spoke with hesitation of new forces let 
 loose in the country. Elizabeth saw him suddenly 
 alone and rather abject, turning violently in the 
 wind, paunch and buttock buffeted in turn. 
 
 Andrew Howard jeered at him. " You are 
 nervous these days, my friend. You thought once 
 that you could play them off against each other, 
 your men and Weaverbridge. You are not so sure 
 now, I think. Between the new threats of the one 
 and the old greed of t'other you stand a good chance 
 of being squeezed to death. Not you alone, more's 
 the pity." 
 
 Jess Cornish interrupted. " This country is no 
 business of mine," he said savagely. " If it were, 
 I'd go out of business before the crash. I don't 
 understand you. You must be all fools. Here you 
 sit and make jokes while a crew of slimy beastly- 
 minded thugs strangles your country " He 
 
 choked. 
 
 They were politely scornful of his violence. 
 
 " Surely you can't mean Trubert? " Andrew mur- 
 mured. " Or our Weaverbridge? " 
 
 Elizabeth, listening to Muriel Verschott babbling 
 of affairs, found Jess standing behind her. 
 
HAEVEST 245 
 
 He bent over her chair. " I can't stand this," he 
 said softly. " Let's go." 
 
 She looked up at him and shook her head. He 
 dropped into a chair at her side, ignoring Lady 
 Verschott with suave indifference. 
 
 " I can't talk to these people," he said. " Don't 
 any of you care at all what happens to your coun- 
 try? " 
 
 " Of course we care." 
 
 " Then I don't understand you." 
 
 " No," she said, and trying to find words for him, 
 could find none and said again — " No." 
 
 She saw her lover's belief in his country as if it 
 had been a living thing. It wrapped itself in a 
 flag and gibbered at her. Jess was forever drag- 
 ging it out, fondling it, and showing it to the world. 
 She could not so separate herself from England. 
 " When I can take out my heart and say — I have 
 faith that it beats," she thought. 
 
 Throughout the centuries the oppressed had been 
 gathering themselves in the pit. She saw the forces 
 of two terrible egoisms arrayed against each other. 
 It was no longer a struggle for bread. They strug- 
 gled for power in the womb of their mother. Eliza- 
 beth saw her exhausted and bleeding. 
 
 She saw for a moment, a shadowy, grinning 
 horde. Yellow, brown and black, they gathered on 
 the fringes of the struggle and waited. In com- 
 panies they marched behind white men to the 
 slaughter of white men, and the eyes of the march- 
 ers looked into the eyes of the silent watchers with 
 understanding. 
 
246 THE CLASH 
 
 The Asiatic statesman was taking his leave. He 
 bowed before Lady Weaverbridge; his face of a 
 cynical idol expressed a neat and smiling serenity 
 while he reflected on the appalling ugliness of the 
 broad flat breasts half -hidden by her gown. 
 
 "Andrew Howard hates the East," Elizabeth 
 whispered. 
 
 The American was staring at the retreating 
 statesman. "Do you hate it too?" he asked ab- 
 sently. 
 
 " There is more of the moon than of the earth 
 iu it," she observed. "Malice and cold intelli- 
 gence." 
 
 " Malicious slaves," he flung at her. 
 
 " Oh, no, they are not slaves." 
 
 " Is a man any less a slave because he binds the 
 shackles on himself? " 
 
 "We Westerners," she said, "pay for our free- 
 dom in being more exposed and terrifyingly more 
 easy to smash." 
 
 Cornish spoke with a savage contempt. "We 
 shall deal with the East," he said. " You might 
 fail ; America won't." 
 
 " But will there be an America when the west- 
 ward sweep begins?" she persisted, while he 
 laughed at her. "How do you know you're not 
 building on the sands? There are so many 
 Americas ; it will take time to weld them into one 
 whole, as England has been welded with her 
 blood. You are an American, but so is Eandolph 
 Sharman, and what have you in common with 
 him?" 
 
HARVEST 247 
 
 " America," lie said briefly, and added in a dif- 
 ferent tone, " I am going to France in three days' 
 time. Do you care? " 
 
 Slie leaned back and watched him under droop- 
 ing lids. At the moment she wanted nothing ex- 
 cept to be left alone. He neither spoke nor looked, 
 but she felt his nearness as if he had drawn close 
 to her, and she held her shoulders from the im- 
 agined touch. The breath in her throat was trait- 
 orous. She grew faint beside him, feeling his 
 mouth between her chin and throat, and his head 
 below her seeking lips. 
 
 "You crush me," she thought desperately. 
 " Your love takes too much. You should have been 
 my friend. I wanted to laugh with you ; I want to 
 ride and play and share exciting adventures with 
 you. Not to be hurt and crushed. Not to be ab- 
 sorbed into this frightful passion. How did I come 
 to be caught in it? " 
 
 Her thoughts turned aside. "Women talk of 
 more freedom as if there were only one meaning to 
 the word and that a physical one. They are mak- 
 ing a terrible misreckoning. That is not freedom ; 
 it is a worse slavery. It is to be enslaved by one- 
 self." 
 
 She shut her eyes. " Oh, what a fool. You think 
 like a fool. You wanted him. You could have had 
 his friendship, but you were not content." 
 
 " But I did not want this," she said aloud. 
 
 Cornish bent over her. 
 
 " What is it you do not want? " he whispered. 
 
 " To be hurt." 
 
248 THE CLASH 
 
 His hands lay open, on his knees. She saw the 
 square short fingers curl inwards. 
 
 " Do I hurt you? " he said softly. 
 
 Swaying, she turned her eyes from the swart 
 flame of his. 
 
 " I thought I had been kinder than that," he said 
 at last. 
 
 She wanted quiet. Well, she could be quiet now, 
 quiet as she pleased. Afterwards would be time 
 enough to decide whether to be quiet was the most 
 desirable thing in the world. 
 
CHAPTER XXVni 
 
 Elizabeth spent Armistice Day in the kitchens 
 of Felshott and the mothers and babies feasted. 
 When she came to London a week later she found 
 it still exhaustedly revelling, with the grey of fa- 
 tigue heavy upon it. 
 
 Andrew Howard, dragging his scarred body 
 about Kensington Gardens, told her savagely, 
 " The restaurants were frightful. Fat peeresses 
 shed jewels and powder and clothing, and all the 
 old generals who weren't allowed to lose the war 
 sank up to their heavy jowls in Heidsieck and port. 
 What a silly hell!" 
 
 Jamie had not come home. He was going 
 straight to Paris to meet his chief. 
 
 Lord Weaverbridge busied himself with a new 
 world. He determined to create one which should 
 be free from the inconveniences of the old. He 
 was of the opinion that theology and not creation 
 is the proper business of the Deity. 
 
 Among minor counsellors he called to his side 
 George Trubert, that sleek harassed man. He ex- 
 plained to the Labour leader that everything pos- 
 sible was to be conceded to the workers, even to a 
 share in control. "I will show them no fatuous 
 Die-hard face," said he. "But make no mistake: 
 at the end of concession I fight and I Avin." 
 
250 THE CLASH 
 
 In emotion Ms speech, took on a tense lyricism 
 which was rather odd. 
 
 He declared that he saw England, like an eagle, 
 refreshed with blood, " Quiet me your people," 
 he said to Trubert, " and I will rake the world to 
 fill oui- coffers." 
 
 Inspiration faltered and he considered a while in 
 silence. " Friendly competition," he said at last, 
 " is the keyword of the future." And out of an- 
 other long silence, " Oil. We shall have plenty of 
 oil. The next war will be fought over oil," adding 
 hastily, " but that has nothing to do with you." 
 
 Trubert groped painfully among his own 
 thoughts. " Suppose," he said difO-dently, " that we 
 can't control our men and that you lose the fight? " 
 
 " I have confidence," the great man said, " in the 
 noble heart of the people." 
 
 " But suppose they lose confidence in us," the 
 other murmured. 
 
 Lord Weaverbridge made an answer that re- 
 vealed the quality of his intellect and the majesty 
 of his soul. " If in that ' us ' you include me," he 
 said superbly, " the question does not arise." 
 
CHAPTER XXIX 
 
 The Peace Conference sat in Paris. Liberty, 
 ■with a bloody pate, stalked famisbed on tbe ice- 
 bound Neva. Grand Dukes and generals ran about 
 two hemispheres crying Murder, Eevenge, and 
 moved by the thought of so much suffering, the 
 victors of the war blockaded Russia, so that Mur- 
 der had to tighten the belt across his hollow stom- 
 ach. Lord Weaverbridge conceived the idea of 
 buying that distraught country and running it in 
 opposition to the United States. It was a noble 
 thought. 
 
 To Jamie Denman, working feverishly in Paris, 
 the crash of Central Europe became a wraith-like 
 fantasy. There was an Empire and there were 
 cities, and then one day there was no Empire and 
 in the cities children died and mothers wept. The 
 children were the more blessed in that they died 
 to expiate a great sin, folding their little hands in 
 sacrificial resignation. 
 
 Lord Weaverbridge groaned in travail and the 
 new world was born, by the fecund will of one 
 terrible old Frenchman and passionate lover of his 
 country. He had faith only in the negation of 
 faith and saw that an eyeless malice broods over 
 the destiny of man. Lusts meaner than his, and 
 greeds poorer, served him. Youth, that was to have 
 
252 THE CLASH 
 
 swept the world, rotted unseen to manure it, or 
 living, became absorbed in a search, for excitement 
 or bread. The old men did as they pleased. 
 
 Elizabeth listened to the talkers in the Weaver- 
 bridge house. 
 
 " Tens of thousands of Jews have been slaugh- 
 tered in Europe since the Armistice and the souls 
 pass from their tortured bodies in a world indif- 
 ferent to them. Whole families disappear without 
 leaving even a memory." 
 
 " But they don't seem to mind being massacred 
 and there are as many as ever." The speaker 
 laughed nervously. 
 
 "By oppression Jews are made Socialists and 
 their Socialism is a dark and destroying flame." 
 
 " Jews are hated for their inexcusable ef&ciency : 
 they are born traitors in the war between man and 
 work, the enemy of all proper men." 
 
 A deep voice behind Elizabeth said suddenly — 
 " America ought to praise us for saving the world 
 from the danger of a united Ireland looking round 
 for someone to fight." 
 
 " They don't really care about Ireland," came a 
 contemptuous answer. " The Irish-Americans do 
 perhaps. But for the rest — it's just the human 
 habit of calling down wrath upon your neighbour's 
 morals when what you really dislike about him is 
 the shape of his face, or his manner, or his wife, or 
 his bank balance." 
 
 There was a pause and then a shrUl voice said 
 amazingly — " It's not the least use asking my hus- 
 band to see about your little affair to-day. He 
 
HARVEST 253 
 
 keeps Friday for important things. You see, he 
 has Venus exalted in Taurus and that does make 
 such a difference. Now I myself have Jupiter on 
 my mid-heaven." 
 
 Later in the same day Elizabeth found herself 
 watching a regiment of returned soldiers. They 
 passed almost silently through intent, brooding 
 crowds. Cheering spurted out and died abruptly. 
 Again she was listening to voices that spoke in her 
 ear as if the stones had tongues. A vague troubled 
 sigh passed through the silent multitude. 
 
 " We prepared the fortifications before Bapaume 
 and shelled them out of it and then they let the 
 Australians walk through." — "Ay, fair spoiled 
 those Colonials, they did." 
 
 "An Englishman gets on all right in Belgium, 
 but they hate the sight of us in France. They 
 didn't mind us at first." 
 
 " In the fiftieth, were you? That was an unlucky 
 regiment." — " Yes, we were made up three times 
 in six weeks. After that the whole went. All but 
 me and another." 
 
 Elizabeth caught sight of Cecil Howard's mother. 
 The crowds were keeping her on the edge of the 
 pavement. Her eyes rested on the marching 
 colimins without pity or interest. She stood before 
 the living with her burden of dead and maimed, 
 among all the other women who had travailed in 
 vain. 
 
 Jess Cornish, still stationed in Prance, was in 
 London on short leave. He had a sudden desire 
 to visit Hollow Down and to that end hired a pre- 
 
254 THE CLASH 
 
 posterous touring car and a chauffeur prepared to 
 drive all night. They left London in the early 
 evening. Elizabeth was very silent, and smiling a 
 little, Jess acquiesced in her mood. Once she 
 glanced at him, trying, with an unconscious in- 
 tensity, to fix in her memory his immobile face, 
 and the steady humorous audacity of his eyes un- 
 der their indolent lids. 
 
 " I saw the returned soldiers," she said abruptly. 
 
 He turned his head to look down at her. " I 
 saw them myself," he observed, " and, by God, if 
 I'd had a million throats I would have shouted 
 with all of them. Your countrymen stood like 
 stocks; aren't you ashamed of them? It used to 
 make me mad when I thought how they let our 
 boys wander about England unwelcomed and un- 
 friended. But they treat their own no better." 
 
 Elizabeth burned with a sudden, choking anger. 
 " You forget that when you came," she said softly, 
 " we had been at war for three years. Not a street 
 but mourned its dead. Everywhere little towns 
 that were towns of the dead. Did you expect to 
 find us ready to laugh and shout for you? You 
 that came in time to ring the curtain down at 
 Chateau Thierry. What did you expect? " 
 
 The low bitter voice stopped. " I beg your par- 
 don," she said. 
 
 " For what? " 
 
 " For the indulgence of saying what I feel." 
 
 The car ran through Surrey lanes. Out of his 
 resentment the American spoke contemptuously of 
 the Peace which had just been signed. He said. 
 
HARVEST 255 
 
 " You talk of your sacrifices, but you never talk of 
 tlie square miles you have added to your Empire 
 nor of your Near East ambitions. Half Europe 
 is in ruins and you will expect America to pour oil 
 and wine into tbe wounds so that the dying man 
 may get up and work for you. You will see that 
 we are not such fools." 
 
 The woman found his self -righteousness intoler- 
 able. " You moralise so well and so easily," she 
 said at last. "And I have no doubt that in this 
 affair your country will be justified of its moral- 
 isers. But how we shall hate you for them. What 
 a set of damned prigs you are ! " 
 
 She woke the malice in him and he told her the 
 story of a lynching. She saw the broken mutilated 
 body of the I. W. W. man and heard the cry that 
 broke through that frightful mouth — " For 
 Christ's sake, shoot me: don't let me suffer like 
 this." 
 
 White and sick, she shrank from the man beside 
 her, but when he bent remorsefully over her, she 
 said softly, " It doesn't matter ; it's not worth 
 thinking about now." She drew him to her with 
 a sudden fierce movement, holding him closely 
 against her breast. 
 
 It was not quite midnight when the car reached 
 Hollow Down. The village was in darkness and 
 Jess leaned out to direct the driver. At the bend 
 of a narrow road the car stopped ; they left it there 
 and climbed the lane towards the downs. The 
 chalky road gleamed under their feet and they 
 stumbled in deep ruts. "When I was a boy of 
 
256 THE CLASH 
 
 fifteen," he said irrelevantly, " I went fence-riding 
 by myself, I'd ride for three days and not see a 
 soul. At night, rolled in a blanket, I lay awake 
 staring at the stars. I imagined adventures that 
 might happen to me and planned what I'd do and 
 say." 
 
 At the top of the hill the lane became an avenue 
 of pines. They walked through the singing dark- 
 ness until between its last trees they saw the dim 
 immensity of the downs. 
 
 Jess spread a rug and drew another over them. 
 With his head propped on one hand, he lay for long 
 minutes looking down at Elizabeth. She laid 
 caressing fingers across his eyes, but he seized her 
 hand and held it roughly away from him. With 
 something like a cry of pain he stooped his face to 
 hers. She was afraid of this jealous hunger. She 
 felt herself in the grip of a force as blind and in- 
 satiable as the earth on which they rested. Her 
 spirit turned every way to elude it while her body 
 lay passive and languid. 
 
 Long after he slept, she lay in the curve of his 
 arm, motionless and wakeful. At the end of her 
 passionate wayfaring she had come upon the stolid 
 indifference that her great-aunt had discovered in 
 her. Her mind regarded with curiosity the body 
 that had known ecstasy. Under its brooding mal- 
 ice no madness of love or suffering was possible. 
 
 Jess stirred. With an impulsive tenderness she 
 pressed her body closer to his. When he woke 
 Elizabeth was sleeping with an arm across his 
 breast. 
 
CHAPTER XXX 
 
 Elizabeth knew that Andrew was staying near 
 Felshott. He did not come over to see her for a 
 week, and wlien he came his mood was unfriendly. 
 He was pale and he told her abruptly that Juliette 
 Delfourge was dead. 
 
 " She sent for me a month since," he said, " and 
 I did not go." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because I grudged her the castle," he said 
 shortly. " She sent again a week ago. They said 
 she was dying and I went." 
 
 His eyes darkened. 
 
 " Tell me, Andrew," Elizabeth said gently. 
 
 He laughed. "Do you like the look of death, 
 then? I thought she had been fooling me, but for 
 once she spoke truth. She was lying on that 
 monstrous great marriage bed, and when I came in 
 railed upon me for the delay. ' Curses come home 
 to roost,' said I, and lay down beside her. ' Faith, 
 you are thin; I could hide you under one arm,' I 
 told her, to make her smile. But she fell to scold- 
 ing me because my riding boots soiled her quilt, 
 and then to weeping instead. * You have come too 
 late,' she cried. ' I am dying, love, dying. No, you 
 are not my love, though I wanted you so.' She 
 lifted her poor arms. ' Love me a little, Andrew.' " 
 
258 THE CLASH 
 
 Elizabeth drew back. " What did you say? " she 
 asked harshly. 
 
 He laughed again, mocking her. " Told her I 
 loved her, of course. What else? ' Take me up,' 
 she whispered, ' and let me die where I would have 
 lived. I would sleep with my head on your breast.' 
 I could not feel her ; she lay like a leaf against me. 
 Once she stirred and said, ' You should have 
 brought your wife to this bed, my Andrew. You 
 did not want to marry me and I should have been a 
 poor bride. Look what a little dent I make in this 
 great bed.' I kissed her lips and took her life into 
 mine, for she was dead when I laid her down." 
 
 Elizabeth stretched out her hands, but he smiled 
 in her face. " Do not touch me, Elizabeth. I am 
 sore. What a little thing is pride and a pitiful 
 thing love, and what a vast thing is this death that 
 swallows them both." 
 
 His jeering voice hurt her and she watched him 
 in silence while he walked over to the window. He 
 turned, hesitated, and flung the question at her. 
 
 "What are you going to do with your alien 
 lover? " 
 
 She withheld herself quite easily. "Need you 
 say this, Andrew? " 
 
 " iNo, of course I needn't," he told her. " It's 
 impertinent. But your affairs do concern me a 
 little. Jamie is my very dear friend. And I was 
 once in love with you. As you might have 
 guessed." 
 
 "And do you think that the latter — supposi- 
 tion — gives you the right to question me? " 
 
HARVEST 259 
 
 " I've already aclmowledged tliat it doesn't," lie 
 said, and watched lier amused smile. 
 
 " You're not in love with, me now, Andrew." 
 
 " !No, I'm not, my dear," lie told her cheerfully. 
 " It's very feeble of me. It ought to have been a 
 deathless passion, and all that sort of thing. But 
 it wasn't." 
 
 She was still regarding him with a detached 
 amusement. "When did' you discover that it 
 wasn't?" 
 
 He gave way to the savage upthrust of his need 
 to hurt her. " I doubt whether it's possible to go 
 on loving a woman who is associated with the 
 things one detests. When I imagine you in your 
 lover's arms I want to laugh. I'm frightfully sorry, 
 my dear. My sense of the ridiculous is no doubt 
 abnormal. But there it is — and there my love for 
 you is — slain by a smile." 
 
 She seemed to shut her spirit over the pain of 
 the wound. A deliberate scorn touched her smile. 
 "How did you know that Jess Cornish was my 
 lover?" 
 
 He admired the gesture that flaunted it in his 
 face. " How does one know these things? " he said 
 carelessly. "By insttuct, I suppose. Perhaps 
 my instincts are sharp when you are their con- 
 cern." 
 
 She abandoned her defences with a reckless dis- 
 regard of his antagonism, baring her breast to his 
 malice. 
 
 "Andrew, what am I to do? What am I to do 
 with Jamie? I thought I could face it. But I 
 
260 THE CLASH 
 
 can't. I Imow I can't." You kno-w I can't. What 
 am I to do?" 
 
 He tried desperately to rebuild her defences for 
 her. He was filled with remorse and bitterly 
 ashamed. " Don't ask me, my dear. I could never 
 enter with any ease into those interminable discus- 
 sions in which clever people scratch each other's 
 spiritual backs." 
 
 It was as if he had cried to her — "No, don't 
 show me: I can't help: I don't want to know." 
 She shrank from her knowledge of his futile and 
 horror-stricken pity. 
 
 He faced her quickly. "I've hurt you, Eliza- 
 beth. And after a while you'll be angry with me 
 and say to yourself — ' He dislikes me and he 
 doesn't understand.' But I don't dislike you. I'm 
 still a little in love with you, so that I have to set 
 my teeth when I meet you with your Texan and re- 
 mind myself that you don't matter. For after all, 
 you don't matter, you know, and nothing you can 
 do, or give up, or pretend to yourself that you've 
 given up, matters. You're just a — a beautiful 
 symbol of something that is happening to us all. 
 Jamie was too gentle, too courteous — you were 
 bored with him, and you turned to the other be- 
 cause he was so alive and so vivid that you never 
 saw he was brutal and sentimental and — gross. 
 Oh, don't misunderstand me. I'm sure he is the 
 most delicate and charming of lovers. But his 
 mind is gross, and he hasn't grown a soul yet. 
 You're a beautiful thing he wanted and he went 
 straight for you. Just as everywhere over the 
 
HAEVEST 261 
 
 ■world men of his breed are going straight for the 
 beautiful things they want. Tearing at our old 
 kindly things, hurting them, destroying them. 
 Everywhere. Buying and selling and bargaining. 
 The whole world become one vast market-place 
 where life and death are bartered for a mess of 
 pottage. And if you go poking among the lovely 
 costly things you find that some of them are 
 stained with blood." 
 
 The pressure of her hand on his arm pulled him 
 up. He laughed softly. " Oh, I'm so sorry, my 
 dear. Do forgive me. I quite forgot we were dis- 
 cussing your soul." 
 
 She had recovered her serenity and was smiling 
 at him with an affection that he found pitiful. He 
 could more easily endure the sight of her unhappi- 
 ness. 
 
 " I don't like you to think ill of me, Andrew." 
 
 " I don't think ill of you, dear child. I'm al- 
 most desperately sorry for you. You're sure to be 
 hurt, whatever you do. And I hate you to be hurt. 
 Just as I hate to see our beautiful old world going 
 to almighty smash to gratify the mad greed of mad- 
 men." 
 
 " Jess is greedy," she said painfully. " I know 
 it." 
 
 He interrupted her. " Jess Cornish has blood 
 brothers in this our own country. You're not the 
 only traitor in the camp, my dear." He stooped 
 to kiss her hand. "Don't worry, Elizabeth. INo 
 love affair is ever so important as you think it is. 
 Neither are we important, since the world is not 
 
262 THE CLASH 
 
 ours and the future is not for us. The world we 
 knew and the tender beautiful things we loved are 
 for ever gone. They wUl not vanish suddenly in 
 the crash of the war, but they will stand for a time 
 like empty temples whose worshippers have long 
 since marched away. Until one day they will be 
 forgotten as if they had never been. Just as we 
 shall be forgotten. Forgotten, forgotten." 
 
CHAPTER XXXI 
 
 Miriam met Andrew in tlie hall. She came in 
 and looked curiously at Elizabeth. "Andrew How- 
 ard said you had been quarrelliag with him," she 
 observed. 
 
 "No," said Elizabeth. "No. That's not quite 
 true. He has been offering me good advice." 
 
 " Nonsense, my dear. The Howards have all of 
 them the most charming manners." 
 
 "Andrew was not at all charming, Aunt 
 Miriam." 
 
 Miriam gave her a sidelong glance. " By which 
 you probably mean that he has ceased to worship 
 you." 
 
 Elizabeth smiled. "Perhaps I do mean just 
 that," she said cheerfully. 
 
 " You'd have done better to marry Andrew How- 
 ard, my dear, poverty and all," Miriam retorted. 
 " He'd have beaten you and wrung the American's 
 neck. Did he ask when you intended to tell Jamie 
 of your — change of heart?" 
 
 " Great-aunt Miriam," the girl began, and could 
 not finish. 
 
 " No one has the right to hurt another," she got 
 out at last. " I thought once that a man had the 
 right to do anything he could bring himself to do. 
 I knew nothing when I thought that." 
 
264 THE CLASH 
 
 " What a folly is this talk of rights," Miriam said 
 scornfully. "Life has nothing to say to rights. 
 Life is a hunger that will be fed." 
 
 " Pity," Elizabeth began again. " If one remem- 
 bered to have pity for others." 
 
 Miriam laughed. " Pity comes afterwards," she 
 said, " on a full stomach." 
 
 While Elizabeth stared at her, she became aware 
 of a lurking horror. In the darkening room Mir- 
 iam sat, grotesque and sinister. Carved in yel- 
 lowed ivory, her head nodded on her rigid body; 
 living eyes looked stealthily frOm the dead face. 
 She waited patiently. 
 
 Elizabeth suppressed the cry that rose to her 
 lips. Miriam lifted her head and for a moment 
 Elizabeth thought that she saw her own face, grown 
 old and cruel. It was herself that mocked her from 
 the old woman's eyes. She looked in them and read 
 her own heart. When she opened her mouth the 
 sound that came from it was an old woman's voice, 
 thin and harsh. 
 
 " What are you? " she whispered. 
 
 If Miriam had answered, "I am your heart. I 
 am your image, made by you," she would not have 
 been startled : she would have believed, and bent to 
 whisper in the dulled ear for the pleasure of talking 
 to herself and seeing her secret thoughts reflected 
 in the eyes of her terrible familiar. 
 
 But Miriam said sharply, " Don't mutter, 
 child," and with a shaken laugh Elizabeth groped 
 on the wall for the electric switch. Miriam sat 
 blinking like a cat in the subdued light. 
 
HAEVEST 265 
 
 " Life," said she, " is tlie only study for people 
 of taste. It is a costly one. When I was young, I 
 paid with both hands, royally. As I grew older I 
 paid as little as possible. Now that I have nothing 
 left with which to pay I do not buy, but I watch the 
 prodigality of others." 
 
 " You watch me," Elizabeth said. 
 
 Her great-aunt's smile grew kind. "Yes, I 
 watch you," she said softly. "And do not think 
 that I am altogether brutal, my dear. Or that I 
 don't know that you are right when you talk of 
 pity. If men pitied each other, Christ would have 
 come again. But men are not pitiful. Some of 
 them learn pity, through being hurt, or through 
 hurting others and sickening at the sight." She 
 peered at Elizabeth. 
 
 " I can't tell Jamie." 
 
 " Would you rather lose your lover? " 
 
 " I wish it had not happened," Elizabeth said 
 painfully. 
 
 Miriam looked askance. "How do you know 
 that isn't just weariness? " she asked. 
 
 " I don't know," Elizabeth cried wildly. 
 
 " It must be quite a shock," her great-aunt said 
 smoothly, " to iind that you have not even the cour- 
 age of your crimes." 
 
 " It isn't a crime." 
 
 "No, it isn't," Miriam agreed sardonically. 
 " It's a blunder." 
 
 Elizabeth answered hotly. 
 
 "You make words of everything. I have hurt 
 Jamie to death, and lost my contentment and 
 
266 THE CLASH 
 
 self-respect, and you sit there and pick it into 
 words." 
 
 " Were you then so contented before this Ameri- 
 can came? " 
 
 Elizabeth began to laugh. 
 
 "You are always right," she said. "But you 
 are wrong, too. I am not weary of Jess. The ad- 
 venture has gone out of it and I'm damnably tired. 
 I should like to go away. I shall tell Jamie, and 
 ask him to divorce me and then I shall go away by 
 myself." 
 
 " Be quiet," Miriam said sharply. " You are 
 talldng like a fool, and your taste is poorer than 
 the poor sentiment. I thought you had been better 
 brought up than to contemplate such a folly. Tell 
 Jamie and keep your lover, or send away your lover 
 and keep Jamie. But don't talk to me of divorce 
 and going away alone. Do you contemplate a 
 touching confession followed by as touching a re- 
 treat into some conventional solitude? Guinevere 
 a, la mode? How like you." She watched the 
 angry blood in Elizabeth's cheeks. " Women who 
 commit follies are tiresome," she said more quickly. 
 " They have scraggy necks and wear sandals. You 
 should be better bred." 
 
 Elizabeth spoke impulsively. " Thank you," she 
 said steadily. " You are just, I think. But I do 
 not yet know what I shall do." 
 
CHAPTER XXXII 
 
 Jamie Denman had returned from Paris. At 
 Ms club, which offered hospitality to American of- 
 ficers, he was accosted by a lean Westerner whom 
 he had known at Hollow Down. The man from 
 Colorado said solemnly — 
 
 "I want your complete opinion of the Confer- 
 ence." 
 
 Jamie stared. His mouth twitched while he ap- 
 peared to reflect. " Three of the cleverest men in 
 Europe shut up with an honest fool," he said at 
 last. 
 
 The American stiffened. *'I take it," said he, 
 "that you are referring to the President of my 
 country." 
 
 " I am referring to your President, and if you 
 want to shoot me or merely to wave your flag at 
 me, come and see me to-morrow. Do, dear old 
 thing." He thrust a card at the astonished Ameri- 
 can and hurried away. 
 
 The other stared after him. " That is a very im- 
 petuous young man," he observed, " and his man- 
 ners are insulting." 
 
 Captain Cornish looked up from the chair where 
 he was sprawling over a Times. " The English," 
 he said, "have the most perfect manners in the 
 world. Always provided that you know the code." 
 
 Jamie stood looking across Piccadilly. Glancing 
 
268 THE CLASH 
 
 waves of heat rose from the road. He was a little 
 light-headed and his body felt strangely elongated, 
 so that the passers-by moved about below him like 
 puppets. He saw a wounded man drag himself 
 across the road for an incredible space of time. 
 The man reached the pavement and lifted to Jamie 
 his terrible face. Time and reality swept back upon 
 him while he compelled his eyes to meet calmly the 
 eyes of an obscene mask. 
 
 He sat in a tube train, and the dull sense of un- 
 reality returned. He drowsed in his corner, A 
 dream visited him, hung like a cameo between the 
 brief trouble of sleep and a confused waking. In 
 a low-walled room Elizabeth lay half -asleep. Her 
 cheeks were flushed and her limbs warm and 
 languid. Her lips parted and she made a gesture 
 of invitation. Jamie bent forward; aversion be- 
 came an evil desire to hurt her with discourteous 
 hands. Her face changed under his eyes ; the ter- 
 rible face of the wounded man lolled upon the pil- 
 low. The pits of his eyes were in Elizabeth's face, 
 his mouth twisted across hers, and his limbs, supine 
 and grotesque, stretched along her body. Jamie 
 was seized with a sick trembling. He woke ; a face 
 stared curiously at him, and the electric globes 
 rushed past with the rushing walls. 
 
 Elizabeth was alone at Felshott, though she had 
 come up to town to meet him. He recalled her 
 face as he had seen it across a tea-table, an hour 
 after their meeting. It was hardened against him, 
 and he talked to her about the Conference to hide 
 from both of them his uneasy pain. He fell silent 
 
HAEVEST 269 
 
 and she had said suddenly — " Do you want me to 
 stay in town? I ought to go straight back? " He 
 saw her stiffen to face a protest. He made none, 
 enduring the shock of his disappointment. " I'll 
 come after you so soon as Duchesne will let me," 
 he said lightly. 
 
 Yielding to an impulse, he telephoned Duchesne 
 from the tube station and went down to Felshott 
 that evening. She was in the garden and at the 
 sound of his footsteps on the walk turned sharply. 
 He came straight to her. 
 
 " I ought to have come before," he said un- 
 steadily. " Elizabeth, tell me what is wrong." 
 
 She put out her hands. " Dear," she whispered, 
 and when he did not move, took a step towards htm, 
 and held him gently. " Oh, my dear. Have you 
 wanted me? I would have come." 
 
 " You went away," he said. His anguish choked 
 him. " Oh, it is more than. I can bear," he cried. 
 Eesentment took him by the throat and he turned 
 away and left her. He heard her voice and then 
 her swift steps behind him. She gripped his arms 
 and kissed him fiercely, breathless and shaldng. 
 " I love you," she repeated. " Believe me that I 
 love you." 
 
 They sat on the terrace seat, close together in 
 the darkness, like children comforting one another. 
 He knew that she surrendered herself to him. If 
 he said now, " Tell me what is wrong," she would 
 answer him. With a gentleness rooted in his pain, 
 he refrained from questioning. " I had rather not 
 know," he said aloud. 
 
270 THE CLASH 
 
 Elizabeth lifted her head. "Know what, my 
 heart?" 
 
 "Whether you love me or not," he said, smil- 
 ing. 
 
 She held his mouth between two fingers while she 
 kissed it. 
 
 They went indoors. Miriam had gone to bed, 
 and Jamie, fastening the door, turned and took 
 Elizabeth in his arms again. " Would you indeed 
 have stayed if you had known I wanted you? " he 
 murmured. " I want you now." 
 
 She went slowly upstairs. When he stood beside 
 her bed, she lay with averted face. He bent over 
 her and saw that the tears were running over her 
 cheeks, though she struggled to check them. He 
 stared at her stupidly for a moment and then spoke 
 at random. " I came to say good-night," he said. 
 She caught his hand and he disengaged it gently. 
 " You are tired, dear heart." He went away with 
 blind awkward steps. 
 
 He dressed himself again and went out. Through 
 the brief night he walked about the park, stumbling 
 between the trees. Drops of sweat ran down his 
 face. Elizabeth was faithless, and suffering. He 
 could not now remember when he had first known 
 that she was faithless. Long ago, in France. 
 There were letters that had disappointed him, and 
 a thing said to which he had shut his mind. His 
 thoughts turned in him like a sword. He imagined 
 her first surrender to her lover. 
 
 He saw it as if he had been a witness. 
 
 What had she felt? Jealousy tore him with 
 
HAEVEST 271 
 
 physical pangs. He wondered if she had thought 
 of him then. " Oh, my God, why should she have 
 thought of me? " he cried aloud. When had she 
 begun to think of him? Had a memory of him 
 come to her when she lay in the American's arms? 
 Had she been sorry for a moment? 
 
 For a while he suffered the bitterness of a terrible 
 humiliation. She had looked at him and thought 
 of the other. Even now in the garden while he 
 had caressed her she must have been thinking of 
 the other. " She would have let me take her. How 
 do I know when she was with him last? It might 
 have been a night ago." He was sick unto death 
 with loathing. 
 
 That passed. Another thought stabbed him. 
 The thing was irrevocable. Not all her tears, not 
 his anguish, not any thinldng or weeping could 
 undo it. For ever she was spoilt. He flung up his 
 arms in an agony of regret. Why had she done it 
 to him? " Why didn't you tell me how it was with 
 you? " he said. " You gave me no chance. Didn't 
 I deserve at least the truth at your hands? Why 
 didn't you tell me? You must have known that 
 you loved him long before you let yourself become 
 his mistress. Why didn't you tell me then? I 
 could have done something. Surely, I could have 
 done something. You never gave me a chance. 
 You slunk off behind my back." He covered his 
 face for shame. 
 
 Spent, he halted at the edge of the trees. A 
 stillness had come upon the air, so marked that 
 Jamie lifted his face to the quiet sky. " It is the 
 
272 THE CLASH 
 
 turn of tlie night," lie said, and after & "wMle, " I 
 have been in hell." 
 
 He stumbled forward a few steps, and falling 
 across the path, lay there, half asleep and strangely- 
 calm. His thoughts went on, in confused dim 
 fashion. He was glad that he had held his tongue 
 before Elizabeth's tears. He might have lost Ms 
 head. He might have turned upon her in bawdy 
 indignation. "A lame incompetent, and a hot 
 swaggering man," he said once. " She should have 
 had a better lover than either of us." 
 
 The east dawned white and burned into a radi- 
 ance that strode across the hills and leaned into the 
 valley. Jamie walked slowly towards the house. 
 " I shall not always suffer like this," he reminded 
 himself. "I shall be sorry that my joy in you 
 
 came to so poor an end. But I shall forget " 
 
 His thoughts winced away from his hurt, and for 
 the first time he thought directly of Jess Cornish. 
 But he could call up no clear image of the Ameri- 
 can ; neither did he feel any anger against the per- 
 son of Elizabeth's lover. The bitterness of his loss, 
 losing his joy of her, overwhelmed all lesser pangs. 
 
 He decided to ask her nothing. " She will tell 
 me herself," he thought. " I can wait." 
 
 The earth was awake with dayspring. Insistent, 
 coaxing, defiant, bird answered bird in the trem- 
 bling trees, and the grass shivered to the touch of 
 the wind. Jamie lifted his head ; deep within him, 
 though he knew it not, a tiny spring of healing rose. 
 
 Elizabeth was standing on the terrace. When 
 he saw her, looking out into the morning, his 
 
HARVEST 273 
 
 strength failed him, and lie pressed Ms hand against 
 a young birch tree. An old song echoed in his 
 heart. Behold thou art fair, my ieloved, yea, 
 pleasant. Thou art all fair, my love; there is no 
 spot in thee. I am sick of love. Turn away thine 
 eyes from me, for they have overcome me. For love 
 is as strong as death; jealousy is cruel as the grave: 
 the coals thereof are coals of fire, which hath a most 
 vehement flame. 
 
 Elizabeth turned her head and saw him. She 
 ran across the wet grass, crying — " Out so early, 
 Jamie? " For a moment he held her from him, 
 and then they clung together in sUence. Regret 
 tortured him again, and he pressed his head against 
 her cool throat, so that she should not see his faca 
 
CHAPTER XXXin 
 
 Jamie returned to London. A fever of unrest 
 drove him througli the days and kept him awake at 
 night. Trying to take up again the work which 
 in 1914 he had abandoned he found himself at a 
 loss. His services were unwanted and he unwel- 
 come. 
 
 Yet the changes were not on the surface. The 
 party of official Labour was just where he had left 
 it, but it had no longer any thunder of its own. 
 Completely overshadowing it, the powerful Trades' 
 Unions went their way. Ideas of control, and new 
 ambitions, fermented in their rank and file, from 
 which rose an intermittent clamorous protest. 
 
 Telford-Smith, to whom Jamie turned for en- 
 lightenment, was openly triumphant. " The world 
 is on the eve of rebirth," said he, and offered to 
 show Jamie its new masters. 
 
 At the meeting to which he took Denman, a 
 young engineer spoke coldly. He said, "We no 
 longer believe that it is possible to achieve a new 
 England without violent Revolution. We can now 
 see in the near future that point at which the forces 
 of Capitalism will be compelled to call a halt to 
 concessions and face us. We can see them at home 
 preparing for this last fight, and abroad intriguing 
 in the Near East and planning to wrestle with 
 America for the trade of the world. To these 
 
HAEVEST 275 
 
 things we hold the master key. Without our con- 
 sent nothing can be achieved of all their ambitions. 
 Are we fools who will work longer and harder that 
 they may grow richer and out of their riches fling 
 us a contemptuous dole? Are they cowards who 
 will give in without a struggle? " 
 
 " Who is behind this man? " Jamie asked. 
 
 " All the young workers of the country." 
 
 Afterwards Jamie spoke to him. The young en- 
 gineer was willing to talk. He despised Telford- 
 Smith. "He belongs," said he, "to the intelli- 
 gentsia, the impotents of modern society. With a 
 mad logic they pick their way among ideas and 
 reach ridiculous conclusions free from any taint of 
 reality." 
 
 " When you talk of revolution," Jamie said, " you 
 never talk of the day after." 
 
 " It will be very like the day before. There will 
 be no massacres though there will be some blood 
 lost. But we shall keep our hands on the new 
 forces." He paused. 
 
 " It is very difficult," Jamie said, " for a man of 
 my sort to keep himself in his socialist faith. Prob- 
 ably you do not believe it possible. I loathe the 
 injustice of the old order but I regret in its passing 
 the beauty that it built on injustice and greed. Do 
 you know what I mean? " 
 
 The engineer nodded. " There will be a beauty 
 in the new order, but it will not be the old beauty." 
 His eyes blazed suddenly. " You know nothing of 
 the white seething beauty of molten steel, nor the 
 fiery beauty of red-hot rails and hot swart faces of 
 
276 THE CLASH 
 
 men, nor the swift beauty of girders and the leap- 
 ing beauty of iron arches. And when you talk of 
 beauty, do you ever think of those miles of terrible 
 houses, with windows closed against the filthy dust 
 of the street, brown peeling paint outside and dark- 
 walled squalor within? We shall sweep away all 
 that." 
 
 " Not on the day after." 
 
 " How that next day obsesses your mind ! " 
 
 " It is so much more important than the revolu- 
 tion," Jamie murmured. 
 
 The young workman reflected. "Do not sup- 
 pose," he said, "that I do not see in our ranks 
 brutal faces, and faces that are vacuous and loose- 
 mouthed. A brute is the same in any class of so- 
 ciety. Our fools have not the refinement of yours. 
 They content themselves with nastier drinks and 
 beastlier women." 
 
 He added, " The brute and the fool are as im- 
 potent as our friend the Bolshevik editor." He 
 nodded towards Telford-Smith, gesticulating in a 
 corner. " It is we, the makers of the world, who 
 will rule it." 
 
CHAPTEE XXXrV 
 
 Jamie Denman walked aimlessly tlirougli the 
 streets east of Houndsditch. He was depressed, 
 and their ugliness crushed him. " I am as impo- 
 tent as Telford-Smith," he thought, and then as- 
 sured himself that the engineer's talk of revolution 
 was the absurd dream of a fanatic. The world as 
 he knew it was too solid. But over half of Europe 
 the solid world had crumbled at a touch. 
 
 A few drops of rain fell in the heavy air, the pre- 
 lude of a storm. Thunder leaped among the swarm- 
 ing houses and the rain reared between heaven and 
 earth a wall of quivering steel. 
 
 Jamie took shelter in an underground caf6. In 
 the darkened room vague figures huddled against 
 the walls. The proprietor of the caf6 pushed his 
 monstrous belly from one to the other. He brought 
 mugs of coffee, and lit a lamp that filled the room 
 with an acrid smoke. A man stumbled down the 
 stairs, stooping his huge body in the doorway. The 
 rain poured off him and ran in pools across the 
 floor. He felt the silent distaste of all those torn 
 wrecked creatures among whom he stood. Blink- 
 ing painfully, he sat down beside Jamie. He 
 spread enormous hands out on the table and looked 
 at the young man with a fixed placid melancholy. 
 After his third coffee he began to talk without car- 
 ing whether anyone listened. Jamie heard his 
 
278 THE CLASH 
 
 voice through the crash of the thunder, a bodiless 
 murmur like the far-off clamour of trees. Strange 
 pictures were born of his words and flitted through 
 the room. 
 
 Jamie saw a Eussian village. Childlike, cunning 
 and brutal, the peasants separated themselves awk- 
 wardly from the earth whose life flowed ceaselessly 
 through them, a blind increative force. Out of 
 their two landowners they sent to the Duma that 
 one who promised them most. Then, with money 
 painfully counted out, they sent after him a peasant 
 to sit in the gallery and listen to his words. They 
 had sent this one. Jamie saw him in Petersburg : 
 he stumbled along a narrow street of secretive 
 houses. With wooden steps they huddled over the 
 river. He moved past them, sluggishly, like the 
 dark water. In a steaming, yellow-lit caf6 he 
 came upon a dancer : she jerked her thin white body 
 between the tables and he took hold of it in his 
 clumsy hands. He bought her with the peasants' 
 money and afterwards hid himself. In the spring 
 he drifted to England and a nervous young police- 
 man, feeling that huge hand on his shoulder, had 
 him locked up for assault. He did not seem to 
 know whether he had been in prison days or weeks. 
 " One day," he said, " I heard the voice of the key 
 in the lock." 
 
 The phrase roused Jamie to a sudden memory of 
 the young engineer talking in an ill-lit room. With 
 a new sharpness of vision he saw the emergent force 
 gathering itself against the fatal obstinacy of 
 Weaverbridge, two egoisms that could wreck the 
 
HAEVEST 279 
 
 world. He saw that hmnan society had become a 
 complex unwieldy structure built upon the segrega- 
 tion in poverty or slavery of whole classes of men 
 and women. Against this injustice now rose in the 
 heart of man itself an instinctive and irresistible 
 revolt, which might even yet be turned to create a 
 new unity out of disunion and warring greeds. 
 But by the grace of Weaverbridge it would be 
 turned against itself and bring upon the race some 
 frightful disaster. 
 
 His mind refused to credit a universal catas- 
 trophe. 
 
 He reflected, however, that there was a singular 
 lack of intelligence in the ordering of the universe. 
 Why otherwise should the most complete and deli- 
 cate ecstasy possible to man have been arrogated to 
 a physical emotion, the emotion of sexual love? 
 
 The storm was over. He climbed out of the 
 cellar and walked until he found a taxi to take him 
 into the Strand. Through the colimins of Ad- 
 miralty Arch he saw the sombre panoply of the 
 setting sun. A multitude of clouds, tawny-bellied 
 and irradiate, hung in the dim blue void. 
 
 Under the Arch an old man held a tray of 
 matches. Emptied of hope, he propped his wrecked 
 body against the wall. No sound issued between 
 those bloodless, vacant lips ; he did not even proffer 
 his matches to the passers-by. 
 
 At the foot of the plinth a man inveighed hoarsely 
 against the King and against the injustice of dis- 
 charged starving soldiers. A few policemen lis- 
 tened stolidly on the outskirts of the crowd. 
 
280 THE CLASH 
 
 Jamie limped along the Mall. He thought, 
 " Suppose man should indeed refuse to obey that 
 law of Nature bidding him unite or perish. The 
 world will slip back into barbarism. As part of 
 Europe has already done. But is not the universe 
 a harmony of cause and effect in which the least 
 deviation would produce chaos? Then why sup- 
 pose that of all created things man alone is not 
 governed by this rigid harmony? " 
 
 He understood suddenly that man might be the 
 only created thing with the ill will to break the law. 
 
CHAPTER XXXV 
 
 Elizabeth felt herself separated from Jamie by 
 more than her own act. In his thoughts lay hidden 
 a strange country : acres upon acres of ruined fields, 
 humped into desolate ridges and pitted with shell 
 holes full of water. The wild flowers and the bul- 
 rushes were taking back the barren land, thrusting 
 up between the twisted wire and round the squat 
 white pill boxes. There was a road haunted by 
 the ghost of a wood, grey skeletons of trees stand- 
 ing stifly or leaning like gaunt limbs wrenched 
 from their sockets. 
 
 In this country Elizabeth could not set foot. 
 Jamie walked in it alone with memories that seared 
 and tore, and men who had been alive and now were 
 dead. 
 
 He had abandoned his attempt to get back into 
 the movement of Labour. His help had always 
 been an impertinence, and was now unnecessary. 
 Moreover, he did not know how to help. He 
 stepped back, with a smile for his incapacity. 
 
 As the pressure of work in the department slack- 
 ened, he had little to do, and came down to Felshott 
 every evening. He tried to interest himself in the 
 Hall, and made suggestions which Elizabeth was 
 faintly surprised to find useful. He showed her a 
 cheerful affection ; his kisses were cool and friendly, 
 
282 THE CLASH 
 
 and Elizabeth, was grateful for Ms reticence -with- 
 out seeking to fathom it. 
 
 He was not able to control his thoughts with, an 
 equal success. They tortured him at night with 
 images from which he would have fled in pity for 
 that gentle lady, his wife, had they not followed 
 him closer, the harder he tried to escape. 
 
 Came an early morning when they hunted him 
 from his bed. In the chaos of his mind one thought 
 drove itself through the rest like a nail set at his 
 temple. Sleep. " I must sleep," he repeated. 
 Sleep. Quiet as death, but warm and healing. 
 The desire of it ran through his limbs like the mad- 
 ness of love. He would lie warm and soft. He 
 would go in unto his wife and get sleep of her. 
 
 He stood looking down upon her as she slept. 
 Leaning over the bed, he hardly heard her quiet 
 breath. She was pale, with the translucent pallor 
 of deep sleep. He touched her, but she did not 
 wake. He said her name and at that she stirred 
 and looked at him. 
 
 " Elizabeth," he whispered, " I am tired to 
 death." 
 
 Half raising herself, she stretched out one arm. 
 " Sleep, then," she said softly. " Sleep, little 
 heart." 
 
 The warmth of sleep poured from her over him. 
 A profound lassitude overcame him. He no longer 
 desired her. Passion had died of her swift pity. 
 He desired nothing save to lie still. 
 
 Elizabeth said drowsily, " Why is it you cannot 
 sleep? " 
 
HAEVEST 283 
 
 "I don't know," he answered truthfully. He 
 could not remember the thoughts that had tor- 
 mented him. 
 
 " The world is full of dead men," he said sud- 
 denly. " They press round me so that I can neither 
 sleep nor breathe. I see them when I look at you. 
 I used to see them when I was in hospital." 
 
 She opened her eyes. " When were you in hos- 
 pital? " 
 
 " Over there," he murmured vaguely. "A bomb 
 dropped outside my stores tent and I got a small 
 piece in my leg." 
 
 " You never told me. Why wasn't I told? " 
 
 "I was afraid you would be sorry for me," he 
 said simply. After that he said nothing at all, and 
 when she looked down at him, she saw that he slept. 
 
 She was wide awake now, startled by his words. 
 They penetrated the stolid abstraction that had 
 persisted since Jess Cornish went to France. Once 
 before it had been shaken, when Jamie came to her 
 and she had wept in a shamed unhappiness on 
 which she dared not dwell. He left her and she 
 had retreated again into her protective apathy. 
 
 Jamie slept with his head on her arm. Exhaus- 
 tion had drawn a deep line down each cheek. In a 
 brief vision, gone -before she could grasp it, she felt 
 rather than saw herself living without hun, a 
 stranger in a strange land. The figure of her lover 
 was shadowy. There came a foreknowledge of the 
 useless regrets that would torment her. For a mo- 
 ment the thought stirred in her mind that all re- 
 grets grow dim and vanish. It stirred but faintly, 
 
284 THE CLASH 
 
 and was lost in a rusli of emotion. She gathered 
 his thin body to her and pressed soft kisses on his 
 eyes and parted lips. " I will make it up to you, 
 indeed, indeed I will." Even in that sunken sleep 
 he stirred as if he shrank from her pitying tender- 
 ness. In a little while she too slept. 
 
CHAPTER XXX\r[ 
 
 MiKiAM was afraid 
 
 She saw Elizabeth sitting in placid indecision 
 while disaster drew on with each day that passed. 
 It seemed impossible to rouse her. 
 
 "When does Captain Cornish come on leave 
 again from France? " she asked bluntly. 
 
 "He has been on leave again," Elizabeth said 
 calmly. "Andrew saw him at the club. He did 
 not come to see me." 
 
 " Why? " 
 
 Elizabeth shrugged. 
 
 " I don't know. Perhaps he knew that Jamie 
 had come home." 
 
 "And do you think that such charming delicacy 
 will last for ever?" Her great-aunt was shocked. 
 " You are in a shameful position," she said harshly. 
 " What are you going to do? " 
 
 For a moment Elizabeth's glance faltered. Then 
 she smiled. 
 
 "You are grown monstroxis considerate. Great- 
 aunt Miriam," she said suavely. "Or monstrous 
 scrupulous." 
 
 Miriam's eyes gleamed. "Scrupulous?" said 
 she. "You are rash to take the word into your 
 mouth. It is true that I took a lover and another 
 after that, but by gad I took them honestly, in the 
 
28G THE CLASH 
 
 sight of all men. I was not bred to modern refine- 
 ments." 
 
 "Nothing could be in more modern taste than 
 your sentiment, ma'am," Elizabeth said smoothly. 
 Then her face changed. 
 
 " Great-aunt Miriam," she cried. " I do assure 
 you that I know what I have to do. I love Jess as 
 I could never love Jamie. But I can no more tear 
 Jamie out of my heart than I could kill him with 
 my hands. I can't buy happiness at that price. 
 The thought of him would haunt me." 
 
 Miriam's voice had a scornful edge. "You are 
 trying to tell me that you still want the Texan but 
 no longer find it possible to pay for him. And so 
 you will give him up. Very touching, m'dear, but 
 does it parse? It is a noble gesture. Or will be 
 when you have rehearsed it a little." 
 
 Elizabeth flushed. " I know well enough," she 
 answered, "that it is not noble. Do you think I 
 do not know that it is only moral softness makes it 
 impossible for me to hurt Jamie? " 
 
 " I know nothing of your softness," her great- 
 aunt said drily. " I know well that you are alto- 
 gether too ready with words. But if it gives you 
 satisfaction to work up to an heroic sacrifice and 
 so hide from yourself the fact that you are tired of 
 your glorious adventure — "why, do so, my child. 
 I'm sure you want Captain Cornish to have a beau- 
 tiful and noble memory to take away with him." 
 
 Elizabeth put out her hand in a defensive ges- 
 ture. "Have pity," she whispered. "Oh, have 
 pity. I need it." 
 
HAEVEST 287 
 
 " You don't want pity now," Miriam said. " You 
 want a miracle. Take care. You may find — when 
 you have staged the beautiful sacrifice — that you 
 really care after all." Her voice sharpened. 
 
 " Does Jamie suspect you? " she asked. 
 
 " No." 
 
 " Then he is a fool." 
 
 "He is no fool," Elizabeth said slowly. "But 
 he never feels deeply about anything." 
 
 Miriam gripped her wrist. " Elizabeth, listen to 
 me," she said, with a fierce urgency. " There is 
 that in you of which I am afraid. Once in Sicily 
 I stood by the waters of a bay : they were smooth 
 as oil and without warning parted and revealed a 
 lothly great worm. You do not know what is in 
 your heart. I beg you to search it. l^ow. Before 
 it is too late. You were better dead than nursing 
 a lie in your heart." Her face was convulsed. " I 
 have learned in a bitter school and paid dearly for 
 my lessons. All I have learned is said in this: 
 truth is best. Always truth is best. Truth is the 
 only good and the purest pity. Oh, if I could but 
 make you understand. They are such old words 
 that they mean nothing to you. Yet there is every- 
 thing in them. Everything. Men lie for profit or 
 for pity. All lies turn to poison, but a lie that is 
 told for pity or shame breeds such a host of ills that 
 no power on earth can compass their redemption. 
 Elizabeth, in God's name, I entreat you to be honest 
 with yourself. You are asleep. Wake, I tell you." 
 She looked at the girl for a moment and went stiffly 
 out of the room. 
 
288 THE CLASH 
 
 Her words rang in Elizabetli's ears, evil, menac- 
 ing, like words spoken out of a dead and frightful 
 past. But slie could not bestir herself nor discover 
 the thoughts of her heart. Her mind drowsed 
 heavily, resting in an indifferent detachment that 
 muted the Southerner's appeal. She drifted 
 through the days, thinking vague thoughts of love 
 and sacrifice, and feeling very little. 
 
CHAPTEE XXXVII 
 
 Elizabeth came upon Jess without warning. At 
 the first sight of him in the doorway of her garden 
 room a sharp pain assailed her. She swayed a lit- 
 tle in his arms. The dizziness passed and she found 
 herself holding desperately on to her vision of a 
 pale wounded Jamie. 
 
 Jess was in a black and intolerant mood. He 
 pressed relentlessly upon her the need for telling 
 Jamie at once. 
 
 " Not another day, not another hour/' he said. 
 " I can't stand it. I couldn't come near you on my 
 last leave. Denman came into the club and I hid 
 behind the Times. 1 didn't want to see you after 
 that. It's treacherous, it's beastly. I'm not pre- 
 tending I don't loathe the thought, but we've got to 
 go through with it." 
 
 She struggled against the stupor of her mind. 
 Again she felt herself drawn by his consuming vi- 
 tality. She leaned towards him, but he looked at 
 her with a faint mocking smile. 
 
 " Keep away, Elizabeth," he said. " This is not 
 a moment for sentiment." 
 
 The words stung her. The angry blood surged 
 in her brain. 
 
 She wanted to strike through his impassivity, 
 and so struck blindly. 
 
290, THE CLASH 
 
 " Need there ever be any sentiment? " she asked. 
 
 He allowed himself no change of expression. 
 
 " Now just what do you mean, my dear? " he said 
 mildly. 
 
 Her anger was ebbing but she was driven by her 
 own words. Moreover it gave her pleasure to feel 
 herself hard and destructive. She rode her mind 
 like a bitted horse. 
 
 " Don't you think," she said, " that perhaps we've 
 been exaggerating a little? " 
 
 His narrowed eyes regarded her without emotion. 
 She was filled with excitement. Standing before 
 him, she turned her head to escape his eyes. He 
 stood stifly, close against her, his arms rigid by his 
 side. Her stolidity was suddenly gone: she was 
 sick with the jerking tumult of her senses. She 
 could not think. With throbbing pulses and mind 
 that ran hither and thither in a futile confusion, 
 she yielded herself to an impulse that rose from the 
 farthest recesses of her being, a strange involuntary 
 treachery roused into blind life, an eyeless thrust- 
 ing horror. 
 
 She faced his terrifying immobility, and yet it 
 was not she who faced it but another who was not 
 conscious of him, yet still conscious of the need to 
 leave a beautiful image of herself in his mind. 
 
 " My darling," she said, " I want you to go away. 
 I want you to go now at once, while I can bear it. 
 I'm not in love with you: I'm mad with love 
 for you. But I can't leave Jamie. I can't, I 
 can't." 
 
 She faltered before an abrupt consciousness of 
 
HARVEST 291 
 
 his veiled, watcliful gaze. Already her mind was 
 turning revolted from tlie falsity of her words. 
 
 Suddenly the flame broke through him. He held 
 her savagely, so that the breath fluttered in her 
 crushed body, bending upon her a face of black 
 rage. " You lie, you are lying to me." The words 
 were not quite inaudible. " You are not sacrificing 
 your love. You are getting rid of me. You are 
 afraid of me. Couldn't you keep faith with either 
 of us, lover or husband? " 
 
 He released his hold so that she lay in the curve 
 of one arm. With his free hand he pushed her 
 gown violently off her shoulders, tearing the flimsy 
 stuff. Hard cruel kisses bruised her. She swayed 
 agaiust him in a blind response. 
 
 He felt the yielding of her body and flung her 
 suddenly off him. " I thank God that I am a bar- 
 barian," he said. " The dregs of a worn-out race 
 sicken me." He paused. "For just half a mo- 
 ment I almost believed in it — that noble renuncia- 
 tion of yours. I will say for you that you are the 
 cleverest woman I ever owned. I've taken all I 
 want. Your husband can have what is left." 
 
 She was beaten and she knew it. A change came 
 over her face. She lifted her head, holding him 
 there by the miracle of her stillness. The blood 
 thundertag in her ears had a voice that was older 
 than the voice of her treachery. " This is the last," 
 it said. "You are evil, and your deeds a shame, 
 but you shamed yourself. The stranger had no 
 hand in it. You are broken, but you broke your- 
 self, and by God you shall stand to it now." 
 
292 THE CLASH 
 
 She did not know whence she drew her strength, 
 but she drew it easily, with a joyous confidence, and 
 her laughter rang lightly in her ears. 
 
 She looked him in the face. 
 
 "How frightfully American," she murmui-ed. 
 " Your fervour does you credit. You should have 
 had a larger audience." 
 
 A dull red burned across his cheekbones, like the 
 mark of a lash. 
 
 "You are stiff-necked," said he, and took his 
 leave. 
 
 When he had gone, stepping through the 
 French window and striding across the lawn, she 
 stood for a moment, her hands clasped on her 
 breast. 
 
 With a cry shaken out of her anguish, she sank 
 on the floor. She was unconscious of her tears, un- 
 conscious of torn dress and disordered hair. She 
 could neither think nor plan. 
 
 The touch of her husband's hand did not startle 
 her ; she realised without emotion that he had heard 
 the American's words. He soothed her, kneeling 
 to take her in his arms. He thought, " She is 
 spoiled and draggled." A passion of pity JBlled 
 him. He caressed her with infinite gentleness. 
 Once he held her a little from him and said calmly, 
 " I came to you quite clean, my dear." And after 
 that he said nothing at all, but knelt there with her 
 body relaxed against him. 
 
 She was almost unconscious of an unwilling 
 flickering emotion that was half contempt for his 
 gentleness, before the marvel of his pity over- 
 
HAEVEST 293 
 
 whelmed her. She abased herself at its feet; it 
 bound her to him for ever. 
 
 Late in the evening he came and stood beside her 
 in the opulent dusk of the garden. " Elizabeth," 
 he said gently, "we will go to some place of meadow 
 grass and trees, and forget." 
 
 She looked up at him, and he held her lightly by 
 the shoulders. A curious gleam came into his eyes, 
 a flash of something like hatred that was gone in an 
 instant. Into his gaze a quality of fierceness en- 
 tered, new and disturbing. 
 
 He turned towards the lighted house, and she 
 went with him, shrinking a little. 
 
CHAPTER XXXVm 
 
 On Ms last day in England Jess Cornisli went 
 again to Hollow Down. He would never return. 
 Already his mind was astir with, new ambition, and 
 interests that only his own country could fill. He 
 rejoiced in his youth and the resistless tide of his 
 energy. 
 
 He climbed the hill to the crest of the downs and 
 sat looking down at the small village. He con- 
 sidered Elizabeth, clumsily and a little painfully. 
 He remembered his thought of her as a cold wanton, 
 but his mind rejected that on the instant. With 
 a brief involuntary compassion he saw her spirit 
 shining through its beautiful body. It leaped on 
 spread wings and fell back bruised and shamed. 
 It limped along mean byways and dreamed of the 
 heights. 
 
 He had not been able to break her. She had re- 
 serves at which he had not guessed. Neither could 
 she break him : he paid tribute, ungrudging, to her 
 pride. " These people are all proud when they 
 come to it," he murmured. "Where do they get 
 it?" 
 
 In the western sky an elfin lake, wan and greenly 
 glimmering, lay between tranquil clouds. The 
 vault of heaven glowed with a remote pale light. 
 Beechen woods, their burnished glory dimmed, 
 stood sentinel above the valley. South and east 
 
HAEVEST 295 
 
 the rounded hills kept sure the scattered villages. 
 Over the still air was borne faintly the gentle mel- 
 ancholy caw of rooks, returning from the stubbled 
 fields. They hovered round the square belfry of 
 the church; dipping and circling, they wheeled 
 above it. 
 
 The Amef ican walked down towards the village. 
 In the brooding quiet of the hour its farms and 
 cottages merged into the folding dusk. 
 
 He overtook a man moving before him with bent 
 head and heavy steps. Jess knew him for the old 
 farmer who supplied the aerodrome. 
 
 " Mr. Hinwood." 
 
 The other answered his greeting as if they had 
 talked together only the day before. Like an 
 ancient twisted tree, he stood beside the young 
 American. 
 
 " Cap'n Cornish? " He pointed stiffly at the 
 fields from which the last sheaf had been carted. 
 " The eatage of the fog we call that," he said slowly, 
 " eatage of the fog." 
 
 " You'll have your sons back now? " 
 
 The old man bent aside a straggling branch. 
 " Killed." 
 
 "What, not all four of them? " 
 
 " Ay, all." 
 
 The American stammered a little. "What are 
 you doing now then? " 
 
 "Harvesting now, and threshing. After that 
 we'm going to plough the hill field, it that was 
 fallow in your day." 
 
 Jess Cornish felt the presence of a strength be- 
 
296 THE CLASH 
 
 side wMch Ms own strength stood abated, his 
 yonth and his vitality become transient and of little 
 worth. 
 
 A wind came from the downs and shook a sudden 
 glory from the trees : it filled the hillside with its 
 exultant clamour. 
 
Cornell University Library 
 PR 6019.A51C5 
 
 The clash, by Storm Jameson 
 
 3 1924 007 801 354